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Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 10 Apr 1940

Vol. 24 No. 10

Irish Currency and Sterling—Motion (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That Seanad Eireann would welcome a statement of policy by the Government regarding the Irish currency and its connection with Sterling—(Senators MacDermot and Johnston.)

I hope Senators feel, on the whole, that Senator Johnston and myself performed a service, rather than the contrary, by introducing this motion. We had a very interesting statement from the Minister for Finance, and some very interesting speeches from other persons. There was a notable absence of what was contemptuously referred to by either Senator Lynch or Senator Campbell, or both of them, as economic jargon. I stated at the outset that I had no claim to be an economic expert, steeped in the doctrines of the Manchester or any other school, as Senator Lynch or Senator Campbell alleged I was. I do not think I said anything that even the most uneducated outsider would have difficulty in understanding. I believe that that holds good of the bulk of what was said in the course of the debate. It was not conducted in terms of economic jargon. In any case, if there was economic jargon, I rather fancy it might be found in the speeches of the Labour Senators rather than elsewhere.

I freely confess that this motion was intended almost as much to draw a statement from the Labour Party as to draw a statement from the Minister. There has been, as I pointed out in my opening speech, a great deal of campaigning going on by the Labour Party and certain allies of theirs, a campaign full of heated denunciation of persons and institutions in this country. Whether or not the proposals of the Labour Party are as moderate or as modest as they say they are, what is quite certain is that the propaganda by which those proposals were supported was not modest and moderate propaganda. It was in effect, whatever it was in intention, a revolutionary propaganda—as Senator O Buachalla pointed out, a propaganda that tried to make the people believe that they were being put to all sorts of unnecessary hardships because of the selfishness or stupidity, or both, of a number of people in high places controlling the financial machine and acting purely in their own interests or, what is worse still, in the interests of John Bull. That sort of talk has been supplemented by extracts from Encyclicals, used in such a way as to seek to convict everybody who disagrees with the Labour ideas as being downright rebels to the authority of the Vatican, and bad Christians.

I thought it was time, high time, that that kind of thing should be put to the test of being brought here into one of the Chambers of the Legislature for discussion, and I was hoping to draw a statement from the Labour Party, as well as a statement from the Minister. They were strangely coy about giving us that statement. For a time, I thought we were not going to get one, and when, eventually, we did, it was introduced by a complaint on the part of Senator Lynch of my having the audacity to quote from a "private document" of the Labour Party. That is really very odd. What is this private document of the Labour Party? It is a pamphlet called "Planning for the Crisis," and it can be bought at Eason's, and, I dare say, elsewhere, for the sum of one penny, and after you have read it yourself, you are urged by a note at the end to get another dozen copies and to distribute them to your neighbours and friends. It seems to me a little strange, therefore, to allude to it as a private document, or to complain about my having referred to it. The only grievance there can be in it is that I was giving to Senators free and for nothing what they might otherwise have to pay a penny for, a grievance that does not seem to be very substantial.

We had, on account of that campaign, every right to expect a statement from the Labour representatives, and all the more so as we have in our midst two of the most authoritative spokesmen Labour could have. Senator Campbell was a member of the Banking Commission, and for two years or more, while that Commission was sitting, he was familiarising himself with every aspect of this country's economic life; and Senator Lynch was the chosen spokesman of the Labour Party to give evidence before that Commission.

Mr. Lynch

No, sir, I was not.

Well, I have the book of evidence here, and I find that two gentlemen are mentioned as giving evidence together on behalf of the Labour Party—one is Mr. P.J. Cairns, and the other is Mr. Lynch.

Mr. Lynch

On behalf of the Labour Party?

Was it not on behalf of the Labour Party?

Mr. Lynch

It was on behalf of the Trade Union Congress, a very different body.

I am greatly interested to hear of that distinction, but, in any case, it does not weaken the force of what I say——

Mr. Lynch

It strengthens it.

