This is an amending Bill to the Cereals Act of 1933. It amends the Act in four respects. Sections 1, 2, 3 and 4 are merely definitions. Sections 6 and 7 deal with the problem that has arisen of the small mills. Those who took a keen interest in the Principal Act will know that a licensed flour mill had amongst other things to mill a certain quota and if the quota were not filled, the mill was subject to a fine of £25 for the first offence and £50 for a subsequent offence. We had also a provision in the Principal Act for permitted mills. By permitted mills were meant mills that milled on commission throughout the country and also milled wheat for farmers' use. In practice we find that there are a number of mills that both import a certain amount of foreign wheat to mill for sale and also mill on commission. The principal business of these small mills is to mill on commission but at times perhaps they import say 100 barrels of foreign wheat and mill it for sale. They have a very poor idea of the amount that they might be able to dispose of in the year and they are very badly circumstanced to pay a fine of £25 for the first offence or £50 for the subsequent offence of giving a wrong estimate of what their powers in that respect might be. We propose under Sections 6 and 7 to exempt those mills which mill under 1,000 barrels of wheat in the year from the penalties for disobeying the quota. In that way they will be quite free to carry on as before, milling on commission for farmers and milling a small amount of wheat also for sale.
Section 8 deals with the case of farmers, wheat growers, who did not register in time. In the Principal Act it is laid down that every farmer must register as a wheat grower before 1st May in order to be eligible for the bounty or subsidy when the wheat of that particular year is sold. The Bill had not passed through both Houses of the Oireachtas until fairly late in the session and the farmers claimed that they had not got a sufficient warning of the date when registration was due. The result is that we had quite a number of applications coming in late. We think that it would be a great hardship on those farmers, particularly in the first year, to penalise them to the extent of 6/- or 7/- per barrel because they had not obeyed this particular regulation. We had about 8,000 growers registered up to the 1st July. Since that 2,000 further applications came in. We may take it therefore that practically one-third of the growers would be excluded from the bounty if this amendment were not brought in. We are only making the amendment for this year. In future years the date 1st May will have to be insisted on because it is very difficult to work a scheme like this in the Department if we have not got sufficient data early in the year to calculate the acreage so as to be able to fix the national percentage and the total quota for the year. As, however, this year the number affected is very large comparatively we can allow them to come in up to 16th December, as is provided here.
Section 9 deals with another matter that has arisen. It deals with a matter that was somewhat involved perhaps or overlapping in the Principal Act. The principle underlying the cereals legislation with regard to wheat was that no bounty would be paid except for wheat used for human consumption. It has been found in practice that, if a person is registered as a dealer and also, say, as a maize miller, he could, under the Act, pass some wheat on which the bounty is payable into his own maize mill and have it mixed with maize for animal feeding. That is a thing that we would like to have amended, because, having paid the bounty on the wheat, we would like to have it used for human food only. Section 9 brings in the necessary amendment.
Part III of the Bill deals with seeds. It is desirable, of course, to give power to wheat dealers and flour millers to sell the best samples of wheat which they get as seed. The dealers and flour millers buy their wheat in the open market at more or less the same price. They have this year adopted the principle in most cases of buying on the bushel. Most of the millers gave a fixed price of 17/6 for a 62 lbs. bushel. In some cases, they gave 2d. less for one pound bushel downwards and 2d. more for one pound bushel upwards. The people from whom they buy the wheat get the bounty. They could easily, as the Act stands, sell that wheat as seed and they would naturally charge the same for that seed as the ordinary seed merchant could afford to sell it at. The ordinary seed merchant has either to import the wheat or buy it from the farmer. He has to buy it from the farmer knowing that the farmer cannot get the bounty. The ordinary seed merchant, therefore, could not afford to sell the wheat at less than 23/6 a barrel. This would give a very unfair advantage to the flour miller or wheat dealer in regard to the seed if we left the Act as it is. It would enable them either to undersell the the seed merchant by 6/- or 7/- a barrel or sell at the same price and make a profit of 6/- or 7/- a barrel more than the seed merchant. We propose to give the registered dealers and flour millers power to sell the seed but for the seed they sell they must refund to the Minister for Finance the amount of bounty paid. They will then be paying say 23/6 for the wheat the same as the seed merchant. They will be on the same level and the State will get something out of it to which it is entitled.
