Deputy O'Toole has received permission to raise on the Adjournment the subject matter of Question No. 438 of 12 October 1978.
Adjournment Debate. - Price Increases.
I thank the Chair for allowing me to raise this matter. I tried to raise it on Tuesday and yesterday and I suppose, third time lucky, I should be thankful for the opportunity of raising it now. The question reads:
Mr. O'Toole asked the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy if he will state, in relation to the recommendations from the National Prices Commission which he approved during the months of July, August and September 1978, the commodities in question and the extent of the increases; and, in relation to the recommendation which he did not approve, the increase recommended and the commodities concerned.
The written reply of 12 October reads:
Details of price increase recommendations made by the National Prices Commission during the months of July, August and September 1978, will be set out in the commission's reports for these months. The press statements to be issued in connection with these reports will indicate which of these recommendations I have approved. The July report will be published on Friday next, 13 October 1978 and it is expected that the August/September 1978 report will be published towards the end of this month or early next month.
In other words, I was given the expected dates on which the National Prices Commission reports would be published. I did not seek this information. I sought specific information of price increases for the months of July, August and September. Any citizen would be entitled to the information I was given this day week. That is the position as I see it.
I understood that Question Time was an important part of our parliamentary procedure. We all realise that the parliamentary question is the only device open to people like myself to elicit specific information on important topics. As I have outlined, the substance of my question concerned price increases, which is the concern of every consumer. In seeking this information I was seeking something which I have previously sought and got. Indeed, there have been instances when I have received a comprehensive reply to a specific question. On 7 March, 6 April and 20 June last year I received comprehensive replies to similar questions. On 2 March my colleague, Deputy Oliver J. Flanagan, received a comprehensive reply to a similar question as did Deputy Barry Desmond in October last. But on 28 June last, the last day on which this House sat prior to the summer recess, I received a reply which was similar to the reply received by me last week. In other words, there seemed to be a change of heart somewhere along the way. It would now seem that the performance is being repeated during this session. I am being denied general information which I seek through the normal device of a parliamentary question. Is the information sought available? In the absence of information to the contrary I must assume it is available. If so, I must also assume in the absence of that information that the Minister has something to hide. That is the only logical conclusion I can come to.
Deferring the evil day when the people must have this information is in no way advantageous to the Government or to the Minister. This recent development, which is a deliberate curtailment of information, is nothing short of a scandalous abuse of the long-held privileges of the Members of this House. It is an erosion of my rights and the rights of other Members of this House and reduces Question Time to nothing more than an exercise in evasiveness. That is my opinion of the present format of the replies to such questions. What is the Minister afraid of? Why is the responsible Minister not present?
It is generally understood that one of the major planks in the Fianna Fáil manifesto was the control of prices being handed over to a senior member of the Cabinet. The Minister, Deputy O'Malley, has said that he is responsible for price control. I am not surprised that he did not come into the House this evening because his record in relation to the control of prices is nothing to shout about. Since last July we have had something of the order of 430 price increases. One of yesterday evening's newspaper headlines, "Shopping Basket Shock", brought home to me the importance of receiving information to which the country, the House and I are entitled. The article informed us that the shopping basket has soared to 12p in the £ more than in Great Britain. Every housewife in the country knows it and no amount of ostrich-like activity or evasiveness is going to hide that fact.
What is contained in the National Prices Commission report for August/September? Nobody knows. This lack of information is leading to a certain amount of worry. It is causing speculation and confusion. The confusion is being compounded by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance. I was present in the House yesterday afternoon at Question Time when Deputy O'Leary put down a question to the Minister for Finance in regard to the consumer price index and what might be expected in the future. The Minister stated that, from the information available to him and taking all factors into consideration, he expected the CPI for mid-November would show a reduction, despite the fact that only last week we had major increases in the prices of sugar and briquettes which would affect the CPI to some degree. While the Minister was on his feet, the Taoiseach a few miles away was addressing, according to yesterday's Evening Herald, the Kevin Barry UCD Fianna Fáil Cumann. He said that while inflation had been brought well down into single figures it was now pushing upwards since it reached the low rate indicated in the May CPI. I quote:
The causes are near home and lie with higher food prices and income increases that are out of line with the real growth of national output.