——that we are fortunate to have in our midst two men who have seen so much of this question, and have been so directly concerned in it as Senators Campbell and Lynch. Now, I think that they have distorted their outlook by making two very big assumptions, both of which I believe to be unsound.

One of these assumptions is, and it is stated in this pamphlet of the Labour Party, that an adjustment of the monetary system is the natural method for going about the business of providing full-time employment for the adult population, regulating the price level and raising the standard of living of the mass of the people. It is assumed, without any vestige of proof, without any attempt at proof, by Labour apologists, that some sort of tinkering with the monetary system is the natural way to go about that tremendous task.

Mr. Lynch

We never said "tinkering."

The word "tinkering" is a word of prejudice, I admit, on my part. Manipulation of the monetary system, dealing, handling, doing something with the monetary system, is the way to cure unemployment and to raise the standard of living. I say it is not, and I say it has never been found so in any country, and wherever it has ever been attempted the ending has been failure.

Mr. Lynch

Even by raising the bank rate?

Neither reducing nor raising the bank rate has anything like the effect of curing unemployment——

Mr. Lynch

That would not be tinkering, for instance?

It might be. I am not suggesting that the bank rate should never be reduced or raised, but I do say that the natural way to go about making a country prosperous and making it happy and adding to the sum total of its wealth is not by manipulating the monetary machinery.

The second big assumption they make, and they have made no attempt to prove it, is the one stated by Senator Campbell, to the effect that the material resources of this country are sufficient to maintain all its present population and, so far as one can judge, any future population, no matter to what size it may grow, in a condition of simple luxury. Now what right has he to make any such assumption? I am afraid there never has been a time in this country when all the population were prosperous and content, and——

Mr. Lynch

Has the population never been bigger than to-day?

——in a state of simple luxury. How far we can go towards attaining that I cannot say.

Mr. Lynch

We had 8,000,000 of a population once.

I am sure that the way to go about it is not by monetary manipulation. Senator Lynch keeps on making interruptions about the size of the population. I must say that I do not know what he deduces from it. If he could point to a time when there were 8,000,000 of a happy and prosperous population here it might be helpful, but the time when there was a population of 8,000,000 here was the time of our greatest misery, a misery infinitely transcending anything this country has to-day. Therefore, I feel myself justified in saying that the Labour spokesmen have made the mistake of starting by two tremendous assumptions which they have not attempted to justify.

Poverty is very far, unfortunately, from being a new thing. Senator Lynch summons us to a crusade against poverty and that is very far from being a new idea. I am sure none of us need to have the trumpets sounded for us to call us to take part in a crusade against poverty, if we can see clearly a way of doing so advantageously. All through our history we have been a poor country—the poverty of Ireland has been almost proverbial throughout the world. It was attributed, of course, to British misrule—in part, it was due to British misrule—certainly it was in part due to successive upheavals against the British connection. There was very great poverty in this country before the British came; there was great poverty during the time that we formed part of the British Empire and, according to Senator Lynch, there is even greater poverty to-day than ever before. I do not agree with that; I think it is a gross exaggeration, though I admit there is very great poverty in this country. One of the first things I said when I came into public life here about eight years ago was that all Irish politics should really be a crusade against two things— poverty and Partition, that they were the two evils that really mattered. That was an obvious sort of thing to say and I claim no credit for any original idea. Those were the two great evils: in the past eight years I have seen very little done to cure either. I have seen some efforts to cure poverty, but no real effort—no effort at all that I could call an effort —to cure Partition. On the contrary, things have been done that tended to perpetuate Partition.

