Dev is to blame for everything ??

McArmalite

Firstly, can we just try and keep this discussion to economic issues, Dev and the Treaty, Neutrality, Catholic Church laws and the Constitution etc are all important and worthwhile subjects, but let's try and keep the discussion on Dev's economic polices !!!!!

Anyway, recently ejmaztec posted on the 02-01-2008 " Ireland was then run by its own version of Robert Mugabe i.e. DeValera, who, for a mathematician, wasn’t very good at sums, especially where the Irish economy was involved. Irish people left this country in droves, worked their balls off in the UK, the US, and anywhere else they went. They could have stayed here and watched their families starve to death to promote DeValera’s idyllic farm-yard Ireland. It was the money that these people earned in Britain etc, that subsidised Ireland’s paupers. "

At the time I thought about, and though I agree in part, I mean there was many other factors also I think, worldwide events etc, poor ol' Dev is blamed for everything these days !!!!. For instance, firstly, when the Free State was founded in 1922 look at the kind of economy we inherited form centuries of british misrule. Needless to say, it was one of the most extorted and underdeveloped in Europe. I mean, it's like trying to blame the economic situation of the present states in Eastern Europe with the management since 1989 and not relating it to the previous decades of mismanagement under Communism ??

And after 1922, Civil War, partition which divided the natural economy along the border, Wall St Crash 1929, instability leading up to and during WW2, our relationship with sterling and the gross mismanagement by the Department of Finance who were practically the old pre 1922 civil servants.

And when you consider it, from 1922 to 1959 when Dev retired as Taoiseach for Sean Lemass to take over, he was in power half that time, 1932 - 48, 1957 - 59, eighteen years out of 37 ?? Is it right/fair to blame it ALL on Dev ??

eroo

Yes...ruined politics in this country due to going anti-Treaty.In the end he achieved nothing of any importance regarding the Treaty.After all,it was Cummann na nGaedhael who created the Westminster Statute which paved the way for dismantling the Treaty.Dev got all the credit..

#15

To the post above:

Dev was not the most anti-treaty (or ''anti-Brit'') of that generation of politicians/revolutionaries.
To place the weight of blame for the civil war upon him is unfair. True, he stoked up tensions. But he was quickly sidelined by more extreme elements within the anti-treaty camp.

The Westminster Statute was not created by CnaG as such. It was an Act of Parliament passed in response to the desires of the dominions.

Incidentally, Dev was furious when Ireland was removed from the commonwealth.

Re OP:

I'd agree with much your post. Partition prevented the economy from growing as it cut off the rest of the country from the industrialised north-east.

Economics is not my strong point so I will leave that to others to debate. From what I do know, I would say that it is unfair to blame it all on dev, I think he is an easy scapegoat sometimes. And the context is sometimes forgotten as well. The rest of the world was not exactly booming during the 1930s and 1940s!

walrusgumble

eroo wrote: »

Yes...ruined politics in this country due to going anti-Treaty.In the end he achieved nothing of any importance regarding the Treaty.After all,it was Cummann na nGaedhael who created the Westminster Statute which paved the way for dismantling the Treaty.Dev got all the credit..

true, but at least john a costello got the one up declaring a republic. that statue is ridiously under rated and raely discussed, the impact it had on the new commonwealth was massive for all dominion countries

walrusgumble

#15 wrote: »

To the post above:

Dev was not the most anti-treaty (or ''anti-Brit'') of that generation of politicians/revolutionaries.
To place the weight of blame for the civil war upon him is unfair. True, he stoked up tensions. But he was quickly sidelined by more extreme elements within the anti-treaty camp.

The Westminster Statute was not created by CnaG as such. It was an Act of Parliament passed in response to the desires of the dominions.

Incidentally, Dev was furious when Ireland was removed from the commonwealth.

Re OP:

I'd agree with much your post. Partition prevented the economy from growing as it cut off the rest of the country from the industrialised north-east.

