Regarding the two motions on the Order Paper, I ask Deputies to look at to-day's Order Paper. I suggest that motions 1 and 2 might be linked up as follows. No. 1 to stand. The opening words of the second motion: "That the Dáil is of opinion" might be deleted and substituted by the words: "And that accordingly the Emergency Powers (Control of Prices) (No. 28) Order, 1939, be revoked". Deputies might delete the redundant words. The motion would, I suggest, read better.
Sugar Prices and Emergency Powers Order—Motion.
The following motions appeared on the Order Paper:—
1. That the Dáil disapproves of the increase in the price of sugar announced by the Department of Supplies, and instructs the Minister for Supplies to take immediate steps to have the price reduced. —Patrick McGilligan, Risteárd Ua Maolchatha.
2. That the Dáil is of opinion that the Emergency Powers (Control of Prices) (No. 28) Order, 1939, made by the Minister for Supplies on the 31st day of October, 1939, should be revoked. —William Davin, Tadhg O Murchadha.
Even if it makes less sense.
I beg to move the amended motion:—
That the Dáil disapproves of the increase in the price of sugar announced by the Department of Supplies, and instructs the Minister to take immediate steps to have the price reduced and that accordingly the Emergency Powers (Control of Prices) (No. 28) Order, 1939, be revoked.
I ask the Dáil to pass this motion in the first place to show that it condemns and disapproves of the misery and the hardship that are being caused to many classes of people throughout the country by the increase of 1½d. per lb. in the price of sugar. In the second place, I ask that the motion be adopted as a condemnation of this hardship having been brought about through lack of preparation on the part of the Minister for Industry and Commerce at that time, and, in the third place, as an expression of complete disapproval of the most unsatisfactory way in which Government policy has been expressed. We have had four statements on Government policy recently in so far as sugar is concerned. Firstly, we had the general statement of Government policy in relation to the emergency when it was first discussed here on the 27th September. Dealing with the question of sugar in that debate, the Minister for Supplies stated that some of the difficulties of the sugar situation were caused at that time by the hoarding of supplies by private individuals, and by the fact that traders kept in their stores sugar supplied to them for their normal requirements and refused to supply their customers. He also indicated at that time that there was no possibility that he could see of any shortage of sugar. He indicated that during the months of August and September there went out to wholesalers much more than two months' supply. He also indicated that they had fixed the price of sugar. He was supported in his statement that there would be no difficulty with regard to sugar supplies by the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures who on that date said:
"We hope to have a 100 per cent. supply from our own resources. We have 100 per cent. at the moment because we have 75 per cent. home grown and we have other sugar in reserve."
Three weeks passed. Again there was a statement of Government policy at very great length and during the discussion on the statement of Government policy at that time, the Minister for Supplies again turned to the question of sugar and he stated, as reported in column 472 of the Official Debates:
"Some Deputy asked whether the stand-still order for sugar still operates. It still operates for the sale of sugar. We do not anticipate any immediate change in the price of sugar. Perhaps if the idea became widespread that no immediate change in the price of sugar due to increased manufacturing costs or any similar cost is anticipated, some of the sugar which has been lost en route from the wholesalers to the consumers might be released and some of the difficulties relating to the sugar supply might disappear."
Then, two weeks passed and we had a statement issued from the Department of Supplies on the 1st November. That statement indicated that the Government had received complaints that the public were unable to purchase their normal requirements of sugar but that since the emergency arose normal, average, supplies had been issued monthly and consequently that there should be no shortage. It went on to say that owing to the outbreak of hostilities the price of sugar had increased and that therefore the retail price would be increased by 1½d. per lb. The Minister also indicated that he had arranged with Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann, on the instructions of the Government to purchase for immediate delivery, the balance of the country's requirements up to the opening of the 1940-41 manufacturing season.
Then a week passed. We had three weeks between the two first statements of Government policy, then a further period of two weeks, and then after another week we have another statement of Government policy, that of the 1½d. by which it was necessary for the Sugar Company to increase the price, 3/4d. was to be taken by the Government and put into the Exchequer. The implication was that the Sugar Company could carry on with the other ¾d. The contradictions indicated in these statements of policy on the one hand and the way in which they vary with the actual facts of the situation are most disconcerting to anybody who realises that sound and systematically carried out Government policy is a thing that is most important and most essential to get the country over its present difficulties—absolutely important if there is to be any co-operation by other Parties in the Dáil or by the people of the country with the Government's plans for carrying on.
In the first place, I say that we condemn the increased price of sugar because of the misery that has been brought about. I might couple with that the disruption that has been brought about by the suggestion that traders holding up supplies and refusing to sell them to their customers have been responsible for part of the shortage. In the first place, on the question of hardship, the documentary evidence that one gets from individuals living ordinary lives is much more impressive, I am sure, to the Minister than many of the statements that Deputies make here in the Dáil, which as the Minister for Finance indicated yesterday, were liable to get on his nerves. Here is a statement from Dublin:—
"I am a married woman with five small children and my husband is unemployed through no fault of his own. He is a commercial traveller and has held good positions. Up to the outbreak of the war he was getting a little business in advertising. Of course, that is finished now, and our entire income is 29/- a week. Rent 10/-, light 1/2, so you can guess that the terrible increase in the prices of foodstuffs is hitting us very hard. Therefore, I am writing to you, sincerely hoping that you will do your utmost to have the price of foodstuffs decreased. The cost of living at the present time is driving us almost to despair. This letter is the absolute truth and can be investigated at any time."
I leave that to speak for itself. The following letter comes from Donegal:
"You may be surprised to learn that for the past month, since the shortage of sugar began, the price in Donegal was 4d. per lb. Since the increase of 1½d. per lb., these traders immediately added this extra 1½d. and the ruling price for past week is 5½d. per lb. The writer has been charged this amount by two leading traders. You can understand the plight of poor children whose parents cannot afford meat, eggs or butter if the last little article of sustaining food is withdrawn, as indeed it must be, at 5½d. per lb. With the 2-lb. loaf at 6d., maize meal at 13/- per cwt., flour at 19/- for an 8-st. sack, the heads of large families who count their total weekly income by shillings, are now obliged to give up sugar. Any Donegal priest, medical doctor, postmaster, or sergeant of the Civic Guards will vouch for the statement that this letter contains."
Did the Deputy do anything else about that letter except read it here?
If the Minister will point out to me that there is any information in that letter that is not in his possession at the present time——
It is clear from the letter that if traders are charging those prices they are breaking the law. Take the price of bread, for example.
Does the same apply to sugar?
I am merely stating that certain traders, to the Deputy's knowledge, are breaking the law, and I have asked him if he has done anything about it except to read the letter here.
In respect to sugar?
Deputy Morrissey is only "cod-acting."
I am putting a question to the Minister which he cannot answer.
The writer complains about the price charged for sugar—5½d. a lb.; bread at 6d; maize meal, 13/-; flour, 19/-, and so on. I will pass the letter to the Minister. The Minister charges shopkeepers with withholding supplies. I propose to give another letter as a sample of the dislocation and disturbance that is created in a matter like that. This also is a letter from Donegal. The writer states:—
"Shopkeepers here are charging the following prices: 19/- per 8-stone of flour; sugar, 5¼d. per lb.; tea, 2/8 per lb. The above price we consider is above the regulated price. It is a sin crying to Heaven for vengeance to see how the shopkeepers of above area are trying to rob the poor people. Their excuse is the war which we consider does not affect the retail price of the main necessaries of life to such an extent. You will excuse the scribe of this letter for not inserting my name and address for the following reason: I am a poor bread-winner, depending on some of the aforesaid shopkeepers, chiefly, a part of the year getting credit to support myself and dependents. If they knew I gave such information they would boycott me and starve us out. I am speaking for hundreds of thousands."
Now, the type of complaint that I have got from every part of the country about the retail price of sugar, from the City of Cork up to the mountainy districts of Donegal, was of such a nature that my reason for mentioning it here is this: that I have interpreted the attitude disclosed towards shopkeepers in that last letter as an attitude created by the remarks of the Minister. On the 18th October he spoke here to the effect that shopkeepers were holding up supplies. I am doubting whether the complaints made against shopkeepers are proper complaints to be levied against shopkeepers at all. That is why I have felt like that up to the present. But I am prepared to be disabused by the Minister. If there is anything that is wrong, as between shopkeepers and the retail purchasers, I would welcome that being remedied.
I do submit, however, that the various statements of the Minister contradict one another and are quite untrue in respect of facts actually in our knowledge arising through statements made in a Parliamentary manner by the Minister. These statements have induced me to think that the blame in the matter is not on the shopkeepers. The complaints that are being made about shopkeepers have been induced, I submit, by the Minister's statements with regard to shopkeepers. That is a situation that I would like to see cleared up, as to whether the blame lies with the Minister or with the shopkeepers. If the position be that unwarranted profits are being made out of sugar by shopkeepers, the basic level of price being what the Minister and the Sugar Company have brought it to, then an injustice is being done to the people, and particularly to the poorer classes of purchases. Nobody, shopkeeper or other, should be allowed to add an additional and unnecessary injustice in the case of poor purchasers.
Families in Donegal, Dublin and other places, whose incomes can be mentioned in shillings, are complaining of the price of foodstuffs. They are complaining that the additional charge of 1½d. per lb. on sugar is going to create considerable hardship on them, and that it is going to injure the health, as some of the letters indicate, of the younger members of the population. We protest against the increase in the price of sugar because of that. We protest further because the whole necessity for the increase in the price of sugar arose out of a lack of preparation on the part of the Minister.
I would like now to deal with the Minister's mis-statements on the situation—that normal average supplies were circulated throughout the country during the months of September and October. The fact is that the amount of sugar circulated in the month of October this year was less than the amount of sugar circulated in October, 1938, and less than the amount circulated in October, 1937. The amount circulated in the two months, September and October this year, was less than the amount circulated in the same two months of 1938 and 1937. If one takes the three months, August to October, one finds that the position is the same. During the four months, July to October, a less amount of sugar was circulated by the Sugar Company in 1939 than in 1938 and 1937.
A difference of 1 per cent.
I can tell the Minister that it is considerably more than 1 per cent.
1.1 per cent.
If the Minister thinks that the percentage matters, I am prepared to take him at his word. In the statement issued by the Minister for Supplies on the 1st November, 1939, this sentence occurs:
"Since the emergency arose normal average supplies have been issued monthly, and, consequently, there should have been no shortage."
The emergency began on the 1st September and the Minister issued his notice on the 1st November. During the two months September and October, 1939, the Sugar Company issued 328,224 cwts.; in 1938, for the same months, the company issued 428,378 cwts., and in 1937, for the same months, the company issued 390,357 cwts., so that for the two months in 1939 they issued 100,154 cwts. less than they did in the corresponding two months of the previous year, and 62,133 cwts. less than they did in 1937.
Why leave out August?
Why did the Minister leave out August in his statement here?
I am dealing with the Minister's statement. I am telling the Minister that even if he did add in August, it would be substantially less and if he added in July and took the four months, it would be even more so. So you had the Minister holding up these supplies and he makes a statement to the effect that he was issuing the normal supplies. May I add another point to that? Although the Minister issued during the months of September and October, 100,158 cwts. less than he issued the year before that, we have it that the issue of sugar was nearly 25 per cent. down in 1939 as against 1938.
Is the Deputy not aware of the fact that there was a war scare in 1938 and that in the month of September, 1938, the issue of sugar was considerably higher than in a normal year?
I will take the Minister back to 1937, and by the month of August——
Add in July.
I will if you like. The figures can be got in a reply by the Minister to a Parliamentary question on the 8th of November, 1939. If we go back and take September and October based on the Minister's statement of 8th November we find that the issues in September and October, 1939, were 62,133 cwts. less than in September and October, 1937.
Is not that truly wonderful?
In September and October, 1937, the total issue of sugar from the Sugar Company was 390,357 cwts.
In a month?
No, in two months. In September and October, 1939, it was 62,000 cwts. less than in the same period in 1937.
My definition of a normal supply is that there went out in those two months one-sixth of the customer's normal supply. What do the Deputy's figures prove anyhow?
What I want to be allowed to go on, and to prove is this—that not only was there 100,000 cwts. less issued in September and October this year than in the two months of September and October of last year, but that some of the sugar that was issued in October, 1939, was issued on the understanding—on a kind of contract—forced by the Sugar Company that the purchaser would pay the November price although the sugar was delivered in October and although there was a stand-still Order made by the Minister that sugar prices should not be changed above the existing price for a particular period. I will take only one case. There was one manufacturer in the City of Dublin employing a large number of people. By the 20th October he was short of sugar and he had either to shut up his factory or to get sugar. He did not want to shut up his factory, and in order to keep going, he got a supply of 54 tons of sugar from the Sugar Company. But he got that supply by giving a guarantee that contrary to the Stand-still Order issued by the Minister he would pay for that sugar issued in October, the November price.
He had already got his full normal supply.
He had not already got his full normal supply. That forced guarantee cost that manufacturer £756 for getting that sugar in October, for he was forced to give an undertaking that he would pay the November price for it. So we have the position that even the quantities issued in respect of September and October were not issued at the price for September and October. More than one manufacturer has had to pay the November price for the sugar received in October, notwithstanding the Stand-still Order issued by the Minister. I want to say that the position in which we find ourselves to-day in regard to this particular matter is all due to the lack of preparation on the part of the Minister. I say that because if the Minister, or the Sugar Company—in accordance with the protestations of the Government that they were making preparations for emergencies that might take place—had laid in a four months' supply of sugar above the normal by the beginning of September this year, we would have been able to carry on with the supply that we had laid in and two years' production of our own sugar until the 1st August, 1941.
And the Deputy would have been the first to protest if we had done that.
I am talking about facts and about the protestations and declarations of the Government. An additional four months' supply over our normal supply in this country on the 1st September this year would have given us supplies of our own sugar, even though the production of sugar during the next two years' period were only equal to what is being produced in the last two years; that is to say if there were no increase in the amount of beet grown in the country.
That four months' supply of sugar would have secured as until August, 1941. What would that have cost? About £250,000 at the import prices for the eight months up to September. That price was about £8 6s. c.i.f. per ton in Dublin. So that the expenditure of that sum of £250,000—planning to that extent for four months' supply of sugar above the normal—would have enabled us to keep on at the then current price of sugar, that is 3d. per lb. until the beginning of August, 1941. The Minister says that because of the increased cost of imported sugar he had to agree with the Sugar Company to raise the price of sugar by 1½d. per lb. in the beginning of November. What is that going to cost the people of this country between the beginning of November this year and the 1st August, 1941? I should say it is going to cost £2,500,000. Take half of that sum if you like, and we get the fact that the Minister's failure to plan for the necessary supply of sugar is going to cost this country between the 1st September this year and the 1st August, 1941, a sum of £1,250,000.
He instructed the Sugar Company to do it.
He instructed the Sugar Company to do it. I do not at all want to relieve the Minister of responsibility for the neglect of those preparations, but assuming that it is the fault of the Sugar Company——
If we had two years' supply it would be a lot nicer.
It would be much nicer, but I am not asking the Minister to do anything that is abnormal.
On the only occasion on which we did it the Deputy objected very strongly.
When was that?
In the case of wheat. Does the Deputy remember the row he kicked up when we laid in a six-months' supply of wheat?
The row the Deputy kicked up then was that the millers—in respect of whom the Minister had a report that they were taking exorbitant profits over and above what the commission set up by him considered reasonable—because they were asked to lay in a supply were putting a shilling, or whatever it was, on every sack they distributed throughout the country. What was complained of then was not the laying in of a stock of wheat, but that the persons who had taken enormous profits out of the pockets of the producers of flour throughout the country—reported on and completely evidenced by the Minister's own commission—should have been permitted by the Minister at that particular time to take additional and enormous profits.
What the Deputy objected to was the laying in of any stock of wheat, because he said there was going to be no war.
Will the Minister have some kind of sense and some kind of honesty and decency? The other day, here in the House, the Minister criticised the timber merchants because they had not had foresight. I do not want to develop that; the timber merchants themselves have given their own reply to it. But here is a question not of a two years' supply of sugar, which the Minister says would be very nice, but of a four months' supply above the normal quantity.
That is because the war started on 1st September. I did not know it was going to start on that date. The Deputy did.
You were the only people in the country who did not know it.
We probably were. Deputy Morrissey kept very quiet about it.
At any rate the Minister has informed the House very formally that for 12 months before that he had been making preparation, through an adequate committee in his Department, for meeting the emergency, and at the end of 12 months we had not a four months' supply of sugar above the normal. I say that if a four months' supply of sugar above the normal had been there——
Suppose the war had started on 1st August?
——it would have saved this country £1,250,000, even letting the Minister get away with the other £1,250,000 taxation which has to be borne by the sugar suppliers. If there are poor persons in Dublin and in Donegal and in Cork complaining of the cost of sugar to-day, and of the fact that at that cost, and with their income measured in shillings, they are unable to get a sufficient supply of sugar to give to their families, it is because the Minister—for all his machinery, for all his protestations, and for all his statements to this House—had not a four months' additional supply of sugar in the country, and they are going to be paying for 18 months, unnecessarily, the additional price of sugar that he has put on now. For that, I say that the Minister stands utterly and absolutely condemned by this House. The Minister thinks it would have been too much to expect that he would have had a two years' supply of sugar——
No. If I had known the war was going to start on 1st September I would have had it, but there was no divine revelation, not even a whisper from Deputy Morrissey.
How many months' preparation did the Minister think the committee he set up ought to make in order to discharge their duty?
Up to the beginning of the next campaign, whenever it was.
And the Minister, therefore, was expecting an outbreak of war in the year 1939, and he only brought his plans up to the beginning of November, 1939?
Or in the year 1940— whenever it started.
Will the Minister let me tell him why I consider him silly——
The Deputy has done it so often that it is unnecessary to do it again.
——and why I consider he neglected his duty in this matter? I say that neither the Minister nor the Sugar Company nor the committee he set up can have had any conception of the sugar position in the world, or they would not have left this country without the four months' supply of sugar of which I speak. I submit that the losses of the next 18 months are likely to be followed by losses even after that. It is possible for the British Government to get in their supplies of sugar, and the Minister cannot have been so far removed from the general sugar position in the world and from what was being done by his neighbours with regard to sugar that there is any excuse for him to be in the position that he is in now. Amongst other matters, it was being urged for the last two years by persons in Great Britain, including Sir Arthur Salter, who has recently been made Parliamentary Secretary for shipping there, that one of the things that should be stocked was sugar, because it could be got cheaply at the time and because it was easy to stock. One of the things he argued was that sugar should be stocked in preference to wheat. In so far, therefore, as expert advice could be got by looking around the world and seeing what the persons with most experience were saying, all the expert advice that the Minister could get pointed to laying in stocks of sugar.
The Minister, in order to excuse the price of sugar that is being charged at the present time, points to the fact that at the end of the last war the price of sugar was much higher than it is now. But the Minister again is attempting to mislead the House. At the outbreak of the last war Great Britain was depending on Europe for two-thirds of its sugar supply—not on any other part of the world. Two-thirds of the supply of sugar consumed by Great Britain in 1913 and 1914 was provided from Europe. That was one of the reasons why, with the excessive demands made on other parts of the world under war conditions, sugar prices at that particular time rose to the point they did. In September, 1939, or at any part of 1939, Great Britain was not depending on Europe for any scrap of its sugar supplies. More than half the sugar supplies coming into Great Britain were coming from the West Indies and from Cuba, where there was no strategic difficulty for Great Britain at any time in securing its supplies, and about one-sixth of their supplies were provided at home. There is no reason in the world, therefore, why there should be, as a result of the present war, the remarkable rise in sugar prices that took place as a result of the last war.
And no reason why we should lay in two years' supplies, if the Deputy's argument is sound.
The Minister can deal with the question of two years' supplies if he likes, but I want to point out that it should not have been necessary to gamble on the question of two years' supplies. It would not be reasonable to ask the Minister to expect that a war started in the conditions and after the episode of the last 12 months would continue until August, 1941, and it would not be reasonable to ask him to consider that the capacity for expanding sugar supplies in Cuba, the West Indies or Java, or the other places where there is a very considerable amount of capacity to expand sugar supplies, would be such that they would be capable of expanding, if necessary, by August, 1941, to an extent that would prevent sugar prices rising in the way in which they did rise.
I do not know how to describe the various changes in the statements of alleged fact that can be found in the four statements of policy, with regard to sugar, coming three weeks, two weeks and one week ago, one after another, but the Minister must know, and he will hear plenty of evidence from every direction in the country, of the hardships that have been brought on people by the increase in the price of sugar. An examination of the matter will give a clear indication of the way in which he has failed, and of the way in which, in September and October last, he or the Sugar Company deliberately held up supplies of sugar. I will merely impress on him now that up to the present, at any rate, in dealing with the supply of sugar, he has been utterly and completely incompetent, and in holding up the sugar supplies in the way in which they were held up in September and October, if the Minister has any responsibility in that regard, then he has been absolutely heartless. The fact that he has made statements which would tend to misrepresent and cover up the withholding of these supplies saddles the Minister, in my mind, with complete responsibility. For these reasons I suggest that the House should pass this motion.
I formally second the motion and, with the permission of the House, I will reserve what I have to say till a later stage in the debate.
Mr. Byrne
Yesterday, when speaking on the Financial Resolutions, I drew the Minister's attention to the hardship brought about by the increase in the price of sugar. This week another very grave hardship has been inflicted on the poorer people, the users of tinned milk. The increased price of the sugar content for the purpose of sweetening the tin of milk amounts, I understand, to only one-twelfth of a penny, but the price of the tin of milk has been increased by a halfpenny. It may seem very small, at a halfpenny a tin, but if families, especially in the tenements, use half a dozen tins of milk a week, or one a day, as necessary food for their children, it means that there is a further tax of 3½d. a week imposed upon them. I ask the Minister to inquire into the causes of the increased price of the tin of milk, and see if it is justified. If it is not justified; he ought not allow it to be charged.
I join with Deputy Mulcahy in protesting strongly against the increase in the price of sugar. The holding up of sugar supplies was, I think, a great scandal. It was simply scandalous the way the manufacturers were allowed to hold up sugar. In the last days of October they told the people that there was no sugar whatsoever. The people were in queues around the grocers' shops, waiting every day for sugar and blaming the grocers. The morning when the new supplies came out, the grocers were able to give the people any quantity they liked. That is something which has yet to be justified before the public.
I join in the protests made against the treatment of one of our principal manufacturers of sweets and confectionery in this city. This man, at the request of many members of the Dáil and others outside, kept on his full staff during the month of October. Although he was short of sugar, that well-known Dublin manufacturer, so as not to displace any employees, drew on his November supply of sugar and sold at the October price. He manufactured his sweets and confectionery, and took the Christmas orders on the October prices, and had to pay the November prices when the time came. I think that is very shabby treatment of this concern; it is very shabby treatment of employers who did their best to carry out the Minister's request. When he was Minister for Industry and Commerce his idea was to find employment. This old-established firm, not a new industry at all, was doing its best to keep the staff going. They drew on the November supplies, and had to pay November prices, although they sold at the October prices. I hope the matter is not ended, and that the Minister will see that justice is done to the firm.