I do not believe that there is any Party in this House or in the other House or throughout the country which really needs the exhortations of Senator Lynch and Senator Campbell to turn their minds to the subject of poverty. We are all conscious of it and longing to cure it. Nobody has any right to put himself up on a superior moral elevation and accuse another of being concerned only with selfish money interests—as Senator Lynch was good enough to say about me on the last occasion. I claim it is an outrage for any Senator to try to adopt that superior moral status in regard to poverty, as we are all concerned regarding it. If it is a crime to be in favour of conserving such wealth as we have got, I am guilty of that; if it is a crime to wish to prevent the people who have savings from losing those savings by bad financial policy or by a monetary policy which reduces their value or destroys them altogether, I am guilty; if that is being a supporter of selfish money interests. I am afraid I am. In no other sense, however, can I admit that anything of the kind is true. What are the actual proposals that the Labour Party have to offer us? The main features are, firstly, that there is to be an abandonment of the Irish currency's present fixed relation with sterling, and, secondly, that there is to be a Development Commission set up which is to operate by means of developmental credit.

Senator O'Callaghan has said that the banks in this country are not doing their duty. That was fairly fully discussed at earlier stages of this debate. I disagree with him: I think that it was not really denied by the Labour Party in this House nor seriously denied by any witnesses before the Banking Commission, that credit has always been available in this country for credit-worthy persons and objects from the banks at a lower price than in most countries of the world. It also has been admitted that our banks have kept the savings of the people safe. If the banks have performed those two functions so successfully and without a single bank failure in the last fifty years, I think that those who accuse our banks of being inefficient or unequal to the task to be expected of them, are very blind to our blessings. We have some economic blessings and the excellence of our banking system is one of them.

At the time the Banking Commission was sitting, so far as I could gather, the wish of Labour was that all the existing banking institutions should be abolished and that their place should be taken by a Government Central Bank. The main object of that was that the operations of this Government Central Bank should be dictated by the Legislature—whether, in a commercial sense, loans were sound or not, those loans should be made, if the Legislature wanted them to be made; in other words, credit should be given for non-credit-worthy objects and persons, if it was considered to be in the public interest. Labour appears to have made a change in its outlook. It is prepared to leave the existing banking institutions alone and let them carry on on commercial principles; and the savings of the people of this country are not, apparently, to be conscripted and risked in loans that may be unsound and dictated by political considerations rather than by the ordinary considerations of people in commerce. Instead of taking over the banks, we are to set up an institution side by side with the banks which is to issue the credit to the non-credit-worthy persons and for the non-credit-worthy objects for which the banks cannot be expected to use the savings of the people.

I do not wish to go into details in regard to the objections to these plans, as that has been done so very thoroughly already. Senator O Buachalla made a most effective speech on the subject, but, apart from what he said and apart from what the Minister said about breaking the link with sterling, there is the Banking Commission Report. There is not a single thing that has been said here which has not been also submitted for consideration to the Banking Commission and considered very fully and fairly by them. For the convenience of Senators who might wish to consult the Banking Commission Report, without reading an unnecessarily large amount of it, I would like to refer them, on the subject of the link with sterling, to paragraphs 209 and 210; and on the subject of developmental credit and the attempt to spend ourselves into prosperity by making a large outlay on objects that are not immediately profitable and productive, I refer them to paragraph 287 of the report. I could read those paragraphs here but will not detain the Seanad by doing so, as any Senator who wishes can look them up for himself. I would suggest to any Senator who is seriously interested and who has not read those paragraphs, to read them.

What percentage of the Banking Commission recommendations were accepted by the people?

I am afraid I am not competent to answer that question. I do not imagine that the percentage of the people who have read the Banking Commission Report is a very high one; I could not say what percentage of the Seanad has accepted or read that report.

That is the point.

The Senator can conduct a little investigation on his own account. I am not qualified to tell him. Speaking generally, the Minister has set forward the practical inconveniences that would result from throwing aside the link with sterling. I myself said something about the effect of setting on foot all those public works by means of developmental credit, the effect it would have in increasing prices, increasing imports, increasing the cost of living and necessarily producing inflationary effects because there would not be a corresponding immediate production of saleable goods.

