andMr. Clinton asked the Minister for Agriculture if he is now in a position to indicate quality standards and price for the 1963 wheat crop, bearing in mind the urgent and immediate necessity of announcing them before the sowing season.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Wheat Quality Standards and Price.
32.
Prices for millable wheat of the 1963 crop were announced on 25th February. The question of standards is still the subject of discussions between the National Farmers' Association and the flour millers.
Is it not most necessary, before the sowing time, that the farmers should know what quality standards will apply and also that the end responsibility to fix those standdards—or, if not to fix them, to be able to announce them—should lie with the Minister?
The only definition of what a millable standard is was made many years ago and apparently has never been amended. It is as follows:
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 definition is there for a very long time. It is because there has been some dissatisfaction between the growers and the millers that these two organisations came together and last year made an arrangement which did not seem to work satisfactorily—but discussions have been taking place. As I said in reply to the question, no finality has as yet been reached as a result of these discussions.
Has the Minister ever defined in a very broad way standards of millability now, and will he undertake that the standards appertaining a few years ago will appertain next year and so will keep the farmers happy?
The definition is construed in a legal sense and I cannot do anything to alter it.
That may be so, but is it not the Minister's responsibility to see that those standards do not change from year to year—that the standards which were good five years ago shall be good in 1963?
It is a question of determining who has the right to measure these standards.
It is the Minister's responsibility.
I have never thought so.
I insist so.
If I were to go up to Louth to tell the Deputy how he was to do his business, I wonder how he would take it?
If he told me the right thing, I would be glad.
In that case, I would be going as an adviser.
Cutting out all the trimmings, is not the net result that the price of wheat has been reduced by as much as 4/- in the barrel?
Is it not a fact that Ireland is the only western European country where decisions on the millability and the general standards of wheat are left to the millers to decide? Is it not a fact that the Minister has available to him a report furnished by the Agricultural Institute within the past three months in which it was stated that Ireland was unique because the millers were allowed to be the judge and jury on the question of wheat standards?
Practices are different in every country, tastes are different and standards have to be different as a result. Having regard to our tastes here we have standards to coincide with what those tastes require.
Is the Minister aware that the announcement he refers to of 25th February represents an estimated reduction of £200,000 in the income of the farmers next year?
Hear, hear.
I am not aware of any such thing. That allegation is not true.
The Minister will have a question next week about that.
I do not care if I have one every halfhour.