Edition Bobbett2. Speeches and statements by Elizabeth F. Bobbett

1953 Rathdrum, By-election Meeting

Source: Wicklow People, 16.05.1953

Miss Bobbert said that while the Fine Gael Party had kindly offered her the use of their lorry and loud speaker, she told them that it was seventeen years since she addressed her first public meeting in Rathdrum from a pig cart and she would prefer to address that meeting to-day from a farmer’s cart also kindly offered. She assured them that she was going forward as an Independent candidate, with no allegiance to any party, and would vote according to her conscience, if not directed on the matter by her constituency committee. She said she would delay them only a few minutes as the other party must have little regard for farmers to keep them so long with a meeting. She would just like to remind her listeners that while the Fine Gael speakers had referred to the Central Bank and the high interest rates now charged, and the fact of our money being invested in England, that it was the Fine Gael Government that passed the 1927 Currency Act which tied this country more closely to the Bank of England. Our Governments had no control over the Bank rate as it was governed by the Bank of England. She believed that the control of the credit of the country should be under our parliament and used for the benefit of the nation to develop the country. Agriculture was the greatest wealth producing industry in the country. They are told of the wealth brought into the country by the tourists, but she felt that if the farmers had not provided the food for them to enjoy and the money to purchase our imports of other items, there would not be so many tourists. They had listened to the praiseworthy efforts to give County Wicklow the advantages of the Land Rehabilitation Scheme and drainage, but she was sorry to say that if in West Wicklow much land had been rehabilitated by these schemes, here in East Wicklow there was very little done by the Department. She had been waiting ever since the first day the scheme was published to get some drainage done, but was told that the machinery was too large for the work in County Wicklow, and that the few units they had had in Wicklow had gone to the midlands to work there. She made a special appeal to the women to give her their No. 1 vote, as they had no one to represent them in the Dail. The few women who are there are tied to either of the Parties. She assured them that if they placed the heavy responsibility on her of fighting the cause of rural Ireland in the Dail, she would do her best for them as she had done for the past seventeen years throughout the county.