Bank of Ireland Bill, 1929. - Land Purchase Annuities. – Dáil Éireann (6th Dáil) – Thursday, 2 May 1929

Bank of Ireland Bill, 1929. - Land Purchase Annuities.

Mr. de Valera

Before I move the motion in my name, I wonder whether we can get agreements on this proposal. It just occurred to me as I was looking through all the documents necessary for this case whether it might not be better that we should divide this debate into two parts, say, devote three or four hours to it to-day, and then leave an interval which would enable members to verify for themselves quotations and references to documents. I fear it would be quite impossible for any member of the House, unless there is some interval, to refer to the documents. I am pretty certain that before the case is completed, it will run over references to the Land Acts, references, for example, to documents like the Transfer of Functions Order and a number of other documents of that kind. I think it would be most unfair to members, having documents referred to in a single debate like this, to expect them without having had an opportunity of consulting the documents for themselves to come to a decision on the matter. I would suggest that instead of the arrangement of going through the whole case and having a vote on it to-night that we should divide it into two parts, have two or three speeches on each side, and after that to postpone the motion until this day week and finish it then.

The President

Personally I would much prefer if the debate could be finished to-day. I do not know whether there is any trouble about the documents in question. They have been available for the past five or six months, and we could have produced them if asked. I personally prefer that in a discussion on these matters there should not be a second day. These second days bring in extrancous matter as a rule, and do not throw any light on them

Mr. de Valera

I take it, then, there is no hope of agreement with the President on that?

The President

I, certainly on the case that has been made by Deputy de Valera, cannot see that there is justification for a second day. I am at a loss to know what documents there are which have not been available for the last five or six months.

Mr. de Valera

The documents are available and the Land Acts are available, but I wonder how many members here would be satisfied to hear references simply to them without consulting them. After all, this is a question which involves millions of money. I will refer later, for example, to what percentage of our revenue and so on it amounts to. I think it would be ridiculous for this House to hear the case and decide a matter of this magnitude in a single sitting. The whole financial settlement involves a yearly drain on this country of a sum which is about one-fifth of our total revenue. I think it is only fair to members of the House who, I am sure, have read all sorts of arguments pro and con, who are actually going to sit in judgment on a matter of this kind, that they should have an opportunity of thoroughly understanding the case before giving a vote on it. That is my reason for asking that we should, first of all, have the case fully stated. There will be doubts raised. There will be a counter case put up. Probably all the members who have to decide on it will have to examine the points raised for themselves if they are going to give an intelligent judgment on it. It is not because we are only to have six or seven hours on it. It is not going to be like what happened when the Land Act of 1923 was passed. It was introduced. I understand, on the Fourth Stage of the Bill, just slipped in without any explanation.

An Ceann Comhairle

Do not let us get excited at 3.30.

Mr. de Valera

We are prepared to go ahead. In any case, there was no suggestion that the case as far as I was personally going to make it, was not going to be made, none whatever. My suggestion was that this matter which, for the first time in this House, was going to be adequately discussed, would be so discussed that every member who was going to vote on it would vote with an informed judgment upon it. I do not think that the opportunity that can be given here to-day is likely to be an opportunity of that kind. However, if there is not agreement we can go ahead. But I would ask the members who have got to vote on this motion to remember what they are doing, and that a sum of money involved——

Mr. Hogan

Is this in order? It is an exhortation to other members to remember what they are doing.

An Ceann Comhairle

Let us be clear. This is a motion put down for private members' time. It was put down a considerable time ago, and it is now being taken in Government time under an arrangement made at least some weeks ago. The question involved in the motion is merely a question of the transfer of the land annuities—no wider question. Deputy de Valera has made a particular suggestion which would. I think, need agreement on the other side of the House. If there is not agreement, I think no good purpose can be served by continuing to discuss the suggestion. The motion should be moved now in accordance with the original arrangement. I suggest, therefore, that Deputy de Valera moves the motion.

Mr. de Valera

The motion which I move is:

"That the Dáil is of opinion that the land annuities now being paid into ‘The Purchase Annuities Fund' for transmission to Great Britain should henceforth be paid into the Central Fund, and that the Executive Council should immediately take the appropriate steps to that end."

There is a reference to "The Purchase Annuities Fund," and that reference takes us back to the Land Act of 1923. I will quote Section 12 for the Deputies, as they may not have it in front of them. Section 12, sub-section (2) reads:—

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in the Provisional Government (Transfer of Functions) Order, 1922, all sums collected after the 31st day of March, 1923, in respect of purchase annuities in repayment of advances made or to be made in Saorstát Eireann in pursuance of purchase agreements under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, or any later Land Purchase Act other than this Act shall so far as not already paid into the Exchequer be paid into a fund entitled "The Purchase Annuities Fund" to be established under the control of the Minister for Finance, and there shall from time to time be paid thereout by the Minister for Finance to the appropriate authority for the credit of the Land Purchase Account or the Irish Land Purchase Fund as the case may be an amount equivalent to the purchase annuities accruing due in respect to the aforesaid advances.

For the purposes of this section purchase annuities shall be deemed to include interest payable in respect of an advance as aforesaid.

Under that section, you have established this Purchase Annuities Fund into which the annuities were to be paid, and they were to be paid there so that "from time to time they should be paid thereout by the Minister for Finance to the appropriate authority for the credit of the Land Purchase Account or the Irish Land Purchase Fund, as the case may be, an amount equivalent," etc. There are two other funds referred to there. It is just as well perhaps that we should understand what these funds are from the very start. We have, first of all, the Land Purchase Account. The Land Purchase Account was an account which was established under the Act of 1891, and it was administered by the Land Commission up to the time in which the Transfer of Functions Order took effect. I will refer to that Transfer of Functions Order in a few moments. The next fund that is mentioned is the Irish Land Purchase Fund. That was a fund set up under the 1903 Act, and it was controlled by the National Debt Commissioners in London. So that this section of the Land Act sets up this fund into which at the present moment these annuities are being paid, and it authorises the Minister for Finance to pay out of this fund, from time to time to the appropriate authority of the Land Purchase Fund, which is now in London, an amount equivalent to the purchase annuities accruing due in respect of the advances made under the Land Acts from 1891 to 1903. I hope any references to these Funds will be understood. As I say, at the moment the position is in virtue of this section of the Land Act, the land annuities which are collected in Ireland, and which, under the Treaty for a period, were paid into the Exchequer of the Provisional Government, are now being paid into this fund and transmitted to Britain.

The object of this motion is to get the Dáil to declare that that should cease, and that these annuities should no longer be paid into that fund, that they should be paid into the Central Fund as other revenues of the State and controlled as other revenues of the State are controlled. In effect this motion amounts to getting from the Dáil an expression of opinion that this section of the Land Act of 1923 ought to be repeated. I say it is competent for you to repeal it, and I hope that when it is considered your judgment will be that it ought to be repealed, and that this sum of money which is yearly being sent out of the country gratuitously, because I hold there is no contract that binds you to send it, ought to be retained. It is being sent out by your own act as a free gift to the British. This State is not in a position to make any such free gifts. This money is required for our own needs, and it should come into our own Exchequer and be paid out of it only as other revenues are paid out for the services of the State.

Under this section there is reference also to what is called the Transfer of Functions Order. Deputies will remember that there was an Article—I think it was Article 17— of the Treaty which provided for certain transitional arrangements for the Government of what was called Southern Ireland during the period that was to elapse from the signing of the Treaty until the Free State came into statutory existence, with a Constitution and so on, fully organised. Article 17 of the Treaty is as follows:—"By way of provisional arrangement for the administration of Southern Ireland."

That term "Southern Ireland," of course, shows us at once that the Act of 1920 must somehow or other have been regarded as being in operation, because it was only under the Act of 1920 that the term "Southern Ireland" had any meaning at all. The Article reads:—

By way of provisional arrangement for the administration of Southern Ireland during the interval which must elapse between the date hereof and the constitution of a Parliament and Government of the Irish Free State in accordance therewith, steps shall be taken forthwith for summoning a meeting of members of Parliament elected for constituencies in Southern Ireland since the passing of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, and for constituting a Provisional Government, and the British Government shall take the steps necessary to transfer to such Provisional Government the powers and machinery requisite for the discharge of its duties, provided that every member of such Provisional Government shall have signified in writing his or her acceptance of this instrument. But this arrangement shall not continue in force beyond the expiration of twelve months from the date hereof.

As I say, by that Article a Provisional Government was to be set up for the administration of Southern Ireland, and the British Government was to transfer to that Government the powers and machinery necessary for carrying on government during the transition period, and in order that there should be a definite limit to that transition period a bound of not more than twelve months was set.

On 31st March, 1922, the British passed an Act called the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act, the effect of which was to give the force of British law to the Articles of the Treaty. Besides giving the force of law to the Articles of the Treaty, it also provided that for the purpose of giving effect to Article 17 of these Articles of Agreement, referred to as the Treaty, Orders in Council could be made transferring to the Provisional Government established thereunder the powers and machinery therein referred to. As the Act is a short one, it might be better perhaps to read the whole of Section 2, which explains itself as readily as I could explain it and in shorter form.

For the purpose of giving effect to Article 17 of the said Agreement, Orders in Council may be made transferring to the Provisional Government established under that Article the powers and machinery therein referred to, and as soon as may be and not later than four months after the passing of this Act the Parliament of Southern Ireland shall be dissolved....

I will not comment on phrases like that that occur in a number of cases, but later I shall draw attention to their significance as showing what was the state of the law in Ireland during that period.

.... and such steps shall be taken as may be necessary for holding, in accordance with the law now in force with respect to the franchise, number of members, and method of election and holding of elections to that Parliament, an election of members for the constituencies which would have been entitled to elect members to that Parliament, and the members so elected shall constitute the House of the Parliament to which the Provisional Government shall be responsible....

Mind, it is "the House of the Parliament."

.... and that Parliament shall, as respects matters within the jurisdiction of the Provisional Government have power to make laws in like manner as the Parliament of the Irish Free State when constituted. Any Order in Council under this section may contain such incidental, consequential, or supplemental provisions as may appear to be necessary or proper for the purpose of giving effect to the foregoing provisions of this section.

As you see, this Act did two things: it gave the force of law to the Articles of Agreement, and it provided for Orders in Council which would transfer the necessary powers and machinery. On the following day one of these Orders in Council was issued—on the 1st April. As I have pointed out, these Orders were simply to transfer the functions, powers and machinery, so that this transitional Provisional Government which was to be provided for from the date of the passing of the Treaty until such time as the Irish Free State should come into full being, with its Constitution, etc., should be able to function.

The section of the 1923 Land Act refers to this Transfer of Functions Order and says, that notwithstanding anything in this Order the money should be paid into the Purchase Annuities Fund. Why was it necessary to refer to this Order at all? To my mind, the only necessity for referring to it was that up to that time the money had been paid, in virtue of this Order, into the Provisional Exchequer. The Act made a variation in the procedure which had originated with this Order in Council, and which continued on even after these Orders in Council, which were made only to cover a transitory period, might be regarded as having gone out of force.

In any case, at the time the 1923 Act was passed the procedure was that these land annuities were paid into the Exchequer. The particular section of these Orders that refers to the payment of the annuities is Section 4. The validity of this Order I repeat is based on the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act.

Section 4 says:

All sums collected by the Provisional Government after the date of transfer on account of

(a) purchase annuities payable in respect of land situated in Southern Ireland, including any existing arrears thereof;

(b) sums due on account of existing loans made to authorities and persons in Southern Ireland out of the Local Loans Fund, the Development Fund, the Road Improvement Grant or Road Fund, or other similar public fund shall be paid into the Exchequer.

In that section, item (a) is the one that is of importance for this particular question. It says that these land annuities shall be paid into the Exchequer of the Provisional Government, and it was in virtue, therefore, of that particular section that the annuities were first paid into the Exchequer, and that you have reference to that fact in the section of the Act which I am asking the House to express the opinion should be repealed.

Now we come to another document called "Heads of the Ultimate Financial Settlement between the British Government and the Government of the Irish Free State." That was a document signed on the 19th March, 1926. It is signed by Winston S. Churchill on the one side and Earnan de Blaghd on the other. Amongst the heads of settlement is this:—

(1) "The Government of the Irish Free State undertake to pay to the British Government at agreed intervals the full amount of the annuities accruing due from time to time under the Irish Land Acts, 1891-1909 without any deduction whatsoever whether on account of income tax or otherwise.

(2) "The Government of the Irish Free State agree to pay to the British Government prior to March 31st, 1926, the sum of approximately £550,000 being the amount hitherto withheld by them in respect of income tax on annuities payable under the above-mentioned Acts.

(3) "The British Government accept liability for the provision out of moneys provided by Parliament of the cost of the interest and sinking fund on bonus and excess stock under the above-mentioned Acts, subject to a contribution by the Irish Free State Government of the sum of £160,000 in the year 1926-27 and at the rate of £134,500 per annum thereafter."

Now the first part of our case is that this document is not, so far as binding this State is concerned, worth the paper it is written on. No Minister can assign national property away by his own signature. This has never got statutory sanction, and every sum paid out in virtue of that agreement without co-lateral statutory sanction is being paid out without the proper authority. We therefore say that this is not a binding contract between the Irish Free State and the British Government, and we hold that any case that is made for the transmission of annuities on the basis of that document is a case that cannot stand.

The position with respect to our financial obligations, if there are any to Great Britain, begins with the Article of the Agreement of 1921. It sets out that:—

"The Irish Free State shall assume liability for the service of the public debt of the United Kingdom as existing at the date hereof, and towards the payment of war pensions as existing at that date, in such proportion as may be fair and equitable, having regard to any just claims on the part of Ireland by way of set-off or counter-claim, the amount of such sums being determined in default of agreement by the arbitration of one or more independent persons being citizens of the British Empire."

There is another Article also dealing with Finance, Article 10. That Article is:

"The Government of the Irish Free State agrees to pay fair compensation on terms not less favourable than those accorded by the Act of 1920 to judges, officials, members of the Police Force, and other Public Servants, who are discharged by it or who retire in consequence of the change of Government effected in pursuance thereof.

"Provided that this agreement shall not apply to members of the Auxiliary Police Force, or to persons recruited in Great Britain for the Royal Irish Constabulary during the two years next preceding the date hereof. The British Government will assume responsibility for such compensation or pensions as may be payable to any of these excepted persons."

If you examine the Articles of Agreement you will find that these are the only two Articles that refer in any way to the question of Finance or to any financial obligation as far as this country is concerned. Article 5 was the principal Article. That committed the Irish Free State to accept such liability for the service of the Public Debt of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as existing at the date of the instrument—such proportion as might be considered fair and equitable when the sets-off and counter-claims were taken into account. And those who asked the Dáil of the Republic to accept the Treaty held that under that Article Ireland would in fact not have to pay anything, that the counter-claims which could be put forward were such that they would completely overbalance any claim made, and that if there was to be justice Ireland would not be paying any sum of money to England but the reverse.

Now that Article of the Treaty was held in abeyance for a number of years. There were references in various documents to what was called the ultimate financial settlement, and everybody who read them must have understood that the ultimate financial settlement was the financial settlement referred to in Article 5 and nothing else. It will be remembered that in December, 1925, there was an agreement which the people of the country, at any rate, were led to regard as the ultimate financial settlement. They were told that their obligations under that Article had been cancelled, that it had ended in Ireland being asked to pay nothing more than "a big nought," that a good bargain had been struck, and everybody who was anxious lest there should be any obligation or burden placed upon Ireland as a result of the ultimate financial settlement could rest easy henceforth, that this good bargain had relieved them of all cause for uneasiness.

That particular agreement was signed on the 3rd December, 1925. It was signed on behalf of the British Government by five members of that Government, on behalf of the Government of the Irish Free State by three members. and on behalf of Northern Ireland by James Craig and Charles H. Blackmore, Secretary to the Cabinet of Northern Ireland. Now, we are to remember that this was an agreement by which the present division of Ireland was accepted that the States of Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland became established or rather that the boundaries of these States became finally fixed. It was said by those who were afraid at the time that the country would not stand for that settlement, that at least they had made a good financial bargain if they had made a very bad political one. Section 2 of the Agreement says: "That the Irish Free State is hereby released from the obligations under Article 5 of the said Articles of Agreement to assume the liability therein mentioned." Within three months from the signing of that document and the publication to the people of Ireland, as well as to the Dáil, that there were no financial obligations under Article 5, we find a secret document was signed. That document was signed secretly by the present Minister for Finance, negotiated in secret and kept a secret from the 19th of March until November. Why was it kept secret? The other pact or agreement that I have mentioned was submitted to the Parliament here, and there was the submission of a similar agreement in the British Parliament. But this financial agreement was not brought before the Dáil, and one does not want to have, let us say, the desire of the Minister for Agriculture to make suggestions as to motives——

Mr. Hogan

Fire ahead.

Mr. de Valera

—to realise that this document was kept a secret because the Minister for Finance was afraid, so soon after having stated that there was no obligation but a nought, to face the Dáil and to face the country with an agreement which burdened the Free State with a sum of something like £5,000,000 a year. It was kept secret from March to November. Why? When it was brought back and when the Minister for Finance was asked to explain it, he treated the Dáil and the Seanad with disdain and refused to do so. The members of the Seanad asked that a committee might be set up to investigate this matter. That committee was refused, and it was refused again, I say, because the Minister for Finance could not explain this document. It has not been explained to this date. Not a single reason has been given which would hold water as to why the people of this State should pay this £5,000,000 a year. You will not have given in this debate either a reason why that money should be paid out. Surely, the attitude of the Minister for Finance and the attitude of the members of this House should be, that before we give money away out of this country to any foreign country, we should have a definite contract before us by which we are obliged to give that money. Let us have that contract. Let us see the contract under which we are obliged to pay out that money.

By Article 5 of the Treaty we assume liability for the service of the public debt of the United Kingdom—such portion as may be apportioned to us on a fair and equitable basis when the counter-claims have been taken into account. When that document was signed those who signed it must have had before their minds what was the nature of the obligation they were undertaking. They must have had before their minds what was the public debt of the United Kingdom on the day on which they signed it. What was that public debt? We have evidence in several documents that the public debt on that date included the liability of the British Exchequer to meet the dividends and other charges on stock which they had issued under the Land Acts from 1891 to 1909. That is definite. It has been argued, "Oh, the public debt is not the same as the national debt." What is it then? Is it narrower than the national debt?

Mr. Hogan

I hope that, so far, I have been understood. The point I have made up to this is that as regards the service of the land stock, by which I mean the payment of the dividends as a portion of the public debt, we had undertaken a liability for a share of that, up to 3rd December, 1925, if the counter claim did not offset it. But when this pact of 3rd December, 1925, was duly ratified, any obligation on our part to meet the service of that stock disappeared. Assume that it was a national debt in the narrow sense of the term. Assume the public debt was put in by the British through inadvertence, because they did not know the technical term for their own debt, and they deliberately went aside and chose a wider one. Assume they did not want to make their net as wide as possible at that time. We are not, however, so foolish as to think that they did not want to do anything like that and that it was mere inadvertence on their part to put that term in. Even suppose we were innocent enough to believe all that and to believe that their draftsman did not know the proper technical term to use and that they meant by it strictly the national debt, was the payment of this land stock dividend to the bondholders an obligation we undertook on 6th December, 1921? I say it was obviously, for the reason I have given already, that it was guaranteed land stock, that the stockholders did not care what accounts the British Government had or how it hoped to recoup itself. That was not the business of the stockholders. The obligation to the stockholders was a British obligation and as such was naturally included in the national debt. We have evidence of that fact in the Act of 1920. If one reads the schedule in that Act one will find reference to Irish land stock there. I will read it for the House in a moment so that Deputies can form their own judgment upon it. The reference makes it clear that the British themselves regarded the service of the land stock as part of the public debt. If Deputies are not satisfied with the terms of the Land Acts which make it clear, in my opinion, if they are not satisfied with the commonsense view that the contract for the service of the debt can only be between those who issued the stock and the stockholders, if nothing will satisfy Deputies completely and absolutely but pointing to the letter of the law on the matter, they have it in the Act of 1920.

In two sections, particularly Section 26, of the Act of 1920, you have reference to these annuities and to what is to become of them. Sub-section (2) of Section 26 says:—

"In each year a sum equal to the amount payable in that year in respect of purchase annuities shall be paid into the Irish Land Purchase fund or account, or other appropriate fund or account, out of moneys provided by the Parliament of the United Kingdom."

That is a definite statement, a definite putting of the obligation for meeting the interest on land stock on the Treasury of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. That obligation was directly on it on the day on which the Treaty was signed. Therefore, anybody signing those Articles of Agreement, and asking himself what were the definite obligations constituting the public debt of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on that date, knew that there was here an undertaking, a definite liability, to pay for the service of those stocks out of moneys provided by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was an immediate, definite, and direct obligation, and not merely by way of subsidiary funds, but a direct obligation on the Treasury "out of moneys provided by the Parliament of the United Kingdom." These were not the moneys that were to come from the land purchase annuities in Ireland, from the people who paid them in Ireland, but they were to come directly out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. Therefore on the date on which the Treaty was signed, without any question whatever, we have it in black and white in a British statute the statement that that service was an obligation on the Exchequer of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Without yea or nay it was, therefore, a part of the public debt. That is one of the sections to which I have referred as proving the point, but I have also referred also to the Schedule.

