Deputy James Leonard gave me notice that he wished to raise on the Adjournment the subject matter of Question No. 13 which appeared on today's Order Paper.
Adjournment Debate. - Animal Feedingstuffs.
I asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce today if he was satisfied that the removal of animal feedingstuffs from price control was justified. In his reply he gave as his reasons the recommendations of the Prices Commission in consultation with the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries and the various farmers representative organisations. The Minister's attitude seemed to be: "They told me to do it".
I should like to impress on the Minister the seriousness of that action, particularly in the county I represent, an area of small farms, an area where small farmers are depending for their income on farmyard projects and intensive feeding of pigs and dairy stock. In that area there are 7,600-odd holdings, and the average farm size is 33 acres. Thirteen per cent of the farms have ten to 15 acres; 39 per cent have 15 to 30 acres, and 27 per cent have 30 to 50 acres. Therefore, 79 per cent of the farmers in my county have 50 acres of land or less. In that area pigs are a very important farmyard project; 40 per cent of the farmers in Monaghan keep pigs. It must also be taken into consideration that a large number of the 7,600-odd people are on off-farm employment and they are not included in the number of farmers who keep pigs, and a large number of them would have pigs of one grade or other, be it rearing, or fattening, on their farms. When it is considered that 70 per cent of the cost of producing pigs goes into feedingstuffs the serious effect a large increase has on the income of those farmers will be realised. There is also a large number of dairy cattle and on a small acreage the feeding must be supplemented with bought-in feeds. In that respect it is very important, too, that a very close watch should be kept on prices so that the farmers would have some hope of making an income off those small farms.
The Minister said it was on the recommendation of farmers that this decision was made. If he had gone down to Monaghan to a meeting last week and asked those people what they thought of his action in removing price control, I know what they would have told him.
Would the Deputy tell me what they would have told me? Would he put it on the record?
I leave to the Minister's imagination what they would have told him when they find their livelihood being taken from them by those massive increases which have been occurring all year, with the largest increase of all coming immediately after the removal of price control. As I said, it is essential that we would have farmyard enterprise if the small farmer is to survive. The poultry enterprise went out of the hands of the farmer into the larger combines, and the only farmyard enterprise left was the pig industry. Under EEC Directive No. 159 relating to farm modernisation, it is far more important that we would have those farmyard enterprises to make those small farms viable at all. Even in the pig industry it is a very big problem to achieve the targets which they would want to achieve under the EEC directives, and, with present difficulties, it would be absolutely impossible for many of those people to become development farmers.
A lot of employment was given in a number of compounders and a number of bacon factories. Only last week the local paper headlined the loss of 23 jobs in one bacon factory. Another heading referred to the IFA protest and when this particular meeting of the Pigs and Bacon Commission was being picketed, the county chairman said that this could be looked upon as drastic action but not so when one considered that the cost of pig rations had increased by £33 over the past year while the price of pigs had increased by £4.50. The cost of producing the pig had gone up by £12 over the past year and during the last six months the sow population had fallen by 50 per cent in County Monaghan. At present dealers are purchasing sows and killing the piglets so as to sell them as dry sows to the factory at a handsome profit.
Side by side with that there was another heading: "Pig industry crisis." It referred to sows and bonhams being killed off, and to 23 men losing their jobs in an area where jobs are very scarce at any time.
Last July I asked the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries if he would provide a fund to cushion producers against those fluctuations in prices. He said it would be a desirable thing and that he had actually mentioned it to the Pig Board. We also have the statistics from food and farm research to prove that the margin for pigs in March, 1973, was £3.74 whereas the margin for pigs in September, 1973, was £2.37. If you add to that the increase of 65p per cwt. which was the amount that was put on immediately after the de-controlling of animal feed prices, the total is £3.90, which would mean a loss on pig production.
The Minister said today that he had consultations with the farmers representative organisations and that generally they welcomed the proposal. If the farming organisations were seeking an increase in the price of milk or beet, would he accept their recommendations? Is that the way he will be guided? I think a Minister should be his own boss, make his own decisions and should not require to be guided. As the Government has to rule, the Minister should rule his Department and should not be guided by any outside body.
By that removal I think he opens the flood gates to the profiteers and that is evidenced by the price being charged at present for feeding barley. Last harvest the farmers got £40 to £50 per ton for barley. Last week the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries admitted, in reply to questions, that barley was making from £65 to £75 per ton. I said then that even at £65 per ton there was excessive profit. I was disappointed with the Minister today but the most disturbing part of it was that there were some points of which he did not seem to be aware. I thought he was top class as regards agriculture.
Would the Deputy say what points I was not aware of?
