It is all right to eat carbohydrates if one cannot afford anything better but these people cannot afford even the carbohydrates. This point of view is supported to a considerable extent by the findings of the Nutritional Survey. Admittedly, this survey was carried out in 1946-47 but it is the only one we have available which goes into very great detail. It gives the consumption of food by the varying classes in the cities and towns and in rural Ireland and it discloses that a high percentage of the food consumed by what they called the slum dweller, the lower income group, the unemployed, the old age pensioner, is bread and that 44 per cent. of the meals of children under 14 years of age was composed of bread and spread, The difference in consumption between the lower income and the middle income group is that 18 per cent. in the middle income group and 44 per cent. in the lower income group eat as a predominant item of their diet bread and spread, that is, butter, margarine or other such commodity. That was the position in the city of Dublin. In the farming community, one-third of all meals taken consisted simply of tea and bread or tea and bread and butter or margarine, and the poorer the family, the higher the consumption of bread. I think this claim which is made that the more prosperous a society is, the lower the consumption of bread is true. While it is true internationally, it is also true nationally, and the lower the income, the higher the percentage consumption of bread or cereals in any family.
The people we are trying to help most are those who cannot afford to buy any of the other expensive commodities such as meat, eggs and so on. We want to secure a reduction in the price of bread in order to help such people in the middle and lower income groups and, in particular, the large families. The Nutritional Survey also showed that the larger the family, the lower the consumption of bread because they are unable to afford it.
I want to give some figures which may be of some help in assessing the validity of the suggestion that the drop in the consumption of bread is a measure of our prosperity. The consumption in Ireland, as a percentage of Britain, of bread is 131 per cent.; of fish, 23 per cent.; butter, 88 per cent; potatoes, 172 per cent; and fruit, 80 per cent, so that in fact the general level of food consumption and general dietary standards are relatively low. That, of course, has a considerable effect on the general physique and health of the middle and lower income sections of the community.
We believe therefore that there is an important principle involved, the necessity to try to see that the flour milling industry is operated in the most efficient way and in a way which is likely to lead to the maximum reduction in the price of bread. As I said, there are various ways which can be tried—subsidy, trade union action or nationalisation. In the nationalisation of the industry, we are given the assurance that the money which now goes in profits to the millers and to the various components of the flour milling industry and bakery industries generally will be ploughed back by a State company into the industry and either used for its improvement by providing more efficient equipment or for better wages for the employees and for the reduction of the price of the end commodity, bread, to the consumer, who is of course to a certain extent an employee.
We believe that in these circumstances, the high price of bread and the fact that so many of our people are faced with the inevitability of using bread as the most important component of their diet, we are justified in claiming that we cannot afford the luxury of running this very important industry under private industry and that we cannot afford the luxury of paying profits to private individuals out of the milling industry. The need to reduce the price of bread is so great we are justified in asking and insisting that these people forego their profits and in that way we shall have money at our disposal to help secure a reduction in the price of bread. This suggestion is not based on the classical socialist belief in the ownership and control of industry being vested in the people but is a simple proposition that in certain circumstances, where it serves the common good and where we believe it is contrary to the public interest that a profit be made, we are justified in suggesting the industry be organised so that profits can be absorbed back into the industry in one of the many forms I have suggested, better wages, better conditions for the workers and a better price for the end product, which is the bread.
We could not be justified in putting forward this far-reaching suggestion, a proposition which certainly affects one of the greatest industries in the State, affects hundreds of individuals, and which would mean radical changes for many people—of all of which we are fully conscious—were it not for the fact that we feel a case can be made against the flour milling industry and against the bakery trade, on foot not only of the needless distribution of profits but also on foot of the demonstrable inefficiency in the flour milling industry.