You remember how Mr. Lloyd George, when he brought in this Act of 1920, boasted of his generosity in making a free gift to the Irish people of land annuities. By this Act the land annuities collectable here in Ireland were to be paid into the Exchequers of Southern Ireland and of Northern Ireland. This was to be a free gift to the Irish people. Those of you who remember the Financial Relations Commission of 1896 and the Primrose Committee which was set up in preparation for the 1914 Home Rule Act, will remember that it was adjudged, in one case by Englishmen mostly, that Ireland had been overtaxed for many years to the extent of an annual sum of two and three-quarter millions. It was suggested in the Primrose Committee that restitution should be made for that annual over-taxation of Ireland by giving Ireland a sum approximately of three millions a year. That sum was preferably to be given back by way of some terminable annuity, so that Ireland would get back, over a period of years, roughly the amounts taken away in over-taxation. The people of Ireland would get that back. Mr. Lloyd George chose the land annuities accordingly as the appropriate way of paying that money back. Of course, he would not call it a paying back of money of which we had been robbed during the greater part of a century. In true British fashion, he called it a gift. This was to be a generous gift to the Irish people—this paying back of money that had been taken away.

In the Act of 1920 it was proposed to give as a free gift, as he called it, to the people of Northern and Southern Ireland these land annuities. They were to be paid into the Exchequers of these two particular States and would remain property to be used for the public service of those States. That was the reason why you had Section 26 (2) in the Act. Instead of drawing the money and recouping themselves for the sums which the British Exchequer was bound to pay for the service of the debt from land annuities which they collected in Ireland, the British Government was going not to ask for this recoupment at all, and the Exchequer of the United Kingdom was going to pay out that sum without getting recoupment from anywhere. The Sixth Schedule is in connection with Section 23, and by it Ireland was in each year to make a contribution towards the Imperial liabilities and expenditure mentioned in that Schedule. The first sub-section of Section 23 says:

"Ireland shall in each year make a contribution towards the Imperial liabilities and expenditure mentioned in the Sixth Schedule to this Act."

That Schedule enumerates what these Imperial liabilities and expenditure are. It starts off by referring to National Debt charges, and proceeds in the first instance to enumerate these. It enumerates them in two sub-sections. In the first sub-section it says:

"The charge in respect of the funded and unfunded debt of the United Kingdom, inclusive of terminable annuities paid out of the permanent annual charge for the National Debt and inclusive of the cost of the management of the said funded and unfunded debt."

The other sub-section says:

"All other charges on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom for the repayment of borrowed money, or to fulfil a guarantee other than charges in respect of local loans stock and any guaranteed stock raised for the purpose of land purchase in Ireland."

The reason it had to omit, as part of the Imperial liabilities and expenditure for which Ireland is liable, the reason there was expressly omitted from that list the charges in respect of local loans stock, and any guaranteed stock raised for the purpose of land purchase in Ireland, was because these had been specifically given by the Act to Ireland, and it would be a ridiculous thing to give these to Ireland in one section and at the same time impose upon Ireland charges in connection with them that would take them away. Therefore you have here these expressly excluded from the list of the national debt charges for which Ireland would be responsible. The fact that they were referred to in this list shows that they were regarded as national debt charges, and proves once more, a fact of which I have given other evidence, that at the moment of the signing of the Treaty, these were included in the public debt of the United Kingdom, and they were therefore liabilities for which we might be charged under Article 5 of the Treaty if the counterclaims and sets-off were not sufficient to counterbalance them. Therefore, when you come down to the pact of 1925, you have all the obligations with respect to the service of land stock wiped out by that later agreement. Nobody can say, in view of that, that by keeping the annuities here we are in any way inflicting a hardship on the stockholders. It is not our business. It is a direct charge on Great Britain, and nobody can say that we are not in any way fulfilling any contract we entered into. We are neither repudiating our contract by retaining the annuities, nor are we in any way whatever doing an injustice to any stockholder. The stockholders have a right to receive their interest from the Government that contracted with them when it borrowed money from them, and we have a right to keep these annuities here.

As I said at the beginning, nobody has pointed out where we have undertaken any contractual liability. Gratuitously, we hand these annuities over to England. Let Ministers point out where it is if it exists. Let them point out any justification whatsoever, except the Acts of this Parliament here, the particular Acts by which the Minister for Finance is authorised to pay out that account. That is not a contractual liability. In so far as it is a liability at all, it is a liability which this Dáil must be presumed to have taken gratuitously, but did it? What were the circumstances under which this Act was passed? The Act was passed in 1923. What were the conditions then? You were still waiting at that time for the ultimate financial settlement. You did not know at that time what would be your obligations under it, what would be the sum with which you might be charged. It had not been decided and just as the Transfer of Functions Order was accepted, the money was sent over as the continuance of the previous practice. The annuities had been sent over to England before, and it was continued on. You were waiting for your liability to be apportioned. That was the position when the Transfer of Functions Order was passed. That was the condition in 1923 also.

One must say that the Dáil would have been wiser in the case of the Transfer of Functions Order, and again in 1923, to hold what they had got. It is a good maxim that possession is nine points of the law. These annuities were here. They were your right, and you would have been wiser in holding on to them instead of looking for recoupment afterwards or a return of the moneys you had handed over. You would have been much wiser to hold on to them and not be asking that they should be given back if the judgment was that you did not owe them at all, but, apparently, the Dáil at that time was not prepared to take that stand. The circumstances perhaps were such that they did not feel that that was the best stand to take. They handed over these annuities. They expected that the financial settlement would deal with them. I blame the Dáil or the Provisional Government not so much for handing them over under the Transfer of Functions Order or for passing this section of the 1923 Act so much as for paying them for one day after the pact of 1925 was signed. I hold that there was no justification for handing them over at any time, that they were part of the United Kingdom national debt, and that if we acted wisely we would have retained them here pending a decision on this question. We did not do that. We handed them over. Why should we hand them over for one day longer after 1925? Why should not we say when we got this nought in 1925: "We have already handed over to you so many millions of money which was ours in annuities and we expect to get it back?"

There have been I am sure, in various sums, up to thirty millions of Irish money handed over to England since the Free State came into being. In the land annuities alone we are handing over three millions a year. Why should we do that unless there is a contractual obligation to do it? Nobody in this House has yet shown us that there is a contractual obligation to do it. Are we so rich that we can afford to send out of this country a sum of money that is a quarter of our revenue? You all saw the other day where Mr. Snowden quoted Mr. Bonar Law as saying that if England were to pay the thirty-seven millions to the United States that it undertook to pay it would put England in bondage for a generation. Now, thirty-seven millions a year is only 4.6 per cent of their revenue.

What is £3,000,000 a year in our revenue? What is £5,000,000 a year of our revenue? £5,000,000 a year of our revenue, which we are sending out here, if you compare it to the revenue of this State, is twenty per cent. of it. If the English feel that £37,000,000 is a burden on them, that 4.6 per cent. is a burden on them, what a burden twenty per cent. upon this country must be. That is the burden we are foolishly taking on our backs and forcing the people of this country to pay without any contractual obligation, as I have said. A few days ago when the Minister for Finance was introducing his Budget, he said, "We cannot think of derating. Derating." he said, "would mean £2,000,000 a year. Where can we get it?" I have here the typed copy of the speech he gave us. Speaking of this derating, he said it would only come to £2,000,000! the exact figure is not far from £2,000,000. It is a little over £2,000,000. He said, "It is quite impossible for us to think of it." The farmers, our competitors in the North of Ireland, may be derated. The competitors of our farmers in England may be derated. Our farmers will have still to take the burden of rates and compete at a disadvantage with these rivals of theirs in the North and in Britain. There cannot be any help for them. Why? Because the revenues of this State would not stand it. But that derating is only £2,000,000 a year, and we are gratuitously paying, without a contractual obligation to do so, half as much again, £3,000,000 on the head of land annuities alone. If we only examine this question of land annuities carefully and see what are our contractual obligations under it, we will begin to discover that there are other items of the so-called ultimate financial settlement that we are not liable for either. So the question involved here is not merely a question of £3,000,000 of land annuities. I do not want to bring them up in this connection, because I do not want to complicate the arguments, which are not absolutely parallel, and would only make for confusion. I am keeping solely to the land annuities, and I say the amount is half as much again as the sum required for derating.

The Minister, when talking of this derating proposal, said it would be preposterous for the Minister for Finance to suggest it at the present time. In respect of agriculture, land derating would cost £1,900,000; in respect of farm buildings, it would cost £150,000; altogether a sum of £2,050,000. The annuities will do that, and half as much again. If you keep the items I think you are entitled to keep, you can start an enterprise as big as the Shannon scheme every year, and finance it completely. The Minister for Agriculture, when down in Clonmel, asked the people of Clonmel how are we going to get £30,000,000 more for land purchase? You have sent to the British Government, since this State was established, more than would be sufficient to buy out all the remaining land. From twenty to thirty millions have gone out of this country gratuitously as I said, without any obligation on our part to do it. We are not realising what this amount of money is. In order to realise it, I put before you the amount sent out for the last four or five years. We need not go to England to get a guarantee for our land stock; the money if kept here would purchase it in cash. Each year with these annuities, and the other sums we are liable for under this financial settlement, we can start an enterprise as big as the Shannon Scheme. Realise that, up to the present, there has been only £4,000,000 spent on the Shannon Scheme, and you are sending out more than that sum each year unnecessarily to Britain. Do you think you are acting fairly to this country in voting away that money when there is no contractual obligation to do it? You are giving it as a free gift, as I said.

To go back to the Minister for Finance, when talking about this, he said "we cannot do it." It would require for agricultural land and buildings £2,050,000. If we were to derate in respect of industrial establishments in addition and freight transport it would mean a total of £2,231,000, still short of the annuities, so with the annuities you would have over and above several hundreds of thousands of pounds after you had derated all agricultural land, agricultural buildings, industrial establishments and all freight transport. He said you cannot do it. He tried to picture to you what it would mean and he gave a long list of the taxes that it would be necessary to impose if he were to do it. Will you please think of that argument of his in this way. The money you are paying out every year, if you do not pay it out, with it you could remit taxes as heavy as the Minister proposed to impose? The Minister said if we wanted to derate and to meet it, it would involve seven items of new or increased taxation, a shilling in income tax, so everyone can remember you could carry on the present services, if you had this money paid over to England in your Exchequer, and you could remit a shilling on income tax, a farthing a pound on sugar and threepence a pound on tea. That does not come in by way of remission it was an additional tax he was proposing to place. However, the argument stands. There was a shilling on income tax, a farthing a pound on sugar, threepence a pound on tea, fourpence a gallon on petrol and paraffin, five per cent. on boots and five per cent. on such apparel as is now subject to fifteen per cent., and sixpence per pound on tobacco. These are the items, and he said: "Deputies will recognise that no Minister for Finance could bring any such list like that to the Dáil for adoption and expect it to meet with an enthusiastic reception." He did bring an equivalent tax in that 1923 Act, and in its continuance he has brought in very much more than that. He has brought in a sum here which covers that list, and covers more, and I hope you will give it the enthusiastic reception which the Minister for Finance expected he would get if he brought in the list of taxes he mentioned. Remember these taxes are going on because the funds that should be in the Exchequer are not in it. As I said there is no contractual obligation whatever to pay them. Why then are we gratuitously taking this burden upon ourselves? Can we not have the ordinary common sense to say that we are not in a position to keep on making these gifts? We cannot afford to undertake this burden. England is not entitled to it.

I have argued this case on the narrowest lines possible. I have not talked in this case of how the land of Ireland got into the hands of the landlords from whom it was purchased. I have not argued, as I could have argued, that if there were no instruments of this kind whatever that if England took over the obligation and bought out these landlords she was simply redeeming her own promises to those who were her servants in the past. She gave these grants of Irish land to her soldiers and others who were in her service in the past. If she bought them out and gave them other equivalents, if she changed the values of the land of Ireland she had given them into money, she would be doing nothing more than fulfilling her own obligations to her own people. Why not let her do that and say our obligations are to our people, to keep the money which is our right here, and that before it be given away we should see in black and white, expressly, in a form that we could not deny, the contractual obligation to do so? As far as we are concerned, on this side of the House anyhow, we say that the ultimate financial settlement has no binding force. We say, even if it had, it imposes obligations on this State that we cannot stand over. If it were a binding document we would say it was due to our people to re-open that settlement. We, on this side of the House, would do that, but we are not at all in that position. The position is this, that there are no obligations, and that the paying over of this money to England is a gratuitous act on our part. The motion I ask you to assent to is this, that the particular section of the Act which gave authority to the Minister for Finance to pay away this money should be repealed. That is, in effect, what it means. The express terms of the motion are:—

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

took the Chair.

Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Hogan)

Deputy de Valera has made two points, or has tried to. One of them is that the only authority for paying the Land Commission annuities to the National Debt Commissioners or to the Bank of England is Section 12 of the Act of 1923. His second point is that, in any event, by virtue of the agreement of December, 1925, cancelling all obligations under Article 5 of the Treaty, Land Stock being public debt, there is no longer any obligation to pay these annuities because they are for the service of the public debt. These are the two points. They are not nearly so complicated as the Deputy would wish to make them. Every possible effort has been made for the last two or three years to complicate this question. The Acts which are in force, the Acts which are not in force, and the Acts which never were in force or never will be in force, have been pressed into service; but the position is, in fact, quite simple, and it has taken considerable ingenuity to complicate it in the way in which it has been complicated up to the present.

Let us examine the first point: That the only authority which we have got for paying Land Commission annuities over to the British Treasury is Section 12 of the Act of 1923, with the implication that if that section were repealed we would be entitled, in fact we would be bound, to retain the annuities in this country, as we would have no legal authority for paying them elsewhere. Let us examine that. I do not believe that it is news to Deputy de Valera, or to any other Deputies who are interested in this matter, that the Land Act of 1923 is not the only Land Act. There were numerous Land Acts in this country before 1923. We need not go back further than the Act of '81, which contains certain land purchase provisions. There was the Act of 1881 and the Act of 1885. There were other amending Acts. There was the Act of 1891, the Act of 1903, the Act of 1909, and the Act of 1923. All these Acts are the law of this country, and the Deputy knows that perfectly well. I doubt if there is a Deputy so innocent as to think that the Treaty repeals, say, the Land Act of 1881. I doubt if there is a Deputy so innocent as to think that the Treaty repeals the Land Acts of 1903 or 1909.

I listened to a debate on the Land Commission a few days ago. I listened to the same sort of debate a year previously. A number of Deputies on the benches opposite were very interested to find out why the proceedings under the 1903 or 1909 Acts could not be expedited, why all the holdings under these Acts were not being vested, and vested quickly. They must have known then that these Acts were in operation, little as they know about the law of land. I must say Deputy de Valera succeeded in making a great number of inaccurate statements and in muddling himself to an extraordinary degree. They must know that the Land Act of 1903 was not repealed, that the Land Act of 1909 was not repealed, that, in fact, advances were made up to recently under the Land Acts of 1903 and 1909, and that there is no clause, either in the Treaty or in the Constitution, which either impliedly or directly repeals any of these Acts, and that these Acts are the law of the land. What is the law? The Deputy might say that other laws, the laws of property, the laws of contract, the laws of torts were repealed. I remember that, with a great show of innocence. Deputy Lemass, in another place, made the same point. He asked if these annuities are not paid under Article 5 of the Treaty what authority have we for paying them. He professed to believe that the Treaty suddenly repealed all the laws of property, all the laws of contract, and all the Land Acts which were made the law of this country. I do not believe that he is so innocent. If he is, I wish to disillusion him. These laws are in operation. They are the laws of this State, and have been taken over through the Treaty and through the Constitution.

What is the position under these Acts? Deputy de Valera went to a great deal of trouble to show that there was no connection whatever between the annuitant, the farmer who gets the land, and the man who issues the stock. Well, there is a most definite connection and a most definite contract, and I will tell him what it is. Take, say, the Act of 1903. I do not wish to over-complicate this question, and, as I said before, there is no necessity. The finances of the Acts of 1903 and 1909 are to be read together. The finances of the Act of 1881 and the arrangements were practically the same, except that in one case stock was issued to the owner and in the other case cash was issued. Take the 1903 Act, because it is a typical Act, and because under that Act practically three-fourths of the land of Ireland was sold, and because it was under that Act this £300,000 that we could do so much with if we could only embezzle it is being paid. What is the position under that Act? The Act sets out first that there shall be a land purchase fund or account —because the word is different in the 1881 Act—set up, that out of that fund shall be paid dividends and the sinking fund in respect of stock issued. Another section goes on to say that into that fund shall be paid the annuities.

Mr. Lemass

Will you quote the section?

Mr. Hogan

Certainly. It is clearly laid down under the Acts that into that fund shall be paid annuities through the Land Commission, and that out of that fund shall be paid the interest and sinking fund. The tenant purchaser signs an agreement under the 1903 Act under which he definitely agrees to pay a certain annuity corresponding to the interest and sinking fund on the advance which he gets, which advance is equal to a certain proportion of land stock. Under that agreement, there is direct connection established definitely between the tenant purchaser, the Land Commission, the National Debt Commissioners and the stockholder. There is definite authority under these Acts, first of all, for the payment of the annuities into a certain fund in the Land Commission. The payment of these annuities out of that fund into the Land Purchase Fund or Account under the control of the National Debt Commissioners, and the payment by the Commissioners of the interest and sinking fund on land stock out of this fund is definitely laid down in each of the Land Acts. In addition to that, under the Land Acts there is a Guarantee Fund, and, finally, certain provisions in respect of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. I do not want to go in detail into the position with regard to the complexities of the Guarantee Fund. I have a list of the funds that make up that fund here. It is sufficient to say that the Guarantee Fund is largely financed out of an Irish grant in aid of rates and certain educational services. It is expressly provided that that fund shall make good any shortage of annuities due to the failure of the tenant purchaser to pay them. It is provided, however, in this way: that if there is a shortage in the Land Purchase Fund it shall be made up first from the Consolidated Fund, and that the payment made from the Consolidated Fund shall be made good out of this Guarantee Fund, which, in effect, means out of the rates of the country. Therefore, so far as the land purchase annuities and the interest and sinking fund on land stocks are concerned, the position is beyond all doubt. In fact it is this: the first liability for the payment of that interest and sinking fund is expressly provided by the Act to be the annuity of the tenant farmer who gets the advance; in the event of his failing, Irish rates and taxes; and in the event of Irish rates and taxes failing, then the advance is to be made out of the Consolidated Fund, out of the taxation, if you like, of the United Kingdom, but that advance is to be a temporary advance and is to be made good to that fund, or the taxpayer, whenever the Guarantee Fund is in funds again.

There is no question whatever about that position. Deputy de Valera, or any other Deputy on the opposite Benches, need not go very far, or to many lawyers, to establish that that is the law of the country—the law in connection with the annuities. That establishes a definite connection between the tenant purchaser and the buyer of land stock. When a man invested in land stock of course he knew there was sufficient security—probably that is the reason he purchased. He must be presumed to know the arrangements that were made expressly for the financing of that stock, and the arrangements were that the interest and sinking fund were to be paid (1) out of the annuities, (2) out of the Guarantee Fund, and (3) only after both had failed, and then only as a temporary expedient, by the taxpayers of the United Kingdom, and their debt was to be made good to them. The Land Commission was bound by statute in the year 1922 to pay the annuities over to the Land Purchase Fund or Account.

Mr. MacEntee

What statute is that?

Mr. Hogan

1923. The account is the account kept by the National Debt Commissioners. Section 12 says that the annuities were paid in the first instance to the Minister for Finance and that he transferred them. If Section 12 had never been passed, the law in operation before the Act of 1923 was passed was still the law of the land. The Act of 1923 does not repeal the previous Land Acts, but it does alter their financial position so far as it purports to alter them. If it were never passed, the financial provisions of these Acts would be law, and taking the Transfer of Functions Order and the previous Land Acts, if the case were as Deputy de Valera thinks, the position would be that the Land Commission would be transferring the money to the Land Purchase Fund or Account instead of the Minister for Finance. And that would be the saving of the country!

I was rather interested to hear this argument. It was the first time it was put up, or that I heard it. The argument that passed muster for the last year or so through the country was that clearly we were freed from all liability under Article 5 but for the stupidity of the Minister for Finance and the bad legal advice we got. As to the other argument Deputy de Valera has advanced with great care now, if it has been put forward before, I confess I never heard it. It was kept quiet; we have heard it now for the first time. Am I to take it that the reason he has changed his position is that he realises now that he has no case on the other point? I ask some of the lawyers on the Fianna Fáil Benches, before I come to the other point, to tell me do they really believe that if the Land Act of 1923 was never passed, and was not the law of the land, the previous Land Acts of 1903 and 1909 were not in operation, and if they believe that they were not, will they say when they were repealed? These are simple questions: I hope they are quite clear, and I should like an answer to them. I shall put them again: If Section 12 of the Land Act of 1923 were not the law to-day, would the financial provisions of the Acts of 1903 and 1909 be still the law, and, if not, when were they repealed? Is there complete authority under these Acts of 1903, 1909 and 1891, and, in fact, is not the Minister for Finance and the Land Commission bound to pay over these annuities to the Land Purchase Fund? Remember, we are not now on the merits, but on the law.

I have been hearing for the last year that the Land Commission annuities are neither legally nor morally due. Now, it has come down to this: that it is Section 12 of the Land Act of 1923, and only that section, which gives the Minister for Finance any legal authority to pay the Land Commission annuities over. I am told that from the passage of the 1923 Act the moneys had been paid into the Exchequer. Under the Transfer of Functions Order, which came into operation, not on the 1st March, 1922, but on the 1st March, 1923, there is provision that they shall be paid into the appropriate fund or account. The appropriate fund or account is the Land Purchase Fund or Account under the 1891, the 1903 and the 1909 Acts. That is there in the Transfer of Functions Order.

