I am afraid I cannot quite relate the remarks of Deputy Cosgrave to the motion I moved. I do not quite see how the business methods of the Irish Sugar Company, and the amount of their earnings which they allocated to depreciation and so forth, can have any bearing on the question of controlling the import of sugar. The sugar has to be imported in one way or another. The price at which the Irish Sugar Company sells at the present time—at least, the price of the sugar produced during the recent campaign—is 29/4½d. per cwt. That is the net price, carriage paid, at 40 different centres in the country. That arrangement of paying carriage to different centres in the country is designed to ensure that the price of sugar will be uniform, so far as it is possible to arrange it, in all parts of the country. That has not been the arrangement heretofore. Heretofore, people in rural areas or in the central parts of the country paid a substantially higher price than the people living in the port towns; but the device of the Irish Sugar Company, by which they pay carriage to a very large number of centres in the country, has changed that position. The price they are charging is an economic price. It is a price which enables them to pay a reasonable price for the beet supplied to them by the farmers, to pay reasonable wages to the workers employed in the factories, and to enable the factories to operate efficiently. The factories are very efficient. They are amongst the most up-to-date factories in the world and they have been worked very competently by the company.
The return which the company gets on the capital invested in the enterprise is, of course, something that may fluctuate from year to year. They have obligations in respect of debentures and on their preference shares, and their obligations in respect of these, of course, are known in advance; but any return over and above the amount necessary to pay the debenture interest and the dividend on the preference shares, in so far as it is not allocated to reserves of one kind or another, is available for the ordinary shares, and all of these are owned by the Minister for Finance on behalf of the State. It is to be anticipated that the company will be able to reduce its manufacturing charges according as the staffs of the factories become better trained in their work and as the various difficulties, which are inevitable in the initial years of a big concern of that kind, are overcome. Even allowing, however, for the fact that these initial difficulties are there, and that the staffs are not fully trained, the price at which sugar is sold here by the company is substantially lower than the price at which it is sold in the majority of European countries. It is very much lower than the price at which sugar can be bought in the countries whence there are sugar exports. I mentioned before that the fact that we can buy CzechoSlovakian sugar at 7/- a cwt. here has to be related to the fact that the people in that country have to pay very much more, retail, for their sugar in their own shops. In other words, the export of sugar in that case is being subsidised, and it is entirely unfair to relate the price at which that subsidised sugar can be bought here to the price of the sugar produced here. The British Government have a beet sugar scheme in operation, but they are assisting the development of the industry in a different manner to that in which we are doing it. They are paying a direct subsidy similar in nature to the direct subsidy which was paid to the Carlow Sugar Company before the establishment of Cómhlucht Siúicre Eireann.
The only question that arises here is whether it is better to control the import of sugar by one method or another. In that connection, I want to emphasise the fact that the quantity we will have to import in future years will be very small indeed. It is true that 15,000 tons or 16,000 tons of sugar will be required to be imported this year to supplement the 84,000 tons produced by the factories, but in future years that will not be at all necessary, and in fact sugar will not be imported at all except in small quantities and of a special class to be used as raw material for particular types of manufacture. There are certain types of manufacture in which particular kinds of sugar, such as cane sugar, must be used, and only such quantities of sugar as must be used for such industrial purposes will be imported in future years. It would be completely impracticable to regulate that importation under the Control of Imports Acts. I explained yesterday that, to enable one importer to get a small quantity of sugar under the present arrangement, it would be necessary to make a quota so large that every registered importer could share in it. The quota would have to be made sufficiently large, in order to ensure that the one importer, whose interest it was desired to meet, would get the amount that he required, and as every registered importer could share in it, it would mean that a very large quantity of sugar would have to be imported unnecessarily, delaying the clearance of the Irish Sugar Company's stocks and creating new difficulties in the financing of these stocks. The difficulty was so obvious, and was working out so much to the detriment of the sugar importers as well as to the administration, that it was the importers themselves who originated the suggestion that the sole licence to import sugar, to whatever extent is necessary, should be given to the Irish Sugar Company. That required legislation because, as the law stood, the sugar company could not get a licence to import sugar, and that is why this Bill is necessary.
The question of the fee with which this resolution deals only arises because of the possibility of there being at any time a slight difference between the price at which sugar can be imported and the price at which native sugar is available. It is extremely improbable that that difference would ever be enough to enable a reduction in the retail price of sugar to be effected. Sugar comes in here at a price, exclusive of duty, of 7/- to 7/6 a cwt., but there would have to be a reduction of 2/4 a cwt., before one farthing in the pound could be passed on to the consumers, whereas the difference is only one of pence. The suggestion that we should accumulate whatever difference there might be over a number of weeks, for the purpose of giving a reduction in one week, could only be applicable to the circumstances of this year and might operate unfairly for a number of people in the country. A very large proportion of the sugar we use is used by manufacturers. It is not consumed by householders, but is used by manufacturers in the production of commodities of one kind and another, such as jams, confectionery, sweets and so forth, and if one manufacturer, merely because he purchased his supplies in one week, got his sugar at a lower price than another manufacturer who had his stocks purchased earlier he would have an advantage over his competitors. The manufacturers themselves are particularly desirous that an arrangement should be made which will keep the price of sugar uniform throughout the year, and this arrangement does that.
The price of imported sugar is rising and all the indications are that it is going to continue to rise. It may, in fact, rise substantially, if the political and other conditions on the Continent of Europe do not improve, in which case, of course, there will be no question of a fee at all, because the price at which imported sugar will be available will be equal to, and may possibly exceed, the price at which home-produced sugar is sold. In these circumstances, this question does not arise, but if there should be a slightly lower price for imported sugar, amounting to a few pence or 1/- a cwt., the question is who should get it. It cannot go to the consumer. It went last year to the sugar importers in the form of increased profits. They got their normal profit, plus that difference, on that sugar, and that, I think, is not a desirable position. Should it go to the sugar company or should it go to the Exchequer? The view of everybody who has examined the matter is that it is better it should go to the Exchequer, if that situation should arise.
