I move No. 36: "That a sum, not exceeding £150,631, be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1924, for expenditure in respect of the General Prisons Board, and of the Establishment under their control, the Registration of Habitual Criminals, and the maintenance of Criminal Lunatics confined in District Mental Hospitals." A sum of £75,000 has been voted on account of this service already.
COMMITTEE ON FINANCE—ESTIMATES FOR PUBLIC SERVICES. - GENERAL PRISONS BOARD.
Under the heading of C.C. there is an item of £14,000, "Pay of Military Staff," which is £5,000 more than last year. When we turn to the details we do not find any details for this particular item except to say that provision is made under these sub-heads for the salaries of the governors and deputy-governors of these institutions. I should like an explanation of that particular item, whether this money is spent for the protection of the ordinary prisons and in what way this money is spent, what are the salaries, and so forth, of these military governors, and why should that particular item come under a Civil Estimate such as this while these men belong to the Army and are attached to the Army?
I should like to know how soon Visiting Justices will be authorised to resume operations. I shall be quite frank in saying that I consider the Government has very badly bungled the whole question of prisoners — one of their worst bungles — because, when you come to think of it, it would have been a very easy thing to allow prisoners to be visited, as they were in normal times, by certain Visiting Justices, so that there would be some reasonable outlet for grievances which always exist in a prison. There are, I suppose, legitimate grievances in every prison, and the Government's conduct in the matter is such that no complaint made by any prisoner can be checked by anyone outside. The Ministry will say, "Oh, it is propaganda," and other people will believe the complaint, no matter what it is. It is obviously in the interest of the State that you should have someone visiting prisons from outside, and I suppose more particularly so when you have 10,000 or 12,000 men in prison, without any warrant of law whatsoever. Our almighty Ministry would not condescend to have the matter legalised, because if they did the law would have contained checks and controls which would have irked the Ministry. If they had proper tribunals established it would have enabled people to get out who were wrongly imprisoned. Every man here knows that there must be numerous prisoners against whom, from the most loyal Free State point of view — that of the Ministers themselves —there could be nothing, who have been arrested on suspicion. What remedy have they? I do not know whether the Ministry contemplate handing over the prisoners as a legacy to the next Government, or whether they will be released just before the Election. It would, I think, be useful if we could have a statement of policy upon this very serious matter of the prisoners, a matter all the more serious now that the Government has not made an agreement with the Irregulars. I desire, in this connection, to draw attention to one matter of considerable urgency. In the course of their investigations the military or civil agents of the Government have, on three or four occasions, I think, seized sums of money which had been collected for dependents of the prisoners, and these seizures would probably be justified on the allegation that the money was intended for something else. But, in fact, funds that were destined for prisoners' dependents, and for no other purpose, have been seized, sequestered, and not returned——
Mr. O'HIGGINS
On a point of order, does this arise on the Vote for the General Prisons Board?
I think it is going beyond the scope of this Vote.
Might I state the case in view of the fact that we have such things as "Gratuities to prisoners" and "Contributions to Discharged Prisoners Aid Societies," if you look at P and Q in the Vote? I quite understand that the Minister does not desire this matter discussed, but it is really a very serious matter. To my certain knowledge there are people on the verge of starvation; there are people, who do not know whether they will have to-morrow's dinner or not, dependent on these prisoners, and several hundreds of pounds have been seized by the authorities, and all demands are met with silence — there is no return of the money. I felt that I only had to raise the matter even for the Minister for Home Affairs to realise that that state of affairs cannot be defended. It is a monstrous thing, at a moment like this when violence has ceased and when one would have thought that even the most devoted adherents of the Ministry would have been delighted to do all they could to forward the interests of these unfortunate dependents. I would like an assurance that any money taken in that way will be given back to those who are administering this Fund.
