Dillon, James MatthewWednesday, 15 May 1957 |
Dáil Éireann Debate
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Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Milk Costings Commission.
Oh dear, dear! I hope Deputy O Briain will not get a weakness.
I thought the Minister would not have much to add.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Cost of Maintenance in Institutions.
Does the Minister make the same presumption in respect of Ministers?
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Donegal Weaving Factories.
Every avenue is being explored and every stone is being turned.
For the last 35 years.
Order of Business.
We ordered for the 18th May, I think, a Greyhound Bill which was proposed to be circulated——
We have one Tánaiste in this House and that is enough for the present. If anybody is covetous of his job let him shove up in the bed, but meanwhile I take it the Tánaiste will answer my question. Mi...
That is the difference between impudence and common courtesy.
Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 5—General (Resumed).
We have just heard the maiden speech of the Minister for Defence in this House and I felicitate him on the occasion, on the form and the substance of his speech, with not a word of which I found mysel...
That is what interests me about the Minister for Defence. He has been so staggered by the stories told to him since he became Minister that he is beginning to persuade himself that this problem of de...
The more they talk, the more we shall learn from them. I wonder does the Minister for Justice seriously believe that increasing the price of what is most familiar to many in rural Ireland, the price...
Yes.
Yes.
Yes. Please put it on the record and let Deputies opposite take out pencil and paper and write down that if the Fianna Fáil disaster had not come upon the Irish people this Budget would not have been...
I did not expect Deputy Traynor would even join the general trend of my observations. He is usually a friendly and courteous debater in this House.
That has been my experience. I do not blame him as I do not blame the Minister for Defence, when they see the picture fully put before them to find themselves recoiling in horror from the thing they ...
I think they have fallen into the error into which many people fell before them. They are trying to follow the policy personified by Montague Norman of the Bank of England, Mr. Andrew Mellon of the U...
They believed a country was better run by professional economists than by us, the chosen representatives of the people. You see, we never did believe that it was our duty to abrogate the obligations ...
I do not expect the Government will discuss it at all. I am complaining that when the Budget comes to be discussed in Dáil Eireann we have no Minister for Agriculture to tell us what the repercussion...
We had the Minister for External Affairs when he was free to turn his eyes from Stephen's Green.
You had an acting Minister for Agriculture.
I was told he was an acting Minister for Agriculture until Mr. Seán Moylan had been made a Senator.
It does not matter. It is very like Fianna Fáil, and the thing I fear about this is that when the Department of Agriculture is being filled the Government will say: “Get any fellow over in Stephen's ...
It is a long time since I was in the children's school, but it makes me young again to hear even so venerable a figure as the present Minister for Finance saying to me: “Yah, and you, too.” The Minist...
In the meantime, the Minister should not behave as if he was in the kindergarten. It is not going to prove his argument when he says “Yah.”
At the next stage, the Minister will be taking conkers out of his pocket and challenging me. It is strangely indicative of the mentality of Fianna Fáil that their attitude to the Department of Agricu...
The Minister intervened several times to say that. I do not think he has made much of an impression on the House. He has a neophyte beside him and he should give him a good example.
I have been trying for the last ten minutes, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, to do your job. It is the Minister for Finance who has been interrupting me; I have not been interrupting him. I quite agree we...
I do not expect Deputy Booth to understand this. His primary interest is in motor cars and industrial enterprises. I am talking about agriculture and I do not think he would claim to know very much ...
He does not seem to be worried. I think it is a matter of very grave concern that the repercussions of this Budget cannot be examined from the point of view of agriculture. I cannot remember any rep...
I think the Minister might have fairly said that that represented an additional 1½d. or 2d. on the price of butter. How many people knew that in addition to putting 5d. on the butter it was proposed...
I will tell you what could be plainer. It is this: This means that the 5d. subsidy provided by the inter-Party Government is being withdrawn and an additional charge of 2d. is being placed on butter.
What should it amount to?
What should it amount to?
That is not fair. The very substance of my complaint is that we were not told. To tell you the honest truth, I do not think any of you particularly cared. I think it is vital to the industry. The ...
Do you not think that we were entitled to be told the additional charges the Minister proposed? Would it not have been better for him to tell us that the allowances would be reduced by 1d. or 1½d? I ...
Why?
There is no need to get cross with me.
There is no need to get cross. What the Budget operated to do was to remove the 5d. which we had provided. Everybody understands that a certain unknown factor then enters in—the removal of the produ...
I think the Minister felt this was a matter of relative insignificance. I do not think so. Anything which touches the creamery industry is a matter which goes to the very root of our life in this cou...