One must not suppose that until now the finance of this country has been directed according to the ideas of what Senator Lynch and Senator Campbell so often alluded to as the Manchester School, that there has been no assistance by the State to any form of economic activity. That is the very opposite of the truth. We have development commissions in existence already only they are not called by that name. The Department of Agriculture is, to a large extent, a development commission. The Department of Lands is a development commission. The Department of Local Government, with all it is doing for housing, is a development commission. And there are others—the Department of Public Works, the old Congested Districts Board in the days when Senator Madden says that the initiative was being crushed out of the Irish people. There have been all these agencies already, which are in effect development commissions, and I approve of them. At any rate, I approve of a great deal of what they have done and are doing. But they are spending money that has been raised by honest-to-God taxation or else has been borrowed out of honest-to-God savings. They are not manufacturing money. They are not inflating. It is really no good the Labour spokesmen pretending that what they want does not mean inflation because, if it did not, they would not be pressing for the breaking of the link with sterling and, moreover, they would not have quoted the authorities which, in fact, they did quote in the course of their speeches.

I am not going to go back to Mr. Gladstone, beyond saying that the notion of his being quoted in support of a scheme of currency inflation and developmental credit is about as comical as anything could be to anybody with a historical sense. Nor will I go into the quotations from Mr. Lloyd George and others that were used. They are not really relevant. As regards Australia and New Zealand, which were cited for our imitation, I will only say that I believe that the separation of the Australian pound from sterling, the difference which arose in the value between the two, was not a matter of policy so much as the necessary effect of unfortunate financial errors in Australian politics, and that if they could afterwards have undone it, they would have undone it. In fact, when an Australian representative was over here about two years ago—I think Butler was his name—he attended a lunch of the Parliamentary Association, and he admitted to us—with how much accuracy, of course, I do not know, or how far it still applies—that Australia was going back as fast as it could, and had gone back to a great extent, to complete financial orthodoxy. As regards New Zealand, we all know that New Zealand became a bit unorthodox. The result was that last year one of her Government representatives had to come over to England with his hat in his hand and was having great difficulty in arranging for the renewal of loans. It may be that New Zealand was only saved from a major economic crash by the coming of the European war.

So I do not think these examples count for very much. But the one I do want to go into a little bit more is the remarkable use which Senator Lynch made—I am sorry he is not here—of an article in The Economist, which, he declared, was written in support of just the kind of proposals that he was pressing upon us. It is significant that the title of that article is: “The Technique of Inflation.” By the way, in case Senator Lynch should have forgotten it, I would like to mention that when he was giving evidence before the Banking Commission, he stated that he was absolutely opposed to any movement towards inflation, because, “as we see it,” he said, “inflation would have a devaluing effect upon money and wages, and, consequently, upon our standard of living.” Therefore, he has changed his mind. Of course, it is quite legitimate for him to change his mind, but I think it worth while to take note of that. He has quoted The Economist as an authority in support of the proposals that he recommended to us, but he omitted to tell us that the article began like this:

"Since the outbreak of war there has been an impressive unanimity of testimony that inflation must and will be avoided. This sentiment has been heard from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, from politicians of all Parties and from independent authorities. This unanimity is all to the good. It is true that it is possible to see some advantages in a strictly limited rise of prices. But that way lies the primrose path. Inflation, if it comes, will come so imperceptibly, so independently of any decision of authority, that it can be relied upon to take an ell for every theoretical inch conceded to it. The danger is that we shall get a sizable inflation while protesting that we want none; if we say we should like a little, we shall get an infinite amount.