Would the Deputy please indicate the various sums that have been taken, the places from which they have been taken, the dependants for whom they would have been appropriated and any other information that he has at his disposal, particularly precise information of the starving dependants that he has mentioned? We all have hearts, just the same as the Deputy, and looking over the last twelve months one is rather amazed at what became of the money that was seized by these grand idealists he told us about whose dependents are now on the verge of starvation, a seizure of £130,000 on one occasion. The Deputy smiles. It is not a sum to be smiled at. It is a very considerable sum. We have now to levy it from the dishonest as well as the honest tax-payers, and I suppose we will have to levy it from the dishonest idealists that are amongst the Irregulars, as well as the honest idealists who are amongst them. But to get up here and make an oratorical outburst and give a description of certain people who are starving by a Deputy who does not come near the Ministry and give any information about the monies seized, and so on, is, to my mind, not advocating the interests of the persons he pretends to have at heart. I do know of one case where deposit receipts for considerable sums have been taken charge of by us, and I do know that an honest case has not been put up, that they are the property of dependents of Irregulars or of persons in need. I do know that the Irregulars, or their agents, have been told that if they did produce an honest case that it had been collected for that purpose, that it will be devoted to that purpose if guarantees are given to us that the money is bona fide for dependents. Huge sums of money have been taken not alone from banks, public institutions and other bodies like that, but from private individuals. What has become of it? Who has it? The relatives of the unfortunate dependents that the Deputy has spoken of? What are they doing with it?
Dumped like the arms.
I may have misunderstood the argument of Deputy Gavan Duffy, but I take it that he was referring to personal property belonging to prisoners, possibly small sums of money that were found on the prisoners when arrested. I have heard of cases of that kind, and the dependents of those prisoners needed whatever money they could get for their sustenance.
Mr. O'HIGGINS
May I press the point of order, that matters bearing on military prisoners should be discussed on some Vote other than the Vote of the Civil Department of the General Prisons Board? I do submit, sir, that the Army Estimate is the proper Estimate on which to raise matters of this kind.
With reference to that point of order, the Minister is responsible for making this necessary, inasmuch as he charges against this Vote the pay of the Military Staff, the pay of the Governor of the Prison in whose charge the prisoners are. The prisoner in these circumstances, while according to the argument of the President he is a prisoner whom he has a right to keep, is kept for preventative purposes. The case of the Ministry in regard to these prisoners is that they are kept for the purpose of keeping them out of mischief. They are not tried and convicted, but the arguments run as though these were convicted prisoners. I submit that in the case of prisoners from whom property is taken when they are arrested they ought at least to be able to say to whom that property shall be given, otherwise it is theft. You are not only taking the prisoner's body to prevent his attacking the State, and avoiding the necessity for trying the prisoner, but you are taking his possessions.
His?
His possessions, and by so doing depriving his dependents of what is their due. I am talking now of the property of the prisoners, as I understood Deputy Duffy's arguments.
That was not his argument.
As a matter of fact, I was referring to funds collected expressly for the Prisoners' Dependents.
I will leave that with Deputy Gavan Duffy, but I will deal with the case of the property of prisoners which is personal to the prisoner, and which is being retained by the authorities, lost by the authorities, never returned by them, even when men have been released. Members of the various departments, I do not know whether they are C.I.D., Protective Forces, or some secret organisation within the Army, but one or other of these uniformed forces have obtained possession of the property of prisoners. One has a right to expect that that property would be deposited and catalogued and returned at least when the prisoners are released, but many cases have arisen in which no such return has been made. Ministers have no right to speak of these people as though they were criminals and as though what they had on their person was stolen property. Unfortunately the state of mind of Ministers is too often that the fact of arrest is sufficient proof of guilt. Now, touching this item, C.C., there are no details available. This is a provision for the current year, and I think we should be informed as to whether it is the intention to have military governors in these prisons for the whole of the year, and why the charge for the salaries of military governors should be put on this Vote against the Prisons Board. The fact that these military officers are in charge of prisoners again makes it necessary to treat this Vote as the occasion for dealing with the condition of these prisoners, and I will support Deputy Gavan Duffy in his plea as to the necessity for some civil inspection of the prisons — if you like a medical inspection of the prisons, or an inspection of the prisons by Medical Officers of Health.