Now, coming to the second point, it can be stated simply. Land stock, we are told, is a public debt. Article 5 of the Treaty set out that Ireland was to take responsibility for a fair share of the public debt, after allowance is made for a certain set-off. Under a certain agreement made in December, 1925, it was set out that all liabilities of the Irish Free State under Article 5 were cancelled, and that agreement was given the force of law. It is argued from that, therefore, that the land stock was public debt, and that as the only liability for public debt was under Article 5, there is no longer any legal authority for paying either interest or sinking fund in the shape of annuities to the British Government. With regard to one point Deputy de Valera can be quite easy in his mind. It has never been denied that public debt and national debt are the same thing. Everybody knows that. They have the same term; the Deputy opposite is merely pushing an open door. He might have saved himself a lot of trouble. We can approach the question as to whether land stock is a public debt or not from two directions. The definition of public debt is well known, and it is set out in various decided cases and various authoritative text-books. Take the public debt of the United Kingdom. Public debt is a debt the interest for which the Exchequer of the United Kingdom has a direct obligation without any security or any remedy against other parties, and it is payable out of taxation or is a charge upon the Consolidated Fund. That is a well established definition of public debt.

Mr. Lemass

By whom?

Mr. Hogan

It is a definition of public debt which can be verified by consulting authorities such as Lord Halsbury and various decided cases and various statutes. The Deputy can make his mind easy. I shall give statute law for it. Public debt as a term is very simple. It is a debt due by the public taxpayer. Public debt is defined, as I say, authoritatively as a debt in respect of which the taxpayer is liable, and in respect of which he has no remedy over, and in respect of which he has no security. That is public debt.

Now the question arises, was land stock public debt. On that definition it was not. There was no debt at any time to the public in respect of land stock. At no time since land stock was first issued and since local loan stock was first issued was there any debt payable or paid by the public in respect of them. Since land stock was first issued and up to this date, and as a result of the arrangement come to, the case must always be the same. The interest on the land stock was in fact first paid either by annuitants or by the Guarantee Fund. There was never at any time any charge upon the Consolidated Fund, or upon the taxpayer, in respect of land stock. Land stock did not become a public debt, and could not, until both the annuitants and the Guarantee Fund had repudiated the obligation. But in case there might be any doubt in anyone's mind about it, the thing is settled definitely by statute. It is settled in respect of Local Loan stock, which is rather a similar stock, and there is a certain clause in the Local Loans Act, 1887, which was transferred bodily to the Land Acts of 1903, and which also applies to the Land Act of 1909. "For the purpose of calculating the annual sums payable to the Bank of England and the Bank of Ireland for the management of the National Debt, the stock shall be considered as part of the National Debt inscribed in the books of the Bank of England and the Bank of Ireland, but the annual sums so payable shall be paid as part of the expenses of the Land Commission."

There are some lawyers on the other side. Here is a direct statutory provision that for a certain purpose land stock shall be regarded as public debt. What is that purpose? For the purpose of paying certain moneys to the National Debt Commissioners in order to find the interest; but these moneys shall be paid by the Land Commission. There is one invariable rule of interpretation to which there is no exception, which every lawyer knows, that where something is declared to be something else for a certain purpose, it is only that something else for that certain purpose, and it is a direct indication that it is not that something else for no other purpose. There is no question about it in law; that makes it perfectly clear that only for the purpose of paying interest and sinking fund to the National Debt Commissioners is land stock National Debt.

Mr. Derrig

Would the Minister for Agriculture tell us from what Act he is quoting?

Mr. Hogan

I am quoting from the Act of 1903, Section 32. This is taken from the Local Loans Act. I want to have a definite answer to that point also. Can there be any doubt of this legal maxim of interpretation that the expression of one thing excludes everything else, and that when something is declared to be something else for a special purpose that that is a clear indication that it cannot be that something else for any other purpose? If that is so, if this is National Debt there was no occasion whatever for this provision, the various Acts for setting up the National Debt Commissioners apply. There was no need for this provision. It was because it was not a National Debt that this provision was inserted. Why was it inserted?

The National Debt Commissioners were established many years ago to deal with what was at the time the National Debt. In the course of time other stocks came to be issued also —land stock and local loan stocks and other stocks—and it was considered that the annual payments of the interest and the sinking fund on not only National Debt, but on stocks which were not national, should be made by one body, the National Debt Commissioners, and this applies not merely to land stock but to local loan stock, and it was provided that for the purpose of paying interest and sinking fund on the stock by the National Debt Commissioners it should be regarded as National Debt. That is a clear indication that for no other purpose is it National Debt, and that in fact it is not National Debt.

But a similar provision applied to the 1909 Act. We can put all this beyond doubt. I can only quote authorities. I can only quote statutes. We can disagree about them. But there is one way of putting all this beyond all doubt. This matter could have been put beyond all doubt two, three, or four years ago quite simply. The agreement cancelling our obligations under Article 5 of the Treaty was confirmed in 1925, and made the law of this State in 1925. The Ultimate Financial Settlement was not made the law of this State since 1925. No Act was passed since 1925 altering, amending, or affecting the Act which cancelled our obligations under Article 5. Therefore, the law to-day remains exactly the same as when we passed the agreement cancelling Article 5. Why has not anybody taken action and got the opinion of the courts as to whether this land stock is public debt or not? There has been a campaign raging through the country. The cost of such an injunction would not be much. Any citizen or any taxpayer can take an action for an injunction against the Minister for Finance preventing him from illegally paying money over to England. Why has not that action been taken? Is it conceivable that if Deputy de Valera believes a single word he has uttered here to-day that he would have let the last three or four years pass and not have actions taken restraining the Minister for Finance? What is the reason? There is only one, and the Deputies on the opposite benches know it. They recognise quite well that all their talk is so much balderdash, and they realise that it would not stand one hour's examination in court before a judge.

Mr. Carney

Neither would yours.

Mr. MacEntee

It did not.

Mr. Hogan

Do not get me off the track. I would like to discuss that with you, but I cannot do it now. This is only a small point, but it may be news to some Deputies that as regards the stock under the Land Acts under 1881 and up to 1885 there is no guarantee in the Exchequer for the stock at all. There was no guarantee. The Consolidated Fund is under no obligation whatever in regard to the sinking fund for the 1903 and the 1909 Acts. The British Exchequer does not even come in as a third party, so that as far as any portion of the annuities is concerned, even on the Deputy's own showing there is no case made. Even if you do not like my definition of public debt and if you do not accept this meaning of the term I ask you, do you accept what I have just quoted, the principle that when one thing is expressed directly everything else is excluded. as a principle of interpretations of the Local Loans Act. Remember that the 1885 Act was financed largely out of the Local Loans Stock. That particular section in the Act dealing with the Local Loans Stock and the sections in the 1903 and 1909 Acts setting out that the Land Stock shall only be regarded as public debt for a certain purpose do not form a clear statutory indication that it is a public debt for any other purpose.

Mr. Lemass

It does not state that at all.

Mr. Hogan

It says that for the purpose of calculating the annual sums payable to the Bank of England and the Bank of Ireland for the maintenance of the National Debt, the stock shall be considered as part of the National Debt.

Mr. O'Kelly

Go to law with the devil and hold the courts in hell. Is that what you want?

Mr. Lemass

And have them suppressing the courts when they give an unfavourable decision.

Mr. Hogan

I do not mind Deputy O'Kelly, who gets hysterical on the slightest provocation, but it is different with Deputy Lemass. I want an answer from him on that. This hugger-mugger is going on too long. Why do they not go before the courts? They are there for the purpose specifically of interpreting the law. The Deputy did not go before the courts, because he did not believe a single word of what he has been saying. His present position is such that he is endeavouring to cover it up with all sorts of pettifogging arguments. It was necessary in order to establish this case to work in the 1920 Act. There are, I know, Deputies on the opposite benches who are capable of a lot, but I do not believe that they are so utterly stupid as to believe some things they say about that Act. The first statement made by Deputy de Valera about that Act was that there was a reference to Southern Ireland in the Treaty, and that that expression "Southern Ireland" was taken from the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, and that the Government of Ireland Act must be regarded as the law. Really, the innocence of that surpasseth all understanding, coming as it does from a Deputy who can split hairs better than any Deputy in this House or any man in the country, from a Deputy who can indulge in all sorts of subtleties. That little piece of innocence is really too much, it is too touching. The Deputy knows perfectly well that the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, provided in a particular section that I have here, Section 73, that it shall come into operation by stages, and it sets out the appointed dates. Equally he knows that the Act so far as some of its sections were concerned, was the law, because appointed days were named for them. The Deputy heard no later than yesterday in the Dáil reference to the penal provisions of the Penal Laws. So far as some sections were concerned, they were not the law. The Deputy knows that perfectly well.

Mr. MacEntee

Prove that.

Mr. Hogan

Section 73 of the Act of 1920 sets out as follows:—

Then let us hear what I did say.

Mr. Hogan

Yes, here it is:—

"Our farmers certainly ought to pay something for the privilege of using the land, but what, perhaps, they pay should not be annuities calculated to compensate the landlord for his legal claim to rent, but rather a land tax which could be graduated more justly and scaled down in accordance with the farmers' ability to pay."

Mr. de Valera

You might read the context.

Mr. Hogan

I will, but I am not going to read the whole statement.

Mr. de Valera

Read the context.

Mr. Hogan

Yes. I am not going to read the whole context.

"Still I do not assert that those who advance the money which the British Treasury used to buy out the landlords should not be repaid. But the question by whom the money should be repaid has still to be settled. I am not for repudiation of debts."

Of course not.

"A future Republican Government could not ignore all the acts of its predecessor, but the financial settlement which Cosgrave has made with England is too absurd and will have to be reopened."

The important point is this. I have been criticised for stating that the policy of persons opposite is to try and induce the farmers to support them in the hope that they will have to pay no annuities, and for having stated that this entirely dishonest campaign is really directed towards conveying to the farmers that if this campaign succeeds they will not have to pay anything. I want to justify that out of the mouth of Deputy de Valera. He began by saying that the farmers should not pay annuities but should pay a land tax.

Mr. de Valera

I never made such a statement.

Mr. Hogan

"Our farmers certainly ought to pay something for the privilege of using the land, but what, perhaps, they pay should not be annuities calculated to compensate the landlord for his legal claim to rent but rather a land tax which could be graduated more justly and scaled down in accordance with the farmers' ability to pay." Will the Deputy deny that?

Mr. de Valera

My statement is clear. I was talking about general policy, and my words do not bear the interpretation which you are putting on them. At no time did I suggest that the tenants should not pay their annuities.

Mr. Hogan

It is very lucky that I have this quotation, as it is an old trick of the Deputy. I am not appealing to the Deputy to say what he meant. God knows what he meant. I am merely reading out what he said and leaving it to the country to judge. This is what he said:—

"Our farmers certainly ought to pay something for the privilege of using the land, but what, perhaps, they pay should not be annuities calculated to compensate the landlord for his legal claim to rent but rather a land tax which could be graduated more justly and scaled down in accordance with the farmers' ability to pay."

The farmer is not a fool. He takes the tip all right. We all know what the farmer will read out of that. He will say: "That is all right."

Mr. Gorey

"Good old Dev."

Mr. Hogan

Yes; a nod is as good as a wink. On the other hand, if anyone dares to suggest that repudiation is involved, Deputy de Valera will say "I never meant it." I have extracts here, and I think I will give him a few more of them.

Mr. Lemass

They are very excellent as red herrings.

Mr. Hogan

You do not like them.

Mr. Lemass

Red herrings, that is all they are.

Mr. MacEntee

Stick to the motion if you are not afraid.

Mr. Hogan

I can claim credit for driving the Deputy at a later date into the open. He tried to hedge. Here is an extract quoted from a statement of his in the "Irish Times"—it is a report of the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis, and I suppose it also appeared in the "Irish Independent"—in which he said that annuities were due to the State and were the property of the community as a whole. Deputy de Valera also stated that "the policy of Fianna Fáil was that the annuities should be paid into the Central Fund." He had come on at that time.

"The annuities were due to the State and were the property of the community as a whole. When that money came into the Central Fund, belonging as it did to the community, it would be a question for the Government and the Dáil to decide the manner in which it should be spent, with special reference to the claims of agriculture."

Mr. Gorey

Hear, hear.

Mr. Hogan

In other words, gentlemen, if we succeed in getting away with this ramp we may collect the annuities with one hand but we will give them back with the other.

Mr. Fahy

We might de-rate.

Mr. de Valera

If they are all as good as that we will be glad to hear them.

Mr. Hogan

Practically every one of these statements is on these lines. I have never yet read a statement from the Deputy on land annuities in which he has not stated: "Of course, when we get the annuities we will pay special attention to agriculture." In other words, he will give them back.

Mr. Fahy

Is that a legal interpretation?

Mr. Hogan

That is Deputy de Valera's way of doing it. He has another habit which is very typical. He always sings vicariously. When he wants the real gospel preached he sends down to the country some of the least important Deputies. They give the real dope. No humming or hawing about them. The advantage is that, if they get away with it and get the votes of the people, so much the better for Deputy de Valera. If, on the other hand, they make a mistake and it is just a little bit too tough, he can let them down. I can also quote Deputy Fogarty, Deputy Mullins and Deputy Corry. Personally, I think that their attitude is much more honest. There is not the same amount of pettifogging about it. Here is what Deputy Fogarty said:

"When Mr. Hogan, the Minister for Agriculture, was in Clonmel recently he did not give much heart to Mr. Morris's motion. The motion we will put forward is to pay no land annuities.

Mr. Fogarty

And only right, too.

Mr. Little

It is great fun laughing at the Irish farmers.

I have a recollection of it, and I think Deputy de Valera answered it. I will answer it now. I was just coming to the point. Even when the Treaty was being advocated in 1922, when we were endeavouring to be as optimistic, if you like, as possible, the most that we ever claimed, or that we thought we could claim, was a set-off in respect of the public debt. We have done that. There is absolutely no payment in respect of public debt. There is no country in Europe in the same position. You have Czecho-Slovakia and all those other countries which were freed from Empires after the war and they had to take over a share of the National Debt. We were the only country in Europe that was fiscally separated from another country and at the same time took over no share of her public debt. At the same time, if Deputies opposite had examined the question closely and in a responsible way, and had come to the conclusion that England owed us £60,000,000, and made that case to the country, the case could be debated on its merits. What have they done? They have made it quite impossible to debate that question any longer on its merits. They have really gone round to the farmer and said: "Regardless of whether England owes us £60,000,000 or not— £60,000,000 being the capital value of the outstanding annuities—if you enable us or put us in a position to repudiate them, we will let you off from the payment of Land Purchase Annuities." That is a dishonest campaign—a campaign that if it succeeds will rot the country.

Deputies know that the Irish farmer is not concerned whether England owes us some millions, but that he is very much concerned whether he will have to pay his Land Purchase Annuities. It was because the Deputies realised that, that they took the entirely dishonest line of fighting this case on the issue of the Land Purchase Annuities. They wanted to get support which would not be convincing support due to a belief in the merits of the case, but support due to the conditions of the farmer, who might be in trouble or debt for three or four or five years. They have made it absolutely impossible to discuss the financial settlement on its own basis. No country that has ever done that sort of thing has ever succeeded. The man in the country who endeavours to take advantage of a technicality in an agreement in order to break it, generally has the contempt of his neighbours, but he at least has one consolation. He gets away with it. The position you are trying to put the country in in this matter, and the position you are trying to put yourself in, is the position of a man who is trying to break a contract and has failed. You are trying to put this country in the same position as a litigant who goes into the Petty Sessions Court, and who, though he has an obviously dishonest case, takes advantage of a technicality which does not exist, tries to perjure himself before the country and fails. He has the contempt of the people, and I suggest that that is what this country will have if this campaign succeeds. I do not believe it will succeed.

Mr. Derrig

I must congratulate the Minister for Agriculture on having treated the House to a very entertaining hour, giving quotations from speeches made by Fianna Fáil Deputies down the country. If we had gone to the trouble of collecting all the speeches that have been delivered from the Cumann na nGaedheal side during the past few years on the question of the land annuities, we would have been able to produce some humorous material also. Happily we have taken this question in a rather more serious manner than the Minister for Agriculture has taken it. We have looked at it as a great national question which has its foundations in history. We have pointed out that the question did not begin in 1903 or 1921, but it began far back in our history. I submit to the House that if the whole question is examined from that standpoint, the House will come to a far different conclusion to that which it might have been tempted to come to as a result of the sallies of the Minister for Agriculture. To give an example of the type of speeches delivered by Ministers in regard to the question of the financial settlement, I will quote a single extract. It is an extract from a speech by the Minister for Finance:—

"If Clause 5 had gone to arbitration, they would have contended that they had to pay nothing. In making out the detailed arrangements to carry out the Treaty, the Government found sums to be clearly due, and it agreed that they should be paid."

It was not agreed that they should be paid. The Irish people have not agreed that they should be paid. Not alone did they not seek arbitration for that question in order to put the full financial claims of the country against the claims of the British Treasury, but they did not even make a case. They went across to Mr. Churchill, and because Mr. Churchill said "Sign this," they signed it. That we are told now is what the Irish people agreed to.

If the House doubts that that is a misrepresentation of what actually happened, I would ask it to look at this further extract from a speech which the Minister for Finance delivered before the Society of Chartered Accountants on January 25th, 1925: "My view is that the claim of the Free State for over-taxation extending over a period would be at least as high as any sustainable claim the British Government could put forward against us for our share of the present British debt and taxation charges." So that on the 25th January the Minister for Finance had in mind apparently the financial history of the relations between this country and Great Britain. He had his counter-claim in his pocket. He told the Irish people through the Press on that occasion that he was prepared to present that counter-claim and that he felt Ireland would get the better of the bargain. But when he came back from London he had quite a different story. He had to admit then that he had no intention whatever of putting up this counter-claim, that the claim he spoke so much of in January he had completely forgotten when he got to London. He said: "It would have been easy for us to have put up a much bigger counter-claim than £157,000,000"—the figure which Senator Colonel Moore, who was jeered at in this House, pointed out was wrong by £40,000,000—"but I believe under a neutral arbitrator our claim for over-taxation might either have been wiped out altogether, or would certainly have been very drastically reduced." He believed that if the question had been carried before an independent arbitrator their claim might have been wiped out altogether or might have been very drastically reduced, but it is not what Mr. Blythe, the present Minister for Finance, thinks in this matter. It is what this Assembly, if it represents the Irish people, thinks that ought to count, and the fact, as Deputy de Valera pointed out, that no sanction has been asked for from this Assembly for these annual payments shows that the Minister for Finance has tried to cover up this question. There is at present, so far as we know, no statutory authority whatever for the payment of these sums. There is no statute upon the Statute Book of the Irish Free State for the payment of these sums of money. There is only this document, which is signed with the initials of the Minister for Finance and Mr. Winston Churchill, and that cannot be a contract between the Irish Free State and the British Government.

The Minister for Agriculture, avoiding the usual type of speech which he has been delivering down the country in regard to the debt of the Irish tenant-farmers to the bondholders, in regard to the question of the repudiation of the National Debt by this Party, has turned aside on an entirely new track. He professes, by an examination of the Irish Land Purchase Acts, to prove that the Irish tenant-purchaser had a liability to the British Government.

Now I cannot describe to the House better the actual situation in England and the actual view-point that English statesmen had in regard to this whole matter of land purchase than by quoting them the words of the first man who mentioned it, and that was John Bright, who spoke at a meeting in Dublin on 30th October, 1866. He advocated, on that occasion, buying out the alien aristocracy and demanded a "parliamentary commission, empowered to buy up the large estates in Ireland belonging to the English nobility, for the purpose of selling them, on easy terms, to the occupiers of the farms and to the tenantry of Ireland." Writing to Bright on 22nd May, 1869, Gladstone, the pioneer of land purchase, said, "The question is how the State, after buying out the landlords at a thumping price, is to get back its money." There is a clear admission from the man who started land purchase that this was a State transaction. It was taken up by the State because the alternative to buying out the landlords was revolution in Ireland. When the British Government were driven to it—economist and all as Gladstone was—he did not and could not, cavil at the financial expense. They introduced two Acts in 1870 and 1881, which I am going to deal with.

I turn to the Act of 1885 under which the President, in reply to a question yesterday, has told us we were paying £284,000 annually to the British Exchequer. Section 24 of the Act of 1885, sub-section (1) definitely states that advances out of the Consolidated Fund, not exceeding five million pounds, shall be made available for land purchase in Ireland. Section 24, sub-section (2) further states that the Treasury may borrow temporarily from the Consolidated Fund. Therefore, in the 1885 Act the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom was the source of the advances and borrowings made for land purchase in Ireland under that Act. If the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom is not security from the Imperial point of view, what is? If it is not a clear proof when the Consolidated Fund is definitely named as the source of revenue for a particular purpose that such service is an Imperial liability I would like to know what is?

We turn now to the Land Act of 1891 which the Minister for Agriculture referred to at some length because under that Act a guarantee fund was set up under Treasury direction as a guarantee for the payment of the land annuities. There was also, as the Minister for Agriculture pointed out, the Land Purchase Account itself into which the annuities were paid. It was provided that if the guarantee fund was not sufficiently strong to balance any arrears of annuities that the amounts which would be necessary to make up the balance would be got from the Consolidated Fund. Therefore, when the guarantee fund passed away there was, under the 1891 Act, a clear and direct liability upon the Consolidated Fund itself. If the land purchase account or if the guarantee fund are still in existence under these Acts, and if they still operate in the Irish Free State to that extent, certainly the liability upon the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom may be relieved, but I have yet to learn that those sections in these Acts are in operation in the Free State at present.

