I move the amendment standing in my name on the Order Paper:—
In page 4, in the Schedule, to delete the following:—
3. Tea Importers, Limited. £6,000,000.
I put this amendment down to draw attention to what I consider to be a matter of very vital importance. The purpose of the amendment is to delete from the Schedule Tea Importers, Limited. The consequence of the amendment would be that the current authorised overdraft of Tea Importers could no longer be guaranteed by the Government. What I envisaged was that Tea Importers should cease to function.
If my advice in that matter had been adopted 18 months ago, when this question arose in the House, we could have bought all the tea we wanted at about 1/8½ per lb. for the lowest grade and from that upwards according to quality. As a result of the retention of the system of buying all our tea centrally through Calcutta, the lowest grades are costing 3/2 to 3/4 per lb. Albeit the Minister committed himself to the proposition when he was so exasperated by the failure of the London wholesale tea trade to deliver stocks to this country at the beginning of the 1939 war, and then resolved that he would never deal with them again, I want to urge on the Minister that in matters of this kind understandable reactions of pique should not become the signpost of policy. Surely the interest of our community is to buy tea where they can get it best and cheapest.
The most strait-laced protectionist will not, I suppose, advocate the growing of tea in this country. It is true that at one time the Taoiseach was prepared to suggest we could cut out tea and live on light beer. So far as I know he has abandoned that policy, together with the recommendation of the Egyptian bee and the growing of Irish tobacco. I could understand the Minister restricting imports of tea if he had in mind the prosecution of the Taoiseach's policy of living on light beer but I understand that has now been dropped from Fianna Fáil policy and it is not intended to grow a tea substitute. Surely then the prime object of our Government should be to enable our people to buy the best tea for the lowest price wherever they can get it.
Now, I happen to have some knowledge of the tea trade and I happen to know that there are thousands of experienced grocers in Ireland who bought their own tea for generations and who always had access to the wholesale distributors in Dublin, London, Liverpool and elsewhere. Some of the grocers bought their tea through wholesalers in Dublin and London; some of them bought through agents bidding on their behalf at the Mincing Lane auctions. Let us remember that when our merchants went, by their agents, into the tea auctions of Mincing Lane, they were bidding against buyers from America, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Denmark and all over the world. We must be now one of the only countries who put upon ourselves the obligation of purchasing tea in Calcutta. I do not want to restrict anybody from buying tea in Calcutta if that is the way he wants to buy it. All I am asking is that the ordinary grocers should have restored to them the right to buy for their customers the best tea they can get at the lowest possible penny and to compete then with their neighbours for trade by offering better tea for less money than the shop down the street.
The present position is that every grocer in Ireland is obliged to buy his tea from a certain number of wholesalers who draw their supplies from Tea Importers, Limited. We are now told that these wholesalers are to be allowed to form a monopoly, a teabuying monopoly, that thereafter the grocers will be obliged to buy their tea from the members of this monopoly, who can only function for the purpose of purchasing as a monopoly. You may go through all the movements of giving them the right to deal on the Calcutta market and consign the tea to Tea Importers only in name, but if you bring 15 wholesalers together and tell them they are the only people who in practice are going to be able to import tea and that everybody thereafter will have to buy tea from one of the 15, how long do you think that competition will survive amongst them? I warn the House that the net result of such an arrangement is that, taking quality and price into consideration, our people will be paying 6d. a lb. more for their tea than they otherwise would.
The price of the lowest grade tea has gone up 4d. per lb. in the last three months as a result of the increase in the world price. Bear in mind that had we been free to buy tea wherever we could get it in the last two years the stores of the tea merchants in this country could have been full of tea at a cost of about 1/10 per lb. delivered in this country. It has gone up because we were operating on the Calcutta market. I do not know how Tea Importers manage their affairs, but the fact is that they have advanced the price of the lower grade tea by 4d per lb., and that increase has had to be passed on in toto to the customer. In respect of tea, retailed at 5/- and 6/-per lb., the quality has been brought down while the price at 5/- and 6/- has been maintained; but in respect of tea retailing at 4/- per lb. the price has gone up to 4/4.
I do not know what induced the Minister to get this bee into his bonnet. It is ludicrous for us to be confined to a few London wholesalers. They will sell off all they can and the only effect of the present arrangement is to leave us stripped and naked and exposed to the Calcutta tea merchants. They are no soft bunch. So long as the Indian Government can levy an export tax on tea they will levy it to the last farthing. Immediately there is a surplus they will set about reducing the output of the tea gardens. The same is true of Ceylon. As long as there is an export tax on tea they will levy it to the last halfpenny. I strongly urge on the Minister to wind up Tea Importers and get out of this business and allow the merchants of this country to buy their tea wherever they like, so that through the operation of competition we can secure for our people the best teas at the lowest price. Any other course is going to cost our people money. You have in this a form of exploitation that it is extremely difficult to expose because excessive prices can be more effectively concealed in tea by wangling quality than in almost any other commodity that our people habitually buy and use.
