702.0641D/11
The Chargé in the Irish Free State ( Denby ) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 2.]
Sir: I have the honor to refer to the Department’s instruction No. 278 of March 20, 1934, regarding the payment, by consular officers stationed in the Irish Free State, of the road tax for motor vehicles and the drivers’ license tax.
Diplomatic officers stationed in the Irish Free State are exempt from the payment of the above taxes but the Department of External Affairs has consistently refused to extend the same privilege to consular officers. The position taken by the Department of External Affairs is that the privileges extended consular officers here already are more extensive than those extended in most other countries. The Department of External Affairs points out, for instance, that foreign consular officers stationed in the Free State are accorded the privilege of importing duty free anything they desire for their own use not only on their first arrival but throughout their period of duty. This includes the privilege of importing gasoline without payment of the high current duty of approximately sixteen cents per gallon.
The road tax for motor vehicles here, as in Great Britain, amounts to one pound sterling per horse power per year which undoubtedly adds greatly, for consular officers and others who pay the tax, to the cost of maintaining automobiles in the Free State. On a 24 horse power Ford car, for example, the tax would be £24 a year. The Legation is informed that Consul B. M. Hulley of the American Consulate General in Dublin has had to put his car into dead storage as a measure of economy and that Mr. Leslie Woods, the American Consul in Cork, for the time being is without any at all, for reasons of economy.
On receipt of the Department’s instruction, the Legation, on April 7, 1934, again took up the question with the appropriate official of [Page 999] the Department of External Affairs and pressed for relief for American consular officers from this heavy tax—which has no equivalent in the United States. The Legation was informed however that there had been no change in the matter since it was broached before; that President de Valera himself had decided that it did not seem feasible to afford relief for the calendar year 1934; and that the whole question of diplomatic and consular immunities was being intensively examined by the competent Free State authorities with a view to seeing what adjustments could be made and what relief could be granted—on the basis of reciprocity and in harmony with tax conditions in other countries. This statement, of course, may have been made in good faith with a sincere desire to help foreign consular officers in the Free State and on the other hand it may be a way of gaining time and postponing a final reply in the negative.
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As to the French Consul in Dublin the situation is as follows: A French Consul is attached to the French Legation here. He is granted exemption from the tax on the ground of his diplomatic status as a member of the staff of the French Minister. There was a French Consulate in Dublin until the French Legation was established and the Consulate was thereupon abolished.
The other consuls either pay the tax or do not own cars.
The Legation believes that the French solution of the difficulty, as outlined above, is not without merit. If the Department were to find it possible to attach American Consular Officers in Dublin to the staff of the Chief of the Mission and so make them a part of the diplomatic mission here there should be no trouble in obtaining from the Free State Government the immunities desired.
Respectfully yours,