We were told by the Minister for Agriculture that when people were investing in those land purchase bonds they certainly believed that it was a British security, but they also had to have knowledge of the legislation which was being passed, and presumably of the Guarantee Fund. My answer to that is that the British Exchequer, under the 1891 Act, guaranteed both principal and interest of the Land Stock which was issued under that Act, and, therefore, I say that when British or any other investors invested in that Land Stock they did not do so on the ground that is now being put up to us here, that is because Irish rates or the local taxation account of Ireland were behind them, but because the security of the British Empire and of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom was behind them. To suggest that money was found for land purchase in this country because of particular financial devices that were inserted in the Land Purchase Acts by which the British Treasury endeavoured to set off some of their accounts in relation to Ireland against others, to pretend that now at this hour of the day that these provisions are still in operation and that the rates of Ireland or the Land Purchase Account set up under these Acts are still in operation is trifling with the question. I submit they are not in operation and that, even if they were in operation, the fact that this liability ultimately fell upon the Consolidated Fund is a strong argument, an argument which the Irish people see and which I hold they will support, for believing that that land stock ought ultimately to be classed as part of the public debt of the United Kingdom.

We turn now to the 1903 Act. Under this Act a bonus was established, and for that bonus and excess stock the Irish people are paying an annuity of £134,500. I turn aside, for a moment, to examine what the liability or the position of the British Empire was in regard to bonus and excess stock. It was believed at the time by the Irish people that those amounts were free gifts that were put into the land purchase transactions to bridge a gap between the tenant purchaser and the landlord. We are told now by the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Finance that they were not free gifts and that, like everything else, the Irish people have to bear their share of them.

Section 47, sub-section (1) of the Land Act of 1903, having already stated that a Land Purchase Aid Fund is to be set up, states that the bonus shall be paid by sanction of the Treasury in sums which shall not be greater than £12,000,000 annually. Section 47, sub-section (2) states, "the stock guaranteed to be paid by moneys provided by Parliament." Therefore, the guarantee of that stock was to be by money provided by Parliament. Now we are told that this is a liability of the Irish people, although we have the words of the Act of 1903 itself to show that the stock was guaranteed by money paid out of Parliament. Section 47, sub-section (3) went on to state "that the provisions of the Act referring to repayment of advances by the Land Commission to the National Debt Commissioners shall not apply to advances under this Section." If that is not a clear and unequivocal denial and abrogation of any other Section of that Act which contemplated repayment by the tenant purchasers or by the Irish people of the bonus I would like to know what is.

In the matter of excess stock, Section 3, sub-section (1) of the 1909 Act states that the deficiency in respect of an issue at a discount shall be charged against the Ireland Development Grant and any further deficiency out of moneys provided by Parliament. Where is the Ireland Development Grant now? It is gone and, therefore, I say that, as in the case of the bonus, the liability for the excess stock held in the first instance against the Irish Development Grant, which is not now in existence, reverts back completely and absolutely to moneys provided by the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

The Minister for Agriculture told us that those Acts are still in force, but he omitted to state, I think, what the position of the British Treasury was in regard to the financial provisions of these Acts, and if these Acts are looked upon as a whole and in relation to the statements of English statement upon the subject, and in relation to the actual financial clauses of those Acts themselves, I believe that it will be clearly established that the amounts provided in those Acts were a liability of the Imperial Exchequer, and that the Imperial Exchequer now in law, if not in fact, is chargeable with that liability. Because in those Acts the stock that was to be issued was to be administered by the National Debt Commissioners. It was to be considered as National Debt stock under the various Acts which have been passed from time to time in the British Parliament regulating the National Debt. It was to be in their hands, and the interest in all cases was to be guaranteed by the British Parliament. The Sinking Fund was under the absolute control of the National Debt Commissioners. The National Debt Commissioners had power to borrow temporarily, and they did borrow out of the Consolidated Fund itself for the purposes of land purchase, and the accounts which were kept were kept by the National Debt Commissioners as part of the National Debt Accounts. I submit that all those considerations establish the fact that if Public Debt and National Debt are the same as the Minister for Agriculture claims them to be, the entire sums granted in respect of land purchase in Ireland are a liability upon the British Exchequer, and that Exchequer is now responsible.

The Minister asked whether you could take a clause in an Act which prescribed a certain thing for a certain purpose and use it in entirely different circumstances for another purpose. That is, I believe, one of the fundamental principles of the law of the interpretation of statutes, and I would call the attention of the Minister for Agriculture and of the House to the statement of the President yesterday, in which he dealt with the supposed or alleged repeal of penal enactments. He said in the course of that statement that the subsequent repeal of a statute by which an enactment was repealed does not operate to revive the enactment in the first instance repealed. I do not believe that in law there is any claim, but even if there was a claim, I think it could be clearly shown that the 1920 Act repealed absolutely any financial provision in previous Acts which determined that the Irish people should be chargeable for this Imperial liability, as I call it.

In that Government of Ireland Act you have Section 26, which says:—

"Purchase annuities payable in respect of land situate in Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland respectively shall be collected by the Governments of Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the amounts so collected shall be paid into their respective Exchequers, but nothing in this Act shall confer on either such Government any powers with respect to the repayment of the purchase annuities."

The second sub-section says that "in each year a sum equal to the amount payable in that year in respect of purchase annuities shall be paid into the Irish Land Purchase Fund or Account or other appropriate fund or account out of moneys provided by the Parliament of the United Kingdom." Even if that section were not the law of the land when the Treaty came into force at the end of December, 1921, we would have there, at any rate, a clear and definite manifestation of a British decision that land annuities should be left in Ireland, and that the Imperial Exchequer should be responsible for the service of the debt. Even, as I say, if it is not the law, it shows us the British attitude.

Why should we now throw away that just because the Minister for Finance told us that for some reason or other he did not or would not or could not put up his counter-claim, or put up this issue to the British Treasury officials whom he met? Why should we scrap that when we have behind us not alone our own common sense, but the decision of the Free State High Courts themselves, about which the Minister for Agriculture talks so much? In Mr. Justice Meredith's court, in the case of Cahill v. the Attorney-General, it was pronounced by that Court that in respect of matters under the 1920 Act, which were not inconsistent with the Constitution of the Free State, that Act ought to be taken to be in force. Therefore I submit that there is no need to go into the courts of the Free State so long as that decision is there, proving clearly that in the opinion of our judges the 1920 Act was in force, at any rate, in so far as it is not inconsistent with the Free State Constitution. If it is part of the Free State Constitution to pay out to England this huge sum annually, without any Act or sanction of this Assembly, then it will be consistent with the Constitution. I submit that such a thing obviously could not be, and there is nothing in the Constitution to give the Government any power to pay out this money in the way they have been doing. Therefore, the decision of the Free State High Courts ought to rule in this case. Of course, the Minister for Agriculture told us in connection with the appointed day, which was to be fixed for the transfer of the different functions under the 1920 Act, that different appointed days were being fixed for different services, and, presumably, he wants the House to believe that one particular section of the 1920 Act in regard to penal enactments can be said to be in force, while at the same time Section 26, which would give us a claim to the land annuities——

Mr. Hogan

The Deputy is misquoting me. What I said was that there are numerous sections of the Act of 1920 definitely brought into operation by definite appointed days but that the financial provisions were never brought into operation by definite appointed days.

Mr. Derrig

If it is the law that you can take a certain part of the 1920 Act, when you are the Government in power, and when it suits you to do so, and say: "We will say this is in force and the people will believe us"; and, when it does not suit, take another part of the Act and say it is not in force, then that is good law, but I prefer the decision which I have mentioned of Mr. Justice Meredith and the Free State High Courts, that all parts of the 1920 Act which are not inconsistent with the Free State Constitution are in force here to-day.

Minister for Justice (Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney)

On what date do you say that decision was given?

Mr. Derrig

I have not the date.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney

Was it prior to the passing of the 1922 Act which repealed the 1920 Act?

A Deputy

You are caught out.

Mr. Derrig

If you are referring to the British Act, I do not know whether the British at any time had the right to repeal the Act in so far as it was in favour of this country. If the Minister for Justice wants the House to believe that after the Free State had been set up, after the Free State Constitution had been established by statute, both by this Parliament and by the British Parliament, the British Government still had the right, if it suited them, in this particular matter of the annuities, to repeal the 1920 Act, I do not agree. I believe that the British Parliament had no power whatever to pass laws at that time either enforcing or repealing Acts in the Irish Free State. I might go further and say that when it suited the Government, in the case of the executions in 1922, to interpret the 1920 Act in a particular way, they interpreted it in that way; and now, when it suits them to interpret it in another way, they are interpreting it in another way. If the foundation of their case is on Irish law, on the law of Irish lawyers, let it at least be consistent. There is in that 1920 Act a clear admittance by the British Parliament that the land annuities were to be kept in Ireland, and that the Imperial Exchequer was to be responsible for the service of the land stock.

If any Deputy says that the British are going to deny that, I say they cannot do so. I say that the alternative to the position that the Minister for Agriculture has put up, that because certain financial provisions were not implemented through Orders in Council certain appointed days were not fixed, cannot hold. You cannot have a position that there is nothing there. There must have been something there in connection with land purchase annuities and in connection with their control and administration until the Free State Constitution was passed into law at least, and during that period I submit that the 1920 Act was in operation. That it was in operation was shown by the fact that you had a Lord Lieutenant appointed under it who was a Catholic, a thing that could not have taken place before; you had a Supreme Court of Judicature and an Appeal Court set up for the whole of Ireland; you had a Joint Exchequer Board set up, at any rate temporarily; you had magistrates appointed and changes made in respect of District Courts, and all these matters show that from the British point of view the 1920 Act was not alone on the Statute Book, but was in operation in this country. If it was not in operation, how can you reconcile the fact that in Northern Ireland, by an Order in Council issued, I think, on 21/11/'21, the annuities began to be paid into the Northern Exchequer, and how is it that you had a British Chief Secretary representing Ireland in the British House of Commons?

That Act, I submit, was in force until after the Act which implemented the Free State Constitution. It was only by an Order in Council, called the Transfer of Functions Order, that the British Treasury ever claimed the annuities. Why did they claim the annuities in this case? The 1920 Act, we all believed—I think a sound legal reason could be given for it—was the foundation of the actual administration of Government in the Free State. Why was the principle laid down under the 1920 Act in connection with the payment of annuities into our Exchequer departed from, and why had we an entirely different situation? Simply because the financial arrangements in the Free State were in the hands of two British officials, one, I understand, representing the Irish Provisional Government and the other representing the English Government. These two officials found that the Irish Free State Government at the time, the Provisional Government, was not au fait with this matter and was not preparing its claim, and had no intention of preparing its claim, and was actually going to force these annuities upon the British Government whether they wanted them or not—these gentlemen of the Provisional Government were either too busy at the time or too indifferent to pay much attention to this important matter of finance. Therefore, a certain official whose name I shall not mention, but who was responsible in the main for the financial provision inserted in the Transfer of Functions Order and, presumably, in the Act of 1923 subsequently, when it was pointed out to him that these financial provisions were inconsistent with the 1920 Act, and a negation of it, and a contradiction of the Home Rule Bill, said: "Damn the Home Rule Bill; they want to give the money to the British Government, and let them give it." This official helped to frame the Transfer of Functions Order and, presumably, the other regulations now quoted to us here as some kind of authority for the payment of these sums of money.

The Minister for Agriculture dealt with the question of the annual contribution. That used to be a strong stock argument of his down the country. Although the Government themselves have shown in their dealings with their own law courts that they are not above using certain parts of the 1920 Act, in-certain ways to suit themselves, they can use, down the country, an entirely different argument to suit the politics of the moment and they have no scruple in telling the Irish people: "you cannot expect the English to leave you the land annuities without paying them anything instead. You cannot accept one part of the 1920 Act without accepting the other." For the purpose of the land annuities I believe that this section is there; that it repealed all previous sections which determined that the annuities should be paid to the Imperial Exchequer and that it still is law in this country.

But to deal for a moment with the side issue of the Imperial contribution, we are asked, "How would the English let you away with the land annuities unless you pay their Imperial contribution laid down in that Act?" That Imperial contribution was based upon certain services which were to be rendered and which the Minister for Agriculture either did not deal with or passed over in a very casual way. In return for that Imperial contribution which the 1920 Act levied upon Southern Ireland we were, under Schedule VI. of the Act, to have the British Imperial Exchequer responsible for all naval, military and air force expenditure, including pensions and allowances. They were also to be responsible for all foreign and colonial forces and services, for external trade, coinage, and temporarily, at any rate, they were to be responsible and to pay for the upkeep and maintenance of the following services in connection with reserved matters:—police, magistrates, postal services, land purchase, and services in connection with the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Therefore, there was a very complete set-off in regard to the Imperial contribution under the 1920 Act of services that were being rendered by the British Imperial Government in exchange for the contribution.

If we examine the condition of affairs in Northern Ireland, into whose exchequer the annuities are still being paid, we will find that the annual contribution there, in spite of the fact that they hold the annuities, is nothing very serious. It does not militate against Northern Ireland, as will be seen from the figures, in the same way that this drain of five millions and other Imperial services that we have to maintain here—certain ports, a defence force, and so on—militate against us. In 1925-26, instead of a contribution from Northern Ireland, the Imperial Treasury paid to Northern Ireland the sum of £329,000. In 1926-27 they paid to Northern Ireland the sum of £217,000, and in 1927-28 they paid, in all, the sum of £4,497,000, and the exchequer surplus in Northern Ireland for 1927-28 was £248,615. So that in the transaction of Partition, whatever we may have lost in the unfortunate secret agreements which were made between our Government and the British Government, and which were never sanctioned, we have the sad compensation that Northern Ireland seems to have benefited to the same extent that we have lost, or even more than we have lost.

The total amount of land stock, including excess stock and bonus, according to the Finance Accounts of the United Kingdom outstanding on the 31st March, 1928, was £129,000,000 roughly. That can be taken roughly as the capital sum for which the Irish people are responsible. Is it any wonder that you cannot have progress, that you cannot have a policy, that you cannot deal with matters which you want to deal with, so long as you have a millstone of £129,000,000 round your neck as capital liability that will have to be cleared off? This £129,000,000, nearly all of which the Irish Free State taxpayer is held to be responsible for, ought to be taken into account in connection with the counter claim that the present Minister for Finance should have made, and carried to arbitration if necessary, and for which he should have sought and would have found the backing of the Irish people to sustain him in his struggle against the British Treasury—if I could call it a struggle.

The whole matter should be considered with the whole history of the financial relations of this country with England. In the very same way as the Minister for Finance was so innocently fooled when he put his signature to this document, which he was afraid to show in the light before the Irish people in 1926, in 1853, in an alien Parliament, Mr. Gladstone hoodwinked the Irish people by imposing income tax upon them and increasing the spirit duties here. He did that, he imposed that income tax temporarily, and it has become permanent. He imposed that increase in the spirit duties, which meant that for the succeeding years of that century and up to the establishment of the Irish Free State they were bleeding Ireland by excessive over-taxation. He gave the same excuse that the present Ministry are giving here to-day. He said: "I have fixed the liability upon you for income tax and for spirit duties, but against that income tax I have cleared off certain consolidated annuities." These consolidated annuities were in respect of the money lent to the Irish people for relief work during the Famine. So that if the present Minister for Finance were alive in 1853 he would have congratulated Mr. Gladstone on his "damn good bargain" of wiping out an annuity of £240,000 for the loan that he had given to the Irish people and imposing in its stead a sum of £420,000 for income tax. But here we have an Irish Parliament, a native Government which has sprung out of the greatest national movement that was ever seen in Ireland, and that Government, with a few witticisms and a few cheap remarks, puts up substantially the same case as Mr. Gladstone, that they made a "damn good bargain," when the country knows that they paid a great deal more than they got and that a great deal of their claim had been set aside. I say, consequently, that we have not advanced; we have gone back.

A friend of mine said recently that if we were to take a Unionist or an old Loyalist assembly, or any assembly of Irishmen of intelligence, or any intelligent body in the country with a desire to serve the country, they would approach this question as a national question arising out of that movement. We would ask the present Government to reopen this matter, and we would support them in getting the full rights to which they are entitled. I say that because this question of over-taxation is not a question which Irishmen alone are in agreement upon. It is a question which English experts themselves have agreed on. In the year 1894 the famous Financial Relations Commission, sat, and one of the greatest English experts upon it, Sir Edward Hamilton, said that with regard to Imperial contribution if Ireland were wiped out to-morrow Great Britain would still have to maintain the same army and the same navy and pay the same amount for her Imperial fighting services. We on the Irish side cannot see that argument, and do not believe it apparently. The Minister for Agriculture said that we were speaking what we did not believe. Those who are on the opposite side now want to deny history and to turn down in this matter of over-taxation every leader that nationalist Ireland ever had, every leader who ever spoke or wrote on this question. Here we have the Government accepting this miserable, paltry settlement.

Thomas Sexton and others declared on the same occasion, "Ireland should be exempt from a contribution to Imperial expenditure at least for a time." The Primrose Committee recommended that three millions a year should be allocated to expenditure in Southern Ireland, in respect of old age pensions and in respect of the various amounts that were taken from Ireland in over-taxation from 1853 to 1921.

We have various sums mentioned. If we take the estimate of the Minister for Finance himself as to the amount which he expected in connection with the liability, but which he refused to accept or did not fight for in connection with the assets and in connection with his counter-claim— if we take that figure the amount which was taken from Ireland during that period would run into hundreds of millions. It has been calculated by Lord McDonnell, an English administrator, an Irishman, though an Imperialist, that the total amount taken from Ireland up to the last pre-war year in over-taxation was £326,000,000.

Now, the Minister for Agriculture comes along and says you cannot disentangle the Imperial contribution from the rest of the 1920 Act. You cannot say that Ireland is entitled to the land annuities without paying the Imperial contribution. I say she is entitled, but even if she is not entitled we should have put this up against the liability which Britain put up to us for their public debt, and we had a powerful and an unanswerable claim.

Out of the mouths of their experts, and from the Commissions and Committees which were set up, we have it that Ireland for half a century and more had been over-taxed to the tune of from two and a half to two and three-quarter millions a year. And that aggregate sum of money that was called an Empire's ransom by Lord McDonnell was cast aside by our Minister for Finance when he said: "Even if I put it up it would be swept aside. I do not think we could have got an arbitrator to sustain it." We could not have got an independent citizen of the poor old British Empire, one honest man who would arbitrate on that question, on which countless commissions have sat and reported, and on which the Irish Party for two generations carried on a campaign in the British House of Commons. We would not have got an arbitrator to believe that Ireland had a claim.

Now I submit to the House that in respect of the central point of our argument, the fundamental principle of the case we have established, that in the matter of the Land Purchase Annuities, the 1920 Act repealed all previous Acts and that the Act of 1920 is still in force. I submit that we have got no calculated or reasoned answer to that. We have got the answer that the Government usually gives, that it is otherwise, that they know it is otherwise. But I cannot in this matter accept the dictum of the Minister for Agriculture, lawyer and all as he is, in this matter. We want in the first place to have the facts. We want to know what is the legal claim and what is the authority for saying that the 1920 Act is not now in operation? What kind of law is it that says, as I have reiterated in my speech: "When it suits you, you will take a certain part of the 1920 Act and say that it is in operation, and when it does not suit you, you will take another part of the Act and say that it is not in operation."

What is the foundation of Free State law in this matter? Let us hear what it is. It was stated over and over again, not in this but in other discussions, that the question of the Land Purchase annuities did not arise. It was assumed they were due to Britain, and, since the Government in their wisdom had made up their minds on this matter without consulting other parties in the House, and without consulting their own party or the Irish people—since the Government at that time had their minds made up that the annuities were due, we are to be bound for all time by that decision. If that decision were enshrined in an Act of this Parliament, which could be attacked or amended, or if there were an opportunity for discussing this matter on another occasion if it came up in some form or other yearly, then this party would be given an opportunity of expressing its views, and, of course, we would have welcomed that.

I want to deal with the statement of the Minister for Agriculture that there was something wrong or dishonest about the suggestion, of Deputy de Valera that consideration of this matter ought to be deferred. The House has not given sanction to this payment. There is no law compelling it. The agreement has never been ratified and we do not want it ratified. We do not want an adverse vote of the House. We want a recognition by the Government that this is a national question, that it is a question that can be inquired into. It is a question upon which the lawyers have not given a decision. Let them, for example, say whether they are willing to abide by the decision of the Free State High Court which said that the 1920 Act was in operation. We do not want the House to commit itself. In the national interests we do not want it to commit itself by ratifying this false bargain. We want the question left open, and we want to have another opportunity of discussing it. We do not want to have it discussed in the atmosphere that the day before it is brought on here the Irish Press tells us that it is already disposed of. You cannot adopt that attitude in a matter involving five millions, especially when you have the Minister for Finance saying he cannot hope to bring expenditure below the present sum of £24,000,000, at least by any considerable amount. You cannot have that attitude while the country is in the position that it occupies at the moment, when you are looking for a loan and you cannot get that loan only to a certain. amount and under certain conditions. That is the only way you expect to be able to raise money for productive purposes.

