Yesterday, and for some time past, I have sought to elicit from a multitude of Ministers—all of whom contradict one another—what had become of the 48,000 tons of superphosphate that were held at the disposal of the Minister for Agriculture when I left office on the 14th June this year. We have travelled through a whole gamut of answers without getting any satisfactory explanation. We had the Minister for Industry and Commerce who said there never had been any "super," that I had never provided any "super," and that it was all a figment of my imagination. Then Deputy Smith, the Minister for Local Government, took a whirl at it and he had the assistance of the dignified figure of Deputy Corry.
Then the acting-Minister for Agriculture downfaced Deputy Corry and told the Minister for Health to shut up. I took an hour off from my parliamentary duties yesterday to see Burgess Meredith in a gangster film. I noticed with great interest that one of the elements of horror introduced into that drama was the continuous employment by the gangsters of a kind of double talk that left every honest man wondering did they mean "yes" or did they mean "no". Every time an unfortunate victim questioned them to that end, they hit him in the left eye, and when he asked why, they replied: "Why what?" This treatment of their victim continued for some time until the wretched citizen was expected ultimately to collapse and to say "yes" to anything addressed to him when the conversation had quite got beyond him.
Now I put it to the House, having heard all the answers I got in the course of the last week or fortnight from the Tánaiste, from the Minister for Agriculture and the various Deputies who function for him: was not the impression created in the mind of every Deputy in this House that there never were 48,000 tons of "super" available? Even Deputy Hickey rose, like the honest man he is, in the midst of the tumult to make the modest request that the House and the people should be told the truth about this matter. He asked: "Who is telling the truth here?" I do not blame him. It would have been an act of faith on the part of Deputy Hickey to have accepted my asseveration against the confused tumult on the Front Bench opposite, but it would have flattered me if Deputy Hickey had made that act of faith and not paid me the doubtful compliment of testing the weight of my words against the tumult of that collection there. Now I do not want to follow all their confused asseverations in regard to this matter. I shall content myself by referring the House to Volume 127, No. 9, of the Official Report, column 1595:—
"Mr. Lemass: May I again advise the Deputy to advise the farmers to buy up these fertilisers, because the price is not going to get less? These fertilisers come from a part of the world where there is likely to be trouble.
Mr. Dillon: What about the 48,000 tons of fertilisers I left to the Minister for Agriculture?
Mr. Lemass: First of all, there were no 48,000 tons. When I inquired about that I was told that you were talking nonsense.
Mr. Dillon: I left 48,000 tons.
Mr. Lemass: You did not.
Mr. Dillon: I would have made £250,000 if I kept it in my pocket. I left it in the hands of the Minister for Agriculture.
Mr. Lemass: He could not find it.
Mr. Dillon: It is not the first time he could not find something until I showed him how."
Now, here is the patina of verisimilitude spread over that cross-talk from the Minister for Industry and Commerce:
"Mr. Lemass: When I asked the officials from the Department of Agriculture about that they said they did not know what you were talking about."
I am bound to go on record as saying that I do not believe any official of the Department said any such thing.