Deputy Corry gave notice that he wished to raise the subject matter of Question No. 30 on yesterday's Order Paper.
Adjournment Debate. - Imports of Sugar.
It is with reluctance that I raise this matter with the Minister who cannot be up to all the ramifications of every branch of agriculture in a moment. However, I have a duty on behalf of some 60,000 tillage farmers and as Chairman of the Beetgrowers' Association, that is, to see that this extraordinary stockpiling of sugar purchased abroad at a higher price than the cost of home-produced sugar will not be used as a big stick to the detriment of my colleagues in the Beetgrowers' Association in their fight for a just price this season.
I hold that while the farmers are prepared to produce beet, they are entitled to the full acreage they can produce and are entitled to the protection of the Minister for Agriculture in that line. What has happened? I admit that, for a new Minister, the Minister made a very good attempt to deal with this. He states:
Production of refined sugar from the 1963 beet area of 88,000 acres amounted to 131,000 tons and the imports of sugar referred to by the Deputy were necessary in order to meet the difference between this domestic production and total requirements.
The 88,000 acres of beet averaging 12 tons to the acre, with an average of 16 per cent sugar content, gives a yield of 168,960 tons of sugar that is 38,000 tons more than the Minister's figure. There was an importation during the year 1963 of 39,562 tons of sugar, giving a total of 208,522 tons. According to the reply I got from the Minister here last week, of that quantity in sugar and sugar goods we exported 51,000 tons bringing it down to 157,000 tons required for domestic use, 120,000 tons for household use. Therefore there was in stock before this quantity came in 37,522 tons of sugar.
Why should we add to that as imports from January to July of this year 39,562 tons of sugar at an average cost of £73 11s. a ton, that is, £15 10s. a ton higher than the cost of sugar leaving our Irish factories? The total stock, when that was brought in was 77,084 tons of sugar or over 50 per cent of our total domestic requirements. The Minister continued in his reply:
The world price of sugar has now fallen to about one-third of what it was a year ago and sugar could now be imported here at significantly less than the cost of home-produced beet sugar.
From January to July of this year, there were exported from this country 8,231 tons of sugar at an average cost of £92 13s. a ton. The cost of beet manufactured into sugar and selling as the best refined sugar leaving our Irish factories was £58 a ton. Why should there be an import of close on 40,000 tons of sugar when there was already in stock some 37,000 tons? Why should those imports be made at an average cost of £73 a ton against the Irish price of £58? If that quantity of sugar were required and the Sugar Company asked the Irish farmers to produce it at the price that was down here, there would be an increase in our beet prices of 52/- a ton. I am sure the farmers would be very happy to do it.
I asked the Minister the reasons for this. He gave me as a reason that the imports of sugar were necessary in order to meet the difference between domestic production and total requirements. The domestic production, as I pointed out, was 168,000 tons. What has not appeared in the question I asked the Minister and which I kept up my sleeve was that there were 40,000 tons of sugar brought into this country in the year 1963 and that should be capable of fully satisfying our requirements. Seeing that we exported only 51,000 tons of sugar, there were 37,500 tons of sugar left in stock.
I know the difficulties we have to meet at times but there is such a thing as the sinews of war. When we find that our costs of production have gone up and the price of our beet is based on costings, we do not want to have a big stick of 60,000 or 70,000 tons of sugar lying in stock there to fight us. In my opinion, that is what it is there for and I object to it. I object to the expenditure of £400,000 more on that import of sugar than was paid for the sugar produced by our own farmers. Surely they are entitled to as good a price at least as any nigger.
First of all, let me say a very sincere word of thanks to Deputy Corry for the fact that he obliged me yesterday evening in agreeing to postpone the raising of this question on the Adjournment because it was necessary for me to be elsewhere.
Secondly, I want to say that it is with very great trepidation that I rise to debate any matter of this sort with Deputy Corry because, as the House is aware, Deputy Corry knows more about beet production and sugar than probably any other Member of this House. He has had a lifetime of experience. However, I hope to be able to reassure him on what is, I think, his main worry, namely, that the Irish Sugar Company is stockpiling with a view to using that stockpile, perhaps, to depress either acreages or prices in the coming year.
I should like to take all the mystery out of this whole question of sugar. I think it is something that we can put down in black and white, in fairly simple terms and on relatively small sheets of paper. The enormously diffuse statements and the complicated explanations which have been given about it from time to time seem to me to be totally unnecessary.
I shall begin with the picture as it was in 1962-63. The total production of sugar from the 1962 beet crop was 125,000 tons. In 1963 we imported, as Deputy Corry rightly points out, 43,000 tons of sugar. That gave us our requirements for both domestic consumption and the export market. We used approximately 120,000 at home and we exported 52,000 tons. In other words, between home production and imports, we had a figure of 168,000 and, between domestic consumption and exports we had a figure of 172,000 tons. The difference was made up between the opening and closing stocks on hands in the beginning of the year.