You must take into consideration the other question, that this money is going out of the country and that it is a great drain on the country, especially in view of the reduced population and in view of partition. It is really a greater drain than any over-taxation we ever suffered under the British regime. If we want to set our house in order and put our finance on a proper basis, we ought not to treat this question in the way the Ministry have treated it. They have looked upon it as a matter distinctly not worthy of consideration and urged through wrong motives. Rather is it a matter urged with the history of Ireland behind it, and that has also behind it the strong and sound support of British law which speakers on this side have quoted. It could be much stronger if it were supported by Irish law, the Irish law which we were told this Treaty was to be interpreted under, the Irish law which says that the soil of Ireland and everything in Ireland belongs to the Irish people. The very Constitution says that the land of Ireland belongs to the Irish people, and that it cannot be subject to a liability which a foreign bondholder holds in his pocket. We cannot have the position, if we take up the national point of view, that the land of our country belongs to another. If that is so, then the freedom we have got is a sham. If we have not the first fundamental of an independent nation, and the first essential for the building up of our country—that the land of Ireland should be handed over to us completely free—then we have not freedom.

As regards the actual tenor of this resolution, I desire to call attention to the fact that we wish this resolution to be passed because we want to have an opportunity of raising this matter again. We believe if the resolution is adopted it will compel the Government to bring forward legislation embodying in a modified form the ultimate financial settlement and giving sanction to these payments. There is no sanction for them at the present time. Although we say that the amount should be paid into the Central Fund, we simply put it that way because we believe it is the very least we can say at present and the very most we can say if we are going to take this discussion as merely opening instead of closing this important matter. Let no Deputy be under the impression that a vote on this question is going to finish the matter. It is not. It is a matter which has been shrouded in mystery as far as the Ministry are concerned. It is a question they have failed to answer when charged in this House. It is a matter shrouded in misrepresentation so far as the Press are concerned.

Although the number of hours given for a discussion on this matter is limited—and, by the way, that is not an agreement to which this Party ever gave sanction—we are satisfied that the House ought to assert that the matter is of sufficient importance to be brought up here again and that there is a sufficient case to show there is no statutory authority from this House to sanction these payments. By voting for the resolution the House will enable us to move some distance on the way towards re-opening the financial agreement, towards looking for a revision of it with the British Government, and towards giving the Irish people confidence in the belief which they still hold, in spite of the limited opportunities that have been given them to understand our side of the case, that money now being exported from the country ought to be retained.

Mr. T.J. O'Connell

The terms of the motion standing in the name of Deputy de Valera are rather ambiguous, and I am afraid the concluding remarks of Deputy Derrig have not helped to clarify them. I think that the issue that is being debated here is one about which there is no doubt whatsoever. It is to that issue that I will direct my remarks. The question is whether or not the land annuities should be retained in the Free State, or, as Deputy de Valera said, should be paid into the Exchequer and controlled, as other revenue in the State is controlled. There has been a very great deal of agitation, political discussion and long-distance firing, if I may say so, between the opposite parties with regard to land annuities for over two years, and, perhaps, it is well that we should have this debate here, although, from another point of view, which I hope to refer to later. I think it is rather a mistake that it has been raised in this particular fashion. There has been a lot of irresponsible talk of one kind or another, and there is no doubt that hopes have been raised in the minds of people who, perhaps, have not given to the subject the thought that its importance deserves. I feel that is a wrong thing to do. I feel, and have always felt, that very much of the trouble that followed the setting up of the Free State Government here and the enactment of our own laws arose from a sense of disappointment and disillusionment on the part of the people and the falsification of the hopes held out by many people during the years of agitation. There were people who thought that if we had our own Parliament here they would never again have to pay annuities, income tax, rates, and, perhaps, houses would spring up like mushrooms during the night and it would be in every sense a Utopia.

There were, undoubtedly, people, innocent and, perhaps, foolish, who were under that impression. They were disappointed once and I am surprised that many of them have fallen into the trap again. It is wrong that an impression of that kind should be created and I know that it has been created in many quarters in regard to land annuities. We have heard some reference to-day with regard to the right to pay no rent—why should the landlords get any rent, why should they have a right to payment for land? We were told that they came here as Cromwellian settlers and took the land by force. That, however, is a long story and it is a long while ago. All the landlords were not Cromwellian settlers and since the land was originally seized the men who seized it or to whom it was given, have gone away. They have got value for it and that has nothing to do with seizure. There were many changes of ownership during the last 750 years. If we were to have that principle enunciated— reference was made to it here and many references were made to it in another place—what would we do with the tenants on the estates of the descendants of the old Irish chieftains? Would they have to purchase the land from these landlords, the O'Conors of Roscommon or the O'Donohoes of Kerry? What would happen in the case of people who purchased land and for which value was paid? All sorts of complications would arise. There is, however, no need to discuss that. We know that the Irish people, through their elected representatives during a period of thirty or forty years before the Irish Free State was set up, agreed to and accepted the principle of land purchase. That was nationally accepted.

The other point may have been raised by one or two persons here and there, but so far as the great mass of the Irish people was concerned, there was never any question as to the acceptance of the principle of land purchase and of paying whatever value the land had and for the giving of compensation for it. If one were to father a revolution in this country it would be a particularly attractive proposition to go out and preach that doctrine. I do not believe that any one on the Fianna Fáil Benches would propose any such thing, and I think, therefore, that that particular aspect of the case should be dropped and is not worthy of our serious consideration here. Let us, however, examine for a moment what happened, assuming that the principle of land purchase was accepted, as I say it was. It was open to the tenant to make an arrangement with his landlord himself to agree on the purchase price, to plank down the cash and get the fee-simple of his land. It was open to him to go to a bank, or some corporation that would lend money to him, and get money to buy out his land and to pay it back by instalments. A system of that kind would be naturally slow in its operations, and would take hundreds of years to complete on that basis. Land tenure in Ireland was a great social problem. It affected a great number of people, and the Government of the time were bound to step in, as they did, to assist the buying out of the landlords' interests in the land. As Deputy Davin reminds me, they were forced to do so by the agitation carried on by the Land League and the National League over a series of years prior to 1903.

What happened? In one sense we can look at all these transactions between landlord and tenant as individual transactions. A man had a farm, a certain price was fixed for it, say £500 or £600, and if the farmer was in a position to plank down the money he got the fee-simple of his land and never paid any annuity. There were some cases under the various Land Acts where that kind of transaction took place. In the main, of course, that was not done. The Government of the day came to the assistance of the tenant, advanced him the money on the security of his land and arranged that he would pay back the money advanced to him. He got the fec-simple of the land on condition that he would pay back the money advanced to him to purchase it. The British Government of the time lent that money to the tenant and they raised the money by issuing Irish Land Stock. Various people—English, Irish, foreign and colonial— purchased that stock. These persons were not going to advance money to Irish farmers unless they got the security of the British Government, and the British Government bound themselves to pay interest to the stockholders. The stockholders, the people who lent the money, must get their interest. That is admitted by everybody, and no one has said that they should not get it. That was made clear to-day. If anything otherwise were said, then the whole social order, commercial probity and national credit would be at stake. Nobody, however, has said that.

It therefore comes down to this: if it should happen that the tenants did not pay their annuities, and if they were not paid to the British Government for the purpose of paying interest to the stockholders, there is no doubt that the British Government themselves would pay. That is the proposal that is being made—that the British Government should pay interest to the stockholders but that they should no longer get the annuities from the tenants. If that is to be the position—and I take it that that is the proposal—then what right has the Saorstát to collect annuities from the Irish tenants? The Irish tenants entered into no bargain except this. They were to pay back to the people who lent them the money the money that was lent to them. I maintain that there is no right on the part of the Free State Government to collect these annuities from the tenants if that is to be the position. If Britain is responsible for the payment to the stockholders I cannot see the right on the part of the Saorstát.

Deputy de Valera speaks about revenue, and says that the annuities should be paid into the National Exchequer and controlled as other revenues of the State are controlled. When did these annuities become revenues of the State, or who made them revenues of the State? They are not like income tax or a tax on tea or anything else that is levied. They are on a totally different basis to any tax or duty that has been levied. They are a series of individual bargains for a certain amount of property, and, for the life of me, I cannot see what right the State would have to collect these annuities at all. I say that the farmer would quite naturally take up this attitude and say, "If Britain is paying my debt, why should I pay somebody else?"

Mr. MacEntee

Let him take up that attitude.

Mr. O'Connell

Of course, if that is the position, that would be a difficulty to be faced. A great deal has been said on both sides of the House to-day about the legal basis of this case. As a matter of fact, I think that the case is founded entirely on the interpretation of two legal provisions in the Act of 1920, and in Article 5 of the Treaty.

I submit there is even more than that. Why is not the whole ultimate financial settlement dealt with? I want to say that the proper way to attack this whole question is to seek for a revision of the ultimate financial settlement if you want it. I will suppose for a moment that Deputy de Valera were President of the State, and had as his Minister for Finance Deputy MacEntee. I am quite sure that it is not to this Dáil that Deputy MacEntee would come first with a resolution of this kind, if he wanted to tackle this ultimate financial settlement. He would go to the other party to the agreement. He would go to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and say, "Look here, Snowden, we think that this bargain which our predecessors entered into was not a fair one to our country. We want to sit down and have a talk about it. What do you think about it?" That would be the way to go about it. I would certainly strongly support a proposal of that kind. I am prepared to support it, because any time I had an opportunity of expressing dissent, I never agreed to the settlement. I was here, when some of those who are talking very loudly to-day were not here, to protest against the agreement of 1925. I was opposed to it at a time when, if we had got help from the people from whom we should have got help, this question would not be before us at all to-day. However, that is past history, and I do not want to be raking it up.

I say again that there are only two alternatives before us with regard to the question of the land annuities and everything that is bound up with the land annuities, the ultimate financial settlement, the £600,000 and the other matters. There are only two alternatives to consider. One is repudiation; the other is revision of the agreement entered into. That is the reason I am proposing to vote against this resolution as it stands here. My opinion is that you cannot disentangle the resolution as it stands from repudiation of the debt, because if you want to have a settlement on a legal basis there is a way of doing that. Deputy Derrig said that he did not want to force this issue, that he was not anxious to force the issue with regard to this ultimate financial settlement, but I submit that that is in fact what the Fianna Fáil Party are doing by introducing this motion in this way. singling out one item in the ultimate financial settlement and asking that the motion should be passed. I do not think that is the right way to do it. I do not think that an ordinary person can read anything into the resolution as it stands there, except a refusal on the part of this Parliament to pay these land annuities to the stockholders. If you get agreement with Britain that they take over that responsibility, then it will be necessary for you to make some provision whereby the annuities must still continue to be paid. Otherwise you have no justification, in my opinion, for collecting annuities from the tenant farmers.

I think that it is unwise on the part of the Fianna Fáil Party to force the issue in this particular way. I believe they would be wise to withdraw this particular Resolution and not force it to a division, but to take another opportunity of raising the whole question of the ultimate financial settlement with Britain. In the re-opening of that, and in seeking better financial terms with Britain, I am certainly prepared to support them or any Government that proposes to do it. I am not prepared, for reasons I have attempted to show, to support the motion as it stands there for, to my mind in any case, it is taking away one of the two alternatives that I maintain present themselves to us here to get out of this settlement, that is, repudiation on the one hand or revision on the other, and I stand for revision in this matter.

Captain Redmond

I am rather inclined to blame the Minister for Agriculture for not having made the speech he made to-day at least two years ago. For the last two years there has been a campaign in the country which certainly suggested, to less sophisticated minds, that there was a possibility, nay, a probability, that the tenant farmers of Ireland would not have to pay their annuities in future. Well, I think this debate to-day has cleared the air in that respect, and I do not propose to engage upon the process of flogging a dead horse. This horse has been stalking about the land now for a considerable time. I think he has been fairly well slaughtered and may be consigned to rest after this finance debate.

To sum up what I believe was the effect of the speech of the Minister for Agriculture, I would be prepared to say, in his words, that I am not prepared to enter upon a system of national embezzlement. We here in this House, have to, and had to, take certain laws as we found them and to abide by certain obligations which were entered into before this House came into existence, unless we otherwise repealed or amended them, and when Deputy de Valera starts off by making the bald statement here that the purpose of this motion is, in effect, to repeal Section 12 of the Act of 1923 and that by the repeal of that section he would attain his purpose, namely, that we here in this House would not be bound still to go on collecting, by our agents, the annuities from the tenant farmers of Ireland and pay them over to the British authorities, I am afraid he has been very badly advised. He has stated, that by that section of the Act of 1923, we were making a gift, those are his own words, to Britain of this large sum of money. As the Minister for Agriculture stated, this section of the Act of 1923, merely made one little difference, that instead of these annuities being handed over, as they had been previously, to the Land Commission, they were to be handed over to the Ministry of Finance and the Act of 1923 and the Act of 1909 and the previous Acts were in existence at the date of the passage of the Act of 1923, and are in existence to-day and would have been in existence, too, even if Section 12 of the Act of 1923 had never appeared upon the Order Paper of this House. Therefore, to the suggestion, and it is more than a suggestion, made by Deputy de Valera, that we were under no contractual obligation—I think these were his words, and he used them more than once in this debate—to collect and pay these annuities in the manner in which we are now paying annuities unless Section 12 of the Act of 1923 had been passed, I say, speaking as a layman and having a little knowledge of the Land Acts of this country, that that statement is nothing short of moonshine.

The other point Deputy de Valera laid special stress upon is that the cancelling of Article 5 of the Treaty did away with any obligation on our part to pay these annuities, because he argues that they were portion of the public debt. The Minister for Agriculture has, I think, given a very fair definition of what he considers to be the term "public debt." I know the term "public debt" has not been used as frequently as the term "national debt." That does not get away from the fact that to any sensible individual public debt means debt owed by the public, and owed directly by the public and not recoverable by the public from any other source. The very arguments which were used to-day by the Minister for Agriculture, in fact, were the idential arguments that were used in the British House of Commons by members of the Irish Parliamentary Party when in 1903 and 1909 they were taunted by the enemies of Ireland that those Acts were a hardship on the British taxpayer, and that it was the British taxpayer who would be called upon to pay the price for the Irish tenants who purchased their holdings. The reply of the Irish members of those days was in identical terms with the reply of the Minister for Agriculture to-day. They said then, as he said to-day, "the British taxpayer will not have to pay a single solitary penny of this money," and up to this he has not had to pay a single penny of that money, and what the Minister for Agriculture said was said by them then—that in the first instance the tenant-farmer had to pay. If the tenant failed to pay, then the amount was paid out of the Guarantee Fund, which was made up largely of rates upon Irish land and Irish holdings. If that fund failed, then the Consolidated Fund would come to its rescue and fill up the gap. But that gap would be afterwards filled up once more when the Guarantee Fund, which inevitably would increase the account, was able to do so, showing that never at any time would the British taxpayer ultimately have to pay one farthing for the purchase of Irish land. That all goes to show that this was not a burden on the British taxpayer. This was not part of the Public or National Debt that this was, if you choose, a guarantee by the British Government, but only a very limited guarantee, and a guarantee that was to be recovered by a further guarantee from the Irish land itself in the shape of rates and otherwise. Now so much for Deputy de Valera's argument in regard to this being portion of the Public Debt.

It strikes me that there seems to be a serious misconception about the whole situation. There was a lot of talk about handing over this money to the British Government, as if we had this money here to play with, as if it were a product of taxation, as if it were, as Deputy de Valera suggested, part of our revenue. It is nothing of the kind. We are merely custodians of this money. We are merely the collectors of this money. In that respect, I admit we are doing something for the stock-holders. We are expending a certain amount of time and of money, owing to this agreement, in collecting these sums by way of annuities, but we are doing no more, and I am in entire agreement with the Minister for Agriculture when he says if we were not to perform this duty we would be in precisely the position of a man who goes and commits the crime of embezzlement, because we have simply got this money in our hands as custodians and trustees to hand over to the proper quarters for its ultimate and legal destination. I think certainly that Deputy Fogarty has shown himself to be honest in this regard. If we are to collect these sums from the Irish tenant farmers, and if we insist, or endeavour to insist, that this sum should not be handed over to the British authorities to pay the stock-holders, but that having taken them from the tenant farmers, on the ground that they are legally due annuities, that we should proceed to pounce upon them and to use them for another purpose, I say that would not be anything short of sheer embezzlement, and, furthermore, it would be entirely illegal. We have heard a great deal about the Act of 1920. Even Deputy O'Connell says that this is a legal matter and that the proper place to discuss the effect of the Act of 1920 is in a court of law. There is a great deal to be said for that.

Mr. Davin

By the lawyers.

Captain Redmond

From many points of view. But surely we all have a certain amount of commonsense and it does not take a very large stretch of imagination or of commonsense to be able to interpret the meaning of Section 73 of the Act of 1920. The Minister for Agriculture has already quoted that section, but here it is again—at least, the salient points of it: "It shall come into operation on the first Tuesday in the eighth month after the month in which the Act is passed or some other day not more than seven months earlier or later" meaning thereby, if it is necessary for me to interpret that, that it could be fifteen months before any particular section of this Act was put into operation or before the appointed day was named. No appointed day was named in regard to the financial provisions of this Act. We were asked what about Northern Ireland. Certainly an appointed day was named for Northern Ireland, but it was never named for what is known as Southern Ireland and when the Minister for Agriculture says that the Act of 1920 was never in operation, and is not in operation, and probably never will be in operation in this part of Ireland, known as Southern Ireland, in regard to the financial provisions of that Act, who is there here in this House, in view of Section 73 of the Act of 1920, to controvert that statement? I do not think it requires any great intelligence to be able to see the meaning of that section and I do not think really that it even requires a judge to decide that the Act of 1920 in regard to its financial provisions, and in regard to the appointed day having been named, has never yet come into operation or had any legal effect in this part of Ireland known as Southern Ireland. That being so, I think that Deputy de Valera's case hopelessly falls to the ground. It is based upon two points. First of all, he has based his case upon the repeal of Section 12 of the Act of 1923. It has been shown, whether Section 12 was ever introduced, passed or repealed, that we are still liable under the other Land Acts.

In regard to the point that the London Pact of 1925 wiped out any contractual obligations which we might have had prior to that in regard to the payment of annuities. I submit that the London Pact of 1925 had nothing to do with the annuities, that the annuities were never portion of the Public Debt, that whether the London Pact of 1925 had been passed or not, whether Article 5 of the Treaty had been cancelled or not, that we would still be under the same contractual obligation to see that these annuities were paid and placed in their final, ultimate, proper and legal destination.

I think that this debate has, for many reasons, been an instructive one. I think it is a good thing that it has come about. I think it has distinctly cleared the air, and I would not like to be in the shoes or in the place of the Leader of the Opposition who received the trouncing that he got to-day from the Minister for Agriculture.

Mr. Lemass

When it was announced that this motion, which has appeared upon the Order Paper for some time, would be taken to-day, I, for one, was hopeful that it would be considered in something approaching a non-party spirit. The proposal contained in the motion is a very serious one, one of very great moment and very great interest to our people. It has been supported here in the House by a detailed case by Deputy de Valera, in which he gave chapter and verse for every statement that he made—statements which, to the common knowledge of all Deputies, have been endorsed by lawyers of repute, and statements which, in my humble opinion, were worthy of the very serious consideration of the House.

It became obvious, however, as soon as the Minister for Agriculture stood up to reply to Deputy de Valera that this case was not going to be discussed on its merits. I presume the Executive Council met and solemnly decided to put up the Minister for Agriculture as their first speaker. They knew the Minister's methods. They knew that his weapons were mere abuse and misrepresentation, and they were relying upon the fact that he would resort to these weapons and endeavour to misrepresent the case made by Deputy de Valera and get a vote of the House, not upon the merits of the case, but upon the merits of the Minister for Agriculture's powers of vituperation. We have had the whole question of morality dragged in. We have been told we are advocating embezzlement, not merely by the Minister for Agriculture, but also by Deputy Redmond. If the question of morality is to come into this case, we had better not start our examination of it in the year 1891 or the year 1903. Acts have been quoted and Deputies have been referred to numerous legal documents. Let them go back earlier than the years mentioned, to such Acts as the Underwriters' Acts of Charles I— Acts providing for the payment in Irish land of certain British officers who gave services to His Majesty in Ireland and in France, or to pay in the same manner for the supplies given to His Majesty's troops. Let them go back to those Acts which were passed by the British Parliament by which the land of Ireland was confiscated, by which the land question was created and the landlord class constituted. If we are going to have this question discussed as a moral question, and if we are to have them taking one point of view and parading themselves as holier than thou, the only honest men in the place, we will have to examine the question in all its implications.

It was the Confiscation Acts that created the landlord class. If the Irish people had ever been strong enough to take this land back by force they would have done so and they would have been justified. Is there anyone here, except the representatives of these Cromwellian settlers, who will deny that? The Irish people were not strong enough. They made a vigorous effort in that period known as the Land War, and as a result of their efforts the British Government thought it expedient in their own interests to buy out their landlord garrison, to take back from these people, or their successors, the land they held, to give them money instead, and to divide the land amongst the farmers of the country. It is true, of course, that they took every precaution to ensure that they would not lose anything. They took steps to ensure that the tenant farmers would pay enough for the land to enable them to give the advance in cash which they desired to give to the landlords. But that does not alter the fundamental facts of the case. It merely created this question of land annuities, which we are now discussing. We, however, although we believe there is an unanswerable case based upon moral right to stop the payment of annuities at any time, we think we can do it, are not pressing that case now.

