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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 7 Jun 1928

Vol. 24 No. 2

PUBLIC BUSINESS. - ADJOURNMENT DEBATE—PRISONERS ON HUNGER STRIKE.

Motion made and question proposed:—"That this House do now adjourn."

I gave private notice this morning to the Minister for Justice of the following question:—

To ask the Minister for Justice whether it is a fact that the five Republican women prisoners in Mountjoy Jail, Sighle MacInerney, Eva Jackson, Sighle Humphries, Mrs. MacDermott and Florence MacCarthy, have gone on hunger strike; whether the primary cause of this hunger strike has been the refusal by the prison authorities to give those prisoners political treatment; whether in answer to a protest against the refusal of that treatment the prison authorities have ill-treated these women, and whether it is the policy of the Government to treat men and women convicted of political offences as criminals.

Since the Minister got notice, I take it he has had an opportunity of investigating the facts in this case, and finding out whether it is or not a fact that these women are on hunger strike, and also, whether it is or not a fact that the primary cause of the hunger strike is the refusal by the prison authorities to give these prisoners political treatment.

I understand that one of the prisoners, Sighle MacInerney, was arrested on the 25th January, 1928, and that she was charged with the possession of arms and treasonable documents and sentenced to six months imprisonment. With respect to Sighle Humphries, I understand she was arrested on the 17th May and charged with treason and embracery and that she is on remand; she was arrested in the street near her own house and was not allowed to inform her people of her arrest. I am informed, also, it is becoming a practice of the detectives to arrest women like that, take them to prison and have them searched for documents and so on. Florence MacCarthy, I understand, was arrested on the 10th April and she was charged under the Treason Act with assisting and maintaining a military organisation not established by law, and was sentenced to six months imprisonment. I have no details with respect to the other two ladies, but I am sure that the Minister for Justice has. What I am anxious to know is, as I have said, whether it is or not a fact that these women are on hunger strike, and whether it is or not a fact that the cause of their being on hunger strike is that they have been denied political treatment. There has been an attempt made, all the time, by the Executive Council to follow on the lines of Dublin Castle here, and to pretend that there is no such thing as political prisoners.

There were a good many sacrifices made from 1919 to 1921 to compel the British authorities to distinguish between criminals and those who were fighting for a political principle, the principle in this case being the right of the Irish people to be completely free. In every civilised country there is a distinction made between criminal classes and those fighting for this principle; and it shows the position that we have been brought to when we find Ministers giving an excuse for their action precisely the same as given by Ian MacPherson, Short, and Hamar Greenwood. I hope that Deputies, here, who understand what was the basis of the fight that we put up against the British are not going to follow the example of the Executive and pretend now that they do not understand what these women are fighting for or what is the principle that is at stake.

These women, I understand, have been prevented from associating one with another. They have been for weeks now in solitary confinement. Everybody who ever attempted to study the prison system, apart altogether from those who have experience of it, and surely there are a number of Deputies on both sides who know what solitary confinement means, knows what it is likely to mean for women such as I have mentioned.

I was looking up, in the Library, the prison reports for some years past and there is one feature of them which is indicative of cruelty. There are no people who can be more cruel than some of our people, no people that I would trust less with the control of prisons because in the present circumstances they have not got the long tradition that other people have about the necessity of treating human beings as human beings and not treating them as beasts. One of the things I noticed is that there has been a continued increase in the number of people who have been sent from prison to mental hospitals. In 1923 I could find no case of anybody who was sent to a mental hospital who was not regarded as insane on committal. In 1924 one was sent to a mental hospital who was not insane on committal. In 1925 the number went up to three and in the last report available it mounted up to five. Now I suggest that that rapid increase indicates that the people in charge of the prisons now have not the experience that is necessary to give them a proper understanding of what the treatment of prisoners should be. I hold that that increase of insanity in those not insane on committal points to something very serious, and I think it is the duty of the House, at once, to set up a Commission of inquiry into the whole prison system. It may be said, perhaps, that there is an increase in the number of prisoners and that this is a mere increase in proportion. It is not. The number of prisoners at the end of the year, 1923, was 830, in 1924, 940, in 1925, 1815, and in 1926, 759 so that while the number committed to mental hospitals went up from one to three and then to five the number of prisoners in jail, at the time, were actually diminished so that nobody can say that it was an increase in proportion to the number in prison. As I say most of us know the brutalities that can be practised in prisons.

We know that under the English system, even though the regulations themselves were brutal, the people who were in charge and responsible for carrying out the regulations were tied hand and foot, and every care was taken to see that they would not abuse the powers given them over the unfortunate individual who was at their mercy. But of the Free State prisons the experience of some—I cannot speak myself in the matter——

A DEPUTY

Maybe your time will come yet.

