Before we enter upon public business, I understand that Deputy Hewson desires to make a statement.
NEWSPAPER STATEMENTS.
A certain amendment standing in my name will be moved to-day to the Public Safety Bill. I should like, therefore, to call attention to the atmosphere which has been created by a section of the Press in this regard. With your permission, A Chinn Comhairle, I shall read a paragraph from today's "Irish Times." This is the comment which is made upon the Public Safety Bill:
The list of amendments yet to come is a fearsome-looking document. It consists largely of proposals to change the word "and" to the word "but" to delete a comma here and a semi-colon there, but many a scene has been engendered by a point of punctuation and several nasty rocks lie ahead.
Further down, in the same column. I think, I find the motive of this paragraph:
It is doubtful whether an already weary House will gladly suffer such a course. The House has arduous hours before it, so many, in fact, that the President, last night, said that he was going to ask Deputies to sit on the opening day of the Horse Show. A sitting during Horse Show week is unprecedented in the history of the Assembly.
Whoever is the author of that paragraph, I suggest, must have known that the result of its publication would be to induce Government Deputies, in particular, to believe that their time was being wasted by purely frivolous amendments. That suggestion is either trus or untrue. For the information of certain Deputies who have perhaps not read the Bill as I have read it, or perhaps not read the amendments, I draw attention to the matter. I do not find fault with the omissions in the newspapers from the reports of the debates. There are many omissions on occasions. I think that after the scenes that we have had during the last two or three days, we should be protected from having further scenes encouraged by Press paragraphs of this description, which are, I suggest, not even based upon truth.