Extract from the minutes of a meeting of the Cabinet
'Reduction of tariffs and elimination of preferences: Proposed conference in London in March 1947'
(GC 4/239) (Item 1) (S13915)

Consideration was given to two memoranda, both dated 6th March, 1947, submitted by the Ministers for Industry and Commerce, and Agriculture, relative to the Conference proposed to be held in London in March, 1947, in regard to the Reduction of Tariffs and the Elimination of Preferences.¹

Approval was given to the following proposals:

1.  that the main object of the Irish Delegation to the Conference should be to continue, as far as possible, the right of free entry and the financial preferences accorded to this country in the Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement of 1938 in respect of Irish agricultural commodities imported into the United Kingdom;
2.  that the Delegation should resist the reduction or elimination of preferences only where existing or possible future trade between Ireland and any Commonwealth country is likely to be affected and should raise no objection in other cases;
3.  that the Delegation may agree that one or other of the following alternatives will be considered by the government:
   • that the United Kingdom should continue its present guarantees unchanged, subject only to an understanding that, as and when the United Kingdom might need to increase a given protective duty, the countries in preferential relations with the United Kingdom would not unreasonably withhold their consent to the United Kingdom charging a preferential duty in order to avoid increasing the margin of preference, or
   • that the United Kingdom would agree to replace the general guarantee of free entry by specific guarantees of free entry in respect of schedules of goods of interest to each Commonwealth country;
   and
4.  that the Delegation should follow the lines indicated in the preceding paragraphs but should not enter into commitments without seeking further instructions.