Government to borrow £10m to plug revenue gap as cost of living crisis creates hardship

Dublin, 15 December 1922 – The Government of the Irish Free State is to borrow £10m in order to bridge the gap between its expenditure and revenue.

This huge sum, the President of Dáil Éireann, W.T. Cosgrave, told the Dáil, was directly related to the current conditions of unrest in the country. Were the situation different, he remarked, the level of borrowing would be very little.

The government’s expenditure for the year ending March 1923 is expected to be in the region of £38m, while the amount of income will be around £27m. The excess of outgoings is likely to continue for some time, Mr Cosgrave said, as the government will need to find large amounts of money to pay out in compensation.

The Labour Party leader, Thomas Johnson, took exception to the reference in the legislation to the Bank of Ireland as the institution which will advance the Ministry for Finance credit, saying it was very undesirable to single out any specific bank.

British Pathé footage from 1922 of the fighting and destruction in Dublin

The financial challenges facing the country are echoed in those being faced by its citizens. Marie Johnson, political activist and wife of the Labour leader, gave evidence to the Prices Commission and suggested that some effort should be made to reduce the price of milk in view of the prevailing poverty and the necessity of pure milk for young children.

A man named Patrick Doran presented the commission with evidence that the price of flour, coal, butter, porter, milk and tobacco were higher in his neighbourhood of Ringsend than in Rathmines. He attributed this to Ringsend being a working class district and to the credit system.

In related news the Free State government has expressed its intention to set up a commission on unemployment to get to the root of the problem and to coordinate the various organisations that tackle these issues, including St Vincent de Paul and the White Cross.

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]