All I am criticising is the failure to provide information. I am gradually getting from the Minister now what his view really is. I wonder could I ask the Fianna Fáil Deputies to intervene in the de...
I do not think they knew it. I do not know what are the implications of the provision of money to convert wheat into animal feed. Why was that put in? Why was that wheat not used for the production...
But surely we have not reached the stage where we are producing so much wheat now that we are going to pay the millers £150,000 at the end of the year to grind it and feed it to the cattle?
No. This is the equivalent of selling butter as cart grease. You do not grease an ass's cart with butter. You sell the butter for the best price you can get.
The U.S.A. has two years' crop in stock.
You have plenty of storage. There is no difficulty on the storage front whatever. You can keep 60,000 tons of wheat.
None.
The millers do not want to use it. They want to make the case that one-third of the crop is unfit for conversion into flour. That is all cod.
What is the Minister's estimate of the quantity of wheat which will be turned into animal feed?
Do you realise that 30,000 tons of the Irish wheat crop are to be converted into animal feed and the millers are to get a subsidy of £150,000 for doing it? Do you realise what that means?
They will get the difference. We are applying £150,000 for the conversion of 30,000 tons of Irish wheat into animal feed.
Somebody is getting it.
Do you imagine your own followers are such imbeciles as to believe that the farmers of this country will get Irish wheat sold at the price of barley and the difference is to be made up from the Excheq...
Now do you see what this is leading up to?
What did you say? Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
Committee on Finance. - Turf Development Bill, 1957—Money Resolution.
Comparing the new Cork station with the new Ferbane station, which are about equal age and capacity, would the Minister tell us the cost of generating electricity at Ferbane?
What does the Minister mean?
What is the cost of producing a unit of electricity with milled peat?
I should like the Minister to clarify one point. Would he give us the fuel volume of Marina, which is an oil-burning station, as opposed to Ferbane, which is a sod peat station?
And Marina is oil burning?
The Minister says the fuel cost for milled peat is about one-half of that for oil at its present price, and the price of oil may go up or down in the future. I think it is important to know what is t...
Marina is a new station too.
Committee on Finance. - Turf Development Bill, 1957—Committee and Final Stages.
I wonder how long will the Minister maintain this skill at getting his legislation?
Not co-operative, but courteous. Question put and agreed to.
Committee on Finance. - Imposition of Duties Bill, 1957— Second and Subsequent Stages.
I hope I will not be regarded as a purist.
May I make two submissions? In our present circumstances, is it desirable to maintain this system of suspension of duties with the possibility of reimposition without any reference to Parliament? It ...
That is the annual thing? However, that removes that. The only other thing that occurs to me is whether it is desirable to invest the Government with powers to suspend or revoke duties which have be...
Then, during wartime it was necessary to have a number of emergency powers in order to enable the administration to be carried on in time of emergency. I will not press this matter further than to sa...
What about the repeal of the statute.
Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 5—General (Resumed).
When we adjourned we were discussing the impact of the Budget on agriculture. I was asking the Minister for Finance why he made provision for £150,000 to convert a proportion of the wheat crop into a...
He said it is bad wheat.
I think that what happened is that this is wheat which the millers do not want to mill. They made the case very strongly to me—and I saw their point—that they should not be asked to mill sprouted wh...
——imported, if needs be —to enable you to carry any quantity of sprouted wheat you may have to incorporate into the grist.
No. They got 50 per cent. from September until about October. Then we sent for them again because at that time we did not know what the wheat crop would be like as it came in. The general undertaking...
The crop turned out to be much larger than we anticipated.
Exactly. There will be a much bigger harvest this year.
We have too much wheat. One of the defences for appropriating £150,000 in this year is that there is no place to put the wheat. I assure the Minister that he is mistaken. There is store. It is quit...
What is wrong with it?
Do not believe a word of it. They tried to sell me that cup of tea and I just laughed at them. It is nonsense. I assure the Minister there was not a barrel of wheat taken into storage and dried fr...
Yes.
No, but I do ask the House to face this interesting fact: how many members of the Fianna Fáil Party believe that one of the results of the inter-Party Government policy was that we had too much wheat,...
The Minister knows that that is not true.
Here is the position. The first explanation is that we have too much wheat and nowhere to put it. I want to warn the Minister for Industry and Commerce against this and here is the reason I think it...
——the millers will come and say that sprouted wheat is not fit for conversion into flour. The next step will be that the millers will explain to the Minister for Industry and Commerce that sprouted w...
