asked the Minister for Agriculture if he will state the steps he is taking to ensure that the citizens of the Republic of Ireland will have enough of their own butter at least for ration purposes during the coming season.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Butter Supplies and Prices.
There is a guaranteed market and a remunerative price for all milk supplied to creameries for manufacture into butter and I see no reason to believe that the supplies of milk which will be received at creameries will not be adequate to enable all reasonable home requirements of butter to be produced.
Inasmuch as our people happily consumed 13½ oz. butter per week, per head, in 1950 as compared with the Danish people's consumption of 2½ oz. per head, per week, in the same period, I feel the Deputy can be reassured.
Can the Minister say if the price is remunerative?
It is paying some people's salaries.
I asked the Minister a simple straight question and the Minister started to tell me about the snow on the mountains last year.
Has the Deputy a supplementary question to ask?
I asked the Minister what arrangements he is going to make to see that there will be sufficient butter in this country and, as usual, he side-stepped the question.
I can assure the Deputy that the latest census returns for January, 1951, reveal a comforting increase in the number of milch cows and heifers in calf. Courage, courage.
Is the price remunerative?
What else pays the salary of the large number of unproductive people in this country?
The employers themselves do not think so.
asked the Minister for Agriculture if he will make available to the public details of any proposals he may have for ensuring an economic price to farmers who produce butter for sale during the present year.
There is no restriction on the price or sale of farmers' butter, and producers will, therefore, be able to secure the highest price which the consumer is prepared to pay. I am, of course, always prepared to give all practicable encouragement to those farmers who would prefer to send their milk to creameries rather than to convert it into butter.
Will the Minister not agree, on account of the consumers' subsidy that is being paid for creamery butter, that the home producers of butter are at a disadvantage, and that the prices prevailing for the homeproduced butter over the past three years have been uneconomic?
If that is the situation obtaining in the area served by the Shelbourne Co-operative Society in the County Wexford, I should be glad of the Deputy's assistance in remedying it.
Is the Minister aware that, in several areas in the Twenty-Six Counties, where no creameries exist, farmers producing butter on their farms have been receiving uneconomic prices for the past three years?
I know of one area in which the Deputy's friends eliminated the existing creamery, and if he feels that the people have suffered a loss thereby, I will be glad of his help in re-establishing it.
Can the Minister say why the Government continues to subsidise creamery butter while refusing to subsidise butter made on the farm? Surely that is an injustice. The home maker of butter is as much entitled to have his product subsidised as the maker of creamery butter, or does the Minister wish to continue to import inferior butter from the continent?
The Deputy overlooks the fact that his colleague, Deputy P. O'Reilly, never fails to refer to the subsidy as a subsidy for producers. It is a subsidy for consumers. There is no subsidy paid in this country to the producers of butter.
Is the Minister aware——
Question No. 37.