Is that a sufficient justification for the motion which the Deputy has put down? I think that the Deputy, instead of confining himself to one aspect of this issue when addressing the House upon a motion of such gravity as that, ought, at least in fairness to those whom he is asking to support him in the view which he takes, have put before the House what the consequences would have been if I had refused to sanction the issue. After all, the Dublin Corporation, with —as I believe Deputy Martin O'Sullivan and every member of the Corporation would admit—the continuous support of my Department, have been endeavouring under great difficulties to carry forward a housing programme over the emergency years. The money which they proposed to raise out of that £1,000,000 to the extent, I think, of £927,000 was required for urgent housing purposes. An additional £22,000 was required to finance the extension of Vergemount Fever Hospital, and £50,000 was required for expenditure upon air-raid precautions.
The Deputy has based his motion upon the money which was to be borrowed for housing purposes. The corporation had previously secured sanction to borrow money for housing purposes, this sum among others. The proposal which they put up to me was for sanction as to the manner in which that money was to be borrowed. What did the Deputy want me to do? He wanted me to refuse to sanction the raising of the money, and, by withholding my consent to throw the whole housing programme of the Dublin Corporation into confusion, presumably so that he might be able to come here and criticise the Government for not assisting the Dublin Corporation in the efforts which it was making to provide decent homes for the people. Would I have been justified in holding up the housing programme of the Dublin Corporation on the only ground which Deputy Mulcahy has submitted to this House—that if this money were raised in one way rather than in another the banks would get a little less? I am not discussing at all the propositions which the Deputy put before this House. I am not criticising the figures upon which that argument was based. The argument may be right or it may be wrong. It was almost completely irrelevant in any case. The only thing that was relevant was the point which I am emphasising, that if this money were raised in one way rather than in another the banks might get a little more profit or a little less profit. It is upon that ground that the Deputy, who used to sit for one of the constituencies in this city which contain a very large slum population, would ask me to impede the operations of the Dublin Corporation, and to condemn people to live a little longer in slums. That is the argument which the Deputy advanced in this House, in that long tirade of his, to justify the motion which he has put down on the Order Paper. That is the one aspect of this question to which he said over and over again he was going to devote himself.
I submitted that this motion was remarkable in the fact that it represented the Opposition's retreat from Alberta. It was remarkable also in another regard. Sitting behind the Leader of the Opposition at the present moment is Deputy Peadar Doyle, who occupies the august position of first citizen of the city, Lord Mayor of Dublin, and Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Dublin Corporation. Sitting on the Labour benches is his predecessor, Deputy Martin O'Sullivan, who in August, 1944, was Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Dublin Corporation. This motion, let me remind you again, condemns not merely the Minister for Local Government but also the principal parties to the transaction, the Dublin Corporation and the Bank of Ireland. It is, therefore, I submit to you, a vote of censure upon the Chief Whip of the Fine Gael Party, who occupies the honoured position of Lord Mayor of Dublin. I wonder was Deputy Peadar Doyle consulted when this motion was first put down? Perhaps he was not, because Deputy Peadar Doyle was not then Lord Mayor of Dublin—it was Deputy Martin O'Sullivan—but he has since become Lord Mayor of Dublin, and in that capacity he has been an active participant in the discussions between the Dublin Corporation on the one hand, and its bankers, the Bank of Ireland, on the other. In the opinion of his Leader, Deputy Mulcahy, has Deputy Peadar Doyle, in his capacity as a member of the Dublin Corporation and as Lord Mayor of the City of Dublin, been guilty of entering into discussions which have not been in the public interest, and of submitting to me proposals for raising not £1,200,000 but £2,320,000? Has he been guilty of acting contrary to the public interest in being a party to proposals submitted to me for permission to issue stock to that amount? I think we ought to hear Deputy Peadar Doyle on this matter. Does he approve of this motion? Is he, in his capacity of Mr. Codling, Lord Mayor of the City of Dublin, asking me to sanction a proposal, while in his capacity as Deputy Peadar Doyle, Mr. Short of the Fine Gael Party, he comes in here to this House and sits behind his leader while his leader condemns that proposal? Is he in the Dublin Corporation going to vote to enter into this transaction with the Bank of Ireland, and to vote to ask the Minister for Local Government to sanction the transaction, while he comes in here as Deputy Peadar Doyle to criticise the proposal and vote against it?
This thing is ludicrous. It is ridiculous. It is dragging public conduct in the city and in the Dáil into the greatest disrepute. It is a serious matter. It is very serious, because, as has been pointed out here, the money is required—part of it at any rate—to fulfil an obligation already entered into by the Dublin Corporation. It is required in order to enable them to convert a 5 per cent. loan into a loan carrying a lower rate of interest. It is also required in order to finance housing works which are now in progress or are shortly about to be undertaken. Surely Deputy Mulcahy ought to have had a serious discussion with the Lord Mayor of the City of Dublin before he made the sort of speech we listened to this evening, or before he allowed that motion to remain on the Order Paper. I think that the mere fact that a motion in those terms has been put down on the Order Paper by his leader must make the position of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, as a member of the Fine Gael Party in this House, a very uncomfortable one. However, I am sure he will manage to extricate himself from that position with dignity.
About the conduct of the Bank of Ireland in a matter of this sort I have nothing to say. I am not here as an advocate or defender of the Bank of Ireland. That banking corporation is perfectly competent to look after itself. I should like those who may be interested in those matters outside to understand that the conduct of that banking corporation has been impugned in this motion. No doubt Deputy Mulcahy will be able to justify in a way which he has not done in this House the reason why he felt bound to impugn the conduct of the Bank of Ireland as being contrary to the public interest. That, however, is a matter I will leave to him.