On the whole, I think the increase in the price of sugar can be considered as one of the greatest scandals of the year. Hardships have to be borne by people all over Ireland. In most cases what does it mean? It means that in many places they are not getting the same supplies, because they have not the money to pay for them. In the tenement quarters in Dublin, in many cases, they have to do without things. That is a well-known fact. There were charges fixed some six years ago in connection with unemployment allowances and public assistance, but since then the average family budget has been altered, and what £1 did a year ago would now require 23/11. There is no way of getting the additional 3/11, and the people concerned have to do without things. I am told that by persons who can speak for the classes that I refer to. I hope there will be no further taxation imposed on the poor people who are unable to bear it. I trust that this motion will pass.
Mr. Morrissey
The Minister for Supplies, who has, in my opinion, been very properly pilloried here to-day for the position we find ourselves in, gave, by way of interruption to Deputy Mulcahy to-day, the excuse which he gave here on a former occasion, that the reason for all this is because he and his colleagues in the Government did not know the war was going to start on the 1st or 2nd September. I think that is absurd, but, bad as it is, it is probably as good an excuse as he can offer. It shows the deplorable lack of foresight of a Minister in a Government that asked for responsibility to administer the affairs of this country. The Minister may not have known that the war was going to start on the 1st or 2nd September, but there was hardly a child in the country who did not know that it was almost a certainty that war would start on some day before the end of this year. Does the Minister deny that?
Everybody knew there was a danger of war, yes.
Mr. Morrissey
That it was almost a certainty?
When did the Deputy know it?
Mr. Morrissey
I believed, and I think, there was not a person in Europe, perhaps in the world, that did not believe that it was almost a certainty that war would start.
When did the Deputy come to that conclusion—what date?
Mr. Morrissey
The Minister can make his own speech. Was there any greater certainty of the war starting last year, and if the Minister was justified in laying in additional stocks of wheat and paying the millers additional sums to store that wheat for fear of war, would not the Minister be equally justified, or was not the danger equally clear to him, in respect of other necessaries of life?
Sugar, for example?
Mr. Morrissey
Sugar, for example, yes.
We laid in stocks of sugar.
Mr. Morrissey
You laid in stocks?
Yes.
Mr. Morrissey
Where are they?
The only argument is as to how much we laid in. Deputy Mulcahy says we should have laid in an additional four months' supply.
Mr. Morrissey
Does the Minister now say that his Government and himself laid in additional stocks of sugar?
Enough to bring us to the opening of the campaign.
Not four months more than the normal stock.
If the war had started four months before the 1st November we had four months' supply.
Mr. Morrissey
I do not know whether this is the fifth, sixth, seventh, or tenth separate and distinct explanation that the Minister has given on this matter.
I said the same thing every time I spoke.
Mr. Morrissey
The Minister has shown himself to be absolutely and utterly reckless as to what he says. The Minister thinks that anything he says is good enough for the people of this country and for the House.
Would the Deputy quote any statement that I made?
Mr. Morrissey
General Mulcahy did so.
Nonsense.
Mr. Morrissey
Anything the Minister said does not carry any weight with anyone in this House, even in his own Party, because it is recognised, not now, not last month, not five years ago, but over the last eight years, that he has no regard whatever for the truth, that he will make any statement which will extricate him at the moment out of the particular difficulty in which he finds himself. We are in this position because of the series of unparalleled blunderings and muddlings carried on by the Minister and his colleagues over the last eight years. I was going to say it was the culmination but I am afraid we cannot look upon it as that. It has cost this country millions of pounds and the people of this country are to-day, because of the Minister's lack of foresight—I will not put it any stronger than that—called upon to bear this burden and called upon to bear it at a time when they are not able to do so. Every person in the community, no matter what his position in life, is called upon to contribute to this but, naturally, it leans upon certain sections much harder than upon others.
The Minister said here in this House that there was no danger of any shortage of sugar.
There is no shortage yet.
Mr. Morrissey
The Minister said there was no fear of any increase in the price of sugar and charged the traders of this country with hoarding and with profiteering. The archprofiteers and the archhoarders in this country are the Government themselves. As a matter of fact, I drew it to the Minister's attention when a similar matter was being discussed here within the last five weeks that hoarding was going on not only in regard to sugar but other commodities, principally by wholesalers in this country.
But the Minister is not going to put all the blame on them and let the Government get away scot free with what they like to do. Sugar is 4½d. per lb. to-day because of the action of the Government and not because of the action of the shopkeeper. And the Minister knows that. The people could not get sugar up to a certain date, but immediately the 1½d. per lb. went on they were told they could get all they wanted. When that statement was issued it was stated that the reason for the increase of 1½d. per lb. was because of the increased price of sugar which had to be imported. That was given as the justification for the increase of 1½d. per lb., and two days afterwards, when we got the Supplementary Budget, we found that half the 1½d. was going into the revenue. I do not know—or rather I do know—I was going to say I do not know—whether there is any use whatever in saying anything to the present Minister because, it does not matter what the position is, he will get up here and he will state what he is pleased to state, irrespective of whether it is true or not.
I will prove it to be true.
Mr. Morrissey
The Minister will prove it. I will be charitable enough to say that he will prove it to his own satisfaction. Mind you, he is fairly good at it. I do not know anybody who can get up here and brazen out a situation as well as he can, but I think he is caught at last. The Minister has wriggled out of a good many situations to his own satisfaction. He has succeeded in putting it across the country—I will not say this House—on a great many occasions. The Minister did not deceive the people of the country about the sugar situation. Every man, and particularly every housekeeper in this country knows quite clearly who is responsible for the position with regard to sugar. I will allow the Minister to be at his best— and at his best he can be fairly good— and even then he is not going to get away with it.
Wait and see.
Mr. Morrissey
I need not wait. That observation of the Minister means to me only one thing, and that is that he is going to have even less regard for fact and for truth in the statement he proposes to make in this debate than even he has had before.
And that will be a lot more than the Deputy.
Mr. Morrissey
I would not for a moment dream of entering into a contest with the Minister on that line. He can leave every member of this House standing.
That is why they are all standing behind.
Mr. Morrissey
There are not very many, standing or sitting. However, they know before he gets on his feet what he is going to say. They are quite sure of it. Apparently, not even Deputy Corry is going to come into the House to listen to the Minister proving that the Sugar Company is not going to make £700,000 profit as a result of the Minister's action. But, because the Minister and his colleagues did not know that the war was going to break out on the 1st September, we find ourselves without supplies. Is it not a well-known fact that nearly every country has been laying in supplies, some of them for over three years?
What country?
Mr. Morrissey
Will the Minister tell me of any country in Europe that found themselves at the outbreak of war without feeding stuffs, without fertilisers and without sugar? Will the Minister name any country in Europe that found themselves in that position? Will the Minister name for me any country in Europe that, at the outbreak of war, found themselves in the position that they had to start feeding the pigs on flour?
Can the Deputy name any country that is better off than this country in respect of any of these commodities?
Mr. Morrissey
I will say this: that this country must have been a very prosperous country eight years ago, because not even all the blunders and muddling of the Minister and his colleagues over the last year were able to break it. But no thanks are due to the Minister. Does the Minister think that he is fulfilling his responsibility as a Minister? Is he satisfied in his own mind that there was nothing which he could have done that would have put us in a better position than we are in to-day?
If I knew that the war was going to start on the 1st September I could have done a lot. I only knew there was a danger.
Mr. Morrissey
Would it have made any difference to the Minister if it started on the 1st October?
It would have made a lot of difference.
Mr. Morrissey
It is a pity that the Minister was not in Hitler's confidence. Because the Minister did not know that the war was going to start on 1st September, and because the Minister did not take even the most elementary precautions, this country is to be saddled with an increased price for sugar and additional taxation running into millions of pounds. That is the price we are paying for the wise men we have sitting on the Government Front Bench. It would be entertaining, if nothing else, to hear the Minister trying to explain it away. I have no doubt that he will try to do it. I have no doubt that he will make a very good attempt, but he will have to make a very good attempt. I suggest to the Minister, however, that he ought to deal with the facts, and that he would be showing a far greater sense of responsibility if he does admit a lack of foresight rather than simply try to brazen it out and say that he did not make any of the statements, not only those issued by way of official statement from his own Department of Supplies, but the statements which are reported in the Official Reports. I take it he is going to repudiate those statements.
Every one of them was strictly accurate.
Mr. Morrissey
The Minister, therefore, was strictly accurate when he told us that there was going to be no shortage of sugar. The Minister was strictly accurate when he told us that there was no danger of any increase in the price of sugar. The Minister was strictly accurate when he said that sugar was going to be increased by 1½d. to pay for the imports, and when he took ¾d. of that and put it into the revenue.
The Deputy cannot quote a single statement from any document which will justify his last remarks. I challenge him to do it. I challenge him to quote them now.
Mr. Morrissey
Deputy Mulcahy, in the last 20 minutes, in the hearing of the Minister and of the House, has quoted them.
He did nothing of the kind. I challenge the Deputy to quote the statements.
Mr. Morrissey
Might I suggest to the Minister that he should not anticipate his performance.
I am merely exposing the Deputy.
Mr. Morrissey
The trouble is that there will be some effort required on the Minister's part to try and expose me.
Not a serious effort.
Mr. Morrissey
The Minister is exposing himself. The trouble will be to try and cover himself up. The Minister says that he never stated that there was no danger of a shortage of sugar. He states that he never said there was no fear of an increase in the price of sugar. There is no necessity to stress it any further.
Nor did I ever say that the 1½d. was due to the increased cost of imported sugar.
Mr. Morrissey
If the Minister stated that he never made a statement, or his Department never issued a statement, regarding the amount of sugar in the country or the price of sugar, or whether there was any sugar, it would not surprise me in the slightest. The Minister is so utterly reckless that it would not surprise me if he got up here and stated either that we had a four-year supply of sugar or that we had not a pound of sugar in the country. As I say, the country is in the unfortunate position in which it is to-day because of that absolute blundering and muddling. The only defence we get, absurd and all as it is, is that the Minister did not know the war was going to break out on 1st September.
He knew something on the 20th August, when the Dáil was summoned.
I wish to support this motion. It is rather preposterous that the Minister should try to brazen out that he never made the statements attributed to him. What is worse is that during the period he was making these statements a sugar scare was created all over the country. We had a sugar scare which was worse than when sugar was being rationed during the last war. Certainly there were people getting in supplies of sugar, but the ordinary shopkeeper could not get a bag of sugar. Then the campaign for the manufacture of sugar in the beet factories started. Even then sugar could not be got. The ordinary wholesalers who supply the small shopkeepers in rural Ireland could not get the sugar to supply them. On the 1st November, however, it was announced under big headings in the newspapers that sugar was to cost 4½d. per lb. I want to know from the Minister what happened during the three or four or five days previous to the 1st November. Was there collusion between the Minister, the Sugar Board, and several wholesalers? Was there a wholesale withdrawal of sugar from the beet factories by wholesalers for three or four days before that order was made? The information that I have is that from one beet factory, anyhow, there was wholesale loading and removal of sugar for the few days previous to 4½d. being announced as the price of sugar. It was not going to benefit the taxpayer; it was not going to benefit the Government. Therefore I say, if that is the case, there must be some collusion somewhere.
Who is going to benefit?
The wholesaler who took the sugar out.
Does the Deputy know his name?
I am telling you that I am informed that sugar left wholesale from one beet factory for three or four days previously. There was no loading of sugar until that time, but for three or four days previous to that it left wholesale, so that the workers in the factory said: "There are mystery trains leaving."
Another Grimms' fairy story.
I am subject to correction, and I hope I am wrong.
The Deputy can be satisfied that he is wrong.
I have been told by people working inside the factory that that is the case. We will leave that aside for the moment. We were on the eve of putting ¾d. per lb. on sugar for the purpose of revenue. When we allowed the sugar scare to go on so long, why did not we allow it to go on until the Budget could be introduced? What were your reasons? I would be very anxious to know. The price of sugar is supposed to be fixed at 4½d. per lb. I cannot find any sugar selling at 4½d. per lb. Even the best retailer in the country, if he can sell it at 5/8 per stone, which is just 5d. per lb., is very lucky.
I think it is rather ridiculous for the Minister to say that everything was above board, and that he has done everything in the interest of supplying the country. We were all looking towards a war fifteen months ago. In fact, it was a toss up week after week whether we were going to have immediate war or not. The ordinary man in the street knew that war was on the horizon and was only staved off for a time. There was then a row between the sugar beet growers and the Sugar Company, in which the Minister should have been interested, because several members of his Party were connected with the Beet Growers' Association. They wanted a tax of one-eight of a penny per lb., and for that said that five-sixths of the sugar required could be produced here. But the Minister would not then dream of putting any part of a penny on sugar as it would be a crime and a catastrophe. Now he comes along and there is no trouble about asking the people to pay 2d. per lb. more for sugar. What I feel most of all about this tax is that it hits the poorest section of the community. We are told that poor people have the largest families, and that being the case this tax is going to hit them harder than any other tax. It will certainly hit those who are idle and who have to try to keep body and soul together and provide for a wife and five or six children.
I warn the Minister that this tax, more than any other one, is driving these people to where Ministers were once, to extremes, in order to get relief. No tax is hitting those drawing unemployment assistance more than this tax. Every little tax imposed is driving these people to the extreme left, of which Ministers are afraid at the present time. If there is to be extra taxation, no one should make extra profits. The Minister has made the excuse that ¾d. is necessary in order to give the Sugar Company a chance of carrying on, and so that they will be able to buy foreign sugar. We were told that sugar is likely to be scarce and dear, but the Minister said that we had 12 months' supply. The Minister for Agriculture also told us that we are to have compulsory tillage. Then, why import any more sugar? Why not manufacture here all that is required, even though it has to be rationed? Let the rich as well as the poor do with less.
If we have 12 months' supply, we should not in future have to pay any tax in order to get imported sugar. In September the Minister said that we had six or eight months' supply which would carry us over. I do not think there is the slightest excuse for the Minister, although I know that he can whitewash things very well. I want to know if it is a fact that there were wholesale withdrawals of sugar from the beet factories for four days before the price of 4½d. was announced? I should like to be assured that that did not happen. I am very sorry if it did. If it did, I blame the Minister, and say that it was in collusion with several sets of people.
I want to join in the protest against the impost on sugar in the recent Budget. I think it is an unjustifiable hardship on our people, particularly when it is remembered that the average income is relatively low, that a big percentage are very poor, and that these have the largest families. It is a very serious burden on them. The Government and the Minister cannot justify that impost until all other sources of revenue are tapped, and until some very definite economies are effected in the extravagant services that we have at present. As a good deal has been said on that aspect of the question, I do not propose to weary the House further about it. I do not think that at the price fixed by the Minister, 4½d. per lb., it is possible for grocers to sell sugar. The ex-factory price of sugar is £39 6s. 8d., and that works out at four and the three-fourteenths of a penny, and when you add to that delivery charges, handling charges, sugar bags, and labour by the retailers, sugar cannot possibly be supplied for the difference of four-fourteenths or two-sevenths of a penny.
For that reason I do not think 4½d. per lb. can possibly continue. As a matter of fact, we have been informed, and I am aware, that in a good many areas 5d. is being charged for sugar. I do not think it is possible for retailers to sell sugar less, especially in districts remote from the factories, where freight charges and the cost of delivery are high. There is more or less a flat rate for sugar delivered all over the country, with variations, but in some districts it is costing more than £39 6s. 8d., as delivery charges would be slightly higher. The Minister fixed the price at 4½d. By the Budget there is an increase of ¾d. in the import duty, bringing that duty up to 2½d. There is also an increase in the excise duty on home produced sugar by ?d. per lb. making the present excise duty seven-eighths of a penny, leaving a difference still, as compared with the price fixed by the Minister, of ¾d. per lb. Now, I understand, and believe, that that ¾d. per lb. is going to the Sugar Company, and I submit, Sir, that that full ¾d. per lb. is going as profit to the Sugar Company. The reason I say that is that I went to the trouble, on Wednesday last, the 8th November, to ask the Minister for Supplies a question on that matter. The question is reported in col. 1098, of No. 7, vol. 77 of the Official Debates, of that date. I was anxious to find out whether or not the ¾d. that is going on home-produced sugar, or any of it, was going towards the cost of the raw sugar to be imported and refined here during the coming months, plus the cost of refining and the cost of the duty. The question I asked was as follows:—
"Can the Minister assure the House, with regard to the raw sugar he proposes to import, that the price of 4½d. will cover the cost of the raw sugar, plus the cost of refining, and the cost of the duty?"
The Minister replied that it would, and therefore we may take it that the 4½d. is going to cover the cost of raw sugar, plus the cost of refining it, plus the excise duty.
I was rather afraid that the answer I gave then might mislead the Deputy, but I am sure he will remember that we were at the end of the debate at the time, and it was not possible to give a full answer. As I had explained earlier, however, the ¾d. increase would not be sufficient to cover the additional cost of imported sugar. If all our sugar was being imported, a much heavier increase would be necessary; but in order to spread the increased charge over all the sugar we use, whether home-produced or imported, ¾d. would be sufficient; but the Deputy must not relate the ¾d. to the cost of imported sugar, which is much dearer. When we import that sugar, refine it here, and sell it, we will be selling it at the same price.
At 4½d.?
Yes; but that would not cover the cost, and we would be selling it at a loss.
All I can say is that my question, and the Minister's answer, is there in col. 1098.
I have pointed out to the Deputy that that was at the end of the debate, and that I had already explained the position. That sugar will be sold at the same price as the other sugar, but when we are selling it, it will be sold practically at a loss. However, it will be sold at that price.
That is not the question that I put to the Minister. I asked whether the price of 4½d., in connection with the raw sugar that it is proposed to import, would cover the cost of the raw sugar, plus the cost of refining and the cost of the excise duty, and the Minister said that it would. It would appear from that that the ¾d. would go to the Sugar Company as profit, and that ¾d. a lb., on this year's produce—taking the Minister's own figure of 60,000 tons of sugar produced in this year's campaign—would yield £420,000. What will become of that £420,000?
Who is going to pay the increased cost of imported sugar?
What is the imported raw sugar going to cost? Are we not entitled to know what it is going to cost and what is the quantity of raw sugar to be imported? If this House is to discuss the question of sugar supplies, and the price the consumer in this country has to pay for sugar, I submit that we, in this House, as representatives of the people, are entitled to be given figures of that sort. We are entitled to get information on this matter, and I am very much inclined to challenge the Minister on that. I submit that the real trouble goes back further than September or August last, and that it goes back to the fixation of beet prices last year, and also goes back to what occurred during the last two or three years. I see that the Minister has just left the House, but I think that the time has come when the whole position of the sugar beet industry should be carefully examined and analysed. What is the position at the moment? We had the original sugar factory at Carlow, and the Government extended that industry and evidently expected that the country was going to produce practically all our sugar requirements through the four sugar beet factories. Now, if we examine the acreage that has been under sugar beet in this country for the last three seasons, we find this position: In the season 1937-38 there were 60,680 acres of beet grown here; in the season of 1938-39, that acreage dropped from 60,680 to 49,550; and this year the figure is down to 40,873 acres. So that we have the position that you have a fall in two years of 60,000 acres under beet to 40,000 acres this year. What does that indicate? It is a definite indication that this industry was going to finish in two years if this state of affairs continued.
I want to point out to the House that, with regard to the sugar requirements of this country, the Sugar Manufacturing Company have a monopoly for the supply of all our requirements, both from inside and outside sources. Some months ago, I put down a question in order to elicit some information with regard to the cost of the manufacture of sugar, because I felt that the cost of the manufacture of sugar in this country was not justified when you compared it with the cost of manufacture of sugar in Great Britain. Deputy Mulcahy, a few days ago, also put down a query with regard to salaries and wages, and we were refused the information by the Minister, who told us that this was a private company. Now, let us examine this private company. The board of directors of this company is nominated by the Minister, and he put two civil servants or that board, one of whom is the managing director; and the Minister for Finance can dismiss any member of the board and nominate his successor. The taxpayer contributes, approximately £1,000,000 per annum for this industry The company is a tax-collecting machine for the Government, and the surplus trading profits on imported sugar go to the Exchequer.
The company holds its annual meeting, at which there are no share holders, except someone to represent the Minister for Finance. The Minister for Finance holds all the ordinary shares, and the preference share holders have no right in law to attend except when the company fail to pay their dividends. I want to point of also that for the capital of this company—and, mind you, the capital issue is £2,000,000—the taxpayer is ultimately responsible, because that capital is guaranteed by the Government. Yet, when we, in this House, put down a question relating to the costings of this company, we are told that it is a private company, and we are denied information. I submit, Sir, that the company is an institution of the Government, directed and controlled by the Minister for Finance; that it is financed by the taxpayer, and that he —or we, as his representatives—should get all that information; that it would be healthy and wholesome to have that information; and that it is only right and proper that an institution of that sort should be criticised as to its workings, as to its financial policy, and also as to its general policy.
Is this company any more private than the three or four companies that are operating 18 similar factories in England? If I want to get particulars as to the cost of manufacture, or as to any costings relating to the beet sugar factories in England, I can take up the British Agricultural Journal and get all the costings, and all the data one would require, in that journal; and yet, if one wants to make a comparison between the cost of manufacturing sugar in this country and the cost of manufacturing it in Great Britain, we have no figures here which can be related; we have no such figures published in this country. Has the company any more right than a railway company to refuse to disclose information regarding salaries and wages? The railway companies give particulars of the amount of goods carried, the cost of carriage, figures relating to passenger traffic, and full facts and figures relating to practically all their activities. That information is published and is available to the general public. Yet, we do not get information which, I submit, we are entitled to get regarding the activities of this company.
The Deputy is, I believe, referring to questions which he recently put to the Minister. The reply of the Minister was that he had no responsibility and had no power to obtain the information which the Deputy required.
I submit that if the Minister for Supplies has power, as he has admitted in a public statement recently, to give instructions to the directors of the Sugar Company we are entitled, in a debate of this kind, to criticise his conduct in so doing.
The question before the House is concerned with the price of sugar, not the conduct of the beet sugar factories.
And what caused the increase of price?
The conduct of the Sugar Company has a direct bearing on the price of sugar because, I submit, the cost of manufacture is 50 per cent. higher here than it is in Great Britain. I am arguing that that cost is not justified. I am forced to one conclusion by the attitude of the Minister. I pointed out the contributions made by the Minister and I explained that the Minister for Finance has complete control over the election of the directors of the company. He can dismiss any member of the directorate at any time and appoint a successor. No shareholder, save a representative of the Minister for Finance, is present at the annual meetings of the company. I am forced to one conclusion, that the Minister is deliberately cloaking the incompetence and inefficiency of this company by denying information to this House. As I said, there are 18 factories operating under four groups on the other side. All the data concerning these are published in the British Agricultural Journal. I cannot get any information about the operations of the Sugar Company in this country. I come from a beet-growing area and have grown beet since the Carlow Factory was established. I should like to see the industry a success, and I think the wholesome criticism in this House would be very useful in establishing the industry on a proper basis.
The point of view of the Chair is that an Act of the Oireachtas has established this industry under certain conditions. If, under the Act, this House has no right to obtain certain information, the Deputy, in attacking the company, which is an independent undertaking, is acting in much the same way as if he were to attack, for instance, any company which had obtained a loan from the Industrial Credit Corporation.
What about the contributions made by the taxpayer? You, A Chinn Comhairle, cannot, I think, point to any other company which enjoys that privilege—which has a monopoly for the handling of a particular commodity to the cost of which the taxpayer is contributing, approximately, £1,000,000, and will be contributing considerably more than £1,000,000 with this increase of ¾d. per lb.
