Skip to main content
Normal View

Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 22 Oct 1931

Vol. 40 No. 5

Supplementary Estimate. - In Committee on Finance. Vote 64—Army.

I move:

Go ndeontar suim bhreise ná raghaidh thar Cúig Míle Púnt chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1932, chun costas an Airm, maraon le Cúltaca an Airm.

That a supplementary sum not exceeding Five Thousand Pounds be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31st March, 1932, for the cost of the Army, including Army Reserve.

As Deputies will see from the Supplementary Estimate which has been circulated, this Vote is intended to meet expenses incurred in carrying into effect the provisions of the Constitution (Amendment No. 17) Act. It is impossible, at the present stage, to estimate the cost of operating that measure with any degree of precision. The figure of £5,000 has been set down, perhaps, as a minimum figure. Should the amount prove to be larger, it will be possible to obtain the additional amount by means of virement, as there will be a saving on other subheads of the Army Vote. The expenses will fall roughly under two heads—expenses connected with the Tribunal and its staffing, which will be a minor item, and other expenses in connection with places of detention, maintenance of prisoners and so forth.

I rise to oppose this Estimate. As the Minister for Finance has admitted, the £5,000 is a mere bagatelle as compared with the amount the State will have to bear responsibility for when the Bill is carried into full operation, as has been intimated. The worst of these dictatorships and these efforts to repress what may be perfectly just and perfectly natural motives amongst large sections of the community is that they have ultimately to be paid for. We are going to be placed in exactly the same position in regard to the cost of this new military dictatorship as we were last week with regard to its operation. We got no information whatsoever as to what exactly the Government were going to do under this Act, what steps their Tribunal, their police forces or their auxiliary forces throughout the country were going to take. I asked the Minister for Finance if it was proposed to organise or recruit new forces and he said that that was not the intention at the moment. Apparently, considerable recruiting has already gone on in connection with what is called the Protective Force and in connection with that branch of the Gárda Síochána which has been connected with this work. I think the Minister ought at least inform the House and the country what exactly all this organising is going to cost and not attempt to get away with the suggestion that a sum of £5,000 will meet the expenses that will accrue. Let us take even the cost of the guards who have been allotted to protect the members of this House. I do not know what they are to protect them from in some cases at any rate. If the 124 persons who voted for this Bill last week in the Dáil and Seanad are to be protected for the next twelve months by two guards per person, or by even one guard per person, the guards, instead of costing something like £5,000 more, will cost something like £30,000 or £40,000 more. I sincerely hope that the Government will not consider it necessary to maintain these guards. Seeing, however, that it seems probable the guards will be maintained, the country is entitled to know from the Deputies concerned what reason there is to believe they are in danger of their lives. Is my friend Deputy Gorey, for example, in any danger in the constituency that we both have the honour to represent? I refuse to believe it. I have not seen any report from any responsible body, any responsible individual or any police officer in that constituency to show that there is anything going on there that could cause the slightest qualms or squeamishness to Deputy Gorey in going about his affairs in the ordinary way.

I agree.

Not alone are we going to pay £30,000 or £40,000, but if this continues we are going to have heavy expenses in connection with maintenance. These guards will have to be paid a reasonable salary. I think most of them occupy the rank of lieutenant, or have been Lieutenants or officers in the Army. In addition to a payment of at least £5 per week per man—it may be more or less—a further sum will have to be paid for their expenses. They will have to stay in hotels, and they will have to travel. The provision of accommodation and the provision of transport for them will increase the bill to a very large figure. We have not alone to consider the guards, but we have to consider the Garda Siochana. We have been told that large numbers of men have been newly assigned to the work of dealing with these organisations, which are said to exist in the country, and that a large squad is being apportioned to each police division. If that is so, the Dáil is entitled to know, before it passes this Vote—this is really only a nominal figure which does not, as I have emphasised, represent the real, ultimate cost of this adventure—how many men have been newly recruited to the special branch of the police force and distributed throughout the country. There is also the case of the Army patrol which we see cycling around the streets of Dublin in the evening. Nobody knows what is the object of these patrols. But even if a special recruitment of the Army is not necessary, we can be quite sure that special costs will arise in connection with them. Officers will have to be specially detailed, and other expenses will arise. That is one of the things which it is impossible to understand, but it is going on.

Another matter is as to the rank of those people. I suggest to the House that the ordinary rank of the officers who will be employed either as guards or otherwise will be that of a Lieutenant in the Army. I notice that in Iris Oifigiúil of the 2nd October there is a very long list of officers of the Defence Force given who have been promoted. Eight officers have been promoted from the rank of Captain to Commandant, and forty-nine other officers have been promoted from the rank of Lieutenant to that of Captain. Are we to take it that these promotions were made in anticipation of this Act; that it was found necessary to take that course in order to make these officers do this work, and that it was necessary to induce them to do this work by giving them this promotion in advance? We are quite in the dark as regards this protective service because we do not know who is responsible. The Minister for Defence is listening, and he will no doubt be able to explain to the House what Ministry is responsible. Is the Minister for Justice responsible? Are these officers who have been just promoted—I do not know whether they are on protective work or not—to work in connection with the Military Tribunal, to be under the jurisdiction of the Minister for Justice or the Minister for Defence? In the event of both Ministries having certain duties and functions to carry out in connection with the Constitution Act, how is the House to distinguish between the officers who are responsible to the Minister for Justice and those who are responsible to the Minister for Defence?

On this question of virement, as one who is a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I have experience of that. It means that a Government Department, when it finds itself short of funds, when it finds it has spent, as in this case it undoubtedly will, the amount allocated—£5,000— under sub-head A.A., and that it requires more money will go to other sub-heads of the Army Vote upon which money is unexpended—in which so to speak, a surplus remains—and it will take that surplus or portion of it out of the sub-head to which it originally belonged and the sub-head for which the Dáil originally voted the money, and it will spend it under a sub-head the sum for which was insufficient to carry out what was deemed necessary.

For example, any other sub-head of the Army Vote where there is money available may be raided by the Minister for money to provide funds to enable him to pay expenses in connection with the Constitution (Amendment No. 17) Act, 1931 when this £5,000 is exhausted. The principle is a well-recognised one, but so far as I understand it—I did not look up the matter recently and I am only speaking from recollection—the principle under which virement is exercised is governed largely by tradition and usage. That is to say, a Minister will not transfer money from one sub-head to another except in accordance with routine and usage, and furthermore, he will not do it in a way that would be clearly against the wishes of the Dáil when they voted the money originally.

For example, if Deputies on the opposite benches voted £1,437,041 for various purposes in connection with the Army, it may happen that they did not desire any of that money should be spent in connection with the new Military Tribunal or indeed in connection with any of the expenses under this new Act. It may happen that Deputies would be willing, and had in mind that this £1,437,000 should be spent in accordance with the Army, running as an ordinary force, in peace time and governed by the laws of this country. It may be that Deputies when they suddenly see the Army transferred to what I might call a war footing by reason of the military tribunal and patrols and whatever other activities in the way of raids, arrests and internments the Army may take upon itself—it is quite possible that Deputies who would vote money for the Army when the Vote was passed would not vote for it under the new circumstances. In any case, in my opinion the Minister has deceived the House in the first place by giving no indication whatever of what the cost may be, even the cost of the force which he knows himself they had to newly recruit up to the present, and of the expenses which he must know are incidental to this Act. Furthermore, the method of setting out this sub-head as "expenses in connection with the Constitution (Amendment No. 17) Act, 1931" might cover anything.

Anything whatever that arises, whether it be regular or irregular, whether it be in accordance with current financial usage or not the Minister may come along afterwards and say: "Well, the House passed this money. I told them over and over again that probably more than £5,000 would be necessary. Nevertheless they agreed to it. Furthermore, I told them it would be spent in a general way, that we wanted it in a general way under the general head expenses in connection with this Act, and there is nothing whatever to show that the Dáil had any other intention except to spend this £5,000 or any other sum I felt called upon to get from other sub-heads to spend it in whatever way I thought fitting and right."

We had an example at the Public Accounts Committee last year where this principle of virement was transgressed, in the opinion of the Public Accounts Committee which is supposed to be a judicial body. I know there are Ministers who do not consider it a judicial body, who consider it a body which ought to be abolished because it has the temerity to support the Comptroller and Auditor-General, whose function it is under the Constitution to see that all public money is rightfully and properly spent and that it has the sanction and authority of the Dáil behind it to see that it is being spent. On that Committee we are generally all of one mind when we are discussing these financial questions and the Committee unanimously reported against a certain transaction which took place where the Minister took advantage of this principle of virement. He was granted a comparatively small sum of money from the Dáil, £12,000, for Army gratuities under a specific sub-head which is exactly the same as the Dáil by its majority will probably pass this £5,000 here. When the Comptroller and Auditor-General examined the account subsequently he found that not alone was £12,000 spent but £216,000 more was spent. That is £228,000 in all. We stated that the spending of that £216,000, although officials of the Department of Finance or the Minister or anybody else might argue it was justifiable and in the exercise of this power of virement, was contrary to the intentions of the Dáil.

I remember that the Minister stated it was on the grounds of policy that he did not declare to the House that a further sum, a very much larger sum than the £12,000, would be necessary. Is it on the grounds of policy that the Minister now refuses to give the House any information whatever as to the expenses he has incurred up to the present, or is likely to incur, or as to what the total cost of this measure is likely to be? Even if the Minister gave a full and accurate account of the expenditure which he foresees in connection with this Act, he cannot expect support from the Fianna Fáil Party, at any rate, in giving him any financial facilities whatever.

So long as we are satisfied that the ordinary law is there, and that we are spending well over £3,000,000 in the maintenance of an Army and the maintenance of a highly efficient police force, and that money is already being spent, there is no reason whatever why we should spend a further sum on the creation of special forces and special tribunals and the pursuance of special activities.

There are one or two points I think it would be well to refer to again in connection with this Tribunal. In the first place we were treated to a great deal of lectures, particularly on religious matters, by Ministers on the opposite side and by Deputy Mulcahy, the Minister for Local Government, whom nobody will accuse of having created any sensational social revolution during his period of administration of the important office he now holds. He actually took it on himself to lecture the Labour Party as to how they should word their phrases when referring to social discontent in this country. I quote from Vol. 40, No. 1, Col. 151, of the Official Reports:—

We have that body to-day at a time of financial and economic depression and social unrest, at a time when the Deputies on the far side do not know what politically or economically they want, at a time when so little of the Deputies on the Labour Benches know what socially or economically they want, that they are almost slipping into borrowing words from the Constitution of Saor Eire.

It seems to me from my recollection that what the Minister said was that the Labour Party were using the same words. What is that but felon setting the Labour Party, trying to create the impression in this country that the Labour Party no matter how they might pretend otherwise—we believe them to be a thoroughly respectable set of men indeed—trying to pretend to the country that the Labour movement is in some way irreligious, that they are some way connected with this dreadful organisation that is trying to upset the country and create a social revolution. Whatever right the Government Party have to badger the Fianna Fáil Deputies with regard to our actions in the past they have no right to badger the Labour Party who, as soon as this Dáil was set up, tried to carry out the Constitution as they saw it. When in 1922 money was being voted for purposes somewhat similar to the purposes this money is being voted for Deputy Johnson stated then "It is an extraordinary thing that although we cannot get money to remedy social evils we can get plenty of money to carry on wars." That is the extraordinary thing in this present situation, that no matter what money the Government may require, whether it be £5,000, £50,000 or £500,000 it is assured that money will be forthcoming. Once you start the ball rolling you do not know where it is to stop, but these people have the temerity to tell the country that they cannot get money to deal with the problems of the slums or of the Gaeltacht or any other problem crying out for solution, when, as Deputies pointed out, so long as they do exist unsolved, they must remain the breeding ground for the discontent they are trying to put down with a strong hand under this Act.

I say also that it is a thoroughly dangerous practice for politicians, no matter how devout they may be, no matter how holy they may be, no matter how often they may have the word of God on their lips, to mix up religion with their own views. Religion will, I hope, continue in this country when we are all dead and gone, and when possibly the policies we stand for are gone with us. Is this to help the cause of religion? If you suggest, as has been suggested, that it is necessary, in defence of that cause, to carry out this Act and put people to death, it can afterwards be justly declared that when the Act was being put into operation it was put into operation with the intention of making the people of this country believe that it was necessary to carry it out in order to save religion.

Could anything be more foolish or preposterous? Look at the associations they have banned. Some of them I, at any rate, never heard of, and I am sure the vast majority of Deputies in this House never heard of them. As to those who, we are told, are connected with Russia and revolution, even including Saor Eire, how many are in all these organisations? It has been stated that the same individuals are in several of the organisations, but I say if all the individuals in all the organisations— outside the I.R.A. at any rate—were put together it is very doubtful if they would form more than a few hundred people. If what I am saying can be controverted, let the Ministry produce the evidence. They have refused to show us where these revolutionary groups are going on, to show their numbers, or to say what the subversive doctrines are that are being preached, and above all to show that they are trying by force of arms to upset the existing social order. We have no proof whatever of this, and when we see a highly responsible Deputy like Deputy Davin coming into this House full up with scare rumours that rifles have been landed in Kerry, and that hundreds of men have been drilling on the public squares of certain villages throughout the country, we know what a sedulous Press campaign is capable of doing. It cannot make the people of Donegal believe that there is a serious situation in Donegal. It cannot make the people of Kerry believe that there is a serious situation or a state of armed rebellion in Kerry or in any other county, but it can by false rumours and by lying reports and by suggestion pretend that there is an undercurrent going on all over the country, and that in counties other than the counties in which the people who are reading the papers live, there are dreadful conditions. The people of the Midlands believe that the South of Ireland is in a terrible condition of unrest, and the people of the West think that the City of Dublin, which is on the eve of the Eucharistic Congress, is in a condition something approximating to what Petrograd was in 1919 or 1920.