Economics is not my strong point so I will leave that to others to debate. From what I do know, I would say that it is unfair to blame it all on dev, I think he is an easy scapegoat sometimes. And the context is sometimes forgotten as well. The rest of the world was not exactly booming during the 1930s and 1940s!

yes but it was with delegates of south africa (cant think of his name) and irish people such as desmond fitzgerald (garreth's dad) and kevin o'higgins that were the real ball players in the conferenes. it was people such as them that pushed for this to happen. akin to modern day good friday agreement consulations which lead to draft

walrusgumble

McArmalite wrote: »

Firstly, can we just try and keep this discussion to economic issues, Dev and the Treaty, Neutrality, Catholic Church laws and the Constitution etc are all important and worthwhile subjects, but let's try and keep the discussion on Dev's economic polices !!!!!

Anyway, recently ejmaztec posted on the 02-01-2008 " Ireland was then run by its own version of Robert Mugabe i.e. DeValera, who, for a mathematician, wasn’t very good at sums, especially where the Irish economy was involved. Irish people left this country in droves, worked their balls off in the UK, the US, and anywhere else they went. They could have stayed here and watched their families starve to death to promote DeValera’s idyllic farm-yard Ireland. It was the money that these people earned in Britain etc, that subsidised Ireland’s paupers. "

At the time I thought about, and though I agree in part, I mean there was many other factors also I think, worldwide events etc, poor ol' Dev is blamed for everything these days !!!!. For instance, firstly, when the Free State was founded in 1922 look at the kind of economy we inherited form centuries of british misrule. Needless to say, it was one of the most extorted and underdeveloped in Europe. I mean, it's like trying to blame the economic situation of the present states in Eastern Europe with the management since 1989 and not relating it to the previous decades of mismanagement under Communism ??

And after 1922, Civil War, partition which divided the natural economy along the border, Wall St Crash 1929, instability leading up to and during WW2, our relationship with sterling and the gross mismanagement by the Department of Finance who were practically the old pre 1922 civil servants.

And when you consider it, from 1922 to 1959 when Dev retired as Taoiseach for Sean Lemass to take over, he was in power half that time, 1932 - 48, 1957 - 59, eighteen years out of 37 ?? Is it right/fair to blame it ALL on Dev ??

great thread something new.

as far as economy, maybe it was wrong place at wrong time in the sense of the international situation such as already mentioned, ww1 and the 1929 wall street crash and of course the aftermaths of the destruction caused by the civil war, parts of the north east being more industrialised and immigration did not help either.

ironically as many will note the war years such in urban areas like belfast and london brought some boom time. irish farming enjoyed a moderate success in that britian needed our milk and other foods, which one history teacher told me were not always of the best quality.did not help when farmers were still relying on the horse and chart and machinery was a novelty and when the weather was bad it destroyed the years goods. sure is it true that it was not until the 1950's most rural areas had some form of electricity in the home?

what might be worth examining is what was the state of britain and america, germany and france like in those years prior to ww2 like as well, but not such economic in the sense of stocks and shares but the socio economic welfare of their respective states. are their some comparisions to ireland? how many of these states had protectionist tariffs like ireland?

maybe the question could be asked, did protectionist tariffs, as well meaning as they were back then, do more harm than good? one significant aftermath of ww2 was the establishment of the european coal and steel pact between the belnelux countries, germany, france and i think italy. this of course in time abolsihed such tariff's between these countries and would one day ultimately lead to the establishment of the european economic community.

the reason i suggest this is to see if ireland was not the only state unwilling to expand as they way we know irish business is willing to do today.

what needs to be commended about cumann na ngeadheah was that despite the risks of failure, it was brave enough to go ahead with projects like ard na cruasha and the establishment of esb and bord na mona.

the economic war 1932-1938 which was brought about by dev with holding land annuities owed to the british since the land reform acts of parnell / land league time did not help the economic situation with britian as we almost often relied upon them for their ships to transport our goods. but dev been the statesman defying his enemy managed to get the treaty ports back at the expense of a £10 million settlement. one must also remember the treaty also imposed liabilities such as the salary of the governor general - which was an embarrasment (of course that went in 1933ish)

yes, in hindsight dev's idea of ireland was outdated by the 1940's. he was not trusting of industry and his attitude on the women's role in society did not help, did n't married women have to leave their jobs when married. compare that to britain were the war years, the women found a new voice a role as they worked just as hard as the men in the factories.

