asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he will set up a prices advisory body to investigate and report on the marketing and retail distribution of fish in the State.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Fish Marketing and Distribution.
35.
I have no plans at present to set up a prices advisory body to investigate and report on the marketing and retail distribution of fish.
Will the Minister concede there is a case to be made for such an investigation to take place, bearing in mind the very low return to fishermen on the high seas at one end of the scale and the very expensive cost to consumers at the other end? Surely somebody in the middle makes a packet and surely the Minister is aware of this?
I cannot say with certainty whether undue profits are being made by middlemen in the fish industry because it would be misleading to take the price paid to fishermen and the price paid by the housewife and to regard the difference as straight profit. A number of factors have to be taken into account. I am not ruling out the possibility that there may be some excessive profits in this respect. The Deputy will be aware, however, that the recent NIEC report on an incomes and prices policy envisages the establishment of an incomes and prices committee which might recommend, among other things, investigation of the prices of certain commodities. He will also be aware that the Government have accepted the recommendations in that report. Consequently, it seems to me that such a committee when established should consider an investigation in depth of the price of fish, among other things.
Is the Minister prepared to recommend to the committee that the price of fish should be investigated?
The scheme envisaged in the NIEC report is that the committee themselves should decide if there were certain commodities that should be investigated.
That is the point. Does the Minister not think that fish should be investigated?
I do not think that is what is envisaged in the NIEC report; I do not think it would allow for me doing that.
May I put it to the Minister, nothing that the Government have accepted the report in principle, that he is aware he has got effective price surveillance machinery in the Department and that it would not be unusual to have that machinery activated in the case of fish prices? Let us have one such piece of action, anyway, to commemorate the by-elections.
Is it proposed to transfer all price investigations to this committee?
That is not envisaged. The machinery in the Department will be maintained and indeed the recommendation is that it would be strengthened.
Why postpone an investigation of fish, then?
Because it is quite conceivable that the new body might regard certain other commodities as having higher priority.