Has not the Deputy criticised the sugar beet undertaking sufficiently for his purpose?
I am only just starting. I want to go on and show how the policy of the Company has had a detrimental effect on the whole industry and how the growers have been treated by the company. I submit that that arises out of this motion and that I am justified in doing so.
Not in discussing the price the farmer gets for beet.
If the farmer had got a price which would have encouraged him to grow beet, this situation would not have arisen.
The question of the price the farmer should get for beet does not arise. It is not clear to me that to give an increased price for beet would reduce the price of sugar.
I can show how it would reduce the price.
The price of beet is not relevant. The Deputy must await some more favourable opportunity.
If such a price were paid for beet as would secure an economic output for the four factories, the result would be that although the price of beet would be slightly higher, you would have a full through-put of beet for the four factories and the company would be financially in a better position.
I am not prepared to hear the Deputy further on that issue. If the Deputy would read the motion he will find no reference to beet.
The policy and attitude of the company and their method of approach to the people who are producing the raw material for the manufacture of sugar have brought about the situation to which I have referred—a fall in the acreage under the raw material from 60,000 two years ago to 40,000 in the present year. The directors failed completely to understand the grower and ignored what were fair and reasonable demands. They tried to make the grower the slave of the factories, and their whole attitude was intolerable. I shall give the House a few examples of their methods of dealing with the growers. Take the question of variety of seed. The Minister for Agriculture, who is present, knows the position well. It is the policy of the company to refuse the growers any information about the variety of seed they were sowing. When they asked that the variety of seed they were sowing should be stamped on the bag of seed, that request was refused.
Who has a better right to know what the variety of seed is than the man who is going to plant that seed, see the plant grow and tend the plant? Yet the intolerable attitude of the company was: "You have no right to know that; that is our job and ours alone". Take the delivery of beet to the factory. If there was a shortage of beet at the factories during a wet period, they were prepared to take deliveries, any and every way—to take loads in excess of the dockets issued. Then, when there was a surplus supply, if the farmer sent in a load in excess of the docket, part of his load was thrown off in the factory yard, with the result that that portion of the man's beet was trampled upon. That was a matter over which the farmer had no control. He could not guess what amount of beet a lorry sent out by the railway company would carry. When this company started to operate, if a man sowed beet in excess of the actual acreage contracted for, the factory representatives came out and instructed him to tear up that beet.
He could not even keep that beet to feed stock, though it is very useful food for live stock. They insisted on a very definite proportion of beet to cereals— one-third beet to cereals. Some old growers in the Carlow area, who had been growing beet from the start of the industry, were forced to reduce their crop by 50 per cent. Then, in the later years, when the acreage began to fall, as a result of the intolerable method of handling growers, growers were permitted to grow any acreage they liked, without any regard to its relation to the cereal crops. Similarly, at the start of the industry, the pulp produced was the property of the grower and he was compelled to take pulp back. It was argued—and argued rightly—by the Minister himself that this sugar beet substituted roots—turnips, etc.—and that in order to encourage winter feeding on the farm the pulp should go back and be used for food on the farm. For the last two years that pulp has been taken and a very high price fixed so that the effect it has is not to encourage pulp feeding on the farm. That method of handling this industry has had a disastrous effect.
Again, at the start of the industry under the Irish company, they commenced by buying sugar on a flat-rate basis, although old and experienced growers advised against that policy. It was pointed out that it was in the interests of the industry to buy on a sugar-content basis, since it encouraged the farmer to produce beet of the best quality with high sugar content. It was also pointed out that it was in the interest of the company that beet should be bought on a sugar-content basis. That advice was ignored by people who knew nothing at all about sugar beet. This year the policy is changed again from a flat rate back to the sugar-content rate. The price this year is 49/6 for 17½ per cent. sugar-content, with 2/6 for every unit over and above that. That 49/6, I would like to point out, works out at 2/10 per unit up to 17½ per cent., and the farmer only gets 2/6 for the higher units.
The price paid for beet may not be discussed. Neither is this a debate on the management of the sugar factories.
Is it not a debate on the price of sugar?
Yes, but the Deputy is discussing in extenso the management of one of the factories.
Is not beet raw sugar, and has it not a definite bearing?
The Chair is not officially interested in the percentage of sugar in beet. The Deputy has strayed from the motion.
I am sorry that that is your ruling, Sir, because I have been looking for an opportunity to say something about this subject for a considerable time.
That is precisely what struck the Chair—that the Deputy's speech is an attack on the Sugar Company, which is not the matter before the House.
It has a definite relation.
The Deputy must obey the Chair's ruling.
Very good, I submit. But I say this much—and I am saying nothing about beet this time—that the whole policy of the company handling sugar has produced the result that I have referred to, a falling off in the acreage of beet, and a very bad balance sheet for the company last year. If that situation continues, I believe that we will see the end of this industry in two years. The present position, with the increased cost of imported sugar, is going to give an opportunity to the Government to put that situation right; they have already increased the price. Apart altogether from the taxed imports, they have already added ¾d. a pound, and that shows an increase of £420,000 over what would have been paid for the cost of manufacture of the 60,000 tons of sugar that the Minister told us would be produced in this country this year.
I would ask the Minister what is going to be done about that ¾d. per lb. Is that ¾d. per lb. going to go to the profits of the company, or is any share going to go to the grower? I would like to ask the Minister that, and I think it has a definite bearing on the price. As far as the company is concerned, that ¾d. per lb. cannot be claimed as increased cost of manufacture. The Minister for Supplies told me, when I asked him a categorical question on last Wednesday, that the price of 4½d. per lb. would cover the cost of the sugar that it was proposed to import, plus the cost of refining, plus the increased excise duty; so that that ¾d. per lb. on home-grown sugar was going into the profits of the company. I submit that the cost of manufacture is not any higher. They have bought practically all the requirements in coal for the campaign; the limestone is already stacked in the four factories at the old price, delivered during the summer; and labour costs are now no higher than they were last year when this year's price was fixed. Yet this ¾d. per lb. is added to the price, amounting to £420,000. I want to know if that ¾d. per lb. is going to the company or is the grower going to get any portion of it for this year's crop? I submit he is entitled to consideration.
The people who heard to their surprise and to their indignation of the substantial increase in the price of sugar—which was announced some weeks ago over the radio—will specially remember one thing and that is the amazing cynicism which surrounded the terms of the announcement. The position was that, for weeks before that, the consumers of sugar were harrassed and unhappy in connection with supplies. Retailers—and particularly small retailers in the country—were in much the same position and the whole question seemed to be one of supplies. The other side of the picture was represented by the Ministerial announcement in this House that there were ample supplies of sugar and that any dislocation that had occurred was entirely due to the shortsighted policy of a section of the general public in laying in large supplies, that once that temporary dislocation would have been surmounted a normal position would be reached. Above and beyond that, there was the announcement that no increase in the price of sugar might be expected. Then came this announcement, to say that sugar would be advanced by 1½d. per lb. and that from the period of the advance any amount of sugar could be obtained. I think that it would be hard to beat the terms of that announcement for brazen cynicism of a kind that I have never seen excelled.
I say that the ordinary people in the country regard this as the worst form of public robbery that has taken place for a good many years. I think the feeling of the people is that any talk about price control here, or any announcements regarding price control here, must be regarded as entirely insincere in view of this imposition, an imposition that resolves itself into a sum of £1,400,000 for the people of the country, and that at a time when the price of practically every other item in the family budget has been increased considerably.
I heard recently in another place a statement from a prominent member of the Beet Growers' Association, that the Growers' Association were assured that the supplies of beet sent to the factories last year provided for a price of 3d. per lb. for sugar which could not be exceeded without injustice to the consumer, and I think there is official information to bear that out. If that is the case, this represents a most flagrant change of policy, and a most flagrant breach of that undertaking. The more one examines this matter from the point of view of the consumer, from the point of view of the retailers, from the point of view of the farmers, and from the point of view of the general need there is for keeping prices fairly level at present, the more one wonders how there could be any justification for the imposition. The Minister for Supplies told us here recently that the price of sugar in the last war went up 1/- per lb. There are great possibilities in that direction in this country yet, because the announcement I referred to said that we need not expect any further increase in the price of sugar for a considerable time. The possibilities of an increase in the future, however, are still there.
I should like to refer to one aspect of this matter generally in connection with prices, and it is that a recent analysis goes to prove conclusively that the increases in prices at present, having regard to the period during which the war has raged, correspond fairly accurately with the increases in prices which took place during the last war. I am speaking of the necessaries of life. If that is so, and if some of the people supposed to have more sources of information than many of us are correct in their prophecy of a long war, the position is going to be very terrible indeed before that period has expired. I feel that there is still time to redeem the injustice and iniquity of this imposition. One could understand, even though one would very strongly disagree with it, the action of a Minister who, pressed from the financial point of view, imposed a tax on this or any other commodity, but one cannot understand the methods by which this imposition was put on the people's backs and the effrontery with which the whole proceeding, the announcement and the general policy before it and since, was carried out.
This is a particularly serious matter for the poor; it is a particularly serious matter for those of the poor, and they are very many, thank God, who are blessed with large families; it is particularly serious in any house where there are young children; and it represents a very considerable eating into a very small and sometimes very miserable income. It is a particularly severe thing, too, for that increasing section of our people who have very little meat on their tables from one end of the week to the other, who are not able to have butter very often and who are not in the happy position of many others of having many items of food in the family menu. Unfortunately, and it is symptomatic of the growing position in the country, there are increasing numbers of people whose principal food for three meals every day is bread and tea, and, consequently, sugar. It is going to be very serious for people in that position, whose family diet is so limited. I suggest that the Minister, having seen the feelings which have been stirred up by this imposition, and having realised, as he must realise, the injustice and hardship of this imposition, might well accept the terms of the motion, and agree to have the order which imposed this iniquitous tax on the people, and very particularly on the poor people, withdrawn while there is still time to do it.
The present Minister for Supplies and his colleague who is just leaving have, in the course of their careers, got away, as Ministers, with many a stunt, so far as supplies and the prices of commodities used in this country are concerned, and that is possibly the reason why the Minister, at an early stage of this debate, was inclined to be so cynical, why he denied every remark he ever made and stated that he never said any of the things he was quoted from the Parliamentary debates as saying and why he was inclined to laugh at any statement made regarding this question of the increased price of sugar. Possibly the Minister's experience and his colleague's experience for the past number of years, in view of their attitude when commissions reported that people like the millers and the bacon curers were making excess profits——
The debate has no bearing on millers' or bacon curers' alleged profits.
I do not intend to refer to it beyond that. I am merely saying that the Minister's cynical attitude is probably justified by the fact that when it was proved in the past that there was deliberate profiteering going on in this country by commissions set up by the Minister he took absolutely no notice, and one need not be in the slightest surprised when the Minister takes absolutely no notice of the scandalous position created in this country by his own incompetency in regard to the sugar supply. The Minister has spoken with regard to sugar on a number of occasions in the last three months. On one occasion, as lately as last week, at column 1045 of the Official Debates, he said:—
"There was no substantial holding of sugar by any of the wholesalers or, for that matter, by any of the retailers... but whatever hoarding of sugar was done was done mainly by consumers."
Even if we accept that statement as fully correct, that the reason for the scarcity at the end of October was hoarding by consumers, we may ask what kind of people hoarded it? Was it the labourer or the labourer's wife with five or six small children, or the small farmer's wife with a large family, who were in a position to buy sugar for hoarding in the last couple of months? I defy the Minister to go into any small town in a country district, to go into the homes of the people in any country area, and tell us that they could afford to hoard sugar to such an extent as would cause the retailers and wholesalers to run out of stocks in the last fortnight of October. The Minister knows perfectly well that that is not so. It was not the retailers who hoarded it, because the retailers could not get it from the wholesalers; and it was not the consumers, except a very limited section of the consumers, because the bulk of the people, the people who would be most affected for the last two months, would not be in a position to spend any extra money on sugar for hoarding. Is not the position plainly this, that for the month of September and October it was practically impossible for any country shop to get supplies of sugar from any wholesaler? Towards the end of October it came to the point when they were not able to get any at all. Some people succeeded, like the manufacturer to whom Deputy Mulcahy referred, in getting a bag or two on condition that they paid the November price for it. But the very moment the new price Order was made, the very moment that the increase of 1½d. was put on, there was not a wholesaler in the country, from the Irish Sugar Company down to the smallest merchant, who was not sending out travellers and phoning customers, telling them that he would give them all the sugar they wanted at the increased price.
The Minister cannot justify the increased price. The Government have now sought to justify half of the increase in price by the imposition of a tax, but they cannot justify the other half of the increase. The sugar for which the increased price is now being charged is presumably sugar that was imported to make up the shortage arising in the period between the time when the supply of the home-manufactured commodity became exhausted early this year and the beginning of the new manufacturing season. Will the Minister say that the price at which that sugar was imported justified the increase of ¾d. per lb.? The Minister cannot say it, because the Minister knows it is not correct and that he would not be justified in permitting the Irish Sugar Company to increase the price in respect of supplies they already held. The Minister cannot deny that the Irish Sugar Company had reserve supplies bought and held long before the new prices Order was issued on 1st November. If the Minister is inclined to say that that is not true, we have the words of the Minister for Co-ordination of Defence who on the 27th September, as reported at column 374 of the Official Debates, said: "We have 100 per cent. at the moment, because we have 75 per cent. home-grown and we have other sugar in reserve." It is for this other sugar in reserve, which was held up and hoarded at that time, that the Minister is now permitting these people to charge the increased price.
The Minister cannot for one moment justify the increase of ¾d. per lb. He can justify now, as I have already said, the first ¾d. because of the additional tax which has been imposed, but he had fixed 4½d. per lb. as the price before the Budget was introduced. How could he justify an increase of 1½d. a lb. prior to the Budget? Will he tell us what the actual position was in regard to sugar supply at any period for the last three months? Were normal supplies being issued? If normal supplies were being released from the factories or from the Irish Sugar Company, where were they going? They certainly were not going to the retailers. There is no use in saying that the retailers got their normal supplies, because they did not. They did not get one-quarter of their normal supplies of sugar. If, to use the Minister's own remark, something happened on the way from the wholesaler to the consumer or from the Irish Sugar Company to the consumer, what did happen? Can the Minister explain for one moment what was the cause of the muddle for the last two months? Is it not a fact that the sugar was there? Is it not a fact that the Minister for Co-ordination of Defence said the sugar was there? Is it not a fact that that sugar could not be got in the towns of this country and that the very moment that the price was increased you could get all you wanted?
Some people may have been in the happy position of the gentleman in Macroom about whom Deputy Corry spoke last night. Mind you, Deputy Corry's story about the fowl dealer who had 30 tons of sugar in stock is typical of the mentality of the Fianna Fáil Party. Because the Minister's Party is to blame, blame everybody else, blackmail everybody else. Blackmail the retailer and blackmail the consumer, but do not blame the Minister. That is the motive of the story told by Deputy Corry. It does not matter if it puts certain people in the town mentioned in the position of being slandered, and perhaps create suspicion all over the countryside as to who was the person who was able to hoard 30 tons at a low price and sell it at the increased price. The Deputy's attitude is: blame anybody outside, but do not blame the Minister; the Minister was not responsible for the muddle. No matter what happens, the Minister will muddle out of it. He certainly has taken upon himself one great attribute of British politicians, that no matter what happens he will muddle out of it. He has muddled out of so many scandals in connection with industry in this country that he will muddle out of this one, because he will satisfy himself in his own mind that whoever was responsible it was not our august Minister for Supplies.
I believe the Minister sat back for the past 12 months and did not care what the position was. He said he had no divine inspiration, that he did not know the war was going to start on the 2nd September; that if he knew definitely it was going to start at that time he would have been all right. I say that it was perfectly obvious for some time prior to the outbreak of hostilities that a major European conflict was coming, and was coming very soon. The Minister overlooked one significant fact. He has got to remember that the importation of sugar was justified in the past year more than ever, because the Minister will have to admit that if a protracted war hit this country in such a manner as to make transport difficulties acute, the carrying out of the beet sugar policy at home would be made more difficult. The Minister knows, if he ever paid any attention to the subject, that a number of countries during the last war discovered that for themselves.
Will the Minister say what was the cost of the sugar now sold at 4½d. per lb. or 5d. per lb. as the case may be? Was that sugar bought or produced here at a cost that justifies the present price? If it was sugar that was produced by the Irish Sugar Company, the price could not be justified, because it was produced on the basis of being sold at 3d. per lb. If it was imported, it was sugar imported before there was any rise in price. No matter what happens in regard to the first ¾d., the Minister cannot justify the second ¾d. at all. The Minister is aware, or should be aware, that the consumption of sugar in this country dropped considerably in 1938, as compared with the average consumption of the years 1933 to 1937. Even with the decrease in acreage under beet, very little foresight, very little business management on the part of the Minister would have put us in a far better position than we are in now. Is the Minister to give no explanation whatever to the people for the cause of the muddle, or is he going to say that the only way out of it was to shove on a sudden increase in price and allow everybody to get all the sugar they wanted? Is the Minister serious in his suggestion that there was a normal supply of sugar going out to the towns and villages of this country during September and October?
Is the Minister serious in saying that the dislocation was caused because of hoarding by consumers? If so, will he tell us the type of people who, he thinks, were hoarding? Will he also tell us where they got the sugar to hoard in these few months, or admit that it was hoarded by people that he was aware were hoarding it, and that they held the sugar until the Minister issued his Order authorising the increase in price, and then let it out to be bought by those in a position to pay the increased price? The Minister, I am sure, will make one of his usual defences, namely, that what other people say is wrong, and that what he says or thinks is right. No matter what he says or thinks he will not, in my opinion, be able to explain to anybody in this country why they should now be called upon to pay 4½d. or 5d. per lb. for sugar, because there is no earthly justification for charging that price. He will not be able to convince the people that it was the retail shopkeepers, or anybody else, who caused the muddle, and not the Minister himself. He will find it very hard to convince the people of the country, and I say this with all the seriousness at my command, that the Minister himself was not a party to a conspiracy to defraud the people of the country in regard to sugar supplies.
I wish to join with other Deputies in protesting against the increase of 1½d. per lb. in sugar. Would the Minister say whether the Sugar Company asked for permission to increase the price by 1½d. per lb.? I have not so far heard him give an answer to that question. We have to take it now that whether the company got permission to do so or not, they did, in fact, advance the price by that amount. The strange thing about this is the date on which the increase took place. It occurred on the 31st October when traders, in the normal course, would be making arrangements to get their November supply.
On a point of order, may I point out that there are only eleven Deputies in the House, and that there is not one Fianna Fáil Deputy sitting behind the Minister in this debate?
There is not a quorum in the House.
Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted and 20 Deputies being present,
As I was saying, the price of sugar was advanced by 1½d. per lb. on the last day of October when traders were making arrangements for their November supply, the object of that, I take it, being that the November supply would bear the increased price. I can say, speaking for the County Mayo, that prior to the 1st November, business people were not able to get their normal supplies of sugar. The result was that they were badly handicapped in meeting the requirements of their customers who were coming in complaining that traders were hoarding the sugar and would not supply it. They had some grounds for making that complaint, because, about a fortnight earlier, it was announced on the wireless that ample supplies of sugar, sufficient to meet the requirements of the people, could be obtained in the ordinary way from traders, and that if traders did not supply it they could change their custom. In view of that announcement, traders were put in a very awkward position with their customers. The announcement had a very serious effect both on the public and on business people.
It is quite plain now that the situation that was brought about on the last day of October was for the purpose of enabling the Sugar Company to make. arrangements to get this extra 1½d. per lb., but what I cannot understand is that, within a week, that increase was reduced by half, and the company is now left with ¾d. of an increase. If ¾d. extra is now considered sufficient to give the company for the sugar they will need to import to meet normal requirements for a quarter of the year, I would like to know what they were going to do with the other ¾d. that they originally intended to collect off the people. They will find it hard to explain that. Anyway, the position now is that the company will have to be content with ¾d. extra, whereas on the 1st November they looked for, and got, an extra 1½d. I would like to have that explained.
We are all agreed that sugar is a most important and necessary article of food. In the case of very young children it represents 50 per cent. of the nourishment they require. If poor people in the country districts are not able to get sugar, then they have to buy substitutes made from sugar. They must use jam as a substitute for butter. My information is that there is going to be an advance of 3d. on the 2 lb. pot of jam. An increase of 1½d. a lb. in sugar will lead to an increase in the price of biscuits, tinned milk, and at least 40 per cent. of the commodities sold in shops in which there is a mixture of sugar.
The cost of all these articles of food will go up. That will be a very serious matter for the ordinary consumer, buying in his weekly supplies for his family and home. We are told that we grow sufficient beet to meet our sugar requirements for three-quarters of the year, and that all we require to import is the balance, or a quarter of the year's supply. Will it take the difference between 7/- and 19/- per cwt. to do that? The extra tax of ¾d. more than covers the cost of the sugar that we have to import.
There is one point on which I would like to have some information, and it is this: if the full extra tax of ¾d. is not required to meet the cost of the sugar in stock from last season's beet supply and of the sugar purchased and stored for the purpose of meeting the shortage, are the beet growers going to get anything out of the tax for the beet that they are supplying this year? We have this extra tax on sugar and all this, in my opinion, shows that sugar is going to be a very dear commodity and that people will be obliged to make a reduction in the amount of their purchases. This increase in sugar will certainly be doing a great injustice to the young and especially so amongst the poor. I am firmly convinced that it is not yet too late to make some arrangements or too late to ask the Minister to reconsider this tax of ¾d. The Minister should meet the wishes of the public by reducing the price of sugar from the factories by 7/- a cwt. I would go so far as to say that he should wait and see if he requires this ¾d. in order to cover the purchase loss on the balance of the imported sugar that will be required for the coming year. I believe that the reduced purchasing power of the people may shorten the purchases of sugar. I believe the reduction in the amount of sugar that the people will be able to buy and pay for will work out in such a way that there will be sufficient sugar in the country without the necessity of importing any sugar at all; that is to say, taking into account the sugar we have on hands at present with what the four factories will produce this season. These are some of the views that I wish to put before the Minister with regard to the price of sugar and the supplies available. I come from a very poor county, a county in which the people will be very severely hit by this increase in the price of sugar, particularly this increase of 1½d. I would ask the Minister at least to take off the ¾d. I urge him to give the question all the consideration he can and to take into account how necessary an article of food sugar is. I ask him to help the people by reducing its price.
The discussion on the increased price of sugar has now occupied some days but the more the Minister speaks on the matter or interrupts other Deputies, the more bewildered one gets as to the real reason for this scandalous tax on the people. We were told by the Minister that one of the reasons why he did not buy a large quantity of imported sugar was that he was not divinely inspired and that he did not know that war was about to break out. Just imagine a statement of that kind from the Minister of a Government which even before the war was declared found it necessary to call the Dáil together to tell the House and the country of the grave crisis that existed in Europe and the possibility that the peace of Europe was on the point of being broken. Imagine, too, the same Minister making statements in this House on previous occasions indicating that there was a section of the Department of Industry and Commerce urging private employers in this country to import as many articles as they could get and to store them so as to be prepared for the time when, through the outbreak of a European war, there might be a grave shortage of such supplies.