there is no doubt that dev was a statesman, his domestic policies or that of his cabinet, unless i am mistaking have a lot to be desired. it was not until the like of tk whitaker went into the dept of finace that things got going. it was people like him that had dreamt up alot of the policies used by lemass when he came into power.

did the catholic church butt into too much? not dev ir ff, the mother and child scheme caused an uproar (is it true that is not the actual reason
resigned from governement?)

this post is a little all over the place, and i do not profess to be an expert on economic affairs as the post will show, but maybe it can be used as a foundation for issues to look at by others in this debate.

for my two cents is dev to blame for everything? i dont think so. whether or not it was an excuse, i doubt veterans like padraig pearse, dev, stack, traynor, lemass and co spent a great deal of time putting their economic ideas together to form solid policies during their first years of public service as constitutional and independence from britain dominated most of their young lives.

#15

that statue is ridiously under rated and raely discussed, the impact it had on the new commonwealth was massive for all dominion countries

walrusgumble wrote: »

yes but it was with delegates of south africa (cant think of his name) and irish people such as desmond fitzgerald (garreth's dad) and kevin o'higgins that were the real ball players in the conferenes. it was people such as them that pushed for this to happen. akin to modern day good friday agreement consulations which lead to draft

I would say that the statute is not under-rated at all. I would say that it is OVER-rated by some.
In the context of the commonwealth, the statute was a natural step in the development of the dominions. In the context of Ireland, it was indeed much more important than just an act of parliament. It was the hammer to smash the treaty.

The statute was designed with the whole commonwealth in mind. The Balfour Declaration had declared the equality of all the dominions, equal in status to Britain.
Therefore it was natural that those countries would be able to make their own laws without referring to Britain for permission.

Countries such as Canada, Australia and South Africa had no intention of destroying the link with Britain. They were settled by Britons and they looked back on the motherland with affection. Those countries developed peacefully- Ireland was the contrasting dominion, having had to fight bitterly for the same status that those countries were willingly granted.

So we can see how the statute was nothing exceptional for the other dominions- it merely put into legislation what already existed.

Dev used the declaration and the statute to dismantle the treaty, claiming the equal status of the dominions as allowing him to do so. If Britain were to restrict Irelands equality due to a treaty, then Dev said equality was non-existent. In light of this, Britain could hardly stop Ireland from doing as it pleased under the terms of the statute, or else the other dominions would kick up a major fuss!

In terms of any Irish politician getting credit for the developments of the 1920s/30s, I would consider it vital to consider the role of the dominions during this time also. And luck was a major factor too! Dev was lucky that he came to power just after these developments occurred.


So I wouldn't agree with your comparison to the GFA negotiations- the situation was completely different!

ejmaztec

I don’t like quoting Wikipedia, but the following paragraph sums it up.
“Further, the new political class in the Irish Free State from 1922 was not financially sophisticated, planning instead a social revolution whereby most of the economic population would live on small farms, and not wanting to embrace outside investment in a very serious way. A notable exception was the Ford motor plant in Cork.”
De Valera was THE boss and the buck stopped with him. I mentioned in another post that Irish businessmen with funds overseas weren’t stupid enough to bring their money back. With the attitude of De Valera and his “team”, I’m not surprised they didn’t want to throw money into the Irish economy. I would also surmise, although I’ve seen no details, that it would have been prudent for any sensible businessman to get his liquid funds out of Ireland as soon as he could, before,during and after the upheaval.
I think in general, that Irish business people are more ruthless and demanding than say, their UK counterparts. They have a completely different mind-set and always seem to think that their employees are trying to stitch them up in some way. The mutual trust factor doesn’t seem to exist. I think that there began an aping of the British land-lord/land-agent types, when entrepreneurial Catholics started to build up their wealth in the latter part of the 19th century. They trusted the ordinary folks as much as the British did, and still do.

People say that the whole world was in economic turmoil during the 20s and 30s, so Ireland was no worse than any other country at the time. I believe that things would have been a hell of a lot worse, had there not been significant emigration.