On a point of personal explanation, I did not start the story referred to by Deputy Derrig. I asked if the Minister would confirm the story I heard. I want to say that I did not believe any such thing.

The speakers who are sent out by the Cumann na nGaedheal Party to spread these rumours have taken very good care that they would not give the lie to them. The Minister for Justice made a statement that in 1925 Seán Russell, the Quartermaster General of the Irish Republican Army, was in Russian pay. His statement was contradicted twice in this House last week by Deputy Lemass who has personal knowledge of the transaction, whereas the Minister knows nothing whatever about it except that he got a certain document in the dump at Killakea. He refused to withdraw and tried to felon-set Seán Russell as he tried to felon-set the Irish Labour Party before the Irish People and the Fianna Fáil Party as well, as people who are in some way connected with Russia and in some way connected with those subversive doctrines that are said to be threatening the very existence of the social order here. I say I thoroughly agree with what Deputy Lemass has said, that this Bill would never have seen the light in the peculiar circumstances and conditions in which it has seen it if that unfortunate document had not been found, the only document that exists according to the words of the Minister for Justice to show any connection whatever with Russia. The six years old document which was found several months ago was not published. Why? Because the Government, realising their position in the country, realising the ground that they had lost and realising that they should have to make a serious and terrible effort to recover that ground, prepared the way themselves for the coming General Election. They decided that they would fake up a case and they have faked up a case and got away with it to an extent that absolutely amazes me. When the Government broadcasted a six years old document which the public cannot examine critically and reasonably it is wonderful the false impression that can be created. We remember how the British Labour Government was swept out of office when the Zinovieff letter was published. I say that this document found in the Killakea dump is the Zinovieff letter of the present Free State Government. The Minister could not contradict Deputy Lemass when he gave the lie to the statement that Seán Russell was in the pay of Russia in 1925 or at any time. Deputy Davin asked the Minister (Column 268, Vol. 40, Official Debates):

"Have you any more recent document?"

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: No, I have never said I had. I have never suggested that there was any more recent document at any time, and I tell you definitely and distinctly——

Mr. Davin: Tell it to Deputy Hassett.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: I tell the Deputy definitely and distinctly that there is a steady inter-communication between the irregular forces in this country and the forces which are making in Russia for general worldwide disorder."

If that is so, let us have the proof; let us have the documents to show that this constant inter-communication is going on. How can the Minister say in one sentence that he had no document whatever since 1925 to prove that there is communication, and in the next sentence come forward and say that there is constant inter-communication going on. These are the gentlemen who are asking for powers of life and death as if the country had not sufficient experience of how they used these powers of life and death when they had them before. We remember 1922. When the Minister for Defence talks about his authority from God, the authority that the present Government have got from God, I ask them had they that authority from God for what they did on 8th December, 1922. Had they authority from God for that?

There was a document quoted here by the President in regard to certain activities of mine in 1922. I am not anxious to go into 1922 any more than anyone else, but when people are posturing in the name of religion, people who if they examine their own hearts and their own Benches might find plenty of demoralisation and plenty of rottenness which they would do well to clean up, let them clean up the Augean stable before they hold themselves forth to the people of this country as the defenders and upholders of public right and morality. There is going to be no appeal from this court. The unfortunate fellows who will be dragged before it, if they are not shot now, will be shot on the first pretext. This is a reprisals Act. There will be no appeal. They forgot when they were doing it before to prevent it. In the old courts under the old English tradition in this country, at any rate there was something of justice and right. Even when a man was caught in armed rebellion there was still a Supreme Court that he could go before to fight for his life. But while an appeal to the Supreme Court was being taken in the case of Erskine Childers in 1922, he was shot before his appeal could be heard. They are not going to make any mistake this time. There will be no appeal. The man will be shot before anybody knows anything about it. These are the gentlemen who are looking for powers, and who, in addition, are looking for thousands of pounds to enable them to get these things done.

They talk of Russia. The Minister for Finance talked of the anti-democratic theories that are prevailing elsewhere in Europe. He has not denied responsibility for the famous article in the "Star," in which he counted on the army in the event of a change of Government after a general election to take the law into their own hands and decide whether a Fianna Fáil Government should be allowed to operate or not. He who has not denied responsibility for that article comes forward and talks about antidemocratic theory. There is no antidemocratic theory in force in Italy or Russia equal to that. Even the Cheka, the secret court that we hear so much about under the Bolshevik Government, pales into insignificance before this monstrous military tribunal for which we are now to vote money. As an English paper said last Sunday, old Arthur James Balfour must smile in his grave when he thinks of the Bill that has been passed through this House. Even if our tyrants are our own countrymen surely to God we are not going to put up with a situation in which we are allowing them to go forth with the blood lust that they have publicly proclaimed on their lips and in their hearts against those outside who disagree with them.

I say the whole thing is madness, absolute madness, and that the people are being fooled and an effort made to drive them into panic. An effort is made under the sacred name of religion to pretend to the people that there is a dreadful situation in this country and that dreadful things have happened. There have been three murders—three murders last summer. These are the justification for the Bill. They are the only justification for the Bill. No Deputy on the Cumann na nGaedheal benches or anywhere else can say that anything else but these murders are the real reason for the Bill. Why was not the Bill introduced that time? Why was it left over until it would coincide with the document from the Irish Bishops which would give the present Government an opportunity of going forth again under the cloak of religion and pretending that they are doing this for the sake of religion?

I say let us have the documents. Let us have the reports from the police inspectors throughout the country. Let us have the definite evidence of these constant communications with Russia that are going on. Let us have definite evidence as to the threatening letters and notices, the midnight raids on persons, the threats to the young men to make them join the I.R.A., and the efforts to strike terror into the hearts of the law-abiding citizens. Let us have evidence that the detection of ordinary crime is rendered difficult through dread of intimidation. The police officers whom the State is paying to carry out the work of crime detection are, on the whole, honest and non-partisan. They, I think, have a sense of responsibility with regard to these matters. They are not, I hope, guided by political views and I for one would be prepared to give the fullest consideration to anything they would say. But this debate has been significant, in spite of all that has been thrown out about the misrepresentation and the conjuring up of revolutionary and subterranean movements. It has been significant by reason of the fact that not a single document has been published from any police officer in any of these Twenty-six Counties to show that the condition of affairs was so serious in his area as to demand this Act.

I have nothing further to say except this: when an Independent Deputy stated down the country that the vote in the Dáil last week finished the discussion of this Act, he was making a mistake. It has not finished the discussion of this Act. This Act will come back like a boomerang. It will recoil on the heads of those who passed it, and particularly on the back benchers of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party who refused to come out and to state what the actual conditions were in their constituencies. The Act will recoil upon them. The people will begin to see, in spite of the state of panic that is sought to be introduced during the past month, that there is no danger of any social revolution on anything like a large scale. The people themselves have common-sense. They know their conditions, they know also that if you have 10,000 people in the Donegal bogs living on an area not half as fertile as half-a-dozen ranches in Meath that you cannot expect those people to have high and mighty ideals—people who do not know where their next day's bread is to come from. These are the people who are subject to the theories of the Communists. When you have the unemployed, and when you have 78,000 people living in single tenement rooms in Dublin you have the very class of people who are open to these Communistic doctrines.

All that is necessary is to have a Government in power with a truly Christian outlook, and with sympathy for those people. Feelings of resentment and anger are aroused by displays of extravagance which this country cannot afford. These are the chief causes of discontent. I say if the people saw a sympathetic Government in power, if that Government had mapped out an economic programme for dealing with housing, for dealing with the Gaeltacht and other problems over a period of five or ten years, there would be no need for proclaiming these wretched organisations consisting of a few score individuals. The people would come back to their old spirit. They are now prepared to listen to any doctrine of despair. If the people get a proper lead they would be the first to appreciate, welcome and support it. I would ask the Government to drop this Act, to settle down seriously to the affairs of this country and try to make this the contented and prosperous country that we all thought it would be under a native Government. In such conditions I am confident that any signs of discontent that we have will wither away like clouds before the mid-summer sun.

I want to speak on this matter because of certain things that have been referred to in the discussions upon the Constitution (Amendment No. 17) Act. That Act inserted a new section in the Constitution, as Deputies are aware. A section of it empowers the Executive Council to make an order, when in its opinion the circumstances justify doing so, bringing into operation certain exceptional provisions designed to deal with an emergency. We have read in the Press that the Executive Council has made the order and that the emergency provisions are now in operation. The first official intimation of that fact which has been given to the House is the estimate now before us. The Minister for Finance asks us to vote £5,000 to meet expenses which will be incurred in the exercise of the special powers conferred by the Executive Council under that order; but he carefully warns us, when doing so, that the £5,000 indicated on the face of the estimate is only a token and that the actual amount to be expended is likely to exceed it to a very great degree.

The question which the Dáil has to ask itself is, having passed that Act, whether in fact the Executive Council were well advised in making the order which it authorised it to make. No attempt has been made to justify the action of the Executive Council to the Dáil, and I presume that the Ministers are relying on the account of the circumstances which they alleged exist here, and which they mentioned to us during the debate last week. In the heat of that debate it was not possible to give detailed and critical examination to the evidence they produced to show that a state of emergency exists here which justifies the suspension of the Constitution and the equipment of the Executive Council with these amazing powers.

Ministers asserted that there was a widespread conspiracy in the country to overthrow the State and to bring about a social revolution. That assertion was made with emphasis, and members of the Dáil were, no doubt, affected by it, because these men hold responsible positions, and presumably they would not make assertions of that kind without a full sense of their responsibility. We have, however, since then received the Official Report of the debate, and we have been able to examine, in detail, the evidence they produced, or what they alleged was evidence, to show that such a state of emergency exists. We find that, although they stretch the few threads of evidence they possess almost to breaking point, they do not prove their case.

I want to endeavour to make this clear to Deputies, because I think it is of very great importance. Does it matter in the least what vehement Ministers assert when they talk of certain conditions existing in this country? The Dáil should not be satisfied with mere assertions. As Deputy Derrig has suggested, the Dáil should demand proof, and the proof has not yet been submitted. The assertions made by Ministers were divided into two parts. It was asserted that there was serious prospect of a social upheaval here in consequence of the dissemination of Communistic propaganda, and also that an organisation existed which was seeking to overthrow the State by force of arms. Let us take the points separately.

In relation to the allegation that Communism is rampant in the country and that there is imminent danger of a social upheaval, three points of evidence were produced. Certain documents were read which originated in 1925. There was an account given of an alleged visit made to Russia in 1929 by a party of students organised by Mr. Peadar O'Donnell, the purpose being that these people should study revolutionary practice. Then there was the constitution of Saor Eire. The entire case made by the Government to support its assertions that there was imminent danger of a Communist uprising here, rested on these three allegations—documents which originated in 1925, the reported visit to Russia, and the constitution of Saor Eire.

As regards the 1925 documents, my name was mentioned. In fact, I think most of the documents read were alleged to have been written by me. I think it will be accepted that I can speak with some authority concerning them. I want to say very definitely that in making the decision to send a delegation to Russia in 1925, the fact that a Communistic form of government existed there did not enter into the deliberations at all. That decision was not influenced one way or the other by the form of government existing in Russia. The sending of that delegation, the intention behind it, was precisely the same as that which induced the Standing Committee of Sinn Féin, of which President Cosgrave was a member, in 1917 to send a delegation to the Russians; which induced Dáil Eireann, on the motion of the late President Griffith— and most of the members opposite were members of that organisation at the time—to send a delegation to the Russians, and which induced the Provisional Government in 1922, with which Government members opposite were concerned, to send a delegation to Russia. The idea was to secure sympathetic assistance in the national struggle here of a Government whose aims might be considered for the time being to coincide with ours in national matters.

As Deputy Boland said, the attempt was a failure. Russian economic theory or communistic doctrine was not discussed by that delegation, nor were they concerned with it. No member of that delegation received any money from the Russian Government. The organisation which sent them did not ask for, and did not receive, any money from the Russian Government. Any attempt to establish a case in support of the allegation that there was danger of Communism here arising out of the documents that were read is thoroughly dishonest, and is dishonest to the knowledge of the men who tried to establish it. The entire incident terminated in 1925 and there were no unfinished tag-ends left which were not accounted for. The delegation was sent for the sole purpose of soliciting Russian aid in the event of it being possible to secure any supporting action against British Imperialism. The members of the delegation were not concerned with, and did not discuss, any economic theory or any points of Communistic doctrine. They did not take, ask or receive any money. The entire attempt was a failure and it ended in 1925. No case whatever can be made in support of the contention that there is a danger of Communism here; no case can be based upon anything that happened in that year arising out of that delegation.

That was the first and the main leg upon which the Government stood in support of its contention concerning Communism. The second was an allegation that a party of students, organised by Mr. Peadar O'Donnell, went to Russia in 1929 for the purpose of studying Bolshevik revolutionary tactics. I do not know anything about that, but I have seen it stated by Mr. O'Donnell in the Press that he was never in Russia in his life and he knows nothing whatever about any such party of students. The third point upon which they relied was the constitution of Saor Eire. As those who have been reading the daily Press will have observed, members of the executive of that organsiation have stated it was not its intention to bring about here the establishment of a Communistic State. I will agree that it is very hard to reconcile this statement with the published constitution of the organisation, and that there is evidence of muddled thought somewhere. It is quite clear, however, that this statement disproves the contention of the Government that there is a widely organised and dangerous conspiracy in existence for the production of a Communistic uprising.

