asked the Minister for Supplies whether he realises the extent to which flour at 3/2 per stone is being fed to live stock in preference to compound feeding meal at 3/- per stone, and whether he will take steps forthwith to ration flour and thus secure to every household at least a minimum of 5 lbs. of flour per head per week.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Rationing of Flour.
Statements have been made that flour is being fed to live stock in some areas, but I find it practically impossible to get evidence in support of this allegation. Whenever evidence is available, proceedings will be immediately instituted for contravention of the order prohibiting the use of wheaten products for such purposes. The circumstances, however, are not such as, in my opinion, justify the institution for the whole country of a rationing scheme which would necessarily be very elaborate and difficult to administer. The whole position is, however, being kept under constant review.
Does the Minister realise that unless he rations flour in rural Ireland half the population will be getting sufficient and even too much flour and the remainder of the population will be getting none at all? Does he realise that there are women with six or seven children going from shop to shop in rural towns in order to get a sufficient supply of flour and that there are other people who are running from shop to shop with ready money in their hands buying not only sufficient for their own use but surplus flour wherewith to finish off pigs which they have nearly ready for slaughter? Does the Minister not realise the urgency of putting an end to that abuse and the inevitable impossibility of ending that abuse by any other system than providing each citizen with a ration book for flour which will entitle him to get every Saturday the flour he requires to keep himself and his family?
Every flour trader in the country is receiving 90 per cent. of his purchases during last year and purchases during last year were higher than the normal; so that it is almost correct to say that the quantity of flour going out for consumption is equivalent to the normal. We must depend on the retail traders to secure an equitable distribution of that flour. It is, I think, a practical impossibility to ration flour. If necessary, we will have to increase the supply by mixing other cereals with wheat, but I cannot think of any equitable system of rationing flour.
Does the Minister realise that there are areas in Monaghan, within the Border, where there is no flour going at all, and where the people were buying flour across the Border and smuggling it during the last year?
That is not correct.
I am aware that the Minister has directed a 5 per cent. or 10 per cent. increase in the total flour supplies going to wholesalers in County Monaghan.
That does not seem to arise out of question 28.
The Minister says it is not correct.
The Minister's remark was in reply to an irrelevant supplementary of the Deputy's.
I am asking for equitable distribution of flour. I am asking that the country people will be entitled to get enough flour to bake a cake for the family. I do not care a fiddle-de-dee how the Minister does that. I know no way to do it — and I have been in the flour business for 20 years — unless the Minister rations flour. There is no other way and the Minister will wake up to that six months later when there are riots in the country.
Does the Minister realise that it is not codology to grow wheat and that only for the fact that a few of us indulged in that "codology" there would be no flour here now?
That is not the only codology the Deputy indulges in.