IRISH FREE STATE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4744, 29 August 1924, Page 1

IRISH FREE STATE.

GERMAN FINANCIAL HOLD.

INDUSTRIAL PENETRATION. The German contractors who have been carrying out a survey of the water-power resources of Ireland have handed their report to the Free State Government (jstates a special correspondent of the London “Morning Post"). The report takes into consideration not only the rivers flowing into the Free State territory, but the waters of Northern Ireland, and Messrs Siemens are understood to have tabled comprehensive proposals for the electrification of the whole of Ireland. From the start of these curious German-Irish negotiations the Free State Government has hud in mind the hope of using .the scheme as an inducement to Ulster to come into the Free State, and it seems that Mr Cosgrave hopes to offer Belfast electric power at half-nothing a unit if only it will change its allegiance from Britain to an Ireland penetrated with German influence. If Messrs Siemens’ scheme is adopted for the Twenty-Six County area an expenditure of over two million pounds will be involved. Private Irish enterprise will not put up the money. The Government itjself is hard enough pressed for money .with which to pay its mighty armies.of jobbers, its ornamental consuls and ambassadors. Hence it would seem all but certain that Siemens will get the job for which they are being paid to tender. This will give to German finance and industry a hold of Irish power resources which will constitute nineparts of industrial conquest. In any case, the scheme is bound to cause an enormous influx of German engineers and operatives.

Increasing anxiety is felt in Ireland at the growth of foreign influence m our economic affairs. The Free State is fast moving towards bankruptcy. The latest figures ishow that at the present rate we are importing goods to th.> value of about twenty millions a year more than we export; an appalling figure of which the significance seems but dimly to be realised. The number of bankruptcies has increased to something like double that for the preceding year, The cost of living is not going down. The upshot of this state of affairs may well be financial conquest by wideawake German investors, who would apply intelligent methods to the exploitation of resoutces which we ourselves have used so badly. Those of us who view such a prospect with dismay, and have no wish to see the pleasant valleys of this land filled with cosmopolitan adventurers, mines and minerals, and power stations working to make Germans rich, wonder whether any attention is given in England tb these tendencies, and whether British capital has tibandbned us.

To withdraw British forces from Southern Ireland and leave the tribes to their internecine strife was one thing. Was the economic capture of this once-Britfeh territory by Continental exploiters contemplated ?