On Thursday last, May 23rd, in speaking in the Budget debate I asked the Minister for Finance a question as recorded at column 1876 of the Dáil Volume 161, No. 14.
I said:—
"I am asking the Minister did he say yesterday in reply to Deputy Dr. Browne that the people may now have to eat bread without butter?"
The Minister replied:—
"Dr. Ryan: I said no such thing and the Deputy knows it.
Mr. Desmond: I will accept that if the Minister says so."
In the same column the Minister found it suitable to accuse me, to use his own words of "that sort of damn lie" and further on in the same column he is recorded as accusing me of "dirty insinuation".
The question about which I asked the Minister, in regard to his statement, is recorded in Dáil Volume 161, No. 13, at columns 1687 and 1688 of Wednesday, 22nd May. In reply to a supplementary question from Deputy Dr. Browne the Minister stated first of all:—
"I am not aware that the lower income group eats more butter than the average. If you take the butter and bread together it comes out a little above——
Dr. Browne: They can eat dry bread. It suits the Minister all right.
Dr. Ryan: They have to. They did it from 1948 to 1951 when the Deputy was Minister."
All I have to say, Sir, is that I deeply regret that the Minister found it suitable to suggest that I was using in his own words "damn lies" or "dirty insinuations". The record, I think, will show that such was not the case.
