When the Seanad adjourned last evening we had had speeches from both the right and the left, and, although one might have expected some more help from some of the people on the right, I confess I was disappointed in finding so little difference between the points of view expressed by Senators like Senator O Buachalla and Senator Sir John Keane. My amendment was put down because I honestly believe that this central banking institution, which is to be brought into existence through the operation of the measure which is going through the House, cannot with the machinery which we are inserting in this Bill do the things which we want to have done in this country. I am not attacking the joint stock banks or their policy in the past in any vicious sort of way, but I join issue with all those who acclaim the efforts of the joint stock banks in the matter of giving us the essential financial machinery requisite to build up life here in the way we want to have it. Senator O Buachalla said that the joint stock banks had given great assistance to agriculture in the past, or something equivalent to that; I do not want to misquote him. Since this State was set up there has been considerable dissatisfaction because of the difficulties agriculture has been experiencing in having provision made by way of capital for necessary undertakings. That dissatisfaction with our financial institutions was first expressed in 1926 when the Oireachtas in those days put through the Agricultural Credit Corporation Act. If the existing institutions were doing all that was necessary for them to do, there would never have been any necessity to bring in any such measure as that.
One would think from listening to Senator Sir John Keane that the joint stock banks were the last word so far as agriculture was concerned. There has been grave disappointment over a period of years with the operations of the joint stock banks and, as I say, that first expressed itself in the Act I have referred to. I do not know how much was hoped for from that Act, but it was early realised that the whole basis on which this new institution was to function was not satisfactory, that the financing of the institution itself was not what it ought to have been if the maximum amount of good was to be done for agriculture. It is past history now, but I think it is not revealing any secret to say that at the first meeting of the board of directors of the Agricultural Credit Corporation the first thing they did was to go in a body to the then Minister for Finance to express to him their considered opinion that the financing of the Agricultural Credit Corporation made it difficult, if not impossible, to do for agriculture what ought to be done for agriculture. I was on the board then. That is past history, but it is a fact. There has been no great improvement since.
While the corporation has undoubtedly convenienced a great many borrowers within the State over a period of years, the whole structure on which the institution is founded and the difficulties which it experiences in getting money at the right price make it impossible for the corporation to do for agriculture what must be done for it if it is to be put on a sound basis. All through the years why do we hear people declaiming against the banks? I am not one who will take part in that campaign. In fact I feel, and people like me feel, that our greatest friends are the commercial banking institutions, but with many with whom I discussed the question, the feeling is that unless there is more consideration, more understanding and a more forward policy on the part of the commercial banking institutions, a number of people who are in the middle of the road to-day, are going to be driven to extreme steps. I do not like extreme steps. I do not believe in them. In the last analysis, no matter where we look for a test of extreme measures, I do not think anybody could be satisfied with the fruit garnered from them.
The attitude of the commercial banks in the past, to say the least of it, has not been as helpful as it could have been. The directors of our commercial banking institutions would be in a much happier frame of mind to-day if they had taken the advice offered to them for a number of years, and had put more money into the soil of Ireland, into all sorts of equipment for Irish farms and into farm buildings. Their money would be much safer than it is to-day. I am convinced that it would be much safer, because the truth is that if agriculture here is strong, healthy and vigorous, to that extent will our banking institutions be strong, vigorous and helpful. I do not understand why the directors of commercial banking institutions cannot see the position from that angle. Perhaps it is because they prefer to look to the outside world. I feel that the methods to be employed in the future to get money for national undertakings are roundabout methods, and are not going to be efficient for the undertakings that we hope to see brought into existence. The methods proposed in this Bill will, I believe, be thoroughly unsound. No matter what way we approach it the central bank cannot issue credit. Anything procured must be procured through the commercial banks.
I have here the 15th annual report of the Electricity Supply Board, of which all members of the Oireachtas get a copy. I do not know if many Senators examine it, even with superficial curiosity. It is a very interesting volume. In the accounts for 1941-42 the total amount of interest payable to the Minister for Finance on loans, loan stock, acquired undertakings and other interests, comes to £792,300. That national undertaking has to find practically £800,000 for interest. Where does it find the money? Naturally the people who buy electricity pay for everything, for fuel, for the engines, for the staffs as well as the interest. The total receipts from the sale of electricity amounted in that year to £2,182,000, which the consumers of electricity had to pay, and of that, £800,000 was interest on money borrowed for the carrying out of that national undertaking. In other words, one-third of the total expenditure in that year was by way of interest or, to put it in another way, the consumers of electricity are, for four months of the year, paying interest on borrowed money. If the interest was cut by half, and brought down to 2½ per cent., it would represent one-sixth of the expenditure on the millions of units consumed. It would mean if the rate of interest was reduced that, for two months of the year, each consumer could have electricity for nothing. I am convinced that the policy proposed here is an unsound one. It is retarding national development, and is the kind of policy enunciated by Senator Sir John Keane, and the one, I am afraid, that is going to be enunciated by the board when the central bank is set going. If that is so, and if national undertakings are only possible in the future in a roundabout way by getting money from the joint stock banks at rates of interest that will have to be levied on the community, then I say that you are damning the possibility of national undertakings being started.