Did Dev write off the National debt?

[shmuck]

Did De Valera at one stage write off the national debt? I can't seem to find out any historical documents reports that say he did but I was told by a politician that he did? was he talking Bollocks? anyone know? thanks.

[seabhcan]

Did De Valera at one stage write off the national debt? I can't seem to find out any historical documents reports that say he did but I was told by a politician that he did? was he talking Bollocks? anyone know? thanks.

Dev refused to pay the land annuities to Britain. Britain imposed what today would be called "sanctions", destroying the Irish economy and plunging the country into poverty. A few years later we paid up anyway.

[White Horse]

Did De Valera at one stage write off the national debt? I can't seem to find out any historical documents reports that say he did but I was told by a politician that he did? was he talking Bollocks? anyone know? thanks.

DeValera reneged on the land annuities payable to the British government. This caused the Economic War that almost brought the Famine back to Ireland.

It was a disaster that took Ireland 30 year to recover from.


Irish Land Commission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Defeated Romanticist]

I don't think that was public debt. De Valera's economic war made it possible for us to be neutral during WWII. Let me see was an economic war and some temporary pain worth not having Dublin and Cork incinerated?

Toughie that.

[shmuck]

Thank you.

[shmuck]

Well de Valera disagreed with you.

Under the terms of the treaty, the Free State was absolved of any liability for the UK's public debt. But was still obliged to pay the land annuities of 250k per annum for 60 years.

De Valera took it into his head that the land annuities were actuallly public debt after all, regardless of the fact the original loans were to enable the private purchase of land by tenant farmers.

In the end of course Dev saw sense and ponied up a lump sum of 10 million, or the equivalent of 40 years work of payments. Seeing as the annuities had already been paid for 10 of the 60 years, and the interest foregone on the lump sum would account for another few years, Dev pretty much ruined the country for a pittance. Math obviously wasn't his strong suit.

Nothing to do with an illegal occupation of a foreign land by the british gov bankers who raped this country for 800yrs. and continue to do so.Oh No all Dev's fault

[nuj]

Math obviously wasn't his strong suit.

Actually it was, which makes it even more puzzling.

Maybe the original question was related to the tangled ownership structure of the Irish Press, where individual subscriptions towards the paper's founding were appropriated/written off into a shadowy US corporation controlled by de Valera, with a PO Box number in Grand Central Station as its registered address.

[nuj]

Nothing to do with an illegal occupation of a foreign land by the british gov bankers who raped this country for 800yrs. and continue to do so.Oh No all Dev's fault

The "British" means English, Welsh and Scottish. The Scottish Act of Union was in 1707. You do mean "English" don't you?

[Rocky]

I don't think that was public debt. De Valera's economic war made it possible for us to be neutral during WWII. Let me see was an economic war and some temporary pain worth not having Dublin and Cork incinerated?

Toughie that.

Yeah and in 1932 Dev looked into his Crystal Ball and saw WWII coming and the British being dump enough to elect a PM as bad at Foreign Politics as Chamberlain.

[lebowskilite]

Nothing to do with an illegal occupation of a foreign land by the british gov bankers who raped this country for 800yrs. and continue to do so.Oh No all Dev's fault

Show me an 800 year-old bank...

Also, no one said it was all Dev's fault. But that £10m? Yeh, I'd say he should take quite a chunk of responsibility for that.