That is the entire case they make in support of their contention. Not one additional scrap of evidence was produced by any Minister who spoke. Such Ministers as were challenged to produce evidence of an association between any Irish group and Russia subsequent to 1925, admitted they could not do so. They admitted they had no such evidence and any Deputy who may have been misled by their speeches should now reconsider his position in this regard because it is quite obvious that the Bill was pushed through this House on false pretences.

Leaving aside for a moment the Communist uprising part of the story, and turning to the evidence produced here to the effect that an organisation called the I.R.A. was contemplating taking armed action for the overthrow of the State, we find that allegation rests upon the following points:—A series of quotations from the leading articles of "An Phoblacht," an interview alleged to have been given to the "Daily Express" by a Mr. Frank Ryan, and-this is the most serious part of it—a list of crimes and cases of violence which took place in the country during the past six months.

The seriousness with which we should regard these quotations from "An Phoblacht" will depend on the information given to us as to the relationship existing between that journal and that organisation. Do the leading articles of that paper reflect the views of anyone else except the Editor of it? No evidence has been produced to us to show that they do. So far as this House is concerned we have only the word of the Minister that that paper is the official organ of any group or Party. It purported to be an independent organ and the Editor apparently took sole responsibility for the views expressed in the leading article. I am not trying to defend these views or justify them in any way but I am asking that the House should be furnished with proof that the publication of these views in that journal can be alleged to be part of a conspiracy. As regards the "Daily Express" interview, alleged to have been given by Mr. Frank Ryan, in the issue of "An Phoblacht" subsequent to that interview a statement appeared on the authority of Mr. Ryan that the interview was inaccurate and misleading and in all fairness to Mr. Ryan, who, I think, is in a position of very grave danger now, that fact should have been stated. When the interview was being read in the House—

He said it was inaccurate and misleading.

Did he say how or why?

I do not know. I do not read the paper as carefully as some Ministers seem to do. I looked the matter up since the interview was read and I saw that note. The fact that that note was given in the paper should have been stated here in fairness to the House and to the person concerned. As regards the various crimes and acts of violence which took place during the last six months I should like only to refer to a statement which appeared in the "Irish Press" on Monday and which was said to have been received by that paper from the leaders of the I.R.A. organisation. They very definitely imply in part of that statement that some of these acts, at any rate, were committed by members of that organisation, who acted without authority and who were apparently outside the control of its leaders. I agree that if that is so the situation may be, from another point of view, even more serious than we thought, but it destroys the contention that these acts were a part of a well-organised, and carefully planned conspiracy or part of a deliberate policy. In fact it is stated in these documents that they are the result of provocation directed against individuals. I shall read the paragraph:

In the process of organising, Oglaigh na h-Eireann has been violently attacked and individual volunteers brutally assaulted and persecuted, and many imprisoned. Natural resentment has, in some cases, deflected volunteers from their main objective, and provoked them to demonstrate against their attackers. These occurrences have been no deliberate or settled part of our policy, as we realise that their development would lead to civil war.

They state in that document that they do not desire civil war and that it is not part of their policy to attack Ministers or Deputies—as they put it themselves, that the policy does not include assassinations. In quoting that document I do not want to be taken as justifying in any way the existence of the organisation or defending its policy, or even as implying that there is no situation in the country to deal with.

The case has been, I think, falsely presented to this House. It was presented as an alternative between equipping the Executive Council with these drastic powers or leaving the State and the Government defenceless in face of an armed organisation not under the control of the Dáil. The case was put in that way, but that is not the case. The contention made from these benches is that the Executive Council is adequately equipped with powers under the Treasonable Offences Act, the Firearms Act, the Juries Protection Act, and a host of other Acts, with an Army and a police force, to deal with any situation that we can see to exist, any situation which has been proved to exist. We contend that the giving of these additional powers is unnecessary. They are not merely unnecessary, but they create in themselves additional danger. That they do create that danger is evident to any Deputy who was listening here to the Minister for Agriculture. It was evident to any Deputy who listened to the President of the Executive Council and the other Ministers who deliberately dragged the debate back to the incidents of 1922 in order to revive the bitterness of that period. As we are all human beings at best, they succeeded to some extent. If they keep at it, they are bound to succeed. Although Cumann na nGaedheal may gain a slight Party advantage by it, the nation is going to lose by it.

There is another point that I omitted to deal with. Proof was required to show that there was some link between the nationalist organisations, the I.R.A. and whatever organisations are associated with it, and the Communist organisations—Saor Eire, and the other organisations which have been since suppressed. The only proof that such a link existed advanced here was the fact that certain individuals belonged to both. I am quite certain that there are individual members of the I.R.A. who belong to the Knights of Columbanus. That fact does not prove that the Knights of Columbanus have anything to do with this conspiracy. I am quite certain that others belong to the Catholic Truth Society and various religious, non-political and charitable associations. The fact of their membership of these associations does not necessarily link these associations with their activities. I say that the fact that individual members of the I.R.A. happen to be also members of Saor Eire in no way proves, although it may lead to the inference, that there is a direct link between these two organisations. It is not inference we want but proof, and the proof has not been forthcoming.

Since the Bill was passed here it has become evident that there is a very strong public feeling against the use of these powers by the Executive Council. I have read carefully most of the local papers published in the country over the week-end, and with the exception of two or three that are very virulently Cumann na nGaedheal, and some of them, I think, subsidised by the Cumann na nGaedheal organisation, there is not one which expressed complete approval of the Government's policy. As Deputies know, most of them normally support the Government and find everything that the Government does to their satisfaction. Certainly none of these papers said that the conditions in the county in which it circulated justified these measures. The one or two papers that did seek to justify them did so, not on the grounds that these powers were needed in the particular areas in which they circulated, but in other areas which they heard about.

As Deputy Derrig said, people in Donegal are told that there is chaos in Kerry; people in Kerry may believe that there is serious disorder in Donegal; and both may believe that there is a terrible situation in Dublin; but we have not yet heard one Deputy say, or read a local paper which said, or had a debate at a local council at which it was shown that the people in any particular part of the country were prepared to admit that the serious situation the Government talked about existed in the part of the country with which they were acquainted. That has not yet happened. We have had a number of local councils expressing disapproval and we have had other indications from various channels that the public was most uneasy concerning the equipment of the Executive Council with these very drastic and despotic powers.

It is because of that that we are taking advantage of the introduction of this Estimate again to ask the Government to hold its hands. It has got all the powers that it sought. There is no question about that. It has established its military tribunal. It is in a position immediately to come down on any manifestation of disorder that may arise. We ask the Government to leave it at that, and having got the powers, and being in a position to deal with the most serious situation that may possibly be forthcoming, to try the other method we have been suggesting. When we suggested dealing with this situation by removing the oath of the allegiance from the Constitution various Deputies scoffed because they either did not see or pretended that they did not see the direct connection between the two. I want to ask is there any Deputy opposite who places such value on that oath that he is prepared to retain it there if by removing it there is the slightest chance of ending the situation that exists now? I will not put that chance as being very great, but I say there is some chance. I want to know if there is one Deputy who will say that he is prepared to sacrifice that chance in order to retain that oath in the Constitution. I take it that we are at perfect liberty to remove it if we want to do so. That is not denied, I assume. This Dáil has perfect liberty to pass through an Act amending the Constitution and abolishing that section if it wants to do so. That has been asserted at a number of public meetings throughout the country and I take it that it will not be denied here.

Assuming, therefore, that we can remove it, the proposition I am putting to the Dáil is that now that the Government has the powers it asked for, and has armed itself in every way to deal with any situation that may arise, it should not use these powers unless it is absolutely necessary to do so, and in the meantime that it should try the alternative method, that it should try the method of amnesty instead of the method of execution, that it should try the method of facilitating political action by those people, whose views differ from ours, instead of suppressing it. If the Government did that it would, in my opinion, put itself in a very strong position to appeal to all groups and to all the people in the country to cease wasting their energies in factional strife, and to concentrate on the solution of the very grave national, social and economic problems with which we are confronted. If the Government did that, if having made political action possible by everyone, if having shown a willingness to let the civil war stop, shown a willingness to forget everything that has happened in the past and to go forward only with things that concern the future, I think that appeal would be almost irresistible. We are asking anyway that it should be tried. The Government has carried its point concerning the amendment of the Constitution. It has got these powers. Even if it is not prepared to surrender any of these powers, it can, nevertheless, try the other policy as well, because the two do not cancel out each other. They can be tried side by side. If the Government is not prepared to do that, then we will feel bound in conscience because of the dangers we foresee to refuse to facilitate it in any way in the operation of these powers, and certainly to deny it such funds as it seeks by introducing an Estimate of this kind.

I think we cannot emphasise too often that facts are inexorable things and that no matter what has been said, or will be said, there is and there will be, for some time, unless checked, a growing menace to the life of a certain section of the people of this country. That is known to the Government. It is known to the Fianna Fáil Party and it is known on the Labour Benches. What I complain of is that instead of endeavouring to remove that menace and endeavouring to meet the danger, the Government is going in the opposite direction and is trying to create a new danger. There will be a menace in the country as long as there are 78,000 people unemployed and 80,000 houseless. As long as the last remnant of the Gaelic population is allowed to lead a miserable existence on the barren shores of the West Coast there will be a menace in this country. There will be a menace as long as these things are allowed to continue and instead of creating a Committee or a Commission to deal with them what do we find?

We are asked to-day with the blunderbuss of a suspended Constitution held to our temples to vote £5,000 for the extra employment imposed on five men. It is not to consider how we can give employment to the 78,000 or houses to the 80,000 but to give extra employment to five men. We have been told a lot about Russia and a lot about other countries. We have not been told of the historic causes that produced the situation in Russia. There are men in Russia to-day, I venture to say, who never heard of Carl Marx in their lives, who are participating in the state of disorder or order that is in Russia, and who have been driven to it not by the philosophy of Carl Marx but by the despotism of the Czar who preceded the present regime. What has happened in Russia is that the boomerang has returned. What has happened in this country is that you are throwing the boomerang and it is going to return sometime on yourselves. You are asked to give £5,000 to five men to hold this State at ransom. They are to do as they like, being responsible to no one. I do not know whether I am contravening this Act by the manner in which I am speaking at the moment.

You are.

Mr. Hogan

I do not know whether under its provisions I am not amenable to the very Act I am referring to, but I know this much—that we are asked to vote money for a set of five men who are not even responsible to and have not to report to the Executive Council. There is no provision in the Bill to make these men report to the Executive Council. They do exactly what they like and, with the blunderbuss of a suspended Constitution at our temples, we are asked to vote £5,000 for the setting up and maintenance of that court. I must be careful of my words. I think Deputy de Valera used the word "incidents" the other day and was severely lectured about it. Things have happened to the country and we have been told about them. We have been told that they are responsible for the present state of affairs and for the suspension of the Constitution. I wonder if that is so?

I wonder if the Executive Council has convinced itself that all these things that have happened throughout the country had a political motive? Incidents have been cited here in extenuation of this measure which I, with local knowledge, am positively certain had no political motive and no social motive whatever. If they had any motive at all it was some personal one. Are these things so serious as to demand the suspension of the Constitution and to give into the hands of these five men the power to hold up the entire country to ransom? Across the water they have had riots, they have had a Naval revolt, and they have had policemen shot in the streets. Yet there has been no Public Safety Bill there, and there is no serious danger to the British Constitution—of course, it is unwritten—or to the British Parliament or to the British Government. The real danger in this Tribunal is possibly that the court is composed of men who were activities in the recent troubled events in this country, and that there will be imported into this court not the atmosphere of impartiality and fair play which one naturally expects to find in the ordinary courts, but possibly the atmosphere of the civil war with all the bitterness and hatreds which it engendered. I hope that will not happen, and that it will not be brought about. I hope seriously that no bitterness will influence any of its decisions, and that nothing of a bitter nature will be introduced. After all, while we condemn outrages and violent methods, we must consider that the ideals that certain people are seeking are the ideals that the whole country sought at one time, and that while the circumstances surrounding the attainment of these ideals may change the ideal itself remains the same.

The meanest and pettiest portion of the debate on this Act was possibly the way Deputy de Valera's advances were met. Deputy de Valera, as leader of the second largest Party in this country, went as far as anybody could go to try and engender a peace atmosphere. He went as far as anybody could go to try and secure that the representatives of the people of this country should come together in conference to see a way out of any danger that the Government could show there was to the peace, stability and social order of this country. There was no effort made to challenge the main argument of his statement, but little bits of it here and there were picked out by the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Defence, and it was these that the Ministers attacked. These little things were torn to pieces, but to say that his main argument was torn, it was not. Little things which overlapped and which had not the strength of the main argument were picked at in places, but that was all.

I did not speak on the Bill, and I did not intend to speak on this motion. I have been more or less driven to do so because of certain things that were said with reference to the country of which I am one of the co-Deputies. I say with all the responsibility that I can that there is no serious state of affairs in that county that would warrant giving the lives and liberties of its citizens into the hands of five men who are to be responsible to nobody but themselves. I know the county fairly extensively from Killaloe to Loop Head, and there is no state of affairs there that would warrant the suspension of the Constitution, leaving the country with no Constitution but the will of the Executive Council, with not even the will of the Executive Council, but at the will of a dictatorship that has been unequalled in the history of any country.