"If, then, this article is frankly concerned with the technique by which inflation could be brought about, it is only because the right to do so has been earned by the drastic nature of the suggestions for avoiding inflation that have been outlined in preceding articles. Two weeks ago, it may be recalled, the suggestion was made that the incidence of income-tax might be increased to the equivalent of a standard rate of 10/- in the £, with still steeper increases on certain incomes, and, for the smaller incomes, either a wages tax or a universal excise. Last week it was proposed that the volume of the public's savings should be forcibly doubled by the deliberate restriction of all forms of unnecessary expenditure. None of these suggestions have been put forward with any illusions about their extremely drastic, and necessarily unpopular, character. But it is only graduates from the hard school of accepting the necessity for impositions of this nature who can be allowed to admit the possibility of any inflation at all."

In other words, in The Economist's view, before there should be any question of embarking on these inflationary plans, we should have gone the length of raising income-tax to 10/- in the £; we should have imposed a tax on wages for the small man and we should have introduced a strict system of rationing in order to cut down expenditure, and it is only when all these expedients have been exhausted that it is prepared to make suggestions as to what might be done in the way of inflation. The article ends up by saying:—

"The order of ideas very vaguely and tentatively suggested in this article is not merely unprecedented and unorthodox, but it carries some psychological danger. Inflation must not be made to appear easier than it is. Yet the recognition of inflation, if it cannot be avoided, is well founded in logic, and action of the general nature outlined here would be the means of saving the community very large sums of public money. But precedent and orthodoxy cannot be defied with impunity. We come back at the end of the argument, to the point from which we started. The soundness of our wartime financial policy will be measured by the extent to which the necessity for these devices is avoided. We must first carry taxation and the rationing of expenditure to the utmost limits that are humanly supportable. Only when these efforts have been carried as far as they can be will it be right to consider the technique of inflation."

Now, that is the attitude of people who are engaged in a desperate war for existence, and I think that, when Senator Campbell has equated us with the British and said that if the British are engaged in a war with the Germans so are we here engaged in a war with poverty, he has forgotten that the way to win the war with the Germans may not be the way to win the war with poverty. In order to win the war with the Germans you may have quite deliberately to impoverish yourself and to impoverish posterity. The object of these suggestions in The Economist is to show what might be done in the way of mobilising all the resources that possibly could be mobilised—the financial resources—to beat Germany, but it never for a moment pretends that the mobilising and use of these resources is not going to result in impoverishment. Of course it is, but the British prefer to impoverish themselves rather than to be conquered, whereas, if we are fighting against poverty, it is a contradiction in terms to say that we must impoverish the country in order to conquer the poverty of the country. Consequently, the analogy between the war against Germany and the war against poverty is a profoundly misleading analogy.

The Labour spokesmen also quoted the Minister for Supplies as a prophet favourable to their ideas, quoting a recent speech in which he spoke about the extent of unemployment and the necessity for doing very drastic and perhaps revolutionary things to cure unemployment; but are they so sure that what he had in mind was a readjustment of the monetary system? I do not think he had that in mind. Reading his speech, I would have said that if he had anything definite in mind it was a suggestion that we might have to abandon democracy, and I invite Labour Senators to reread Mr. Lemass's speech to see whether that is not a more natural meaning to put on it.

That would require some imagination.

Let the Senator read the speech and then repeat that that would require imagination. The Minister made a definite reference to democracy; and it is conceivable that you cannot get rid of unemployment altogether unless you actually order your unemployed man to do this or that work, at this or that wage, and in this or that place. I hope it is not true, but it is conceivable, and, so far as I know, no other complete solution of unemployment has been found, and it is for every one of us to consider whether the remedy is not worse than the disease.

During the past eight years, since this Government came into office, we have been very far indeed from adhering to these doctrines of the Manchester School about which we hear so much. Senator Cummins says they were brought in for our destruction at the time of the Act of Union, for the purpose of enslaving this country and ensuring that we should be only a pastoral community. So far as I am aware, the Manchester School did not come into existence at all for a quarter of a century or more after the passing of the Act of Union. In any case, whether or not it was the policy of the British to force pastoralism on us, I do suggest that their monetary system was quite irrelevant to it. They may have taken other measures; I do not propose to take time going into that. But there was nothing in the English monetary system or currency that turned this country into a pastoral country, and it is quite absurd to suggest that there was.