We have one very great advantage in trying to assess the position in the flour milling industry, that is, a number of reports from commissions set up by successive Governments. These are magnificent reports so far as the examination of the facts disclosed are concerned and the energy with which the whole matter was pursued, but they disclose, first of all, a situation which points to a considerable measure of inefficiency in the flour milling industry and bakery trade generally. They must also disclose the measure of disquiet felt by different Governments at the position of the flour milling industry. One of the most disturbing things is that, in spite of many categorical statements, recommendations and findings of these people—nobody would call them socialists; I suppose they were mildly conservative individuals who formed the greater part of these commissions—their recommendations have been completely ignored by successive Governments.
One of the most important recommendations is made by the first Flour and Bread Inquiry, 1950, which is referred to on page 27 of the Final Report of the Flour and Bread Committee, 1956. At paragraph 29 it quotes this recommendation:—
Our first and fundamental recommendation is, therefore, that a proper uniform costing system be put into operation in each mill without delay, so that costings may be available for interim periods as soon as possible and for the year ending 31st August, 1950 in due course.
That recommendation is really the basic recommendation of the Flour and Bread Inquiry and it is reiterated in the subsequent Flour and Bread Inquiry, 1956, in the report of which they also pointed to the wide variation in costings.
On page 57, paragraph 58 they set out:—
The wide range in production and distribution costs is prima facie evidence of wide variations in efficiency ——
and they repeat then the recommendation that a proper, uniform costings system be put into operation.
The report also states:—
It is surprising to find that—seven years after the submission of the Inquiry's Report—there is still no complete costing system in the industry, nor is there any indication that one will be installed in the near future.
Of course, they made the obvious point that until a proper costing system is introduced into the flour milling industry, it will be impossible to be certain as to the degree of efficiency that is to be found in that industry.
On page 59 of their report of 1956, they say:—
We accordingly strongly recommend that a uniform costing system, on the lines of that devised by the Department of Agriculture, amended, where necessary, in the light of developments since 1950-51, should be installed in the mills without further delay.
As far as I am aware, the flour millers have completely ignored this recommendation and have allowed the demonstrably inefficient mills to continue to operate, without taking any steps to bring themselves up to the position of efficiency which would allow them to reduce their working costs. This is all very well in an industry making television sets, motor cars, washing machines or refrigerators, where that could be considered permissible, but in an industry which is concerned with the provision at the lowest possible cost of our daily bread, it seems to me to be the height of irresponsibility on the part of the flour millers that they have not yet seen fit to examine their own industry in order to find out in what way it could be brought to its maximum level of efficiency.
The average cost varied between 12/8d. and £1.15.1d. Obviously, that is an appalling range of discrepancy between the lowest and the highest. The Committee report shows that there must be a considerable measure of inefficiency in mills for which the consumer is paying. That is the most important thing. The profits do not suffer. The flour millers continue to take their profits. They merely put an increase on the price of bread. I think any State company would hasten to introduce an efficient costing system so that they would be able to weed out the inefficient from the efficient. This has been neglected by the flour millers.
There is another situation which arises every year—we are at present engaged in it—and that is the disputation which goes on between the Department of Agriculture, the farmers and the flour millers over this question of a fair price for the wheat and the test for the millability of wheat. The millers consider they are to be the final judges on the suitability of wheat for the mills and for making into bread. Consequently, of course, the farmer is completely in their hands. He appears to have little or no right of appeal. He has no redress that I can see, readily available to him, at any rate. Consequently, the millers have the final say and that, I think, is most undesirable. If a State company were formed, we would have a situation in which farmers' representatives would have an equal say with everybody else.
In regard to the question of the decision as to millability, the definition of "millable" wheat is clearly so imprecise in its wording as to be open to practically any interpretation at all. Wheat must be commercially clean, in sound and sweet condition and capable, having regard to the methods customarily used in the milling industry for the cleaning and conditioning of wheat, of being milled into flour suitable for human consumption. That could be interpreted and is being interpreted by the millers any way they want to and the farmers can do little or nothing about it. No attempt has been made by the millers to devise a more precise test or definition of millability in order to try to make it possible for the farmers to know exactly where they stand every year with their crop.