There is no justification for the expenditure of money upon this measure, because there are already ample powers in the hands of the Government to deal with the situation such as it is. Every one of those crimes, every one of those incidents mentioned by the President, could have been dealt with under one or other of the measures at present in existence or under the common law.

Amongst other Acts, the Government had at its disposal the Firearms Act and the Treasonable Offences Act. There are also laws in existence for dealing with high treason and treason felony, with murder and with protection by means of the Protection of the Person Act, the Protection of Property Act, and the Criminal Law Amendment Acts. The Government have also at their disposal law to deal with criminal conspiracy, criminal libel and seditious libel. It is in the memory of every one that when a certain case was brought into court here, the judge said that if it had been brought on a direct charge of seditious libel it could have been dealt with on that basis, but owing to the bungling methods of the Government, even from their own point of view, they failed to carry out the law as it is in existence. They have powers under the Juries Acts from 1927 to 1931. Under an earlier Juries Act they have power to fix the basis from which they can choose a jury. The Minister under the Act may prescribe the minimum rateable valuation for jurors in a district. They can take jurymen from one place to another and try with any kind of jury they like. They have all the powers they require under the Act of 1929, an Act which was continued in the last session. We were then assured by the Minister that the Act had been very successful, that it had justified its existence, and was necessary for the future.

[An Ceann Comhairle resumed the Chair.]

The contention at the close of the last session was that Act was necessary and ample to deal with the situation. There was no suggestion at that time that jurymen had been terrorised, or that the system had broken down. There was no reference then to these incidents, most of which had occurred prior to that debate. There was no reference to the necessity for further legislation. If the situation was such as the Government now pretend it was then they were lamentably lacking in their duty at that time in not immediately bringing in some measure such as they are bringing in now. Instead they took several months to consider it. It was not in a moment of necessity that they brought it in but several months afterwards, and instead of confining themselves merely to dealing with certain acts which should be prevented they enlarged the scope of the whole measure to prove that they had a political bias, that their attitude was one of political opposition, that they wanted if possible to include in their charges under the new Act not merely those persons who had committed these acts but to associate with them the Labour Party and the Fianna Fáil Party.

Again, by voting this money we are handing over the power of life and death to five men, none of whom, so far as I know, has any extensive knowledge of law or experience of the administration of law. The idea of appointing men of that sort and with such grave responsibilities is in itself an outrage on the whole community. There is no provision under the Act for procedure. There are no rules; there are no methods of procedure whatever given. Are we going to have even a code, any code which is at present in existence, by which we may be guided in knowing what these five members of the Tribunal may do? It certainly has not been put into the Act that the King's Regulations are being adopted. Whatever might be said for or against them, at least we would know where we were and we would have some indication of how the general public or the legal profession could take up any attitude towards the measure at all. That code at least has behind it a considerable amount of experience, but here we are handing over powers to five men without knowledge of law, without absolutely any procedure, with full power to enforce any punishment they like, punishment unknown to the law, punishment for which they will be afterwards absolutely immune. They cannot even be arraigned before the Bar of the House. They are supreme above all. We have abrogated the supremacy of this Dáil by not inserting in the Act powers by which the supreme authority of the country, the Dáil, could arraign them before the House if they acted improperly or outside their powers.

The fact of the matter is that this is the last desperate throw of the Government, the last desperate throw of the dice of violence. Their first throw was when they broke the Pact and broke the law of the country, as it was then in existence. The second was when they were offered peace terms and when they turned them down. The third was when the "cease fire" order was given. Again peace terms were offered and refused and so on down from year to year ever since. Every effort to try and bring back all the groups in this community into normal constitutional life has been refused. The effort to get rid of the Oath has been repudiated. The attempt to use the referendum and petition has been also set aside by changing the rules in the middle of the game and by removing from the Constitution the possibility of using that referendum. Then again the Oath is followed up by further measures making those even who want to stand as candidates sign an affidavit.

If the Government is honest in this matter and is really trying to end the evils which exist in this country I personally am quite willing to see certain evils ended. If there is anti-God Bolshevism in this country, we certainly want to see it destroyed and prevented from going further, but they are not going to destroy it by these means. If they are absolutely honest I think they should get real agreement between the best elements in this country, the most earnest and sincere elements, and then dispose of the evils when they have got that agreement. Here, as I say, is the test of their honesty, whether they are willing to remove the Oath or at least to try to make that attempt. This is the test as to whether they are merely politically-minded or honest.

I wish to oppose the passing of this Estimate of £5,000. The terrible seriousness of giving powers of life and death to five men without any legal knowledge whatever was brought very forcibly home to me by the fact that I know one of the men who has been appointed and I know that he has no legal knowledge whatever. I knew him to be in his early days—I do not want to say a word against the man — an agricultural worker. In later times he was Secretary for the Transport Union in a district in this State. I knew him—

May I ask is this in order? It seems to me to be very bad form to discuss the personal history of any man.

We are going to pay for him.

I do not want to stop Deputy Harris, but I cannot by any means accept the theory that because we are going to pay money under the Estimate, all the personal history of any individual, mentioned as a member of a Tribunal, is open for discussion. Deputy Harris is merely indicating his opinion about his qualifications. Deputy Harris is in order.

I have no confidence in his legal knowledge. I was a member also of a branch of Sinn Féin with that man years ago. He advocated Communistic principles then and his grievance against me always was that I was not a Communist. About six months ago I had a conversation with him—we were good friends all the time—and we were talking about the condition of this State and others. He expressed the opinion that conditions were much better in Russia than anywhere and that the Russians seemed to be doing better than any other country in the world. I am just stating what I know to show the frightfulness of this whole Act that has been passed, in putting the power of life and death into the hands of five men. I opposed it and I appeal to the Executive and to the Government not to allow these powers to be used, to try the peaceful policy, to remove the Oath and remove the terrible poverty under which people suffer at the present time. I know the terrible debts that hang over farmers in my own county at present. I know the terrible poverty there is amongst the small holders in the bog districts. If the Land Commission progressed at anything like the same rate at which we get coercive measures through here, there would be much more happiness and much less discontent in the country. But the people are allowed to live in hovels. The farmers are not able to pay their men and greater numbers are becoming unemployed. In the towns the conditions are the same. The people are living in slums. If we brought in Housing Bills to remove the people from the bogs and put them on the good land and if the country were governed in the interests of the people instead of in the interest of Imperialism, we would have no need for this measure.

The sum of £5,000 involved in this Estimate cannot be regarded as very great, but I expect, when the public come to examine it, they will add to it another sum of about £3,000,000. Having added the two items, they will come to the conclusion that, after all, they are not getting value for their money. The taxpayers of this country have been unduly burdened for the last six or seven years. Most of them have been paying taxes out of the capital and savings. That cannot be denied. We may be told by the Revenue Department that that is not the case but I know it definitely to be the case. What have the people got for all this? They have been told that the judges, who have been put into position, are not capable of administering the law, that the jury system has become completely out of date—certainly not up-to-date enough for the people of this country—that the Army, and, above all, the Civic Guards, are incompetent. That is the position as I see it and as the ordinary citizen in the country sees it.

I have been through the country a great deal within the last three or four days. I have talked to people of all shades of opinion and there was not one who did not sincerely regret this last move. They had begun to hope that the bad old days were past and that measures of this description would be hung up. They saw signs of the people getting into friendly intercourse with members of the Civic Guard. They thought that the intense bitterness of 1922 was beginning to pass, when suddenly, they were confronted with this measure under the most mysterious circumstances. I do not think the British Government, in its worst days, was able to surround an instrument of this description with such terrifying mystery. We are told that one of the principal reasons for the introduction of this measure is to prevent us from becoming Atheists, or adopting some form of religion which exists in Russia. I knew a good many Russians in my time and they were not particular about any form of religion. I dare say they had their own and carried it out. I do not know anybody in this country who is particularly anxious to adopt the Russian religion, whatever it may be.

We were told here that certain leaflets were distributed throughout the country. After we got that piece of information, I tried to get hold of some of these leaflets. I had reasonable means of getting hold of them and I made a definite effort to get them. I was told that people saw these leaflets but these people could not get a single leaflet for me. A good many clergymen spoke to me on this matter and they were rather surprised. They had no proof of this beyond rumour. What is the position throughout the country? Do the people thoroughly understand, or are some of them so terrified that they are afraid to ask questions? I am afraid that, gradually, in the last three or four days, there is creeping in amongst the people that terrible thing—suspicion. One is afraid of the other. As soon as that develops, there is serious danger. Any measure of this description which does away with free, honest, open trial, with efficient and sufficient punishment when found to be necessary—anything that does away with that system is bound to lead to this suspicion which I have referred to. That is one effect of this measure. The other effect of the measure has to do with certain classes of people who are known, I suppose, as non-law abiding citizens, or outlaws. The other class are known as law abiding citizens. I want to know whether this courtrmartial or the Executive Council, when it gets the opportunity, is in a position to say which is the lawful or law-abiding citizen and which is the outlaw. That is what brought this horrible suspicion into the people's minds.

I fail to see how any member of the Guards or of the Army can find out exactly which is the law-abiding citizen and which is the outlaw. It will be more difficult for a courtmartial. And if it does happen to get as far as the Executive Council, it will be far more difficult for them. The result of all that is that the people have begun to lose confidence in one another, and have begun to become afraid of one another. If that is the idea behind the Government in introducing such a measure—I hope it is not, but I think it is the result—it is time for us to give up this sort of thing, and get on to something that will benefit the people. I believe that the people will become disgusted and that we will definitely force them into what will be serious and dangerous illegal organisations. What are we dealing with in this country at the present time? I could not choose a more appropriate word than a good many medical men choose when occasionally they have to describe certain ailments. Instead of hunger, they always say malnutrition. A number of our people are suffering from malnutrition. There is not the slightest effort made to see that these people get any form of living or that sufficient provision is made for them. We have quite a number of laws for the relief of poverty. They are all neatly worded, and to the stranger, who has the Acts explained to him by a Minister, they appear perfectly suited to their work. But what will be the position of County Boards of Health this coming winter? Those internment camps will not be used for members of those illegal organisations. They will have to be turned into camps for the feeding, clothing and sheltering of a great part of the population. I do not think that members of the Government realise the seriousness of the position in the country. They do not know what is happening day after day. They do not know what is happening in the markets daily. There are no remarks passed of that. With great reason, a number of these people say that this Bill was introduced for the purpose of diversion—that the people might not settle down to consider certain questions. They have put it down as a political manoeuvre. Why should not the Executive Council be big enough and strong enough to use the Acts they have on their Statute Book for the suppression of those crimes?

What happened in the case of the dump in the Dublin mountains? We were told a great deal about that. That dump I am told was a splendidly erected edifice. In fact, numerous barrels of cement must have been taken there to build it and the workmanship was perfect, and all that was certainly not done the night before. I wonder what were the well-paid members of the C.I.D. and police forces doing in the city of Dublin when they allowed that kind of thing to go on? I think the taxpayer is entitled to say "We will not have these men any longer. We will not pay them if they are not efficient." This Bill is introduced now and this extra sum of money is to be expended because the members of the Executive Council have allowed amongst their servants men who are not efficient. It is not because they happen to be partial. It is because they must have been excessively stupid. There was no single case cited that the Executive Council could stand over as definite proof of anything happening. A most unfortunate occurrence took place in Tipperary when an official of the police force was murdered. It was a most regrettable thing to have happened, but nobody knows who committed that crime. Why not get efficient men enough to discover these people? It should not be impossible. The new Safety Bill and the complete distortion of the Constitution will not discover these men. You may argue that there are political and national reasons for that weakness. I admit there are. But why could we not remove all these; there are only 2,000,000 people here and we ought to be able to come to some agreement. I believe we would if the effort was made. There is not the slightest doubt about it. We are not abnormal, but we have not got a chance. The people supposed to be in the majority certainly would not give the chance. I think they would be well advised if they want to keep this country going and to continue what existed up to the last month or two, when a feeling of intimacy and agreement between the people and their officials was taking place and the bad effects of the late civil war were gradually disappearing, to make an effort to work in the other direction.

When I read of this Bill being introduced, it struck me that I would just have a try and look up some of the different measures of this description that were passed when the government of this State was in the hands of the British Parliament. When I filled a couple of sheets of paper with the different Acts under different names, but all meaning the same thing and having the same result, namely that they were futile. I got tired. Then I thought to myself, perhaps some of the English statesmen of those days might have said something about them, and I found the utterance of Disraeli on that point. I found that he made some rather sound remarks. He discussed the position of this country, and he found that at one time in Ireland the cause of the disturbance was potatoes, at another time it was religion, and at another time something else, but it was always going on. He was not inclined to believe that any of these things was the real cause, and he said if he were asked to give a remedy his advice to the British Government would be to give to this country the same thing as they would get if they were after going through a successful rebellion. I am afraid when it all comes down to hard tacks that that is one of the solutions. There are impediments unquestionably for certain people. I think we ought all to be generous enough to admit that what is not an impediment to us may be an impediment to some other people, and if we discover this impediment to them, I think for the sake of the country, that that impediment such as the obstruction to entering such an assembly as this ought to be removed. After we had taken that step and left this Parliament free to everybody to enter and express their opinions then I think we would be entitled if these terrible disturbances and these organisations spoken of continued to take strong measures. I honestly say we are not entitled now to take such measures, because in the case of the ordinary individual he knows that there are sufficient powers and more than sufficient powers in the hands of the Government of this country to stop anything that might be objectionable. For that reason the suspicious exists in the minds of the people to-day that this is purely a political move.