So we have the position that while the Minister through his Department is urging and inviting private employers to import and store commodities because of the threat of the European war and warning them of the danger of the shortage of these articles, the Minister himself was taking the view that he did not in fact know that there was any likelihood of war breaking out. He tells us now that because he was not divinely inspired he could not be expected to make provision for the purchase of sugar to supply the needs of the country or to make good the difference between what we produced here in our own factories and our total requirements. He tells us that was the view he took because he did not know whether a war was to break out or not. One finds it hard to imagine that that kind of simplicity represents the real mind of the Minister who does not seem in other matters to be quite so simple. Yet in this matter of the outbreak of war and the holocaust that was threatened in Europe the Minister for Supplies is just a simple little boy. He had no idea that war was to take place even though through his Department he had been telling the traders of the country to purchase and import all the commodities they could get. But he himself does nothing about these other commodities which may be far more necessary to the health and wealth of the people than some of the commodities which the merchants were being advised and invited to import. The Minister gave us that as the reason or as one of his reasons why he did not purchase and import sugar at the phenomenally low price that prevailed during the past year——
That is not the reason. As a matter of fact we did purchase sugar.
In what quantity?
Enough to bring us to the 1st November.
We still have not got from the Minister the price at which he purchased the imported sugar. Perhaps an examination of the matter would show that the sugar was purchased at 2½d. per lb. and that that is being sold to-day to the poor people of the country at 5d. per lb.
I gave the facts here last week. We have sold imported sugar at a loss.
What were the actual figures?
The Minister gave only one figure, 19/4 per cwt.
I gave more figures than that.
That was the only figure we got.
On the last occasion on which this matter was discussed here, the Minister told us that the price of sugar on the British, Belgian and Dutch markets was rising, and he quoted figures to show that the price had risen between March and May this year. I asked him to tell us what the price of sugar in the British, Belgian and Dutch markets was between March and May and to tell us what the prices were each month subsequent to May. But the Minister could not be induced to go beyond May.
The Deputy said a minute ago that I gave no figures at all.
I do not mind the Minister making as much a mess as he likes of his own figures and his own case, but he is not going to make a mess of mine. I said, and I repeat it, that the Minister did not tell us the price at which he bought the sugar which he imported. What I am saying now is that on the last occasion the Minister said the price of sugar had risen in the British, the Belgian and the Dutch markets. He quoted the rise in price between March of this year and May of this year. The highest price he quoted, I think, was 10/9 a cwt. for sugar in the dearest of those three markets. I asked him to tell us what the price was in the months subsequent to May, because while sugar did go up to over 10/- a cwt. in May, it fell to less than 8/- a cwt. in the British market in August.
It did not.
It did.
I have the list price here in front of me.
It did, and the Minister knows it. The Minister knows that sugar could be bought cheaply in July and August of this year, probably very much more cheaply than it can be bought now. If we had the vision, we might well have bought two years' supply of imported sugar in August last probably for what we will pay to-day for one year's supply. The fact that the Minister was not divinely inspired, or did not see the necessity for doing that, has presented the country with a situation where it must now buy sugar at a much higher price than that at which it could have bought it two or three months ago if the Minister had then only bestirred himself. On every occasion on which the Minister has talked about sugar he quoted us the case of one well-known Dublin firm which put an advertisement in the paper, and, as a result of the advertisement which that firm put in the paper, he said there was panic purchasing. Whoever was the manager of that firm and was responsible for that advertisement probably rendered much more service to the poor people of this country, if they could buy the sugar, than the Minister for Supplies. At least the manager of that firm had eyes; at least he had brains; at least he had vision; at least he had the ability to see what was happening. The Minister for Supplies did not know there was a war on; yet, the manager of some grocery establishment in town, before the war occurred, could put an advertisement in the paper stating: "The red flag is up. Take notice there is going to be a war. There is going to be a shortage of sugar. There is going to be difficulty in getting it. Take my advice and buy now." That was an advertisement by a manager of a grocery establishment in Dublin.
And he did a service to the poor, according to the Deputy?
Will the Minister keep his temper? Bad and all as his case is, it will be worse if he loses his temper.
The Deputy said he did a service to the poor.
I said he did a better one than the Minister did.
The Deputy said he did a service to the poor, anyway.
The Minister may twist my words any way he likes.
Did he say that?
Since the Minister got the title of Minister for Supplies, the whole emphasis is on the last four letters of his title.
Is that a joke?
No. Unfortunately it is the truth. The Minister misrepresents and distorts what every Deputy says.
What did the Deputy say?
I said that the person who put up the red flag, and said there was danger——
Did a service to the poor?
I said that the person who put that notice in the paper, and put up the red flag of danger, the person who said "There will be a shortage; buy now and do it as quickly as you can, because the price will go up and supplies will be difficult to get", rendered a much bigger service to everybody, including the poor, than the Minister for Supplies rendered to them during this crisis.
Is that good enough for the Minister?
That is clear. That person, at all events, saw what was coming. He knew there was a war coming. He knew there would be difficulty in getting supplies. He knew prices would rise. He was thinking much more alertly and much more accurately than the Minister was thinking on the whole subject.
This is an intelligent contribution to our discussions.
When it comes to interpretation of non-intelligence, the Minister is very well qualified to speak. At all events, there was not very much intelligence displayed by the Minister on the question of purchasing sugar supplies. The people are being mulcted because of his inability to get sugar in the first instance. We ought to look at this whole question of sugar in the light of the speeches which have already been delivered by the Minister, and to examine for a few moments the vacillation of the Minister on the whole question of sugar supplies. He told us on 18th October, at column 620 of the Official Debates, that there was no shortage of sugar in the country. That was the period when people found it most difficult of all to obtain sugar supplies. There was no shortage, but the people could not obtain supplies of sugar.
Because of the advertisement which the Deputy is praising.
The advertisement has annoyed the Minister. If he had done his job efficiently, the people would not be in a mess, and would not be salted to the tune of the £1,400,000 for which they are being salted in this Budget alone. He told us, at a time when the people could not get sugar, that there was no shortage at all. When it was pointed out to him that there were business concerns who were genuinely unable to get any sugar, he said: "There is no scarcity of sugar. There is plenty of sugar available." Going on to prophesy as to the future position in respect of sugar, he said: "The only reason for any temporary dislocation is that the wholesalers got two months' supply of sugar and sold most of it at the beginning of the two months, thus leaving themselves short at the end of that period. That period is now over. They can now get ample supplies to meet their normal requirements for the future, and consequently there should be no difficulty whatever in meeting all demands for sugar, unless there is a tendency on the part of some people to buy abnormal quantities, or on the part of traders to restrict sales." On 18th October, in the midst of a keen sugar shortage, the Minister was screeching that there was no shortage of sugar. It was only a temporary dislocation due to the wholesalers selling their supplies of sugar too quickly, but that period of dislocation would be overcome; there would be abundant supplies for everybody, and there would be no further trouble after that. That, according to the Minister, was the position on 18th October. But on the very same day— after assuring the House that the temporary dislocation of sugar supplies would be overcome, and that everybody would be able to get an abundance of sugar—having apparently, to his own satisfaction at all events, disposed of the dislocation in respect of sugar supplies, the Minister went on to discuss price. He said at column 742——
Is the Deputy now pretending that he is quoting two references in sequence?
I am quoting the Minister's own speech.
But those two quotations are not connected in the report? Is that right? Just tell the truth.
The only people who intervened in the meantime are other Deputies. I am quoting from the speech of the same person; that is sequence enough.
They are not connected quotations anyway.
In any case, the Minister goes on to talk about the price of sugar. The supplies were all right; there was no shortage; the dislocation would be overcome, and there would be an abundance for everybody. Coming then to the price of sugar, the Minister said: "Some Deputy asked whether the stand-still order for sugar still operates. It still operates for the sale of sugar. We do not anticipate any immediate change in the price of sugar." In order to get a proper picture of this whole business we have got to see what the Minister's view was.
The Deputy could continue the quotation, of course. It would help him out a bit.
I will read it down to the next figure, if that will help the Minister.
I will read on from that later.
The quotation proceeds: "Perhaps if the idea became widespread that no immediate change in the price of sugar due to increased manufacturing costs or any similar cost is anticipated, some of the sugar which has been lost en route from the wholesalers to the consumers might be released and some of the difficulties relating to the sugar supply might disappear." That has not affected the first quotation which I read at all, and, if the Minister thought that anything was being suppressed, he has it all now. In any case, we had the Minister telling us on the 18th October that there was no shortage; that there were heaps of sugar for everybody, and there was no anticipation of any immediate change in the price of sugar. That was the sense of false security into which the Minister deliberately lulled the House on the 18th October. Even from the 18th to the 30th October people still experienced considerable difficulty in obtaining sugar supplies. Up to the 30th October it was impossible for people to get sugar in reasonable quantities, and it was most difficult for the poorer people to get reasonable quantities. As a matter of fact, in the country sugar was being sold in such small quantities as quarter and half lbs. That was on the 30th October.
Then we had a broadcast announcement that the price of sugar, with the Government's approval, had been raised from 3d. to 4½d. a lb. In fact, it was on the instructions of the Government that it had been raised from 3d. to 4½d. a lb., and henceforth the people could get any quantity they liked, once they were prepared to pay the new ransom. We had heaps of sugar in the country on the 18th October, according to the Minister, and he indicated that no further dislocation need be anticipated; in fact, there was going to be a deluge of sugar and there would be no change in price. Within 12 days the Minister announced that the price of sugar had been raised by 50 per cent. Then all the held-up supplies of sugar were released, so that people could pay the new fancy prices demanded, on the Minister's instructions. If ever there was a case of cornering and deliberately boxing the market, that was the most shameful example ever perpetrated on the people. They were deliberately holding back supplies.
Who held them back?
The Minister should know.
The Deputy is making a gross misstatement. What he is saying is not supported by any statement of fact. Who does he allege held it back?
The Minister for Supplies is supposed to know what is happening in the country.
Does the Deputy allege that somebody held back stocks of sugar?
The Deputy alleges that the Minister is positively disorderly, just because he is losing his temper, as usual.
You are the quickest man to run away that I know.
If the Minister could only control his temper, everything would be all right. He cannot control the sugar, and now he cannot control his temper. I cannot help the Minister losing his temper. I am not responsible for that kind of temperamental disability. It is unfortunate that in all these crises the Minister always loses his temper, and the public, unfortunately, have to pay, as they are now paying to the tune of £1,400,000.
The Deputy flatters himself if he thinks he is a crisis.
I did not quite catch the Minister's observation, but in any case it does not matter. The Minister asks who held up the sugar. As Minister for Supplies, he ought to know. He said on the 18th October that there was no shortage, that there was plenty of sugar in the country. If there was, it could not be got by people between the 18th and the 30th October. But on the following day there was an abundance of sugar released for sale, and it was not all Irish sugar, as the Minister knows.
Every grain of it.
That is positively not true. Wholesalers in this city sold sugar which was not Irish-produced sugar.
I defy the Deputy to produce one of them.
I can tell the Minister that he will find that out if he exerts himself and asks his inspectors to inquire from the sugar wholesalers in the city. I am not going to do the Minister's work.
The Deputy makes allegations, but he does not attempt to prove anything. I defy Deputy Norton to produce one of these wholesalers.
I know it was done, and that is enough. The sugar supplies were deliberately and definitely held back until the people were charged 4½d. instead of 3d. a lb. There is not a person in the country who does not know that, excepting the Minister for Supplies. Everybody experienced a shortage of sugar on the 30th October, when it was 3d. a lb., and then they found that sugar was almost fired at them on the 1st November if they paid 4½d. a lb. for it. The only person who does not know that there was a proper "hoofle" in that is the Minister for Supplies.
I think the imposition of a tax of ¾d. a lb., or 7/- a cwt., on sugar, particularly in the existing circumstances, is an outrage. But you do not stop the mischief and the hardship there; you go on to permit the Sugar Company to get another ¾d., another 7/- a cwt., and you clap on to the public 14/- a cwt. on sugar. By doing so, I think you display an absolute cynical contempt for any kind of hardship imposed upon the people under this Budget. Let me work out the cost as affecting families living on limited incomes. Take the case of a man and his wife and four or five children, where the consumption of sugar might reasonably be put at 6 lbs. per week—perhaps an extravagant consumption for a family of that size. They used to get the sugar at 3d. a lb. and they are now paying 5d. They are paying 2d. a lb. more now than on the 30th October. Six lbs. of sugar a week at 2d. a lb. extra works out at 1/- and over 52 weeks that makes £2 12s. If a man happens to be an agricultural worker, his wage is approximately 27/-, less certain deductions for insurance. In one year, two weeks' wages go to pay the additional cost placed on sugar. Two entire weeks' wages are gone paying the higher price for the sugar, irrespective of the difficulty of a man in that position being able to raise the money that would cover the original price of sugar.
That is what has been done by the Minister. I think it is an outrage, and not all the blatancy that the Minister can mobilise, or all the abuse he can indulge in this evening, will save him from the rightful condemnation of the people for permitting a thing like that to develop within two months of the opening of a European war, all because he had not the vision to purchase supplies of sugar in the European markets when it could be bought at phenomenally low prices.
Does the Deputy know that too?
I suppose it is an offence for anybody to imagine he knows anything once the Minister is alive. Apparently the Minister considers himself the repository of all knowledge. Under examination, he does not stand up to a very high test of knowledge. The motion before the House is one asking, in effect, that the price of sugar should go back to its October level and that sugar should be controlled at that level. I think that is the least the Government ought to do in regard to a staple article of diet such as sugar. We had, of course, a very grandiose declaration by the Minister in the early days of the war fixing a standstill price for everything from pepper to tall hats, a meaningless kind of order that was never possible of implementation. Since then what we have been doing is excluding one article after the other from the standstill order. It would have been much better sense for the Minister and it is still much better sense for the Minister to recognise that for certain commodities you cannot possibly fix a price but in respect of staple articles of diet such as butter, sugar, tea, bread, milk, eggs, bacon, flour, coal, commodities which are consumed in the main by working-class people, by people without any private incomes, by people without any investments, by people who are likely to lose their employment as a result of a war situation, to say: "I will turn my face stiffly against any attempt to allow the prices of these articles to increase." Even if nothing were done on the generality of other commodities we would at least be assured of a reasonable price in respect of staple articles of diet.
Now we have reached the position when almost nothing is controlled with any reasonable firmness. No increase in the price of sugar was anticipated on the 18th October. Twelve days afterwards it went up by 50 per cent. I would not mind betting that we will never see sugar down to 4½d. per lb. again in the rural parts of the country, notwithstanding the recent order by the Government presuming to fix it at that price.
This, of course, is not the only example in which there has been apparently complete inability on the part of the Government to control prices but it is the most glaring example. It is the most shameless example of complete indifference and complete cynicism on the part of the Government to the sufferings of the masses of the people. Flour, bread, coal have all gone up in price. Eggs are almost unpurchasable by working class families. Milk has gone up. Bacon has gone up. Now, we are going to get sugar up by 50 per cent. and nothing whatever is being done by the Minister effectively to grapple with a situation of that kind.
We are seeking to annul this Order because we believe that the new price for sugar imposes an unreasonable tax on the consuming public and presses with exceptional rigour on the poorer sections of the community, and is calculated to press with still greater severity upon them in view of the approach of winter, the serious unemployment problem, which tends to become still more serious, and the extension of the already wide belt of poverty in the country. What is done in this inexplicable action by the Minister is to compel the people who consume sugar in this country to pay £1,400,000 more per annum for their sugar. That is what they are going to pay under the action of the Minister. The public should know and understand that. They should understand too that that is the price which is being exacted from them by a Minister who, 12 days prior to the making of a sugar Order, intimated that he did not anticipate any increase in the price of sugar.
I said nothing of the kind. The Deputy knows quite well that I said nothing of the kind.
I quoted the Minister's speech.
The Deputy did not quote that.
I will get back to it again in the hope that the Minister will, for once, remember what he says.
I have it printed here before me.
I have another copy of the same Report. The Minister said:
"We do not anticipate any immediate change in the price of sugar."
And, 12 days after that, a 50 per cent. increase was clapped on to the price of sugar. I think the Minister will find it difficult to explain a situation of that kind. Sugar is being raided and taxed for the purpose of raising revenue, and the Sugar Company are being allowed to get away with ¾d. per lb. extra on sugar, presumably in order that next year they will pay dividends on the ordinary shares of the Sugar Company which are held exclusively by the Government. But, in any case, between what is raked in in taxation and what may come in in the form of dividends from the Sugar Company, the consuming public will pay close on £1,500,000 as a result of the Minister's order.
This motion seeks to annul the action of the Minister in that connection, and I hope that the public will understand the consequences of the Minister's action in this matter. I defy the Minister, with all the statistical matter which he can command, to leave this to a free vote of the House. He knows perfectly well he could not get a majority of the members to support the action he has taken in this whole matter. It can only be done by applying the Whip.
I am interested in that last statement of Deputy Norton's, because I have the idea I am going to get support for the rejection of this motion in quite unexpected quarters. Let us read the motion:—
That the Dáil disapproves of the increase in the price of sugar announced by the Department of Supplies, and instructs the Minister for Supplies to take immediate steps to have the price reduced, and that accordingly the Emergency Powers (Control of Prices) (No. 28) Order, 1939, should be revoked.
We are not voting on that motion, you know. The Ceann Comhairle has decided that.
I gather that the two motions have been amalgamated, and that we are now discussing one motion only, moved jointly by Deputies Mulcahy and Davin.
Have they been amalgamated?
They have, of course.
You quoted only one. Quote the second motion.
The motion is:—
That the Dáil disapproves of the increase in the price of sugar announced by the Department of Supplies, and instructs the Minister for Supplies to take immediate steps to have the price reduced, and that accordingly the Emergency Powers (Control of Prices) (No. 28) Order, 1939, should be revoked.
Is not that the motion we are discussing?
Deputy Norton is wrong, as usual. The effective part of that motion is the last part, that which seeks to secure the revocation of the Control of Prices (No. 28) Order. What was the Control of Prices (No. 28) Order? There was an order made by me taking sugar out of the original Control of Prices Order which fixed the price for sugar, and for a number of other commodities, at that prevailing on the 26th day of August. The effect, therefore, of the adoption of this motion by the Dáil would be to compel, as from this evening, every manufacturer, wholesaler and retailer of sugar in the country to sell sugar irrespective of the price he paid for it, at the price which he was charging upon the 26th August. Deputy Norton asks that that should be left to a free vote. While I do not think that is a practical suggestion, I am curious, if it could be adopted, to know from what quarters support would come. I know that Deputy Dillon pressed me three weeks ago to make this Order. He urged that sugar should be taken out of the Stand-still Order.
And rationed.
I will quote the Deputy. It was in connection with the Deputy's urges that sugar should be taken out of the Stand-still Order that I made the statement which has been so frequently quoted here this evening. Deputy Dillon, remember, was urging that sugar should be taken out of the Stand-still Order——
And rationed.
Deputy Dillon was shouting for order with monotonous reiteration while other speakers were addressing the House. I hope Deputy Dillon is going to be so particular to see that I get order.
The Minister interrupted while I was speaking.
I have no objection to interruptions provided they are intelligent. Deputy Dillon was urging that the Control of Prices (No. 28) Order should be made. It was alleged by Deputy Dillon, and I think it was alleged by some others, that on that date, the 18th October, certain traders in the country were being compelled to sell sugar at less than they were buying it for. Deputy Dillon, I presume, therefore, will not vote for this motion which asks for the revocation of that Order and which is going to put him back in the position in which he was at that date when the price of sugar was fixed at the price prevailing on the 26th August. The revocation of this Order is going to compel traders in this country to do what nobody else in the world is capable of doing, and that is, to sell sugar at the price which prevailed in August. Deputies should be clear as to what they are asking the Dáil to do. This motion that you are proposing, and which you are going into the Division Lobby to vote for, will compel people in this country to do what no trader in any part of the world can do to-day, and that is, sell sugar at a profit at the price that prevailed in August.
That is the third time you said so.
I want the House to understand the proposal. In my opinion, this House would stultify itself by passing this motion. I do not think that will worry members of the Labour Party or of Fine Gael; but if they are going to make fools of themselves they should do it consciously. When I was being urged that sugar should be taken out of the Stand-still Order, I made the statement that was quoted here, and which I am going to read:—
"Some Deputies asked whether the Stand-still Order for sugar still operates. It still operates for the sale of sugar. We do not anticipate any immediate change in the price of sugar. Perhaps if the idea became widespread that no immediate change in the price of sugar due to increased manufacturing costs or any similar cost is anticipated, some of the sugar which has been lost en route from the wholesalers to the consumers might be released, and some of the difficulties relating to the sugar supply might disappear.
Mr. Dillon: The Minister has not dealt with the case of Ballaghaderreen, where we are required to sell sugar under cost price."
Will the Minister give his reference?
Column 742 of the Official Reports. I continued:—
"I am anxious to get rid of the stand-still Order, but the only way we can deal with it until we get a different system of price control is to maintain it until somebody makes a case for removing it.
Mr. Dillon: I have made the case repeatedly by letter and by telegram."
He also made it by speech in the Dáil. The case that Deputy Dillon made by letter and by telegram, and by speech on that occasion, was in favour of making the Emergency Powers (Control of Prices) (No. 28) Order, which we are now being asked to revoke.
That is quite false, and the Minister knows it.
How is it false?
The case is stated there in column 715. I have a letter in my pocket from the Minister stating that the case is well-founded, and I am to interpret the Order to mean that I am to charge the price as suggested in column 715 until further notice from him.
Of course the Deputy's case was well-founded. That is why I made the Order.
Does the Minister deny that he wrote to me and stated that it was unnecessary to amend the Stand-still Order because I was to interpret it as meaning that we were to make the same profit on sugar under the Order that we had been making on sugar before he made the Order? Did not the Minister write in that sense?
The Stand-still Order had nothing whatever to do with profits.
I have a letter from the Minister saying it has. It is signed by the Minister.
The Stand-still Order fixed a price. I concede at once that it is quite reasonable that no Order made by me should operate to compel any trader to sell at a loss, or to prevent him making what was a reasonable profit or a normal profit on the sale of these goods. In order to give effect to that the Stand-still Order had to go.
You told me in your own letter that it was unnecessary to abolish the Stand-still Order to remedy that defect.
If the Deputy will stop talking in order to think he will realise that an Order which fixes a price that has no relation to the profit of the trader, but the actual amount of money he may get whether it produces a profit or not, could not be interpreted to mean anything else except that a price must be charged——
I have your letter telling me to do that.
The Order was amended.
No, before you amended it.
The Order was repealed.
Before you amended it or repealed it you wrote to me yourself and told me to interpret it in that way.
The Deputy is either trying deliberately to confuse the House as to what we are discussing or else he is confused himself. I am not denying that the Deputy got a letter from my Department to that effect. I am not denying that that was a reasonable interpretation of the position. But I am saying that if this motion is passed, the motion that Deputies have proposed and are going to vote for, that Order is revoked and we get back to the position that the Deputy must charge the price for sugar which prevailed on the 26th August no matter what he paid for it. That is what Deputies are asking the House to do. That is the motion on which they want a free vote.
What is the date of the letter?
It does not matter.
It does. Nothing matters to you.
Does the Deputy appreciate what his motion is, what he is trying to do?
What is the date of the letter?
