The next Estimate is in connection with the Criminal Investigation Department, and it amounts to £19,916. I move that Estimate.
DAIL IN COMMITTEE. ESTIMATES. - CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT.
Will the President give us some idea of the number of men included in this Department; whether they are confined in their activities to Dublin, or do they range all over the country? I think we should have more information on the subject beyond the mere statement of the cost. I would ask the President to enlarge upon this Vote before discussing it.
The Criminal Investigation Department is responsible to the Ministry for Home Affairs. It consists at present of about 100 men. This gives really no proper conception of the effective force for their proper duties, because in the existing conditions a very strong house guard has to be kept, and there are really only about thirty or forty men available for the duties proper to the institution. The scale of salaries is as follows:—It starts with the Director, who is allowed a sum of £250 per annum, unpensionable, because that officer is merely seconded from a position in the Postal Service, and it is the Postal Department that is responsible for his substantive salary. In addition to that salary he receives, while acting as Director of the C.I.D., a sum of £250 per annum, which is not assessable for pension. The Chief Superintendent is paid at the rate of £400 per annum. Superintendents receive £5 15s. per week. The Inspector of Transport receives £5 5s. per week, the Station Inspector £5 5s., ordinary Inspectors £5, Assistant Inspectors £4 15s., and the ordinary rank and file of detective officers £4 10s. The rates are in excess of those for the D.M.P. and Civic Guard, but each of these forces is provided with uniform free and a boot allowance, which is not provided for members of the C.I.D. In addition, of course, there is the difference that from the very nature of their work the risks taken by members of the C.I.D. are somewhat greater than the risks which the D.M.P. or the Civic Guard are subjected to. The allowances include a rental allowance of £30 per annum for each married man who is not accommodated in the official quarters. The actual travelling expenses and subsistence rates similar to those granted to the D.M.P. and the Civic Guard, are allowed. Then there are fuel and light expenses for their headquarters at Oriel House, and certain incidental expenses, for newspapers and postal and telegraph expenses. They do not range all over the country, though there is nothing definitely embodied in the objects of the institution that would prevent that. But as a fact they operate in the Metropolitan area, and only on very rare occasions are they sent out to the Co. Dublin. It is not usual, and it has not been done, to send them out generally through the country. The question of the necessity of branches through the country has not yet been seriously considered.
I would like the Minister to inform the Dáil whether his attention has been drawn to the case that was reported in the newspapers the other day, showing the conduct of the Director of this Department towards the Police Magistrate, Mr. Lupton. It showed a distinct want of understanding of his position as Head of the Criminal Investigation Department. He committed the grossest contempt of Court, which was by no means a good example to the members of this force. I think it is desirable that we should know that the Minister has taken due notice of the conduct of Captain Moynihan in the Court, and let him understand that the position of police officer, whether of this particular department or any other, is one to give assistance in the administration of justice; and that the magistrate or judge, whoever might be in charge of the court, ought to have at least an amount of respect and accordance with the rules of evidence and the direction of the court from him as from any other member of the public. I think it is necessary for the reassurance of the public that we should know that the Minister frowned upon the conduct of the Head of this department in that instance, and that there should be no encouragement given to police officers, whether of the Criminal Investigation Department or other force, that they can flout magistrates.