I am talking about barley. The Minister seemed very vague regarding the amount of profit now obtainable on barley purchased last harvest. This was my impression and it disturbed me. When I watched the Minister on television, with a simple stick, he seemed to be very good at the profit margins and food conversion. I would think that in talking about profit per pig and a livelihood for the small producer that you could base it all on food conversion profit margin.
The Minister has a bigger stick now.
Would the Deputy take a serious question from me? He may answer if he wishes.
My impression of this debate was that I would make my contribution and that the Minister would reply to the points I made.
I have a serious question the answer to which would help me reply to the Deputy.
The Minister is being helpful.
(Interruptions.)
My answer to that would be: had the Minister asked me a question at Question Time today or had he not been so vague and if he had given me a clearer explanation when he was answering my question, there would have been no need for an Adjournment Debate and no need for him to question me now or vice versa.
May I ask the question now? Does the Deputy believe that I was wrong to remove price control from feedingstuffs?
I would answer it this way. The Minister with all the technical officers and information available to him should have been able to give me an answer today when I asked him if his action was justified. He did not say. Would the Minister answer my question now as to whether he thought the action was justifiable and I shall tell him what I think?
Yes, it was justified.
But the Minister did not control the price of animal feedingstuff. It went sky high.
Will the Deputy answer me?
The Minister can read between the lines of the case I am making. The Minister is aware that there was a very substantial increase being sought when, as my friend here mentioned, we came to the Monaghan by election—I have a cutting from a newspaper here—and we were castigated for mentioning increases coming up in the price of feedingstuffs. That was denied at those election meetings. At that time the Minister met members of the farming organisations in Monaghan. He knew then of this increase and I think he was running away from his responsibilities in that he should have dealt with that application when it was put on his desk for an increase in the price of animal feed instead of taking the easy way, withdrawing the price control and allowing the merchants to set the price. One of the arguments was that it would create competition which would result in a drop in price. One must realise that most compounders are working to capacity and even if some compounder by more efficient operation or by paying less wages could reduce the price, he could not still provide enough for the needs of the other people. Competition would not be created that way. Even if the co-ops—and, as I said, there are 46 per cent of the compounders in the hands of the co-ops—were to reduce prices they still could not compound sufficient to cover users' requirements. From that point of view I think the Minister ran away from his responsibility when the price rise was applied for by giving a free-for-all.
In the few minutes left I want to endorse what my colleague has said. In his answer to five questions put down in relation to pigs the Minister's first point was the increase in feedingstuffs. The questions were put down on Wednesday, 13th February, by Deputy Cunningham, Deputy James Gibbons, Deputy Leonard, Deputy Callanan, Deputy Meaney and Deputy G. Collins. The Minister took them all together and the first reason he gave for the selling off of sows was the increased price of feedingstuffs. This was the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries. I have great respect for the Minister for Industry and Commerce and, as my colleague said, I also admired him when he was on television but I cannot agree that he should use as an excuse the advice he took from anybody. When I do business I look for advice from everybody but when it comes to making a decision that I have to stand over I make it and stand over it myself. The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries said in answering the questions that he got advice from this one and that one——
I intervene to advise the Deputy that he has about a minute left.
I would ask the Minister to consider seriously the possibility that the country may be without pig meat and without liquid milk because of the increased price of feedingstuffs. What policy have the Government in regard to price control?
I must now call on the Minister for Industry and Commerce to reply.
It is interesting that I was unable to elicit from Deputy Leonard, who thought this matter important enough to bring us back here tonight, a straight answer as to whether he thought I was right or wrong. I gave him a straight answer but he did not have the courage to give me a straight answer. Would the Deputy like to do it now?
I spoke for 20 minutes——
But the Deputy did not give that straight answer to that question. Will he do it now?
(Interruptions.)
Members must speak through the Chair.
The Deputy was afraid to do it. He wanted to play both sides of the road. Let us say first what we did.
(Interruptions.)
Order, please.
A Deputy
The Minister is wrong.
At last, somebody said I was wrong. Somebody had the courage to give me an answer. I removed the price controls on the 20th December. The Deputy said it was because a number of people asked me to do so.
That is what the Minister said.
Order, please. I cannot allow any further interruptions on a limited debate of this kind. Deputy Leonard and Deputy Callanan enjoyed 20 minutes to make their case. The Minister has less than 10 minutes to make his and must be allowed make it without interruption.
And without aggression.
The Chair will deal with that matter.
Although I was requested by farming organisations and by individuals, it was not a matter of bowing to their request. The National Prices Commission employed consultants who were experts. If I ask to have experts employed to advise me, I will take the greatest notice of their advice. The experts reported in the eleventh occasional paper of the National Prices Commission, a copy of which was, I believe, sent to every Deputy in the House. If the Deputy wants to know the reasons, if he reads the documentation he receives he will find 95 pages of analyses of the industry. It was on the basis of a published report of expert consultants that I took such action.
