DÁIL IN COMMITTEE. - O'CONNELL STREET MEETING.
With regard to the O'Connell Street meeting, it is not, up to the present at any rate, the policy of the Government to interfere with or to stop any such meetings, and there was no authority, at any rate as far as the higher responsible officers of the Army or the responsible members of the Government are concerned, for the stopping or interfering with the meeting in O'Connell Street on Sunday week. The matter is the subject of a military inquiry, and while it might be reasonably pressed that a military enquiry into the action that had taken place, say ten days ago, might very well have been finished now, the position apparently is that it is not. But all our officers and all our men, I take it you will appreciate, are very hard worked. The result of that military inquiry, as has been stated, will be made public, and it would be inadvisable for me to refer further to the matter. As far as the general question of discipline is concerned and the complaints that have been made about some parts of the country, at any rate, of officers adopting a defiant attitude towards members of the public, we have gone through a very strenuous and a very serious six months of it, and if the army were not fundamentally a disciplined army, it could not have done the things it has done, and where individual cases of indiscipline or of wanton interference with members of the public, and with private and public property, are brought to notice, suitable action is invariably taken. I would ask the Deputies who have complaints to make with regard to indisciplined action on behalf of army officers, or any men under any circumstances, to state these complaints clearly and simply, and pass them to the proper quarters, so that we may deal with these particular incidents, and that we may be able to keep proper control ourselves, and set up where it is necessary a proper headline as to what we want in the line of discipline in the army. Generally these incidents, when they occur, create friction, and that friction is passed round, and we talk more of the things that irritate us than of the things that pass smoothly all round us, without perhaps knowing they do pass. But there may be from any particular district a volume of complaint in regard to indiscipline in the Army. We could not have done our work if we were not a disciplined body. With regard to the Vote for wages for civilians attached to units, there are a large number of civilians employed attached to the Army. I have not got the figures by me now, but I think the figures are available of those who are not soldiers, and who have not been brought into the Army in the way mentioned, and that Vote is to cover the pay of these civilians. With regard to what is called making civilians put on uniform, there have been cases in which it has been necessary for us to arrange that certain classes of work on which the Army is, to a large extent, dependent, and which it must have completely under its control, be transferred to military control, and done by soldiers. In certain cases, such as in the work of repairing and maintaining our Transport, we have had to put it up to the men, civilians who were employed by us on that work, that it was necessary, in the interests of the Army to have that work completely in the hands of soldiers, and we gave them, rather than paying them off, the option of joining the Army, and quite a number of them elected to do so. With regard to the question of the general cost of the army and the squandering of money, or rather the waste of money in many cases, we have an army of practically 30,000 men and the net Estimate is £7,245,000, and that means that the cost per head of the Army is approximately £241, and I feel if I am not going to come before the Dáil later for a Supplementary Estimate, some time or other towards the end of the year, that there cannot have been much waste, considering that we have not the same control over administration as we would have if we were properly fixed up in barracks, and if we were in a period of training rather than a period of war. There are many things a person responsible for the Army might like to say. A person somewhat proud of its work during the last six months, up against the great difficulties it was up against, might like to say things that the men of the Army deserve should be said of them in speaking of the Army Estimates here. They have passed successfully through a very difficult military situation. Some more cleaning up requires to be done in some areas, but as far as the Treaty position in the country is concerned the Treaty position has been saved. Our men have been brought from their homes and with very little previous military organisation on through lines, back in May and June last, had to organise the whole system of supplies and their whole transport system. We have set up on I believe sound lines an Air Service. We have had to develop the Paying and Accounting services. When we found in Cork a difficult economic situation arising from the situation in the country, as a result of the number of railway employees out of work—there was something like 1,200 of them who were not in receipt of any unemployment benefit or other payments of any kind—we put it up to the Government that we could organise a Railway Maintenance and Protection Corps, and we have done it, and we probably saved the Government some money in the matter of compensation. At any rate I believe we have relieved a very pressing economic situation in the South. A large number of railway employees were taken into the Corps, and the work within a few weeks was such that we had to send back a number of them to the railway to carry out ordinary railway work, as a result of the opening up we had done. There are some parts of the country at the present moment without railway facilities, but we hope that the country will not be very long in that particular state. Our men have built armoured trains, taken ordinary motor lorries we used on the road and fitted them up for railway transport, and generally succeeded in organising that Department in a way we are very proud of. We have taken over the barracks from the British here in the meantime. At the present moment we are engaged in the process of re-organising the Army, that is, in crystallizing it into definite military formation in many parts of the country. We will be very well prepared when the time comes to deal with the complete re-organisation of the Army. We have got a Pay Commission working that will clear up many of the anomalies in pay and allowances, and the general conditions under which men work in the Army at present. A Commission has just finished going into the question of wound pensions and allowances in respect of men who have been killed or wounded in the present struggle, or in the past struggle with the British.