I rise to propose:—
"That a Select Committee consisting of five Deputies to be nominated by the Committee of Selection and with power to send for persons, papers and documents, be appointed to investigate publicly and report to the Dáil on the wholesale and retail prices charged for coal in the County Borough of Dublin, and the Borough of Dun Laoghaire, and to make recommendations:
That the quorum of the Committee be three."
There are very few sections of the people to-day that are not experiencing very great difficulties. Through the increasing costs of everything, and the increasing difficulty in securing their incomes, they are, as I say, meeting with one kind of difficulty or another. That is particularly so in the case of the poorer sections of the people, but everybody is affected, and I feel that in many matters to-day Deputies have duties and responsibilities from which, as in the case of soldiers in the presence of danger, or doctors in the presence of sickness and distress, they must not run away. To see some of the injustices and to see some of the hardships that are being wrought to-day by administrative actions, and to stand by and do nothing about them, would be, from my point of view, a shameful thing, just as shameful as the soldier who ran away in the face of danger, or the doctor who turns his back on his patients or on sick or disabled people. No matter what may be said here or pointed out as to what are the objects of Deputies like myself in bringing forward these things, I have no intention whatever of turning my back on them or running away from them.
I appealed to the House before, in connection with other matters, that the business that it is the responsibility of this House to do, ought to be done systematically and carefully, and I have no intention here, in connection with this matter of coal—and never had any intention—but to ask that obvious facts in connection with the situation, obvious hardships and obvious injustices, should be looked at carefully and systematically, and that the necessary steps should be taken to remove these injustices and hardships; and I would ask the Minister for Supplies or any other Minister or Deputy who thinks otherwise, to give me credit for the moment, when presenting the case to the House, for approaching it in that way, and to look simply at the facts I put before them.
My reason for raising this matter, as it has been raised by Deputy Alderman Byrne before and as it was raised by Deputy McGilligan, in the way in which the question now arises, is that certain facts show definitely that the prices charged for coal in the City of Dublin are higher than they should be. I want to submit to Deputies that the figures I propose to show here with regard to the position indicate a prima facie case that in the eleven weeks from the 18th January to the 6th April there was charged at least £71,000—and it may be £100,000—more for the coal that was issued here than was just or reasonable according to the prices charged, say, from August to November last. That is, assuming that the prices charged from October to November last in the City of Dublin were reasonable, in the eleven weeks from the 18th January to 6th April at least £71,000 in excess of the reasonable profits of the previous months were charged during that period. I say, at least £71,000, because that is not taking into consideration that persons who got their coal other than through bellmen or the small retailers were charged more as a matter of excess than were the persons who bought their coal through the bellmen and the small retailers.
In discussing the question of coal a lot is heard about bellmen. One principal reason why one hears so much about bellmen and the present cost to them in connection with the sale of coal is that they are a class of people in respect of whom we can readily get the prices they are charged. The quality they get is a fairly standard quality and there are not the very elusive differences in the prices charged by the bellmen for coal as in the case of the ordinary householders who buy direct from the coal merchants. Now, the present position is that in December the bellmen were charged 53/- a ton for their coal; on the 10th January they were charged 52/- for about a week, and on the 18th January they were charged 58/-. The Minister admitted to the House here that he had approved of the increases made at that particular time and approved of them in order to meet increases in freights and pit-head prices. On the 18th February, by Order, he further increased the prices that bellmen were charged for their coal to 63/-, and in the case of the small retailers to 68/-.
In discussing the question as to whether the price charged for coal since January is excessive or not, I relate my arguments to the price charged to bellmen because they give you a regular, systematic, running line of prices, month by month, and I relate them to the import price of coal c.i.f., given by Parliamentary answer to this House by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. This question was raised by Deputy McGilligan who asked on the 11th March whether an explanation could be given of the fact that while the import price of coal between January and February was raised by 1/3, the price charged to bellmen had risen from 52/- in the middle of January to 63/- in the middle of February. The Minister for Supplies on the following day dealt systematically and thoroughly with the whole question in regard to the fixing of prices as related to the general position. After he had dealt with it, I asked him could he deal with the question raised the night before and the Minister's answer simply was that I was endeavouring to stir up disturbance and unrest in the City of Dublin, that he knew what I was after, that I was disseminating lies, that I could put on the red hat of revolution if I wished to do so, but that I was not going to get very far with it.
I expect the Minister had some reason for suggesting that it would be easy to stir up feeling and disorder and, for that reason, I would ask him to treat this motion here seriously and to do something to get it carried into effect because if people sit down in committee to examine information systematically placed before them by the Department, if they exchange views in committee quietly without any heat or argument, there cannot be any unnecessary stirring up of feeling. The truth must come out and, coming out in that way, it can be faced and the matter can be settled without any confusion, irritation or noise. The Minister's answer to my motion was that it would be ineffective and that it was illegal. On that point I want to say, that the motion is simple in form. If there are any lies, the committee will deal with them, and if they are restricted in any way by the lies, they will come up against them.
The Minister implied yesterday that he had recently made an offer in this matter and that if I had accepted it, the thing could be quietly settled in a few hours. This motion appeared on the Order Paper almost immediately after our debate on the 14th March. On the 2nd April the Minister intimated in writing to me, through the Parliamentary Secretary, his views to this effect:—
"Motion re Coal Prices.
"The Minister for Supplies intends to inform the Dáil that the motion, in its present form, cannot be accepted owing to legal barrier to the disclosure of information furnished by private firms and other reasons. He will state that he is prepared to accept a motion which would not require disclosure of confidential information and the purpose of which was to establish a committee to investigate whether coal prices now being charged in Dublin and Dun Laoghaire are reasonable. He will propose that the motion before the Dáil be withdrawn and that there should be consultation between the Whips as to the form of motion which might be accepted."
I was of opinion that the inquiry did not necessitate going into any unnecessary confidential information, and on the following day I sent back to the Minister a redraft of the motion. I stated that I would be satisfied with a motion such as this:—
"That a Select Committee consisting of five or six Deputies, to be nominated by the Committee of Selection, be appointed to investigate whether the prices charged for coal in Dublin or Dun Laoghaire since the 1st January, 1941, are reasonable and to report to the Dáil, the quorum of the Select Committee to be three (or four)."
I wanted an inquiry without going into confidential documents or anything of that kind. I wanted to go back to the 1st January, 1941, because between the 1st January, 1941, and the date that the Minister made this offer, which he says will settle everything, and which was only four days before he took 6/8 off the coal price himself, there had been an increase of 6/- a ton dating from the 18th January, which he stated here in February he had approved, and there had been an additional increase of 5/-, bringing the price up to 63/- per ton from the 18th February. I consider this unreasonable and unjust. On the basis that 30,000 tons of coal per week are sold in the City of Dublin, and assuming the August prices to be reasonable, I claim that there has been an overcharge of £71,000 at least. That amount has been collected from the people on the wholesale price alone in these 11 weeks. Therefore I was not satisfied, and did not think it reasonable, that the Minister would set up a committee on terms of reference which would prevent the coal position being looked at from the 1st January. I did not want to go back any further. Inside an hour of my submitting the motion to the Minister, he informed me that there was no purpose in going back, wasting valuable time of busy people, and added that the question was whether present prices were right or wrong. The Minister, in fact, at the time he made the proposal to me, must have been actually in process of reducing the price of coal by 6/8 because, inside four days, it was reduced by 6/8.
