Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 15 Oct 1924

Vol. 8 No. 23

DÁIL RESUMES. - MOTION TO SUSPEND STANDING ORDERS.

The PRESIDENT

I move:

Go gcuirtar ar fionnraoi forálacha Buan-Orduithe 86 agus 88, i dtaobh fógra do thabhairt chun Ceathrú Céim agus Cúigiú Céim Bhille do thógaint, chun go gceadófar Ceathrú Céim agus Cúigiú Céim Bille an Chonnartha (Daingniú ar an gCógontú Fóirlíontach), 1924, do thógaint inu.

That the provisions of Standing Orders 86 and 88 as to the giving of notice for the taking of the Fourth and Fifth Stages of a Bill be suspended to permit of the Fourth and Fifth Stages of the Treaty (Confirmation of Supplemental Agreement) Bill, 1924, being taken to-day. Motion put and agreed to.

Question—"That the Bill be received for final consideration"—put and agreed to.

Mr. JOHNSON

Before the Bill passes I want to make two or three points on certain statements made in the course of the earlier debate. The President has said that we should not commit ourselves to statements in regard to our belief in the possibilities of this Commission, judging that the areas to be transferred are small or great as the case may be. Deputies may be convinced from all the evidence that the setting up of this Commission is going rather to promise to certain people in the Northern Counties that their claims are to be considered fairly and due weight given to the promises contained in Article XII. of the Treaty. If we are convinced, as I am, that no such weight is going to be given to their wishes, and that no chances exist in the circumstances of the just claims of the Northern Nationalists being given effect to, and the intentions of the Treaty being fulfilled, then I say it is our duty to say what we have to say here so that we shall not be taunted or be capable of being taunted with having held out hopes to the Nationalists in which we have had no faith whatsoever. I know from my recent visit to the Border Counties that there are very many people who are hoping, but not with such assurance as they hoped some time ago, that the result of the Commission being set up is going to lead to their being transferred to the Free State area. I think the hopes are ill-founded and I think that the fact that we are agreeing to this supplementary Treaty is merely prolonging the agony of our comrades and friends in the North. There is one consideration which has weighed with me a good deal in the pleas for setting up a Boundary Commission, and that is whether they are going to be transferred or not, they will know their fate, and that it is very desirable they shall know for a certainty at any rate under what Government they shall be operating.

Now, if this Bill promises even that assurance, I think it would be a fairly strong argument in its favour. But we have seen from statements that have been repeated here, agreed to by Deputy Mulcahy, confirmed, as I have said, by Deputy Milroy, and almost assented to from the Ministerial Benches, that the passing of this Bill is not going to expedite the conclusion, and is not going to bring any way near finality the doubts and hesitations as to whether the men in Newry and Derry and Enniskillen are to be under the Six County Government or under the Free State. The passing of the Bill is only leaving in the air the question as to their fate, and it is a preliminary to a long series of controversies and conflicts, and they will be in doubt all the time. If this Bill were not to pass, if the position were that the Treaty minus Article XII. were operative, at least the present boundaries would be known to be more or less permanent. We know that there are boundaries; we know that there will be boundaries. Whether Article XII. comes into operation or not there are going to be boundaries. The question really is as to which is to be the supreme authority over the North-Eastern Government.

I want at least, as far as I am concerned, to rid myself of the responsibility of dangling before the Northern Nationalists and Labour men the hope which I think is ill-founded, that they are going to be any nearer to a decision as to their future Government when this Bill passes. The Minister for Justice, as I shall call him now, thought he was trampling with his hob-nailed boots on certain pet notions of mine about the Council of Ireland. As I said, he was kicking the air. I have no particular faith in the Council of Ireland, as contemplated by the Treaty, with its composition according to the Act of 1920; but its composition was the composition as agreed to by the Dáil and by the Minister when he urged the ratification of the Treaty. I want to make clear my position in that matter. If the body contemplated in Article XII. were set up it would be composed, half-and-half of representatives from the Free State and from the Northern Government. It would have its Chairman appointed, according to the Act, by the Lord Lieutenant, and the Minister suggests that that inevitably ensures that the Free State at any rate would have no influence on the decision.