The case which we put before the Dáil is a legal case based upon the interpretation of the Treaty, and on the legal position that prevailed here and in England at the time the Treaty was signed and passed. We presumed—I do not know if we are right—that all parties would be glad to see the land annuities retained in this country if we can clearly demonstrate that we have the right legally to retain them. Is there anyone in this House who will insist upon paying them if it can be clearly shown that we are under no legal obligation to do so? I do not think so. Let us, therefore, examine the case from that attitude. It is a matter, I think, that none of us can feel proud of, that after all the efforts and sacrifices that went to bring about the position in which this Dáil was established, we should see standing up here a Minister presuming to speak on behalf of the Irish people, or a section of them, and not making Ireland's case, but making England's case, in a disputed matter. That is what has been done. We maintain that if it is a fair case, a case capable of being argued, it is the duty of every Deputy and Party to endeavour to strengthen and support that case, instead of endeavouring to find the weak spots in it and to pour ridicule and abuse upon those advocating it. It is, at any rate, a matter in which the Irish people should be given the benefit of any doubt that exists. Remember, we are the possessors of the annuities, and, as Deputy de Valera says, possession is nine points of the law. It is not upon us to prove that we have the right to keep the annuities; it is on England to prove that she has the right to get them, and until she has proved to our satisfaction that, within the terms of the Treaty and the legal position existing at the time it was signed, she is entitled to the payment of the annuities, why should we pay them? Should we not give to the Irish people the benefit of the doubt?

What was Deputy O'Connell's speech but one long argument in favour of giving England the benefit of the doubt? He said it is a legal case which should be argued in the courts, and that he was unable to follow the legal argument. Therefore, he said, in effect, "Give England the benefit of the doubt—keep paying." That is not our view. It is, I think, an extraordinary view to come from the leader of the Labour Party. It is true, of course, that we had the still more extraordinary spectacle of his justification of landlordism in Ireland. He argues that Great Britain is paying the farmers' debts. These are the words he used: "Why should the farmers pay anyone else?" Let us examine that particular statement to its full and logical conclusion. If Great Britain is paying the farmers' debts, why should we proceed to pay Great Britain? If what Deputy O'Connell is presuming is correct, why should we insist that the farmer should proceed to pay that money as well? Why should we enforce payment by all the powers at the command of the Government, and having secured it, hand the proceeds over to England, if England is discharging the debt? We are under no legal obligation to transmit it.

I do not want to turn this debate into a discussion between Deputy O'Connell and ourselves upon matters that are not directly concerned. He said, of course, that if he got our help in 1925 we need not now be discussing the question. If we get his help in 1929 we will never discuss it again. It is an extraordinary thing for him to come forward and say he is against the whole financial settlement. What part of it is he against, if not against the land annuities? Is he against the payment of the local loans, and if he is, will he show the difference between the payment of the local loans and the payment of the land annuities? Is he against the payment of the R.I.C. pensions? If you take the R.I.C. pensions, the local loans and the land annuities out of it, what is left? If he is against the whole ultimate financial settlement, must he not be against these separate parts of it. No; he is going into the Lobby to vote for the biggest portion of it, while, at the same time, asserting loudly that he is against it all.

The Minister for Agriculture and Deputy Redmond endeavoured to assert and prove that the matter of the payment of the land annuities was one between the individual farmer and the stock-holder; that whatever machinery may have been established, there was a definite contract, as the Minister for Agriculture said, between the farmers on the one part and the stock-holders on the other. Deputy Redmond said the same thing.

Mr. Hogan

When I was speaking the Deputy interrupted me and asked me would I quote the sections. I said I would, but I forgot to do it. I will quote the sections now.

Mr. Lemass

I will do it myself. We will deal with the Act of 1903, which the Minister dealt with. I shall put a series of questions. We are going to examine the Act from the point of view of finding out was land stock liability part of the National Debt. The question is: Who borrowed the money?

Mr. Hogan

No.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy must be allowed to make his own speech. It is a magnificent maxim that every Deputy must make his own speech.

Mr. Lemass

Who borrowed the money, paid the interest, and provided for the sinking fund charges? What other questions are there? Is there anything else could be done with it? It was borrowed and used and paid. Who did all these things? Section 27 is the first of the financial clauses, and deals with the provision of the money. It provides that for the purpose of making advances to the Land Commission a special fund shall be opened by the National Debt Commissioners. That was purely a bookkeeping arrangement and it had nothing at all to do with the fundamental part of the Act. Section 28 says: "For the purpose of raising the money required for the Land Purchase Fund the Treasury may by warrant addressed to the Bank of England or the Bank of Ireland direct the creation of a new capital stock (to be called a guaranteed two and three-quarters per cent. stock) redeemable after thirty years from the commencement of the Act at par." The money raised by the stock, less the expense of issue, it was provided, should be put to the credit of the Land Purchase Fund. The money was raised by Treasury Warrant. It was not borrowed by the tenant farmers. That is agreed. We have it definitely established that the British Government borrowed the money.

Mr. Hogan (Minister)

They issued the stock.

Mr. Lemass

Settle it in court.

Mr. Rice

Name them.

Mr. Lemass

I am asking the Government to consider that while there is reasonable doubt about this they should stop paying the annuities over to the British and give the Irish people the benefit of that doubt. That is one of the proposals that we are trying to put before the House in asking it to pass this motion. We are not disputing all that the Minister for Agriculture said, but we are not going out to seek another round with England on this issue. We ask that while the Treaty remains in existence, that while the people of this country want the Treaty, they get the whole benefit of it, and if there is an interpretation of that document possible which will entitle us to retain these annuities in our own country, that that interpretation be given to the document, and that until the British Government prove that we are wrong in our contention the annuities should be retained here.

That is not asking too much. It is asking for an Irish interpretation of that agreement. Apparently Ministers, sooner than give that interpretation, are here to-day making arguments in support of the British case, arguments that they know the British Government themselves could not make without belying its own position. The whole case seems to me to be settled if we can establish the point that the land stock is part of the National Debt. I maintain that that is obvious from the terms of the Land Acts. But in case Deputies are still in doubt, I will take refuge like Deputy de Valera in the 1920 Act. I notice that it is the habit here to take refuge in the 1920 Act, and that habit is not confined to this side of the House. The President was making a case yesterday that the penal laws did not any longer operate in the Saorstát, and though he had a perfectly good case based on the Constitution, he did not stop there. He made another case based on the 1920 Act. The section of the Government of Ireland Act dealing with land purchase annuities says:—

"In each year a sum equal to the amount payable in that year in respect of purchase annuities shall be paid into the Land Purchase Fund or Account or other appropriate fund or account out of money provided by the Parliament of the United Kingdom."

Mr. Hogan

Once we cancelled our liability under Article 5 we had no further liability in respect of British public debt.

Mr. Lemass

I am clear about that. We escaped that obligation at a price—a very substantial price.

The iron heel came down at the right moment.

An Ceann Comhairle

We are travelling very far away from the land annuities.

Mr. Lemass

When the civil war was over, when the country got back to normal conditions and when the Ministers had time to look around, they found that the payments were going into the British Treasury and they had not the moral courage to say that the payments had been made in error and without justification. They continued to make the payments and, as each year passes, they are becoming less inclined to admit their error. They made an error in respect not only of the land annuities, but also in respect of the R.I.C. pensions. They are making three distinct payments which they are not, in any obligation imposed on them by the Treaty or any enactment subsequent to the Treaty, bound to make. The second ultimate financial settlement which has been quoted in connection with these payments is one which, as has been pointed out, has no binding force whatever. It was never ratified either by this Dáil or by the British Government. As I say, it has no binding force. The purpose of this motion is not to repudiate debts, as I desire to inform Deputy O'Connell, nor to do any of the horrible things which he was contemplating, but to ensure that instead of making these payments now in secret they would come annually before the Dáil until such time as there is a majority in the Dáil with the moral courage to stand up for their rights. The passage of this resolution would not necessarily stop the payment of annuities to England. That would be a matter of policy for the Executive Council to decide. It merely provides that the annuities will come, not into the Annuities Fund, but into the Central Fund out of which they can only go in consequence of a vote of the Dáil. If, year after year we have this matter coming up, just as the R.I.C. pensions and the Local Loans payments come up, then we can bide our time for it may not be very long until there is a majority in the Dáil to give the Irish people the benefit of the doubt. That is all we are asking for them now.

It should, however, be made clear that we are not necessarily changing our general attitude in this respect because of the case which we are putting forward to-day. We are not accepting the 1925 bargain. If the British offered us the annuities to keep without question in return for our acceptance of partition, we would not accept. When the day comes when the people of this country will demand, and elect representatives who will demand, the revision of the Treaty, we will not merely ask for an equitable financial settlement, but also the unity of our country. We will want not merely the article sold but the price paid, as we are lawfully entitled to both. We are entitled to make that claim. The case we make to-day is one based on the Treaty. It should have been made by those who accepted the Treaty, but it is because they failed to do so, and because they are putting, not an Irish but an English, interpretation on the document that we have come forward to make this case for them. Our logical case is different. It is not based on the Act of 1903 or 1909, but on the Confiscation Acts of Charles I. and Charles II., and on other Acts which created the land question in this country. The Minister for Agriculture has asked us why this case has not been taken to the Courts. This is the one court here which we recognise in the matter. We are not going to take it before Judges appointed by the Executive Council. They may be impartial in other matters, but we could not expect them to be impartial in this matter. It is not in human nature. They were appointed by the Executive Council under conditions which were not normal, and in matters like this we could not regard them as impartial.

Mr. Hogan

That is the worst argument you have used yet.

Mr. Lemass

It may be, but that is my feeling at any rate. Possibly somebody may take it into court, but I will not, nor would I accept the decision of the courts in the matter. In any case, where would the case end? Would it end in the Supreme Court here or would it go further, and would Ministers opposite be prepared to accept the verdict of the ultimate court as representing a fair decision upon a matter concerning the interests of both the British and Irish people? I would not. Here we have a court which is good enough for us. Behind it are the people. If we lose it here we will appeal to the people and let them decide, for they should decide this matter. If there is an interpretation of the Treaty document possible which entitles us to hold the annuities we will hold them until that interpretation is proved to be wrong. If we go beyond the Treaty then there is no case whatever against the moral claim which we would have to retain these annuities. The arguments which have been made by Deputy Redmond and Deputy O'Connell are, in my view, beside the point. If the British Government have no right to receive the annuities, that is no reason why we should continue to pay them until we have proved our right. Deputy O'Connell wanted to know what right the Saorstát had to collect annuities. He asserted that it had no right. Even if we could not prove our title to receive annuities, there is no argument in consequence of that fact that we should pay the annuities to England. I maintain that the tenants are under contract to pay to the Land Commission; that, since the Transfer of Functions Order, the Land Commission is a Free State Department, that the Land Commission could and did at one time pay these into the Exchequer up to the date on which Section 12 of the Act of 1923 was passed. There is no reason why, if that section is repealed, it could not do so again. The annuities would still be paid, but they would have to be voted out of the Central Fund instead of coming automatically out of the Land Annuities Fund. Deputy Redmond, of course, was merely re-echoing the Minister for Agriculture and, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Minister for Agriculture should be greatly flattered by Deputy Redmond's remarks, but, as a serious contribution to the discussion, they are worth nothing.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney

Deputy Lemass's remark about Deputy Redmond's speech being worth nothing as a serious contribution to this debate drives me, after listening to Deputy Lemass with a considerable amount of patience during his long speech, to a similar conclusion that his speech was worth very little. It was worth very little, except for the strange moral doctrines which he put forward—the moral right to stop the payment of these annuities —and the threat which he seemed to hold out that if ever his Party came into power they would then take the step of repudiating the annuities and repudiating their debts.

It seems to me that the entire case which is put forward on behalf of those who are moving for this alteration rests upon a complete misunderstanding. Let us take what these annuities are. They are so many debts due by so many private citizens. They are nothing more than private debts; they are not payments by one country to another. They are not taxes or things in the nature of taxes; they are payments by private individuals of their debts, and the question at issue is: Shall these private individuals pay their debts to their creditors or shall they not? That is the whole question at issue. The views of Deputies opposite seem to be that they shall not pay their creditors; they shall pay somebody else. Who are the creditors? This money was borrowed by Irish tenant farmers to purchase their land. It was borrowed and invested by them in the purchase of their land just, as in the same way, they would have invested in the purchase of land money they got from a bank or from any other source. That is the condition in which they stand, and if that is borne in mind, and if the whole time you are clearly convinced and perfectly aware that the annuities are simply private debts due by private individuals, as plainly they are, the whole case put forward by the Opposition falls to the ground. If you take the condition at the date the Treaty was signed, it was this. Land Purchase had been applied to Ireland and had gone on for a considerable time; it had come from the Bright's Clauses of the Act of 1870 right down to the Land Act of 1909. The position was that there was a fund guaranteed by the British Government, and only a Guarantee Fund. The primary liability for that was the annuities of the tenant farmers. The next liability was the Guarantee Fund. Then there came the public rates, and then only, subject to recoupment, the Consolidated Fund. That is the condition. Under Article 5 of the Treaty an agreement was entered into that the Free State would bear a certain proportion and would assume liability "for the service of the Public Debt of the United Kingdom as existing at the date hereof and towards the payment of all pensions as existing at that date in such proportion as may be fair and equitable, etc." The Article has been read to the House before and I will not read it again. At that date these land annuities were no part of the Public Debt of the United Kingdom.

It is perfectly agreed, I think, by everybody here that public debt can only mean national debt, and the contingent liability of the British taxpayer did not constitute these Irish land purchase funds part of the national debt. That is very well accepted. Take a standard text book like Halsbury. for example, written in 1912, and you will find clearly set out the capital sum for the national debt. You will see side by side with it the sum for contingent liabilities. National debt and contingent liability are entirely different things. How could this thing be called a debt when it was only contingent? It was only in certain circumstances that the British taxpayer could come in. It was not a debt of the British taxpayer; it was a debt of the tenant purchasers, secured first by various Irish funds, and only, ultimately, to the lender secured by the British Treasury. It is perfectly clear that it was not part of the public debt, and did not come under Article 5, and was in consequence not in any way affected by the repeal of Article 5 by the agreement of December 3rd, 1925. Let me take what the position of the British Government was. As I have said, it was only liable contingently. Precisely in the same way if the Government of the Saorstát had any liability, though I could strenuously contend it had not under Article 5, it would still only be a contingent liability and the primary funds would not be in the slightest bit affected. There still would be the liability of the purchasing tenant to pay his land annuity. That is not paid by the State. It is paid by different individuals, and as a liability would continue, whether the contingent liability in the State for this land stock did or did not exist. That was the position, and it is still the position.

Deputy de Valera talked a great deal about the ultimate financial settlement. He also talked a considerable amount about Section 12 of the Land Act of 1923. Neither of those has the slightest thing to do with the issue before the House. It is not under the ultimate financial settlement that these annuities are paid. It is not from the ultimate financial settlement the liability springs. The liability for the payment of annuities rests upon the individual man who got the money to pay for the land he holds. What is the position of the State? The State is nothing more than a collecting agency. It hands over these annuities to the British, and the British Government hands them over to the real owners, the persons who advanced money to purchase the land stock. What would be the alternative to that procedure? Would it not be that the British Government should come over here, collect the debts due, act as a collecting agency on behalf of the persons who own the stock, and that they should go into our courts and take proceedings there for the recovery of these annuities? Is it not a much better way that we should constitute ourselves a conduit pipe to collect the annuities just as the British Government is another conduit pipe to convey these sums of money from the borrower to the men who lent it?

Deputy O'Connell asked perfectly correctly where does the transfer come in. These are debts due by the Irish tenant-farmers who have borrowed the money. Where is that transferred to the Oireachtas? We are told it is under the Act of 1920. Deputy Lemass very fairly admitted that he was driven to fall back on the Act of 1920. What is the Act of 1920? We all know the history of it, and the circumstances under which it was passed. A free gift of £3,000,000 a year, or whatever sum it was—I need not be too accurate in figures on this matter—was to be given to Southern Ireland, and a grant was to be given to Northern Ireland in respect of the annuities then due. That was a bribe which was not accepted. That Act of 1920 never came into operation. A Parliament was not set up in Southern Ireland under it. It never was an accepted measure and never came into operation. Now it is said on the other side that you are entitled to pick and choose amongst its provisions. You can approbate and reprobate at your choice. You can pick out of that Act a certain section and say: "We like this section and we will take it; under this section we get the land annuities, and we will take it. Hard by is another section which prevents us levying customs; we will not take that; we are to pick and choose; we are to take what we like and say, ‘This is in force, but that is not in force. I like this, and I will have it. I do not like that, and I will not have it.'" That is the argument that the Deputies opposite, in Deputy Lemass's phrase, are driven to adopt. This question has been before the country for some time. I am glad it has come into this House. I am glad it has been discussed in this House, because surely now it must be apparent to the Deputies opposite that they have neither moral nor legal right to hold these annuities, and though I may not have a very high respect for the Party opposite, and though that respect, such as it is, may be dwindling day by day, I still do hope that I am not entirely wrong when I express the desire that this preposterous campaign will die to-night and die for ever.

An Ceann Comhairle

I think if it is intended to conclude, the Chair should be in the position to call upon the mover of the motion at the latest, at 10 o'clock, if possible before that.

Mr. de Valera

My position, of course, is that I am anxious that the Deputies who will be asked to vote on this resolution should have an opportunity of considering this question carefully. That was why I suggested that the debate should be adjourned for a period to enable them to sift for themselves this question. However, if we are not able to get agreement on that, I would ask to get an opportunity of replying at a fairly convenient time.

Minister for Finance (Mr. Blythe)

The first of the things that has always made me feel that there was not very much sincerity in the attitude taken up by the Chief Opposition Party in this matter has been their failure for such a long time to put down any motion to deal with it in the Dáil, because if it were a matter so important and involving so much money, and if they believed in their case they should have brought it to a vote at the earliest opportunity. The second thing which made me think that there was not much sincerity in it has been the way in which they dealt with in as if it were something which arose out of the ultimate financial settlement, although any Deputy on either side who considered it would have known that the ultimate financial settlement had nothing whatever to do with the question of the payment of annuities apart from the mere point of the income tax of those annuities. They would have known, and Deputy de Valera has admitted to-day, that the financial settlement could give no authority to pay out any sum, and that the sums which are being paid out are paid out on the authority of an Act which was passed before the ultimate financial settlement was arrived at at all, and that consequently they have, in talking about this matter in connection with the ultimate financial settlement, been refusing to deal with it seriously and simply have been trying to use it merely as a platform stunt. Sometimes when Deputies on the other side have admitted that the payment of those annuities did not arise or flow from the ultimate financial settlement, but from the Act of 1923, they have pretended that the House and the country were left under the impression, at the time of the Boundary Agreement of 1925, that there was to be no further payment of the land annuities.

When the President was asked what the figure was he said, "A big nought," and there have been all sorts of references to that, and suggestions that the President either deceived the House or was going back again to the old question of the ultimate financial settlement, or that something was done later which undid the effects of the agreement of 1925. The President, on the Second Reading of the Treaty (Confirmation of Amending Agreement) Bill, 1925, made it perfectly clear that the wiping out of Article 5 did not interfere with the payment of land annuities to the appropriate British fund which was then going on. As there has been so much misrepresentation on this matter, I would like to quote from the concluding speech of the President on the Second Reading debate of the Treaty (Confirmation of Amending Agreement) Bill on the 10th December, 1925, beginning at the bottom of Column 1765. He said:—

I am proud to say, and let whoever likes make political capital out of it, that we met honest, just, and generous people to make a case to. The Irregulars can go out now if they like and sound that throughout the country. I am going to tell the truth in connection with these negotiations—the whole truth. We explained that we were paying out three and a quarter millions a year for land held by our people, more than half of them occupying uneconomic holdings. We explained that we were sending out of the country a million and a quarter in pensions, and we told the British Ministers: "You can, if you like, assess us for ten, twenty, thirty millions; we will not be able to pay. Is it any advantage to your country to make us bankrupt? We are not standing for repudiation. We are prepared to bear our burden; we are bearing at present, and will be bearing for a long time, an undue burden, and we are not honestly able to pay a single penny." It was accepted in good faith, and that finished Article 5.

Now the President made these remarks winding up his speech on the Bill which confirmed the agreement of December, 1925, and left the Dáil in absolutely no doubt on the matter. It was perfectly clear from those remarks that the payment of the land annuities which had been going on was to be continued. It was on that basis that the agreement of December, 1925, was settled. There is no doubt at all that if we are to call for the revision of any arrangement whereby the land annuities are paid over, it would be equally open for the British Government to call for a revision of the agreement whereby our liability under Article 5 was knocked down.

Mr. Carney

What about the "big nought"?

Mr. Blythe

The "big nought" is all right; it is there. I quoted these remarks just to show that there has been no attempt on the part of the Fianna Fáil Party to deal honestly and sincerely with this matter. As the Minister for Agriculture pointed out, they made it simply a matter of dishonest, raging propaganda through the country, an appeal to, what they think, the overwhelming instincts of cupidity amongst certain sections. The misrepresentation they have gone on with in connection with the whole matter seems to me to be clear proof of that.