I do not know how many clauses of the Constitution have been interfered with or abolished, but a certain number have. I believe that when the Government was in this terrible predicament they say they are in, their duty was to say to the people "The position is as we say. We will have to change the Constitution completely to deal with this question, and we will go and ask your opinion." The Government had two courses open to them—to enter into conference here with the people of this country and see what was wrong, or go and ask their opinion and get their authority for interfering with what we were so often told was sacred. After so many hundred years it is time to be finished with this method of coercion. It is pitiable in the thinly populated country districts, with people living in lone houses to hear opinions of what may happen them in the night. It is all right in the cities where people live alongside one another, but in the long, dreary dark evenings, with the results of such a measure as this hanging over the people, their outlook is not pleasing or comfortable. They are not in the slightest degree thankful to the Executive Council for introducing this measure.

On a previous occasion in this House speaking about another Department, I said that money could always be found for war purposes and money could not be found to solve unemployment or to meet the social needs of the people, and that when the next war would come and the ordinary people saw its consequences they would do away with those who made such a position possible. I think the Irish people see the bluff behind this war measure. In my particular constituency they see it anyway. The only people I have seen gullible enough to swallow the stories which were circulated around the country for a month before the introduction of this Bill, were the clergy. The Government's agents made it their business to go around with their memorandum to these very gullible gentlemen and tell them the most fantastic stories about guns and drums, drilling and parades, Russian agents, Russian spies and anti-God propaganda.

When one asked where such things were occurring one was always told the next parish, and when they went into that parish they were told it was the parish after that. When it was pointed out that they did not exist in any of the districts they were told it was down in Kerry, and the Kerry people were told it was up in Galway. So we had a repetition of the old scare that we had in 1798 about French influences, the French doctrine of the revolution, the American doctrine of the revolution in '67, and the German mailed fist doctrine of the revolution in 1916. That aspect of it is all right but the consequences of this Bill are certainly terrible. I had occasion to ask a question of the Minister for Defence to-day. In reply to that question he stated that there were no military present in the particular district on that day, and with the permission of the Ceann Comhairle I will take this opportunity of dealing with that particular matter now.

The Deputy is over-optimistic, I am afraid. The debate seems to have been a little removed from the motion, but the Deputy is going to travel even a little further than anybody else.

What I was going to indicate is that if the practices that obtained on this particular occasion are an indication of what is going to occur under the Bill and an indication as to how this money is to be spent the matter is very serious. I would at least advise the Minister when he sends out his officers that when they are on duty they should be sober anyway. They can get drunk afterwards. They should be sober when they go on duty, so that they can control their hands and their tongues. It hardly corresponds with the good Christian theologian who presides over their destinies. There was nothing so disgusting in all the things that led up to this as to hear references to God, eternal truth and the Commandments. I never read of a tyranny in the world the author of which did not quote all these things. There was never a Czar in Russia who used a knout and terrorised his people but acted on the Ten Commandments and quoted God and all the rest of it.

Deputy O'Reilly has referred to the conditions of unemployment that obtain throughout the country. If money could be found to solve part of the unemployment problem as readily as it is being found under this Vote there would be very little to worry about in the way of Communistic propaganda and the spread of Bolshevik ideas. From my knowledge of the small farmer, I know that this particular November the majority of them will not be able to meet the half year's annuity that is due. With the collapse in the price of pigs and prices in general, unless by borrowing and running bills in shops they will not be able to meet the annuity due in November. The Minister for Defence has called us blackguards for going around the country calling on people not to pay their annuities. I have constantly told the people that where the paying of annuities necessitates the taking of food from the family let the annuity go to hell.

The Deputy is going a little far from the estimate now.

I contend, a Chinn Comhairle, that I am trying to follow the particular way the debate has gone up to the present. We had great talk about Russian leaflets and Russian agents. Deputy O'Reilly has asked for the production of these. It would be very interesting to have them read to us in the House. I believe one of the Executive Council's agents went to Cardinal McRory and told him that there were 700 Russian agents in the country. I heard that after the passing of this Bill they all cleared out through the port of Dublin as hard as they could. It must have been an extraordinary sight to see 700 of them clearing out. After referring to the three murders that were committed in the summer as a reason for this Bill and for the Vote that is being passed to carry out the terms of the Bill, the President gave as another serious reason that he was dancing below in Clonmel and somebody put out the lights. So all law is abrogated, the Supreme Court has creased to function, because the President was not allowed to dance in Clonmel on a particular night.

I heard in the debate Deputy Dr. Hennessy throw over an old jibe at these Benches when somebody was speaking about who did-in Kevin O'Higgins, and the same thing was repeated in the Seanad. Perhaps if Deputy Dr. Hennessy looked amongst his own supporters he would get the assassins much more quickly than he would be throwing his jibes at these Benches. As I said, in the particular constituency from which I come, there is no need for such a Bill; ordinary people want peace. They say, Why is not the conference that has been suggested by the Bishops and suggested by the public bodies who met to discuss the subject, being called? We can repeat it. Why has not that conference been called not only to deal with the social and economic evils of the country, but also with the national situation? I would like to know from the Minister for Defence how he hopes to succeed with this particular Bill where Balfour and everyone else failed. Even if all the individuals who were named by the Minister for Justice are shot or hanged, does it not strike you that there will be a repercussion and an ugly scar left after such an event. There will be a bitterness left in the country that it will be very hard to get over, and will the path of peace and the path of reconciliation and of economic development and of the development of social services not be a better line to pursue at this juncture. While we suggest a conference and peace, we do not suggest pacts, and we certainly do not suggest a national government.

I can quite plainly see that the Minister, particularly the Minister for Agriculture, is terribly disgusted at the things which are being said during this debate. Despite how dissatisfied he may be, I am not going to vote for the Supplementary Estimate. We are asked to vote £5,000 in order to carry out the measure which was passed into law here last week. It is not £5,000 we are voting. Nobody knows what amount this will come to in the end. The Minister who introduced this Vote gave no explanation or any idea as to what he thought the amount would come to in its totality. He even did not give us any idea of what has been expended in connection with the scaremongering that has been carried out by the Government Party in the last few weeks. If he gave us the figures of what was already spent in creating this scare atmosphere in the country we might have a good idea of what it would cost the Government of this country and, on the other hand, the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. If we had these figures we might be able to judge what the total was.

Besides, as Deputy Derrig mentioned, when £12,000 was already voted in this Dáil for Army gratuities the Minister for Finance allowed to be paid out of the country's purse £216,000 more. If that is to be an indication of what is going to happen here we will pay out a very large amount of money before this thing is fixed finally. Besides there is no reason whatever for the measure we are now asked to put into force by voting money. I think it is the most lamentable thing I have seen for a long time, for the past ten days or more to see Government Deputies going about the country with a body guard of two or more men to protect them. I make the charge here that the majority of the members of the Government benches have objected to the guards being put on their bodies. and were forced to take the guards by the big minds behind this move in order that the scare might be successfully spread. When you see a Deputy like Deputy Sheehy, of Cork, or Deputies from Mayo going around to their constituencies with a bodyguard it is laughable in a sense, but it is very tragic also. If any foreign Press representatives came last week outside the gates of Leinster House at 3 o'clock or before it and took a photograph of from sixty to one hundred armed and non-uniformed guards in the pay of the Government, who were assembled there, and published that photo in the foreign Press, what kind of opinion would be formed of us by people abroad? They would certainly say we were in a worse state here than they are in Spain. They would certainly say we are much more disturbed than in Russia or Mexico, or in any other country which is in a disturbed state.

It was disgraceful, and I charge the members of the front benches of the Government with deliberately creating that scare in order that the scare would save themselves from political defeat in the country. I was in my constituency last Sunday week and a Deputy there had his bodyguard in a certain town and another Deputy had a bodyguard in another town. Both those Deputies object to the guards, and the guards protecting them had the same objection. They would prefer to be doing their ordinary duties. The guards protecting them if asked their views would say, as one of them told me, that there was not the slightest necessity why any Deputy in Mayo should be given a bodyguard to save him from his constituents.

I charge the Government with deliberately creating that scare and making themselves scaremongers simply because they have seen the writing on the wall, and know that there is no political future for them in the country unless they try to create a war atmosphere amongst the people in the West of Ireland, where they have tried to get members of the Government to carry through this measure for them. There is the responsibility on their shoulders that there is a scare being created, something like what was created in 1914 about the Huns. I believe that in quiet country districts, where people never heard of Communism or Saor Eire, they are wondering what kind of cannibals these people are, or whether the same thing is going to happen as happened in the Great War, and the logical conclusion will be that they think they will shortly be asked to join up and fight against this terrible Russian menace, not at home, but in other countries. It is to add to that scare, to give that scare some foundation in the minds of the people, that we are now going to be asked to vote money to assist the Government in carrying through that campaign. Saor Eire has come into this discussion. I know very well that Saor Eire was scarcely known in the County Mayo until the Minister for Justice went down there and went around prating at chapel gates about Saor Eire and about the terrible measure he was bringing before the Dáil to stamp it out.

Naturally, sensible people in Mayo, when they found the Minister for Justice finding fault with Saor Eire, thought there was some good in it. Some of these people wanted to join up and wondered where they could get at the heads of it. Before the Minister went down to Mayo there was very little or nothing at all known of Saor Eire. But the Minister could not go to the people of Mayo in their present frame of mind and talk to them about anything else but war. He could not talk to them about the financial position in the country or about the strength of the Freemason lodges in the country. The only thing he could talk about was this terrible war threat, this awful organisation of Saor Eire, about which the people of Mayo got the first intimation from the Minister himself. If you ask the County Mayo Deputies what is wrong there they will not tell you that the Saor Eire organisation is very strong in Mayo, or that the I.R.A. organisation is very strong, or that the twelve or thirteen organisations that have now been proclaimed are very strong. But they will tell you that the position of the Government is not very strong, because they have absolutely failed to deal with the problems which confront them in the County Mayo.

I was surprised to hear from the President that they were being confronted with this terrible organisation. He says "At a time when we are endeavouring to ward off from the State the terrible economic disasters of other countries..." I would like to know from the President or from some of the Ministers what have they done or what are they going to do to ward off this terrible economic disaster that is happening in other countries. I would like to know what they have done up to the present to remedy the economic distress that there is here. What have they done to try to meet the case where you have from 14,000 to 20,000 young men and women in the country at present who would have gone to America if the emigrant ship would take them? If those 14,000 to 20,000 young men and women are idle how can you blame them if they think of trying some other means in order to try to force the Government to do them justice? We are told that Communism is rife and that Saor Eire is going very strong. I am surprised that some movement or some impulse has not prompted the idle or the starving people in this country or in Dublin to storm Leinster House, brush aside the Guards and do even worse than that.

The Government close their eyes to these evils. Then hungry men looking for bread turn to the people in secret organisations who say to them "We are the men who can remedy the situation." Then the Government, wrapping the mantle of sanctity around themselves, say "Oh, we will deal with that; we have our secret tribunals and executions now." That is the remedy the Government proposes for these evils. I was speaking the other day to a Cork Deputy who voted for this Bill. He had his bodyguard; I asked him if things were bad down in Cork, and his reply was that the strongest evil there was unemployment. He said there is no danger of a revolution in Cork; no danger from the I.R.A. in Cork, and no danger from Saor Eire. "The only thing we deplore," he said, "is that the Russians are not buying more tractors from Ford's Factory in Cork." That is the fault they had in Cork with the Russians; not the fault that they were trying to come in and organise Communism.

The same thing will be said by the other Cumann na nGaedheal Deputies if they are asked about this question. They will say the same about the economic problem. But the Government say: "What about the murders through the country? You are standing over the murders." It is time now that that parrot-cry was finished with. The men on these benches faced murderers in the old British time when the men on the benches opposite would sell us to them. It does not lie with Deputies on the opposite benches to talk of these matters or to bring charges of murder against anybody in this House.

I know that the view is held by sensible men in the country that this thing was deliberately created by the present Government. It was hatched in the Cumann na nGaedheal offices in Parnell Square because their policy had failed in three counties. Their prospects were poor and they felt there was no future for them as a Government. They felt, too, that the only thing they could do was to create a scare and to bring back to the minds of the people of this country the terrible thoughts of gun bullies, civil war, secret tribunals and executions. By bringing back again that atmosphere they believed the people would have turned to them to save them. To whom would the people turn but to the Government, the Government who had created the scare? To whom would the people in their helplessness turn but the strong man in the Government who always talks so much about murders?

Instead of trying to detect murders and evil-doers they make political capital out of the murderers and evil-doers and out of the evils which they have committed. That is what they have ever tried to do. Then we heard so much about this terrible wave of Communism and unrest that is in the country. What is the contribution the Government have given to that? The first contribution that was given to the peace in this State was the Minister for Finance's (Mr. Blythe's) statement down in Cork when he talked about the people who fought and died for a Republic as being out for a whole lot of humbug. What about the men whose brothers went down? What about the mothers whose sons went down for it? Do they realise that the Minister who at that time encouraged them now declares that it was all bluff? It was bluff for him, but it was no bluff to the people whose dear ones were lost.

