asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he will state the total quantity and value of (a) creamery butter and (b) factory butter, manufactured during each of the years 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937 and 1938, inclusive, and the total quantity and value of (a) creamery butter and (b) factory butter exported during each of these years; and if he will state what amount, if any, of the value of the goods so exported represents subsidies, bounties or other such payments.
Written Answers. - Value of Butter Industry.
The statistics of creamery and factory butter manufactured in the years 1931 and 1936 will be found on page 41 of the "Census of Industrial Production," 1936 (P. No. 3143) and for the year 1937 on page 231 of the "Irish Trade Journal and Statistical Bulletin," December, 1938. Particulars of the value of creamery butter and the quantity and value of factory butter manufactured are not available for the years 1932 to 1935 inclusive, but the quantities of creamery butter manufactured in these years are shown on page 56 of the "Statistical Abstract," 1937 (P. No. 2750). Statistics of the value of creamery butter and the quantity and value of factory butter manufactured in the year 1938 are not yet available. The quantity of creamery butter manufactured in 1938 was 766,460 cwt.
Statistics of creamery butter and factory butter exported in each of the years 1931-1938, are published in the annual "Trade and Shipping Statistics" and the monthly "Trade Statistics"; those for the years 1931 to 1933 on page 152 of the annual "Trade and Shipping Statistics," 1934 (P. No. 1807); those for the years 1934 to 1937 on page 185 of annual "Trade and Shipping Statistics," 1937 (P. No. 3121), and those for the year 1938 on page 16 of the "Trade Statistics," December, 1938.
Exporters are definitely instructed that the values in their declarations furnished to customs must represent only the cost, insurance and freight to the sea or land frontier of this country and must not include the value of any bounty or subsidy. Every effort was made by examination and inquiry to eliminate the effect of such inclusion, which may have been made especially in the earlier of the years referred to, and it is considered that the extent of error in the statistics on the account is negligibly small.