I beg to move the following motion:—
That, recognising that the unwitnessed codicil to the Will of the late Sir Hugh Lane directing a certain collection of pictures belonging to him to be given to the Municipal Gallery of Dublin is the clearest proof that can be ascertained of the owner's wishes for the disposal of the pictures after the owner's death, Dáil Eireann earnestly desires that full and just effect be given to the said collection.
This may, in the language of lawyers, be interpreted as being understood to be an agreed motion. I feel that in a matter of this kind it is desirable that an agreement should have been reached in order to show the substantial agreement that does exist in the main object to be achieved, and that is getting the Lane Pictures back again. The actual drafting was undertaken by the Minister for Education, and I have accepted the drafting from him. I would like to make that clear, because if anyone were to ask me exactly how one ascertains the clearest proof, or what distinction there was between the "full and just effect," I would have to refer the questioner to the Minister for Education. I accept this resolution that has been drafted by him. I have dealt with the case previously, and I have nothing to add to that except to leave the matter before the Dáil. Before doing so I want to make one matter perfectly clear. It is just to myself that I should make this quite clear. It is, that while for the purpose to be achieved I accept the wording that the Minister has proposed, I am not to be taken as accepting it for the reason that he has suggested. I desire to state here quite clearly that I am not to be accepted as adopting the creed that he has announced, that it is not the business of a Legislature to instruct the Ministry. I believe that it is the business of a Legislature to do so, and I think that it is the greatest honour that any Ministry could receive from any Legislature that it should have been instructed, and particularly that it should have been instructed by a unanimous vote. I also differ from him—and I want to make this clear—in another matter. He stated that if my resolution were to have been accepted in its original form it would have been a bad precedent. If so, the precedent that was to be feared already exists. On the 20th October last a motion was put forward in this Dáil desiring the Ministry to do a certain thing. That motion was accepted by the Minister for Home Affairs after a certain sentence was changed. That sentence was changed. A motion was passed desiring the Ministry to proceed in a certain manner, and action has been taken on it, so that a precedent exists. On these two grounds I do not accept the reason for the change of wording. I do very heartily accept the change of wording with a view to achieve the purpose which is as much in his mind as in mine, as much in the mind of the Ministry as in the mind of the Legislature, and that carries consent very widely through the country. The pictures at the present moment in the National Gallery in London were intended by Sir Hugh Lane to have been placed in the Municipal Gallery in Dublin, and in honour of his wish and in the interests of justice that wish should be carried out and given effect to by whatever method may be found necessary.
AN CEANN COMHAIRLE took the Chair at this stage.