——I have no complaint to make myself of ill-treatment. Fortunately, I am able to live alone when I want to, but I know people on whose word I can rely who have complained of ill-treatment. I know that there have been brutalities practised for the last four or five years in these jails—certainly during the period 1922, 1923 and 1924—which were a disgrace to human beings, to put it at the least. I, for one, would like to be satisfied that there is not a continuance still of anything of the same kind. I was once in Arbour Hill and I heard an unfortunate prisoner there screaming as he was being beaten. He was a Free State soldier. Some of them tried to communicate with me and tell me of the treatment they were receiving. At that time if I had been able to give voice to my feelings or get the public to understand it, I would have liked to compel the Free State authorities to send in people to see that their own soldiers in that prison were not being ill-treated, simply because I regarded them as human beings. Now, these are Republican women, some of whose names are known to us personally. I know myself that in the home of Sheila Humphreys the Republican Cabinet met when the Black-and-Tan regime was in progress. With that home I associate many of the acts of that Cabinet, and nothing that this young girl is doing now is different from anything which was preached in that home by members of the Republican Cabinet, some of whom are now persecuting her. I think the time has come for that sort of thing to stop, and that if you are not going to face this question on the basis of a national policy, you ought at least face it on the basis of humanity. If you are going to deprive these girls of their liberty you ought at least to give them fair conditions under which to live. The conditions which are being imposed on them are very different from the conditions that the ordinary criminals in America and other civilised countries receive. I have taken some interest in this whole question of prison treatment. I think it is one of the general problems that ought to interest anybody who has any idea at all of government, or of social questions of this particular kind. I have had experience, as most of us had, of the British system, and when I was in America I tried to see what the system there was. I know it is a difficult problem— a very difficult problem—but in the case of these girls I think there ought to be no difficulty. We ought to give them reasonable conditions if we are going to deprive them of their liberty. Remember that the people who are acting as their gaolers now are not merely depriving them of their liberty, but ill-treating them, if my information is correct. These girls, I am told, after coming from Mass on Sunday, went into one cell and they resisted efforts to separate them until they went away at 9 o'clock to separate cells. After that they again tried to associate, and they were pulled and dragged about; their clothes were pulled off by the prison officials. That is my information. I hope it is not true.

What I want, and what I think it is the duty of each one of us here to see is that in these prisons Irish citizens of good standing, who are known not to be criminals, will be treated properly as human beings. It is our duty to see that they are protected, and that a proper inquiry will be held into the whole system to see that the brutalities which did take place from 1922 to 1924 do not continue, and to examine why it is we have this increasing number of people who were not insane being committed to mental hospitals during the course of their terms of imprisonment, in the years I have indicated. I do not wish to labour it any further. I say this: it is a serious matter for us to consider whether the policy of the Executive which is being kept in power here by the majority is going to reproduce in the prisons now under its control the same inhumanities which we associated with the British system here, and in the fight against which we had Tom Ashe dying and many other men who died afterwards of hunger strike. A fight was made by them, not merely against the British, but a fight for the rights of political prisoners in general. Those are the rights these women are fighting for. I say there is no reason at all why these women should be ill-treated, and I ask Deputies to assist us in compelling the Executive to look after these prisoners properly, if they are going to keep them there, and prevent them from being ill-treated. If we find that there is still ground for believing that this ill-treatment is continuing we intend moving that there should be a proper inquiry held by a Committee of this House.

The question which Deputy de Valera put to me to-day was concerned with the five prisoners whose names he has read out. Two of these prisoners had been duly tried and sentenced by the courts. They were sentenced to six months imprisonment each in the second division. The other three prisoners are awaiting trial. The two prisoners who have been sentenced are receiving the ordinary treatment of prisoners in the second division. Those who are awaiting trial are receiving the ordinary treatment of prisoners awaiting trial, with all the rights and privileges that prisoners awaiting trial have got. The Deputy said that these prisoners wished to associate together. I believe they did. But there is a prison regulation, a very right and proper regulation, in my opinion, that convicted prisoners and persons awaiting trial should not be allowed to associate together. As a matter of fact, the three awaiting trial were allowed to associate and to take their exercise together, but they were not allowed to take it with the two who had already been convicted. That would be against the prison regulation, which, as I say, is a very sound and sensible regulation. I am informed that on the 5th instant these five prisoners did cease taking food. The food is there for them——

The old story.

—— at any time they wish to take it. Now, the Deputy went on and said that their clothes were pulled off and that they were brutally treated, and his language was rather rhetorical. These statements of fact which have been made by Deputy de Valera are completely at variance with the true facts. The Deputy said that they were in solitary confinement. I have already told the Deputy that they were allowed to take their exercise together, and up to this moment they are allowed to take exercise at any time.

Convicted prisoners?

The Deputy became very vigorous about people who had done no wrong and about Irish citizens of good standing, and he said that some of them were known to him personally. In my opinion, every citizen of the country must obey the law. The laws are made by this House; they are made by a body which is responsible to the people——

The Executive has not obeyed the laws very much.

And these laws must be obeyed, and they must be obeyed by people of good standing as well as by people of no social standing. They must be obeyed just as much by people who have influential friends as by people who have no influential friends.