Is the Deputy not trying to revoke the Order? The effect of revoking the Order means that we get back to the August price.
Have you not already repudiated your own Order by stating to Deputy Dillon that you did not mean it to be carried out?
Somebody may understand Deputy Coburn, but I do not. I want Deputies to understand what they are voting upon. I know that as a rule they vote recklessly without understanding the issues, but this time they must understand. If they succeed by their vote in revoking the Order, they are putting every trader in the country in this position, that he must sell sugar to-morrow at the August price, no matter what he paid for it.
You have already revoked it yourself.
Was the price increase put on for the Sugar Company or the traders?
This Order relates to the retail price of sugar. The Deputy presumably read the Order before he brought in the motion to have it revoked.
Was the wholesale price not increased?
The same would apply to every wholesaler in the country.
And the Sugar Company.
They are not in it.
The effect of this motion, if passed, will be that there will be no sugar sold. If you pass this motion and fix the August price for sugar, it will not be possible to buy sugar at all to-morrow.
Now the cat is out of the bag.
Nobody is going to trade in sugar at a loss. Deputy Dillon may do it, but nobody else will do it. It is clear that the motion is impracticable. You cannot pass this motion. If you vote for this motion, you will be doing something so foolish that nobody will be impressed by it. Let us leave the operative part of the motion and come back to the other portion of it.
The definition which the Minister was trying to explain.
How much is the Sugar Company getting out of this?
To come to the portion of the motion which deals with an expression of opinion, that the Dáil disapproves of the increase in the price of sugar and instructs the Minister for Supplies to take immediate steps to have the price reduced, there is no good in the Dáil disapproving of the increase in the price of sugar. I regret the increase in the price of sugar much more than any of the hypocritical Deputies opposite who have spoken. Merely disapproving of the increase does not get rid of the causes of it. There were causes for it. If the Dáil passes the motion instructing me to take immediate steps to have the price reduced, I want them to understand that there is no step possible which can be taken to that end which does not involve a contribution from the revenue.
We could reduce the price of sugar in two ways only, either by subsidising it directly or by sacrificing revenue, and either course involves new taxation on something else. What are you proposing? Come on, you cannot shirk the question. I presume you considered that question before putting down these motions.
Is the Minister asking what taxation of other commodities is proposed in order to make up for his neglect to have an extra four months' supply of sugar in the country?
We will deal with the question of my neglect later on. I will deal fully with the circumstances of the introduction of this duty, but, at the moment, I want to deal with a position that you cannot alter. The position is, that you cannot reduce the price of sugar except by reducing the revenue of the State from sugar, or by subsidising sugar. You cannot do it any other way. There was no element of profit about it. I want the House to understand that the Irish Sugar Manufacturing Company, which has a monopoly of the importation of sugar, is making no profit. There is no question of profit. In so far as profit is allowed those traders dealing in the distribution of sugar, I want the House to understand that the margin allowed is a smaller margin than that allowed in Great Britain or Northern Ireland by the sugar control boards in these areas.
Give the figures.
I will give them later. Therefore, if we are to do what it is proposed the House should instruct me to do, and that is, to secure a reduction in the price of sugar, we have to tax something else instead. There may be someone who could seriously argue that it is better to tax something else.
The Deputy knows that that is not true.
I despair of telling the Deputy.
You may, because it is inexplicable.
If the Deputy would hold his tongue for half-an-hour he would understand something about this.
I understand it now.
It could be seriously argued, and, I am sure, it will be argued, that it is better to tax something else. I know that many Deputies in Opposition will agree with that. I know that Deputy Hughes, who was fulminating at the idea of tax on sugar, was at one time campaigning in this country to have a tax on sugar, not for the purpose of meeting a war emergency, but for the purpose of derating. As the Minister for Finance pointed out last week, I know that our predecessors taxed sugar repeatedly, even though now they say it is a most iniquitous thing to do, but for very many years they taxed it at a much higher rate.
What year?
In 1925, 1926 and 1927.
When we were paying so much for an Army that was unnecessary.
Do not take me as contending that the tax was inexcusable. It was a Deputy said that, not I. I do not expect the Deputy to be consistent.
The Minister is perfectly consistent.
I suggest that it is unwise when the Deputy was so flagrantly inconsistent.
The Minister is perfectly consistent in taxing sugar to pay for his mistakes in that way. It was taxed before to pay for his previous mistakes.
Some 12 months ago it became apparent to the Government that there was a danger of war.
You woke up then.
At one period last year a war appeared probable. That was during the month of September last year, but, nevertheless, looking ahead we saw that there was a danger of war. I know that it is easy for Deputies to come here and say that anyone would have known that war would start at 11 am on the 1st September, 1939. They know now, two months afterwards, what most Governments knew at the end of August, that there was a danger of war. We had no greater information than any other European Government, and I say without fear of contradiction, that we made more effective preparations against the curtailment of supplies of essential commodities than most European Governments, not excluding the United Kingdom.
What did you know on 20th August?
I will tell the Deputy in due course. We decided 12 months ago that it was necessary to lay in reasonable supplies of essential commodities. What in these circumstances would Deputies regard as reasonable supplies? We said six months' supply of wheat, and it was Deputies in the Party that is now criticising the Government for not having laid in greater supplies, that afterwards protested against the action of the Government in doing so.
That is absolutely untrue.
The laying in of supplies of wheat and sugar costs money. It cannot be done for nothing. If you invest £1,000,000 or £2,000,000 in stocks of that kind, someone has to pay interest on the money, someone has to pay the cost of storing the goods, and the cost of preventing them deteriorating. We did that with wheat, and it was the Fine Gael Party that protested strongly against it.
No.
They cannot live that down: it is on the records. Why did we get a six months' supply of wheat? We saw that it was desirable we should be in the position, no matter at what date war started, of having a sufficient supply of wheat to bring us up to the next year's harvest. In the case of wheat, it was not merely a question of having supplies of wheat plus flour, but we had to see that there would be sufficient supplies of wheat and flour to bring us to the next harvest, whether was started on 1st September, 1st February, or 1st April, so that our supply position would be secure.
The Minister overlooks the fact that wheat is a 12 months' crop and that six months' supply is no good.
The Deputy should sit down. If we purchased six months' supply of wheat and if we had six months' reserve of wheat and flour, we came to the next year's harvest. Three plus three, plus six, makes 12. I think we can now pass from that subject. The same thing applies in the case of sugar. We endeavoured to ensure that there would be sugar available to keep up normal supplies until the beginning of the next sugar campaign, and that, in the ordinary course of events, is 1st November following. In relation to these two commodities that was the general plan regarding reserves which we followed. It is true that towards the end of August it became clear that the danger of war was almost a certainty.
It is true that we placed contracts for about 25,000 tons of sugar, hoping that it would be delivered before war began. It was not delivered before war began and, on the day the war began, every sugar contract was cancelled. We were in the position that we intended to be in when the danger of war was no more than a danger and not an actuality, that we had available in this country on 1st September sufficient sugar to maintain normal supplies up to the end of October. There were three circumstances that might have interfered with the sugar position nevertheless, the first being any abnormal purchasing of sugar by any section of the community. If there was abnormal purchasing by a single section then, there was clearly going to be dislocation of supplies and our reserves would not be sufficient to keep normal needs met until 1st November. Alternatively, there was the danger that the factories would not start on 1st November, and that delay might arise through mechanical breakdown or, more particularly, through the possibility of labour trouble at the factories. We had labour trouble at the factories. The uncertainty and dislocation that arose, however, in connection with the distribution of sugar in September and October arose mainly out of the fact that, during the last week of August and the first week of September, there were abnormal purchases of sugar, instigated mainly by a number of largely displayed advertisements, inserted by one firm in Dublin, to the effect that this firm knew that supplies of sugar were going to be controlled and that people should get in their supplies. That is the advertisement that Deputy Norton was praising and boasting about. Who could have taken advantage of that offer? Would it have been the poor? No, it would only be the large institutions and wealthy people, who could buy sugar by the sack, who could take advantage of that. They were the people who could benefit by that, and not the poor. It was the poor who were left without their supplies as a result of that kind of thing.
The supplies would be in the country, anyway.
Yes, undoubtedly, and the statement I made here was to the effect that there were adequate supplies here.
Not after the statement made by the Minister.
I never made any statement that there were not adequate supplies, but it did become necessary to curtail the issue of supplies of sugar, and we curtailed it through the wholesalers. In every week, we issued to the wholesaler his normal supplies of sugar, but we had to take into account the abnormal withdrawals that had taken place during the last part of August and the beginning of September, and arrangements were made so that the same quantity would go out that would be necessary to meet the ordinary needs of the people. That quantity went out, and this allegation that supplies were held up waiting for the rise in price, is without foundation. Investigations have been made into this whole matter, and the last 100,000 tons went out at that particular time.
How much was supplied to the wholesalers?
I do not say that our investigations were 100 per cent. complete, but we had the matter investigated by means of machinery, which, I think, was quite satisfactory, as to whether there was any hoarding of sugar by the wholesalers, and the committee reported to me that they were satisfied that there was no hoarding by wholesalers.
And you refused to exercise the power of search.
I did not. Deputy Davin is speaking an untruth when he says that. Well, Sir, I withdraw that statement, since it is unparliamentary, although it has been used often enough in this House. The Deputy put a Parliamentary Question to me on that matter a few days ago, and what reply did he get?
Read it out.
Perhaps the Deputy will refer me to the page.
Yes; it is in column 1109, volume 77, of the Official Debates.
Deputy Davin said I refused to search premises.
I said that the Minister refused to take powers to search premises.
Oh, no; I understood the Deputy to say that I refused to search premises.
With all respect, Sir, I said that the Minister refused to take powers to search premises.
Well, the Deputy may qualify the statement he made, but it is still untrue. Here is the reply I gave to him. I said:
"Article 31 of the Emergency Powers Order, 1939, contains enabling provisions only, and an order would require to be made under that article before an inspection, for the purposes indicated by the Deputy, could be carried out. No such order has been made. If I am furnished with information that stocks have been accumulated for the purpose mentioned in the second part of the question, I will have the matter examined with a view to seeing what action should be taken."
Would the Minister please read on?
Very well. Deputy Davin then asked whether the Minister would consider the advisability of making such an order, even as a precautionary measure; and I said that it would be made if the need arose.
Yes.
Is that saying that I deliberately refused to take these powers of search?
I used certain words, and these words will be found in the Official Records of the House.
Well, I shall leave it at that. It is quite true that, if we had known that the war was going to start, we could have bought sugar in larger quantities. We did place contracts for 25,000 tons of sugar, which was to have been delivered by the 1st September, but which was not delivered by that date and the contracts were cancelled. We did not know for certain whether or not the war was going to start or when it would start, but we based our plans on having enough sugar to carry us over until the next campaign, and we had that sugar.
Deputies have spoken here as if it would have been possible for us to buy any quantity of sugar we thought desirable in the months preceding the war. We could not have done so. I have seen it stated in English trade journals that, even as far back as last May, the grocers there were rationing their customers, and that, as far back as May last, there was a scarcity of sugar, and the British Government were taking steps with regard to emergency stocks. I say that the position in regard to sugar here, instead of being as low as in the time of Cleopatra, or whatever Deputy Dillon said——
I was not speaking of sugar in that connection. I was speaking of wheat.
Well, the price of sugar in August was not the lowest ever recorded—I think that was the term used by Deputy Dillon—but was considerably higher—almost 50 per cent. higher—than it was, say, two years previously.
It was 8/4½d.
It was 8/7½d.
I think it was 8/4½d.
Well, as a matter of fact, I have the figures here. The highest and the lowest prices on 3rd January, 1939, were 7/10½d. and 7/10½d. respectively; on 1st February the highest and the lowest prices were 7/10½d. and 7/7½d. respectively; on 1st March the highest and lowest prices were 8/1½d. and 7/7½d.; on the 3rd April the figures were 10/- and 8/1½d. respectively; on the 3rd of May the figures were 10/6d. and 10/6d. respectively; on the 1st June the figures were 10/- and 9/-; on the 3rd July they were 10/- and 8/8½d., and on the 1st August the figures were 8/7½d. and 8/1½d. These were the prices of British sugar.
And 7/9d. for the November-December delivery?
You could have got no sugar for the November-December delivery. The price at which we can buy sugar now is 19/4d.
Is that the English price?
Yes.
Is it true that they offered to perform these pre-war contracts at 17/-?
No. Of course, I do not want to give details of contracts made with individual firms.
Were you not offered a contract price of 17/-?
That statement, as far as I know, is not true. As I have said, I cannot enter into the details of contracts made with individual firms, but that particular statement is not true.
Well, something like it is very true.
It is very easy for Deputies to talk about the Government having made a muddle about these war preparations. I say that, in relation to the supply of fertilisers, wheat, sugar, and so on, instead of making a muddle of things, we are in a better position than the people in Great Britain are; and not alone were we in a better position before the war started, but we are in a better position now.
Can you guarantee last year's supply to the farmers?
No, I cannot.
But the British Government can guarantee it to their farmers.
We can guarantee to do at least as well.
They have guaranteed last year's supply.
There is no good in going into the details of the position in regard to fertilisers, maize, wheat, or anything else, unless you go into the whole situation. The arrangements in regard to the supplies of our commodities, instead of breaking down, put us in a much stronger position than that in which the Government of the United Kingdom find themselves, and in a very much stronger position than that in which the Governments of most countries in Europe find themselves.
You will find that quoted from Cologne to-night.
Well, I do not mind who praises us.
Praise from any quarter would be welcome now, I suppose.
The Minister should be given a fair chance.
An allegation was made here, or it was certainly implied, that the Irish Sugar Company manipulated its supplies of sugar for the purpose of making excess profits. I think it was Deputy Morrissey who said that the Sugar Company was going to make £700,000 profit on this transaction.
Mr. Morrissey
May I explain. I did not make that statement on my own responsibility. I was quoting Deputy Corry.
I think that that was the most intelligent thing that Deputy Morrissey said. However, in making that statement, Deputy Morrissey was merely repeating a statement made previously by Deputy Mulcahy.
Mr. Morrissey
By Deputy Corry.
And Deputy Mulcahy.
That statement was made on information which, presumably, Deputy Corry has.
It was stated that the Sugar Company manipulated its supplies for the purpose of making excess profits, that they held back sugar which they could and should have sold in October to get the higher price in November. I know that there is a great deal of suspicion in the minds of traders throughout the country because these traders saw two events happen simultaneously—the increase in the price and the abundance of sugar available. These two events happened simultaneously, and these traders put a wrong interpretation on the association of these two events. They said that sugar was available because the price had gone up and that the Sugar Company and those dealing with sugar "cashed in" to make excess profits. There is another much more obvious explanation why these two events happened at the same time. I mentioned that we had on the 1st September enough sugar to keep us going until the beginning of the manufacturing campaign on the 1st November.
You were much more definite than that.
I stated here then what I am stating now.
You said there was no fear of a shortage, without mentioning a date.
And there was no fear of a shortage if normal deliveries could have been kept up.
The Minister's statement was definite.
I could have come in here on the 1st September and made a panic speech about tea, sugar, and fertilisers. I could have added to the uneasiness in the public mind and complicated the situation still more. I stated here, when opening my remarks in September, that it was desirable that any statement I made should be a reassuring statement and that I should avoid dealing with any commodity in relation to which I could not make a reassuring statement. It was clearly in the public interest that the idea should be got into the minds of the people that, if there were no panic buying of sugar, there would be no scarcity because there were ample supplies available to keep us going to the 1st November.
They got it into their heads——
Deputies should remember that the Minister is in possession.
There was no increase in price until the 1st November. During the months of September and October we were selling imported sugar exclusively. We were selling that sugar at a loss. It could not be sold at 3d. indefinitely. On the 27th September the price of sugar went up to 4½d. in Northern Ireland and on the 27th September it went up to 4½d. in Great Britain. We kept it at 3d. per lb. until the 1st November and, on the 1st November, the price went up and the campaign opened simultaneously. We had an abundant supply of sugar not because it was held up for the increase of price but because the factories had come into production on that date.
Might I inform the Minister that at the railway station in Longford several tons of sugar were waiting for a fortnight before the 1st November. Why was it held there and the people wanting it unless it was waiting for the price to go up? It was held at the station.
Why did the Deputy wait until now to reveal that fact, if it is a fact?
Because he thought there was a super-abundance of sugar, according to the Minister's statement.
The Deputy must permit the Minister to make his own speech.
If it is true, it should have been brought to the notice of the Department of Supplies. Personally, I do not believe it.
I wish to thank the Minister for that remark.
I am quite certain that the Deputy got that information from some person. I do not think he says he saw the sacks himself.
I did.
And you opened them to see if there was sugar in them?
That shows the tactics which the Government are willing to descend to.
Three sacks of sugar could easily have become three tons of sugar by the time the story travelled from one person to another. I doubt if any quantity of sugar was held up at any railway station during the last fortnight in October. The reason why the increase of price and the abundance of supplies coincided is that which I have given. We decided on the increase of price to operate from the 1st November and on the 1st November, the four Irish factories came into production. They are now producing 7,000 tons of sugar per week against a normal weekly requirement of about 2,000 tons, so that there is an abundance of sugar—more than sufficient to meet our requirements, no matter how much we consume—pouring out each week from these factories. We have made contracts—firm contracts—to procure from abroad the quantity of sugar necessary to supplement the output of our Irish factories and keep the supply up until the 1st November of next year. We have, in fact, made contracts more than sufficient to keep up the supply to the 1st November, so that there will be a supply in hand in case of any contingency such as a mechanical breakdown at the factories or a labour dispute or some other difficulty to prevent production beginning in the normal way. That sugar we have purchased could not be sold at 4½d. per lb. That is the point Deputies have missed. If we were solely depending on imported sugar and if there were no Irish factories in production, if we were buying sugar in the world's markets for consumption here, the necessary increase in price would be substantially more.
19/4 a bag.
I am assuming the same rate of duty to be in operation. It is, however, possible to maintain the price at the present level over the whole of the year both in respect of imported sugar and home-produced sugar by reason of the fact that that price gives us a margin on the home-produced sugar, a margin which, however, will be fully absorbed by the increased cost of the imported sugar. The suggestion that the increased price is going to provide increased profits for anybody is——
What about the sugar imported at a low price and sold at the increased price?
The imported sugar sold this year was sold at a loss.
The whole lot?
The whole of it. The Sugar Company was losing by selling that sugar at 3d. per lb.
The Minister knows that that is not true.
The Deputy should not say that.
The Minister may not be charged with telling a deliberate untruth. That allegation must be withdrawn.
I will not withdraw the remark.
Then the Deputy will withdraw from the House.
The Deputy then withdrew.
Ordinarily, I would expect a Deputy to take my word, but in a case of this kind a simple sum in arithmetic will convince Deputies that it is so. They can add 8/7½ to the customs duty—15/6, or whatever it is— and find out what the Sugar Company paid for the sugar. They can calculate for themselves whether that sugar could be sold at a profit at the price that was prevailing in August last. It could not have been done. It was not done. The imported sugar of next year will not be sold at a profit but at 4½d. a lb. We decided that it would be better policy to maintain a level price over the whole year than to have a low price maintained artificially for a time and then jump suddenly by much more than 1½d., as it would have been necessary to do in June or July of next year.
Will the Minister say what price is being paid for the raw sugar?
I will not.
That is frankness, anyway. You ordered the Sugar Company to put up the price.
The statement was made here that an increase in the price of sugar had increased the price of other commodities. That is so, to some extent; but it would be false to get the idea that the increase in the price of other commodities was due solely to the increase in the price of sugar. Take the case of condensed milk, mentioned by Deputy Byrne. There has been an increase of ½d. a tin, but that is due to a number of increased costs falling on the Condensed Milk Company; not merely to the increased price of sugar, but to the increased price of tins and of other materials required by the company. Yet we are still maintaining the price for condensed milk lower than the corresponding price in Northern Ireland or Great Britain.
I do not know if there are any other matters referred to with which I have not dealt. I am sorry that we have had to deal with this one in such a controversial atmosphere. Perhaps it is my particular style of oratory which is responsible for that, but in any event I understand the facts and know it is not possible to pass this motion. First of all, the price of sugar would be decreased. We can only decrease the price of sugar by subsidising from the Exchequer. That may be, in the minds of Deputies, a practical course, having regard to the price at which we can buy sugar from abroad. The present price of sugar is not yielding any additional profit to anybody. It is the same price as that which prevails in Northern Ireland or Great Britain and we cannot reasonably expect to buy sugar cheaper than they can buy it. Having regard to that, there can be no diminution in the price. Therefore, to pass a resolution instructing the Minister to bring about a diminution in price is asking for something that is impossible. If you go further and do what the motion asks and get the Minister to revoke the order which releases sugar from the stand-still price order, you are creating an impossible situation for him. In fact, there would not be any sugar at all available in the country.
The purpose of this motion is perfectly clear to everybody. The Government has put 14/- a cwt. on sugar and we are asking them to take it off. That is the sole purpose of this proposal and it is a mistake for Deputies to try to saddle on the wholesaler and the shopkeeper the responsibility for the increased price. That responsibility is undivided and rests upon one man—the Minister of the Government responsible for putting 14/- on to the price. Now, the Minister says that if we pass this it would be impossible to carry on. If you pass this resolution, it will take 6d. a ¼-st. off the price of sugar and it will do nothing else. It will not shake the security of the State, it will not embarrass the Government, it will not withhold from them revenue without which they cannot carry on. It will simply protect the working man's wife, the poor individual's wife in this country, from the necessity of reducing the amount of sugar which she is able to afford for her family. That is all the resolution asks. The Minister tells us that the price he is paying for British sugar at the present time is 19/4. May I trouble the Minister to tell us this: are there not adequate supplies—an exportable surplus—of refined sugar in Britain to give us 100,000 tons a year if we want it?
I am quite certain that that is not so and, so far as I have been able to ascertain, the position in Great Britain is that their difficulty is much greater than ours.
My information, on the other hand, is that there is a two years' full supply in store in Great Britain.
Nonsense.
My information may be wrong. Deputies in the House can test it. It is as easy as falling off a log. My information is that there is a two years' supply of sugar in Great Britain. Further, since the Great War of 1914-18, Great Britain, instead of being an importing country for refined sugar, has become an exporting country to the tune of nearly 1,000,000 tons a year. Is not that so? Is not England a great exporting country in regard to refined sugar, most of which goes to the Scandinavian States? They exported to the Baltic, but stopped that trade the moment the war began.
They imported raw sugar and refined it.
Of course. They imported the raw sugar—though they grew some beet as well—and exported the bulk of their supplies to Scandinavia, the Baltic, and Éire. At the commencement of war they stopped sending to the Baltic States, and are offering it to us at 19/4. I submit to the Minister that what happened in regard to pre-war contracts was that there was 2,500 tons of sugar concerned at approximately 8/- a cwt. when the British emergency control was introduced, and the sugar refining industry of Great Britain was absorbed into the Food Control Board. The Minister got a notice that all contracts would be cancelled unless he could accept at 17/- a ton.
No, that is not so.
Was not the Minister offered it at 17/- or 19/4d.?
No; all sugar contracts were cancelled.
Was not the Minister offered——
No; there was no question of it.
Dozens of other countries covered by the sugar combine in Great Britain, whose contracts were cancelled on the outbreak of war, were told, when the cancellation order came, if they wished to take delivery of the whole of their contracts at 17/- they could do so, but that if they could not agree to do that the whole transaction was off. At any rate, the Minister tells us now that he can get sugar at 19/4d.