Curiously enough, the first big success of the Manchester School was, I suppose, the abolition of the Corn Laws in, I think, 1846, and that occurred at a time when Ireland had reached really a greater depth of economic misery than it had ever seen. The politicians who were associated with the Manchester School, like Cobden and Bright, were very far indeed from being regarded as the champions of selfish monied interests. On the contrary, they were regarded as the champions of the workingman, attacking selfish monied interests which were supporting tariffs and other restrictions that were supposed to be reducing the standard of living for the poor. So that all this curious abuse of the Manchester School and of the people who are too much concerned with monied interests, and of the pro-English minds who have fastened pastoralism on this country and who did it somehow by means of the monetary system and are keeping it so by that means, creates a problem of psychology as to how Labour Senators have got themselves into such a muddled state of mind. The practice of imposing tariffs began before this Government came into office, and the practice of having generous social services began before this country ceased to form part of the United Kingdom. Within our own recollection we have only to take our minds back to the time when old age pensions were started to realise how far it is from being true that even the British were imposing upon us the doctrines of the Manchester School and how far it is from being true that even the British legislature showed a complete lack of sympathy with the poverty and suffering of the small man.

It is indeed not so much the actual proposals of the Labour Party to which I object—although I do object to them and think them unsound—it is not so much the actual proposals, however, that make me indignant, as the propaganda by which these proposals are supported, propaganda that, I believe, has been doing a great deal of harm and will continue to do a great deal of harm unless they cease to be so absolutely reckless of the effects they are producing and, as it seems to me, so reckless of the truth, as they are at present.

It is quite untrue to say that anybody advocates a policy of "do nothing". We all want to do everything that can be done to increase the wealth of this country. I personally believe that any pennies that we can scrape together, over and above what we are spending already, should be spent on the development of agriculture, and that that would be more advantageous than spending it on afforestation, which cannot show results for 30 years or so.

I introduced a motion years ago in the Dáil urging the Government to establish demonstration farms throughout the country—an unpopular proposal, particularly at that time, because the economic war was in progress, and the Government did not quite see how they could make the farms pay, if they did establish them. But the proposal has been made by others, and it was mentioned here the other day by Senator Sir John Keane. I should like to mention it again. In that way, if you have money to spend, I think it would be well spent, because I believe with all my heart that the prospects of raising the standard of living and reducing unemployment in this country depend on making our agriculture more efficient, on getting more modern methods, more skill, more energy and more enthusiasm into it.

It is because all this talk of miracles which could be brought about by some monetary manipulation distracts people from the things that really can do good that I think it is so harmful. For one reason or another, the people of this country have too long had their minds distracted from the question of efficiency. It has been inevitable for political reasons. There has nearly always been some political opponent to go for, and to take property from— perhaps quite rightly, but nevertheless to take it from him. It was the landlords in the old days; it was the ranchers afterwards, and it was the British Government in respect of the Land Annuities, and so forth. It may be that the case was perfectly sound and just—I am not entering into that—in all this, but the necessary psychological result upon the individual farmer has been that he is less inclined to think of what could be achieved by greater efficiency than he is to think of getting his rights as against some other member of our community; and if we are to do any good at all, we have to get out of the habit of making villains of some particular class in the community, whether bankers, Senators or economists, as too many people are inclined to do.

