asked the Minister for Agriculture if sufficient imported and home-grown seed oats and seed barley will be available in the coming sowing season, and at what price.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Seed Oats and Seed Barley.
42.
The answer to the first part of the Question is in the affirmative. As to the second part of the Question, there is no control over prices for seed.
Is the Minister aware that owing to the embargo on imports of oats and seeds during the present year, there is a grave danger that the price of seed oats and seed barley will go sky high? Will he take steps to ensure that there will be a plentiful supply of seeds and that the merchants will get only a reasonable profit?
I have told the Deputy that there is no control over the price of seeds and surely I can tell him that this, of all years, is one in which you could not justify the importation of seed oats and seed barley except to a very limited extent. I suppose we have never had a better grain crop than we had this year. I quite understand the view of the Deputy coming, as he does, from West Cork, but he should remember that there are other areas in which seed oats and seed barley are grown extensively. Farmers in these areas would take a poor view, and would be entitled to do so, if a close eye was not kept on imports.