We have not got it.
No, but can get it.
Not in unlimited quantities.
In any case, in considerable quantities. Now, 19/4 is 2d. a lb., plus an infinitesimal fraction (18/8 is 2d. a lb.); that is what sugar is costing the Minister. The difference between 2d. and 4½d. or 5d.—as is being charged in many parts of the country—is, according to the Minister, a new source of revenue to the Government of one kind or another, for it means that the shopkeeper gets practically no profit.
There are usually other charges.
The other charges are microscopic on a lb. of sugar. On the sugar which the Minister tells us he is importing, there is 2d. that he has to pay the man from whom he buys it, and 3d. that he pays into the Treasury of this State. All we are asking is: Do not levy 150 per cent. tax on the foodstuff of the very poor. Is that a revolutionary or an irresponsible request?
The Deputy is quite entitled to urge that one tax be taken off, but would he suggest where it is to be put on?
Not at all. He does not suggest the substitution of one tax for another. He does not ask the Minister to increase the gap in the revenue, but has suggested on divers occasions how to fill that gap. I have asked the Minister to blow up the alcohol factories.
That is not all.
That is only the beginning of the more obvious economies that occur to anybody. Blow up the alcohol factories.
That will not save a penny.
It will save 2d. a gallon on the entire consumption of petrol for the Government and that can be brought into revenue.
The question before the House is not a question of revenue but of the price of sugar. The two questions should be kept separate.
I accept the ruling without demur, but the House will note well that the Minister challenges me to say, if 3d. per lb. is knocked off sugar, where else he is to get it. When I am about to tell him, the Chair reminds me, perfectly properly, that that matter is more appropriately to be discussed on the Second Stage or Committee Stage of the Finance Bill. And it will be discussed. Do not be a bit uneasy, but let not this House be deluded by the representation of the Minister that the price of foreign sugar is such that he must get 4½d. or 5d. a lb. for it when sold in this country. The price of foreign refined sugar delivered on the quay is 2d. per lb. The price delivered in the houses of the poor of this city is 4½d. or 5d. It is that gap which we want to narrow.
I want the Deputy to understand that the price I quoted is not a c.i.f. price at all.
What price?
The 19/4.
Where is it?
It is not a c.i.f. price.
Is there 2/4 excise duty in that 19/4?
No, there is no excise duty.
Where is the sugar at 19/4?
It represents the price at which sugar can be bought elsewhere, but if the Deputy wants to know the price at which it could be delivered here, it is different altogether.
I fully appreciate the Minister's difficulty. I do not expect him to carry c.i.f., f.o.b., or f.o.q. prices with him all the time, but if he wants to interrupt me and to say technologically across the floor of the House that it is not a c.i.f. price, he should tell me what it is. For the information of the House, a c.i.f. price is the price of an article, delivered in the hold of a ship at Dublin quay.
It is more than that. It is the price over the quay wall.
My experience has been that when I have bought c.i.f., I have had to pay unloading charges. The Deputy is an older hand at the game and he may be able to do a bit of a wangle at the Port of Dublin, but I cannot. I have to pay to get it out of the hold. But if this price is not a c.i.f. price, where is the sugar? There is no use in telling me that sugar is 19/4, because if it is 19/4 in Honolulu, it means a very different price from 19/4 in Liverpool. We ordinarily take the refined crystal sugar price as being c.i.f. Dublin or f.o.b. Liverpool, but do not make the thing more complicated than it is. While the Minister consults his papers, let us assume that the price is 19/4, as the Minister told us, in the hold, over the edge of the quay, or somewhere down at the North Wall, or on the River Liffey. That represents 2d. a lb. and the housewife here is paying 4½d. or 5d. a lb. Why complicate the issue? Why bring in the wholesaler, the retailer and that villain of the piece or this villain of the piece? There is only one villain of the piece and he is the man who is making 3d. on the sugar that cost 2d.
Now, that is not all. If sugar is costing 19/4 to-day, it is because the Ministry of Supplies, which was set up as a sub-department of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, under Mr. Lemass, who was Minister for Industry and Commerce, and is now Minister for Supplies, nine months ago, failed to buy sugar at an average price of 8/-, when unlimited supplies were available. Now, remember that sugar at 8/- is sugar at a 1d. a lb., and the difference between a 1d. and 4½ a lb. is 3½d. If the Minister for Supplies had been doing his job for the last 12 months, the people of this country, instead of being called on to pay 4½d. or 5d., could have been sold sugar at 1d. There has always been a tax on sugar, but the tendency of every Government in this country and in Great Britain has been to bring down the tax if the original price of sugar tended to rise. The tendency of this Government is that the more the price of sugar rises, the bigger the tax they put on it, quite forgetting that if you impose both burdens at the one time, you break the back of those who bear it.
I listened with admiration, I must say, to the Minister because his worst enemy must admit that he is a doughty and resourceful fighter. I heard him perform gymnastics, when Deputy Belton tripped him over wheat, which would do credit to an acrobat. He said he had a six months' supply. Deputy Belton pointed out to him that it was a 12 months' crop, and, in a flash, he thought of three months' flour and three months' something else and said: "Three and three and six make 12. We are at one. Let us drop that subject", and he went on to the next. He thought of that while on his feet.
In this debate?
Yes, I do not blame the Chair for being amazed.
I do not see Deputy Belton's name recorded for having participated in this debate.
No, but he launched an interjection which put the Minister out of step; but the Minister just twinkled for a moment, and was back in step like a bird.
It was just one of the interruptions?
Yes, but I confess that it did not knock a feather out of the Minister. We have all listened to the Minister, and, mind you, one gets bemused listening to him because he has such a facile way of completely disregarding the record that he even begins to persuade one that one must have read the Official Report wrongly or sideways. I cannot come back to column 331, volume 77, No.2 of the Official Debates too frequently. The Minister for Supplies was speaking on 27th September when everybody was inquiring about the position of sugar, and saying:
"Let us ration it at once. We are all ready to make sacrifices in order to see that the poor get their fair share of sugar. Do not let the big fellow get away with it all, so that the poor will be denied sugar for the reason that they cannot afford to pay for it."
The Minister says:
"Do not worry. There is no possibility that we can see of any shortage of sugar."
Can any Deputy believe that it was the man who used those words on 27th September who was talking here to-night? That is not all. He looked around upon us, benevolently, and felt that he had not quite soothed us all down sufficiently, and, at column 332, he returns to the charge and says:
"There is no difficulty to be anticipated at all concerning sugar."
We all sat back and said: "Well, really, to give the devil his due, he has done a good job this time. He has provided us with an ample stock of sugar." And everybody was consoled in mind, and learned back. Within six weeks, the entire supply of sugar had gone up the spout, and there was no sugar at all in the country. The Minister can talk until the cows come home, but either he was telling the truth then, or he is telling the truth now. He cannot have been telling the truth on both occasions.
Did it ever strike the Deputy that I was?
No.
Is there a scarcity of sugar?
Mr. Morrissey
Not since the extra price went on.
There is a scarcity of the sugar the Minister was talking about on 27th September, which was 3½d. sugar, but there is an abundance of the 5d. sugar. That was not the sugar the Minister was talking about, and that is the whole gravamen of our complaint, that we were all talking about 3½d. sugar on 27th September, and we spent the last three days talking about, and paying for, 5d. sugar since the Minister put his claws on it. What is all this talk about the 7/- additional price which the Minister has sanctioned on sugar being required to pay the cost of foreign sugar which he is going to bring in? Either that statement is true, or it is not true. I deliberately submit to the Minister that the statement is not true. I submit to the Minister that the reason the price of sugar has been increased by 7/- per cwt., over and above the ¾d. excise duty put upon it, is that the Government feel that, at present prices, they cannot induce farmers to grow beet in preference to producing live stock, and that they intend to give to the beet growers an increase in the price of beet equivalent to 7/- per cwt. on the price of sugar.
I say most definitely that the increase in the price of sugar had nothing whatever to do with the price of beet, and that it was necessitated solely by the cost of imported sugar.
If the Minister pledges his solemn word of honour on any matter to me in this House, I accept it without reserve, but may I say that what the Minister says to me has utterly astonished me? Perhaps I did not make myself clear. I felt that the Government was making this advance now having in anticipation the purpose of offering a higher price for beet so as to induce farmers to grow more next year. The Minister says that is not true. Very well, I depart from it at once but I am utterly astonished at that statement. May I submit to the Minister that the provision of 7/- per cwt. is out of all proportion to the possible charge that can fall on the Beet Sugar Company for any foreign sugar they may require to import in the coming year? That seems to me as clear as crystal. I put it to the Minister that, even amongst the Deputies of his own Party, the view is pretty generally expressed that it would be infinitely preferable to ration us on sugar than to pursue the course he has now adopted. The net effect of raising the price of sugar to 5d. is savagely to ration the very poor and to leave us virtually unrationed altogether. We can afford to buy all the sugar we ordinarily consume out of the incomes that all of us enjoy, even if we have nothing but our Parliamentary allowance of £480 a year, but the person who is depending on an income of 27/- a week is forced, by the urge of inability to pay, to reduce the intake of sugar into her house.
I put it to the House that in any normal rationing scheme the proper course to take would be to allow every adult person a certain modicum of sugar, and to provide that in the house of a married couple where there are a number of small children, a sufficient supply would be made available for them so that if a woman had ten children, say, a labourer's wife, she would get a larger allowance of sugar than the occupant of a mansion with two children. I am not suggesting for a single moment that the Minister for Supplies is a hard-hearted, flinty servitor of bankers. Silly allegations of that kind are not made from this side of the House. I think he has made a perfectly understandable mistake, but a deplorable mistake. In an endeavour to over-simplify the procedure governing the distribution of sugar, he has really evolved a procedure of savagely rationing the poor and imposing no restriction on the consumption of the rich at all. The Minister will remember —and I ask the House to note this— that on the first day when this matter was raised, I asked the Minister to ration strictly coal, flour, sugar, bacon and Indian meal. That is reported in column 293, Volume 77, No. 2. The Minister said that he could not ration sugar, that it would cost £100,000 per annum. What does this plan cost? Fourteen shillings per cwt. on sugar costs £1,400,000 per annum. My modest scheme designed to secure equal supplies of sugar for all——
How would a rationing scheme reduce the price?
Because with the Minister's existing stock an adequate rationing scheme would have delivered us from the necessity of purchasing any foreign sugar at all.
There would be a 40 per cent. cut.
Is it not infinitely better to cut my allowance and the allowance of people like me, by 40 per cent. than to leave me with an abundant supply while the poor woman who cannot afford to pay the price is cut by 80 per cent.? Surely it is much better to impose a substantial sacrifice on everybody than to leave certain sections with abundant supplies and to strip the poorest, who have such a modest supply of essential nutriment, of almost their entire supply? My scheme, which would give an equal supply all round, would cost only 1/14th of the Minister's scheme.
What about the loss in the normal revenue from sugar if you cut consumption?
The Minister has put up the price by 1½d. per lb.
The Deputy said it would cost only £100,000. It would cost the State much more than that.
It is extremely difficult to get the Minister to face a very simple proposition. If the Minister found that the cost of supplying sugar from the Irish beet sugar factories became intolerable, as the result of reduced consumption, he could switch over completely to foreign sugar. Instead of supplying sugar from the beet sugar factories, which, as the Minister knows, results in a production cost at the present time of 23/6 less 1/2, or 22/4, the Minister could collect for himself 3/- or 4/- revenue on all sugar consumed in this country by switching over entirely to English sugar. He could suspend the manufacture of beet sugar in this country for the duration of the war.
The Deputy cannot have it both ways. We pay the foreign price, do we not?
Yes, 19/4.
If we switch over from Irish sugar, we lose revenue.
If the Minister says that it is intolerable to switch over to foreign sugar and to suspend the beet sugar experiment for the duration of the war——
Yes.
Well, I say if I am to choose between going in to a woman and saying to her "Ma'am, your children are hungry but they have got to go hungrier still" and going in to a farmer and saying: "Look, you have been growing beet but you have got to change over to wheat, barley or oats for the duration of the war rather than impose more hunger on your poorer neighbour", I should certainly say to that farmer: "I expect you——
You are a bigger idiot even than I thought you were.
The Deputy must withdraw that remark.
I withdraw.
Such language is not Parliamentary.
What can you expect? I believe the Minister would not have any serious difficulty in getting that quantity of sugar from Great Britain. I do not think the Minister can have made inquiries.
I understand the situation very fully.
I do not want to give the Minister any short answer but certainly his actions up to now are not evidential of that fact.
You would have very considerable difficulty in getting that quantity of sugar anywhere.
I do not think the difficulty would be insuperable and I can assure the Minister that substantial as the difficulty might be, it could not compare with the difficulties of the wife of a man earning 25/- a week in trying to get money to buy sugar at the present price.
The Deputy's solution is to pay more and to have less.
I say that the cost of sugar to the people of this country would be substantially less, and the Minister knows that. I put it to the Minister that that plan should be considered. I put it to the House that the purpose of this motion is to compel the Minister to take off sugar the 14/- that he put on it and nothing else. I say that that is a perfectly practicable thing without involving the Government in any serious embarrassment at the present moment. It is a perfectly practicable thing, and it is a just thing. It is a thing that ought to be done without any delay.
I think that most of the Minister's own colleagues will feel that the case he made here to-day in his own defence was, to say the least of it, unconvincing. He began in an extremely truculent mood and wound up like a cooing dove, telling us that if we found his mood and manner trying, he regretted it. I have tried to take him at his face value in the concluding portion of his speech, but I cannot conceal from the House that I believe the Minister was, to say the least of it, disingenuous in much that he told us here to-day. I do not think that he tried honestly to give the House a full and clear picture of what the true situation is. I believe that he has tried to cover up the situation in such a cloud of confusion that nobody will be able to unravel the facts.
The facts are three, and they cannot be too often repeated. In the first place there was a shortage of sugar, due to the fact, and to no other fact, that the Minister did not buy in time. The extra 14/- a cwt. on sugar—6d. on the quarter stone—is not due to the shopkeeper, and is not due to the wholesale dealer, but is due solely and exclusively to the Minister for Supplies and Comhlucht Siúicre Eireann in making that addition to the price of sugar. The 14/- consists, as to one-half, of taxation which goes direct to the revenue. The other half goes, the Minister says, to pay the excess cost of foreign sugar. I do not believe that that statement can stand, because 7/- per cwt. on sugar represents £700,000 per annum. I do not believe that the Ministry is going to be involved in that additional cost in order to purchase sugar in Great Britain, and the Minister, I believe, knows that himself. His purchases are not going to cost him £700,000, and that is what 7/- will yield. He is not going to buy £700,000 worth of sugar in Great Britain.
In the ordinary course we would require some 50,000 tons to supplement our own production, and we may have to buy more if we can get it.
Does the Minister deny that he said here that two-thirds of the sugar consumed in this country was home-produced sugar?
It is impossible to say what the actual production of sugar is going to be in any campaign until the campaign is over, because it depends upon what the yield per acre will be, and on the sugar content of the beet. We expect that this year we will get perhaps 60 per cent. Of our requirements.
The Minister did give the figure of two-thirds twice in the House.
There have been years in which we got that. I have always said that it was impossible to say what the figure would be until the campaign was over.
The Minister says that he wants £700,000 to pay the excess cost on 50,000 tons of foreign sugar. Is that not so? This sum of £700,000 will give £14 a ton excess cost, but the Minister himself has told us that the increase has been from 8/- to 19/-
No. I said 8/- a ton, and that the Sugar Company were selling imported sugar at less.
Although it was only costing you a penny. I say that on reflection, and further investigation, the Minister will find that that £700,000 is in excess of any conceivable requirements for the payment of any excess moneys on the purchases of foreign sugar.
With regard to the figure of 19/4, the price quoted by the wholesalers of England, outside the English duty, is 19/4. That is where I got that figure.
What is the English duty, or is this 19/4 the net price?
It does not follow that we can get it at that price, but even if we could, it would be necessary to bring it over here.
That is an interesting figure. I think the Minister will be astonished to discover that if he goes to the British Food Controller he will be able to get it 2/4 cheaper. There is, so far as I know, an exportable surplus of 1,000,000 tons of refined sugar in Great Britain. Does anybody imagine that Great Britain is going to stop all her exports? She could not live for three months without some kind of exports, and she is going to try to export her finished products to this country, and to every other country with which she can do trade.
That is like the two years' supply of wheat the Deputy spoke of.
I would advise the Minister to look up The Economist in which he will find the whole thing worked out. Great Britain has an exportable surplus of 1,000,000 tons of refined sugar. Before the Great War of 1914-18 she was a large importer of sugar. The Minister will find the exact position of Great Britain in relation to refined sugar worked out in The Economist. I cannot see Great Britain refusing to export her finished products. All her industries are practically supplied by imported raw materials, and in order to keep herself afloat she will have to export her finished products in order to get currency to pay her way. I think he may find that sugar is perhaps cheaper there than he says. For these reasons I have no hesitation in asking the House to adopt these resolutions in the absolute confidence that they will create no difficulty in the country. There is no shopkeeper in the country who will not be delighted to bear whatever small loss he expects on the current stocks of sugar that he carries if he gets the assurance that the result of his doing so will be a permanent reduction in the price of sugar by 1½d. or 1d. These are the facts of the case. I urge the House to adopt these resolutions and to insist on this reform being given effect to.
There is one thing, at all events, that is very clear so far as this sugar question is concerned, and it is that if the Government and people of this country had been foolish enough to act on the advice tendered to them on former occasions by Deputy Dillon to close down the sugar factories, the people would now find themselves in the position of having to pay £1,700,000 more for their sugar this year, unless they adopted Deputy Dillon's plan and put in a couple of years' stores of sugar. If the figures which we have been given here are correct, these are the only conclusions to which we can come. The fault I have found with this whole question is that Deputy Dillon now gets up here and pretends and, in fact, tries to put a face on it, that if the beet factories were not working, and if, in fact, they were closed down during the coming year, sugar would be cheaper to the poor, despite the fact that in order to import 40,000 tons of sugar the public of this country have to pay £700,000 more than what they give to the farmers for producing 60,000 tons of it. These are facts that cannot be controverted by anybody. If there is anything that completely stands over and helps out or justifies the policy of self-sufficiency in this country, it is that ¾d. per lb. on imported sugar to-day.
Deputy Dillon talks of rationing. Now, if Deputy Dillon's plan were put into operation during the coming year we would probably have the same position as we had here in 1918, when the price of sugar was £152 a ton, and when the poor man bought his lb. of sugar, and when, if he got it at all, he had to pay 1/2½d. per lb. for it. I am sure at that price Deputy Dillon would still have plenty of sugar, but I would not like to see the poor fellow on the dole or the agricultural labourer at 27/- a week buying his half-stone of sugar at 1/2½d. a lb. Deputy Dillon, of course, would tell him that he is all right, and he would tell the farmer not to grow any more beet. That would have been the position; there is no denying it. Let us examine the case to-day. We have come to this position because both the Sugar Company and the others concerned in it refused last February, March and April to take the advice of the farmers' representatives of this country. During those three months when negotiations were going on in reference to the price of beet, it was clearly pointed out that if the farmers were to produce the full acreage of beet to supply the country's needs, they would have to get one-eighth of a penny more for their sugar. Now that was not done, and as a result of that shortsightedness on the part of the Sugar Company—I, will not call it any stronger name—the people of this country now have to pay £700,000. That one-eighth of a penny would mean that the farmers of this country who grew beet would have got £116,000 for producing the full supply of beet to meet all our sugar requirements. Now, instead of giving £116,000 more to the farmers, the Sugar Company think it better to give £700,000 to the foreigner. That is putting the matter in a nutshell. The Sugar Company went further, and I want Deputies to remember this, that the company during the ten days netted £40,000 out of that 1½d. per lb. on sugar. That was for the 10 days prior to the Minister coming in and putting on the ¾d. per lb. tax.
On whose advice?
During those ten days the price was 4½d. a lb. and, as I say, the Sugar Company netted between £40,000 and £42,000 extra.
Is the Deputy speaking for or against the motion?
Deputy Hannigan will not speak at all, because he does not know which way he had better vote. The position is as I have stated it, and there is no denying it.
The Minister denied that. He said nobody made anything out of the rise in the price of sugar.
I am accepting the Minister's word. He stated that the extra ¾d. is going to go to meet the cost incurred on imported sugar. Very well. There must be brought in 40,000 tons. And that 40,000 tons is going to cost the people £700,000 more than if the farmers of this country grew the beet for the making of the sugar for all our requirements. Still Deputy Dillon advises the closing down of the beet factories. No wonder I was tempted to use an unparliamentary word a while ago.
And the Deputy yielded to temptation.
The Sugar Company are supposed to be responsible people, people who are entrusted with the monopoly of an essential supply for the people of this country. First of all that company made the mistake, and the very bitter mistake, of not providing for the supply of that article at home, when it could be got there, and leaving the money in our own country. But instead of adopting a policy of that kind they go along, penny-wise and pound-foolish as they have been proved to be, and they leave this country short of 40,000 tons of sugar. On top of that and with the knowledge before them last April that this country was going to be 40,000 tons of sugar short they allowed themselves from that day until Hitler fired the first shot to proceed without making provision of any kind to ensure an adequate supply of sugar for the people. That is my charge against the Sugar Company and it is a charge that I would like to see answered. In my opinion any body of people who have been guilty of that slackness is not fit to be trusted any further, and I would say that the directors of that company should go. They got charge of an essential commodity for the people of this country and they did nothing. The result is that the people have to pay £700,000 for their mistake.
Deputy Morrissey said a while ago that there was something wrong about this £700,000. Well the consumption of sugar in this country is roughly about 100,000 tons. The price has gone up by 1½d. a lb. of which ¾d. is a tax, to which I have no objection. I do not care if they put a tax of 1/- a lb. on sugar if that tax is necessary in order to provide the social services of this country; if the Government consider it necessary to tax any article I am not going to growl. What I do object to is ¾d. a lb. on sugar to pay for the mismanagement and neglect of a body of people who were entrusted with a monopoly in this country. It is to that sort of thing I object. It would be bad enough if the public had to pay ¾d. a lb. on foreign sugar coming in; then they would realise the foolishness of Deputy Dillon's argument. But that is not what has been done.
The ¾d. is tacked on to the poor old farmers' sugar along with the rest. The 60,000 tons of sugar that the farmers are providing at the price that was fixed by an arbitration board, allowing for all manufacturing costs, so that it could be sold at 3d. per lb., now has ¾d. tacked on to it by the Sugar Company in order to provide the extra cost of the foreign sugar. That is, to my mind, a mistake. In my opinion, what should be done is to give out the sugar that they are getting from the farmers at present at the price fixed by the arbitrator, to enable that sugar to be delivered to the public at 3d. per lb. That sugar should be given out to the public at 3d. per lb., plus whatever tax is required, and when it comes to the foreign sugar let them put on whatever extra amount the foreign sugar is costing, and let the public see that the policy of having home-grown sugar is working out as the best policy for them, that it is working out as the safest policy for them, and that there is not going to be any further blundering like the blundering we had from Deputy Dillon here to-night. We should close down the beet factories and import all our sugar. I take it that the price of sugar is not going to go down while the war is on. If 40,000 tons of sugar are going to cost £700,000 more at present than it would cost the farmer here to produce it, what in the name of heaven will be the price of sugar next year?
