I hope you will allow me, sir, to make a short statement on a matter concerning my own personal honour. You are the head of the House, and you are rightly jealous of the honour and the reputation of its members. It will be within the recollection of the House that during the debate upon the Vote for the Stationery Office certain statements were made concerning the relations of the Government with a certain paper—the "Derry Journal." I was not in the Chamber at the time, but when I returned I was informed that my name had been brought into the debate, and I thereupon, in order that I might be more properly and accurately informed, took steps to obtain a copy of the proceedings, and by the courtesy of the Official Reporters I have that typescript now before me. I do not propose to trouble the House with any lengthy reading of it, but there are just one or two passages that I shall read in order that Deputies may understand exactly what is in question. In the first place, Deputy Cassidy asked this question of the Minister: "Will the Minister say who approached him and asked him to write to the Stationery Department requesting that Department to stop advertisements in the ‘Derry Journal'?" Later Deputy Cassidy made this statement: "When certain shareholders withdrew from the paper, at the behest of these shareholders the Minister withdrew the advertisements." Then Deputy Carney asked: "Will the Minister explain why these advertisements were not withdrawn until such time as Senator MacLoughlin and Deputy Hugh Law withdrew from it?" The House will observe that there results from these three statements taken together an imputation affecting my personal honour. Deputy Cassidy asserts that at the behest of these shareholders the Minister withdrew the advertisements. Deputy Carney, of whom I am bound to say I expected better, repeats the insinuation in rather more delicate language, and goes on to name me specifically as one of these shareholders. The suggestion quite plainly is that I first sold certain shares—which shares I might just perhaps mention I have held ever since the inception of the company long before 1914—and that I then, having sold them, used my personal influence, whatever it is, with the Government in order to injure the property of the remaining shareholders, including those persons to whom I sold the shares. If it does not mean that, it means nothing. I desire, therefore, to say in the plainest possible terms (1) that I sold the shares simply for the reason which usually dictates such transactions—namely, that at the time I had need of money and that I preferred to sell these shares rather than to dispose of certain other investments; (2) that neither directly nor indirectly, neither by myself nor through any other person, neither before the sale of the shares nor after the sale of the shares, did I have any communication whatever with the Government, with any member of the Government, with any official of the Government, either with regard to these advertisements, or the business or policy of the "Derry Journal," or any matter affecting the "Derry Journal" from first to last; (3) that I did not even know the advertisements had been withdrawn until I saw a statement to that effect in the columns of the paper itself.
Progress ordered to be reported; Committee to sit again to-morrow.