FROM THE ARCHIVES:The hydroelectric station on the Shannon at Ardnacrusha was the major infrastructural project of the first decade of Independence but was seen by some as a grandiose waste of money, as this letter to the Editor exemplified.
Sir, – The evident intention of the Government to pledge the credit of our young and financially embarrassed State to supply £8,000,000 for an admittedly speculative proposal must not be allowed to pass unchallenged . . .
It is the clear duty of the business community, and of the citizens generally, to present an organised opposition to such stampeding tactics. It is at least a remarkable fact that all our Irish engineers and engineering societies who have spoken are unanimous in their condemnation of the Siemens scheme. The suggestion that their unanimous opposition springs from professional self-interest or incompetence, will not bear examination.
Let us remember that, with the Shannon as open to them as the Liffey, at least three groups of Irish engineers advised independently that development should begin with the Liffey and that the harnessing of the Shannon should follow. That fact alone should weigh heavily with the members of the Dail and the Senate.
The particular issue I wish to raise is whether we are going to allow national capital which is urgently required for housing, road improvement, harbour development and arterial drainage to be diverted to force a risky enterprise which, in any event, would be more efficiently established upon commercial lines with necessary State supervision?
Such an hypothecation of public money and national credit at this moment would be an act of extreme folly . . .
The proposal is so alarming, and its discussion so spasmodic and ill-informed, as to suggest that even the obvious requires to be argued. When the scheme was originally outlined it was suggested that the finance, as well as the machinery, would be supplied by Siemens-Schuckert.
Now we know that Irish taxpayers are to find all the money and take all the risk, while Messrs. Siemens simply retire with their profits . . . other vitally urgent problems must remain unsolved for lack of money.
Organised labour is to be harnessed to the Siemens chariot by statements such as President Cosgrave’s that 15,000 or 20,000 men would receive employment for many years. Now we are told by Siemens themselves that only 3,000 men will be employed for three years.
In other words, something like one-sixth of the £5,200,000 required for the first instalment of the work will reach the pockets of Irish wage-earners as against five- sixths of the same expenditure if devoted to rebuilding our roads – a much more urgent and profitable national undertaking than scattering thousands of miles of overhead cables over agricultural areas where electricity for many years must at best remain the luxury of the few. – Yours etc.,
John Irwin
Newbrook Paper Mills,
Rathfarnham.