This is what follows:
"Mr. Cosgrave: If you could get it. I sent to four places myself for a small quantity and I could not get it.
Mr. Lemass: The price is £6 10s. Od. per ton. That is the price at which I was offered it this morning. The price in London is £7 5s. 0d. per ton; Liverpool, £7 10s. 0d.; Cardiff, £7 12s. 6d. The price of red pollard in Dublin is £7 5s. 0d. per ton; in London it is £8 5s. 0d.; Liverpool, £8 7s. 6d., and in Cardiff, £8 12s. 6d. These are the prices to-day.
Mr. Dillon: And the Irish miller's price to-day is £8 per ton and the worst of it is the Irish miller has not got it."
The Minister then passed from the subject of bran, but observe that the Minister says that he telephoned to all the principal centres in Ireland to ascertain the price of bran, and the fruit of his inquiry was that he was satisfied that the price of bran consumed throughout rural Ireland was £6 10s. 0d. a ton. If he approached all the centres, and, with all the resources of his Department at his disposal, accepted that as the true state of affairs, then he allowed his leg to be pulled in the most unmerciful way, because anybody who knew anything about the trade would have told him that, outside a very restricted area in North County Dublin, red bran is not consumed by the Irish feeder at all. Very few people will buy it at all, and in fact you find that the big national flour mills in Cork do not offer it; they offer a mixed bran and they offer a white bran, and all the other mills just offer bran which, according to my belief, is mixed bran containing red and white. The net result of it all is that, in fact, the price of bran, as consumed by the rural community in feeding to their live stock, ranges between £7 10s. in the Midlands up to £8 10s. per ton ex-mill, according to the style and quality of the bran, but the price which the Minister was persuaded to offer to this House as the true price for bran was £6 10s. If that is the best we can hope to get as a result of Ministerial or Departmental inquiries into prices of commodities, then I say that it is waste of time to set up a commission—a commission with a far smaller staff than that of the one already existing— to deal with this matter.
I may say, Sir, that all I have said with regard to bran applies with equal force to pollard; and it is typical of the attitude of any body of men who are trying to exploit the consuming community that it is in their interest to prevaricate and to mislead, so far as they can, any body or any authority which desires to restrict them in making the largest profits they desire to make. Deputy Dowdall explained the position the other day. The attitude of these people, said Deputy Dowdall in effect, was: "When you get a tariff you should try to make the most out of it that you can, and, if you do not do so, you are a fool." Naturally, when the Minister tries to cross-hackle them with a view to forcing them to take less profits in bran or pollard or anything else, they will immediately resort to any expedient to fool and mislead the Minister, and if they can induce him to get up in this House and attach his name to the statement that the price of bran is £6 10s. per ton, then they know that, by doing so, they purchase immunity from any further interference because it becomes the Minister's personal concern to persuade the public that the price of bran is not excessive, that he has investigated the matter, and that he is satisfied that the price is quite all right.
Once that has happened, they know that they can then go on and collect, as they are collecting at the present moment, from the consumers of this country, from £7 10s. to £8 10s., and the Minister gets up in this House and says that the price is £6 10s.—that that is the truth, and that so long as it is the truth it is all right. I can tell the Minister that 90 per cent. or 95 per cent. of those who buy bran in this country are paying from £7 10s. to £8 10s., but the Minister says that the price is £6 10s. and that that is a reasonable price. I have no doubt that the commission, when it is set up, will come out with similar reports; but every member of the agricultural community in this country knows that, no matter what the Minister or the Prices Commission say, they have to pay from £7 10s. to £8 10s. That is what matters to the average small farmer in this country—not what the Minister says is true, but what the small farmer finds to be true when he goes to spend the money which he has for spending.
I have no doubt, Sir, that the money we are going to give the Prices Commission in order to enable them to carry on the farce which has been going on for the past five years will be frittered away, and that the reports we will get from the commission will resemble for veracity the nonsense that was talked by the Minister for Industry and Commerce a few days ago about so simple a commodity as bran. In so far as that is so, I believe that every penny voted and every penny spent under this Financial Resolution will be so much money thrown away.