I gave notice to-day that on the adjournment I would raise the question of the British Food Prices Commission and the necessity of controlling prices in the Saorstát. I did so with a view to getting more information with regard to the answer given by the Minister for Industry and Commerce at question time to-day when he said it was the intention of the Executive Council to bring forward a resolution in both Houses of the Oireachtas to establish a tribunal under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act of 1921, as to the cost of certain articles of general consumption. Now, after hammering away at this question of the control of prices for more than two years at intervals, I feel as if I were entering the promised land when I have actually got a promise from the Government that they are going to take effective action in the matter. Before I begin this evening's Te Deum Laudamus, I would like a little more information. It would be a grave misfortune if this tribunal that is to be set up shared the fate of the Commission on Prices, of which certain Deputies were members about three years ago.
I do not want to criticise that Commission, and, if I did, I believe Deputy Wilson would deal with me, but there is no doubt that the result of that Commission was not successful. I think that that was partly due to the time at which it was sitting. In the winter of 1922 and the spring of 1923 people were not so vitally concerned with prices as with the question as to whether they would be alive or dead next day. Public opinion was not, therefore, in support of the Commission, and the Commission was also gravely handicapped because it had not compulsory powers to call witnesses and make them answer questions put to them. I gather that this tribunal to be set up will have these powers under the Tribunals of Inquiry Act. I gather that any person who refuses to appear as witness or refuses to answer questions put by the tribunal will be reported to the High Court, and the High Court, if they think fit, can deal with this as being contempt of court. This will make the Commission a much more effective body than the Commission on Prices. There is another provision in the Act which I look on with some doubt. It contemplates the inquiry being held in public. I desire that everybody should have fair play. I do not think it would be fair, perhaps, to single out one particular trader—Deputy Beamish perhaps—bring him before the inquiry, and make him give evidence on oath as to his business, while you may not call his trade rivals. I think if the Commission is to be effective, and if it is to get the necessary information, it will require, at least in part, to sit in camera, as people should not fairly be asked to give intimate information about their business in public. I wonder if the inquiry will have power to obtain information from the Revenue authorities not as to individuals but as to business as a whole. The British Commission got valuable information from the Inland Revenue. No names of individuals were mentioned, but they were told that groups of so many butchers and bakers had increased their income tax returns for such and such a period. I believe that that would be valuable information for this tribunal to get. I would also like to know when this tribunal will be established, and when will the resolutions be brought forward, as the question is one of urgency. Prices are already showing their seasonal tendency to rise. I hope there will be no undue delay in establishing the tribunal. I would not quarrel with delay if it meant getting a better tribunal of more representative men to sit on it, but the matter is one that will not brook long delay. Then again, will the tribunal be a permanent body? The British Commission, of course, is not a complete guide for us, but it indicates in some respects the directions in which we can go:—
"What we feel to be required is a continuing association between some permanent organ of the State and the food traders whose business activities we have been examining. We have, therefore, decided to recommend that your Majesty's Government should immediately consider the advisability of establishing a permanent body, to be called the Food Council, whose duty it shall be to study current and future problems of wheat and meat supplies and prices and to issue periodical reports. We do not contemplate a new Department of State with a considerable staff. We have in view the formation of a body which, by combining representation of economic, financial, administrative and consuming interests, would gain the confidence of the public and the respect of the business world.... It will act rather as a mediator between producer, trader and consumer, in reconciling for a common end interests which we do not regard as necessarily conflicting. This idea we develop more fully later. The Food Council should possess a small staff and should have, as assessors, representatives of the principal food trades. From the Departments of State it would, no doubt, derive the information and assistance which have been freely accorded to your Commissioners."
The tribunal should be permanent, because if you have only a temporary body, those traders and interests who do not wish to give information will stonewall and only give information gradually, and it will have to be drawn out of them, in the hope that they will be able to defer the evil day. With a permanent body they cannot defer the evil day. There should be a secretariat or small staff which would report, not to the Minister who could, of course, use the information if he thinks fit, but to a body in the State charged with the supervision of this problem of prices.
To put it briefly, does the body that the Minister and the Executive Council contemplate correspond to the Commission which sat first or to the Food Council which was set up as a result of the report of the Commission? I hope that the announcement which the Minister has made will not create false hopes. There is no patent medicine to cure the problem of high prices. It is a very difficult and complicated problem and I hope I have never, in dealing with the subject, maintained that it was anything else. The causes of high prices are not, of course, confined or peculiar to the Saorstát. They are world-wide and full of ramifications. The Minister, before he reformed, was a professor, so I will not apologise to him for quoting Latin: "Felix, ille erat qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.”—“Happy is the man who helped to discover the cause of things.” In this case I think that this particular man, this particular Felix, will have to keep on walking for a considerable time before the causes of these difficulties are discovered. There is a problem to which this tribunal will have to address itself at once, that is the problem of why the cost of living is higher in Saorstát Eireann than almost anywhere else in Western Europe; why, when prices rise in Saorstát Eireann they rise in double ratio compared with Great Britain? The index figure of the cost of living goes up double in the Saorstát to that in Great Britain, while if prices fall in Saorstát Eireann they only fall half as compared with the fall in Great Britain. That is so in some cases at any rate.