I recently read some notes made by an old man, recounting his family history. During the 20s and 30s, his siblings weren’t old enough to leave home, so they were stuck there in their dingy hovel of a cottage. He mentioned that the local parish priest would ride his horse around the parish to visit his parishioners. On one of these occasions, during the winter, he dropped off at the family home. Once inside, he was so overcome with the level of poverty and the lack of heat, that he was speechless. He took off his overcoat and gave it to them, before riding away in the freezing cold. He hadn’t say a word to anyone inside the house. This is an example of De Valera’s Idyllic Ireland. When the children in the cottage grew up, they not only left home, but like countless others, left the sinking ship behind. I know for a fact that migrants were still sending back funds to their families well into the 1970s. By that time it had become a tradition.

De Valera should have surrounded himself with people who knew how to attract investment, but he didn’t. God only knows what was going on inside his head. One would have expected a man with his intelligence to realise that, with the birth of a new state, anyone with any financial experience, had to come up with something to make sufficient money as soon as was humanly possible, so that Ireland would be self-sustaining, and not have to rely on mass-emigration to survive. I don’t know whether De Valera understood the concept of what poverty does to an entire nation, indeed to an individual. I noticed on the recently available online 1911 Dublin Census that, in his humble abode, he had an illiterate servant girl working for he and his family. I wondered whether De Valera ever tried to teach the servant girl to read or write. It would be very interesting to find this out, to see how concerned he was for the under-dog. He certainly wasn’t hard up, either side of the war of independence, although his diet may have suffered a bit in Wales.

Many people were making money in Ireland, however, keeping the local economy ticking over. Several years ago, I was chatting to some old boy, whose family started a hardware business during the very early 1900s. He was telling me about his skiing trips to Switzerland in the 1930s, and how much he enjoyed himself. After I read about the impoverished family mentioned earlier, I couldn’t help but think that, when this fellah was on the piste, all of these other people were cold and hungry about 5 miles away from his family’s hardware store. I wonder how much of the hardware store’s turnover related to money being sent home by some poor farmer’s children to pay for the upkeep of the farm.

The Ford factory in Cork was a bonus, but I think that Henry was getting back to his roots and helping the auld country. It’s a great pity that Henry wasn’t offered Dev’s job, he would have been well up for lubricating the economic cogs. First Ford factory in Europe, I think, and also the first one to close down.

It seems to be par for the course, where the ones with the ideas, ideals and know-how, never reap the benefits of their labours (e.g. The 1916 executees). The same happened with the fall of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev did all of the work, with a little shove from the West, and who did they end up with? Yeltsin, the singing, dancing pis*head. He didn’t see Russia’s wealth flying out through the back-door! Had he done a proper job, no-one would have heard of Abramovich, because people like Abramovich would not have earned so much money flogging off Russia’s natural resources.

With regard to Ireland, I read somewhere that Michael Collins was dynamic and worldly enough to get off his arse and tout the planet for investment. Unfortunately, after his brains got blown out, he never got the opportunity of proving his earning capacity. Perhaps if he had stayed in bed that day, De Valera might have been the dead hero in some other ambush, and Ireland would now have a population of ten million as no-one would have needed to emigrate. Who knows?

De Valera might not have been running the show all of the time, but he was running the State at the most important time. When he left power, the damage had been done. Many countries that might have been interested in investing, would probably not have had Ireland on their list, because no-one here had been actively involved in pushing for it’s inclusion as an investment area. He should have been working doubly hard, given Ireland’s isolated location at the far edge of Western Europe.

I see that most industrial estates in many towns out in the sticks, seem to have one or two foreign investors in business. A lot of them have been around from at least the 1960s, some longer. It seems quite common, with regard to the American investors, to operate these factories with union involvement outlawed. I think that, when Ireland really got down to trying to lure investment into the country, it was an investor’s market. The only way that they could get these businesses into Ireland was to sacrifice workers’ rights, and also offer over-generous tax-incentives to prospective investors. If, in the early days, Ireland had built up a reputation of having a cost-effective, hard-working, flexible and conscientious workforce, investors would have flocked here regardless of tax incentives.