Senator O Buachalla said very candidly that he had come to his present economic views only after distress and travail of spirit and that he came to them reluctantly, because, in the old days of Sinn Féin propaganda, Sinn Féin economics went along with Sinn Féin politics, and it was perhaps not very easy to discard the former and retain one's faith in the latter. I remember, some years ago, saying in the Dáil, in the presence of the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, that I had difficulty in believing that Sinn Féin economists had arrived at their views by hard work and sitting up at night with towels around their heads studying books of economics, and that I could not help thinking that they had adopted their economics because they fitted in with their politics. The Minister replied that the very reverse was the case. "We formed our economic views about this country first," he said, "and our political views were the necessary result." If so, one wonders what the mental state of the Minister is at the moment, because the days are past when he believed in the possibility of building up here what he called a storm-proof, self-sufficient system of economics. He sees realities now as well even as does the present Minister for Finance who, only a few years ago, so few years ago, was telling us that, in the economic war, we had whipped John Bull and that we could look forward to whipping him again in any other economic war on a future occasion. I wonder how that fits in with the maintenance of so many of our public and private investments in British securities, with the maintenance of the link with sterling, and how we could seriously set about the economic destruction of any country in which we had such an enormous stake as, in fact, we have. I do not say these things in order to be unpleasant, but because they pass through my mind and seem to me to have a certain relevance to the discussion.

I was going to conclude at that point, but I see that Senator O Buachalla has just arrived, and I am therefore tempted to make one additional remark arising out of something he said. He complained that I had spoken in a frivolous manner—perhaps, he even thought, in an offensive manner—about the Gaelic economic order. I did not drag the Gaelic economic order into this debate.

It was the complaint of Senator Lynch that the economic system under which we are living at present is non-Gaelic, and not only was the complaint made here by Senator Lynch, but it has been made hundreds of times down the country, and it is suggested that we ought to do revolutionary things in order to get back to the Gaelic economic order. I merely pointed out the obvious fact that any evidence we have as to Gaelic economic order is discouraging, and it is not surprising that that should be so, because the same applies to the economic order of neighbouring countries in the same epoch. There is really nothing to learn as to what our present course should be by studying Gaelic economics. It is not my desire to make any unnecessary sneers that would hurt anybody's feelings, or do any mischief to anybody's ideals. I think the people who are really responsible for causing sneers, when there are sneers, are the people who make ludicrous claims of that sort for the Gaelic world, that we can get enlightenment as to our economic problems from going back to Gaelic ideas of economics.

The Minister referred to the effect upon Partition of the severance of our currency from sterling. I think that is an important point, and I congratulate him upon having taken Partition into consideration in any one of our domestic problems, because, so far as I can recollect, it is the first time it has happened since this Government came into office. There have been many times when I, and others, have implored them to consider the effects on Partition of things they were proposing to do, but we had no success. Here, for once, the question of Partition has been raised by the Minister, and, though one might perhaps suspect that he might not have raised it if he had not been strongly against severing the link with sterling, anyway he has set a precedent which I hope may be followed when any measure comes up for consideration that might affect the possibility of unifying Ireland.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

As Senators will observe, all the business has been disposed of, with the exception of the motion in the name of Senator Douglas. It is possible that we may have a Bill from the Dáil next week, and under the circumstances I take the liberty of suggesting that the summoning of the next meeting be left to the Cathaoirleach.

The Minister has already indicated that it would be convenient for him to attend next Wednesday. The motion deals with a very urgent matter at present, and the Minister has informed the House that he could attend on that day. I think the discussion would take the best part of the sitting.

There is, as I have said, a probability that we shall have at least one Bill next week, and in view of Senator Douglas's opinion that this motion is a matter of urgency, if there is no objection we will meet on Wednesday next.

Molaim go bhfágtar fút é. I suggest the matter be left to the Cathaoirleach.

The Minister has indicated that next Wednesday would suit him, and as any possible statement by the Government as to their attitude is of importance, I am very reluctant to agree to fixing some other date. However, I am quite satisfied to leave it to the discretion of the Chair, having regard to the circumstances. I will be available and the Minister will be available, but I do not desire to agree now to its postponement to some date on which the Minister might not be able to attend.

The matter is left to the discretion of the Cathaoirleach. If we have a Bill, we will meet next week; if not, we will postpone meeting to a later date.

The Seanad adjourned sine die at 5.40 p.m.

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