In dealing with this matter last night I gave as an example of what was occurring in the case of one family in the town of Cobh, a family consisting of four boys who had fought during the whole of the Tan régime. One of them was captured and executed, another was wounded, a third, after three years of unemployment, had to seek a living in America, and the fourth, unfortunately for himself, is a married man with a family, and had to remain at home. He is still unemployed. In dealing with this matter last night the Minister for Industry and Commerce said it was their duty to look after those who had fought. If it is the duty of the National Government to look after those who fought, do the President and the Executive Council deem that they have any duty whatever towards that family?
I regret to have to say here that the boy who was wounded and became a burden on his married brother, died last year from the effects of wounds. Two years ago I made an appeal here to the Minister for Finance for something for that wounded boy which would relieve the burden on the married man. I was refused, and the boy died in Cobh hospital, where he had been kept by the ratepayers of Co. Cork. That is the treatment meted out to those who fought. The married brother is still at home with a wife and three children to support. He is idle, while employment is being given in connection with the tanks at Haulbowline to ex-National Army men who are single men.
There is another very sinister feature about all this. It is very strange that on the very same day that an order was sent down by the Minister for Local Government to the county councils to the effect that the maximum wage to be paid for work on the roads was £1 9s. per week, that order was coupled with an order that preferential treatment was to be given to ex-members of the National Army. In other words, the respect which the Executive Council had for those who fought, as they put it, was to use them as blacklegs, strike breakers to break the labour movement, to bring down the wages of the working men to a level on which they could not live—£1 9s. per week on casual labour for a man who had to support his wife and children. That was the use to which the Executive Council turned their machine when they were done murdering their fellow-Irishmen. That is the use they made there of them. The Government turned them into a strike-breaking machine. I have seen the effect of that as a member of the County Council. I have seen it within six miles of the City of Cork, where we got a grant for a certain road. The farmers were to pay for a motorists' road something over £2,000 a mile. We got a grant from the Road Fund towards it, and that grant out of the Road Fund— mind you, it was not relief work or anything of the kind—was coupled with an order that the maximum wage was to be £1 9s. and that preferential treatment was to be given to ex-members of the National Army.
There are not, and I am glad of it, many ex-members of the National Army residing in my district. What happened? These men looked for a fair wage from the contractor who had the contract. They had broken time and everything else, and they asked to be paid by the hour. The contractor refused to pay them and there was a strike. The contractor went to the Labour Exchange in the City of Cork and brought down lorries full of ex-National Army men to break the strike of the labourers there for a living wage. The mothers and wives of those workers, who saw their husbands after twelve months of idleness again being deprived of a livelihood, turned out and drove off the ex-members of the National Army. The strike continued for two months, and at the end of that period these workers had to get the wages they looked for, in spite of the order of the Minister for Local Government.
The point I make is that not alone are these men to get preferential treatment, but they are to be used to crush any hopes of any working man getting a decent living wage in this country. That is the use that has been made of them. I have, perhaps, more respect for some ex-members of the National Army than the Executive Council. I would honestly say I have more respect for them. There are some good old comrades of mine who went and joined the National Army through their own convictions, and I would not like to see those men, after their services during the Tan regime and during the Civil War, used as strike-breakers and blacklegs by the Executive Council. That is the only use they have for the ordinary private soldier who served in the ranks, to use him as a blackleg. A picture was drawn in this House the other night of what was given to others by Deputy Aiken.