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——