That indicates to me that he expects an increase in the mid-November CPI figures when the times comes while the Minister for Finance at the same time is giving us categorical assurances that from the information available to him the CPI figure of mid-November will show a reduction. If that is not confusion in the case of two gentlemen who we must assume are very close to each other, I do not know what it is.
Further, Deputy O'Leary tried to elicit from the Minister for Finance if he was taking the August-September price increases into account when assessing the mid-November CPI. Again, we had evasiveness. He would only say that all relevant factors had been taken into account and his prognostication was that there would be a reduction. This has now become a matter of serious concern and is causing not a little confusion here and among the many thousands of people outside this House interested in price levels.
As I see it, the position is that every effort is being made to ensure that the inevitable rise in the cost of living and the inevitable increases approved by the Minister will come in unheralded and unknown to as many people as possible. This would seem to be the policy now adopted by the Minister. We have reached the stage where the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy in releasing press statements from the GIS normally refers to increases as having come from and been approved by the National Prices Commission while if a reduction comes about he comes to the House himself. He did this in the case of the few reductions we have had due to external circumstances, as for example in the case of the ESB charges which were due to exchange rates on the international money market which affect the price of oil. He came here to announce that, giving the impression that he was responsible for reductions while the poor old National Prices Commission were responsible for increases. Let me ask once more why is it, despite the fact that the international rate of exchange has resulted in an upward valuation of the £ sterling, we have not benefited? Why can he not insist in the case of oil prices, for instance, that they be reduced to take account of the improvement in the £? I should like these questions to be answered. I am sorry the Minister did not think it worthwhile to live up to his responsibilities and come here. If he is in charge of prices, let him face the facts as they exist and answer for some of the increases for which he and his Government are responsible.
I should like to ask when the August-September report will be published. It is fairly obvious from the delayed publication of the July report that the Government had made no decision on the sugar price increase until quite recently when they decided to knock a penny off the recommendation of the National Prices Commission. In these circumstances one would expect that the August-September report, on the assumption that it is a unified report as it normally tends to be at that time of year, should be out in the very near future. I should also like to know if the negotiations between the Minister and the petroleum companies in any way affect its publication. That is my main query. Perhaps we could then put in better context the statement of the Minister for Finance yesterday in terms of anticipation of the mid-November figure.
First, in reply to Deputy Desmond, I would hope that the August-September report would be published by the end of this month or certainly by the first days of November. I think we shall not fall very far short of the normal length of time for publication of the NPC report.
Secondly, I think it is sad to see a Deputy from the main Opposition party launching an attack on the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy because of his inability to be here this evening. Perhaps Deputy O'Toole does not follow the press very carefully. Perhaps he did not get the papers this morning or listen to the news, but I think he would agree that the greatest and most crucial problem facing the Government at present is unemployment, and that it has been and will continue to be the task of the Minister to promote industry which will provide good and steady jobs for our young people and our people generally. Because of his duty in that regard the Minister is at present touring the United States with officials from the Industrial Development Authority in the cause of jobs for the Irish people. I suggest that is a very valid reason for the Minister not being here.
It has been fairly common over the years for Deputies on all sides of the House to put down questions seeking information on price increases recommended and approved in a particular period. As the Deputy rightly said, it was the practice until fairly recently to give the information in the form of a rather lengthy tabular statement irrespective of whether the details had already been published or not. These tabular statements may be very lengthy, as the Deputy is aware, and were time-consuming for the officials concerned in compiling them. As Deputies know, reports are published by the National Prices Commission on a monthly basis. To each report details are appended of price increases considered by the commission in the period covered by the report, usually the period from the first day to the last day of the month to which the report relates. These give information such as the name of the firm which sought the increase, the products involved, the price increase sought, and the recommendation made by the Commission to the Minister. In a statement to the press at the time each monthly report is published, the Minister indicates the recommendations he has approved, those he has refused, those for which he has allowed a lesser increase, or those which may be still under consideration.