I now come to the most extraordinary aspect of this motion. Not only is the conduct of the Dublin Corporation impugned in it, not only is the conduct of the Bank of Ireland impugned in it, but also the conduct of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health. If it were a neophyte, a babe in political affairs, who had put down a motion in those terms, if it had been, say, Deputy Flanagan who had put it down, one might understand it. One would not wonder at it. One would take it at what it was worth. But when we see a motion in the terms of this one put down by the Leader of the Opposition Party, a Deputy who once held the portfolio which I now hold, a Deputy who was once Minister for Local Government and Public Health, we can only assume that his memory must have failed him, or that he must be, to an extent to which I believe to be impossible, unaware of the legal position of the Minister for Local Government in regard to proposals put up to him by local authorities who are competent to make issues of stock.
This proposal, which really constitutes the substance of the motion, was a proposal on the part of the Dublin Corporation to make an issue of stock to the Bank of Ireland. It is true that the issue was to be made privately, that it was not to be open for public subscription—that it was a stock issue made by the principal local authority in this country, the Corporation of Dublin, to the principal banking corporation in this country, the Bank of Ireland. It was an issue to be made under the Public Health (Amendments) Act of 1890, and it was to be made under the Urban Stock Regulations Act, 1892. Now, Sir, Deputy Mulcahy, one of my predecessors holding the portfolio or in the office of Minister for Local Government and Public Health, seems to have forgotten the terms of those regulations, and it might be just as well if I refresh his mind in regard to them. Article 2 (1) of the Regulations I refer to—regulations in regard to the creation and charge of stock—which govern us in this matter, states:—
"Where the urban authority have for the time being any statutory borrowing power, and the board have by order consented to the exercise of such power by the creation of stock, then, subject and according to the provisions of these regulations and of the consent order, the urban authority may, from time to time, by resolution, exercise the power by creation of redeemable stock, to be from time to time issued for such amount within the limit of the power, at such price, being not lower than 95 per cent., to bear such half-yearly or other fixed dividend or rate of interest not exceeding 4 per cent. per annum, unless with the consent of the board, and to be so transferable, that is to say, in books or by deed, as the urban authority by the resolution directs...." Now, mark you: by the terms of these regulations this urban authority, the Dublin Corporation, has power to make an issue of stock, provided that the issue price is not lower than 95 per cent., and that the rate of interest is not greater than 4 per cent. This proposal, which was put up to me, was, as Deputy Martin O'Sullivan has told the House, a proposal to issue the stock at par, and issue it at a rate of interest of 3¼ per cent. In these circumstances, bearing in mind that we had already sanctioned the proposal of the Dublin Corporation to borrow £927,000 odd for housing, how could I, or any other Minister who wanted to act within the law and in accordance with the statutes, have refused to sanction the proposal of the Dublin Corporation? Am I to be told that it is contrary to the public interest for a Minister for Local Government and Public Health to act in conformity with or in accordance with the law? It is not much wonder, Sir, that in proposing this motion Deputy Mulcahy took the peculiar course he did, of saying that he proposed to confine himself to one aspect of it. The House will recall how ridiculous that aspect was, and how he ran completely away from the heart and kernel of the whole motion, so far as the Minister for Local Government and Public Health was concerned, and that was the question of whether I had any option to sanction the proposal as put up by the Dublin Corporation: whether I had any power to refuse the sanction. Bearing in mind the practical consequences of a refusal, and bearing also in mind what the Dublin Corporation—ably led by Deputy Martin O'Sullivan, who was then Lord Mayor, and, I am perfectly sure, strongly supported by the present Lord Mayor, Deputy Peadar Doyle—would have said, and the action that they would have taken if I had refused to give a sanction which I am virtually bound to give by the law of the land as it stands, what else could I have done?
Does the Deputy who proposed this motion desire me to withhold sanction, to act contrary to the regulations, to deny to the Dublin Corporation what is, undoubtedly, their right under the law as it stands? Is that what he wanted me to do? We have heard recently from the Deputy and some of his colleagues about the attempt of the bureaucracy here in Dublin to restrict unduly the freedom of the local authorities. I know what sort of an outcry would be raised if I had said to the Dublin Corporation: "I will not sanction this issue". I would be told that I had no right to refuse sanction, that I was holding up the housing programme of the Dublin Corporation and compelling people to live in the slums of Seán McDermott Street, Gloucester Street, and every one of those honeycombs of misery and poverty with which the city is studded. That, however, is not my policy. So far as I reasonably can do so, I am prepared to help the Dublin Corporation, and I have no apology to make to anyone for having, in the circumstances, sanctioned that loan, and particularly in the circumstances that existed in August of 1944. What might happen in the future is another matter. I might, if I had had the power, have attached certain conditions to that sanction. It is at present a matter of some doubt as to whether I have the power or not. That is a matter to be determined, but in any event I think that that doubt will be cleared up before very long, so that in future I will be in a better position to put forward my whole views to local authorities which may come looking to me for advice, for guidance, or for assistance in matters of this sort; but what those views are, I do not think, Sir, I am called upon at this stage to state. I can, I think, show this: that there never was a motion submitted to this House which had less justification on any ground— whether on the ground of expediency, whether on the ground of legality, or whether on the ground of public interest—than this motion which has been put down, without consideration and without thought, by the Leader of the Opposition Party, Deputy Mulcahy, and by his colleague, Deputy McGilligan. I say, advisedly, that it was put down without thought, and I ask any Deputy who wants to consider whether that statement is well founded or not to read the speech in which this motion was proposed by the Leader of the Opposition.