As Deputy Allen ought to know—and I believe does know, because he is a cute operator beaming over there for the last 25 years——
——we got the present crop used, and should get it all used——
——by the skilful use of sufficient quantities of imported wheat. Has the present Minister for Industry and Commerce reduced the grist?
If the Minister changed the grist——
Yes, but has the Minister thought it expedient to reduce the grist?
Now, we know.
Well, you see, he is the Minister for Industry and Commerce.
I think the Minister for Industry and Commerce is right in that it would be foolish to press for a higher percentage than 66?. He might go to 70, but I would not press it. I think he would be wrong ...
I do not blame you. One more salvo from Deputy Allen and Deputy Corry and the position of the Minister will be untenable.
The Minister for Finance has been out now for an hour and a quarter, having tea, and when he was going out, I was expressing some surprise at the method he employed for informing us that the present G...
Did Deputy Allen know, cross his heart and hope to die, when that speech was made in this House, that there was 7d. a lb. going on butter, or did he think it was 5d.?
Did the Minister for Finance have time to refer back to what he said on the Budget in regard to butter? I want to ask the Minister for Finance, now that he is here, does he think the paragraph in wh...
Since that was asked, I got a copy of the Minister's speech.
I am not repeating.
No.
I had not got a copy of the Minister's speech then and I am asking the Minister now if he thinks it was fair to say:— “The appropriate subsidy paid on butter not yet sold to consumers will be recovere...
I would have thought the subsidy was generally deemed to be the 5d. subsidy.
That is perfectly clear. That is the Minister's version. The House has heard my version. Which does the House think was the disingenuous way of approaching them, to communicate that information to ...
I think it is important that the facts should be stated and what I am anxious about it what the repercussions of these proposals will be on the industry. We know now that the price of butter——
——is going to be in the order of 4/3d or 4/4d. I reckon that that will result in reduced consumption of butter on the domestic market. There is a clear undertaking here that whatever surplus over and...
Heretofore, the Treasury recouped the Butter Marketing Committee for any losses they made on that transaction.
What is the Minister's intention in the coming year?
I am only asking a question. I can find no provision left in the Estimates, after the Minister's speech, to meet the charge that may come in course of payment if there are exports of surplus butter b...
But, after the Minister's speech and his announcement of his intention to withdraw all subsidies here mentioned, it does not seem to me to leave anything in these Estimates to provide for the continge...
Any that we exported last year cost about £7.
It is in the accounts.
Last year, no—nothing like it. We only started exporting butter about January and only the exports for January-March came into that account and in this year, prior to the Budget, in the month of Apri...
No.
Could the Minister say what provision is being made in the Estimates for the charge?
The Minister has not made an estimate. If there is any Supplementary Estimate required to support the export of butter, it will be forthcoming?
That is a very important step.
Not at all. These are two interesting facts that we have extracted: first, that we have too much wheat; and, secondly, that not 5d. a lb. but between 6½d. and 7d. is going on the price of butter, but...
What I am concerned about is——
——the situation obtaining at the latest date for which we can get the total gross agricultural production, which is the year 1955. The figure for 1956 has not yet been published by the Central Statis...
I merely give the figures as published by the Central Statistics Office. According to those figures, more cattle were reared in 1955 than we ever had, and more sheep, I believe, than we ever had befo...
I am not casting any reflections on anyone. All I am saying to the Minister for Defence is that if these are evidence of ravage, then ravage has a meaning which I never attributed to it before. We h...
I am not talking in terms of abbis or anything else, but I am asking: is it evidence of ravage that we got more wheat than we ever got in any harvest before and from one-half the acreage of land? Not...
Well, now, Deputy Allen thinks all that is wrong.
That is fair; I shall accept it. Everybody is entitled to his own view. I am for it, but I can understand Deputy Allen's view.
We rehabilitated that land; we had photographs of it in this Lobby and out at the R.D.S.; and it has been seen by people all over the country who are still applying in numbers far greater than the exi...
I do not think that is evidence of ravage.
I think it is evidence that we have something in this country on which money was well spent. We have provided £100,000 with which we built or reconstructed over the past eight years. We have carried...
The successive Governments of Ireland.
Yes. They spent it. I do not know that we have any reason to regret any of that expenditure. When we begin counting up our assets, I think we should remember that we have all that property now. We ...
I would not mind the hanging, so long as they did not cut our throats——
She is a powerful authority on agriculture.
The Minister goes to the queerest sources for his information.
For which you had the revenue.
The 4/4 contains that.
Sevenpence is about the limit.
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