The Cathaoirleach has received notice from Senator Counihan that on the motion for the adjournment of the Seanad he proposes to direct the attention of the Minister for Agriculture to the overcrowded condition of the stores of millers and corn merchants in the City of Dublin and to notices issued directly to farmers by millers and merchants not to bring any more grain for the present to the stores, and to request the Minister to make a statement on the matter.
Adjournment Debate. - Overcrowded Condition of Dublin Corn Stores.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
I may say that I raise this question of the storage of corn in Dublin at the request of many farmers who always sold their cereal crops to corn merchants and millers in the City of Dublin. At the present time, I am informed, all the available space has been filled up and stores are overcrowded. Since the Government brought in a number of ships with foreign oats and wheat there is no room to store any more home-grown produce in the City of Dublin where the great bulk of the corn from several adjoining counties is usually disposed of. Senators may think that this and other statements which I am about to make are an exaggeration but I assure the Minister and the House that any statement I make is a plain statement of fact. I shall first read a communication from a fairly big corn merchant in the city to a carrier to demonstrate what the storage position at the moment is. I do not intend to give the name of the millers, the corn merchants or the carriers concerned but if the Minister requires them, I shall let him have these letters and I shall give him any information he needs on the matter to show that these communications are genuine. The first letter is from a corn merchant to a carrier and it states:—
"We wrote you on the 17th November giving you definite instructions that you were not to bring in any more wheat until you received instructions from us to do so. Despite this you brought in five sacks yesterday. Please note that if you bring in any more wheat you can take it back again. We shall let you know when we may resume taking wheat."
That is from a fairly big corn merchant. In my opinion it was a damnably impertinent letter for anybody in his position to send out. Some of the millers too are writing somewhat similar letters but the millers' letters are not quite so bad as that. Here is a letter from a miller to a farmer:—
"Dear Sir—Owing to heavy deliveries of wheat, the Dublin stores have now reached a position in which they are unable to accept further deliveries, due to insufficient storage. We shall be glad, therefore, if you will cease forwarding any wheat until you get further instructions. I know this will cause you some inconvenience, but we hope the stoppage will be of short duration."
That is the position at the moment and I quote these two letters to demonstrate it. I could quote several other letters of which these two are typical. The first communication was written on a postcard and it had reference to the delivery only of five barrels of wheat, a very small amount. That shows the condition of the storage at the present time. Some of the millers in Dublin and some of the corn merchants, too, are taking advantage of the present position to reduce the price, particularly of oats and, in a good many cases, of wheat also. They are adopting very dishonest stratagems to do so. I have heard of some cases where the farmers were cut 50 per cent. in their price for having oats mixed with the wheat. In that particular case, of which I will give the Minister particulars if he requires them—he may possibly know of it already—the farmers refused to accept the 50 per cent. cut. They notified the miller, one of the biggest millers in Dublin, to send back their wheat. The wheat was not returned. They were haggling over the price for about a week or more. Eventually the miller paid the farmers 52/6 for the wheat—that was 50 per cent. more than the first offer. I think that was a very dishonest transaction. I am not blaming the Minister for the shortage of storage. He cannot fix up storage in a night, but I do blame him for, and strongly protest against, letting in so much foreign wheat, when he should be aware that there was no storage for it, leaving our own produce to deteriorate in the stacks. The millers may take advantage of this particular situation and refuse to take the wheat at all if it has deteriorated, or take it only at a low price as in the case I have mentioned.
I do not think there is any necessity for letting in the oats, at any rate. I saw in the daily Press recently that a grain ship arrived in Dublin on 20th November with 7,140 tons of oats. That 7,140 tons would be the equivalent of 57,000 barrels of wheat. If that oats, for which there is no necessity, was not brought in, the congestion would not be quite so bad. I do not think there is any necessity for the oats. By allowing it in you are simply playing into the corn merchants' hands.
The Minister may say that he wants to produce wheat, and that he wants to cut down the cost of living, but last year the oatmeal millers bought thousands of tons of oats at the Minister's controlled price. His minimum price was supposed to be 21/-, but that was the maximum price for the millers. In a good many cases I understand that they did not turn it into oatmeal but sold it in March or April for 45/- or 47/- a barrel, making over 100 per cent. profit. They did not make oatmeal of it; they could not afford to pay that price for oatmeal, so they accepted the high price and left the people without oatmeal.
In this case the farmers who are most victimised are the small farmers, the men with five or ten or 12 barrels of wheat. Those are the people who are most in need of selling their wheat to meet their liabilities and those are the people from whom it will not be accepted. For that reason, I hope the Minister will be able to do something to relieve the anxiety of those people. The only solution I can see is to suggest to the Minister that even at this eleventh hour he should make an Order to give an increase of 2/6 per barrel to anybody who keeps over his wheat until next February or March. If he did that, perhaps it would help in some way to relieve the congestion. I make that suggestion very seriously to the Minister. I have no personal grievance. Consequently, I am not personally annoyed with anybody about the transaction, but I have great sympathy for the farmers who are affected. I have sold practically all the grain I wanted to sell, and for two-thirds of it I got 57/6; it was all bought for seed. Most of the farmers who were not able to get their wheat or their corn threshed because they had to wait for threshing mills are left in the lurch, and they are in a very bad way at the moment.