It is not going to go up again.
I say what would be the price if Deputy Dillon's advice were taken and the beet factories were closed down so that we had to import all our sugar? If Hitler and his submarines were going fairly well, I am sure the price of sugar would not be reduced and the cost of bringing it in here would not be going down. We had a little argument in that line with another very wise gentleman over at Guinness' a short time ago, and it did not take long to convince him that he was not going to get too much barley imported this year. That, to my mind, is the position. I cannot for the life of me see any justification for it, but I suppose the people will have to pay for the blunder. Undoubtedly the people are paying for the blunder. They are paying for the mistake, and for the ramp that was carried on in this country last year—at the time when the farmers were looking for a fair price for their beet—by Deputy Dillon on one side and a few misguided gentlemen here on this side, that the farmers were endeavouring to rob the country.
Mr. Morrissey
Who were the misguided gentlemen on your side?
Deputy Morrissey, still stands on the one platform with the Deputy who advocated the closing down of the beet factory. Deputy Morrissey is still a silent advocate of the closing down of the beet factory. If he is not, he should stand up and repudiate Deputy Dillon immediately.
Mr. Morrissey
Deputy Corry is justifying Deputy Dillon.
The trouble is that, like the people in the Tower of Babel, you talk in divers tongues. One of you is preaching one doctrine while another preaches a different one.
That is the hit of the season.
That applies to the other side, too, apparently.
We had another statement here from the Minister for Supplies—one which I should be very anxious to hear explained—and that is that he is importing more sugar even than is required. We want to know what that is for? We want to know whether that is the big stick that is going to be worked against the farmers for the next month or two? We are very anxious to know that. Three-farthings on sugar is 12/9 on beet, and whereas the Sugar Company could have got the full 12 months' supplies for 3/7 on beet last April, they are paying 21/9 now. However, we will be discussing the division of that 21/9 with the Sugar Company in a few days. I think since they are getting 21/9 this year the farmer will have to get it next year. I think that would be a very fair division.
What I object to particularly in this matter is that there are Deputies who still consider that it is better to make no provision here at home for the supply of essential articles, particularly essential articles of food, and who are evidently quite satisfied to follow Deputy Dillon's advice. I hope that, in future, when essential supplies are required in this country the advice of agriculturists will be taken, if it is an agricultural commodity that is required, and that we will not have the prices fixed, as they were fixed last year, by university professors and hobby farmers. If the farmers of this country are going to provide essential commodities for the people of this country during a time of crisis, it is only just that some fair price should be paid for that essential commodity. We were warned——
Other Deputies were informed that they may not discuss the price that the farmers are getting for beet.
Put down a motion about it.
We do not want any interference from Deputies who are not getting their livelihood from farming.
It is not so much interference as advice.
The farmers can do their own business without the help of the Great Southern Railway or the buckshee lawyers. We can do our own business without any interference.
You did not do it very well last year.
We consider we did a lot better than you did. The main trouble that I see in regard to this matter is that it is starting the vicious circle we heard so much about. At the start of this war, when the farmers, realising the position that they were going to be placed in during the coming 12 months, in having to pay far more for their supplies, such as manures and essential commodities, than they had budgeted for, looked for a small increase in the price of wheat, we were asked were the farmers going to start a vicious circle. What was refused to the farmers on 7th September and 14th September is freely given to the industrialists to-day. The industrialists can apparently walk in and take £700,000 out of the pockets of the public, but the farmer dare not take 700 pence or he will be charged with attempting to inflate prices.
It is time that kind of thing stopped in this country. That is one of the objections I have to this. I hope that when the question of further supplies of sugar for this country is being discussed in the near future we will hear less of this thing, and if there is any portion of the £700,000 making provision for an implement or a big stick to be used in order to beat down prices below an economic level for the farming community, the sooner that game is stopped the better for everybody concerned, because they will find that the agricultural community can look after their interests, seeing that the industrialists are going to be looked after here.
I wish to intervene for a few moments in order to correct a misstatement made in this House last night by an important Minister in reference to the price of sugar. The publication of that statement has created a feeling of misgiving in the country. I have had communications on the matter, and here is one telegram which is typical:—
"Irish Press and Irish Times state Finance Minister said sugar price fixed at 4½d. Can you say if correct?”
Of course it is not correct. The matter arose last night when the Minister for Finance was concluding his remarks and a question was put across the floor by Deputy Norton. Deputy Norton asked: "Is there not a price of 4½d. fixed by the Government?" and the Minister for Finance replied: "That is so."
That is a rather serious misstatement, because it is not so. The price of sugar, retail or wholesale, is not fixed by any Government order at the present moment. I do not know what obtains in the trade in Dublin, but I know something about the trade in Cork, and particularly in West Cork, and it would be impossible for any grocer there to sell sugar at 4½d. The wholesale price in Cork was quoted at 39/5½ a cwt. That amounts to 4.22 pence a lb. When a trader in West Cork has to pay carriage from Cork City on that price of 4.22 pence a lb. it is obvious that his expenses and general costs will not permit the sugar to be sold at 4½d. I simply want to correct the impression that prevails in the country that there is a controlled price for sugar, wholesale and retail. The statement was made by the Minister last night. It is really a very serious misstatement, and it was to correct it that I have intervened in the debate.
I think the longer this debate goes on, the more confused and mystified and bewildered we all become. We have just had a statement from Deputy O'Neill giving on his authority the price of sugar, not as 4½d., but some undefined figure. I hope that the Minister will state definitely what the price is. As Deputy O'Neill pointed out, the Minister mentioned last night that the increase would bring the price of sugar to 4½d. a lb. The Minister was not very helpful on this question. I have listened to all the speeches made here to-day, and I must say that Deputy Corry's speech was the only one that threw any light on the situation. He gave the whole story, from the very beginning. Although the Minister would not give information as to the price of home produced sugar, Deputy Corry reminded us that arbitration had resulted in fixing the price of beet at 49/6 a ton, thus deciding that the price of sugar would be 3d. a lb.
I am sure when that calculation was made that all relevant factors were taken into account, and we may take it for granted that the 3d. a lb. fixed at the beginning of this year as the price of sugar was definitely ascertained as a just price for sugar in this country. There was no change in the factors that went into the calculation of the 3d. a lb. for home-produced sugar, as far as I am aware, up to 1st November. The price of beet has not been raised, wages have not been raised, and the position should be just as it was for home-grown sugar at the time the price was fixed at arbitration.
The Minister told us that when war broke out all contracts were cancelled. He told us on the 2nd September that there was a 12 months' supply of sugar in the country. That would mean that there was no occasion whatever for the increase imposed on the 1st November. The price of imported sugar on 1st September was £8 6s. a ton. The quantity of home-produced sugar that we had up to and including the amount calculated from the present sugar season was 66,000 tons. We are told that the consumption of sugar here is 100,000 tons. That leaves 34,000 tons to be imported.
The consumption of white granulated sugar is about 104,000 tons. That is distinct from brown or castor sugar.
I am taking these round figures—100,000 tons, 66,000 tons produced in the country and 34,000 tons to be imported. As regards the 66,000 tons produced here, I cannot see any reason for an increase in the price of that. The farmers did look for an increase in price in September, as Deputy Corry informed us, but the increase was not conceded. If we take the Minister's word for it, on 1st September we had a sufficient stock in the country to cover a 12 months' supply. There was no need for imported sugar.
We had not a 12 months' stock in the country on 1st. September.
On your own figures you had two-thirds produced here and you imported one-third.
I said that on the 1st. September we had enough sugar to keep us until the campaign began.
But you brought in nearly 40,000 tons on the 1st September.
I am not quite clear about the position. Sugar had been imported into the country previous to the 1st September and then there was the sugar to be got from the campaign and I understood that that would be a twelve months' supply.
No.
Then I do not know what figures we can go on, or whether we have any figures that will enable us to make any attempt to solve this problem. The way I look at it is that the sugar we had in this country was brought in at £8 6s. a ton—that was the price current on the 1st September. During the months of September and October there was a definite shortage of sugar in this country. I took the trouble to inquire as to what the position was in my constituency and I found that the Sugar Company had given the wholesalers in Cork their supplies for August and September and that they were to have those supplies renewed for October and November. During October, when we were supposed to have issued on the 1st October an amount equivalent to the previous year, there was still a shortage and the people in Cork City and other towns in Cork County had not sufficient sugar and, in some cases, no sugar. The very moment the price went up, on the 1st November, there was plenty of sugar available. Surely we are entitled to draw the conclusion then that there was a certain amount of sugar held up by the Sugar Company.
It would be a wrong conclusion. The reason there was plenty of sugar available on the 1st November was due solely to the fact that the four factories had commenced to work.
There was no shortage on the 18th October.
There was only barely enough to meet normal requirements.
There was no shortage.
On the 2nd September the Minister for Supplies told us here in the House that there was no shortage of sugar in the country. When this scarcity occurred I quoted the words in the report assuring us that there was no shortage. Still there was a shortage. Now we are told that on the 1st November the reason for the increased supply was that the factories were working. What became of the 40,000 tons of sugar that were in the country?
There was no 40,000 tons. There was enough to keep us going up to the 1st November.
A very remarkable date.
I am at a loss to understand what the position is at all. We had the Minister making the statement on two occasions. One, I think, was at the meeting of the Dáil on the 2nd September, but definitely on the 18th October, that there was no shortage of sugar. The Minister tells us that during the month of October there was no home-produced sugar in the country except what was waiting for the new campaign. So that, at the present time, the sugar we are using is the sugar that is being produced in the campaign at present?
That is correct.
Had we no reserves on the 1st November?
No.
Despite all the assurances we got here in the House, and the definite statement that there was no shortage of sugar, we had no reserves of sugar on the 1st November when the new campaign started.
I should qualify that. I mentioned that the factories were producing 7,000 tons a week as against a normal weekly consumption of 2,000 tons. The reserve would begin to accumulate as from the 1st November.
Were there no reserves of foreign sugar?
There were no reserves of foreign sugar.
There were no reserves of any kind of sugar as far as we are aware on the 1st November. Then we had the new sugar produced by the present year's campaign, and for the ten days from the 1st November, when the 1½d. was put on until the 10th November, the Sugar Company, according to the calculations of Deputy Corry, drew £40,000 on that sugar. In other words, they accumulated £40,000 on sugar the price of which had been fixed by an arbitration board at 3d. per lb.
The price of sugar was never fixed by an arbitration board.
Pardon me, it was. The price of sugar beet was fixed and the price of sugar was fixed at 3d. a lb. in conjunction with the price of beet. In other words, 3d. per lb. was the fair price for sugar to the consumer on the assumption that 49/6 was the price for beet to the farmer.
It was sold at 3d. a lb. in Dublin.
For the ten days, then, in November, the Sugar Company did definitely take in £40,000 that they were not justly entitled to. I mean, if there was any reason for an increase when the tax was put on, on 10th November, that ¾d. may be counted as a just increase; but from the 1st November when, as far as we can see, there were no factors, other than the ones which existed previously, to affect the price of sugar, 1½d. was put on. I would like to get an explanation of that. We had the statement of the Minister that there were no reserves of sugar on 1st November; that there was no foreign sugar on the 1st November; that we were waiting for the new supply, and that the sugar that was issued on the 1st November was the sugar that was produced in this year's campaign. I think it is a very fair assumption, then, to say that the price of that sugar was increased by 1½d. when the factors that affected the price of sugar were unaltered.
We have then the position, when the tax was put on, roughly calculating, that £700,000 over and above the price of sugar last year was accumulated by the Sugar Company. I would like to ask the Minister what is the purpose of that accumulation. Is it to pay for increased imports? Is it that the campaign this year will not come up to the expectations of the Minister? I want to know what is the reason for it. We are told that ¾d. is put on sugar as tax, but we are not told the reason why the other ¾d. is put on.
I want also to refer to the fact that there is confusion about the exact price of sugar. Deputy O'Neill has referred to the fact that for some time back the retail price of sugar, even in Cork City, is 5d. per lb. Is that justified, or would the Minister take any steps to see what exactly is the just price for sugar. The effect of that price on the ordinary worker and on the poor people can be seen by anyone. There is no need for stressing it. I think there is certainly need for investigating the price of sugar over and above the price mentioned by the Minister in his Budget. There is definitely reason for investigating that price. Putting the case at its very worst, the only justification I can see is the tax being put on sugar. You may argue that you had no alternative. You may argue that it was necessary to put on that tax. But I cannot see any justification whatsoever for the other ¾d. put on in that order of the 1st November, and I cannot understand the further increase that is being put on, despite the fact that the Minister for Finance has stated that he is going to set his face definitely against any increase in wages, and I think he mentioned profits.
This is a matter that should be further investigated, and to which the Minister should give attention, because this increase in the price of sugar has undoubtedly hit the ordinary people of the country very hard. I do not remember anything causing such agitation and disturbance in the public mind as this increase in the price of sugar. These are some questions which I should like somebody to give us some enlightenment on. I think that the motion which we have put forward is justified. The Minister was very much alarmed by the suggestion that the price should be put back to the price which prevailed on the 26th August. I think that there is nothing very reactionary in that, and there is nothing very alarming or revolutionary in it. Certainly, some justification should be given for the increase in the price of sugar.
I must confess this evening to a certain amount of sympathy with the position in which the Minister finds himself. He has been rather unlucky in the application of his ordinary debating tactics to a rather critical period. It has worked round on him rather more quickly than is usual. The Minister is content to fire off statements which are wide of the mark, relying on the fact that the public memory is short. The time at which they can be analysed is made sufficiently distant, folks' memories are not too long, and there is a considerable amount of trouble in turning up the Minister's remarks and getting him cornered with his own statement. He has been unlucky in that this emergency caused by the war has made the public mind sensitive on this single point of sugar and we are able to parade before the Minister statements which he rather brazenly made at a time so recent that even the short public memory can capture them.
I have no doubt that the Minister is unlucky also in this, that he has to be paraded as the great hero of the policy of the last seven years—self-sufficiency. I have no doubt that the Cabinet has sufficient wisdom to realise that, once the war started, self-sufficiency was not merely blown sky-high, but the fact that there was wreckage and a considerable blow-up could not be concealed from anybody. But the Minister, being the great apostle of the self-sufficiency movement for years past, had to run the gauntlet and be paraded as the show person who had to put in alliance the two great matters of self-sufficiency and foresight whenever self-sufficiency did not meet. What actually happened here was what is familiar to anyone who attends athletic contests. When a row starts and there is a bit of a maul round the goal, one of the players is sometimes partially disrobed. Then there is what is called a "huddle"; the other players gather round, and eventually the man appears in a new pair of pants. The Minister has had to suffer that kind of disrobing and has had to appear before the public dressed appropriately enough in a little pair of short sugar bags.
When he did make his appearance as the person to provide the Government with their real claim to fame both in the matter of self-sufficiency and in the matter of forethought, he did not treat the public through the Dáil with the honesty that is ordinarily demanded of any Minister, and that the critical period we are passing through more particularly demanded. What did he tell us? He says himself that he is not going to have his words analysed too critically. I suppose that is a proper demand when made in a proper way. But we cannot just forget what he did say. Self-sufficiency was the first motif. Under the stress of self-sufficiency the sugar factories produce two-thirds of our requirements. The lilt in his voice suggested that two-thirds was rather an understatement, but definitely it was two-thirds of the annual consumption. Two-thirds of the 100,000 tons which we ordinarily consumed is 66,000 tons. That 66,000 tons was implanted in the people's memories by the Minister's speeches. For the rest, we had to be so many thousand tons short. But the other wing of the Minister's performance came in there about the little bit of forethought. We had the statement that we had a special Department, in anticipation of the present Department of Supplies, set up for nearly a whole year.
The Government, apparently, at the time of the Munich crisis became rather alarmed at the position in which they found themselves, with no provision made against the emergency and under the stress, no doubt, also of Civil Service importuning at the time, this preliminary to the present Department of Supplies was set up. The Minister told us they were working from September, 1938, under his direction, that they had multitudinous duties and a large staff. They were concerned with the accumulation of reserve stocks of essential commodities. Blazoned around the Minister's speech was the great word "sugar" which was going to make his reputation—two-thirds of the sugar produced at home and as far as foresight could go, provision made for supplementing it. I, however, felt critical of the Minister's remarks. I wondered whether it could occur that his performance was up to his boasting. I was a little bit set back when I put down a question and found that up to the 1st September this Department had got into the country 783,000 cwts. of sugar, or nearly the 40,000 tons required. I almost, in fact, felt inclined to bless the Minister for his forethought in supplementing the lack of self-sufficiency. We found then that that was only to meet the gap which had to be filled. He told us to-night more openly than he has ever spoken in this House that we had not any reserves on the 1st November. Deputy Hurley confessed himself confused with the figures bandied about. One might well be confused. It is not a question of whether it is 100,000 tons or 104,000 tons or whether we produce 60,000 tons or 66,000 tons. The Minister I notice in the last couple of nights is weakening on the self-sufficiency note; he says now that we may get 50,000 tons produced at home. I am afraid self-sufficiency is in the background, with forethought running a really bad second; it is not a question that it is leading at present.
As reported in column 700 of the Official Reports we were told:
"We had to carry on the sugar supply until this week, or until the end of this month when the campaign begins, and we had enough sugar to do that."
Whatever is the quantity, we had enough to do that. What was to happen at the end of the month? The new campaign was to begin and then we would be carried forward and all we had to do was:
"We shall have to bridge the gap between the end of the period during which home-produced sugar will be available and the commencement of the 1940 campaign, which will, we hope, give us sufficient sugar to supply our full 12 months' requirements."
What was the need to implement it then? We had enough on the 18th October to carry us forward to the 1st November. After that the factories would be producing about two-thirds and we had some gap to fill until the 1940 season started. After that, the Minister said it was not a question of two-thirds but the whole requirements for the 12 months would be produced at home. If there is any question around that period it will depend on the gap to be bridged and the amount. I do not want to take the two-thirds and the one-third. Let us take the other figures of 60,000 tons produced at home and 40,000 tons to be imported. Foresight comes into play again. On the 1st November this year it was announced:
"Notice is issued from the Department of Supplies saying that the price of sugar will be increased by 1½d. per lb. as from to-day, bringing the price up to 4½d. This announcement was contained in a statement issued yesterday by the Department of Supplies."
Lower down it says that, in order to accumulate adequate reserves, Cómhlucht Siúicre Eireann, Teo., have arranged, on the instructions of the Government, to purchase for immediate delivery the balance of the country's requirements of sugar up to the opening of the 1940-41 manufacturing season. If they have made arrangements to purchase for immediate delivery, we ought to know what is the price. That statement has all the smack of achievement. It may be still in the atmosphere of pretence that was so obvious here in September and October, looking back on those two months now but, at any rate, there is a smack of achievement about that purchase, for immediate delivery, of our requirements.
They ought to know what were the requirements and be able to tell us what is the price. Supposing it is 40,000 tons, we are putting ¾d. per lb. on sugar, and that is going to be exacted over the 100,000 tons that would fall for consumption in the 12 months, and that gives £700,000. If we require £700,000 to meet the importation of 40,000 tons, the Minister has on hands £17 10s. 0d. per ton over and above the price he was paying, say, on 1st September. Can he tell us the price of sugar which he or the sugar company are endeavouring to arrange for immediate delivery? Has it got to the point, that 40,000 tons is going to cost £17 10s. 0d. a ton more than the price being paid when it was possible to retail sugar at 3d. per lb.? I thought at one time, like Deputy Dillon, that there was in this a little bit of hide; that what was being done was to arrange to have something on hands for the sugar beet growers. We have the Minister's most positive assurance that not 1d. of the money will go to the sugar beet growers. I think the Minister has said that twice.
I said that in fixing the price of sugar no consideration whatever was given to the price of beet.
The Minister did interrupt Deputy Dillon the other day —I do not want to have the thing misunderstood—and I understood him to say that no part of this fund now being accumulated through this ¾d. on the lb. is being put aside to give a bigger price to the sugar beet growers next season.
That is quite correct.
The whole £700,000 is being rendered necessary because of the importation of some undefined number of tons of sugar which has to be imported between this and the production season of 1940. The £700,000, over 40,000 tons or 50,000 tons if we only produce half at home, is, on the one hand £17 10s. and, on the other hand, £14. Both these figures are in addition to whatever are the costs ruling about 1st September. I thought that there was a proposal that there should be something on hands for the beet growers, and I thought that was what was being condemned by the economist, who recently wrote to the papers that it was an attempt to distort still further the natural pattern of our agricultural development. God knows, that agricultural pattern has been seriously distorted in years gone by. Questions were raised about the cost of sugar and how the cost of the importation compares with the home produced article. As I understand the figures that have been given in certain debates they are roughly that, to produce sugar at the Carlow factory, or at any of the factories, the price ex factory is 23/6, but there is excise duty in that. It would be 22/4 without duty. That is the cost of the production of sugar here. That was at a time when the cost of importing an equal quantity of sugar was 8/-. I consider that a definite distortion of the ordinary economy of this country, to get something produced at home and putting a tax on it, and an excise duty, or a customs duty—either is appropriate—you had 22/4 to pay for one cwt. of one type as opposed to 8/- for the other, at a cost of 14/- and odd pence of a difference representing £14 10s. a ton, and on the 100,000 tons consumed in the country that is £1,400,000.
Of course, the excuse could be made at the time of the economic war that if you did not get the farmers to go into something, when the ordinary development of the country through mixed farming did not pay, then tillage would slump. In any event we are paying in search of this will-o-the-wisp, self-sufficiency, about £1,400,000 yearly to fill the cost of the sugar at home, when the whole of the sugar could have been imported. That may be a good thing to do in an abnormal period. What are we facing now? The acreage under sugar has been steadily declining—not very much, but it has been on the decline—and I think there is undoubted apprehension, in the opinion of those who want to see sugar beet developed and kept up in the country, that with a better development of live stock, and with the better prices that are going for them, the sugar beet area is likely to collapse still further this year, and that it will be necessary by a greater bait than ever before to keep these people in sugar. Whatever was to be said for keeping people in sugar in late years when there was not the natural outlet for their products in the British market, there is nothing to be said for it at this moment. It is a shocking distortion of the ordinary development that we seek to add further to the bait, and the bait, I suggest, will have to be hugely increased before you can get even the same number of growers producing the same amount of sugar beet as heretofore.
The Minister had two things to guard against, shortage and an increase in prices. We have leafed through these books over and over again, and there was nothing the Minister was so persuasive about as this matter of shortage, and that no question of shortage could arise. I do not suppose there was a meeting of the Dáil since war broke out at which we had not assurances from the Minister on that point of shortage in connection with sugar. The Minister must know—I have no inside information as I am not in touch with the sugar industry on the other side, but I have touch with economic journals—that it is made quite clear that England, at the moment, is going to maintain adequate stores of sugar to be able to supply this country, not with the 40,000 tons required, but with the whole 100,000 tons, and cheaper than we can grow it at home. I understand that the best persuasion that could be used through publicists, lectures, broadcasts, pamphlets and all the devices that can be brought to persuade the human mind in England, is devoted to two points: their war effort and the production of certain materials for war, and next to that, but only just short in importance, keeping up their export industry. They must get certain money in to pay for the vast amount paid out, and one of the materials they are relying upon for exportation is this matter of sugar.
