asked the Minister for Agriculture if in view of the absence of a home-grown wheat surplus in excess of 300,000 tons and the difficult year both in regard to the harvesting of crops and the marketing of livestock it is proposed to return the levy of 4/6d. per barrel to wheat growers.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Levy on Wheat Growers.
25.
It is estimated that the total quantity of home-grown wheat to be purchased by the flour millers this year will be at least 340,000 tons, dried. As all this wheat has been, or will be, purchased at the prices fixed for millable wheat the question of refunding the levy does not arise.
In view of the fact that so much of this wheat will be unmillable and that it will be impossible to buy wheat for seed, does the Minister not think there is a good case for returning the levy to the farmers, as the reason for the imposition of the levy no longer seems to exist?
The question of millability does not arise, so far as the farmers are concerned. All this wheat has been regarded as sound and sweet.
What?
When being accepted by the millers, it was purchased on the basis that it was sound and sweet and it has been paid for at prices set out in the Wheat Order. Therefore, the farmers' interests do not come into this matter at all.
Does the Minister not accept the fact that the farmers have received a good deal less this year than they would have received in a normal weather year?
The farmers have not received anything of the kind. The prices obtained by them are the prices set out in the Wheat Order made by me for 1960. In any event the levy collected will be barely sufficient to market at feed prices the 40,000 tons in excess of the 300,000 tons which in a normal year would be absorbed in the grist. That being so, they have no claim whatever to any refund.
Does the Minister not agree that it has been paid——
Question No. 26.
——in the majority of instances at low bushel rate?
They or I or we are not responsible for the bushelling capacity of the wheat in question.
I have called Question No. 26. The subject matter of Question No. 25 has been exhausted.