It is true that the nationalisation of the Irish railways has in past
years found the keenest advocates amongst individual members of the Home
Rule Party; that the Majority Report of the late Viceregal Commission
favouring State purchase of the Irish railways was formally approved of
by the Parliamentary Party, and that Mr. Redmond has named "transit" as
one of the special matters that should be left to be dealt with by an
Irish Legislature. But there the matter ends. We are not given the
slightest inkling what is proposed to be done on this matter, or how it
will be done, or the slightest proof that under any system of Home Rule,
the financial difficulties of the problem can be solved at all.
The Reports of both the Commissions referred to are based, first on the
continuance of the present system of laws and government, and secondly,
on the use of Imperial credit to the tune of many millions. Yet amongst
the shoals of literature on Home Rule problems and finance, I can find
no enlightenment as to how the transit problem is to be solved under the
new conditions; _i.e._ how any Home Rule Government, whether it has
control of Customs and Excise or not, and however it economises, is to
find the money necessary to buy out the Irish railways and canals. A
Government that is faced with the problems of poverty and congestion, of
housing, of increased educational grants, of afforestation, and of
arterial land drainage, will have an almost impossible task in raising
money for these purposes alone. And, let those who can, inform us how an
Irish Parliament and Executive (with all else they will have in hand),
will be able to raise even the £5,000,000 necessary to improve the Irish
Light Railway System; not to speak of the sum at least tenfold greater
which will be required for a complete purchase scheme.
So far we are without that information. The Irish Parliamentary leaders
have not touched upon the point. The pamphleteers are almost equally
silent. Professor Kettle, in his "Home Rule Finance," mentions the
"Nationalisation of Railways" in one line of print, merely stating that
"the project will have to be financed by loans and not out of annual
revenue" (p. 41); and he further remarks, generally (p. 72), "that for
the development of any future policy, approved by her own people,
Ireland relies absolutely on her own fiscal resources." What fiscal
resources, and under what conditions are they obtainable?
In the volume entitled "Home Rule Problems" issued by the Liberal Home
Rule Committee, with a preface by Viscount Haldane, not one word is said
on the subject, though there are chapters on Irish finance, and on Irish
commercial and industrial conditions. Neither has Mr. Stephen Gwynn a
single word on the subject in his "Case for Home Rule," though he makes
the large assertion that "there is no country in the world where
resources are more undeveloped than those of Ireland."
Mr. Erskine Childers[93] merely refers to the Irish railway problem as
one that is "obvious and urgent," "which no Parliament but an Irish
Parliament can deal with, and which calls aloud for settlement."