Committee Reports > List of Committees > Dáil > 1937 > Committee of Public Accounts > Report - Appropriation Accounts 1935 - 1936

APPENDIX XVI.

PAYMENT OF BOUNTY ON CERTAIN EXPORTS OF CREAMERY BUTTER TO THE CONTINENT.

1. With further reference to that part of paragraph 51 of the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General on the Appropriation Accounts for the financial year 1935-36, which relates to the payment of bounty at less than the statutory rate on certain exports of creamery butter to the Continent, I have to state, for the information of the Committee of Public Accounts, that the butter referred to was exported by the Newmarket Dairy Company, pursuant to Trade Agreements which had been entered into by the Government. The Newmarket Dairy Company is the property of the Government and in exporting butter to the Continent between 1st April and 31st August, 1935, the Company was acting as agent in implementing the Trade Agreements to which the Government was a party.

2. The basis of the Butter Price Stabilisation Scheme is that the value of butter to the producer of milk is maintained each year at a pre-arranged standard figure. This is secured by maintaining fixed home prices and by the payment on exports of such sums out of the Price Stabilisation Fund and the Vote for Export Bounties and Subsidies as will bring the value of exports to the pre-arranged standard figure. The rate of bounty payable on exports of butter is prescribed from time to time by Regulations of the Minister for Agriculture made pursuant to Section 34 of the Dairy Produce (Price Stabilisation) Act, 1935. In the case of the butter referred to in paragraph 51 of the Report, the payment of the prescribed rate of bounty would have resulted in bringing the price of the butter exported to the Continent to a substantially higher figure than the pre-arranged standard value. There was no good reason why the Newmarket Dairy Company should have been paid bounty at such a rate as would have given the Company a net return greater than the fixed home value.

3. To adjust matters, the Department of Agriculture might have taken either of the following courses:—

(i) to pay the Newmarket Dairy Company the full statutory rate of bounty and require the Company to make a refund of the excess above the fixed home value; or

(ii) to move the Minister to make an amending Regulation under Section 34 of the Price Stabilisation Act, 1935, to cover the special payment of bounty in the case.

In the exceptional circumstances of the case, however, it appeared to the Department that either of the two courses mentioned at (i) or (ii) would have been an unnecessarily cumbersome procedure, and the making of a direct payment was, accordingly, considered the best method of effecting the necessary adjustment.

4. The exports in question realised the following amounts:—

Corresponding net values of exports to the United Kingdom during these months were:—

5. As requested at the meeting of the Committee on the 18th instant, I have consulted the Department of Finance on this subject. That Department’s view is that they do not feel called on to make any observations in regard to the transaction which is a matter concerning the Department of Agriculture.

(Signed) SEÁN Ó BROIN,

for Accounting Officer.

24th November, 1937.