Vol. 27 No. 4
I move:—
Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £3,000 chun slánuithe na suime is gá chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1929, chun Seirbhísí Sicréideacha.
That a sum not exceeding £3,000 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1929, for Secret Services.
It is the intention of the Deputies on this side of the House to oppose this Vote and to oppose it very strongly. We think it a very bad principle that public moneys should be put into the hands of any group of individuals for expenditure in a secret manner, and on activities which are not revealed or as to which no indication is given to this House. We are here presented with the bare statement that £10,000 is required for Secret Service. We have not in the Estimates, nor have we had from the Minister, any statement as to what this money is to be expended on. Is it too much to ask that the Minister should give some indication of what has been done and is being done with this money? Is the Secret Service a political Secret Service? Is the money being used to ascertain information concerning the activities of the Minister's political opponents? I would prefer if the Minister would give us in the Estimates or some other way an indication that it is impossible for the money to be used in that way. As far as we are concerned, we know that it is quite possible to use the money in that way. We know that an individual named Harling, who recently became notorious and is now admittedly a member of the C.I.D., came into the Fianna Fáil offices and applied for a position as messenger at 15/- a week. He is a married man, and it is not unfair to assume that he did not want that appointment unless he had an additional source of income which possibly came out of this Vote. I wonder would the Minister tell us why a married man came to apply for a post as boy messenger, worth 15/- a week?
I do not know whether there are any of the present employees at the head office of Fianna Fáil in receipt of any money out of this Vote. It is possible there are, but I agree it is likely there are not, because we have had several cases raised here recently of members of the Civic Guard raiding the houses of officers of the Fianna Fáil organisation and arresting delegates to Fianna Fáil Conventions off trains for the purpose of seizing documents, reading them, and supplying the Government with evidence of the activities of the organisation. If the Government had secret sources for supplying them with the same information they would not care to take the onus of carrying out these raids in public as they are carried out. We, therefore, must assume that this money is being expended for international secret service purposes, if it is not being spent on political secret service work. Perhaps we can guess that there are persons in the employment of the State in the United States of America counting the battleships, or in France counting the submarines. Will the Minister assure us that that is not the case or will he assure us, in view of the attitude which his colleague, the Minister for External Affairs, took on a certain Vote to-day, that they are not in Russia organising a white revolution?
A red herring revolution.
That is the sort of revolution we here would like to see in Russia, anyhow.
Any sort of revolution. The fact remains that we have received no information from the Minister as to what purpose this money is being devoted, and yet the Dáil is asked to vote it blindly. It is a rotten principle, a principle which should be abolished. It is a survival of mediaevalism, and in an ordinary, modern, democratic State it is not right that a blank cheque should be given to any body of men to use in any way they like and for purposes avowedly secret. Certain facts have been brought to our notice which would indicate that there is a body of men in this country associated in some way with the police forces, whose main function appears to be the organisation of crime. We have had cases of men induced to attempt the rescue of a prisoner in Mountjoy and supplied with guns for that purpose by a person who afterwards, it appeared, was in the employment of the Government. He have had the case of Harling, who admitted that he attempted to organise a Republican organisation in addition to those that exist. I know there were some organisations that existed in this country recently, organisations with which our Party were not identified, but which were, I think, somewhat in opposition to the Government. There were organisations such as that which called itself the I.R.A.O.—the Irish Republican Army Organisation—and which, in my firm conviction, contained more secret service spies of the Government than it did members who honestly subscribed to the principles for which it was avowedly established.
The system is wrong, and, it being a wrong system, it must inevitably produce evil results. I wonder if the Minister will tell us whether there are any Appropriations-in-Aid in connection with this Vote? Does the secret service agent who organises a bank robbery stick to the spoils or hand it to the Ministry to be put against the cost of the organisation of that raid? When a post office is raided, as did happen recently, by a gentleman who, I think it has since been admitted, was in the employment of the Government, do the proceeds go into that man's pocket or go against the expenses of the organisation of the raid? I believe while you have an avenue provided by which money can be expended secretly for purposes which are not merely secret but are of such a nature that they cannot be disclosed, evil is bound to result. It would be much better for the Government to put on the Civic Guard and the forces associated with them all responsibility for the suppression of crime in this country. You have 700 detectives, plain clothes policeman, and if they are not able to get all the information required to enable the Civic Guard to maintain order, then no information will be secured as a result of the expenditure of this money. It is a waste of money. This Vote is possibly used by the Government in a manner which they know to be wasteful, but which they believe to be necessary in order to buy the acquiescence of some people who might otherwise be troublesome. I hope the Dáil will reject it. It is not likely they will, in view of some of the Votes they have passed. We, however, will vote against it, because we believe that in principle it is wrong.
The Deputy asked was this money used for the purpose of obtaining information about political opponents. No, it is not. The Deputy asked was any of the money used for the purpose of obtaining information about Fianna Fáil. The position is fully accepted. Perhaps we are too rash in accepting it. We fully accept the position that Fianna Fáil is a constitutional Party.
Slightly.
If they are not quite constitutional now they will become fully constitutional. They are on the right road, and we do not regard them as——
Criminals.
—likely to organise crimes of violence or attempt, by means of armed force, to overturn the authority of a Government elected by the people. No money out of this Vote is spent for the purpose of finding out anything about Deputy Lemass now. Perhaps two or three years ago the money was spent in obtaining information about his activities. The Deputy says that it is a rotten principle, and that it should be unnecessary in an ordinary, democratic State. If there were no remains of the organisations that were so very active two or three years ago, and no offsprings from them in existence it might be unnecessary to have any expenditure under that head. Certainly very little would be necessary. But occasionally, even for dealing with ordinary crime, the authorities must have a little money at their disposal that will not have to be accounted for in detail and supported by vouchers for the Comptroller and Auditor-General. If we had none of these pretended military organisations which can do nothing except die or become murder organisations—if we had none of the remains of these, it would be unnecessary to spend very much money. As I stated, for years the expenditure from this source went down very rapidly up to last year. There was some increase then, but what I think happened up to July twelve months was that we decreased the expenditure too rapidly. As long as you have people talking about renewing war and giving utterances to the sentiments that one occasionally hears, though less frequently as time goes on, it is necessary to have money and to use it to discover so far as possible any plans that they may be making to resort to armed crime, or for the encouragement of crime, and, if necessary, to pay for the information that any of their members are prepared to give.
