No. 392 NAI DT S14134A
Revised and expanded version of Seán Lemass's notes to Éamon de Valera (Dublin) of 27 August 19471
Dublin, 30 August 1947
- Productive capacity (including possibilities of augmenting the sterling area's exportable surplus) has been left unutilised here by reason of the British refusal to supply necessary materials. Examples are coke for foundries, tinned plate, structural steel. Soda ash for glass bottle manufacture had to be bought from a source outside the sterling area at an exorbitant price.
- If we were given an allocation of coal reasonably related to our minimum requirements, instead of the present microscopic allocation, the sacrifice to Britain would be insignificant, our output could be increased in various directions and it would have been unnecessary for us to make the expensive purchases of coal in the United States which have subtracted from the dollar resources of the sterling group as a whole.
- Our agricultural production has been depressed and our exportable surplus of food reduced by restriction on the supply of artificial manures and by the British policy of discrimination against us in prices paid for agricultural goods.
- The British have supplied us with finished goods when they had refused to supply the raw materials. Thus, while the British manpower problem is acute, labour and plant are needlessly left unemployed here.
- Higher prices are charged to Irish importers of industrial materials than to British firms. For example, cotton hosiery yarn exported to this country is 25% higher in price than in Britain.
- Britain's handling of economic affairs has hampered Ireland economically and reduced the contribution Ireland could make, through her export trade, to the self-sufficiency of the sterling countries as a group. The price subsidisation policy, wage inflation, shorter hours and better conditions, the expanded social services, the increased prices for agricultural products have (apart from their effects on Britain's own position) set standards which this country cannot afford. The effects have been a tendency to reduce Irish production and a very great reduction in our labour force through emigration.
- Ireland is naturally anxious that confidence in sterling should be maintained, and the Irish Government is prepared to co-operate in measures to that end, provided that such measures are not designed to assist Britain only, but are based on the common interests of the countries in the sterling group and provide for the fullest development of this country's productive resources.
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