asked the Minister for Supplies if he will state how much of the Vote of £80,000 provided in November last for the purpose of subsidising the price of bread has been expended by the 31st March, 1942, and if he will say whether he has requested any persons supplying bread to the Defence Forces, or to local authorities, either to forgo the subsidy properly due to them, or to refund the subsidy properly paid to them; or whether he has authorised or requested either the Minister for Defence or the Minister for Local Government to make such requests; and, if so, if he will state the reason for such action.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Bread Subsidy.
The sum expended up to the 31st March last out of the Vote of £80,000 was £22,149 4s. 4d. The payments cover ordinary sales of batch bread to the public as well as contract sales to Government Departments and local authorities. Bakers holding such contracts have been asked by the appropriate Government Department or local authority with the concurrence of the Minister for Finance to reduce the contract price by a sum equivalent to the amount of the subsidy paid, as it was felt that the prices quoted under such contracts freely entered into provided a reasonable margin of profit for the bakers concerned.
Would the Minister say whether the bakers who supply the Army and the public authorities use yeast and salt and fuel and petrol and vehicles, and whether they have to bear the cost of repairing vehicles?
I would require notice of that question.
It is a separate question.
Will the Minister say whether the rise in the cost of those things was not the reason for granting the bread subsidy? The Minister came before the House in November last and asked for £80,000 in order to give a subsidy to bakers throughout the country because the price of yeast, flour, fuel, petrol, vehicles, and the cost of repairing vehicles, had gone up. Will the Minister say whether the rise that was occasioned by those increases to the bakers supplying the ordinary public did not also fall upon the bakers supplying public institutions, and will he say whether he has examined that?
Certainly, and I presume that those bakers, some of whom made those contracts before they knew there was to be a subsidy, fixed their prices in relation to the knowledge of the cost of those items.