Therefore, it seemed to the Minister that a considerable amount of official time and the time of the House could be saved if Deputies seeking this type of information were referred to the monthly reports of the National Prices Commission which are readily available in the Dáil Library in the case of reports which have already been published, or which will be available within a reasonably short time in the case of reports covering a current month. There is no need to mention that Deputies and Senators get a copy of this report at the time of its publication. By answering appropriate questions in this fashion, the Minister was of the opinion, and so am I, that duplication of work could be avoided. I am sure everybody will agree that, where this type of information is already available, or will be available within a reasonably short period, the compiling of lengthy tabular statements, which are merely copies of statements already made, or which will be made in the near future, should not be necessary.
I should like to refer to a press statement issued by the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy on 13 October in which he referred to statements or suggestions that the recent increases approved by him, and announced in the July monthly report of the National Prices Commission, were the beginning of a new inflation spiral. This suggestion was made by a colleague of Deputy O'Toole. The Minister said that these suggestions are not only misleading but could be harmful. Price increases announced in conjunction with the publication of the July monthly report, as pointed out in the report, should increase the consumer price index by only 0.7 per cent, including the increases in the price of sugar and turf which fall in the August-November quarter. The latest estimates for the consumer price index to mid-November 1978 suggest that the quarterly increases will be substantially less than that for the quarter to mid-August 1978, giving a year on year inflation rate less than the 8.2 per cent recorded to mid-August 1978.
I should like to thank Deputy O'Toole for the opportunity he presented to me to publicise a press statement issued by the Minister today in connection with the Government's price control policy. There are a few items in it which I am sure Deputy O'Toole, Deputy Desmond and others will be pleased to hear about. The Minister indicated in this House, and publicly, that he had met the National Prices Commission shortly after taking office, and that he had submitted various criteria or proposals to them for the application of stricter control on prices. The commission discussed these and, arising from developments and meetings which took place in the meantime, there will be stricter criteria in future on some items.
The Minister has now decided that price contracts should only be operated for the major dominant firms in the private and public sectors, or where there are special factors such as seasonality of sales which require that price adjustments occur only once a year, or because of technical problems relating to the ultimate unit price to the consumer. Efficiency improvements will continue to play a prominent part in price contracts and in future firms on a price contract will be required to report each year on developments in this area. The overall operation of price contracts will be reviewed for each firm at least every three years.
Under the terms of the Prices and Charges (Notification of Increases) Order, 1976, manufacturers who occupy a dominant position in the market place, and who employ more than 100 persons, are obliged to give two months' notice to the Minister of any proposed price increase. The Minister has now decided that in the case of some companies on a price contract, together with CIE and Bord na Móna—the two major State companies not on price contracts—the period of notification should be extended to three months.
Up to now firms who export 25 per cent or more of their total volume of a product or product group at a price which is not less than the home or Irish price are exempt from detailed price control. The Minister has decided that the export exemption limit should now be raised to 35 per cent of total volume.
There are many other items in the press release which the Minister has sanctioned and which he hopes will lead to tighter and stricter control on applications for price increases to the National Prices Commission. I am sure Deputies opposite will welcome the arrival of these new criteria. We had discussions in this House about what the criteria should be and how we should strengthen the hand of the National Prices Commission and, in doing so, strengthen the hand of the Minister.
I should like to refer to the last point made by Deputy O'Toole in which he quoted from a statement made by the Taoiseach at UCD yesterday. It is unfortunate that when we quote statements in this House, some of us are inclined to quote what suits the occasion and leave out one of the most important elements of the quotation. If Deputy O'Toole had got a copy of the Taoiseach's statement in UCD he would have realised that the quotation went on to say:
We can have either sensible increases in real incomes and more work for our young people or large increases in money incomes with less work opportunities and more price rises.
Did I misquote the Taoiseach?
I do not think the Deputy misquoted the quotation he used but, unfortunately, he did not continue with the quotation. I would not accept that because the Deputy feels information is being cut down by the change in the structure of the reply to his question, his rights are being eroded. I think he would agree it is only reasonable that the Government of the day should see the report of the National Prices Commission before any of us have an opportunity of seeing it. The Minister may recommend various matters in the report, or recommend the report as a whole, but the final responsibility for the passing of the report must rest with the Government.
Is the Minister saying they have not seen it yet?
They have it at the moment. I hope the August-September report will be published by the end of this month, but certainly in the first days of November.
The Dáil adjourned at 5.30 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 24 October 1978.