I could have sympathy with any Deputy other than Deputy MacBride in introducing this motion. After all, he told us that the reason for asking the Dáil to pass the motion was that the policy pursued hitherto was to invest the major portion of the savings of the nation in Britain. During the two years, 1949 and 1950, the Government of which Deputy MacBride was a member invested—if you use that word—through the Central Bank an extra £33,800,000 in British sterling securities and not only did they invest that amount of money in British sterling securities through the Central Bank but they actually imposed a debt on the country of £46,000,000 in dollars in order, as was disclosed in answer to a Parliamentary Question by Deputy Davin to-day, to buy dollar maize and sorghums to sell eggs to Britain at 2/- a dozen in order to build up our external assets that Deputy MacBride complains about.
Not only did they do that but they were so much in haste to build up sterling assets that they sold our Constellations which the previous Fianna Fáil Government had purchased for dollars. The inter-Party Government would not even keep the Constellations until after the devaluation. They sold the machinery we had purchased for the building of a chassis factory. Deputy Davin, Deputy MacBride, Deputy Hickey and other Deputies were behind the Government in these three years.