It’s interesting that the old Iron Curtain countries get a mention, but the fall of communism isn’t the same as what happened in Ireland. The former communist countries had an effective infrastructure, free healthcare, free education systems etc. (Some would say that Ireland hasn’t got any of these three now.) I don’t think that anyone starved, except for those in the gulags and uranium mines. All that those countries needed was a lick of paint and a few hundred surplus factories closed down. It wasn’t very long before investment from the West rolled back in.

Also, taking those countries back to the 20s and 30s, most of them had gained their independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire a couple of years before Ireland became independent of Britain. The pre-WW2 standard of living in those countries was vastly superior to the Ireland of the time. Those countries weren’t short of investment. Czechoslovakia, or the Czech part anyway, was an industrial powerhouse, involved in the manufacture of a multitude of things, cars, trucks, weapons etc etc. Admittedly, they were better placed at the centre of Europe, but they still had a better attitude to commerce. Unfortunately for them all, their economies went into an enforced hibernation after the post WW2 Moscow orchestrated coups.

There is no doubt in my mind that De Valera was responsible for Ireland’s being held back for decades, both socially and economically. Ireland still hasn’t caught up, even now.

eroo

With regard to Ireland, I read somewhere that Michael Collins was dynamic and worldly enough to get off his arse and tout the planet for investment. Unfortunately, after his brains got blown out, he never got the opportunity of proving his earning capacity. Perhaps if he had stayed in bed that day, De Valera might have been the dead hero in some other ambush, and Ireland would now have a population of ten million as no-one would have needed to emigrate. Who knows?

Collins showed he had the ability to manage things financially,but more importantly,he always recognised the need to develop industry while continuing to strengthen agriculture.It is a true shame he was killed,he could have done so much..:(

By the way,ejmaztec,great post!Nice to see such quality and detail!

walrusgumble

ejmaztec wrote: »

I don’t like quoting Wikipedia, but the following paragraph sums it up.
“Further, the new political class in the Irish Free State from 1922 was not financially sophisticated, planning instead a social revolution whereby most of the economic population would live on small farms, and not wanting to embrace outside investment in a very serious way. A notable exception was the Ford motor plant in Cork.”
De Valera was THE boss and the buck stopped with him. I mentioned in another post that Irish businessmen with funds overseas weren’t stupid enough to bring their money back. With the attitude of De Valera and his “team”, I’m not surprised they didn’t want to throw money into the Irish economy. I would also surmise, although I’ve seen no details, that it would have been prudent for any sensible businessman to get his liquid funds out of Ireland as soon as he could, before,during and after the upheaval.
I think in general, that Irish business people are more ruthless and demanding than say, their UK counterparts. They have a completely different mind-set and always seem to think that their employees are trying to stitch them up in some way. The mutual trust factor doesn’t seem to exist. I think that there began an aping of the British land-lord/land-agent types, when entrepreneurial Catholics started to build up their wealth in the latter part of the 19th century. They trusted the ordinary folks as much as the British did, and still do.

People say that the whole world was in economic turmoil during the 20s and 30s, so Ireland was no worse than any other country at the time. I believe that things would have been a hell of a lot worse, had there not been significant emigration.

I recently read some notes made by an old man, recounting his family history. During the 20s and 30s, his siblings weren’t old enough to leave home, so they were stuck there in their dingy hovel of a cottage. He mentioned that the local parish priest would ride his horse around the parish to visit his parishioners. On one of these occasions, during the winter, he dropped off at the family home. Once inside, he was so overcome with the level of poverty and the lack of heat, that he was speechless. He took off his overcoat and gave it to them, before riding away in the freezing cold. He hadn’t say a word to anyone inside the house. This is an example of De Valera’s Idyllic Ireland. When the children in the cottage grew up, they not only left home, but like countless others, left the sinking ship behind. I know for a fact that migrants were still sending back funds to their families well into the 1970s. By that time it had become a tradition.

