A TRANSFORMED IRELAND
DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE :{ The members of the British Farmers' Association* who were on a visit ,to Ireland in May, received an official reception in the lecture theatre of the Royal College of Science, Dublin.. Mr. T..W. Russell, M.P., presided. ■■ - : " - h . 1 Professor J. R. Campbell, Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, delivered. an interesting lecture on ' Agricultural Development in Ireland,' in the course of which he said— important changes have taken place in Ireland since the* last visit of the British Dairy Farmers' Association in 1899. Indeed, these have been so great and their consequences so far-reaching, that it no exaggeration to say that you have come back to view an entirely new Ireland. ' % ■ '-.- Let me mention two obvious conditions which differentiate Ireland from Great Britain, as they afford a key to the better understanding of much of our work. The first is what I may as the immobility; of our farmers. When you are dissatisfied with your surroundings or with the terms on which you hold your land, you do not hesitate to seek a more desirable holding. Four daily papers offer you a choice of vacant farms, and you may take a lease of one in your neighborhood, in an adjoining parish, or in a distant county. There is, indeed, amongst you at certain terms a sort of general post. This is a matter of pure business, in which sentiment plays little or no part. You have, too, your Agricultural Holdings Act, which facilitates the process by arranging terms of compensation for improvements between you and your landlord. In Ireland the custom is far different. There is no Agricultural Holdings Act, no changing of farms, but
There is an Unbounded Sentiment, / altogether praiseworthy, but utterly inexplicable to the British mind, which the family in the holding and makes it for them more difficult to migrate to an adjoining county town than to emigrate to the United States. No one who fails to grasp this simple ■ fact can ever understand Irish land problems.. The second point I want to emphasise is the great proportion of our farms which by you would be classed as very small holdings. Most people overlook the fact that whilst you have in Scotland about 78,000 holdings and in England and Wales about 430,000 in Ireland there are over half a million, of which more than 350,000 do not exceed 30 acres, and of these about 216,000 do not exceed 15 acres. It will be at once obvious, therefore, that the form and extent of State aid here must necessarily be very different from, and I may say more effective than, that in a country of large, self-contained farms. Remember, too, that, as I shall show immediately, the State here has become, in effect, the landowner, and as such would naturally be expected— the present at any rate—to play the part of the philanthropic landlord. Returning to the changes which have taken place in Ireland since your last visit, I may mention three of special note—viz., the great extension of land purchase, the development of co-operation, and the work of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, or, as it is generally called, The Department.' '.': •• . :' *,. Land Purchase Operations. Under the Land Acts of 1903 and 1909, about 315,000 agreements by tenants to purchase their holdings have been lodged, involving advances from the State to the amount of 95 millions sterling. This is in addition to the 75,000 holdings for. the acquiring of which under earlier Acts upwards of 25 millions sterling, were provided. Accordingly, a total of 390,000 peasant proprietors have now been created by means of advances from the State to the extent of 120 millions sterling. There are, however, about 550,000 agricul-
tural holdings in Ireland, so that some 160,000 still remain to be dealt-with.
Such a vast : scheme of land settlement could not be effected without great changes in social and economic conditions/ 'Changes have,/indeed," taken place, and these 'distinctly, for the better. Though the main Land Acts are;of too recent date to allow of their full effect being made manifest to visitors yet to those of us who are engaged in agricultural administration the reform is very apparent. It is nob merely by what the farmer has done, but by the spirit in which he is attempting to improve, and by the rise in his standard of living and in his brighter outlook on life, that we, who are on the. spot, -measure the strength of this new force. " Work of the Department. . .- But it is to the work of the Department of Agriculture that I wish specially to direct your attention to-night. This department was established in 1900, the year following your last visit. It is not merely aBoard of Agriculture in the sense in which that term is understood in Great Britain. In addition to-agri-culture, it is charged. with the administration of that form of Technical Instruction which in England and Scotland is under the educational authorities. It also deals with fisheries and rural industries, besides, having the care of various science and art institutions.
The sum annually available for- the purposes of agriculture, rural industries, and fisheries, which "was recently augmented by £19,000 for "special work in congested districts and by an indeterminate amount from the development fund, is £105,000, of which £78,000 represents the ' whiskey money ' given direct in your country to the County 'Councils, and £SOOO corresponds to the sum spent in Great Britain by the Royal Commission on Horse Breeding. This does not, however, comprise all that is spent on agriculture under the department's immediate supervision. In addition, each of the 33 Comity Councils raises a voluntary rate (for the most part equal to Id in the £) which yields annually about £43,000, a very substantial portion of which is devoted to the department's agricultural schemes. I would have you note these facts well, for we are constantly being told, and it is everywhere believed in Great Britain, that Ireland receives moneys for agricultural development which have no counterpart in grants to England or Scotland. But England, as well as Ireland, has her Whiskey Money' and her Horse Breeding Fund, and if she does not see fit to supplement these by a direct rate, as Ireland does, that fact should not be overlooked when comparisons are made between the two countries. The root of the misunderstanding lies in the fact that whereas in England the whiskey money was handed over unconditionally to the County Councils, in Ireland it was given to the Department who are responsible for. its application, even when this is made through local authorities. Department's Financial Operations. We may note here also an important provision of the Act creating the Department. It is that all our financial operations on behalf of agriculture must, as I have already indicated, receive the concurrence of an Agricultural Board -of twelve members, eight of whom are chosen by representatives of the local authorities, and the remainder nominated ,by the Department; while the whole policy of the Department, and of the Board itself, is subject to criticism by an Agricultural Council 'or Parliament of 103 members, two-thirds of whom, as in the case of the Board, arc elected by the County Councils. ■ Turning now from these central' authorities to local administrative machinery, we see that each County Council appoints a County Committee for Agriculture and delegates to it the expenditure of the rate raised and of such sums as the Department places at its dis--posal. The rate and the Department's grant together form the County Joint Fund for agriculture, the whole being subject to the control of the Department. As a matter of fact, of the £105,000 to which I have referred, about £50,000 is spent through County Committees and the remainder by the Department itself. We are often asked how much of our funds and energy
we devote to education. My answer is that the whole work of the Agricultural Branch'of the'Department is educational. Whether it is the. provision of a scholarship in agriculture or of a professorship in this College, the purchase of a high--class sire for a backward district, the sale of a plough or a harrow on easy terms where hitherto the spade only has been used, the introduction of seed potatoes where change of seed is not practised, the erection of a fence in the Donegal Highlands, or even .the compulsory destruction of weeds, we regard each and all of our activities as a form of agiicuKural education suited to the needs of a" particular class of the community. I find it wholly impossible ta separate our expenditure into that devoted to what is generally classed as technical instruction in agriculture and that which many regard as direct aid, so intimately are science and practice blended in all our operations.
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New Zealand Tablet, 10 July 1913, Page 13
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1,472A TRANSFORMED IRELAND New Zealand Tablet, 10 July 1913, Page 13
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