A paragraph in the newspapers a few days ago, presumably supplied officially, gave us the information that there had been, as a matter of fact, a neutral investigation of the condition of the prisons. Somebody representing the International Red Cross Organisation had the right of inspection of the prisons, and issued a report very satisfactory to the Administration.
It was curiously condensed, and not at all the sort of report which one might expect, having been through the hands of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Unless it were edited for the benefit of the Irish newspapers, I can hardly imagine that a deputation of the International Red Cross would have issued a report, having visited Irish prisons and inspected them, so very short and summarised as that which appeared in the Irish papers, I suggest that it would be advisable for the Propagandist Department to give us the benefit of that report in full. But, apart from that, if it is allowable for civilians from over the seas to visit the Irish prisons to testify to their good administration, surely there is good reason why civilians from within the Free State should be trusted by the Ministry to be honest critics, not to connive at the escape of prisoners just as much as the International Red Cross Deputation might be trusted. It certainly would be to the credit of the Ministry to allow civilians — medical men — to visit the prisons and find out and report to the people the exact state of affairs in these prisons.
There are supposed to be ten or twelve thousand prisoners. I have met prisoners who have been released, and who have spoken in terms very satisfactory, and indeed, laudatory, of the administration. I have met other prisoners who have just been as honest, but as denunciatory as the others have been laudatory. I am convinced from all I have heard, that some prisons are badly administered, that conditions in these prisons are unsatisfactory, while I am convinced that others prisons and other camps are satisfactory, and that the Ministry has no occasion for its hardly-begotten blushes. I would urge that it is not going to do any harm to the Ministry, if they have any confidence in their administration, to allow a Commission of Civilians, Medical Officers of Health, to visit the prisons and the prisoners and to report to them —to the Ministry itself and to the public —as to the condition of those prisoners and prisons. There are, as I said, ten or twelve thousand prisoners, and they are sending letters abroad. In addition, some of them are coming out — and they are reporting what they allege to be the facts. Some stories are doing very great harm to the credit of the country, and those are the stories that will be circulated widely. Other stories are coming out which are, as I said before, no discredit whatever, but rather are commendatory. These stories will not be circulated, and, in view of these arguments, surely there is no good reason why a body of men and women, capable of discriminating and capable of judging for themselves from what they see, should not be allowed to visit these prisons and report frankly and honestly upon the conditions of the prisons and upon their administration. I would press that proposal upon the Ministry. They can afford to do it without any risk of undermining discipline or any risk of allowing prisoners to escape. I could never understand the refusal to allow this in the past. There is surely no reason now to continue that refusal, and I would strongly urge the Ministers to allow such inspection for the satisfaction of the country, and if possible, a justification of their own administration.
I would like to question one matter that was mentioned by Deputy Johnson. He said that the Ministers had the idea that every prisoner collected, if in the possession of any money, was in possession of it dishonestly. I did not say so, and I was the only Minister who spoke.
That was the inference from the argument.
No. I mentioned one particular case in which a prisoner had got a deposit receipt. There was no such inference to be drawn from my remarks, nor had I intended any such thing. If there is an honest effort on the part of prisoners who have money, or deposit receipts, in their possession when arrested, or any other securities, to show that they are in honest possession of that money, we have no intention of keeping it. But we are not, certainly, going to be humbugged by prisoners who, posing as honest men, have considerable sums of money in their possession, for which, when they are questioned, they are not able to give a reasonable explanation.
My reference to prisoners was to the case of prisoners having £1 or £2, a silver watch, or a little pocket money.
I know nothing about these cases. I have not had any specific complaint about that particular sort of case. I had only the other case in mind mentioned by Deputy Duffy.
