DÁIL IN COMMITTEE. - CONTRACTS.
With regard to contracts, there has been a considerable volume of criticism with regard to what has been done and what has not been done with contracts, and if Deputy Johnson says we have pleaded guilty and said that we are going to behave better there may be something in it, but it is hardly a fair way of putting the case or stating the situation. There is no necessity to go back to, say, May, June or July last, and to try and visualise from the inside and from the point of view of people who were responsible for holding the Army together, making an Army, administering it, sending it in not very perfect military formation on duty into the country, because you could not utilise your men in perfect military formation even if you could get them into perfect military formation. You had to scatter them here and there in so-called barracks at a time when communication over a large part of the country was very broken. You could not sit down in Dublin and make a contract for tea, and guarantee that Major General Dalton would get his 5 lbs. per week for his twenty men in Inchigeela. You had to get your provisions where you could in the country, and in many cases contracts were entered into with those people who were actively working against us twelve months ago, and who because of their better business standing were able to make such offers with regard to materials as to be able to get a contract over people who might very well be expecting that when there would be a National Army it would deal with them. We are gradually getting our administration, from that point of view, in order. I doubt if in any place, or in many places, we are paying 100 per cent more than the British people paid for meat. Our prices in many parts of the country are 8d. per lb. for beef and for mutton about 1s. Down in the Curragh we have undertaken an experiment in carrying out our own killing, and the prices there worked out at 8¼d for beef and 1s. 1d. for mutton. With regard to the various other commodities that we are using, we are gradually adopting the contract system, and I think it was at my request that the Government has set up a Contract Board to help us out in the matter, and to give us, so far as we are concerned, advice in the matter of seeking and dealing with contracts, because, perhaps, with the inexperience we have in those matters in the Army, we are not likely to be satisfied to depend upon ourselves. There has been talk of abuses and of local Jewish contractors. When we were working in a time when we could not undertake or could not make contracts, and when perhaps it would be a long time ahead before we could do our business in the usual businesslike manner well, we had the services of men who might to-day be called Jewish contractors. There has been talk of waste of ammunition and check of ammunition. Well, now, that is another matter of administration, and I hope it will be understood that we have to some extent, at any rate, been aware that we have thrown out an Army to protect the lives and the property of the people of this country. and that we are quite alive to many different directions in which you may introduce checks and in which you may perfect your administration.