Dr. Asmal.
That is both irresponsible and incorrect. It is the type of totally irresponsible gutter interjection that we have come to expect. The Deputy knew perfectly well that it was not——
(Interruptions.)
The Deputy must allow the Minister to conclude.
The question now arises: was that action right or wrong? I propose in validation of it to quote from an article written in The Irish Times of 12th February, 1974, by a Mr. Denis Coghlan. It is headed: “Removal of Controls on Animal Feedstuffs has Lowered Prices.” I want to insert a number of quotations from that article into the record. Firstly it says:
At the time the recommendations were made, the manufacturers were claiming increases of up to £13 a ton, but yesterday spokesmen for the ICMSA and the IFA reported that in certain instances price increases had ranged from as little as £3 to £5 a ton.
Further it states:
Competition between the private manufacturers for sections of the market, allied to strong bargaining by groups of farmers and the presence of the co-operative compounders, led, however, to a gradual reduction in prices. A spokesman for the ICMSA in Limerick said yesterday that in many instances the increases imposed by the private manufacturing sector had been reduced to as little as £5 a ton. The IFA spokesman mentioned that, following the increases, some manufacturers were selling compounds at £82 a ton, but because of competition and tough bargaining he knew of people who had been receiving feedstuffs at £72-£73 a ton up to the end of January.
Would the Minister tell us what date that was published?
The 12th of February.
It is tommy-rot.
I am quoting from a journalist——
He is talking rot.
The ICMSA and the IFA are quoted here. My Department has been in touch with the IAOS on this subject and I quote from the note of information which they wrote me in connection with the meeting I had a few days ago:
The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society...have confirmed that many Co-operatives have not increased the prices of feedstuffs since price control was removed. This was partly due to the fact that some Co-operatives had stocks of cheaper barley but also in the long term interests of the Co-operative movement they felt bound to allow for the difficult situation facing pig breeders at the present time.
This is a serious point. Deputy Leonard is as concerned with the plight of pig and other livestock producers as I am. We are both equally disturbed and distressed at the threat to various sectors of our livestock industry by very large rises in the price of grains and feedingstuffs. Deputy G. Collins on 6th February in the Official Report, volume 270, column 117, when discussing the current high prices of animal feedingstuffs said:
...with soya beans now costing £115 per ton and maize £70 per ton and feeding barley and other grains having increased by 50 per cent to 60 per cent in the past couple of months.
Those are the prices of raw material on world markets which go into these concentrates. It is a very serious problem for all animal feeders. I am as seriously concerned about this as the Deputy. His question to me, and I am endeavouring to reply to it in the minutes remaining, is what is the best thing to do. The advice of the consultants, of the farmers' organisations, and of the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries—I am not contemptuous of people's advice; I will listen to it and make up my mind then —the unanimous advice I received, including that of consultants, experts employed to advise me, was to remove the control which I did. It has produced the results testified to by the IFA, the ICMSA, the IAOS and in an article by a journalist whom I do not know and whom I take to be a reasonably reputable journalist. It makes the point, which is a general argument, that rapidly rising prices for grains and for raw materials of the feedingstuffs are a worldwide phenomenon.
(Interruptions.)
Deputies must allow the Minister to speak for the remaining minutes.
It is all home-produced.
When the Deputy says that it is all home-produced it shows how little he knows.
(Interruptions.)
I am appealing to Deputies' sense of fair play to allow the Minister the last minute or two.
The central point at issue is that at a time of rapid rises in the cost of the raw materials, is it better in an industry where there are many producers, some of them inefficient, to have price control or not? If we have price control, then the maximum price is the price and there is no competition. If we abolish price control and have competition, some will go to the maximum price and some will not and they will compete as has been instanced in the period since abolition in the articles from the IFA, the ICMSA, the IAOS and the article I have quoted. There is evidence from all over the country that that is happening. The farmers are benefiting by this difference, in this instance between £13 a ton and £2 or £3 a ton. If Deputies want price control at a time when the increases in raw materials are rapid, then what they are doing is taking from the farmers this difference. He is advocating an irresponsible and ill-considered course of action which will damage farmers' interests. If Deputy Leonard, whom I take to be more serious in this regard, acquainted himself with the contents of occasional paper No. 11 of the National Prices Commission, he will see the reason for the abolition. If he contacted the IFA, the ICMSA, the IAOS and asked what happened, he would satisfy himself that the result was as we wished and to the benefit of the farmers. The decision, which he had not the courage to say was either right or wrong, was a correct decision which helped agriculture.
(Interruptions.)
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 28th February, 1974.