With reference to what the Minister for Agriculture said about our contributing nothing to the public debt, let us put it in another way, for the moment. Without discussing whether or not land stock constitutes part of the British public debt, it is clear that before the Treaty the British taxpayer was paying nothing in respect of the land stock which is represented by the annuities payable by the tenants of the Saorstát. The service of that portion of the debt represented by land stock was met, as has been said, in the first instance by the annuities, secondly, by the Guarantee Fund and if they failed there were certain other reserves before the Exchequer was reached. There was nothing being paid out of the British Exchequer before that and the British Exchequer is in no better position at the present time. These payments are not relieving, to the extent of one penny, the burden which was previously on the British people as taxpayers. Consequently, if you accept the definition of either National Debt or public debt as something that imposes a burden on the taxpayer nobody can doubt that there is no penny of a contribution by way of relief being paid at the present time.

Deputy de Valera and other speakers have laboured a great deal to show that the land stock was part of the National Debt or of the public debt of the late United Kingdom. I think the arguments against that are overwhelming. I think it clearly was not a portion of the public debt, and was never treated so by either Party since the setting up of the Saorstát. But even if it were part of the public debt, the land annuities are quite a different question and present quite a different problem. Even if we were to admit, for the sake of argument, that land stock was part of the public debt and that we had no responsibility for the service of that debt, that does not relieve the farmer of his liability to pay what he contracted, and it does not give us the right to take the payments from him. That money could only come to us if it were given to us in a bargain by agreement with the British Government. The arrears of income-tax and various other things were, at the setting up of the Government of the Saorstát, by agreement with the British Government, handed over to us. The debt which is being paid by these annuities was an asset belonging to the British Government. It was something which they had to dispose of by agreement with us. It was a matter entirely different from the question of public debt, not necessarily proceeding along the same lines at all, or governed by the same considerations. This seems to be the critical point of the whole case, far more essential than the argument whether or not the land stock is part of the old National Debt. What right have we to withhold the annuities from going into the appropriate fund in Great Britain to serve the purpose for which they originated?

The position of Northern Ireland really is not relevant there. They are a subordinate Parliament. A financial arrangement has been entered into with them, and the British Government have agreed that they themselves out of British taxation will meet the requirements of the debt and that they will allow the Northern Government to keep the annuities. I think the suggestion of a free gift there is entirely illusory. In any case, they have made that agreement. There is not that agreement here. I was not in for part of Deputy de Valera's speech, but I did not hear him try to deal with this point at all. Deputy Derrig did, on the other hand, deal with it at some length, but it seemed to me that his arguments were extremely confused and that he had not thought them out at all. Some of his arguments were improvised, apparently as a result of hearing the President's reply on the question of the penal laws yesterday. He tried to argue that the Act of 1923 had come into force at a certain date. I think he was wrong as to the date. It was on 2nd March, as a matter of fact. He argued that the Act of 1920 had come into force then, that it had provided that the land annuities should be retained and be paid into the Exchequer of Southern Ireland, that certain contributions should be paid. I do not know whether he argued that that still remains in force or that it repealed existing provisions, and when it was itself repealed those former provisions which it had repealed were not revived. But he tried to argue that case on certain provisions in the Act of 1920, that we in the Free State had got from the British, which is essential to the thing, the right to retain these annuities and to use them otherwise than for the purpose for which they were instituted. It does not seem to me that he succeeded in proving that. It certainly was never agreed that those annuities should be paid into the Exchequer of the Saorstát. They were to be paid into the Exchequer of the Parliament and Government of Southern Ireland. Now the Parliament and Government of Southern Ireland, the State or province, or whatever we may call it, that was proposed to be set up by the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, was a very different thing from the Saorstát. You had there a Parliament with limited powers, a sort of glorified county council. You had provisions for a Government and an Exchequer, and that was really a part of the Imperial administration. Nobody can argue that any legal provision which gave the land annuities to the Exchequer of Southern Ireland could be interpreted to give the land annuities to the Exchequer of the Saorstát.

I heard in the debate a very confused attempt by Deputy Derrig to argue that somehow or other, as a result of the Act of 1920, we got the right to retain the annuities. That, I think, cannot be substantiated. To argue that we could take one part of a financial scheme made for the Parliament of Southern Ireland and that we could reject another part, that we were given full legal authority by these provisions to do so, is simply patent nonsense.

Coming away from the legal point, I agree to some extent with Deputy O'Connell. I believe the legal thing is clear enough to anybody who will look at it honestly. Anybody would be confused by the variety of arguments, the number of sections quoted or referred to, and by the sort of court atmosphere that can arise. I think it is very difficult for Deputies who are not prepared to get not merely the speeches here but the documents and sit down and consider them carefully, to come to any clear conclusion as to the merits of the legal arguments put forward.

I think it is worth while looking at the moral aspect of the case. The annuities were created for the purpose of paying dividends and sinking fund. It would require a great deal of argument to convince any impartial person that it is a reasonable division to give one party all the assets relating to a service, and to give the other party all the liabilities. The presumption will be to anybody who looks at the matter impartially that the assets go with the liabilities. Anybody who really wants to contest that should set out seriously to prove that the opposite is the fact. That is the onus, as I say, that Deputy de Valera, to my mind, made no attempt to discharge. The question of our share of the National Debt was a thing apart from the question of the land annuities. It was by common consent, and without any objection that I heard from anybody, treated from the beginning as a thing apart. As the Minister for Agriculture has said, the ex-Deputy who has been so active in fomenting this agitation, was himself in the House when the first vote was taken for sums that had been paid into the Exchequer. He was a member of the Dáil Cabinet or the Provisional Government—I do not know which—when the Order in Council was first issued which provided that the land annuities should be paid over and that they should be treated quite separately from the question of Article 5. If we had any liability under Article 5 that would have been determined if the peculiar crisis in connection with the Boundary had not arrived. But it should be quite clear to Deputies that the responsibility for paying these sums over to the appropriate British funds imposes no charge, except a contingent charge, on the public at large. It is nothing at all in the nature of assuming responsibility for a National Debt. If we assumed any responsibility under Article 5, that would have been a responsibility that would have been met out of the Exchequer—everybody would have been liable for it. So far as what is being paid at present under the annuities is concerned, the public at large is not charged at all, and nobody is asked to do anything more than simply to pay the debts that he contracted to pay. So that the whole suggestion that we are assuming some liability in relief of the British, that we are taxing this country and have introduced some sort of new situation, is entirely unfounded.

As we are talking of courts, I will go back for a moment to a point introduced rather incidentally about what would have happened if the question of our responsibility under Article 5 had gone to arbitration. The most we could have hoped for if Article 5 had gone to arbitration would have been what did happen— that Article 5 would have been wiped out. There was no provision in the Article in the Treaty for our receiving a payment, even in case we succeeded in satisfying the arbitrator that we had a counter-claim in excess of the claim which the British Government might put up against us. As a matter of fact, anybody who thinks of the position of any arbitrator will realise that, no matter how strong we thought our case, it is most improbable that any arbitrator, in view of the way countries in Europe are loaded with debt and many of them poor, would have held that the Free State could and should pay nothing. The sum which we might have had to pay might, if we had been lucky, have been small, and it might have been large. I think it most improbable, no matter how strongly we put our case, no matter how good we thought our case ourselves, that any arbitrator would have let us off altogether, or given us as good a result as that we got by the agreement of December, 1925. In fact, if one considers the attitude of, say, the one arbitrater of whom we had experience, the amount might have been extremely large.

Coming to the question of the land annuities, if that went to arbitration I think it will be patent to anybody that no arbitrator would say that the party that had to pay the interest on the money was not going to have the annuities paid by the person to whom the money was advanced. I am perfectly satisfied that any arbitrator before whom a case might go on the question of the land annuities would find against the Free State, and that if we did attempt to embezzle the annuities and to hold on to a thing that we have neither moral nor legal right to, we would not be able to get off with it.

I do not believe for a moment that we are going to have invasions, and that sort of thing, but there are many ways by which much stronger countries than this could be made to pay moneys due, and countries stronger than this have been made to pay debts in which there is not one-tenth the justice there is in this debt. An attempt to embezzle the annuities, I am satisfied, would ultimately bring considerable trouble, damage and humiliation to this country, and the attempt that is being made to play on the cupidity and credulity of people who are not so well-informed about matters of this kind is really endangering the future peace, prosperity and honour of the country. I am satisfied that a naked attempt at repudiation of this sort would have, apart from anything that might arise in a crisis, a very damaging effect on the country, and would certainly throw back every prospect of progress industrially. I do not know whether there is any use appealing to people on the opposite Benches to try and look at the case on its merits, to try to get rid of the misrepresentations and platform sort of sunburstry that we heard to-day, and see whether, either on the moral or the legal side, we have any case for re-opening, and whether there is a prospect that re-opening, if it were secured, would not leave us distinctly worse off than we are at present.

My own view is that if a re-opening were secured it certainly would leave us worse off. I consider that in all circumstances we are bound to pay the annuity, and I think a re-opening would possibly lead to a revision of the agreement of December, 1925. I think we were lucky to get that agreement of December, 1925. I think it was only certain peculiar facts in connection with the Boundary Commission that led to some sympathy for the Free State and the danger of trouble that would not have been merely border trouble, nor shall I say merely Saorstát trouble, that got us such a favourable agreement. I think also the fact that at that time our financial prospects did not look so bright, that our old age pensions were lower then than they are now, and that various other matters looked unfavourable, got us the "big nought." I anticipate any re-opening might land us with a burden instead of a big nought. I had hoped that parties on the other side would at least have learned this: that if re-opening did result, as a consequence of arbitration or something of that sort, in our being assessed with further liability, we would have to pay. I had hopes that they had got away from that sort of mood of another round with the British Empire and that sort of thing.

I do not want to refer to the Civil War, but it should at least have taught them that there was a limit to the sort of resistance that could come out of a movement of that kind, that in fact if there was a determination against the country, as a whole, on a matter like this nothing but the sort of result that came to their side out of the Civil War could result. I honestly put it to Deputies on the other side—and I do not want to be offensive—that I think this matter has never been seriously or conscientiously examined by them, and I think what the Minister for Agriculture said is largely true—that when Mr. O'Donnell and the left wing of that party began their campaign, they were afraid of being left and of having the ground cut from under their feet, and then they rushed into the thing. I think it would be playing a more worthy part if they would just quietly have gone over it all again, and see where they stand, and see what sort of argument and what sort of right they have.

Mr. MacEntee

When the Minister for Finance had been speaking for a short period I was inclined to congratulate him upon the attempt which he had made to address himself to this resolution in a reasonable way. That attempt contrasted very favourably with the speech delivered by his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture. I am sorry to say, however, that at the end of his speech the Minister disappointed me by attempting to intimidate this House. This is not a question of re-opening the Treaty; this is a question of examining the Treaty with the eyes of the Irish people, in order to see whether or not under that Treaty you are entitled to withhold these annuities. I submit to the House that the only justification for the payment of these annuities is that under the Treaty you are compelled to pay them. If there is nothing in that document which so coerces you, then we are entitled to retain them at home, whether in the Exchequer of the Government of Saorstát Eireann or in the pockets of the Irish farmers who are at present paying them to my mind is a comparatively minor matter. So long as the money is retained in Ireland, I, for one, an bound to feel content. I must not be taken as saying that I do not believe that the Government of the Saorstát has a claim upon those annuities and has a right to ask them from the farmer. I put that as a minor issue. The big issue for me is whether or not these annuities are to be retained in this country or paid away as they are paid away at the present moment.

The Minister in the course of his speech said that nobody could argue that under the Act of 1920 the annuities should go to Southern Ireland. I would like before dealing with that to allude to the position that existed here. I know the Minister for Agriculture said that we were endeavouring to support this resolution by Acts which were not in force, are not in force and never will be in force. Deputy Redmond, with the fanatical zeal of a recent convert and his new-born admiration for the Minister for Agriculture went further and said that the Government of Ireland Act was not in force in 1921. I am afraid Deputy Redmond did not read the statement made by the President on the previous day——

Captain Redmond

I must be allowed to explain to the Deputy that I said no such thing. I said the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, was not in operation so far as its financial provisions were concerned in Southern Ireland and never has been in operation.

Mr. MacEntee

I shall deal with that point. If I misunderstood the Deputy, I am sorry and I apologise to him. However, the point is: Was the Government of Ireland Act in operation on the 6th December, 1921, and, if so, to what extent? I think if we can show that the Act, as a whole, was in operation on the 6th December, 1921, or on any later date previous to its repeal that then these financial provisions were also in operation and, therefore, we are entitled to the benefit of Section 26 (1) of that Act.

I would like to call the attention of the House to the Government of Ireland (Adaptation of Enactments) Order, 1922. I will show that so far as that Order is concerned, the Act was in operation in this way, that it identified the Provisional Government of Southern Ireland with the Government of Southern Ireland under the Act. Section 8, Part II, of the Act, sets out that, "unless the context otherwise requires, reference to Ireland shall in its application"—they were dealing with the Weights and Measures Act—"to the case of Northern Ireland be construed in reference to Northern Ireland, and in its application to the case of Southern Ireland, it shall be construed as reference to Southern Ireland," Southern Ireland being the territory administered by the Provisional Government so constituted under the Treaty. Again, in Section 18, which relates to the constitution of Trade Boards, we have the following: "...and if established for Southern Ireland shall be deemed to have been established for Southern Ireland and reference to Ireland in Section 2 of the Trade Boards Act of 1909 shall be construed as reference to Southern Ireland."

So, all the Treaty did was to superimpose something on the position created by the Government of Ireland Act of 1920. It did no more than that. The position which had been created by the Government of Ireland Act existed after the Treaty. In fact, if you turn to the Treaty you will see that there are Articles in it which make that perfectly clear. From the point of view of the British, there existed at the date of the signing of the Articles two separate administrative territories with two separate executives in Northern and Southern Ireland. The Free State, which ostensibly—whether in sincerity or not at this point does not matter—was to embrace the whole of Ireland and include the two administrative territories, was to be superimposed upon them in such a way that the territory of Northern Ireland maintained its separate identity and separate executive. If you want to prove that you will turn to Article XI. in the Treaty, and you will see there reference to elections for constituencies in Northern Ireland. You will see there that even under this Treaty the powers of the Parliament and the Government of the Irish Free State shall not be exercisable as respects Northern Ireland and the provisions of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, shall, so far as they relate to Northern Ireland, remain in full force and effect.

Again, in Article XIV., you see that the Parliament and Government of Northern Ireland shall continue to exercise, as respects Northern Ireland, the powers conferred on them by the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, even if Northern Ireland does not elect to opt out of the Treaty. On the other hand, Southern Ireland with its territory, subject to the definition and adjustment which were to be made by the Boundary Commission later, its executive, its rights, actual and potential, is to continue and is to be merged into the Irish Free State. Article XIII. is proof of that. It says: "For the purpose of the last foregoing Article the powers of the Parliament of Southern Ireland under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, to elect members of the Council of Ireland shall after the Parliament of the Irish Free State is constituted be exercised by that Parliament." Article XV. goes even further and under that Article it sets out: "At any time after the date hereof the Government of Northern Ireland and the Provisional Government of Southern Ireland hereinafter constituted may meet for the purpose of discussing the provisions subject to which the last foregoing Article is to operate ...." Then the Government of Southern Ireland is to be set up. The only Act apart from the Treaty which refers to Southern Ireland is the Act of 1920. Under that Act this Government of Southern Ireland was to be set up. Again, Article XVII. prescribes the way in which the Government of Ireland is to be set up.

The principal fact is, in regard to certain powers under the Government of Ireland Act, that those are definitely transferred to the Government of the Irish Free State. Therefore, you have the situation that the Treaty actually created the Government of Southern Ireland which up to that time had been administered under Section 72 of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. The fact that this Government of Southern Ireland was set up means that there was an Exchequer of Southern Ireland set up; that is, the Exchequer which was to be set up under Section 20 of the Government of Ireland Act, the Exchequer to which these land annuities were to be paid. Therefore, there was an authority established in this country which was competent to receive those annuities. That is the main financial provision.

Somebody may say "What about the appointed day?" The appointed day has been referred to in connection with a number of matters. I would like the House to devote its attention to Section 73 of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, which sets out: "This Act shall, as expressly provided, come into operation on the appointed day, and the appointed day for the purpose of this Act shall be the first Tuesday in the eighth month after the month in which this Act is passed." Section 26 of that Act sets out that "Purchase annuities payable in respect of land situate in Southern and Northern Ireland respectively ... shall be collected ... and the amounts so collected shall be paid into their respective Exchequers." Is there anything to prevent that? I would again refer you to Section 73, which sets out that "the appointed day shall be the first Tuesday in the eighth month after the month in which this Act is passed, or such other day not more than seven months earlier or later, as may be fixed by order of his Majesty in Council, either generally or with reference to any particular provision of this Act...." I would like the House to consider what is set forth there. Remember that this document, drafted by the British Government, by the ordinary canons of legal interpretation is to be interpreted against the person who drafted it.

Section 72 (3) of the Act prescribes that the Act shall come into operation on one day or another. If it does not come in on one day, it must come into operation on another. The section says the first Tuesday of the eighth month after which this Act is passed, or if it does not do that—that is, come into operation on that day—then it may come in on any other day, being a day not earlier than seven months before or not later than seven months after the first Tuesday in the eighth month. But if it does not come in on that earlier or on that later date, then it must be deemed to have come into operation on the appointed day, on the day which was appointed for the whole Act to come into operation. The general effect was that the whole Act was to come into operation on the first Tuesday of the eighth month after the passing of the Act—that is to say, unless there was some proviso to the contrary, the first Tuesday in August, 1921, was the day on which it was to come into operation. The only thing that Act gave power to do was to defer or anticipate the appointed day. It could not do anything more than that. It could fix it earlier or it could fix it later, but if it was not fixed earlier or later, then the Act, as a whole, came into operation on the 8th August, 1921. What was the effect of that? It was to establish an Irish Exchequer and to make these land annuities payable into the Irish Exchequer. Super-imposed upon that was the Treaty, by which the Provisional Government of Southern Ireland was constituted, so that you had everything necessary to give effect to the provisions of that Act and to make it competent for Southern Ireland to collect and retain these annuities.

I would like to make one point clear here. That is the legal position created by the Treaty. The Articles of Agreement for the Treaty were given the force of law by the Irish Free State Act of 1922. I would like to point out this—that these Articles of Agreement which afterwards became statute law did not in any way repeal the Government of Ireland Act of 1920. That is a strong point. That Government of Ireland Act of 1920 remained, and you have the proof that it did remain in the very Articles and provisions of the Treaty. There is nothing in the Treaty that repeals that Government of Ireland Act. The Government of Ireland Act was repealed later. That will, I know, be put up to me. I would like you to consider this first—the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, conferred a right and a privilege, the right of retaining these annuities and the privilege and duty of collecting them, and it imposed upon Great Britain a concomitant duty of making good to the Consolidated Fund the loss that would be incurred by the retention in Ireland of these land annuities. The Government of Ireland Act was repealed. What was the effect of the repeal? Deputies may remember that on yesterday the President made reference to the Interpretation Act of 1889. I would like to direct the attention of the House to Section 38, sub-section (2), paragraph C of that Act:—

"Where this Act or any Act passed after the commencement of this Act repeals any other enactment, then, unless the contrary intention appears, the repeal shall not affect any right, privilege, obligation or liability acquired, accrued or incurred under any enactment so repealed."

Under the Government of Ireland Act—and I want to say that I am arguing this upon a legal point, not upon the fundamental principles of Irish nationality—we acquired the right to retain those land annuities. You see that it is provided by a special section of the Interpretation Act which I have just read that notwithstanding the repeal of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, we did not surrender that right, and Great Britain did not escape the liability which she assumed under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, of making good to the Consolidated Fund any loss that might arise because of the non-payment into that fund of the land annuities.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney

Has she a right to the ten millions?

Mr. MacEntee

I am addressing myself to this because I am proposing to show that there is a good case, a case which we can properly argue in this House and nowhere else. I am endeavouring to show that there is a good legal case why these annuities should not be paid, and that it does not depend at all upon the ultimate financial settlement, and it does not depend at all upon the Land Acts of 1903 and 1909 which the Minister for Agriculture dragged in here to confuse the issue knowing that he had a weak case. The Minister for Finance said that we could not take one part of the Act and reject the other part of the Government of Ireland Act. He said that that was nonsense on its face. But the British Government itself adopted one part of that Act. They adopted it when they appointed the Lord Lieutenant. They adopted it when they declared the election for members of Parliament to Southern Ireland in May, 1921. They adopted it in many other things they had to do in order to provide for the transition period after the Treaty. The Minister for Finance says you cannot adopt one part and reject the other. I am prepared to admit that. Therefore I say that we are entitled under that Act to retain the annuities. You have to consider what other position was created.

There were obligations under the Act of 1920. If you turn to Article 5 of the Treaty, you will see what provision was made there in regard to the obligations which were imposed on us by the Act of 1920. Article 5 of the Treaty is a modification which again was made in the previous Act of 1920 in order to provide that we would contribute so far as National Debt charges are concerned, and these are the main parts of it. Under the other Articles of the Treaty, under Article X. I think we were to take a liability for pensions, and under Articles VII., VIII. and IX. we were to take obligations in respect of national defence which were imposed upon us by the Government of Ireland Act. These were substituted for the other provisions of that Act. Article 5 of the Treaty, which deals with the general financial provisions created by the Treaty, was the one under which we assumed in part, possibly in toto, the financial obligations which were imposed on us by the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. Now here is the position. The Government of the Irish Free State was merged into the Government of Southern Ireland, and the assets and rights, actual and potential of the Government of Southern Ireland, fell into the Government of the Free State. At the same time, obligations also fell upon us. The obligations were dealt with by Articles V., VII., VIII. and IX. of the Treaty. But one of the assets to which we were entitled under the Articles of the Treaty was the land annuities. That is the position as I put it to the House. I think there is very strong reason to assume, at any rate, that notwithstanding any statutory authority or otherwise which has been given by this House for the payment of these annuities, we are entitled to retain them, and the only thing I would like to emphasise again is that this resolution asks you to ensure, before further payment of these land annuities takes place, that, instead of these being paid as at present into the Land Purchase Fund, they will be paid into the Central Fund, and that all payments in respect of land annuities will be dealt with as payments in respect of local loans are dealt with.

