The purpose of this Bill is two-fold and both aims are simple. The first is to extend the final date for the lodgment of applications for repayment to the 30th June, 1936, and the second is to provide for the audit of the accounts of the repayment office by the Controller and Auditor-General and to ensure that the report of the Controller and Auditor-General will be laid before Dáil Eireann in due course.
The House may be interested to learn the impression which the action of the Oireachtas in authorising the repayment of this loan has created abroad and, in that connection, I think I cannot do better than read for the House an editorial which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post of 9th November of last year. The Saturday Evening Post, as I am sure most Senators are aware, is a journal which enjoys a very wide circulation not only in the United States of America but in Great Britain and Ireland and English-speaking countries generally. It is a responsible journal therefore and one which may be described as an organ of opinion in matters of this sort. The editorial is headed: “Irish Free State Pays Up,” and is as follows:
"At a time when so many attitudes and policies throughout the world are well calculated to arouse both fear and censure, it is gratifying to call attention to conduct which deserves only praise. We refer to the action of the Irish Free State in voluntarily paying both principal and interest to bondholders in this country whose claim was moral and legal. This action is contrary to that frequently followed under similar circumstances and larger powers have taken advantage of much smaller excuses to default in payment. To appreciate the full meaning of the good faith displayed, it is necessary to recite even, in at least skeleton form, the background of circumstances. At a general election in November, 1918, the Sinn Fein Party, which had previously held only a handful of seats, swept the country and pledged itself to establish a republic. A constitution was drawn up, a Cabinet elected, and Eamon de Valera, the last surviving senior commander of the republican forces in the rebellion of 1916, was elected President. However, many of the leaders, including de Valera, were actually in jail at the time. The republican forces were supported only by the subscriptions of their adherents, since the public revenues were in the hands of the British. Finally, de Valera escaped from jail and, disguised as a stoker, reached the United States in the late winter of 1919. Here, and in Canada, Central America and South America he sold 6,000,000 dollars of bonds to descendants of Irish immigrants and to other sympathisers with his cause. These bonds were not issued by a Government which was recognised by other nations or which had any legal standing at the time. To many, the struggle in Ireland was merely another of the long series of rebellions against British authority, all of which had been failures. Rarely has an issue of bonds had less apparent investment security. Within a couple of years, the Irish and the British drew up a treaty of peace, but the republican forces split. Civil war followed, and it was not until a number of years later that the de Valera forces triumphed. Meanwhile, the external loan sold in this country was not recognised, although, following litigation, an American court ordered the 2,500,000 dollars, which had been left on deposit in this country, distributed pro rata to the original subscribers, giving them 58 cents on the dollar. A very large number of the original subscribers—in fact two-thirds of the total—failed to put in any claims for the 58 cents award. However, the Government now in power in Ireland decided to open a repayment office in New York and to advertise in practically every State that it was prepared to offer those who had never put in any claims for the 58 cents a total of 1.25 dollars for each dollar subscribed, while to those who had received their 58 cents it stood ready to pay 67 cents more. Now, it must be kept in mind that a great many of the subscribers regarded their subscriptions, not as an investment, but as a gift to old Ireland. Only two persons subscribed for as much as 10,000 dollars and only four for 5,000 dollars. But there were 28,000 who subscribed for 50 dollars each, and no less than 237,000 who gave ten dollars apiece. Though great numbers of subscribers never expected any return, it can be said truthfully that the repayments have been made at a time which was extremely convenient to most of the recipients. That, however, is not the point. What matters is that this small country has met its debt of honour and set an example which more than one great world power might well observe and meditate upon.”
That seems to me a full justification of everything that has been done with regard to the redemption of the Dáil Eireann External Loan. It was mentioned in that quotation that there were 237,000 subscribers with amounts of ten dollars apiece. Every effort has been made to get in contact with those subscribers, by newspaper advertisement and otherwise. In each advertisement we definitely called the attention of those subscribers under whose notice it might come to the fact that the Oireachtas had fixed the 31st August, 1934, as the final date. Notwithstanding this intimation we found after the date fixed by statute had closed that no less than 15,000 new applications for repayments were received. That is to say, they have come in since the 31st August, 1934. When this Bill becomes law it is our intention to repay those 15,000 claims and to readvertise once again in the States of the American Union that we are prepared to receive applications up to the 30th June of this year, and that applications which are received before that date and which on investigation prove to be well-founded and valid applications will be discharged in the same way as the applications which were received under the original Act.
When we have done that we will feel that we have done everything that honour and honesty demand we should do to meet our obligations under these loans. Consequently, I do not think it will be possible for any person to say that we have not taken every step which the circumstances warrant and which, as I have said already, honour would oblige to bring our offer to redeem the bonds under the notice of those who would be entitled to be recouped for the advances they made. I do not think, however, that it will be possible for any person to allege that we have done anything else than lived up to and fully merited the very high praise which has been bestowed upon us by this very responsible American journal. I merely quoted that as one example of the remarks which have appeared in numerous newspapers in America commending us for the actions we have taken, and saying that we have set an honourable example to much more powerful and much more wealthy States than ours. It is our boast that we are honest people, that we honour the obligations which we feel have been rightly contracted in our name; we are taking no more than an honest means of stating what has been done in this regard.