I was also extremely surprised to hear the Deputy's statement that prisoners were relieved of some of their money when captured, and that particulars of these sums of money had never been catalogued. I was surprised at that. The President invited Deputy Gavan Duffy to give instances of cases where sums had been taken, which were Prisoners' Dependents' Funds, properly so called. These instances have not been given by him. I would like to hear from Deputy Johnson instances of the cases of petty pilfering he alleges, because now that is what it has come to. I suggest to the Deputy that he ought not to take ex-parte statements from the other side of this question. I dare say charges are made, but I have heard no proof given. I quite sympathise with the Deputy's point of view in trying to protect what is for the moment the under dog. But there is something more important than that in a discussion like this, and it is that the truth should be told and generally known. The facts are that everyone here in this Dáil and every Party knows of hundreds of cases in every county where men are made up as a result of what has happened in the country during the last year. We all know of such cases. I know it myself in my own county. I know of people who have deposit receipts in the Bank who will be well off for the rest of their lives as a result of the system of common thefts which masqueraded as Republicanism for the last year. There is not a single Deputy nor a Party here who does not know I am telling the truth. It has been done wholesale in every county. For the last six months farms of land have been bought and paid for at prices that would surprise Deputy Gorey, at £70 and £80 and £100 an acre. We all know of these cases, but we will never be able to prove them. These farms have been bought with money stolen from the banks, from the post offices, and from the big houses in the district. That was done wholesale. You cannot treat what has happened as if it was, on the whole, Republicanism.
A point of order was raised before as to whether we were right, in discussing the question of property taken from a prisoner or prisoners, to bring in the question of Republicanism. No question has been raised on the merits or demerits of Republicanism, but now the Minister is going into the question of Republicanism on this matter.
I agree; I did not think the discussion was in order, but the point was raised that we were taking money from the pockets of prisoners. I point out that when you make a charge of this kind you must remember that in every county in Ireland, as every Deputy and every Party here knows, there are plenty of instances of men who have been made up for life as the result of what has happened during the last twelve months— Irregularism, masquerading as Republicanism, by looting from their neighbour, looting the local post office, and looting the banks or the local land owner's house. I know men who have deposit receipts for monies in the Banks who never had them there before this past year. Everyone knows them, and we want to know where they got that money. We are all morally certain in our own minds where they got it.
In the welter of the last year you could not prove things the same as when conditions were normal, when ordinary civilians came forward to give evidence, and when jurymen did their duty as they should do it, without a gun being put at their ears. We cannot close our eyes to those facts, and we cannot forget, when we find an irregular with a large sum of money in his pocket, that it is necessary to enquire where he got it. The least we might do is to save the tax-payers, and the least we might do is to find whether the irregular got the money at the local post office, at the local bank, or at the local big house — the local land-owner's house. Somebody will have to pay for that some day, and when we find irregulars with large sums in their possession, the least we are bound to do is to find out where they got it. The Deputy stated that we have not got accounts of those monies. I do not know what amount of money is in the hands of the authorities arising out of the capture of prisoners. The statement that these monies have not been catalogued and that these monies will not be accounted for is a statement that I did not expect from the Deputy. I merely wish to remind the Dáil of those facts, so that the discussion relating to the funds collected for Prisoners' Dependents should be treated as it should be, and we should not come to the conclusion that we should treat what they now call the Prisoners' Dependents' Fund in the same way as in 1920 and 1921, when funds were put up by honest men, even if they were poor, and put up for an honest purpose.
Deputy Johnson referred to the International Red Cross visit to Irish prisons, and he also said how important it was to have the prisons visited by impartial people. The situation in Ireland is, that since the Treaty there was no branch of the Red Cross here, and, under those circumstances in the ordinary way the International Red Cross in Geneva took an interest in the humanitarian arrangements in the country. The International Red Cross has an international status, and they sent a deputation here. I agreed that the members of the deputation should visit the prisons. I was not aware whether their report would be good or bad. They have issued a preliminary report which Deputy Johnson referred to, and I understand they are going to issue a fuller report later on. From the point of view of impartiality, I think Deputy Johnson will agree that it would be impossible to get anybody who would be as impartial, or whose word would carry equal weight in this country, as that of the International Red Cross at Geneva. They made their report, and I think that more or less speaks for itself.
