asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce whether he intends to amend the price control laws to ensure that breach of price restrictions in respect of bread or flour will bring severe imprisonment sentences on the flour millers.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Flour and Bread Prices.
137.
I do not propose to take action on the lines suggested by the Deputy.
138.
asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce why the increase in the price of flour was sanctioned by him.
139.
asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he is aware that increases in flour and bread prices are causing severe hardships to the poorer sections of the community; and what steps he proposes to take to control such increases.
With your permission, a Cheann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos. 138 and 139 together.
The increases in flour and bread prices recently announced are interim increases which do not become effective until Decimal Day on 15th February. I agreed to these interim increases because it was represented to me that the millers and bakers would suffer a very heavy loss if they had to wait for an increase until I received the report of the Prices Advisory Body which I am setting up. It was claimed by those concerned that they were not in a position to bear this loss and I was afraid that if this proved to be true employment might be jeopardised.
I have made it clear that if the Prices Advisory Body find that the interim increases were not justified, the prices of flour and bread must be adjusted so that the amounts involved will be recouped to the consumer.
140.
asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he will make a statement concerning the basis of the industry costing put forward by the flour and bread industry groups for increases in the price of flour and bread.
141.
asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce if his Department have as yet devised a uniform system of flour, and provender milling and bakery accounts (with particular reference to the verification of interest, storage, sackage and transport charges) to be adopted by each concern involved, by statutory regulation or otherwise.
142.
asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he will make available, in the public interest, the extent to which there has evolved in the flour, bread and provender industries the close monopolistic financial integration of the various flour milling groups, the provender millers and their distribution firms, the grain drying, importing and distributing companies, the grain storage companies and many large bakery concerns.
143.
asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he is aware that successive reports of prices advisory committees into the price changes for flour and bread have indicated that the large bakeries are generally owned by one or other of the three major flour milling groups; that little element of real competition appears to exist in this industry; and if he will make a statement in the matter.
With your permission, a Cheann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos. 140, 141, 142 and 143 together.
On 7th January, 1971, I announced that I proposed to set up a Prices Advisory Body under the Prices Acts, 1958 and 1965, to inquire into and report to me on flour and bread prices. Pending the outcome of this inquiry, I consider it would be inappropriate for me to make any statement on the matters raised in the Deputy's questions.
Would the Minister not agree that successive reports by previous Prices Advisory Bodies have pointed out that there is a grave need in the industry that a uniform system of accounting and industry-costing should be put forward and that the various points I have made—particularly in Questions Nos. 141 to 143—had been repeated ad nauseam by previous Prices Advisory Bodies? Yet the Minister, and successive Ministers, have done precisely nothing about it. It hardly requires another Prices Advisory Body to be told the same facts.
I would not agree. This new Prices Advisory Body can be quite helpful in this investigation. The Deputy asks if some of the recommendations by previous Prices Advisory Bodies were not being adhered to or had not been accepted by me. The Deputy has more knowledge than anybody else in this regard because he sat on the last body. Peculiarly enough, the recommendations he says I am not abiding by were recommendations he himself refused to sign as a member of that body.
Quite distinct and separate from any recommendations contained in Prices Advisory Body reports, these reports pointed out that there is no uniform costings system in the industry and that such should be introduced. It also pointed out that there is a form of "duopoly" in operation in the industry. It does not require a Prices Advisory Body to make one aware of these facts. They have been produced in the Department for a solid ten years and yet nothing has happened to remedy the position. The Minister has done absolutely nothing about it.
Is the Deputy making a statement?
In view of the——
Another committee.
——fact that the Deputy agreed so much with the recommendations, is it not peculiar that he did not sign them?
The recommendations were for particular increases in the price of bread which were separate and distinct from the observations within the report on a whole series of questions raised about the industry. The committee made observations to the Minister: they did not make precise recommendations.
In the application of our prices examination, the recommendations of the previous Prices Advisory Bodies were invariably adhered to. Because I was still not satisfied about the justification for the total increases being applied for—by both the millers and bakers in this instance—I decided to set up this Prices Advisory Body which I expect to be in a position to announce next week.