The next contribution to peace was given down in Kildare when a perfectly peaceful demonstration at Wolfe Tone's grave was banned by the Minister for Justice. Any sensible man would have known that no breach of the peace would be committed that day. Why was the demonstration banned? Why was it only half banned? They banned the trains, but they supplied the buses. They did it in order to aggravate the minds of the young men of this country, to create a disturbance and to get the young men to feel that there is no chance of this Government going straight, and that there is no chance of the young men of the country trying to do things in a constitutional way. When young men were led to think of other means, these young men would be playing into the hands of the men on the front benches. Since we came in here we have made a very good effort to try to pull this country round. We have suggested to the members of the Government to tackle the economic problem. All along they have turned down our suggestions. The only contribution they made to our suggestions was by saying that we were bad parliamentarians. The Parliamentary Secretary to the President said in Meath that we were a disgrace to the country, and that we were hopeless parliamentarians, that we were no good in the Dáil; that we were a laughing stock there. That was said by the man who has time and again made himself a laughing stock in the House in a manner I will not describe here.

If the Deputy has any remarks to make about this estimate he might begin to make them now.

Have I been out of order?

Then the Chair should have pulled me up.

I am so tender I do not like doing such things.

I contend that the money we are now being asked to vote is to subsidise an atmosphere deliberately created by the Front Bench opposite. It is about the creation of that atmosphere I am talking, and I submit that is in order.

When the Deputy indulges in personal abuse he knows quite well he is out of order. Every Deputy knows that personal abuse is out of order, and in this instance it is not a contribution towards peace.

I hope it will also be considered out of order if Ministers speak in that manner here. Anyhow, the contribution of the Parliamentary Secretary to the President was not a contribution towards peace. He told the people that we were hopeless as parliamentarians; that we were hopeless to work with and that our suggestions were futile. I hold that since we came in here we have made numerous gestures to the Government. We have tried to remedy the economic problems which are one of the causes of unrest in the country. Is it the intention of the Government to go the whole hog and create a dictatorship? There is, to a certain extent, a dictatorship already established. Government Deputies were not allowed to vote as they liked. Guards were placed upon them to ensure that they would be here to vote in a certain way, and there is a dictatorship to that extent.

Is it the Government's intention to close the door which leads to constitutional action? The attitude of the Government in introducing this Act is having this effect on certain members of this Party; they are beginning to feel that there is very little use in coming here and trying constitutional action in this country. Do the Government Party want to drive the members of Fianna Fáil out of the Dáil? Do they want us to go to the country and to say we have no further hope in constitutional action? Do they want us to tell the people that every time we seek a referendum on certain important matters the Government close the door on us? Do they want us to tell the people "These men are going to remain in power with the help of their bayonets and by the strength of their tribunals. They will not give you an opportunity of expressing your views through a referendum or a general election." If the Government continue to do as they are doing they will force some of us, anyhow, to do that and will that be for the good of the country or in the interests of peace? I hold it will not and I ask members on the opposite Benches who know this is a game of bluff, to voice their opinions fearlessly.

This whole problem can be tackled in another way. Hungry men cannot be blamed if they smash a window in order to get bread rather than die of hunger. Deputies opposite know those things, and they know there is another way of dealing with the situation. I ask them to consider the result of a continuance of this policy. They will force men who really believe in constitutional action, and who try here to remedy existing evils and to make the people united and peaceful, to adopt other methods. Whether that would be playing into the hands of the Executive or not is another matter, but it should be remembered that men may be provoked to a certain stage and they may seriously consider other methods.

I am not going to say much more about the economic problems. I am really surprised that the people are not more exasperated. Commissions have been set up to deal with the Gaeltacht and other matters, but their findings have been brushed aside. Money could not be found, we are told, but we are now asked to vote money to supplement the scares originated by the scaremongers of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, simply because they see the end coming for themselves. They can read the writing on the wall. I hold it is the duty of every Deputy to refuse to vote for this thing. Let the Deputies opposite who do vote for it be prepared to face the consequences when they go before the people.

I expressed my views on the Act last week. My views on the estimate have been expressed in various ways by several of my colleagues. I waited all during the day in the hope that the President would be in to deal with a matter that arose during the discussion last Thursday. I then referred to a statement made by the President in the course of the debate, which I described as an alarmist statement. I said it reminded me of a statement made by the President when a by-election was on in North Dublin in 1929. I said I believed last Thursday's statement was as unfounded, and I said that he would have to withdraw that statement just as he withdrew the statement he made in 1929. I refer to a statement given by the President to the "New York Times," in which he withdrew an alarmist statement he made a short time earlier when the North Dublin by-election was on. According to the Official Report, the President said: "I beg your pardon. I never withdrew it. I stand by every word of it." I rise now to say that I have the document here.

I will quote from the "Irish Times" of Tuesday, 5th March, 1929, the statement made by the President during the North Dublin bye-election. I will quote a couple of extracts from the statement which was made, if my recollection is right, in the Rotunda, probably ten days before the election took place. He said: "A deliberate and organised attack has been launched against the foundations of ordered society in this city. If this conspiracy is not crushed, and crushed quickly, we shall be faced with a very serious problem. Those who value human life so lightly cannot be expected to respect property, or the rules of ordered society. The whole social fabric is threatened by their existence." That was the statement that I referred to, and evidently that statement got wide publicity in America, because early in April the "New York Times" asked the President for a statement. In its issue of 11th April it says: "In view of reports that terrorism and violence are re-appearing in the Irish Free State, the ‘New York Times' correspondent asked President William T. Cosgrave if he would write a statement on conditions as they are. He consented, and his statement is as follows." The first sentence of the President's statement is this: "It would be a great mistake to pay serious attention to scaremongers," the President himself being the greatest scaremonger who had spoken on Irish affairs. What did he do last week?

If that was not scaremongering in 1929, and it was not scaremongering here last Thursday, then I do not know what scaremongering is. I will quote one or two extracts from the President's statement. He goes on to say: "Things looked black in 1920 and later, but there has been a great change." That was after he had done his worst during the bye-election to create a scare in order to get votes. He then comes along with a statement in order to try to undo the harm that his former statement had done in America and elsewhere. His first statement probably had the effect of frightening people who intended to come here. The "New York Times" would not bother asking for a statement if they did not feel that the President's remarks had had serious reactions amongst people in America interested in Ireland. He says here: "There are still a few people here—malcontents and fanatics—who are always ready to decry State institutions and damage their country. But their numbers are small and their influence is smaller."

There was nobody amongst the malcontents and those decrying the country that decried it to the extent that the President has in that statement made on March 5th, 1929, and the statement he made last Thursday. "We are pretty well accustomed to anti-Irish propaganda" the President further stated in this interview—the blame that only attached to him. He further says here "It has become a bad habit in certain circles. For instance, an article appeared quite recently in a prominent London newspaper written by a special correspondent who sought to show that Ireland was in a state of terror and revolution. This article is mere sensationalism." What better foundation did the man in the London newspaper want than the President's own statement in which he says, "The whole social fabric is threatened by their existence"—and then he blamed the English newspaper! He says it is sensationalism when they write the very same things probably that he has stated himself in his capacity as President of the Executive Council. Further he says here: "The fact is that the Irish people in general are one of the most law-abiding peoples in the world." He discovered "that a conspiracy exists to prevent the detection and punishment of a certain type of crime which masquerades under the cloak of politics. The numbers engaged in this conspiracy are very small. The majority of them are well known to the police and their movements are under constant surveillance. Their importance arises not from their extent or influence, but from the fact that any conspiracy, however small, having for its object to defeat the ends of justice, must be regarded as serious by my Government. There is, apart from this, no justification whatever for any of the sensational or pessimistic things that have been said about us." If that is not a withdrawal, if it is not an apology for the statement of March 5th, 1929, I do not know what a withdrawal or an apology is. Knowing that he said that, having in mind that some people even here in Ireland, as well as in America, must have read the "New York Times," in view of that statement of his, he has the hardihood to come here and say last Thursday, after I told him I read it in the "New York Times": "I beg your pardon. I never withdrew it. I stand by every word of it." If that is what he calls standing by his words, it does not alter the opinion that many of us here have of his principles and how he stands by them.

The alarmist and sensational statement that he made last week will, I am satisfied, have to be withdrawn, if not, as it was in this case, inside a month, very shortly, because that alarmist statement that I submit is without foundation, is going to be published all around the world, not alone in America, but in every other country where there are groups of Catholics who are thinking of coming to the Eucharistic Congress, and who will read that statement. I am fully satisfied that in a very short time the President will be bombarded with requests similar to this one that came from the "New York Times" shortly after he had made that statement on March 5th, 1929, asking him for a statement on the condition of Ireland, and he will find it very hard to stand up to the alarmist, sensational, and unfounded statement that he made last week as to the shocking condition of this country. The scaremongering that he indulged in will then come back upon him. "A widespread conspiracy in this State making for social revolution." In my opinion nothing of that kind exists here. There is no foundation for it so far as I personally am aware. If there were a widespread Communist conspiracy in this country probably its headquarters would be some place in Dublin. If they are in Dublin, I am not aware of it. I am not aware that there is any widespread conspiracy, as was suggested here, making for social revolution or a Communist rising in this country. That statement that was repeated ad nauseam last week is quite unfounded It is an untruthful statement, however it is made. It is one that certainly will have to be withdrawn if a grave injury to the good name of the country is not to be done, and if very serious damage is not to be done to the prospects of the Eucharistic Congress.

I desire to speak.

The Minister has a right to speak also.

I understood he was concluding.

He is intervening in the debate.

I have listened to Deputies who have spoken. I will not say it of most of them, because most of them hardly referred to the matter under discussion, but it is typical of the Deputy who has just got up and sat down again, that he thinks no one else should be allowed to speak.

That is impertinent. We thought you were concluding.

I am occasionally accused of striking an inharmonious note, and perhaps I might get over that right away and refer to the matter before the Dáil. It is obvious that it is most indiscreet to refer to the matter before the Dáil. This is an Estimate for £5,000. Last week the Dáil passed an Act amending the Constitution and a Money Resolution with it, and this is brought in in accordance with what was done then. The sum of £5,000 was criticised by Deputy Derrig, because there were no details of it. An Act was passed, and this is to cover expenses that will be incurred in the operation of that Act, that were not adverted to at the time the original Estimates were framed. As far as I can judge—and I do not set up my judgment in this as being any way more enlightened than that of anyone else—I should think that that sum will actually cover expenses between now and the end of the financial year, but I can give no guarantee whatsoever on that point. Actually, we might have done it by an obvious token Vote, because I think practically every expense that I can foresee at the moment is included in the various sub-heads of the original Estimate, except feeding prisoners. If Deputies want to vote against this, the only real effect I can see that that would have, if they actually carry it, would be that the prisoners would live in a continuous state of hunger strike. I am personally most anxious that within reason they should be fed while they are prisoners.

Deputy Derrig, as usual, invented a new body of men and talked a lot about this new force. There is no new force in existence, as Deputies were told. There is the Army and there is the police force. The primary function of the police is to maintain here a general state of order, to protect what we call the State, and the institutions of the State, and the persons who make up that State. Deputy Derrig asserted, by implication, that there was a new body of men in existence. There is no such thing. There is a body of police. The police function when the country is quiet. There may be a time when their chief function is to see that children go to school and to see that weeds are cut. On another occasion their chief function will be to see that attempts to intimidate Deputies, to strike at the very machinery of Government, shall be thwarted.

Some speaker, I think Deputy Derrig, suggested that there had been no attempts to intimidate Deputies. It has been asserted that constituents called upon Deputies and asked them how they were going to vote. I cannot say in every case, because with a Deputy living in the middle of a big constituency it might not have been exactly in this way, but in many cases that I know of, the men who called upon Deputies were carefully chosen, not from their constituency but from another one. The men engaged knew exactly what they were doing. They announced that they belonged to an organisation calling itself the I.R.A. They went to Deputies who did not represent them so that they would not run the risk of being identified afterwards. There is no new body. Deputy Derrig, as usual, drew upon his imagination.

As far as the Army is concerned, we are not recruiting. If we have to enlarge the Army for this matter, or if the police force has to be enlarged, it will call for another Supplementary Estimate. So far, neither body has had to be enlarged. That is about the Estimate. Many other matters were referred to. Take, for instance, Deputy Lemass. His argument was, roughly, this: that there is, or was, no menace to the State. He has a peculiar system of what I may call epistemology.

That was not my argument. My argument was that the Ministry have not proved that such a menace existed.

That is what I am coming to. Deputy Lemass, with the agnostic mind peculiar to what I might call the state of liquefaction of mind in the nineteenth century, which asserts that unless a thing is proved it is not, says that unless there is documentary evidence produced that there are Communists in the country or that there is an armed organisation they do not exist.

What about the law of evidence?

The law of evidence has no relation whatever to the existence of facts. I think the Deputy ought to admit that a thing can exist even though it has not been demonstrated to him. The purpose of his speech was this, that that organisation, or whatever it was that he talked of, does not exist unless it is proved here by documentary evidence. That was really his line. If he admits that the threat to the State can exist without the Government having documentary evidence, or can exist without the Government producing documentary evidence to Deputy Lemass, the thing he has to apply his mind to is whether or not that threat does exist, and not whether or not the Government has produced documentary evidence for it. There is much evidence that I am aware of— and I do not pretend to be aware of all of it, nor have I looked up the matter for this debate—there is much evidence to my mind available that I personally would use my influence against making available to this House or to the public. I do not say that my word would carry.

The Minister for Justice says there is no document later than 1925.

