Politics & Power Quote by Eamon de Valera

De Valera is doing something more pointed than blaming “foreign imports” for joblessness: he’s casting unemployment as a political choice disguised as an economic fate. The first sentence frames the problem as leakage. Money that could circulate inside Ireland - paying wages, building factories, stabilizing rural life - is instead flowing outward through imported goods, with Britain named first not just as a trade partner but as the old imperial shadow that still shapes Irish dependency. It’s an argument about sovereignty after sovereignty: formal independence means little if the shop shelf is still stocked by the former metropole.

The second sentence is the real blade. “The Government haven’t used the powers which they have” doesn’t merely accuse leaders of incompetence; it implies they are refusing to govern in the fullest sense. De Valera’s subtext is that the state already possesses tools - tariffs, procurement rules, industrial policy, restrictions on imports - but lacks the nerve or ideology to deploy them for “the benefit of the country.” That phrase is doing quiet rhetorical work: it sets up a moral contrast between national welfare and a governing class that, by inaction, serves other interests (British commerce, domestic elites, the comfort of orthodoxy).

Context matters: this is the language of a post-colonial nation trying to industrialize under pressure, with bitter memories of economic subordination and a public hungry for tangible dividends from independence. De Valera’s intent is mobilizing and accusatory: if unemployment persists, don’t treat it as weather. Treat it as policy - and replace the people making it.