I should like to support this Bill that has been introduced by Deputy Conlon and Deputy MacFadden. I think that they have done a good service, not alone to this House but to the Irish language and the cause of its revival, by bringing this Bill in. I would like to say another thing, ma's maith, is mithid é. The Bill has been criticised on the grounds that the Deputies who introduced it know little or nothing about law, and because of that they were not competent to introduce a Bill to deal with this noble and honourable profession, as it was described by one Deputy. As the Minister for Local Government put it the other night, the people who criticise this Bill know little of the spirit of the Irish nation or little of the spirit of this people. We have come to the parting of the ways in this country. It has been long delayed, but the sooner these people, who seem to have formed an alliance in this country to endeavour to retard the progress of the language, realise that when the Minister for Local Government spoke of the spirit of this people what he meant was the changing of the tide that has resulted in bringing to this country, during the last five or six years, the triumph of the Irish language. The sooner they realise and accept that the better it will be for everyone, and particularly for the section that still clings to the traditions of the British Empire Deputy Cooper said that by proceeding too hurriedly we might easily do harm. To whom? This Bill is not going to inflict any undue hardship on anybody. I agree with certain Deputies who said that it did not go far enough. Certainly it is not going to inflict any undue hardship on anyone in this State. The only people Deputy Cooper is afraid it is going to do harm to are the people who still cherish in their hearts the return to this country of the British Empire and all that it stands for—not that it is gone. He said that if the Bill was passed the English would be given a good excuse for breaking off the reciprocal arrangement by which Irish barristers could be admitted to the English Bar, and vice versa, without further examination. There has been a lot of talk of toleration in this House. There has been a lot of talk of what England would or might do if such a thing happened. I think it is nearly time that we got away from that point of view. I think it is nearly time this House should adopt an attitude of self-respect, stand on its own legs, and not mind what England or any other country would do.
I think it would be only right that Deputy Cooper, or anyone else who has information, should furnish to this House, before this debate concludes, an estimate of the number of students who would be really affected, even supposing that the reciprocal arrangement was dropped. The Deputy stated further, that the sole qualification for entering any profession should be fitness to enter it. I agree, but there should be another qualification, that for any citizen the real qualification should be a knowledge of the language of this country, and I would go so far as to say that no position in the gift of the Civil Service or of the Government, no position in the gift of any local authority, should be given to anyone who has not a competent knowledge of the Irish language. Either we mean what we say about it or we do not. Either the money spent on the language by this Government and State for the past five or six years has been spent with the intention of saving it or it has not. Let us be honest. If there is no intention of putting the language on its feet and bringing it back to the position it once occupied, making it the spoken language of the people, the sooner we know that the better, and the sooner we stop fooling about it the better. I believe there is an intention to save it. I believe we will save it, and because of that I say, as I said before, that we have come to the parting of the ways, that we must make an effort to ensure that the Irish language will not be treated with the scorn and contempt with which it has been treated, and is treated, even at the present time by a certain section of the people in this State, after all these years of war and turmoil for a principle.
Deputy Redmond and Deputy Good spoke a lot about compulsion, and I think Deputy Matthews and some other Deputies backed them up in that argument. Deputy Redmond said that compulsion was not the proper means of securing that this country will be Irish-speaking again; that it would make the language more obnoxious to the people. Well, this statement may cause a little bit of a shock amongst some people who speak so much about tolerance. There is no lack of moral courage here as far as I am concerned. As the Minister for Finance stated in the course of the debate, the Irish language has been pushed into its present deplorable position by long-continued persecution on the part of an alien Government. It has been put into its present position by penalties inflicted on the people during four or five hundred years of alien rule. It has been put in its present position, and brought to the gateway of death, because of material disadvantages imposed on it by an alien Government. I say that we have now got a native Government, in twenty-six counties of this nation anyhow, and, if necessary, the very same methods that were used to kill the Irish language should be used to bring it back. I say that the people of this State, and the members of this House, should be quite prepared to stand over that. Even if it is found necessary, and if there is such an organised opposition to it as to make the efforts being made by this Government and by the Dáil inoperative, I say that we should not be a bit ashamed or afraid to go back to the same methods that were made to kill it, in order to restore it, and they would restore it quickly. Deputy Redmond described the Bill as inconsistent and unnecessary; that it did not go far enough. I agree that it does not go far enough; I believe that the age limit as too low. In my opinion it should be 18 instead of 16 years. I quite agree with Deputies who urged that for the engineering profession, the medical profession, and even for the Dáil, after a certain year a knowledge of Irish should be essential for membership. I believe if every public position is given only to those who have acquired a knowledge of the Irish language, and if people are made to wake up to the fact —especially the section that is organising opposition—that there has been a 1916, and that there has been a 1921 in this country—if they are made wake up to the sacrifices made during these years to ensure that a Gaelic Ireland would arise out of the chaos and ruin— then the logical conclusion we may draw is that Irish will be absolutely essential for every public position, and even for membership of the Dáil and Seanad. I do not see why anybody should be a bit afraid to visualise that prospect.