The position in 1964 is very much the same. The figure I gave in reply to the Parliamentary Question is correct. The total production of sugar from the 1963 crop was 131,000 tons. Imports so far are 40,000 tons. That gives us 171,000 tons of sugar, which roughly corresponds with what we will need for both domestic consumption and our export requirements.
The nub of the difference between Deputy Corry and myself in this matter is whether or not the 1963 crop produced 131,000 tons of sugar or whether it produced 168,000 tons, according to the Deputy's calculation. My calculations are simple. We had a total acreage of 88,000 acres. Our average yield per acre was 10.7 tons of beet. That gave us approximately a total of 942,000 tons of beet. The extraction of sugar in the year was higher than usual. It was, in fact, 88.22 per cent. As you know, the standard is 15.5 per cent sugar content from gross beet tonnage. If one makes a simple calculation and takes, first of all, 15.5 per cent of 942,000 tons of beet and then takes 88.22 per cent of that, one gets a figure of 129,000 tons so that, according to the normal standards of sugar content in beet and the degree of extraction of sugar from that sugar beet, the yield from the 1963 crop should have been 129,000 tons. In fact, it was a little better, for one reason or another. It was 131,000 tons and I am afraid no calculations of Deputy Corry's can alter that figure.
I should mention here that that figure is in accord with the figures for previous years. If Deputy Corry's figures were right and if we were to get 168,000 tons of sugar from 88,000 acres—the calculation is a simple one —that would involve getting practically two tons of sugar per acre. We have never got that. The best we got recently was in 1960 when we got 1.76 tons of sugar per acre. In 1961 we got 1.46; in 1962 we got 1.6 and, in 1963, as the calculations I have given show, we got 1.49. There is the difference in our calculations. Deputy Corry thinks we should have got two tons per acre roughly from our 88,000 acres. In fact we got only 1.49—approximately 1½ tons per acre. No matter what way we try to do it we cannot change the fact that out of our 88,000 acres we got 131,000 tons of sugar from the 1963 crop, and no more. Far from any question of stockpiling, the Sugar Company, between that 131,000 tons produced at home and the imports of 40,000 to date, will have available to it roughly 171,000 tons of sugar, which is more or less what is needed for home consumption and export requirements.
I said I want to take all the mystery out of this. When one gets down to calculations of this sort, percentages, yields per acre and so on, it is not very easy to do it here across the floor of the House. I should like to invite Deputy Corry and the officials of his organisation to come into the Department and let us sit down around the table, employing an electronic computer, if necessary, and satisfy each other that these calculations are valid. We can, I think, establish to the Deputy's satisfaction that they are. I want to emphasise again that it is a matter of cold mathematics and, being such, there should be no room for dispute, argument, or disagreement between us. I do not think I have anything further to say.
Is the Minister——
The Deputy may only ask a question.
Is the Minister satisfied therefore that you would require 88,000 acres of beet to produce 130,000 tons of sugar?
In the conditions prevailing last year, because last year was not a good year. The yield of beet per acre was down to 10.7 as against 11.8 in 1962, 11.2 in 1961 and 13.9 in 1960. In 1963, therefore, we had a low yield of beet per acre. Out of 88,000 acres, we got 942,000 tons of beet. If you were able to have the 1960 standard, for instance, applied to last year, you would get more into line with the tonnage Deputy Corry suggests should have been available but you still would not reach it. In 1960 from 68,000 acres, we got practically 1¾ tons per acre. Last year we got only 1.5 tons per acre. If we had been able to get the 1960 standard last year, we would have had 88,000 acres producing 1¾ tons per acre which would have been nearer to Deputy Corry's figure but still would not come up to it.
I take it that we are agreed that the figure for domestic consumption——
Yes.
——is 120,000 tons, plus an export of 10,000 tons——
In 1963 we exported 25,000 tons as sugar and 27,000 tons in the form of goods, 52,000 tons altogether.
I am keeping goods out of it. I am putting the two figures, the figures required for domestic consumption and 10,000 tons necessary to supply British contractors. That is 130,000.
You would have to add 15,000 tons. We exported 25,000 tons in 1963.
In the shape of goods?
No, as sugar. We exported 27,000 tons as goods as well.
I am afraid the Minister and the Minister for Industry and Commerce will have a row over that. I do not mind——
The Deputy will be on my side, I hope?
I am taking the Minister's figures as being correct.
Will the Deputy accept my invitation to come in and talk about it?
I will, certainly. I have a notification here that the requirements of sugar for domestic requirements plus 10,000 tons, would be satisfied by 68,000 acres of beet.
The Dáil adjourned at 5.25 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 18th November, 1964.