I think it can be argued—I am not quite convinced and I am not going to quote it with too much confidence— that the Lord Lieutenant and his functions have devolved upon the Governor-General; but supposing the Lord Lieutenant and his nominees were entirely pro-Northern, and you had a Council composed of twenty-one Northern nominees, and twenty Free State nominees, at least it is a body on which the Free State has at most half the representation, and it has authority over the railways, diseases of animals and fisheries in the Northern area, and no authority whatever over such services for any other part of Ireland. It at least would be an interference; it at least would take from the British Parliament, in which we have no representation at all, the powers which they at present have of administering these services in Northern Ireland; and it would transfer that power to Ireland. At the very worst, the Free State would have twenty representatives out of forty-one. Surely when you are going to deal with any new arrangements, any proposed means of, shall I say, conciliation or conference, it would be very much more powerful to have that in your hands as a bargaining instrument than to have thrown it away.

I want to assure the President in this matter that we have not taken this course with any desire to gain Party capital, or to injure any other Party's prestige. I sincerely believe that the end we seek for is more likely to be attained, the satisfaction of the legitimate hopes and expectations of the Northern Nationalists is more likely to be secured, by the rejection of this Bill, by not passing this Bill, and by not accepting this new Treaty. That is my reason for taking the course I have taken. I believe that it is a sign that we are not making the best use of the powers that we secured by the Treaty. I believe that we have tended to interpret the Treaty not in the manner that was promised in the Dáil debates of 1921 and 1922, but we have interpreted the Treaty in the manner desired by the British signatories rather than by the Irish signatories.

Mr. GOREY

I did not intend to intervene in this debate at all. I do intervene now because of the matter that has arisen in the President's closing of the Second Stage, and also because of some remarks that dropped from the Vice-President. I think some of us are inclined to eliminate altogether what the human mind is likely to do in a certain state of circumstances. The Chairman of this Commission, who, as Deputy Johnson said earlier, is virtually the Commission, will be the deciding factor in the findings. Statesmen in England who are at the moment ex-Ministers, but who may in a few weeks be Ministers, must always be behind the minds of men who are their servants or are likely to be their servants.

The Chairman of this Commission owes his position to British statesmen. He will owe his future to British statesmen, and is it possible that he could eliminate the human factor altogether? Behind the utterances of these British statesmen, all those who have chosen to come into the Press recently, is the threat: "I may not be your master to-day, but I will be to-morrow." I do not know if, in the history of any country or of any negotiations between countries, it has been known that statesmen of those countries have gone into the public Press in order to queer the pitch and in order to create an atmosphere. True, the British Government as a Government, has not broken the Treaty; but those ex-Ministers who were the Government, when they do not want to risk the reputation of their country by actually breaking the Treaty, are trying to poison the atmosphere. That is their object. Their object is to erect barriers through which this Commission will have to drive. Their object is to erect fences outside of which this Commission cannot go. If that is not as near breaking the Treaty as an actual deliberate act of Government, I would like to know what is.

I do not know if it is possible for Mr. Justice Feetham, or any English subject dependent on a future English Government for his position and his advancement, to do justice to the Chairmanship of this Commission. I doubt it. I do not suppose this is the stage at which the offer of the Northern Government, and Northern statesmen, for a still further conference on this question, can be considered. I believe it is not the time; but I think the time might come immediately after the passing of this Bill. Any kind of a settlement, any kind of an agreement that would not make this boundary definite, would be more acceptable to the people of the North and South than something that would be definite and that would be set up on hard facts. I know the minds of the people of the South, and within the last few weeks I have been given to understand the minds of a good deal of the people over the Border, the minds of the rank and file, to an extent that would astonish you. They want unity; they do not want division. Only the politicians, only the men at the head both in the North and in the South, want this division and want a permanent boundary fixed. Only the die-hards in the North and the die-hards in the South want that. If this boundary question were to disappear, their business would disappear and they would have to work like the whole of us.

Mr. DAVIN

They never worked before.

Mr. GOREY

The whole trouble about this question is what alternative can be offered. I am not very enamoured about this Commission. A good many statesmen and members of the Dáil have stated they are not in a position to suggest an alternative. Unfortunately, neither am I. I think these alternative fences have been the ones all our political race-horses have baulked at. I believe Miss MacSwiney has blundered over it, with a torch in one hand and an automatic in the other. It is a question on which I do not think any one of us is able to offer an alternative. The Vice-President has said that the task of the Commission was to give effect to the will of the people in those counties. With the present atmosphere I wonder does anybody think it possible that any Commission, one of the members of which is dependent on the Government of England and on the statemen who are likely to form the Government, will consider the will of the people? Is it possible that the will of the people is going to obtain? Do we honestly think this Commission will give effect to the will of the people? Do we think that what was in the minds of the men who signed the Treaty will be given effect to? In view of the way in which the atmosphere has been posioned before this Commission sits, I think it is not asking too much of the Government, in order to give this Commission a chance of doing the right and honest thing, if they cannot do it in honour as the position stands, to urge the British Government to put into the possession of the Commission all the documents relative to the signing of the Treaty. There is no use in asking them to do it in private. Ask them publicly and let them refuse and then the Commission, if it is composed of intelligent men, will know where they are.