Several Deputies have spoken about the legal profession and the terrible hardship that we are going to inflict on the members of that profession; the awful insult that was imposed on them when we did not consult them before the Deputies opposite introduced this Bill. We were told what terrible consequences it would have; that you would have everything Irish, and all this sort of bosh. Accidentally in the Library I came across a speech delivered by Charles Stewart Parnell at the National Club in Dublin after the Kilkenny election. His opinion of the legal profession stands as my opinion of it to-day, and perhaps it would be no harm to quote his opinion: "The Bar of Ireland was at one time a patriotic body, but it undoubtedly ceased to be a patriotic body when we lost our independence, and it will never again be a patriotic body until a future Irish nation shows these legal gentlemen that the only way to preferment is through the hearts of their fellow-countrymen." This Bill is going to show them that the only way is through the hearts and aspirations of their fellow-countrymen. I do not see why any self-respecting, sane Irishman, with any hope for the future of this country, with any belief in a Gaelic nation, should object to the terms of the Bill.
Deputy Good, in the course of his attack on the principle of the language, said that at least five years' notice should be given of the introduction of the Bill. Deputy Good is a man of intelligence; he is a man who occupies a high commercial position in this country; a man who undoubtedly can read and does read the newspapers; he has been in the Dáil for a considerable number of years, and I am sure that Deputy Good will realise—I am certain that he does realise, but for some reason or other he has omitted to say it— that the policy of this Government for the past six years has been a policy tending towards the Gaelicisation of this part of the country anyhow. Deputy Good knows very well that the other principal political party in this country has always stood for the same principle. On that principle at least there is unity, and Deputy Good should not try to delude the members of the Dáil with the statement that at least five years' notice of this Bill should be given. I may say six years' notice, and even twelve years' notice, has been given since the Proclamation of Independence in 1916. Due notice has been given, and, if the people principally concerned have not observed that notice, it is their funeral.
There is another point which was mentioned by a Deputy here. The Chief Justice of Saorstát Eireann some years back lectured before the Irish Bar on the policy of the Government. There has really then been no lack of notice given to these gentlemen, and if they are kicking against the traces now and will not take their beating like men, I, for one, will not have any sympathy with them. There cannot be any complaint on the score that they have not got notice.
Deputy Good proceeded to say that more was being made of the Irish-speaking problem than was really justified. That is the sort of talk that we heard in this country for many years back, and it is the sort of talk that we hope we will not hear again in the present position of things. Deputy Good, as well as many other Deputies who have spoken in the same strain, should realise that there is not enough made of the Irish-speaking problem. As Deputy Clery reminded the Dáil, if something is not done very quickly there will not be any Irish-speaking problem to be faced in a few years. If some great effort is not now made, all hope of saving the language will be shattered. The fountainhead of the Irish language, the last stronghold of the Irish language, is the Gaeltacht, and if the Gaeltacht goes then the true Irish language goes. You may have the Irish language as it is spoken now in the cities and towns, but you will not have the real inspiration direct from the source. That is the real fact of the matter, and yet we hear this talk about too much being made of the Irish-speaking problem and we are advised that we should not devote all the attention that we are devoting to the subject. All that sort of talk is so much bunkum.