Can the Minister say how soon the full report will be available?
I understand it will be ready in a week or so, but the matter is not one for me.
Before the Minister replies I would like to avoid him mixing me up with the case which was alleged to have been answered by the Minister for Agriculture, and the case I was making. The Minister for Agriculture is very adept at that sort of thing, and I want to try to avoid the necessity for the Minister for Home Affairs repeating the performance. The case I am referring to is the case of prisoners whose houses are raided, and who are taken into prison. The searchers, whoever they may be, perhaps the persons who make the arrest, take property from the prisoner. It may be presumed by the prisoner that there is some record being taken of any money and property, but in many cases the prisoner never again sees his property. I am not talking about deposit receipts. Perhaps the Minister might be charged with having possession of a deposit receipt belonging to me, because they have taken all the property that was handed them by the British Government. Deposit receipts may mean nothing, but where men are dependent for their living upon weekly earnings, a very small sum of money is of great importance to the dependents of that prisoner. If, as is the fact in many cases, prisoners' friends or relatives have no access to, and know nothing about, the Prisoners' Dependents' Fund, or about the Republican propagandists, and are entirely ignorant of the Organisation they have no means of applying for assistance, and they are left on the charge of their immediate neighbours. It is this kind of administration, and this kind of looseness that I am referring to when I am talking about monies taken from prisoners of which no account is given, either while they are prisoners or after they are released.
Mr. O'HIGGINS
I trust we will get particulars of money taken from prisoners and unaccounted for on their release, and proof that they had it. While the Deputy is prepared to say that no such proof ought to be necessary, I am prepared to say that it is at least as necessary, as it is necessary to support the case that the money was taken from them by some officer of the Government and never returned, never checked, never catalogued. The Deputy is rather insistent that these men should be presumed to be archangels until proved to be nearer to the contrary, but I am rather insistent on this — their mere statement as against people for whom they have naturally a rather venemous mentality should not be accepted without critical examination. This is not the only lying propaganda that is indulged in, as the Deputy knows, or ought to know. Sub-head (C.C.) states that it has been definitely decided to transfer the payments provided for under this sub-head to the Army as from the end of the current month. If I were asked just why it was ever necessary that they should be accounted for by a civil department, I am not sure that I could say. It was administratively convenient at the time when these men were simply in the prisons, before the intern ment camps were started, and were in close touch with the officers of the Prisons Board. The vote we have been bearing under this head up to the present —I think Deputy Johnson had some curiosity about it — includes the following:— 3 Governors at £800; 1 Governor at £700; 5 Deputy Governors at £650; 1 Vice O.C. at a similar rate; 33 Clerks, 3 at £6, 2 at £5, 26 at £4 4s., and two at £4 per week; 3 typists, 1 at £2 4s., 1 at £2, 1 at £1 16s. 8d. per week, and 1 Clerk lent from a Government department who receives £2 10s. a week. This is the vote that we have been bearing up to the present, and there is some question as to whether it should ever have been borne by the Prisons Board. Off-hand I could not give an exact statement of the considerations leading to the state of affairs, but it has been agreed between the Departments that it should end at the close of the current month.
On the questions of the present conditions, I do not want to add much to what the Minister for External Affairs has said. This international body did send over delegates. They were brought through not merely the prisons but through the internment camps, and they will report in due course.
Will the Minister say whether they could speak English or Irish?
Mr. O'HIGGINS
They spoke English, I understand. I am afraid they could not speak Irish. This point has to be remembered that, without reasonable co-operation where you have a large number of men imprisoned or interned, the conditions within these places of imprisonment or internment cannot be ideal. Now, so far from there being such cooperation, these men seem in places to have lost their senses; they seem to have had no realisation of the danger to their own health by cutting up their blankets and stuffing them down the lavatories with a view to choking them; all their energies seem to have been directed towards making these places uninhabitable.