As a matter of fact I might occasionally dispute with the Minister for Justice on a point like that. The argument of Deputy Lemass on the Russian business was this: There was a document produced or there was evidence given of some sort referring to a mission to Russia in 1925 which I think—and I do not want to misrepresent the Deputy—he was associated with. I have not looked up these documents, but I think as a matter of fact that things go a little later than 1925. Deputy Lemass's statement was roughly this, disproving the assertion that there is any Communist propaganda in this country: he says that a mission was sent over by him, or with him somehow or other associated with it, in 1925, and he says that mission was a failure. The Deputy may remember that I quoted last year from a report of a meeting at which he and Deputy de Valera were present, Cumann na Teachtaí and the Second Dáil together. At that meeting, as I pointed out, a man called Peadar O'Donnell, known to the Deputy—and I do not think the Deputy is going to get up and say that I am maligning him by saying that he is a Communist—got up and said that the policy pursued by Deputy de Valera and others until that time was entirely wrong, and what was required to get the country was to propound a policy that would appeal to the people, to get them to break some aspects of Free State law. What he said should have been done here was— and I think that this was the first pro posal for the policy that has been so largely adopted by Fianna Fáil since— to go out and preach to the people the non-payment of land annuities, that that would appeal to the people, that the people would break the law, and that would get a condition in the country that would be beneficial to those opposed to the Government.

Up to that time there was a party consisting of these other people outside now, and certain people who are now associated with what is called the Fianna Fáil Party. I am quite ready to be corrected if I am in any way misrepresenting things. In that party at that time, the Deputy will not deny, that people like Peadar O'Donnell were Communist in outlook in that they were anxious to promote the Communist idea in this country, and they regarded it as the one fighting point of view which should be made operative here; that they thought it could be fostered through creating amongst the people generally an attitude of defiance to law. I do not think that is deniable. Deputy de Valera said last week that when he proposed his policy which afterwards led to the formation of the Fianna Fáil Party — again I do not want to misrepresent him—I think he said he was beaten by a majority, but that it was a very small majority. I think that is right. He went on to say that if they agreed to abide by majority rule he would have stayed there because he could in time have got a majority. I think I am not misrepresenting him when I say that from that body, which had, if you like, a right and a left wing, which had in it an element of the Communist, and wanted to run the whole system upon Communist lines, the right wing— Deputy de Valera's wing — withdrew. If they were roughly half, it meant that that solid half which was nonCommunist withdrew, and consequently enormously multiplied the percentage of Communists in what remained of the party.

Deputy Lemass explained that he and his people with no idea whatever of Communism or anything else like that went to Russia but did not succeed. I will say this also, that the present situation was contained in the interior dialectics of Deputy de Valera's movement in 1922 and all through. There it had its seed. He moved away in 1926 and let it germinate. The other people were more in accord with Communist ideas. Since then they have had continuous contact with Russia.

Prove it.

I have not got the documents here. I can prove it. Does the Deputy deny that every year for the last four years there have been people going over to Russia? Does he deny that men have been sent from this country to the Moscow College of Propaganda?

I do not know.

They have been.

Give us proof.

It is provable.

Was the Minister not in touch with Russian agents in 1926?

Mr. Boland

Are you sure of that?

Mr. Boland

I am not so sure of it.

Give documentary proof.

Is the Minister aware that he is under suspicion?

I think it very flattering to be under suspicion from that quarter.

Mr. Boland

The sort of proof that you are giving now.

In this case my word will have to be taken for it. These other people were more in sympathy with what we will roughly call Russian ideas. They have had more encouragement from these quarters because, as was said by the Third Internationale, the I.R.A. is a bourgeois organisation. Its point of view is bourgeois. The propasal was then made, to my knowledge, that they should be got in as far as possible and that when the appropriate moment came the bourgeois element should be eliminated from the true-blue Communists. Deputy Lemass up to 1925 was trying to negotiate with Russia, quite unsuccessfully, but having no Communistic ideas whatever, he came out and left the body which was permeated already with Communism behind it, a body which its whole previous history shows, even when he was in it, led essentially to the overthrow of social order. That body has moved steadily all through in the one direction towards Communism. In February last its organ, "An Phoblacht," published the Constitution of a Workers' Republic, and encouraged correspondence about it. The purpose of that, and I have seen documentary proof of it, was to get this matter discussed in I.R.A. circles with a view to the coming I.R.A. Convention. I have forgotten when the Convention was held, but it was after the publication of that correspondence. The Constitution was put there in order that it might be accepted by the I.R.A. Convention.

Did not the Minister for Labour in the First Dáil advocate the setting up of a Workers' Republic, and was not the Minister a member of that body at the time?

I am sorry to have to bring in the words "eternal truth" and "right and wrong" again. If a thing is right it is right, and if it is wrong it is wrong, whether the Dáil in 1918 or 1921, or at any other time, said it or did not say it. Even if I myself said things that were wrong, the fact that I said them does not make them now right.

Might I point out to the Minister that he has been referring to an organisation which split in 1926? Half of that organisation took a line of action different to that which we took, and it is still in existence. It has not been suppressed or proclaimed under this Act. Apparently the Government did not consider it worthy of suppression under the Act.

The Deputy knows as well as I do that at that time the thing was more political than armed. We had the armed men in that body, but at the time they got rather fed up with the talkers, the Lemasses and the de Valeras. Deputy Lemass knows as well as I do that the men who stood for the armed movement, for the physical force movement, for the overthrow of this State by armed force, after that became more numerous, and while they allowed Miss MacSweeney and "Sceilg" to talk as much as it pleased them, they did not propose to take any orders from them. Deputy Lemass knows well that if the Bodenstown procession had gone on, as presumably he would have liked, they would have been the advance guard there. There would have been, if you like an x number of the I.R.A. from the various battalions and x over 100 of Sinn Féin. There would have been one hundred I.R.A. to one member of Sinn Féin, but Sinn Féin would not go, because Sinn Féin would not be contaminated by an association with traitors, as they would say, like Deputy de Valera and Deputy Lemass. The other people had no such principles. They want to use anybody who is likely to be useful to them. They have no use for the Fianna Fáil Party, but they are most anxious to assist the Fianna Fáil Party in overthrowing the present Government.

Why did Deputy Lemass's mission go to Russia? It wanted sympathetic assistance for the overthrow of this State. Had this State the right to exist then, or has it the right to exist now? I am quite willing to be sympathetic about these poor blinded youths, misled by a whole lot of propaganda, with a situation prepared for their being misled. Deputy de Valera spoke last week about peace, and Deputy O'Connell was tremendously touched and indignant because tears did not come into my eyes, and because I did not go and throw my arms round Deputy de Valera's neck and say: "we are completely at one." We have a lot of young men outside. I am not going to blame all of them, but I think that as regards the majority of them, the best thing we can do for them is to try and wean them away from their bad ways. That is what we have been doing. The way to wean them away from these bad ways is to let them know that these ways are bad.

We are accused of hatred and of bitterness. Deputy de Valera spoke of the "beautiful sentiments and honourable ambitions of these young men." He said "it was the same thought that was at the back of the minds of these young men as was at the back of the minds of the men who resisted British domination in this country." This is the way he is going to bring home to these young men the fact that the course they are pursuing is evil nationally and evil morally. Deputy O'Connell was charmed with that sort of thing. Deputy de Valera said: "These are the men who are being hounded, these are the men who are being driven without the slightest attempt being made to understand their motives, without the slightest attempt to make right use of their motives, which are in themselves noble and good, the desire to have the complete independence of their country." That is the doctrine that is preached to the men who murdered Ryan. "That is the gospel which has kept Irish nationality alive through all the centuries of persecution." I do not want to use strong language, but I must say that I have never stood by and heard quietly such a description of the doctrine of Irish nationality.

Deputy de Valera also said: "It was a forlorn hope, I admit it now and always admitted it, when the Volunteers went out to try and save the Republic, for the majority of the Irish people had departed from it, to save it when the majority of the Irish people had got as their representatives men who had only to beckon their finger and they could get all the ammunition and all the guns and all the support that the British Empire could put behind them. It was a forlorn hope. It was only men who had been inspired with the principles which drove them to face the odds in 1916 and who made them a part of their faith, who would have attempted it. These are the men whom we want to punish now. These are the men who are represented as terrorists, those who never thought of themselves."

The most disastrous side of the situation that we have in the country is that young men, and young women if you like, and possibly middle-aged men, are being misled by the most diabolical propaganda. They are being misled into the ways of crime that are going to be disastrous for themselves, disastrous for the whole country and for the whole race. We are told that these men are the same as the men of 1916. Deputy de Valera in those words admits that he was out in arms when the majority of the Irish people disapproved of him. His argument last week I have just quoted. He was speaking then of 1922. In 1916 the majority of the Irish people had not got all the guns and all the rest of it. What the Deputy said applied to 1922 and 1923 when there was a condition of anarchy in the country, when men went out and took lives in defiance of all law, when we were the Government as we were the Government in 1925 and as we are the Government in 1931. If we were not the Government in 1925, we are not the Government now. If the Party opposite next year or at any future time become the Government by exactly the same process as we have become the Government, then according to the Deputy's argument, they will not be the Government at all. As Deputy de Valera said last year "these men outside can claim the same continuity as we can claim."

I ask that the Minister should produce the quotation.

I do not want to misrepresent the Deputy. The Deputy said that these men outside can claim exactly the same continuity as he claimed up to 1925.

That is all right. I thought what the Minister said was that I stated that the people outside had authority.

The Deputy might wait and listen to what I said. What I said was that the Deputy stated that the men outside could claim exactly the same continuity as he did up to 1925. He actually claimed it up to 1926. What is the first thing that we have got to establish? We do not believe that our people are necessarily criminal, but I personally believe that the historical circumstances of this country are such as to make our people, unless the situation is made perfectly clear to them, more susceptible to certain types of propaganda and to being misled in certain ways than they would be if our history had been different. Has this Government the authority that is naturally possessed by a Government or has it not? Deputy de Valera said last week: "There are people here to-day vested with whatever authority can be given to them by a majority vote of the people." What does that mean? The Deputy continued: "Even though we may say that all is not right, as I said before, there must be some authority. Social order must be maintained, even if there was nothing but a de facto Government.” We have the right to maintain social order here and the right to put down crime, not because we are a de facto Government, not because we have whatever authority a majority vote of the people can give us. As I said last week, and as Deputy de Valera knows perfectly well, the authority by which we operate, although it arises on certain action by the people in voting, is not authority that can be given to us by a majority of the people. That authority may amount to nothing. It does not reside in the people to give us that authority. Our authority comes from God, or we have not any. That is an ordinary matter that Deputy de Valera must accept. If he does not accept that, then we have no right to be a Government here. If we have not the right to be a Government, then people have the right to take steps to get rid of us by force of arms.

Deputy O'Connell talked about my bitterness. That is a type of speech which I consider completely subversive in this country. Why? Because there is no proper national idea in this country. The whole tone of the speeches from the benches opposite last week was based on the assumption all through, of doubt as to the legitimacy of the Government here. Why should there be any doubt as to the legitimacy of the Government here any more than there should be a doubt as to the legitimacy of the Government in any other country? It seems to me that there is an innate slavishness in people when they talk of the Governments of France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain and other countries acting with proper authority and then express themselves as if there were something dubious about our authority.

The slave mind.

Considering the condition of the country, although it has been made as light as possible, most Deputies, I think, have admitted that there is a bad situation. They may say that we are exaggerating and that we are putting too much stress upon it. I think it will be admitted, however, that there are organisation out to overthrow this State, organisations membership of which, as the Bishops have stated, is sinful for Catholics and incompatible with the moral law. Consequently it is the duty of all of us to do all that we can to dissuade our people from being members of these organisations.

Deputy de Valera also said: "The gentlemen who brought off the coup d'etat back in 1922, who at that particular time usurped power.” If we usurped power that power could be taken from us. We have not got any right to it. Such speeches are incendiary at the present time. Deputy O'Connell thinks then it very noble of Deputy de Valera to say that we usurped power in 1922.

I said no such thing.

The Deputy complained of my bitterness. What did I say? I said that Deputy de Valera's speech was one of the most subversive——

Mr. O'Connell

You said it was a blackguardly speech.

I can only speak according to my lights and as it seems to me at the time. When I say that the people of the country are threatened you have Deputies getting up and saying all sorts of nice things about the people who threaten them. I admit that I could take out of the Deputy's speech something quite different. In nearly every utterance he makes two speeches. This is a time for clarity, for making it clear to the people that these organisations are condemned by every right-minded person, and that there is no justification for their action. When Deputies come along and say that they are brave men and express beautiful sentiments about their honourable ambitions, that they are inspired by the same motives as the men of 1916, that these young men have no thought for themselves but only think of the complete independence of the country, when they say also that we, by a coup d'etat, usurped power, and try to justify these men in holding arms— when you have statements such as, that “these gentlemen might stand in the way and prove traitors again as they were deemed to have been traitors before”— what does it all mean? We are either traitors or we are not. Why has not the Deputy the moral courage to say so?

I dare say Deputies have seen posters recommending in effect our assassination on the ground that we were traitors, saying that we should get the fate that every country gives to traitors. Deputy de Valera comes along and says that we are traitors, and presumably that we should get the fate that these men in their posters have threatened us with. The Deputy also said in his speech: "They stood in the past by the established Constitution. They were the Constitutionalists on that occasion." There a little historical matter arises. Deputy de Valera said on one occasion: "When it was suggested that a secret organisation was necessary in the Army in 1925 I went to the meeting where it was proposed to establish it." What does he mean by "the Army" in 1925? There was only one legitimate Army in 1925. That was the Army of which I happen at present to be the Minister. These men decided to call their murder organisation an Army. If it is an Army it has a perfect right to operate. Deputy de Valera there refers to it as an Army, or perhaps he may have meant the Army of which I am Minister? I am not sure that he was proposing to foster a secret organisation in it.

It may have been the I.R.B.

