I have dealt with two cases. The Deputy's arithmetic is very bad. One and one make two, and I hope the Deputy will bear that little bit of information in mind, because he does not seem to know it up to this. I have already replied, in the absence of Deputy O'Connell, in connection with the matter he raised, but as he is here now I will take this opportunity of again informing him, because he seems to have been misinformed, on the organisation of the Gárda force. Deputy O'Connell talked of something which he called the C.I.D. There is no such force in this country as the C.I.D. There is one body of Guards only. There is the uniformed force and there is the Detective Branch, which do not wear uniform.
They are the same body, the same force and under the same control. The officers are uniformed officers, and it is to them that the detective branch is responsible. They have control of the detective branch; over them, of course, is the same headquarters staff and the same commission. Some of them specialise in one class of work, others of them specialise in another class of work, but they are the identical body under identical control. There is no difference between them, and it is as much the duty of uniformed men to detect all sorts of crime as it is the duty of plain clothes men. Uniformed men must use their abilities to detect crime, and a class of crime they are not specialised in they are not sent out specially to investigate. If they have any possible opportunities of checking crime, of arresting when crime is done, it is as much their duty to do so as it is the duty of any member of the plain clothes forces. They are the same united body, transferable one from the other. That is to say, a uniformed man may be moved into the plain clothes force, the detective branch, or a detective may be moved into the uniformed branch, according as the peculiar abilities of the man make him suited for one branch more than the other. Deputy O'Connell fell in with the suggestion which Deputy Lemass made, that men who are in the Guards and were prominent during the civil war should not be continued in the detective branch of the Guards. I cannot really follow Deputy O'Connell's reasoning in that. These men proved themselves to be really the best stuff in the State. They were men who saved this State when it was attacked, who built up this State, and helped to carry the State out of real danger into the position of almost perfect security we have at the present day, and those are men who should not be slighted, who should not be turned down at a time when their abilities and energies are still required. Those men helped to save the State, and those men, in the position in which they now are, are doing fine work to preserve the State; they are thoroughly well suited in ability and in knowledge to the positions which they hold, and they are doing their work in those positions admirably. That, I think, was one of the main things which was troubling Deputy O'Connell. Were they there because of their abilities or not? They are there because they do their work thoroughly, and they are the right type of men to carry on the duties which they are now discharging.
There is another suggestion made by Deputy Lemass, that the Ministry of Justice should be an external Ministry. I wonder if Deputy Lemass regards this House as a serious House, if he regards the Oireachtas as the real ruling authority in this country to be taken seriously, if he thinks Irish public life is to be taken seriously, or whether he takes the whole thing as a sort of Gilbert and Sullivan opera business when he makes a suggestion that the Minister for Justice should be an external Minister, that is to say, that in performing the most important duty which any State can have, the preservation of order, which is the first duty of every civilised Government, the Executive Council are not to have any voice; the Minister responsible for the preservation of order is not to be a member of the Executive Council. He is to be an external Minister. The Government for the time being is not to have anything to do with the preservation of order. Some individual, an external Minister, is to have it, responsible only to the Dáil, the Executive not having a word to say, and Deputy Lemass puts that forward, if you please, as a serious proposition. Deputy Lemass shows his real gift for statesmanship when he puts forward a proposition so grotesque as that.