At the present time some of the millers—I must say it is only some of them—are taking advantage of the situation, and are using what might be described as blackmail against the farmers to cut down their prices. I have heard to-day in the Dublin market from a very reliable and trustworthy farmer, that in one case the corn merchant offered to take the wheat at the controlled price provided that for every barrel of wheat the farmer would give him a barrel of oats at 27/-. I think that is nothing short of blackmail. In this case also I can give the Minister the names. I hope the Minister will make some statement to-night to relieve the anxiety of those farmers who have no way of disposing of their corn.
Senator Counihan is perfectly right in the complaints that he has made here, and I have got only a very slight further aspect of the matter to dwell upon. Complaints have been made to me by farmers adjacent to the City of Dublin that they are in the plight to which Senator Counihan has referred. They have added this further complaint, that certain grain merchants are filling up storage with wheat which they are taking at a reduced price because of low bushelling, and that then, having filled up the space and having given the farmers the reduced price because of that low bushelling, they are passing it over for milling to the millers and are obtaining the full milling price. Not only, therefore, are they doing the farmers out of the difference and making a profit which the Minister never intended them to make, but in addition they are taking up storage space. I am told by people in the trade that with certain firms which are licensed—quite frankly, I can see the Minister's difficulty in the segregation of individuals—they are doing that on a fairly large scale. I certainly have come across one case where I took an individual sample and got it specially bushelled, and I was not satisfied that the farmer in question had got the straight deal to which he was entitled. It appears to me that if those people are allowed to take up our storage space, and are doing so at a time when that space is so scarce, there should be some method of ensuring that they would not be able to make more than the margin of profit that is provided.
There should be some method of ensuring that they are not able to pass on wheat, bought at a certain price because it bushelled, say, less than 54, at less than the full milling price, because I am told that that has happened. I am told that that has happened in the south as well as in Dublin City. This question is causing considerable inconvenience and uneasiness. I am told that in the south it is not a question of storage space but of transport: that the millers in the south have sufficient storage space to take the wheat but transport is not available to get the wheat to the stores. One can quite understand and appreciate that Córas Iompair Éireann may not be in a position to get all the wagons and lorries, owing to shortages due to the emergency, that they would like, but if they are in that position, then I suggest that there should be a better arrangement to take in private lorries and make certain that there would not be any transport hold-up.
I think that Senator Counihan has done a very great public service by ventilating this matter, because I have the suspicion at the back of my head that there is, somewhere or another, something very nearly in the nature of a ramp about this thing, and I feel that if there is that suspicion—if there is any possibility of that—the quickest way to end it is to make certain that the full light of publicity will be cast upon it.
Senator Counihan, of course, is perfectly right in raising this matter if he feels that a serious situation is arising, but I am afraid that he is a little inaccurate in certain details and that he is wrong in some of his conclusions. Nevertheless, he is right in coming along to see if whatever may be wrong —if there is anything wrong—can be put right. Other matters were raised by Senators Counihan and Sweetman arising out of this. Now, I think everyone will have to admit that if the wheat is inferior, the buyer is entitled not only to cut the price but that he should cut it. If the bushelling is less than 54, he cannot be expected to give the same price.
No, I quite agree, but he should not get more for the wheat.
If the wheat bushels less than 54, the producer cannot expect to get the same price, because there is something wrong with the wheat.
I agree.
Then there is also the question of the water or moisture content, and our standard in this country with regard to that is not very good. We allow 22 per cent., so there is no reason why we should be paying those sixpences to farmers whose wheat has an extra percentage of water, and something should be done to see that the wheat is brought in with as low a water content as possible. Again, the miller is entitled to cut the farmer's price if there is more than a certain percentage of impurities in the wheat, such as weed seeds, because somebody—probably the person who has to buy the bread—has to pay for it in the end. All those things have to be considered. I do not think it is true that in any of those cases the farmer can get the price from the miller, and if the miller has to take out 25 per cent. of weed seeds, I do not think he should pay for what he takes out, or if he must reduce the moisture content from 32 to 16, I do not see why he should pay extra for it; and it must be taken out. Accordingly, I think it is obvious that if a dealer is giving an honest bushel return, he is not going to get away with paying the farmer less than the announced price and getting the announced price from the miller. In any case, however, if there are such instances and if Senators or anybody else let us know of them we generally are able to trace them. If we get the complaints within a reasonable period, we are generally fairly successful in tracing these lots of wheat.
I shall give the facts to the Minister.