De Valera should have surrounded himself with people who knew how to attract investment, but he didn’t. God only knows what was going on inside his head. One would have expected a man with his intelligence to realise that, with the birth of a new state, anyone with any financial experience, had to come up with something to make sufficient money as soon as was humanly possible, so that Ireland would be self-sustaining, and not have to rely on mass-emigration to survive. I don’t know whether De Valera understood the concept of what poverty does to an entire nation, indeed to an individual. I noticed on the recently available online 1911 Dublin Census that, in his humble abode, he had an illiterate servant girl working for he and his family. I wondered whether De Valera ever tried to teach the servant girl to read or write. It would be very interesting to find this out, to see how concerned he was for the under-dog. He certainly wasn’t hard up, either side of the war of independence, although his diet may have suffered a bit in Wales.

Many people were making money in Ireland, however, keeping the local economy ticking over. Several years ago, I was chatting to some old boy, whose family started a hardware business during the very early 1900s. He was telling me about his skiing trips to Switzerland in the 1930s, and how much he enjoyed himself. After I read about the impoverished family mentioned earlier, I couldn’t help but think that, when this fellah was on the piste, all of these other people were cold and hungry about 5 miles away from his family’s hardware store. I wonder how much of the hardware store’s turnover related to money being sent home by some poor farmer’s children to pay for the upkeep of the farm.

The Ford factory in Cork was a bonus, but I think that Henry was getting back to his roots and helping the auld country. It’s a great pity that Henry wasn’t offered Dev’s job, he would have been well up for lubricating the economic cogs. First Ford factory in Europe, I think, and also the first one to close down.

It seems to be par for the course, where the ones with the ideas, ideals and know-how, never reap the benefits of their labours (e.g. The 1916 executees). The same happened with the fall of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev did all of the work, with a little shove from the West, and who did they end up with? Yeltsin, the singing, dancing pis*head. He didn’t see Russia’s wealth flying out through the back-door! Had he done a proper job, no-one would have heard of Abramovich, because people like Abramovich would not have earned so much money flogging off Russia’s natural resources.

With regard to Ireland, I read somewhere that Michael Collins was dynamic and worldly enough to get off his arse and tout the planet for investment. Unfortunately, after his brains got blown out, he never got the opportunity of proving his earning capacity. Perhaps if he had stayed in bed that day, De Valera might have been the dead hero in some other ambush, and Ireland would now have a population of ten million as no-one would have needed to emigrate. Who knows?

De Valera might not have been running the show all of the time, but he was running the State at the most important time. When he left power, the damage had been done. Many countries that might have been interested in investing, would probably not have had Ireland on their list, because no-one here had been actively involved in pushing for it’s inclusion as an investment area. He should have been working doubly hard, given Ireland’s isolated location at the far edge of Western Europe.

I see that most industrial estates in many towns out in the sticks, seem to have one or two foreign investors in business. A lot of them have been around from at least the 1960s, some longer. It seems quite common, with regard to the American investors, to operate these factories with union involvement outlawed. I think that, when Ireland really got down to trying to lure investment into the country, it was an investor’s market. The only way that they could get these businesses into Ireland was to sacrifice workers’ rights, and also offer over-generous tax-incentives to prospective investors. If, in the early days, Ireland had built up a reputation of having a cost-effective, hard-working, flexible and conscientious workforce, investors would have flocked here regardless of tax incentives.

It’s interesting that the old Iron Curtain countries get a mention, but the fall of communism isn’t the same as what happened in Ireland. The former communist countries had an effective infrastructure, free healthcare, free education systems etc. (Some would say that Ireland hasn’t got any of these three now.) I don’t think that anyone starved, except for those in the gulags and uranium mines. All that those countries needed was a lick of paint and a few hundred surplus factories closed down. It wasn’t very long before investment from the West rolled back in.

Also, taking those countries back to the 20s and 30s, most of them had gained their independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire a couple of years before Ireland became independent of Britain. The pre-WW2 standard of living in those countries was vastly superior to the Ireland of the time. Those countries weren’t short of investment. Czechoslovakia, or the Czech part anyway, was an industrial powerhouse, involved in the manufacture of a multitude of things, cars, trucks, weapons etc etc. Admittedly, they were better placed at the centre of Europe, but they still had a better attitude to commerce. Unfortunately for them all, their economies went into an enforced hibernation after the post WW2 Moscow orchestrated coups.

