asked the Minister for Agriculture the total amount of surplus wheat exported to the latest available date and the (a) highest, (b) lowest and (c) average price obtained.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Exports of Surplus Wheat.
20.
85,000 tons of wheat have been exported up to 24th June at prices ranging from £16 to £19 2s. 6d. a ton f.o.b.
The average price was £18 3s. 6d. per ton f.o.b.
Will the Minister say why this wheat was not available on the home market at approximately the export price and earlier in the season?
He could not answer that question.
Why?
Because there is no sense in it.
There is an awful lot of sense in farmers not being allowed to buy wheat?
Are we all gone daft or why did we buy pollard and bring in pollard from Eastern Europe at the time we were shipping out feeding wheat at £16 a ton? I think you are all gone daft. That is the only conclusion I can come to.
The Deputy may think it is daft. If he likes to have it that way, let him have it. Pollard is a very different thing from wheat.
Pollard is ground wheat.
Mr. Ryan
Not at all.
For goodness' sake, I have been dealing with it all my life.
It is not ground wheat.
I have been dealing with it all my life.
Now we know who is daft.
Pollard is the product of grinding wheat and subtracting from it as much flour as you think expedient.
Now you are right.
We were shipping out of this country wheat at £16 a ton which could be converted into high grade pollard at a time we were importing pollard, 1½ million cwts., from Eastern Europe. If that is not daft I do not know what it is.
Could I repeat the question that the Taoiseach regards as foolish? Why could not the Irish farmer have an opportunity of buying this surplus wheat at £16 or £17 a ton, the export price, instead of £22 a ton? I do not see anything foolish about that.
The wheat is sold to the Irish farmer at a price comparative to the price of barely and other home grown crops.
Is the Minister aware that the wheat which was exported under subsidy was provided to people who are competing with the Irish farmer on external markets and that, in fact, the Government were actually making it more difficult for us to dispose of Irish agricultural products by subsidising the foreigner against the Irish farmer?
That is an ingenious bit of argument all right.
It is not ingenious. It is true.
In reply to the Minister's reply to my supplementary question in which he stated that the price of wheat on the home market was related to the price of barley, why is it that he has brought down the price of wheat now when the price of barley has gone up?
Would the Taoiseach answer a fundamental question? Why does he characterise it as silly that a question of this kind would be asked in the House?
It is on the supplementary question that I made the remark.
The supplementary question was a real good question.
He is not a wheat man.
The man feeding the wheat produces more than the fellow growing the wheat. The feeder is the man.
Order.
I thought Deputy Corry would have a couple of dozen questions there.
I thought wheat had gone up the spout.
Somebody has closed his mouth.