Mr. DAVIN

I do not want the Dáil to agree to the passing of this Bill through its final stages without every Deputy being clear in his mind as to the use that may be made now, or in the future, of the documents that have been spoken of by the President and regarded by him as being private and confidential. I believe there cannot be any permanent, or at least any peaceable, solution of this boundary question except through a settlement by agreement. If we cannot, as apparently we cannot up to the present, have a settlement by agreement, then I suppose the medium afforded by the Commission is the next best course and the one which will apparently have to be gone through if we have to take the vote that has been cast here this evening in support of this Bill as any indication. Deputy Mulcahy, in the document he has read this evening, has given us, especially the younger members of the Dáil, much useful information. It is quite clear that some British statesmen who have been parties to the signing of this Treaty on behalf of England are in fact using documents, which are said to be regarded as private and confidential, in the utterances they have been making through the Daily Mail and other English papers, to the disadvantage of the Government and of the Government position here. If we cannot have a settlement by agreement or through the medium of the Boundary Commission that would be in accordance with the intentions of the people who signed the Treaty on behalf of Ireland, then we must look to an international court as the only solution, or otherwise we might have a breaking off of our relations with England if she does not carry out her bargain.

But in the case either of an appeal to an International Court or the breaking off of friendly relations with England, then I believe the documents that Deputy Mulcahy has referred to must be at the disposal of whatever Government is in existence here at the time so that Ireland's case may be put before the world in its proper light, and so that England, if she wants to break the Treaty, must face the dishonour that the documents alone can show. I want to know from the President, in case this question is referred eventually to an International Court, or in case of a breaking off of friendly relations with England, whether these documents would still be regarded as private and confidential?

The PRESIDENT

Certainly. It does not affect the issue at all; it would be impossible to conduct negotiations if it were known that when a break occurs or if anything of that sort were to happen, every instrument that was regarded as private and confidential before should be made public. In these matters I happen to be the person responsible at the present moment for this. It may be the responsibility of somebody else in a very short time, but for us it is even more necessary to exercise the greatest possible precaution so that in our early years it would not be within the power of any antagonists of ours to say that we had deceived them, that we had in good faith accepted documents which, as far as the word of a Government or of a man is concerned, were regarded as private and confidential only to be disclosed at the opportune moment. What I mean is this: we get a document, or a number of documents, in good faith. Now, in our first years, if a single document can be published through default or breach of honour on our part, it would be very hard to restore in the minds of strangers—taking strangers in that category to mean persons outside this country— confidence in dealing with us in future.

Mr. GOREY

Would that apply to the Commission?

The PRESIDENT

Off hand I should say yes, and off hand I should say it does not matter what these documents are as far as the Commission is concerned. The Commission has its Terms of Reference, and it is open to the Commission, or at least it might be said to be open to the Commission, to summon before them the five signatories, and whom have we got? We have only one. I do not know whether Mr. Gavan Duffy subscribes fully or entirely to that particular instrument.

Mr. GOREY

Could you not ask them for leave to submit the documents and let them refuse it if they want to?

The PRESIDENT

These documents, to my mind, should be in the control of the Government. We, unfortunately, are in the position in this country of being successors to a Government which had members who apparently do not recognise us as successors. In other words, there was a majority of the Dáil who disagreed with the opinions of the then leader of the Dáil, Mr. de Valera, who was at the time called President. I believe Mr. de Valera took out documents when he was going out. I believe Mr. Childres had documents; I believe Mr. Barton had documents. I suppose, but I do not know, that Mr. Gavan Duffy had documents. The only person remaining out of that Cabinet is myself, and Mr. O'Higgins had some of them. Now, as I said, we are in this position, that Mr. de Valera does not recognise that we are his successors, and in consequence he holds on to these documents. If he publishes these documents—and there have been threats of publication— it would be very difficult to maintain in future in such international arrangements the good name of this country. I had the same sort of explanation to make when I was dealing before with Cabinet matters. The person in immediate charge at the moment is responsible. It is undesirable. In this case you can see the disadvantages of it. Certain people think these documents should be published. I cannot see that. Even if I did so, I am so much concerned for honour that it is impossible for me to agree to publication, and when my successor comes along he will have exactly the same responsibility as I have, and he can impose silence on me with regard to these things. It is only right it should be so.