There is no doubt in my mind that De Valera was responsible for Ireland’s being held back for decades, both socially and economically. Ireland still hasn’t caught up, even now.

i too strongly believe collins would have been dynamic, and would have turned out to be known as a great politican as he was a military general. during his time in britain in the post office, he rose up the ranks (proving he was not some yob from the country), he had a huge capacity for detail, very hands on, he liked the british people and their attitude to business and would have got on better with them than dev. collins surprised some during his time as finance minister with schemes that brought a fair bit of dosh donated by lenin (maybe some one can discuss this further). he came from a farming background so i doubt he would have plorised himself from the farming community whilst modernising the country.

one can look at some of the postive efforts made by cumann nangaedheal (sp) when they governed ireland in the first 10 years, by completing huge schemes like ard na crusha and the esb, pitty collin's life was cut short, maybe we could have had him as taoiseach/finance/industry and leave dev to the statesman roadshow/president.

kreuzberger

Ireland had an industrial base . Partiton removed it from the souths jurisdiction .

did i imagine there was another page to this thread ?

brianthebard

McArmalite wrote: »

Firstly, can we just try and keep this discussion to economic issues, Dev and the Treaty, Neutrality, Catholic Church laws and the Constitution etc are all important and worthwhile subjects, but let's try and keep the discussion on Dev's economic polices !!!!!
??

Economic policies-as mentioned, in the early days of the new state agricultural goods were of poor quality, but that was gradually improved throughout the twenties. Just when Ireland looked to be making some money from the main industry, Dev effectively kills it off. The wall street crash didn't have the same effect on ireland as other countries, because there wasn't as far to fall tbh. And regardless of world depression, england still wanted our agricultural output. Definitely poorly judged in the extreme. Also it was left to Lemass to set up the IDA in the 1960s, but he had been banging on about that sort of thing for decades.

McArmalite

Probably the most important individuals to formulate and advise on Economic policies for the first few decades of the state was the Dept. of Finance. It consisted effectively of the old Dublin Castle Treasury dept. headed by an English man called Arthur Codling. The bulk of his staff also were English, C Almond, J Lynd, C Gregg. The only person from Ireland who held a position of authority in the dept. was a former Dublin Castle Catholic called Brennan. They were effectively like London civil servants sent to some far flung colony to enjoy the pleasures of office but make sure that britian's interests always came first.

Example, watching a programm on TnaG about neutrality in WW2. As WW2 approached, senior army officers met with the Dept. of Finance ( or old Treasury dept. would be more accurate ) to get increased funds for the army. The reply of the dept. of Finance was basically, not to bother, it wouldn't be worth putting up a struggle in the event of an invasion - serious. The incensed officers then went to Dev and fairplay to Dev on this one, he made the money available.

Then there was also the Compenstaion Fund setup under the terms of the treaty and it's tribunal presided by a Lord Shaw. Apart from the Land Annuities, there was a demand for repayments of british govt. capital in the railways, harbours etc. Where Lord Shaw’s tribunal was concerned, when a claim was made against the Irish side the attitude was "Well, prove you didn’t do it" while claims relating to the actions of the Black and Tans etc were greeted with "Well, prove they did do it" and there was a lot of evidence offered of the sort: "I give you my word as a British Officer that . . ."

In the end the 'Free' State had to raise a loan in order to meet the payments awarded. By 1932 the Compensation Fund was still taking up about 7 per cent of the revenue of the 'Free' State.

Originally the treaty had required the 'Free' State to assume a portion of britain’s National Debt, but this particular claim was not proceeded with after begging letters from Cosgrave and co, warning that 'extreme elements' and such would take advantage of public ressentiment etc. Not of course out of any feeling of sympathy towards the Irish but rather because the British realised that even the best of cows can only deliver so much milk and there was probably more to be extorted in the long term than totally bankrupting it in the present.