Although the Minister has thrown a little light on those offices and officers he has not, I think, thrown enough. I do not want to seem in any way to be making anything like a personal attack on this particular officer mentioned, but I think the part of the complaint which Deputy Johnson has been very justly making arises out of the fact that there are a number of military officers who have been used rather through the military side of the Force connected with this Department than through the civil side. The Department was set up as a military establishment at first, but there have been reforms and very effective reforms since then. I know too that there is a scarcity of a certain class of man, both in the Army and Police Force, but I think it is a bad practice, a very bad practice indeed, that a Staff Officer—I understand Captain Moynihan is a Staff Captain— should be subject, to military discipline on the one side, and as Director of the Criminal Investigation Department in some measure to the control of the Ministry for Home Affairs. He is also occupying the position, I may be mistaken, which I think is ordinarily a civil officer's position, and he directs the ordinary investigation. No doubt it is a detective institution, but it is a civil detective section of the Post Office. The Minister has explained that his salary comes from that. I think it is a very bad practice in the first place that military officers should be put on these jobs. It may be that this Officer has particular qualifications for the occupancy of the three posts. There may be a connection, but I do not exactly see the connection, between the military and the Post Office and ordinary detective or police duties. On another aspect of it I would like some kind of assurance, and that is that we are not going to have in the C.I.D. a kind of Irish parallel of Scotland Yard. The Minister has said that ordinarily the job of these men does not range over the whole country, although in some cases they have carried out activities in various parts of the country; that at present they are a Metropolitan force, and that other branches may be established in other parts of the country. I want the Minister to tell us whether this is going to be a separate establishment. I do not mean whether it is going to be under another Ministry, but whether it is going to be a separate establishment, and not simply part of an ordinary national or local police force, because I think there is very grave danger that it is simply going to be a kind of detective caste, and that there is very grave danger of it developing in a way that will not tend to the promotion of the better relations that ought to exist between an ordinary police force whether as a detective division or not, and the general body of the people. I would like him to throw a good deal more light on the activities of these officers, and particularly to tell use exactly what is the relationship, or what is the measure of control which he, as the Minister for Home Affairs, exercises, not only over this particular military officer, but over other military officers who I think are also on the job.
Looking over this list I think it is very meagre to devote only £19,000, for such, an important department as the Criminal Investigation Department at a time when the country is reeking with crime. I was surprised to hear the Minister for Home Affairs stating that the Government had not seriously considered yet the question of extending this department to other parts of the country. I think the Government should have considered it very seriously long ago, considering the numerous thefts that are taking place all over the country, and the amount of property that has been looted all over the country, and which it will take the Government all its time to gather in. In County Cork, for instance, £2,000,000 of public money would not replace the amount of property looted. How do you hope to get that in except through such an agency as the Criminal Investigation Department? We cannot possibly raise a huge Army at once, and equip it and make it the thorough machine we would like to see it. We cannot possibly protect the homes of every individual, and while the people realise their responsibilities, and while they are anxious to assist this Government, and the Government's machinery to function, at the same time they must be pretty wary while men are going around with guns threatening their lives if they give information to the enemy forces, as they are called. Surely, we must realise that the Criminal Investigation Department is absolutely necessary. I hold it is necessary, and I hold it is money well spent in the interests of the State. Every State has a Criminal Investigation Department even under normal conditions. Here we are with a paltry £19,000, while millions' worth of public property is being plundered and looted.
As the Minister has stated the future of this Department is not yet defined. Might I ask him if he has given any consideration to the proposals that we made some time ago, that all these police departments should be under one head, i.e., the D.M.P. and the old R.I.C. should be assimilated. Would he not consider the question of assimilating the D.M.P. and the Civic Guards and the Criminal Investigation Department, so as to have them all under one head, and have no overlapping?
In that connection I notice that the Minister stated, what seemed to me a very curious fact, that whereas there were about 100 men at Oriel House in connection with the C.I.D., only about 30 of them were available for actual work, because the other 70 were guarding the headquarters of the C.I.D. It seems to me a rather disproportionate allowance in an organisation of the kind that there should be 70 per cent. guarding the headquarters and only 30 per cent. actually engaged in active criminal investigation. I think that may very easily be prevented by such a gathering in as Deputy William O'Brien has referred to, and I do urge, not that there should be a diminution of the staff, but that there should be an extension of the work of this Department, and that Deputy Hennessy's point was very well made out. I think that they might be otherwise housed. There are other quarters in Dublin that have to be protected and are being protected, where the whole C.I.D. might be housed, so that the whole body might be available for the work in which they should be chiefly engaged, instead of 7-10ths of them guarding the house while 3-10ths are doing the work. I desire also quite briefly to stress the point which Deputy Johnson has brought before this Dáil. It has been brought before me by a number of constituents, who have felt very strongly about the attitude adopted by this detective officer in the Police Courts. For what purpose are the C.I.D. employed, except to bring to book the people in this country whose course of action is a continual contempt of the Courts of Law of this country, and it ill behoves a police officer engaged in such work to give an example of contempt such as was undoubtedly given by this Captain in Mr. Lupton's Court the other day.