No.
Then their journals lie; they are in error.
For the information of the Deputy, not merely could we not get any sugar in England, but we could get no assurance whatever that sugar would be available any time.
I suggest to the Minister, if that is so, he has considerable arguments with which to refute the statement derived from the technical journals published, and published widely. They must be completely and entirely misrepresenting the situation. However, if that is the situation, are not foresight and forethought very much in the background? Was that a situation that could have been foreseen? What was the Minister doing for the nine months or 12 months since Munich? Was sugar one of the things that occurred to him as likely to cause trouble? We know that certain commodities here have been questioned from time to time, and we know, from questions put down, that the Department set up in anticipation of supply problems did not concern itself with tea. On the night we had the first debate during the war, Deputy Belton pulled the stopper out with regard to petrol. I have not heard the Minister stating anything with regard to the commodities his Department looked after except petrol, tea, wheat, or flour and sugar. Petrol, I think, nobody any longer boasts of; tea, I do not think anyone can boast of on the figures given; sugar, we are now in the position, I hope shamefaced, that he says he has not sugar on hands beyond November 1st, and he finds it impossible to get sugar. The flour situation is one we are going to discuss on another occasion. It is simply a question of allowing ourselves to be ransomed by, as yet, an insatiable band of profiteers.
These are the four things, I understand, the four bull points, the Minister thought he had secured with his Department working since September last. In any event, the Minister, before he can get willing assent to this advance of ¾d. per lb. on sugar, has to make even a bigger disclosure than he has made up to the moment. With all the information at his disposal with regard to the yield, and with all the statistics that he has or that are available to him with regard to yield, sugar content of the beet, and so on, can the Minister yet tell us how the present production campaign is working out, and what is the gap that has to be filled between home production and the amount that has to be imported? What does it amount to in tons? If the Minister can tell us that then we will have a figure with which to associate this accumulation of £700,000. I suggest that we have been brought to a pretty pass in connection with all this.
Deputy Corry, of course, has a bee in his bonnet with regard to certain matters in connection with this sugar question, but of course he is not allowed to think properly about it or to say openly what he thinks. He did say one thing, however, and that is that this country is being mulcted in nearly £750,000 because of blundering. That may be the truth. If it is the fact that sugar was available during the early part of this year, and that the Minister or any group of civil servants corresponding to the people whom, he said, he had looking after supplies, had been properly looking after them, he, or that group, ought to have given the direction and the impulse in this matter. If he did so, what is the excuse to be offered now for this position that we have reached, as was openly stated to-night, that by the 1st November we were just gasping to get the new supplies of sugar from the factories? Now, I suppose, the Minister breathes a sigh of relief and says to himself that the matter is off until next July.
I would not like the country to be mulcted to that extent, and I think it is still possible to minimise it, but we ought to have some calculation made by the Government as to the amount of sugar to be brought in and the price that is likely to be demanded for it. If it does become clear that sugar is not available anywhere, what are we to say for the Government that says that the company has been instructed to purchase for immediate delivery the country's requirements?
It has been done.
It has? Therefore, we should know the price at which it has been purchased. What is the price, and what is the amount? We should have that information, and if the Minister will not give it now, I suppose we can get it by means of a Parliamentary question.
A question was put down the other day on that matter, but it was not replied to.
The Minister says that the sugar has been purchased. What is the price?
What is the price, and what is the amount?
He will not tell us.
He gave me a figure of 19/4.
I did not say we bought sugar at that price, and I explained the matter to the Deputy at great length.
You bought sugar, and yet you will not tell the price. Will the Minister tell us the price?
Yes; what was the quantity purchased and what price was paid?
I do not think it is in the public interest to state it.
Because it would reflect on the Government.
I do suggest that a Parliamentary institution is hardly worth keeping up if the people who ask questions in Parliament—questions that are in the public interest—are going to be deluded by misleading statements such as that. I think that for the Minister to give the figure of 19/4, under the circumstances in which he did give it, and in view of what he told us, could only make one impression on the public mind, and that is that the sugar was available to him at that price, and then the question arises as to why he did not purchase it, or if he did purchase it, how much did he bring in? We have now come to a definite impasse. The Minister has sat down here during a long debate, and he has the information as to the amount of sugar ordered and as to the price, and yet we are told that it is not in the public interest to give any of these figures. I would ask him to try to divorce two things in his mind— the public interest from his personal reputation.
It has nothing whatever to do with my personal reputation.
Well, I might help to rehabilitate a reputation that has been sadly knocked around in the last three months. Has he not been misleading the House? I submit that the Minister has misled the House on at least a half-dozen occasions in regard to this all-important matter of sugar. I say again that he has misled the House on that. He has been asked to take the House into his confidence and say what is the amount ordered and the price paid—and he should do so— but he has refused to do it. I think we can draw our own conclusions from that. It means that he has to run away from his own statements. He has spent a couple of days running away from the statements made in September and October. I suggest that he cannot give a definite statement and that, if he does say something, it will only be a haphazard guess, and he will have to run away from that also, and that whatever there may have been in the public mind about blundering, the impression will only be deepened after to-night's debate. Nobody believes that the Minister has anything that he can prove, because we all know that, if he had, he would display it and cackle about it to his heart's content; and this silence on his part only means that it is a silence designed to hide something, and probably something ugly, either on his own part or on that of his Department of Supplies, a Department which, up to date, has done nothing.
I would not expect anything else from the Deputy.
The Minister for Supplies has earned for himself in this House the reputation of having a style of his own in conducting a debate and dealing with arguments brought forward concerning himself and his Department from time to time. His usual method of answering awkward arguments is to pour out personal and political abuse on the individuals and members of the various Parties who raise such awkward questions, instead of facing up, as any responsible Minister should, to the facts of the situation and taking the people into his confidence, as any right-minded Minister should do.
And so he did to-night, and against the whole lot of you interrupting him.
What price did he pay for sugar? He did not answer that.
It does not matter what price he paid. He told you to-night about it, in spite of all the interruptions.
The Deputy should go down to the Coombe.
I can go anywhere I like in Dublin.
On the Minister's own showing, I suggest that he should go to the next Party meeting, which will probably be next Thursday, and hand in his ticket, and that he should tell those who are defending him to hand in their tickets also.
I do not go there.
I presume the Deputy is not deaf. I say that, if the Minister hands in his ticket, and if those who are defending him hand in their tickets, I have sufficient confidence in the followers and supporters of the Fianna Fáil Party to feel that better and more reliable men can be found there to take their places.
Are you quite sure of that?
I am positive of it. They will have sufficient contact with their constituents to enable them not to forget the policy for which they stood before the war and at the last election. The new Minister for Finance, on the same subject, poured out a good deal of abuse on the members sitting on these benches, and he had the cheek— it is a common word to use—to say that he and his colleague, the Minister for Supplies, represented more electors in this country than the whole of the Labour Party put together. We represent, at any rate, over 100,000 electors, and our viewpoint on public matters is entitled to be listened to in this House. As representatives of the people we are entitled to be told the truth by Ministers that you are responsible for putting on the Front Bench.
Does the Deputy mean that the Minister has been telling him lies?
At any rate, he has contradicted himself several times to-night.
Well, he was being interrupted all the time. It is very hard for a man to keep his head with constant interruptions going on.
I challenge the Minister publicly to hold, at an early date, a meeting in Foster Place, not of the citizens of Dublin as a whole, but of the supporters of himself and his colleagues and get a majority of his own supporters to ratify the policy contained in the present Budget, as well as the increase in the price of sugar. I allege definitely and without qualification that the price of sugar was deliberately increased by the Government for the purpose of collecting taxation indirectly. I ask the Minister to state whether, when he was speaking in this House on the 18th October, he knew there was to be a Supplementary Budget introduced at an early date. I ask also—and I am entitled to an answer—if he knew when he instructed the sugar company to increase the price of sugar by 1½d. there was a likelihood of a Supplementary Budget being introduced on the 8th November. If he did not know, then he is not aware of what is going on in Government circles. When he instructed the directors of the sugar company to increase the price of sugar by 1½d. from the 1st November, I suggest that he knew they were going to collect ¾d. of that 1½d. under a Supplementary Budget to be introduced on the 8th November.
For the public good—pro bono publico.
That is the same kind of thinking that Deputy Corry has been doing. Deputy Corry, like Deputy Kelly, would not object to a 1/- tax on sugar if necessary to provide social services. The Deputy must have known, when making that statement, if he knew anything, that the social services were being reduced by the taxation in the Supplementary Budget on the sugar consumers. We have been told by the former Minister for Industry and Commerce and by the new Minister that the sugar company is a private concern, while at the same time we have the Minister issuing a statement to the public on the 1st November that he gave instructions to the directors of that concern to increase the price of sugar by 1½d. That is done notwithstanding the statements that this is a private concern and that there is supposed to be no interference in the management or mismanagement of that concern by the Government. If it is a private concern, will the Minister or somebody else at a later stage tell us why, like every other private concern, the sugar company did not go before the Prices Commission to make a case in favour of the increase in price of 1½d. per lb.? The Minister cannot have it both ways.
Where did I say that the Government had instructed the company to increase the price of sugar?
The statement says that the price of sugar will be increased by 1½d. per lb. from 1st November.
The Deputy said the statement was that the Government instructed the company to increase the price of sugar.
Deputy McGilligan has already read out the relevant extract.
The Deputy has it at his hand.
From the statement published in the Irish Press and the other newspapers, it is clear that there is definite Governmental interference with the management of the sugar company to the extent that it orders that company to increase the price of sugar by 1½d.
I did nothing of the kind nor did the statement say anything of the kind.
I am not paying any attention to what the Minister says. There is no end to the contradictory statements made by the Minister.
The Deputy admits that what he said was in the statement was not in it.
Deputy MacEoin made a statement here with, I am sure, knowledge, because he is regarded as a very reliable Deputy, that a certain quantity of sugar was held up in a certain store in his constituency. That statement was denied. The Minister bluntly stated that it was an untruth and he did not withdraw that statement. The Minister can ask his Private Secretary to-morrow morning to ring up the railway company concerned and ask whether a certain quantity of sugar consigned to a certain station about a certain date was delivered on arrival or not and, if not, the reasons why it was held up. Is he prepared to do that to confirm or contradict what a respected Deputy alleged and which he referred to as an untruth, which statement he did not withdraw?
He did withdraw it.
He did not.
Deputy Kelly has been sitting in the House for five minutes.
I am not sure whether Deputy Coburn is aware or not that, for 15 minutes during the debate, not one Fianna Fáil Deputy sat behind the Minister. Out of 75 supporters of this "poor man's Government," not one would support the Minister in advocating this tax.
I have been sitting here since four o'clock.
It is a great tribute to you to have sat out the whole of the Minister's speech without asking for some explanation.
There was so much whispering going about the city for the past fortnight that I sat here to hear what they had to say.
I invite you to go down to the Coombe and advocate this tax of 1½d. per lb. on sugar.
Do not mind the Coombe; I can go anywhere.
Tell the people there that every family who voted for you will have to pay 1½d. per lb. extra for their sugar.
Whispering was going on for the past fortnight and there is not a word to-night about it.
I thought we should have the pleasure of listening to you advocating this increase in the price of sugar. The only man on the Fianna Fáil Benches who got up to speak was Deputy Corry. He opposed the tax, used sensible arguments against it and, presumably, will go into the Lobby and vote for it.
Deputy Childers also spoke and spoke well. We do not want to be wasting the public time.
Mr. Morrissey
No; it is the public money you waste.
I know it is hard for him to have to listen to it but I suggest to Deputy Kelly that this increase of 1½d. in the price of sugar is the cost of having an incompetent and inefficient Government.
Hear, hear!
It is part of the cost that has been paid, and will have to be paid, for this costly and farcical air-raid-protection scheme, for the unnecessary mobilisation of the Army and for the partial demobilisation of that Army a month or two after it was mobilised.
Put two spoonfuls of sugar in your tea in the morning.
Mobilisation—under orders from London.
The Minister has refused to-night to answer questions regarding the cost of sugar imported, although he has admitted to the House that he has that knowledge. Is he a Ministerial representative of a democratic Government or is he defending what I call a democratic dictatorship?
Speak to the Chair; do not be speaking to me.
I was provoked into addressing you, perhaps too loudly, because I thought you might not be listening to me.
I do not want to hear any more from you.
According to the figures with which I was furnished last week, the Sugar Company imported 353,933 cwts. of sugar in the five months, April to August this year, only 1,000 cwts. more than was imported in the corresponding period of last year. The Minister told us on the 18th October that two-thirds of the sugar consumption of the country was produced in our own beet factories. He has been suggesting in the subsequent debates that that figure was not likely to be reached this year. Accepting the Minister's statement on that, why is it that no precaution of any kind was taken before the commencement of war to import sugar into this country to a greater extent than in the corresponding period of last year?
Did the Deputy know that the war was going to begin on the 1st September?
The Minister knew more than I knew about that. We were specially summoned to meet here by a telegram which was sent out on the 20th August summoning members of this House to meet on 2nd September and I suggest that, when that telegram was sent out, members of the Government knew more than members of the Dáil about the situation.
The Minister said that only a miracle could avert a war.
It would be only a miracle that would avert it. That amazing situation will not occur again after the people have had another opportunity of dealing with him. The Minister seems to have got himself into the state of mind that he thinks anything he has swallowed or that the people of this State in such an overwhelming majority have swallowed will enable him to continue handling affairs; but he must remember that the people are quite capable of examining the situation and then there will be a change.
That is my confidence in the electorate. They support the Government.
The Minister is aware of the figure for imported sugar. He also stated that the quantity of sugar which went into consumption on 1st September this year was substantially higher than the amount last year. Where did that sugar find its way to? Where did it go from and to whom did it go? I suggest the Minister has at his disposal the names of the wholesale sugar merchants and that he has the means at his disposal for checking up quantities of sugar which reached the wholesalers, and I suggest that he could take power to find out whether the wholesalers hoarded sugar during the period commencing with the war and ending on 1st November, and that he has ample means to do so.
I was informed in my own constituency by a number of traders in different towns that there was a complete hold-up by certain wholesalers from the date that war was declared. I believe the Minister has received letters to the effect from certain people, some of them supporters of the Fianna Fáil Government in my constituency. It is alleged—I cannot prove it—that a certain traveller representing a certain firm went around to a large number of retailers and said that he had been "cut out", that unfortunately they had been "cut out" on the question of sugar. The traders concerned, at any rate, do not believe that; but the Minister had the means at his disposal to stop that kind of hoarding, if hoarding was going on in that particular critical period. I asked him last week in the Dáil, with the knowledge that certain allegations were made to him that hoarding had been going on, if he had not certain power under the Emergency Powers Act, if he would take such power to enable him to check up on the allegations of any hoarding going on. The Minister finally said that it would be met when the need arose. Of course, the order—if ever made—will be made when the sugar has disappeared from the stores of the wholesalers against whom the allegations have been made.
I have personal knowledge that retailers in villages and towns in my constituency did not get the sugar, and it is for the Minister to investigate these allegations, which have been made by other members in this House; it is for the Minister responsible for the good government of the country and responsible to the people to sift this matter to the end. It would be the simplest thing imaginable to order a chartered accountant to deal with it, to take certain powers to examine the books of every wholesale sugar merchant in this country and, if the books are kept correctly, he will be able to know when the sugar came in and when it went out. It does not take more than the intelligence of a boy of the sixth standard at an ordinary school to be able to find out the details. The people who were entitled to sugar could not get it from the retailers in rural Ireland and the retailers in their turn could not get it from the wholesalers. I believe there is a considerable amount of truth in these allegations. They are true in my constituency, at any rate. The traders also state—I cannot say it is correct, but it is generally alleged—that they are getting less profit out of sugar sold at 4½d. than they were getting heretofore.
They are not selling it at 4½d.
I have a letter from a gentleman alleging that it is being sold at 5d. a lb.
What is the name of the town?
I will pass the letter on to the Minister's Department and it can be answered in the usual way.
That price is being charged in half the towns in Ireland.
At any rate, we represent the people of the country, those responsible for finding the capital for the carrying on of sugar manufacturing, and the Minister for the time being is supposed to be the guardian of the tax-payers interested in that concern. The real reason why more sugar was not imported before the war commenced and the real reason why proper precautions were not taken was that the Minister, in the first instance, is an incompetent Minister and is responsible for the nomination and existence of an incompetent Sugar Manufacturing Board. That is the real reason, and the people of this country have sufficient intelligence to realise that. Otherwise, what is the reason that more sugar was not imported than last year?
Did the Deputy know that the war was going to start on September 1st?
Is that not a terrible exhibition—made by an allegedly competent Minister representing the people of the country?
I did not know in the middle of August that the war was going to start on 1st September.
Mr. Morrissey
You said only a miracle could avert it.
I said that on the 28th August.
The Minister will remember that at the war meeting of the Dáil demands were made for weekly meetings of the House, but the Taoiseach pleaded that we should not unduly harass Ministers, who were practically continuously engaged in looking after various interests in their Departments. He also stated that they had been busy for some considerable time before that meeting, and particularly that the Minister for Supplies was busily engaged in trying to secure reserve stocks of essential commodities in case war broke out.
We were preparing against the danger of war.
In the figures given by the Minister himself there is evidence that nothing whatever was done between April and August to secure an additional reserve supply of sugar, although the Minister now comes and admits to this House that there was going to be a decrease in the sugar provisions in our own four sugar beet factories. I can understand the Minister when he tries to answer that kind of argument by abuse, since he has no answer to give, but it would pay him as a Minister of this State to be a little more frank with the people whom he is inviting to co-operate with the Government in a critical period. You cannot have co-operation from these benches on the basis of lies and threats——
Hear, hear!
——threats against the people who have to bear this increased price of sugar that, if they try to obtain any compensation for this increased price, drastic measures will be taken against them in their attempt to do so. I dare say that kind of mentality was born in the Minister for Industry and Commerce when he addressed a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce on a recent occasion. It was certainly suggested all round the city that that inspiration in the speech of the new Minister for Finance was got from a certain employers' organisation in this country. If that is so the employers concerned are inviting a scrap which will not be good for themselves or anybody else.
Ridiculous nonsense.
This increased price of sugar, as every Deputy knows—and as Deputy Kelly knows better than any other—is going to bring trouble in its train. The increased price affects every family, it affects the workers and the families of the wage earners in particular. It is having its consequential effects already by increasing the price of confectionery and other commodities of that kind.
For a genial and good looking man, you can be very wicked.
Deputy Kelly does not know that this was probably the best year for fruit for many years in this country, and the fact that fruit has been produced in greater quantities this year than in any previous year for the last ten years means that it would be a considerable advantage to the people who eat jam, if more sugar were available for making jam from that fruit. I know that there are not many apple trees grown in the Coombe, or around the South Dublin constituency, and perhaps Deputy Tom Kelly is not too much concerned about that aspect of the sugar increase problem.
And that fruit is now rotting in stores for want of sugar.
So I have been assured. I accept Deputy Belton's word for it because he is, I am certain, a greater authority on this matter than I am. I said that Ministers appealed here for co-operation in getting over the present critical period. We all owe an individual responsibility to the people who sent us here, and in the interests of those who sent us here we are bound to take that view, but if co-operation is to be expected, it must be on the basis of Ministers being frank and straight and sticking to the policy on which they got into office.
The new Minister for Finance has on many occasions talked about his personal and friendly associations with the workers and, as I said in the beginning, boasted in the House the other night that he and his colleague beside him secured more votes in the last election from the organised workers than all the members on the Labour Benches. I hope he has looked up the figures in the meantime, but I want to remind him that we represent over 100,000 electors, and I suggest a more intelligent element of electors than put these people on the Front Bench seats under false pretences. I hope the Minister for Finance will take an early opportunity of getting a public meeting arranged for him in Foster Place and that he will ask for the approval of the people who were foolish enough to vote for him, for the sugar tax and the other taxes included in this Budget.
I am of opinion, from listening to the discussions during the last few weeks, that it is useless to make any kind of a case in connection with Budget matters, or any other matters affecting Government policy. Ministers feel that they have a body of 75 or 76 Deputies behind them who, at the crack of the whip, will march into the Lobby and vote for anything they say. That is the position we have arrived at in this country. It is an intolerable position, and a greater danger to the Government who are playing at that kind of politics than if they were dependent on some other Party to maintain their existence. I suggest to Deputy Kelly that the men sitting on the Front Benches to-day, by their lack of close co-operation with their constituencies and with their constituents, are out of touch with the feelings of the people and that is why I suggested that they should hand in their tickets at the next Fianna Fáil Party meeting and let the Party get a dozen back benchers to take their places. They will do their work better and prove to be much more reliable and conscientious men than they are.
We see these new rich people associated with the Government everywhere we go. The same people were at the right hands of Deputy Cosgrave's Ministers when they were in office. They are on the other side to-day—the bacon curers, the flour millers and all these people who are fleecing the public with the Government's consent. It is bad enough for a Government to allow people who control a private monopoly to fleece the public, but for the men sitting on the Front Benches to try to convince the people that they intend to deal with profiteering, and, at the same time, to act as leaders, as they are in this case, of the profiteers of the country is a little too much for the innocent people to believe, and they are not going to believe it. The principal profiteers in this country are the Government who are responsible for control of the sugar supplies of the country and who have in this case ordered an increase of 1½d. or 50 per cent. on the present price. They are very largely responsible for the control of the bacon-curing industry, and the price of bacon is put up almost every day. Every day one awakens and reads some statement from the Information Bureau, one finds that the Minister has authorised some increase in the price of coal, bacon, butter, sugar or some other essential commodity of the kind. There will be a day of reckoning for all this, and Deputy Tom Kelly will find it hard to go back to the Coombe, before the Finance Bill is passed, and get the support of the people for this Budget and for the increased tax on sugar for which he is going to vote to-night without the authority of the people who sent him here.
Would the Minister be prepared to give an undertaking to the House that he will see that supplies of sugar are delivered to grocers in every part of the country at a price which will enable them to sell it at 4½d. a lb., and thus implement the promises he has made to the House on several occasions?
Question put.
The Dáil divided:—Tá, 43; Níl, 57.
Tá
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George C.
- Benson, Ernest E.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Byrne, Alfred (Junior).
- Coburn, James.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Corish, Richard.
- Hughes, James.
- Hurley, Jeremiah.
- Keating, John.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John A.
- Davin, William.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Henry M.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, John L.
- Everett, James.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Gorey, Denis J.
- Hannigan, Joseph.
- Murphy, Timothy J.
- Nally, Martin.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donovan, Timothy J.
- O'Sullivan, John.
- Pattison, James P.
- Reidy, James.
- Rogers, Patrick J.
- Ryan, Jeremiah.
Níl
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Brady, Brian.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Childers, Erskine H.
- Cleary, Mícheál.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Flinn, Hugo V.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Fogarty, Patrick J.
- Friel, John.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Hogan, Daniel.
- Kelly, James P.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Loughman, Francis.
- Lynch, James B.
- McCann, John.
- McDevitt, Henry A.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moran, Michael.
- Morrissey, Michael.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Mullen, Thomas.
- Munnelly, John.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Loghlen, Peter J.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- O'Rourke, Daniel.
- Rice, Brigid M.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Conn.
Tellers :—Tá, Deputies Doyle and Murphy; Níl, Deputies Smith and Kennedy.
Motion declared defeated.