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Dáil Éireann debate -
Friday, 20 May 1927

Vol. 19 No. 25

CEISTEANNA—QUESTIONS. ORAL ANSWERS. - A CORK SPEECH.

asked the Minister for Justice whether his attention has been called to the statement of the editor of the "Cork Weekly Examiner" to the effect that the extracts from Mr. Jasper Wolfe's speech which formed the subject of a question by Deputy Johnson on the 11th instant, and which were described by Mr. Wolfe as "misleading, inaccurate and unfair," were in fact copied from a typescript of the speech supplied to the office of the "Cork Weekly Examiner," and further, whether he has noted that the reports in the local papers, including the "Skibbereen Eagle," were identical, and contained the passages repudiated by Mr. Wolfe.

I have seen the statement of the editor of the "Cork Weekly Examiner" to which the Deputy refers. I have also compared the reports of Mr. Wolfe's speech which appeared in all the local newspapers. They are identical not merely in substance but in detail. I may add that although Mr. Wolfe told the Assistant Commissioner of the Gárda Síochána that it was a week or ten days before the issue of the proclamation in connection with the Cobh murders that he saw two of the men named therein in a street in Cork, I have since seen in the "Cork Examiner" of the 16th instant the following extract from a report of a speech delivered by Mr. Wolfe at Bantry:—"He saw two of them after the Proclamation was issued walking through the streets of Cork. He said that before and would say it again." Mr. Wolfe was reported as saying in this connection. in his Skibbereen speech:—"They issued a proclamation for the apprehension of a number of Republicans... two of whom he saw walking the streets of Cork a few days previously." I have come to the conclusion that, for the moment, Mr. Wolfe's political ambitions are overriding considerations which the Deputy and I would agree ought to prevail even in the weeks preceding a general election.

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