Nothing has been said, either by Deputy Johnson or by Deputy Figgis, with regard to that particular incident with which I am not in agreement. It was inexcusable contempt of a person whose official position should put him beyond the reach of such contempt, more particularly beyond the reach of such contempt from a police officer of the State. A suitable reprimand and admonition were delivered on that occassion. Now, the Director of the Criminal Investigation Department is not a military man. His rank and his title of captain I have never inquired into. I take it that it is an honorary title, perhaps because of his connection in the past with, or his services to, the Intelligence Branch of the Army. He has no dual responsibility; he is responsible only to the Home Affairs Department, and no other department is in a position to give any instructions to him. Deputy Hennessy suggested that we should long since have established a group of Oriel Houses through the country. I do not agree with that and when he spoke of Cork it seemed to me that the proposition there was essentially a military proposition, and that to a large extent the crime there arose from a military situation, and was part and parcel of the armed sabotage that is taking place in the country, which the Army must deal with. When the Army has dealt with it I am satisfied that there will be a very considerable decrease, if not a complete disappearance, of that kind of crime.
On a point of personal explanation, I do not think that the Army was expected to protect owners of property.
In answer to a question some months ago, I informed the Deputy that any information as to the whereabouts of stolen property, if sent to the Army authorities, would be dealt with, and that the Army authorities were prepared to recover looted property in any case where information was placed at their disposal. But if you try to visualise Oriel House establishments or Oriel House branches through the country, you would find that these men would simply be, from the very nature of the case, made part and parcel of the Army, and part and parcel of the military situation. If you establish them in a building the building must be put in a state of siege. Certainly, in Cork, and, no doubt, in many other counties, these buildings would be liable to be attacked, and the men who would be sent out through the country on that particular kind of work of recovering or seeking to recover plundered goods or looted property would go out just in the position of a member of the National Army and would have no more freedom of movement, but probably a good deal less, because of their isolation, and because of the smallness of their organisation, than members of the National Army. I am not at all convinced that it would have been in any way wise or desirable to attempt to establish branches of that particular institution through the country up to the present, and there would have been, of course, a factor and a very serious factor in the situation, the difficulty of control and the lack of contact. Could we answer for the acts of men whom we would send out through the country as our armed servants? Could we answer for them in Cork County, or in Waterford or anywhere else? It seems to me that the armed men we use ought to be in an organisation like the National Army that would be subject to control, and subject to discipline and the Dáil knows and the people know that even in that state of affairs it is difficult to establish all the control and all the discipline that would be desirable. But to send a dozen or twenty men and simply to fling them out through the country and set them in a building and to call that a branch of Oriel House and then to ask us here to answer for all their acts is obviously impossible. Later on, when we see just what kind of situation emerges from all this welter, it may be time enough to consider whether it would be necessary to have here and there through the country, in the larger towns, branches of that institution. No one wants to develop a detective caste, but if we have in this country organised crime, and if crime continues to arm itself to an alarming extent to the life and peace of the community, and the country at large, then it is obvious that this kind of organised armed crime cannot be dealt with simply by an unarmed police who will be performing the ordinary duties of peace officers. It is simply a question that will have to be faced in the future, but, as I say, we are waiting to see to what extent the seed sown in the last year flourished or to what extent they die. We all know that a lot of very evil seed has been sown since last December; it may not all perish with the military defeat of the people who sowed it, and we will have to face and deal with whatever situation emerges after the immediate military proposition has passed.
Sul a chuirfear na meastacháin seo i bhfeidhm tá súil agam go ndéanfaidh an t-oifigeach seo athrú agus ceartú ar na `cartaí cuairte' a bhionns aige: Ar na chartaí seo deir sé go bhfuil sé i n-a Staff-Captain i n-Árd-Cheannas an Airm, i n-a Stiurtheóir ar Thigh Oriel agus i n-a Fhear Ceannais san Roinn Infhiuchta i n-Oifig an Phuist.
I hope that Captain Moynihan, if he does not occupy and does not hold a position in the Army, will change the wording on his visiting card. He describes himself as "Staff Captain, G.H.Q.; Director C.I.D., Oriel House," and whatever his official title is at the moment.
All on the one card.
Motion made and question put: "That the Dáil in Committee, having considered the Estimate for Criminal Investigation Department, in 1922-23, and having passed a Vote on Account of £10,305 for the period to the 6th December, 1922, recommend that the full estimate of £19,916 for the financial year 1922-23 be adopted in due course by the Oireachtas."
Agreed.