I am quoting from the Irish Press of October 24th, 1951, popularly known as the Fianna Fáil Pravda. I am asking the House to look at this; £160,000,000. That is what Pravda said on October 24th. Now the beauty of the Fianna Fáil position is that you have Pravda and then there is a whole string of Izvestias who will say anything they like, and then there are the Government who are quite prepared to sing an agreeable trio of different songs, reserving to themselves the right to opt for whichever is most popular when they have tested public feeling. To keep track of them and earn your living at the same time requires considerable agility of mind.
That is the charge, bolstered with falsehood, bolstered with fraud, bolstered with every scare and alarm with which it could be attended, and introduced to our people on the Tánaiste's authority as a prospective deficit of £160,000,000 which he to-day says he expects will be about £60,000,000. Can you imagine a Government operated by a Tánaiste who can change his economic forecast from a deficit of £160,000,000 to one of £60,000,000 and a Minister for Finance who undertakes to read out to this House the adverse trade balance for the month of July and who reads the total imports figure and then gets as mad as a gnat when I said to him, "Put on your spectacles, you are reading the wrong column." It did not strike him when he read out the figure for our total imports that it was not the adverse trade balance. Can you imagine the approach to economic policy that must go on in a conference of which these two men are the principal advisers and my poor successor, the Minister for Agriculture, is sitting looking up at them as two oracles who cannot err? The poor man must be addled sitting there and the result of their deliberations must be truly fantastic, as indeed they appear to me to be.
One hundred and sixty million pounds! It came down to £60,000,000. But the crowning evil is that it has gone up in the last 12 months. I want the House now to think over something. We have been told that the adverse trade balance has gone haywire, just as we have been told that agricultural production is not what it should be. It is wonderful what people will believe if they are told often enough.
What is the adverse trade balance picture? What was the adverse trade balance in 1947? £90,000,000 sterling and Pravda and all the little Izvestias and all the oracles were hurrying around the country saying it was the best thing that ever happened? Splendid ! Deputy Lemass made the famous Letterkenny speech. Bear in mind it was £90,000,000 then. In 1948 it declined. In 1949 it was estimated that the real official deficit was £10,000,000. In 1950 it went up again.
Now, I call the Fourth Estate to give testimony. It has long been the ambition of the Fourth Estate to be recognised in a free and democratic country as an element which can materially sustain democratic government if it is given the chance to help. The chance it always asks to be given is the opportunity of knowing, albeit on the understanding that the information cannot be published, what the background is, to let them know the essential elements of the background against which news is operated so that they may interpret it correctly, but they must keep the background secret for reasons of national interest.
I challenge the Fourth Estate of Ireland—the editor of the Irish Independent, the editor of the Irish Press, of the Cork Examiner and the Irish Times; is it or is it not true that they were invited to the Taoiseach's room approximately 12 months ago? Is it or is it not true that he there told them that he knew of their desire to serve the national interest, whatever their political affiliations were, if they were but satisfied that it was an interest superior to any political Party's programme. Taking them at their word he told them that the Government felt that the time had come to stockpile and that, having no medium of exchange to put into the hands of our buying commissions and delegates other than inconvertible sterling—we had no tungsten and we had no oil and we had no indispensable article of international trade with which we could barter, and precious few of the others—we had to go out into a market short of supplies wherein both the United States and Great Britain were stockpiling and try to get the goods—a year or 12 months' supply of essential commodities.
Did or did not the Taoiseach tell them that? Did he not say to them: "We know that the im-balance of our international trade which will be manifested in the summer and autumn of 1951 has in it terrific political repercussions for us as a Government; normally we would ask you to start explaining to the people now what we are doing and why we are doing it and what the consequences will be in the trade picture as returned by the Statistics Office in the summer and autumn of this year; the reason why we have asked you to come here to-day was to tell you that in order to avoid forewarning the foreign interests who have the things we want to buy and thus inducing them to put the price up against us—and in the summer of next year when our people are told the background of this story they will endorse what we have done—even if wind of the word reaches you that work of this character is proceeding, if you want to help us, ‘Keep it mum' so that the buying missions that are abroad will at least get the best value they can get in the circumstances for the money that we have got to spend."
You heard Deputy Dr. Browne yesterday trying to spatter his erstwhile colleagues with mud. He knew that the facts of which he had knowledge would not serve the purpose the Minister for Finance sought to establish. Instead of getting up like a man and saying: "I have quarrelled with them, I think they treated me rottenly but when I was their agent and their colleague in this they were right," like a silly, hysterical girl, he said: "Yes, it was done, but it was I did it and maybe the Minister meant something other than what he said."
I suppose we should not be here discussing Cabinet secrets. What is one to do? Suppose a Minister for Finance gets up and says there was no stockpiling and that those who stockpiled, like Deputy Dr. Browne, did it on their own initiative, what are you to do when you know that that is a blooming lie and when you were present at the Government meeting at which the Taoiseach asked each Minister to come prepared with a schedule of what he and his advisers thought should be done and what he and his advisers jointly determined between them in his own particular province it was essential to buy. The Taoiseach invited the Government jointly to consider each Minister's submissions so as to determine the essentials and eliminate the non-essentials.
When we came to Health, if my memory is right, there were two categories—one, medicine and medical supplies, and the other building materials for the hospital programme. In regard to medicine and medical supplies, the Taoiseach told Deputy Dr. Browne that he was to be the judge and, having due regard to all the claims upon our reserves, he was to try to ensure that the public institutions and the hospitals would have a year's supply.
I remember Deputy Dr. Browne explaining at a Government meeting that he had negotiated with the builder to buy up all the materials that would be required for all the hospitals for which he was responsible. I remember my saying to him: "Be careful. If you use one builder and he gets all the profit on this vast volume of material, no matter what you say afterwards, allegations will be made against you. Never mind what your friends will say of what you are about to do, but ask yourself what will your enemies say of what you are about to do, and if you cannot think up an answer right away well calculated to confound them, change your plans." I remember saying to him: "There is an association of building contractors' suppliers, representative of all building suppliers, in Ireland, go and ask them to choose one or more of their number to act on a buying commission for all this material." I remember him coming back and thanking me, saying: "Of course, you are in business and you would think of this; I might quite innocently have left myself open to the malicious misrepresentation which this precaution protects me against."
That is the background in which that former colleague was invited to stab a colleague by the present Minister for Finance, who eagerly sprang to the assignment. But he could not deny that the supplies were here; he could not deny that somebody brought them here; he could not deny that it was not Dr. Noel Browne, but the Minister for Health, and he could not deny that that could only be done by leave of the Government of which he was a member, but he was solicitous to suggest that it was done by their countenancing rather than at their suggestion. He could not understand that it might be done in association with loyal colleagues who wished to share the credit and the blame of all they jointly did.
I call the Fourth Estate to witness that we told them 12 months ago that the balance of trade of this country would be dramatically and radically affected, and that the adverse trade balance would certainly equal and, possibly, exceed the 1947 figure, and that we were doing it deliberately, and thanking God that we had the resources from which to finance that precaution for our people. Were we wrong in that? Remember the situation. The Korean war was in progress. Personally, I was not pessimistic on the probability of war, but I sat there and listened for six days. I am glad to see my colleague now present. Did he hear me rebuke him for his lack of generosity? I think I spoke the truth and spoke fair.