That is to say that they will not be made unless by vote of this House. I think that is a reasonable attitude. I would like Deputy O'Connell, on behalf of the Labour Party, to consider that attitude before he definitely decides to vote against this motion, to see whether we have not made a case in contradistinction to the case made by the Minister for Agriculture, in contradistinction to the case made by the Minister for Justice, who certainly did not address himself to it, good, bad or indifferent, but talked about embezzlement. Embezzlement seemed to be their one justification for this, but I have endeavoured to show that we can retain these annuities without leaving ourselves open to any charge of embezzlement. In view of that I think Deputies in the Labour Party, Independent Deputies and Deputies who are farmers should support this motion. As I said in the beginning, I am not concerned so much as to whether these annuities are paid into the Irish Exchequer as that they should be retained in Ireland. If you think that we have raised this issue simply in order to secure some political kudos, then you are very much mistaken. We have raised it because we feel that it should be ventilated before the people. We are asking you as farmers to consider it, not for your own selfish interest but for the interest of the people as a whole. You are the tillers of Irish soil. Do you think that a power outside this State has a right to exact from you rent for tilling that soil, for making it fruitful and productive, as God intended it to be, and as it should be? Do you not think that you are entitled to the full fruits of that? I say if you decide to-night to vote against this motion for Party purposes, or if you are coerced to vote against it, at least you should address yourselves in the counsels of your Parties to those who are responsible for this policy and see that there shall be an earnest consideration of the whole matter.

Mr. Rice

This debate, so far as it has been discussed on the other side of the House, has been somewhat remarkable from certain points of view. Deputy de Valera, before he opened the debate proper, tried to get an arrangement made to have the second part of the discussion adjourned. He did not do that on the ground that he was not prepared, but I think that was the basis of his suggestion. He wanted to have a week to consider what he would say in reply to the arguments that would be put forward against this motion. I am rather surprised at that, because, by no desire of my own I have been an unwilling witness of the team-work that has been going on for weeks past in preparing the case for this motion. This team-work has been going on, as I say, and I have been an unwilling witness of it, because one does not willingly look on at an operation of this kind, where a Party proceeds, to use the words of the Minister for Finance, to advise the country to embezzle money that is due by it and tries to find what legal basis can be put on their case. It reminds one of gentlemen who contemplate a bank robbery going to their legal adviser before they do so and asking him what is the most legal way in which they can carry out their operation.

Deputy de Valera, and the other speakers on the same side who followed him, based their argument on this principle, that the financial provisions of the Act of 1920 are in force. Another remarkable feature of this debate is that while there are two members of the legal profession on those benches we have not heard a word from them yet on this matter, although we have been told that this is a legal debate. We have been told that the Act of 1920 is in force, that this provision is in force, that it became law and that it is operative; that is to say, that the annuities are payable into the Irish fund. Deputy Ruttledge is an experienced solicitor. He could have told his colleagues that you cannot approbate and reprobate. They have Deputy Ruttledge, who is an experienced solicitor, and they have Deputy Little, who is a solicitor, and these two members of their Party could have told them that it is an elementary principle of law that you cannot approbate and reprobate, whether it is in the case of a statute, a document, or an agreement of any description. You cannot pick out the parts which are in favour of yourself and say: "I will take these and reject the parts that are against me," simply because you do not like them. If you agree to buy a house and pay a certain sum for it you cannot say: "I will take the house but I will not pay." That is what Deputies opposite are advocating, because Deputy de Valera referred to this section of the Act of 1920, dealing with the payment of land annuities into the Irish fund, and spoke at considerable length on it. Then he referred in a light and airy way to Section 23. He read the first sub-section of Section 23, which says: "Ireland shall in each year make a contribution towards the Imperial liabilities and expenditure mentioned in the Sixth Schedule to this Act." He left the matter there. But the same section goes on to provide that Ireland as a whole should, in the first financial year and in the second financial year, contribute the sum of £18,000,000 towards Imperial expenditure.

The section went on to provide that that payment should be apportioned between the two portions of Ireland, that we should pay 56 per cent. and that Northern Ireland should pay 44 per cent. Now, if the financial provisions of that Act are in force, is it the argument of Deputies opposite that we should take the annuities of three million pounds —they are referred to vaguely by Deputies opposite as three million pounds, four million pounds and five million pounds; it does not really matter in a thing of this kind if we are a million or two wrong— that this State should insist that the Act of 1920 is still law, and that the financial provisions of that Act came into operation? If that is the position, then the British Government are entitled to say: "Very well, pay us under the other financial provisions, which are equally in operation. Pay us the ten million pounds a year that you are liable for." I listened with some amazement to the legal arguments that have been addressed to the House this evening, of which that was one.

Deputy Lemass touched on the same subject, and discussed at considerable length the legal aspect of this question. He said that he was not a lawyer, and that he hoped he would never be one. I can assure Deputy Lemass, if it is any comfort to him, that having listened to his argument on the legal question, I am convinced that he is completely inoculated and is in no danger whatever. We are told that eminent lawyers have disagreed on the question. I would like to know who they are, because speakers on the Fianna Fáil Benches have refused to give us any enlightenment on the subject. Who were the eminent lawyers who have advised that party that this country is entitled to repudiate this liability?

Mr. Gorey

They are in the Seanad.

Mr. Rice

Are they the same lawyers who advised the Fianna Fáil Party a few years ago?

Mr. Little

Come to the point.

Mr. Rice

Are they the same eminent lawyers who advised the Party opposite a couple of years ago that the procedure of this House was irregular as regards the administration of the Oath? Because on that occasion they published the names of those lawyers and their opinion, an opinion based on the Parliamentary Oaths Act, which had no operation whatever in this country. Whoever the eminent lawyers are, I do not understand the Party's shyness in not giving their names to the House and in not publishing them in the same way as they published the names of the eminent lawyers who gave them this wonderful advice two or three years ago. Deputy Lemass complained that the Minister for Agriculture did not put forward the Irish case, that he put forward only the English case. I think the Minister for Agriculture did put forward the Irish case, and he put forward the view of the people of this country—that is, that the people of this country should honour their bond. He quoted Deputy de Valera's statement that the annuities would have to be paid, and he also quoted the statements of Deputy Fogarty and some others that they should not be paid at all. That is the game that that Party has been playing. They have played it for years past, and they are playing it still. The leader of the Party will not do it himself, but apparently he has never called to order his followers who make these speeches, who tell the people and the farmers who do not understand these things: "Oh, you will get out of the annuities and you need not pay them at all." Deputy Fogarty gave the case away, because he interrupted the Minister and said that it was a right principle, and that they should not pay them at all. Deputy MacEntee says it is a minor issue whether the farmers pay these annuities or do not pay them. Deputy Fogarty was a bit more honest, because he put it more bluntly. Of course Deputy MacEntee's little game is to tell the farmers that it is only a minor issue whether they pay these annuities into the Irish Fund——

Mr. G. Boland

The Deputy is a good judge of honesty. Keep off that topic.

Mr. Rice

I will give you credit for honesty as a matter of argument. The little game that Deputy MacEntee wants to play is to tell the farmer that it is only a minor issue whether he pays or not, and the farmer has enough intelligence to say: "Well, if it is only a minor issue these people will not ask us to pay, and we ought to vote for them." That is a very patent and a very dishonest political game.

Dr. Ryan

Mr. de Valera

The Minister for Agriculture, in his usual style, started off by trying to draw a number of red herrings across this whole discussion. Instead of dealing with the case that was put up, he quoted from speeches of mine which had no reference whatever to this case. That is the usual attitude of the man who knows that he has no case and who tries to prejudice a jury by dealing with matters which are completely outside the case. With regard to the speeches of mine that were quoted by the Minister, I stand over every single word in them. Why I interrupted the Minister for Agriculture when he was speaking about them was because he sought to make it appear that they had a meaning other than the meaning that any ordinary person would put upon them. I said at no time to the Irish farmer that he was not to pay his annuity. The best case that has been made for that was made by Deputy O'Connell and other Deputies who spoke here to-night. I said that this State was under no obligation to hand over these annuities to a foreign Exchequer, and I say that still. I have spent considerable time in trying to examine this question so as to deal with it fairly. Deputy Rice referred to consultations and so on. Yes, I have had consultations with lawyers to see if they could point out to me a single contractual obligation by which we are compelled to pay these annuities over to Britain, and not one of the lawyers that I have seen has yet been able to point out that we are under any such obligation.

I put four questions, which I now propose to give to the Dáil, to four lawyers when in consultation with them. The same questions were put to two other lawyers independently. Perhaps it would be just as well for me now to give these questions and to state, not my opinion, but the opinion of the responsible lawyers, whose names I can give, on the questions submitted.

Mr. Jasper Wolfe

Would the Deputy give the names?

Mr. de Valera

Certainly. The questions that were put were these. The first question that counsel were asked to advise on was: Whether the stock created under the Irish Land Acts, 1891 to 1909, formed part of the Public Debt of the United Kingdom on 6th December, 1921? The four lawyers, in consultation, answered that question "Yes." So that it is not on my interpretation—it is not on any layman's interpretation of these Land Acts, though I hold that that interpretation would be good enough, because there is evidence that would convince any fair-minded person who has ever construed an Act of Parliament—that, I say, there is sufficient evidence to satisfy him that the stock created under the Irish Land Acts, 1891 to 1909. formed part of the Public Debt of the United Kingdom on 6th December, 1921. The argument of the layman was given by Deputy Lemass, and that argument is found definitely in the Acts themselves, and common-sense adds the rest. These four lawyers, two of whom are K.C.'s, unhesitatingly answered "Yes," after consulting together and thrashing out the whole case until a late hour in the morning.

The next question submitted to them was: Whether, arising out of the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty dated 6th December, 1921, there is an obligation on the Free State Government to transmit to the British Government the annuities accruing due from time to time under the Irish Land Act, 1891, or any part thereof, and to that question these four lawyers unanimously answered "No."

Mr. Hogan

They were quite right in that.

Mr. de Valera

Yes, they are right in that and they are right in the others too. Their answer to that question was "No." The Minister for Agriculture, of course, once confessed that he knew no law. He now tells us that the lawyers are right in that because he thinks so.

Mr. Hogan

Might I interrupt to say that the Deputy is misquoting me to this extent, that I added on that occasion "except land law."

Mr. de Valera

The Minister generally gets irate when anyone tries to correct him. The statement that the Minister made on that occasion is on record for anyone who thinks it worth while to look it up. The third question submitted to these four lawyers was: Whether the instrument dated 19th March, 1926. entitled "Heads of Ultimate Financial Settlement between the British Government and the Government of the Irish Free State" is binding upon the Irish Free State, and unanimously again they answered "No." The fourth question submitted to them was: Whether the retention by the Irish Free State of the amount of the annuities above referred to would in any way affect the rights of a holder of stock created under the said Acts to receive dividends upon his stock, and they answered "No." The four lawyers who, in consultation, subscribed their names to these answers were Michael Comyn, K.C.; James Geoghegan, K.C.; George Gavan Duffy, B.L.; and Conor Maguire, B.L.

I observe that there is a certain amount of merriment on the other side, but I say that these names stand at least as good in the public credit as those of any of the people on the opposite benches. I have here two separate independent opinions given without consultation. One of these is by Martin Maguire, K.C. His replies to these four questions are exactly to the same intent. The first he answers affirmatively with "Yes"; the second, "No"; the third, "No"; and the fourth, "No." I expect, of course, that the members opposite will say to us: "Oh, they are somehow associated with your political views. They gave their opinion not as counsel." Yet they are prepared to stand over these opinions, and to risk their reputation publicly as counsel on them.

Mr. Hogan

Go to court on it.

Mr. de Valera

I will deal with the courts in a moment. I said that I would have the case submitted to lawyers who could by no means be regarded as in any way having views that would be regarded as associated with our Party. I submitted the case to Hubert Hamilton, Esquire, K.C. These are four K.C.'s and two barristers who are known to the public, and who definitely state that in their considered opinion the land stock from 1891 to 1909 did form part of the Public Debt of the United Kingdom on 6th December, 1921. Therefore, I say it comes clearly under Article 5 of the Treaty. These six lawyers also unanimously came to the conclusion that there is nothing arising out of the Articles of Agreement which compels us to send these moneys across to Britain, and these six lawyers also put an end, I hope for all time, to the suggestion that our keeping these annuities here and retaining them here would in any way influence the holders of this stock.

I am asked will we bring this matter to court. I say the proper thing for a House like this that feels that it has a right to these annuities is to keep them here, and let the other people show their right to them. There has been no contractual right shown to this House—no right that the British have to these moneys. The Minister for Agriculture, with his great knowledge of law, tells us that we have the Act of 1903. He wanted to side-track this whole debate by taking advantage of the fact that I said our resolution, if carried out, would amount to a repeal of a section of the Land Act of 1923. That was referred to in it, and he tells us that there are other Land Acts the law of the land. Thank him for the amount of information he has given to us. We all know that as well as he, but in virtue of what are they to-day the law of the land? They are the law of the land just as the 1923 Act is the law of the land. They are the law of the land because you made them so, and you can repeal them as far as any necessity is implied in them of sending this money across. But I say, as a matter of fact, that the 1923 Act in that particular connection is the only one practically that matters.

Lest there should be any other acts or steps that might have to be taken by the Executive Council, you will notice in my resolution that we ask the Executive Council, having declared our opinion, that these annuities should be put into the Exchequer. We have indicated there that it is the duty of the Executive Council to take any other appropriate steps that might be necessary. I indicated one of the steps that might be necessary, namely, the repeal of that particular section. To tell us that we are such simpletons as to be led away by the arguments the Minister for Agriculture put up, that these Acts compel us to send this money across, is rating the intelligence of this House very low indeed. If there is anything in these Acts that would imply the sending of that money across, these Acts are our own and we have here incorporated them into the law of the State. It is by virtue of our own doings that they are the law of this State. All that is necessary is the repeal of that particular section that compels us to send the money across, but really the point is: is there any contractual obligation that compels us to send these moneys across? I say that is the point of it, and nobody here has pointed it out except the Minister for Finance. He is the only Minister who seems to have studied the case at all. The Minister for Agriculture did not think it worth his while to do so, and he rated the intelligence of this House so low as to draw a red herring across the track, as he tried by attempts at hilarity to throw Deputies off the track.

I hope members of this House will realise that what we are asked to do by the Executive Council to-day is to make ourselves fine fellows by being generous before we are just. It is our duty as guardians of the interests of the people in the Twenty-Six Counties to see that they are justly treated before we go out of our way to be unnecessarily generous to the British. Our good mother England has not done so much for us that there is any compulsion on us to go out of our way for her. If all that money was retained here, is there any man on these benches who does not think we have a just right to it? Is there any man here who wants this thing argued on the moral, fundamental basis of right and wrong as between this country and England? There is not a man here who feels if the money was retained here we would have anything more here than we are entitled to have. But if you take the overtaxation, even according to their admission, is there a man here who holds we would not be entitled to hold this as part of the restitution of the money and wealth taken from us? We have not argued it, because it goes without saying that in any assembly of Irishmen it is not necessary to argue that side of the case. We do not believe it is.

The question is that England put a pistol at the heads of our representatives in 1921 and compelled them, at the threat of immediate and terrible war, to sign that document. If there is nothing in that document which compels us to pay, we should stand upon it and not pay. That document purports to be final so far as the implications of financial indebtedness to England is concerned. Here you have four lawyers saying the service of that stock is part of the Public Debt. If it is part of the Public Debt then it comes under Article 5, and Article 5 of the Treaty was worked out according to this Pact of 1925.

We have been forced to argue this case, not on a ground of our choosing, but the ground we have been forced to stand on by members opposite. We have been forced to stand on the Treaty in this thing and debate it from the point of view of the Treaty. Surely, the defence of the rights under that Treaty should lie with the people opposite, but they are not defending them now any more than for years past. They have allowed themselves to be pushed step by step, and the sort of attitude in which they have approached this question in negotiations with England, was evidenced by the attitude of the Minister for Finance to-night. It was a miserable and cowardly standpoint, that if you do not give this and that away, England is going to come along and compel you, whether you like it or not. The people who face the questions between us and England in that spirit are bound to be defeated. We were told that in the Civil War we did not come off so well, and it was hinted, I suppose, that if we were to fight out this case we would have part of our people against us.

I hope, at least, that there is this spirit left in the country. I remember shortly after 1896, when the Report of the Childers Commission was published, seeing an announcement in the newspapers that Unionists and others had held a meeting in Dublin and had come together in order to stand up for the financial rights of Ireland. Is it too much to hope that men on these benches, Irishmen who, knowing and seeing the plight in which agriculture is, and knowing perfectly well the burden imposed on them by this obligation, would stand together and fight this case against England? That is our position. That is what Deputy Lemass meant when he said that we did not wish this matter to be fought as a party issue. Neither do we. We do not want to make any capital out of it. We did not begin this. This thing was started here by Colonel Moore, and I must say that the references of the Minister for Agriculture to Colonel Moore were typical of him. I will leave it at that.

Mr. Hogan

He called me "Cromwell."

Mr. de Valera

Motion put.

The Dáil divided. Tá: 60; Níl: 79.

Tá

Allen, Denis.
Blaney, Neal.
Boland, Gerald.
Boland, Patrick.
Bourke, Daniel.
Brady, Seán.
Briscoe, Robert.
Buckley, Daniel.
Carney, Frank.
Carty, Frank.
Cassidy, Archie J.
Clancy, Patrick.
Clery, Michael.
Coburn, James.
Colbert, James.
Cooney, Eamon.
Corkery, Dan.
Corish, Richard.
Corry, Martin John.
Kilroy, Michael.
Lemass, Seán F.
Little, Patrick John.
Maguire, Ben.
McEllistrim, Thomas.
MacEntee, Seán.
Moore, Séamus.
Mullins, Thomas.
O'Dowd, Patrick Joseph.
O'Kelly, Seán T.
O'Leary, William.
Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
Crowley, Tadhg.
Derrig, Thomas.
De Valera, Eamon.
Everett, James.
Fahy, Frank.
Flinn, Hugo.
Fogarty, Andrew.
French, Seán.
Gorry, Patrick J.
Goulding, John.
Hayes, Seán.
Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
Houlihan, Patrick.
Jordan, Stephen.
Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
Kent, William R.
Kerlin, Frank.
Killilea, Mark.
O'Reilly, Matthew.
O'Reilly, Thomas.
Powell, Thomas P.
Ruttledge, Patrick J.
Ryan, James.
Sexton, Martin.
Sheehy, Timothy (Tipp.).
Smith, Patrick.
Tubridy, John.
Walsh, Richard.
Ward, Francis C.

Níl

Aird, William P.
Alton, Ernest Henry.
Anthony, Richard.
Beckett, James Walter.
Bennett, George Cecil.
Blythe, Ernest
Bourke, Séamus A.
Brennan, Michael.
Broderick, Henry.
Brodrick, Seán.
Byrne, John Joseph.
Carey, Edmund.
Collins-O'Driscoll, Mrs. Margt.
Conlon, Martin.
Connolly, Michael P.
Cosgrave, William T.
Craig, Sir James.
Crowley, James.
Daly, John.
Davin, William.
Davis, Michael.
De Loughrey, Peter.
Doherty, Eugene.
Dolan, James N.
Doyle, Edward.
Doyle, Peadar Seán.
Duggan, Edmund John.
Dwyer, James.
Egan, Barry M.
Esmonde, Osmond Thos. Grattan.
Fitzgerald, Desmond.
Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
Good, John.
Gorey, Denis J.
Haslett, Alexander.
Hassett, John J.
Heffernan, Michael R.
Hennessy, Michael Joseph.
Hennessy, Thomas.
Hennigan, John.
Henry, Mark.
Hogan, Patrick (Galway).
Holohan, Richard.
Jordan, Michael.
Kelly, Patrick Michael.
Keogh, Myles.
Law, Hugh Alexander.
Lynch, Finian.
McDonogh, Martin.
McFadden, Michael Og.
Mongan, Joseph W.
Morrissey, Daniel.
Mulcahy, Richard.
Murphy, James E.
Murphy, Joseph Xavier.
Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
Myles, James Sproule.
Nolan, John Thomas.
O'Connell, Richard.
O'Connell, Thomas J.
O'Connor, Bartholomew.
O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
O'Hanlon, John F.
O'Higgins, Thomas.
O'Leary, Daniel.
O'Mahony, Dermot Gun.
O'Reilly, John J.
O'Sullivan, Gearoid.
O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
Redmond, William Archer.
Reynolds, Patrick.
Rice, Vincent.
Roddy, Martin.
Shaw, Patrick W.
Sheehy, Timothy (West Cork).
Thrift, William Edward.
Tierney, Michael.
Wolfe, George.
Wolfe, Jasper Travers.

Tellers:-Tá: Deputies G. Boland and Allen; Níl: Deputies P. Doyle and Duggan.

Motion declared lost.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.40 p.m. to 10.30 a.m. on Friday, 3rd May.

Dáil Éireann debate - Thursday, 2 May 1929