The Deputy said that it was a hardship on the young men of the middle classes whose custom it was to be educated in schools outside the Saorstát for generations. I do not know why that was the custom. Certainly Deputy Craig, Deputy Alton and Deputy Tierney, and those others mixed up in the teaching profession here, should be able to satisfy Deputy Good that there are in the twenty-six counties of what was once known as Ireland, schools as good, if not better, than any of the schools to which they could send their middle-class children, as they have been doing, according to what we are now told, for generations. There are here, in the twenty-six counties, schools in which middle-class children will receive a really Gaelic, national training, and schools to which, if Deputy Conlon will only extend the Bill, they will be compelled to send their children, and in which those very children will be made good citizens of Ireland and not good citizens of an empire.
Deputy Anthony sent up a lonely banshee type of wail about the working-class children suffering severely from this policy. He made a grand phrase in the course of his statement, when he said that this generation was being sacrificed educationally. The results of tuition in the schools, as the last Deputy who spoke mentioned, have certainly disproved that. The teaching of Irish is no more a hardship on the working-class children than it is on anybody else. The teaching of the Irish language, so far from being detrimental to their education in other respects, has improved their education. I come from an English-speaking district where the Irish language went down with the Gaelic nation at the Battle of Kinsale. I have visited several schools in my own district during the past four or five days, and I have discussed this question with the teachers in those schools. I have submitted Deputy Anthony's statement to them, and also the statement of another Deputy, to the same effect. Those statements declared that the Irish language was injuring the education of the children. In every case the responsible teachers, who have years of experience and have taught the Irish language in those schools, especially since 1923, assured me that far from doing any harm to the intellects of the children, and far from being detrimental to their education, the teaching of Irish has broadened their views, and has done no harm whatsoever to them. That, I think, deals with the complaints made about the results of Irish teaching and the hardship that is being done to the children, according to Deputy Anthony.
There is another aspect, and that is that the boy of to-day is the citizen of to-morrow, and if that boy is not given a good sound training he is not going to be a good, sound citizen. The only way we can achieve a true Gaelic State is by ensuring that the boys and girls of the present generation will have a sound and a thorough knowledge of the Irish language. If it is necessary—I do not believe it is—I will mention to Deputy Anthony that we would be quite prepared—at least I would—to exclude Latin from the curriculum of the schools, or any other language for that matter, in order to make certain that the Irish language would become the spoken language of the people in the next generation.
I think the Minister for Finance struck the right note when he said that they were not going to hold up the language policy for the sake of the convenience of a few individuals. I believe that these few individuals represent only the minority in this country, who still cherish in their hearts the return of the British Empire. If there is any attempt to hold up the language policy, I say that the three big parties in the country standing for the language should resist that attempt with every available resource in the hands of the Government Party, and the other parties combined.
Deputy J.J. Byrne, in his usual melodramatic style, questioned what particular qualifications Deputies Conlon and MacFadden had to force this curriculum on a great profession. He said that the great services to this nation rendered by the legal profession entitled them to better treatment, and all that sort of stuff. Many other things were forced on the people of Ireland and they were not consulted. The legal profession, as was indicated in my quotation from Parnell, must wake up to the fact—and Deputy Byrne must, too—that it is not going to be made a sort of close borough, and it is not going to escape. Those who now say that this is a hardship being inflicted on the children should endeavour to realise the true situation. The sooner they wake up to facts the better.
Now I come to the shining star of the whole bunch. Deputy Jasper Wolfe, who painted a dismal picture of what was going to happen in this unfortunate partitioned country if this Bill is allowed to pass. He told us that he tried every Irish speaker he knew to translate a name, and he failed until he came to Deputy Gearoid O'Sullivan. I am certain that Deputy O'Sullivan, who knows the country from which Deputy Wolfe comes, will be able to bear me out when I say that Deputy Wolfe must not have tried very many Irish speakers or otherwise he would have got a translation.