asked the Minister for External Affairs whether the portions of the report made by Sir Edmund Hall-Patch as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the O.E.E.C., which were reported in the Press on the 28th November, 1951, and quoted by the Tánaiste in the Dáil on the same date were in fact prepared on the basis of material and information supplied by the Department of Finance.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - O.E.E.C. Report.
The report to which the Deputy refers was issued by the O.E.E.C. and is entitled "Financial Stability and the Fight Against Inflation."
As is pointed out in the introduction:—
"This report analyses the problem of inflation, and the related problems in the broad field of internal economic and financial policy that face the countries of Western Europe and North America."
The authors of the report were members of a working party consisting of representatives from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
The report is based upon the current statistical material of each country which all agreed to supply when the O.E.E.C. was set up for the purpose of securing co-operation in European economic recovery and development. I take it that it was supplied by each of these countries as it was in our case by the Departments responsible for agriculture, industry, finance and statistics. The collecting and presentation of this material in our case is done by the Department of External Affairs.
The report is all the more valuable and authoritative in that, as it says:—
"The situation in each country was examined in turn, with the assistance of experts from the countries concerned, and the comments of the Governments concerned were considered by the working party before reaching final conclusions."
The Council of O.E.E.C. endorsed the findings of the working party and in the foreword the council commented:—
"The present inflationary dangers are a serious impediment to the development of the productive resources of Western European countries; they hamper the solution of the economic problems raised by the maintenance and improvement of their well-being and ensuring the collective or individual security of member countries; they cause difficulties for the E.P.U. and for their trading relationships; in these and other ways, their consequences are international."
I repudiate entirely the suggestion in the Deputy's question that the conclusions regarding inflation in the O.E.E.C. Report can be attributed or credited to the Department of Finance or any other Irish Department, official or agency. It will be quite obvious to the informed reader that the O.E.E.C. Working Party are and have been for years alive to the requirements of scientific finance, namely, that the supply of money should be increased when there is a relative overproduction of consumer goods, but that when money is overplentiful in relation to national production, the deliberate inflation of the money supply by the increase of debt or otherwise in order to avoid increases in ordinary tax rates, is, in fact, a form of income taxation which reduces the value of each £ or franc or dollar of the low and middle incomes by as much as each £ or franc or dollar of the supertax payer.
I have given instructions that a copy of the report in question is to be placed in the Dáil Library, together with copies of other valuable O.E.E.C. reports dealing with financial and economic problems which reached my Department in the past few years.
In view of the fact that there are 147 Deputies who might like to refer to the report, will the Minister arrange for a number of copies of it to be made available in the Library?
Yes. I think, too, that a number of valuable reports from O.E.E.C., which have reached my Department in the last couple of years, should also be placed in the Library.
Will the Minister take steps to do that?
Yes. Some of them are being placed there to-day.
The Minister rather stressed one copy of this report. Will the Minister undertake to ensure that more than one copy of it will be made available in the Library forthwith?
I shall do my best. We have only a few copies of it.
Was the working party in this case composed entirely of O.E.E.C. representatives?
Yes, plus representatives of the United States, which might be termed an associate member.
Were no Irish representatives tied in?
No.
If there should be difficulty in placing printed copies of this report at the disposal of Deputies, would it be possible for the Minister to have stencilled copies of it made available for Deputies?
The printed copies are much better. I shall try to get a few copies for the Library as soon as possible. They are also available for purchase in some city newsagents' premises.