asked the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries the quantity of oats purchased by An Bord Gráin or by any other agency under the price guarantee provided by the Government in the current cereal year.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Oats Price Guarantee.
28.
Approximately 14,000 tons of oats have been purchased by merchants in the area covered by the floor price scheme for oats in the current cereal year. Of this quantity 3,311 tons have been purchased by An Bord Gráin.
The total purchases under the scheme were 14,000 tons?
Yes, 14,000 tons bought in the area to which the scheme applies by merchants other than An Bord Gráin and subject to take-up by An Bord Gráin if they were so offered back to the board at any particular juncture up to the end of last month.
But they have not been offered.
We are in fact in the process of selling to the merchants or to others what oats we actually took up and we have distributed these 3,000-odd tons.
May I take it that the Minister now agrees with me that the scheme is a cod and should never have been instituted and that, in fact, we are now selling back to the merchants the oats purchased from them which in the meantime have acquired transport costs to and from storage areas? If they had been left where they were they would have been sold on the market at the ordinary cost of delivery without any extras.
That just shows how little the Deputy knows of what has happened. If we had no scheme much of this oats would have been bought at a price which would have been depressed at the time it was offered because of the fact that there was a floor price. Therefore, we did not have the depressed price for oats that had become a feature of our market for many years, commencing with the Deputy's adventure as Minister for Agriculture.
I saw no depressed market this year for oats.
I am talking about 1948.