asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce when the price of flour will be reduced as a result of the change in the percentage of Irish wheat in the millers' grist from eighty to sixty.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Price of Flour.
41.
As already announced, arrangements have been made with the millers to take up 300,000 tons of wheat of the 1960 native crop. If some proportion of this 300,000 tons is unfit for milling it will be exchanged for a like quantity of imported wheat, without any price adjustment. Accordingly, whatever the outcome of the 1960 harvest, the proportion of higher-priced wheat in the grist will not be affected.
Is it a fact that when the amount of Irish wheat in the grist was increased from 70 per cent. to 80 per cent. from the 5th September, it was agreed to increase the price of both household and other flour because of the increased amount of Irish wheat in the grist? Now that that has changed, is it not only fair that there should be a reduction in the price of flour.
I told the Deputy in reply to a Supplementary Question last week, and I repeat it now, that 300,000 tons of wheat which the millers are obliged to take from the Irish farmers under the agreement between the Department of Agriculture and themselves will have to be taken and if there is, in that quantity of wheat, a proportion of unmillable wheat, the millers will be able to exchange that quantity for a corresponding quantity of imported wheat without any price adjustment. The farmers will, therefore, be getting the full price for their 300,000 tons irrespective of whether it is millable or unmillable. I do not know if the Deputy suggests that the price to the farmers should be depressed.
Will the Minister deny that the effect of that piece of mechanics is to make those who consume bread and flour—they are, in the main, the poorest section of the community—pay in a very special way for the fact that a good deal of our wheat last year was unmillable? Why is the burden of the high price of bread being placed with such emphasis on the backs of the most needy section of the community, for that is the effect of the Minister's scheme?
If the suggestion is that we should have cheap bread by importing wheat, then we can have cheap bread by importing wheat.
Is the Minister aware there are broader backs in the country to bear the burden?
Would it not be a proper and practicable procedure to let this charge, which is a proper charge in order to pay the farmers for their wheat, fall on the Exchequer and not necessarily on the consumers of bread and flour, who are already very hard pressed?
It is the same thing in the end. Exchequer charges will ultimately fall on the community.
But not on one section of the community.
There is no use taking it from one pocket and putting it into another.
Question No. 42.
I asked a Supplementary.
So did many others. I am calling Question No. 42.
I should like your permission to raise this on the adjournment.
I shall communicate with the Deputy.