asked the Minister for Agriculture if he will state the amount of the increase in the price of meat and bone meal during the past 12 months and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Meat and Bone Meal Prices.
There is no official control over the price of meat and bone meal. I understand, however, that there has been little change in the price charged by the manufacturers during the past 12 months.
Would the Minister indicate, even approximately, what that increase may have been?
There has not been any increase. In fact, there has been a sharp decline.
The price this time last year was £38 per ton. To-day it is £42 or a little higher.
That is not a question, but it is the kind of statement I would like to correct. The price last year, so far as I know, as published in the Department's monthly reports, was about 58/- per cwt. in Galway; this year in the same centre the price is 48/- per cwt. The price in Wexford in 1954 was 40/- and has gone up to 45/-. The price in Cork last year was 64/- and has come down to 42/6. On an average throughout the country I would say the price is approximately 10/- to 15/- per cwt. lower now than it was this time last year.
Would it be at all possible for the Minister to give the full figures and to give the percentages contained in each of these mixtures he talks about rather than give the figures he has now quoted for Dublin, Galway, and so on?
I am talking about meat and bone meal.
I am asking the Minister to state——
Question No. 52.