Edition Bobbett2. Speeches and statements by Elizabeth F. Bobbett
1954 Dublin, Meeting of the National Agricultural and Industrial Development Association
Source: Irish Press, 19.10.1954
The suggestion that poultry, butter, milk and bacon should be subsidised for the home consumer was made by Miss Elizabeth Bobbett at a meeting of NAIDA in Dublin last night. She was proposing a motion (passed) objecting "to any financial policy that deprives our agriculture of full production." Miss Bobbett said if that suggestion were adopted we could export more beef and mutton, of which there was a demand abroad. We had a surplus of bacon at present and shortly would have a surplus of butter, which, it was reported, might be sold to Britain at a subsidised price. Was it fair to ask our people to subsidise such exports while being denied the subsidy themselves, she asked. Why not demand, she asked, that the Government take the necessary power to enable them to use the credit of the nation and the wealth-producing capabilities of the land to ensure just prices to producers and at the same time to subsidise consumers so that they could buy more agricultural produce.