No. 212 NAI TSCH/3/S14106D
Memorandum for Government by the Department of External Affairs
Dublin, 16 December 1948
- The United States Minister has asked the Minister for External Affairs informally to provide him with the answers to the two following questions:
- Assuming that, over the period of the Program, ECA loans to Ireland approximate the $400,000,000 figure mentioned, how does the Irish Government propose to use the approximate $100,000,000 which it will receive as the proceeds of dollar-invoiced Materials?
- Practically every conceivable argument in favour of a combination of loan and grant to Ireland has been advanced, with, at the moment, indeterminate results. Perhaps the chief argument in favour of a grant has not yet been advanced, namely, a sound constructive program for its use. In other words, what plan has been evolved which, fitting into the objectives of ECA policy, would be best effected by a grant of U.S. funds, rather than by a loan?
- The American Minister explained that he required these urgently for the purpose of representations he was making in Washington on the Loan-V-Grant issue. He also expressed strongly the hope that the moneys which were now accumulating with the Irish exchequer as a result of the ECA Loan would be used for national development purposes of a productive nature and would not be invested in British or other securities and thus allowed to become unproductive from an Irish point of view.
- Attached hereto is the draft unofficial reply I propose to make.1
- The matter is now of some considerable urgency as the U.S. Minister requires his Memorandum on the question to be in Washington before the 20th inst.
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