Was that the practice in all the prisons?
Mr. O'HIGGINS
It was certainly the practice in Limerick prison, and in Mountjoy by one particular group, and also in Galway prison. That was one form. Another form was to smash the hot water pipes and then complain of the cold. I could show the expenditure of very large sums, recurrent expenditure of very large sums, for repairs to damage of that kind. Finally, we were forced to the view that this was simply an attempt to cause the Government to keep on spending public money repairing these things which were broken as frequently as they were repaired, and finally we had to direct the Prisons Board that, while sanctioning one more repair of a particular kind, in the event of future breakages they should not be attended to until such time as the prisons were clear of military prisoners. The smashing of the hot water system was continued through the prisons, and after the direction we had given to the Prisons Board we did not repair the system. Then the prisoners complained of cold and of insufficient bed covering when they had burned or torn up the blankets. There were complaints of sleeping on the floor when they had burned the beds or otherwise destroyed the bed boards and mattresses, and of discomforts they suffered. Where they had torn up the floors and broken the windows I am not going to say that there had not been physical discomfort to prisoners. There has been. In Maryborough, for instance, where they tried to burn the prison, there have been discomforts. Men were only served out with blankets on condition of signing for them, and saying that they took responsibility for them, and that, if anything happened to the blankets, they recognised there was no case for another supply. Many of them refused to give any such undertaking; they refused to accept responsibility for a second set of equipment that was to be served out to them. In the circumstances, they did not get that equipment, and I have no doubt they were most uncomfortable. I am very sorry that they were so foolish and so utterly unreasonable as to take up that attitude, but when you are dealing with public property, and with public funds, there is appoint beyond which you cannot get in lavishness and folly. It will, of course, be a great relief to the ordinary routine prison service when it will be possible to take these military prisoners out of the premises of the Prisons Board and bring them entirely into military custody and into internment camps. They have done enormous damage to public property and to the property of the Prisons Board, and have been rather a strain on the officials generally. It is, of course, a matter for the Minister for Defence when he will be able to place these men entirely in military custody, and entirely in internment camps, rather than in gaols. The increase in the Vote is attributable, mainly, to three items: (1) for increased numbers of staff in detention camps over the whole of this year; these camps were only open for a portion of last year; (2) provision for a greater number of prisoners than provided for in previous Estimate; (3) the need for repair to damage wantonly done by prisoners in retention in Civil Prison buildings.
Can the Minister give us an assurance that the work of the Prisons Board is likely to go on quite satisfactorily without the appointment of a Chairman?
Mr. O'HIGGINS
Yes, the work of the Prisons Board is going on quite satisfactorily from our point of view, and I would hesitate to take any steps with regard to the vacancy. The matter is being considered. It is one of the things that lie ahead for Departmental consideration, but the vacancy in the Chairmanship of the Board is not causing any dislocation.
Can the Minister say, in view of his answer to a question that there are three Military Governors at £800 a year, one at £700, and five Deputies at £650, what is the reason why such a distinction is made as between Military Governors and Civil Governors. According to the Vote, the salaries of the Civil Governors are:— Class I., £400-£500; Glass II., £300-£400; Class III., £250-£300, and Deputies, £250-£300.
Mr. O'HIGGINS
The Minister for Local Government, who was connected with the Department for Home Affairs at the time the salaries were fixed, tells me that the salaries given for Civil Governors do not take in the bonus, that is the ordinary Civil Service bonus.
Where is the bonus provided for in the Estimates?
Mr. O'HIGGINS
What I have stated explains the difference. There is also the fact that the work and the strain on the Military Governor is out of all comparison with the ordinary hum-drum routine duties of the Civil Governor of a prison. It is very responsible work and involves a great deal of night duty. The proper supervision of the prison requires that the man in charge be on his feet at all hours of the night to receive prisoners and to see that the guards are doing their duty.
Question put and agreed to.