What we are worried about is whether Deputy Corry has made the case that we should now spend an indefinite sum of money, which would be considerably more than £12,000, in putting that dock in condition—for what? For the one hundred thousand mythical pounds that Deputy Corry has imagined, so that we may tow a ship alongside where we could now tow her to repair her, as she was repaired with a bag of cement in Cork Harbour. There is a responsible committee dealing with this matter, a committee of the lower harbour, which has at its disposal all the information and all the evidence it is possible to get. I am dealing with that committee. I am prepared to regard anything it puts forward as responsible. I am asking the members of that committee to say that there is £100,000 worth of work which could and would have been done. They have not said anything of the kind. What Deputy Corry wants to do is to go back to that committee and bring to it any evidence, any documents, any facts, which he can produce which will convince them to the extent to which they will put their signature upon a statement. Then I will consider it as very responsible evidence.
At the present moment I am not satisfied, much as I would like to be satisfied, that if Haulbowline was there that any of that work would have been done. It is a dock 618 feet long. It is undoubtedly the biggest dock in the Free State. It is three times as big as any dock in Dublin, and it is three times as unsuitable for the purpose of doing any ordinary repair work. It is an expensive dock to work. Deputy Corry may want a man merely to state what suits him. I have to state what I have to state to the Minister for Finance when I ask that public money shall now be expended upon it. That dock was built as part of a huge institution, the British Government. It was never economic as far as they were concerned. It cost £20,000 or £30,000 a year, but that did not matter to them. They were building it up for another purpose, a purpose which I think it did serve during the Great War. It was an expensive piece of preparation as far as they were concerned. They could afford to have, as they have all over the world, extensive coaling stations and extensive dockyards and aerodromes waiting for the chance of using them in times of war emergency.
Now, you must not put on a parallel line the user of the same thing for a commercial affair. Imagine Gibraltar being used merely as a commercial harbour. Imagine trying to get agricultural crops out of the land that they keep as part of a fort. What I am asking the responsible people to do is to put forward a case on which I can go to the Minister for Finance. Up to the present, I want to say perfectly clearly, and I say it for the purpose of helping those whose business it will be to produce that case, that no case has yet been produced, that no evidence has been put in my possession, which would enable me to ask the Minister for Finance to spend £20,000, not £12,000, on putting Haulbowline into a merely skeleton condition as a dock. No evidence has been produced to me that if we did do it there would be any user commensurate with that expenditure. As soon as ever I can get that evidence, and I am very anxious to get that evidence, I will use it with the effect with which I can use it if it is evidence over which I can stand.
Wild assertions of any kind are not going to affect the issue. Let Deputy Corry and those others who are interested take what I am saying into serious consideration. I may say I am a member of that committee myself, though I keep away from it because I happen to have the other capacity in relation to it. I am actually providing them with the information which will enable them, if they have the evidence in their possession, to provide me with a case.