I did follow up a few cases that were given to me, and in one particular case we pronounced the flour miller to be in the wrong and made him pay the full price for the wheat, but I think that in all the other cases the miller was right in the price he gave. And now, with regard to congestion, there is congestion, of course, and it is due to a variety of causes, mostly enumerated by Senator Counihan himself. This year was a late year in threshing as a whole, and at the end of September we were 166,000 barrels less than at the same time last year; that is, farmers' deliveries were 166,000 barrels down as compared with the end of last September, but then during the six weeks from about the 13th October to the 17th November 320,000 more barrels, or 40,000 tons, were delivered this year as compared with last year, which meant a considerable increase in the storage and the intake. Dublin got its share of that but, in addition to that, Dublin was particularly put to the pin of its collar for storage on account of the imports. There are 70,000 tons of wheat more in now than at this time last year—that is, on the imported side —and a great deal of that comes through the port of Dublin, so that the Dublin stores are very much more heavily taxed this year than they were last year in the case of imported wheat?
One of Senator Counihan's complaints was that we should not take this wheat at this time of year. It is very difficult in these times to decide on such things, because you must take the wheat when and where you can get it, and whatever inconvenience may be caused here we must put up with it rather than give up the wheat. The same applies to oats, of which 12,000 tons came in. That was offered to us and we had to take it, and it came into Dublin. The oats were fairly quickly despatched, but all the same it made a difference. So that you have those three items that are fairly substantial: you have 40,000 tons more home-grown wheat than last year, 70,000 tons of imported wheat, and 12,000 tons of oats being imported. Of course, these imports are not so terribly big compared with pre-war imports, but in pre-war times wheat and maize were coming in all the year round. There was a regular inflow practically every week, but we have not that regularity now and, accordingly, our stores are sometimes more heavily taxed than at other times.
I must say that I cannot agree with Senator Counihan that we should not have brought these oats in. I am very much in favour of taking anything we can get at the moment, if we can get any sort of fair value. The only feeding stuff we could get was oats up to this. We may get some maize shortly, but we will not get much and it will be expensive. We may be able to get in more afterwards, but whatever way Senator Counihan looks on this, I know that if it were announced that 12,000 tons of oats were offered to us and it was known that we would not take them—and the oats that came in were at the same price as our own, and so it was fair value—we would probably have met with very severe criticism from those who have in mind bigger production of such things as bacon, eggs, and other commodities that are falling on account of the shortage of feeding stuffs. Anyway, the storage is admittedly overtaxed and on that account millers and dealers had to pass the word to the producers and the carriers that they would not take any more wheat for the moment. Deliveries of home-grown wheat are now easing off considerably, and the situation will soon right itself. In fact, the last week for which I got a return—that is the week ending 17th November—deliveries were down almost to half what they were five weeks earlier, that is the week ending 20th October. There is a down ward trend now; there will be a downward trend from this on. The congestion that we have at the moment is going to disappear as deliveries will be easing off, and millers in a short time will be definitely able to take whatever wheat is offered. We may take it that our troubles will then be over.
There is one other point that I took a note of. I should like to say with regard to Córas Iompair Éireann that they have a very difficult problem, because they find it almost impossible, in fact, to renew their rolling-stock, or to get more wagons, so they have to make the best possible use of what they have. I was asked last week about getting seed potatoes, which had been held up for a long time from Galway to Dublin. On inquiring I was told by Córas Iompair Éireann that they could carry nothing at present except wheat and beet; that traffic was so heavy on these two items, that they had to shift them immediately, and could do nothing for a couple of weeks, until traffic in wheat and beet eased off, when they could deal with seed potatoes. We must keep the difficulties of the times in mind, and assume that Córas Iompair Éireann as well as the dealers and wheat millers, are, on the whole, doing everything possible to meet the situation. There may be, as Senator Counihan stated, people who are going a bit too far. The letter he read was, to say the least of it, impertinent, and maybe if the farmer got a more polite letter he might not be so resentful about being asked to hold on to his wheat. People differ in manners and so on, but we have to put up with that. I do not deny the fact that there may be millers and dealers who would take advantage of a situation such as this, to try to get wheat a little bit cheaper than they could get it. I should like to repeat what I said, that in any such case I should very much like to get particulars, because I would like to have such a case as that mentioned by Senator Counihan investigated, where a miller or dealer said he would take wheat at the proper price provided he got oats at 27/- a barrel—barrel for barrel. Of course that amounts to paying a less price than he might pay for wheat. That is the type of case it should be possible to investigate in order to find out what actually occurred.
Will the Minister consider the suggestion I made of giving something extra for wheat that is kept until next March.
That is a difficult question. The Senator will remember that when we brought in our wheat scheme first, it was proposed to give 2/6 per barrel extra for wheat delivered by Christmas, but we came to the conclusion, after two years' experience, that the sooner we could get the wheat threshed and delivered to the millers the better, so we dropped the provision to give the extra price.
May I ask what business will be taken to-morrow?
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Censorship of Publications Bill will be the main business.
The Seanad adjourned at 9.5 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, 29th November.