I accept and am glad to hear, and I was sure it was the case even before he stated it, Deputy Johnson's statement that he had nothing in his mind of a Party character in anything he had said. This matter has not been made the subject of Party manoeuvre; it should not be. I am not sure what Deputy Gorey had in mind when he said that if it were left to the people it would be settled. If he thinks I am standing in the way of a settlement—

Mr. GOREY

Nothing of the sort.

The PRESIDENT

No man would jump out more quickly. I believe a settlement ought to come by agreement, but so far we have not been able to reach it. I wish to God we could reach it. I have heard that people up there do want peace. I believe the people of the south want it, but somehow we do not get beyond expressing these hopes and wishes. I think that it would be the happiest moment in any man's life, north or south, if an honourable peace could be arranged on this matter. We are very sorry to see there is so much distrust and so much in the nature of misgiving.

We have had many tributes from those who differ from us, politically and otherwise, in the Free State as to the fair treatment they have got. I think any person who has been a member of this House will admit that even if he did not get all he looked for, at any rate he was satisfied that he got a fair hearing, and it was open to him to make his case. Unfortunately, those who agree with the majority here complain that they have not got these advantages in another place. If their fears on that score were not so pronounced, this particular problem would not be so difficult of solution. I thank the House for the very friendly manner in which they have criticised our proposals in this matter, and I hope that the misgivings which have been expressed regarding the result will not materialise. The Government has never expressed an opinion upon what the result of this will be. We always regarded it as being nothing short of contempt of court to hear British ex-Ministers, or politicians, or their Press, canvassing what the result of this Commission's work was to be. On all that we are strongly of opinion that it is immoral, very, very immoral. I find that Lord Birkenhead, in one of his pronouncements, stated that it was beyond him to express an opinion as to what should happen; that if his opinion went for anything it would be such and such, but that he could not bind the Commission, or was not seeking to bind it.

Mr. JOHNSON

And that they would be lunatics if they did not do what he said.

The PRESIDENT

We have not given expression to such opinions. This matter has been fairly dealt with as far as the Free State is concerned. I hope it will be fairly dealt with, and I hope that the Commission, when it sits and does its work, will do it fairly and justly. We are entitled to that. Some reference has been made to the fact that possibly the Commission, having in mind the British Government, might take heed of these statements. Well, the man who is Chairman is not affected by whatever Government is in power. He is appointed by the South African Government. To that extent he is independent of whatever government is in power.

General MULCAHY

I think it fair, in view of what the President has stated, to ask him this question: If it was his fate to sit down with others, with British representatives in the way that Griffith and Collins did, with Lloyd George and Birkenhead, and if Lloyd George and Birkenhead then turned out the liars that he knows they have turned out, and if, instead of being dead and having his voice silenced, he were alive and had the use of his memory, what would he say back to them? Would he blot out of his memory everything that passed between them simply because it had not been recorded?

Mr. JOHNSON

I enquired when this matter was brought forward before as to whether the Ministry here would seek permission to publish documents which may have been marked confidential, that they might be released from confidence. If, to justify the reputation of Irish representatives, the Ministry would publicly request permission to publish these documents, or alternatively challenge the British Government to publish the documents in their possession, it would make clear to everyone concerned that you know that the documents spoken of would refute positively the assertions made by the British signatories. If they refused to release these documents the responsibilities would be theirs.

The PRESIDENT

Deputy Mulcahy has put a question to me, and I think it is too hypothetical for me to answer. It would not concern me much what they would say about me. It never did, and it will not do so in the future. I have been called some very bad names, and some of my friends also. That has passed away. Nobody refers to it now. The other matter raised by Deputy Johnson is a matter I would like to bring before the Executive Council. I could not express an opinion on it now.

Mr. DAVIN

Can the President say, for the guidance of the House, for his own guidance, perhaps, and that of any other person who may succeed him in dealing with this question, whether or not if we have to break friendly relations with England these documents would still be regarded as private and confidential?

The PRESIDENT

I would say yes.

Mr. DAVIN

Do not take me as being a party to that.

Question—"That the Bill do now pass"—put and agreed to.