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Volume 9 1948~1951

Doc No.
Date
Subject

No. 212 NAI TSCH/3/S14106D

Memorandum for Government by the Department of External Affairs

Dublin, 16 December 1948

  1. The United States Minister has asked the Minister for External Affairs informally to provide him with the answers to the two following questions:
    1. 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?
    2. 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?
  2. 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.
  3. Attached hereto is the draft unofficial reply I propose to make.1
  4. 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.

1 See Nos 214 and 215.

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