I beg to move:—
"That, having regard to the White Paper entitled ‘Land Purchase Annuities,' dated the 8th December, 1931, and presented to both Houses of the Oireachtas by Order of the Executive Council, the Seanad is of opinion that the Executive Council is deserving of censure (a) for its failure to deal with the question of the legality of the payment of Land Purchase Annuities until such question had become a major political issue, and (b) for then printing at the public expense what is in effect an ex parte statement on such issue.”
I do not intend to discuss the particulars set out in the pamphlet circulated by the Minister on the subject of the land purchase annuities. That is a matter for lawyers to go into, and lawyers are going into it. If the document had been sent out by the Cumann na nGaedheal Party there would not be the same objection to it as there was because it was sent out by the Ministry with the imprimatur of the Government. This particular document was issued last February, and strangely enough, nothing was done in connection with the matter until the eve of the General Election. Then only was it distributed. It was passed around on the evening of the day when the Dáil last sat, and a day or so before the Seanad sat. I presume the object was to prevent its being discussed either in the Dáil or Seanad. That is only in agreement with the way the matter has been treated for the last eight years, I might almost say ten years. During the whole of that time information that was pressed for again and again was refused or evaded, and no attempt was made to show any legal rights whatsoever. If this document had been laid on the Table or published in any way seven or eight years ago, or even five or six years ago, at the time the Ultimate Financial Settlement was made, it would have been very helpful, because we would know exactly what we had to talk about. If the arguments in the document were correct, that would put an end to the whole matter. There would have been no further agitation or bother about it, and we would have been saved a great deal of annoyance. If it had been shown to be incorrect, then the country might have been saved three million pounds per year. No such attempt was made, however. It was not even announced that the Minister acted on the advice of his law advisers. It was just given as a personal question.
I shall just run through a short history of these matters to show how often information has been demanded. In January, 1922, a document was signed called "Working Arrangements for the Treaty." That was signed by all the Irish Ministers who went over to London quite secretly— no one was told about it. They went over and signed the document—a long document in which many things were included. The land annuities were specially mentioned. That was not a wise thing. I will not say it was a very wrong thing, because it was a time of great pressure immediately after the Treaty—the very month after the Treaty. No doubt those Ministers who went over could not be expected to be thoroughly well-informed on all these subjects. All the more reason, however, for not going over and signing a long document full of arrangements of different sorts without asking anybody. What was worse was that when they came back they kept the matter concealed for 18 months—not a word at all about it. It was published 18 months afterwards by the "Irish Times" under the heading of "Secret Document." There is one point that I wish to refer to about that document, that Mr. Michael Collins, who was over there, made a note that he wished the question of land purchase to be postponed. That is all I have to say on that. The document was not very important because it was only a temporary one. Still it was a very bad beginning.
The next thing that happened was that on 1st April British Orders in Council were issued containing statements about the land annuities and directing that they should be handed over to the British. The next thing was the Appropriation Bill, 1923, which was brought before the House. The land annuities were mentioned in that. When it came to the question of the details of that, the President, who was in charge of it at the time, asked that the subject be not discussed or discussed as shortly as possible, because he said it was urgent to pay that money out within a few days and therefore it should not be discussed. It was not discussed. I presume nobody who was in the Dáil at that time—there are one or two of them here now—knew much about it. I do not suppose anybody did. It was passed without question. The next thing that happened was that a Land Act was passed in the same year in which a section was inserted providing that the land annuities should be handed over under the direction of the Minister for Finance. If people had been very expert in the matter, it is very likely that that might have been taken more notice of, but no notice was taken of it for the reason mostly, I think, that the British were not named in it. It was laid down in such a way that most of us believed that the money was being kept in this country. As a matter of fact, I asked two Senators at the time it was going through what was going to happen to the land annuities, whether they would be kept in this country or handed over to Great Britain. One said they were going to be kept here and the other the opposite. They were both directors of the Bank of Ireland, and I thought they would have some information, but they seemed to differ.
On 20th March, 1924, as I had been inquiring into the matter, I put down a motion on the Order Paper asking that papers on that subject should be laid before the House. Nothing was done about that. As a matter of fact, it was the present Cathaoirleach who seconded the motion. Then in December, 1925, we come to the Partition Act. The President then announced with a great flourish that the Free State had a clean slate—I think those were the words he used—and that it was the only country in the world that owed nothing, forgetting that £100,000,000 was due in land annuities, according to his own account, £1,000,000 for R.I.C. pensions, and other matters up to £5,000,000. That was all part of the clean slate. In March, 1926, the Minister for Finance went to London. No one asked him to go, so far as was known. He did not tell the Dáil he was going, he did not tell anyone, except, I suppose, his own followers and the other Ministers. He went over and signed a document which he called the Ultimate Financial Settlement. I do not think it will be ultimate, anyway that is what he called it. He did not inform the Dáil of what he had done when he came back in March. There was not a word spoken about it, and no one in the country knew about it until November. For nearly nine months it was kept a dead secret, although it contained most important matters. One-fifth of the whole revenue of the country was being sent away to Great Britain. Yet he did not inform the Dáil, he kept it secret. Enormous sums were kept secret until November. I do not know that there is any other country in the world where that sort of thing could go on. I cannot understand what the object of this secrecy was, why the country was not told that these agreements were being made.