Friends of the Executive Council excluded.

They must be obeyed all round.

The right man is up to answer—a Castle hack.

I do not know what Deputy Boland means——

I will tell you precisely what I mean.

The Minister for Justice has to answer this question. The question was asked to get a reply from the Minister for Justice. He is the right man to answer.

Faith he is, and well selected too.

Deputies must have patience, and must hear what the Minister's reply is. Otherwise this whole scheme of asking questions on the Adjournment and getting replies will break down completely.

On a point of order, let me ask the Minister if he can deny that political prisoners are not allowed to go to hospital if they are ill?

A DEPUTY

That is not a point of order.

Of course that is not so. All prisoners who are ill are brought to hospital and treated.

I am sorry that I have to contradict that, because I was a prisoner last year. I spent three months in a prison cell with a doctor attending me, and I would not be allowed to go to hospital. Can you contradict that? You should talk about something you know something about, and not be talking through your hat.

This is a question about five women in Mountjoy Prison. It is not a question about Deputy Killilea's treatment when he was in prison.

It is a question about the treatment meted out to prisoners and as to why there is a distinction made between different sections of people.

It is not. It is a question, as defined by Deputy de Valera himself, about five Republican women prisoners in Mountjoy Jail, whose names he gave, and that is what we have to hear about.

I do not like the answer he gave me. The facts are different from those he stated.

Deputy de Valera stated that these prisoners had done nothing wrong. I must say——

Something which was called meritorious a few years ago.

But not in his time.

Does the Deputy call suborning people to perjury meritorious? Does the Deputy approve of perjury? Does Deputy de Valera, or any member of his Party, think it right to endeavour to influence jurymen who are upon their oath to commit perjury—to violate their oath? Does the Deputy say that that is not wrong? Has perjury ceased to be a crime in the Deputy's mind?

We know that the same arguments were used by Hamar Greenwood and the rest—the very same.

I notice that the Deputy shirks the answer. I put a plain question to the Deputy and he does not answer.

Yes. Hamar Greenwood put the very same question. We will get you a copy of the "Weekly Summary" to read, if you like.

The Minister is acting as Crown Prosecutor.

We will have more attempts on the lives of prison officials.

Are you inciting people to that?

No; you could not incite to anything.

Deputy de Valera has made a general and a wild attack upon those who are in charge of the prisons in the Free State at the present moment.

Because we know them.

I take this opportunity of repudiating the charge which Deputy de Valera makes.

You will not have it investigated though.

I take this opportunity of repudiating it as strongly and as vigorously as I can——

Repudiation will not meet it.

—— because I know that any wild rumour that is circulated credulous Deputies opposite swallow, and are most anxious to swallow——

We know they are true.

—— but they are entirely at variance with what are the true facts.

Have an inquiry.

Might I ask the Minister for Justice one question. When was Mrs. McDermott arrested—

On a point of order. As the Minister is not allowed to answer I think that this ought to be adjourned.

When was she arrested and when was she brought to trial, and what was the verdict of the jury?

I have already informed the Deputy that the lady he asks about—Mrs. McDermott—is an untried prisoner.

Arising out of that, when was she arrested? When was she brought to trial, or is it intended to bring her to trial?

I cannot inform the Deputy as to the exact date upon which she was arrested. It does not arise on this question.

Would it be true to say——

I know that the offence she committed was committed on the 25th January last, but the exact date of her arrest I have not got.

This is a question as to how the lady was treated and not for what she was arrested.

She has been detained for almost six months without trial. The jury have disagreed on two occasions, I think.

That is not good enough.

If the jury disagreed she will have to remain until a jury agrees.

Or until you pass a new Bill to convict her.

Deputy de Valera went further and made a statement that not only are these prison officials—who are a body of men entirely competent to do their work, and do their work humanely and properly——

That is a matter for investigation.

The Deputy said that, through ignorance, through inexperience, or through something else, people are being driven insane in prisons.

That is right.

Some of them were.

I gave in October full particulars of every single prisoner who had been transferred from a prison to an asylum. I said: "During the past twelve months two prisoners were transferred to Dundrum Asylum. One of these was, however, retransferred to prison, as the Asylum authorities were not satisfied that he was insane. No prisoner was released during that period owing to mental affection. Forty-three persons in prisons since the 28th June, 1922, are now inmates of mental institutions, 15 of these being in Dundrum and 28 in other institutions. Of the 43, 38 were insane on committal, or found incapable of pleading, or found guilty, but insane, by the jury. There were, therefore, only five persons who apparently developed insanity in prison."

A DEPUTY

Has that anything to do with the question raised?

It is a reply to the point raised.

I perfectly agree with the Deputy that it really has nothing to do with the question, but since Deputy de Valera has raised it, I thought that I might venture to give the facts.

Might I point out to the Minister——

DEPUTIES

Order, order.

It is now 11 o'clock.

I wish to correct a statement made by the Minister——

It being now 11 p.m., the Dáil adjourned.

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