It is a very laudable aim when it is put as neatly as that but let us look at the problem. These assets, looked at from one point of view, are claims in the sterling area outside this country. They are claims on goods and services which in the last analysis are to be equated against goods or services at one time or another furnished by this country. In other words, whether we look at it generally or from the point of view of the individual, a sum of money held like that in the sterling area is a claim.
Let us see what the processes of repatriation would be and let us get down to a single unit. I own £1 sterling. That is a claim abroad for £1 worth of goods or services. I can certainly repatriate my asset if I buy something with that £. If I buy, say, so many packets of cigarettes or if I buy an essential part for a machine which I am working at home, and bring those cigarettes or that machinery home, I repatriate those assets, with the distinction that if I bring in machinery and it is productive machinery, I will be conserving my asset as well and, in the case of cigarettes, I blow it up in smoke, in which case I have simply blown my asset.
Supposing I do not choose to do either of these things, supposing I want to repatriate the money, what is the only thing open to me? I have to sell it to someone for an Irish £. Is not that so? I transfer it for an Irish £, that is, a claim for goods or services at home, for the person who gave me that, if I bring it home in that way, has taken over this sterling claim and, if it is an Irish person, all I have succeeded in doing is transferring the sterling claim. I have not repatriated anything. I have merely transferred it.
It is quite obvious, therefore, that in regard to actually repatriating the assets, as Deputy MacBride admitted on Friday, if I read the report aright, I can only do it by importing goods or services and, obviously, it is no very great economy to import consumable goods of a non-essential type, like the cigarettes I spoke of, in the long run, to the community.
If you consider the thing in reverse, somebody has a claim on us here, has Irish assets, which would be a debt for us, the reverse position holds and, granted—I think this is where the confusion arises—you can then apply the national transfer in both of these cases to cancel out, but you cannot go beyond the cancelling-out process. So that your position is, except in so far as claims on both sides cancel out, your net balance, if it is a positive one or even if it is a negative one, I think, is not repatriable. So there it is.
The Central Bank has so many millions there. If it were to invest that number of millions here, as the Deputy is talking about, that in effect means giving credit to that extent here at a particular rate of interest, and that will not in any way affect the net holding of sterling, as I tried to argue. It is rather difficult to go into a rather arithmetical argument here without a blackboard. I think I have indicated a general line from which it will appear that it is just not feasible to take these assets as such, being sterling claims, and just import them back.
That argument becomes reinforced when you consider what they are there for—as a backing for your currency and its relation to the banking system. I can summarise the whole thing by saying that, short of a very radical overhaul and complete change of your banking and currency system, it is not possible to take that sum there as it stands and invest it in Irish securities.