We have another position developing in the milling industry which I consider is undesirable and which should be changed, that is, that a large sector of the flour milling industry is controlled from outside the country. These people outside the country have little or no interest in or appreciation of the implications of their decisions and failure to increase efficiency. So long as they can take a fair profit, a good profit or a fat profit, they do not mind what the consequences for the consuming public are.
The flour milling industry has also failed in another respect. In spite of the considerable capital assets, equipment and machinery available to it, it has played only a negligible part in the development of the industrialisation of the country over the years. It simply developed the provision of animal feeding, which was easy enough. Very little trouble was involved there. It is now advancing out into what, to my mind, is also undesirable, an attempt to control the bakery trade. In the report of the Flour and Bread Committee of 1956, there is reference to a developing monopoly situation. Sixty per cent.—a most undesirable feature—of the milling capacity is now in the hands of two milling companies. At page 84 of the report, they say:
It is significant that the two milling companies which have recently taken steps to acquire bakeries belong to the two groups, referred to in Paragraph 40 of the Flour and Bread Inquiry, which together control two-thirds of the nominal capacity of the milling industry—one of the groups in turn being in effect controlled by an English company.
They go on to say:—
If present trends continue, these two groups might eventually dominate not alone the milling industry but also the baking industry.
That is the development which is clearly worrying many people in the bakery trade. They are to be gobbled up by these very powerful milling industries and eventually there will be a complete monopoly, not only in the milling industry but also in the bakery trade.
We think it is time that the Government stepped in to stop this development of a monopoly position before it has gone too far. We could clearly reach a position in which these two companies could absorb the whole of the milling capacity and then a takeover bid by the English company for the Irish company would leave the English company in complete control of the production and distribution of the flour milling industry and the bakery trade as well. That seems to be a most undesirable prospect. I cannot see why the people of Ireland cannot themselves take over—establish a State company, take over the industry and establish their own monopoly so that any benefits accruing from the monopoly position come back to the consumer, the taxpayer and the people.
The other failure on the part of the flour milling industry is that it has failed to develop and expand in the industrial field. It is now faced with a reduction in consumption—whatever the reason is unimportant at the moment—in the consumption of bread. Yet the industry has an increasing milling capacity. It has made no attempt whatsoever to diversify its industrial interests and is now confined to a very narrow field. This narrow field is getting progressively narrower. That seems to me to be a situation which the industry could have anticipated. The millers should have anticipated it and taken steps to see that they developed their activities, so that if a contraction did come about, they could have expanded in another way.
The millers failed to take any part in the expansion of exports, or even to try to take any part in the expansion of exports. It is true that it is difficult to expand exports in such a trade, but it is possible to do it and they have failed to take even a small part in the drive for increased exports.
With the increase in the percentage of native wheat in the grist for flour milling, there is a very high percentage of temporary employment. Men are out of employment for a large part of the year and the millers have not attempted to organise their industry so as to employ their workers for the whole round of the year.
The milling industry has made no contribution to the development or organisation of research into the problems of wheat growing in our particular atmospheric conditions, the problematical weather. The position, as we are told by those millers, is that the person who grows wheat by conacre, the telephone farmers, as they have been called, is the person who grows the worst wheat and we are told by the Minister for Agriculture that he does not know how much wheat is grown by conacre. Nobody has attempted to find out how much wheat is grown by conacre and apparently that is the worst kind of wheat. This seems to me to be another failure on the part of the millers.
I do not know how a private company could control the types of farmer who grows wheat except by the contract system. Under Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann, it has been found possible to develop the contract system, but that is a semi-State company and does not present the grave dangers which would arise if these millers were allowed to control the acreage of wheat permitted to any particular farmer which would give them something in the form of a monopoly. There is a position already existing in regard to agencies which is part of the restrictive practices operated by these people. This is the case where a particular miller cannot buy in a great wheat growing area because an agent has it tied up and will not allow him to get supplies. That increases the costs because that man has to go to another area to get his supplies or buy dried wheat from a drier who has a surplus.