I put a question last week to the Minister for Agriculture asking him if he was prepared to remove the control from the price of barley this season and to fix the price as promised by him in the Dáil. I expected to get a definite answer to that and not the rigmarole that I did get from the Minister, and not an evasion of the answer with the partial reply that appeared in the Press this morning. The reply was given here:—
"The answer to Question No. 14 is no,"
followed by a rigmarole that had nothing whatever to do with the question asked.
The Minister and I might find ourselves in agreement, however, on one point. On the 9th July, in his opening statement on the introduction of the Estimate for his Department, the Minister said:—
"I want the farmers to produce next year 700,000 barrels of malting barley at least, for which I guarantee them a higher price than they received in any year for the last ten years. It will not be less than 55/- and it might be more. In that connection I want solemnly to register a protest against what seems to have been the cruel iniquity of having fixed prices of malting barley in this country at a figure ranging from 35/- to 45/-, less cartage from the farm to the maltster, when the world price of barley was 60/- and over and when the brewers of this country were ready and willing to pay 60/- and over and were prevented from doing so by our own Government, with the consequence that, in the last five years, the barley farmers of this country were fined by our own Government £2,000,000 sterling which passed into the coffers of Arthur Guinness, Son and Company, and were then extracted by the British Treasury in excess profits tax collected in Britain."
And he wound up by saying: "That will never happen again." The reference is in column 2595 of Dáil Debates, 9th July of this year. That is the statement made by the Minister. I take it it is a responsible statement. Several Deputies of this House congratulated the Minister on the statement. The Minister went even further than that in column 295 of the 14th July, 1948, when interrupting Deputy Maguire:—
"I do not blame the Deputy. The last Government made the brewers pay our farmers 15/- to 20/- per barrel less than the brewers wanted to pay them. I am now going to allow the brewers to pay the barley growers what they have always wanted to pay, but the last Government would not let them do it. The British Government collected the surplus profits and put them into their Treasury."
Those are the statements made by the Minister. On those statements he was congratulated by Deputies who took his words at their face value, not their proper meaning. Deputy Davin said:—
"I admit quite frankly that the Minister is entitled to the grateful thanks of the people of my constituency for the increased prices he is offering the farmers for their barley during the coming season."
And he even went further. He said he saluted the Minister and took off his hat to him for doing that. Other Deputies congratulated the Minister in a like manner. The Minister left any ordinary intelligent man in this House under the impression that Messrs. Arthur Guinness were no longer going to get barley at 15/- to 20/- per barrel less than they were prepared to pay for it. The Minister and I are on the one word there. What does 15/- to 20/-a barrel mean on 150,000 acres of barley growing in this country? It means over £1,000,000 that will not be taken out of the pockets of the taxpayers, that can go towards farm improvements and the improvement of farm buildings and other things. Look at the benefit that that £1,000,000 could bring to our farmers. It would be given to us by people who, in the Minister's own words, are anxious and willing to give it to us. He stated here that Messrs. Guinness were anxious and willing to give us this money. I asked him to-day, in the middle of the famous harangue we had——