Subsidy to Maintain Pre-Revaluation Prices
The additional subsidy needed to preserve earlier prices was estimated at £2.4 million for butter; bread and cheese increases were attributed to other costs.
asked the Minister for Finance the amount of additional Exchequer subsidy required to maintain the existing price of bread, flour, milk, butter and dairy products at their level prior to the current Green £ revaluations.
Comment on this
: Of the commodities re-ferred to by the Deputy the only ones in respect of which a price increase has been recently announced are bread, butter and cheese.
While the increase in the price of butter can be attributed to the increase in the price of milk arising from the EEC farm prices agreement (including Green £ adjustment) which came into effect on 22 May, the increases in the case of bread and cheese arise from other factors, namely, higher wages and other processing costs. The extra subsidy that would be needed to offset the announced increase in the price of butter is estimated at £2.4 million for the remainder of 1978. The full year cost would be roughly double that amount.
17.