It might be. Deputies on the opposite side got up this afternoon more or less to explain that there was no real danger in the country. I noticed that they say it this week with a good deal more heart than they said it last week. They seem to be more convinced of the lack of danger this week than last week. I think possibly they are right, thanks to the passing of the Bill.

Some Deputy said that, apart from the I.R.A., the other organisations were quite small; it may be that some of the other organisations in the list do not exist. But what is the danger of the situation? The danger is that you have all these organisations together. There has been, for the last three years at least, a constant and steady organisation trying to foster Communist ideas in the I.R.A.

Which organisation?

An organisation of men.

What is its name?

Has Peadar O'Donnell been working to get these ideas into the I.R.A.?

I do not know. Has he?

He has. Do you deny it?

I do not deny it.

If you do not, I will carry on.

I do not know anything about him.

This is the trial that Peadar O'Donnell is going to get. Is this how he is going to be tried?

The Deputies on the other side know the gentleman better than I know him.

That is the cue for the military tribunal.

I do not think they need any cue.

They are carefully chosen.

I think it was Deputy Lemass who said that the document quoted last week about the Russian business was not published when the dump was found because it was decided that we would fake up these things. As a matter of fact, there was a debate here one night, and typewritten copies of those documents were here to be read out and handed to the Press. During that debate— it was during the election — the Deputies opposite, with their usual charming manners, got up and howled, and the documents could not be read. I think the Minister for Justice had been reading some of the documents when the Ceann Comhairle had to declare the Dáil adjourned.

The Ceann Comhairle ruled that the document was irrelevant to the debate.

He did not.

Look up the report again.

I was here and had the documents. I was most anxious that they should be read, but there were such howls that they could not be read.

On a point of personal explanation, we were discussing an event that occurred this year, and documents were about to be quoted relating to the year 1925. I asked if they were relevant to the discussion, and the Ceann Comhairle said they were not.

Admitting that the Deputy is right, what are we discussing? Deputy Lemass said that we carefully concealed these documents and would not bring them forward. On that they rested their case. Deputy Little now gets up and says that, on the contrary, the Government wanted to bring them forward, but the Ceann Comhairle would not allow them.

To bring them forward in the wrong way.

The Minister is wrong, as usual. I did not say that. Another Deputy may have said it.

I think it was Deputy Derrig said it.

The documents could have been handed to the Press.

Some Deputy spoke about this Zinovieff letter and said this was the Zinovieff letter of this Government. Deputy Derrig also talked about our posing as defenders of public right and morality, but why does this question of morality and all the rest come in here? For a very obvious reason. Because Government authority is either a right or a wrong thing. It is defined for us Catholics perfectly clearly. We have to stand by that authority. Inasmuch as we have that authority, we have also the duty to exercise it where necessary. When we get up and say that the action we are going to take is in exercise of that authority, which is our moral possession, we are held up as hypocrites. Deputy Derrig derided us as defenders of public right and morality. As individuals we may be the most contemptible people in the world, but as a Government we are defenders of public right and morality. That cannot be got away from.

God help us, so!

Deputy Lemass asked does "An Phoblacht" represent the I.R.A. He ought to ask the other people. Take the writers of "An Phoblacht." Inasmuch as they are members of G.H.Q.——

Are they?

Prove it.

Inasmuch as they are members of the Army Council——

How do you know they are?

We have documentary evidence of that.

Produce it.

I have not got it here.

Adjourn the court.

Will the Deputy get up and assert that he denies it?

I do not know anything about it.

Prove it.

The Deputy says he knows nothing whatever about it, and I tell him I do.

He would not believe you — naturally.

But he has this enormous love and respect for those noble young men outside who commit murder.

Who are accused of committing murder.

Mr. Jordan

The Minister does not know whether he has or not.

The Deputy said these men might be Knights of Columbanus or members of the Catholic Truth Society. Things can be sometimes dangerous and sometimes not. If you have an army organisation and you have, in connection with that, another organisation which preaches the overthrow of the social order, the denial of the right of private property, the combination of these two things multiplies the danger of both. If you have men filled with these honourable, patriotic sentiments which Deputy de Valera has spoken about, who is also a member of the Catholic Truth Society, he is not likely to have a particular effect in the way of inculcating Communism in the Catholic Truth Society. There is not likely to be a fusion between the two elements, but as between the other two, the whole history of mankind shows that there arises, almost automatically, a fusion between them.

A fusion between nationalism and internationalism?

No. A fusion between the type of organisation which the Deputy belonged to in 1922 and Communism tends to multiply the danger of each and to contaminate each. I think it was Deputy Lemass, again, who talked about the Oath. Let us come on to that. The Oath is in the Constitution. It is also in the Treaty. You have the right to notify the British Government of the abrogation of that Treaty. As I have tried to explain here often before, there is a Liquor Treaty between Great Britain and the United States. The British Government have resisted every attempt to extend territorial waters and the right of search on the part of other countries beyond the three-mile limit.

In that Treaty, the British Government have agreed with the American Government that they will permit American ships to search British ships anywhere within an hour's run of the American coast—about twelve miles. That is a thing the British Government have always resisted. The American Government, on the other hand, allow British ships to take in alcoholic liquor under seal. There is a Treaty between the two countries. The American Constitution says it shall not be legal for alcoholic liquor to be brought into American territory. Alcoholic liquor is brought, by virtue of that Treaty, into American territory, because territorial waters are American territory. The American Constitution is altered by that international Treaty. That international Treaty changed their municipal law and became their municipal law. The American Government might say: "We like this Treaty. We like going out to search for twelve miles, but we object to the fact that the Constitution of the U.S.A. is nullified to this extent by the Treaty we have made with the British. We want that part knocked out." What is going to happen? They notify the British that they do not like their bringing in alcoholic liquor under seal. They give due notice to the British Government that the Treaty is gone and they are now as they were before. The British say: "You do not allow us to bring that liquor in, and we do not allow you to search for twelve miles out." That is the position.

There is a clause in the Treaty about the Oath. Deputies on the other side are always coming along and saying: "In the interests of unity, let the Oath go. These gentle murderers outside would be quite nice chaps and would not do much harm but for that Oath." You have got to face up to the fact that the Oath is part of the Treaty. All usage and all equity prove that when you make a Treaty it can only be modified by agreement between the two parties or, when one or other party gives notice, abrogated. When it is abrogated, it goes in toto and not merely in part. There is a suggestion that we are not an independent nation because of the Treaty and because of our Constitution. The truth is that it is not possible for a nation to be completely independent any more than it is possible to have these perfectly ideal conditions of living that our Communist friends outside talk about. That is not possible for a nation. Nations are not created that way.

During the last six hundred years this intensive nationalism has grown up amongst countries, but by the assertion — the unhealthy assertion, possibly — of that nationalism, they have made it still more impossible to live in that isolation and in that completeness that Deputies over there want. I have explained on other occasions that Belgium and Holland have between them the waters of the Scheldt. If they want to make an arrangement between themselves changing the present position, they cannot do it without the sanction of the other Powers who are parties to the Congress of Vienna. Are you going to say that Holland is not free or that Belgium is not free? To begin with, their sovereignty is limited by their arrangement with each other in so far as the waters of the Scheldt are concerned. Further, they cannot even alter that arrangement between themselves without the sanction of Great Britain as a party to the Congress of Vienna. It is said that people in this country have a right to resist Government by force of arms, have a right to assassinate, have a right to intimidate jurors, because we have not that impossibly complete aseitas which is not possessed and cannot be possessed by any State in the world. They suggest that something is radically wrong because we have a Treaty with Great Britain. On the other hand, they push that on one side and say: "We are all out for peace. Just agree to eliminate that one clause which is integral in the Treaty and we are all right." Everybody is going to be quite happy if that is done, even the people outside who have asked the Deputies opposite not to sicken them with their hypocrisy on that point— even they will be quite all right.

The people of this country have the right to elect a Government to cancel the Treaty. The people are assured that they can do this and that it will be quite safe. Then we are turned to and asked: "Don't you agree that it is quite safe?" If we point out what might be done under these circumstances, we are charged with felon-setting and with suggesting to Britain what she should do under these circumstances. There you have it both ways. The ordinary international custom is that when one party wants to abrogate a Treaty the parties revert to the status quo ante. That is the position as regards the Oath. The majority of the people in this country, as Deputy de Valera admits, wanted peace with England and wanted that sovereignty and independence they had fought for. They accepted that by the terms of the Treaty. Now, it is suggested that a certain small crowd outside are immutably hostile to this State because of that Oath and that in the interest of winning them in we are to change that state of affairs. They should first convince the majority of the people of the country of the right and expediency of abrogating the Treaty of 1921 and not try to mislead the people by talking about one Article in it.

Somebody talked here about suggested conferences. What was the conference suggested by Fianna Fáil? It was a conference between the Government and various other parties, including the men who were out to overthrow this State by force of arms. We exist as a Government for the purpose of maintaining law and putting down crime. We have, as Deputy de Valera admits, authority from God to do that. His suggestion is that while every other Government serves its people by protecting them from crime, in this country as soon as crime becomes armed and threatens life, the Government functions by taking its hat in its hand, going to the gentle murderers and saying: "What are your terms?" Deputies last week talked about the parties to "this quarrel." There is no quarrel. There is authority and there is rebellion. There is the maintenance of order and morality and there is the attempt to overthrow order and to overthrow morality. There is no quarrel there. There is the duty of the Government to exercise its authority, and the people who propose negotiations and peace conferences with the heads of these organisations outside do that because they do not know what an Irish State is and do not know what a nation is. A nation exists and a State exists merely because of the need of government, and the need of government is to put down crime and to have power and force to put down crime. That is what is behind the whole idea. In this country, you are to have a puppet Government and, when a murderer comes out with his gun, the Government is to come along and say: "What are your terms? We agree to them." That is the proposal of Fianna Fáil. And the mealy-mouthed hypocrisy about the thing is that they are the peacemongers and we are the brutal people who are out for blood, hate, bitterness and all the rest.

We have no bitterness whatever against these poor souls. We know that there are country boys to whom these fellows come along and talk about Wolfe Tone. Up to last week, there was the assurance that they could go around, be the big fellows and bully the people round about, being absolutely safe all the time. In the interests of these young men, it was necessary for us to create a condition here whereby, when they did that, they would be very unsafe and whereby, instead of their being free to take other people's lives, the moment they lifted their hands, their own lives would be forfeit. That is in the interests of those young men, and we are much juster to them than the people who go around talking about their noble motives, their splendid patriotism, giving them "the admiration that brave men deserve"— the people who whisper to them that the Government that functions here is a usurping Government created by a coup d'etat in 1922, suggest that we were traitors in 1922, that there is an election coming on, and that if it goes against us we may be traitors again and go between the people and their desires.

What about the Vice-President's article in the "Star"?

It is a long time since I read a translation of it. I never saw the "Star" myself, so far as I remember. I always try to be very careful in quoting Deputy de Valera, but I think, if you take that article and read Deputy de Valera's travesty of it last week in this House, you will see how he tried to misrepresent his opponents. As far as I remember — I am speaking from memory of a long period back — that article said that the Army normally, when a new Government comes into power, should be obedient to that Government.

I do not want to misrepresent the article. I am speaking from memory.

You have a bad memory.

My memory is painfully good, as Deputy de Valera knows.

Do you remember 1926?

I remember the discussion in 1927 when my memory was most painfully troublesome. That article stated that under certain circumstances if the Government that had taken power went against the Constitution or acted illegally — I am ready to accept correction by anybody who remembers the exact words——

We will take that paragraph.

Has anybody got the article? — that then the Army had a right to disobey and use its judgment against it. That article, if it is as I remember it, is a thing that could be technically said to be right.

Do you stand over it?

I do not, because I think in the same way an army is justified in participating in a war without asking itself whether that war is or is not just, because it has the right always to assume that the Government which has that authority from God is right, and it is not its business to ask. I think the Army is the last organisation in the country that should challenge the Constitutional right of the Government. We know perfectly well if to-morrow I proposed spending money wrongly — that if I said I wanted from the Finance Department £500 to buy myself a new wardrobe— the Finance officials would refuse to give it, and they would be right to do it. As far as I remember that article, it is not an article I am out to defend by any means, although I think literally one could say it was right. At the same time I think the Army is the last organisation which should challenge the Government. The Finance officials would be acting illegally if they handed over money to their Minister against the law of this country. In the same way it is said that the Government forfeited its authority when it exceeded those limitations which are put on its authority, which means the Constitution.

£200 for a piano and £218,000 as a bribe to the ex-Army officers.

I can never understand the Deputy. He seems to speak a special language which was peculiar to the old R.I.C.

The Minister's language is the most peculiar I have ever heard. He seems to speak Russian, or Oxford, or the language of some country outside this. It certainly does not come from this country.

We have passed this Act. It has been suggested that our Deputies voted for it because of a police ramp. As a matter of fact the Deputies coming up from the country came up with certain knowledge of the country. I admit this thing is in areas if you like. Anybody who knows South Leitrim and lives there knew perfectly well before last week the reality of the situation we speak about. I think the people in the neighbourhood of Cappawhite, Tipperary, know it very well. I know of places in Kerry where it is a very real thing. You may come from some part of Mayo or some place like that, but as far as the majority of our Deputies coming up from the country were concerned, they came up with first-hand knowledge of the situation. As to the suggestion that we staged this business — we did not stage it, the business was staged by the men who went around to intimidate Deputies. Deputy Seán T. O'Kelly complained of statements made by the President last March.

March, 1929.

Quite right. It was just about the time that there was an attempt to murder the juryman, White, and that the witness Armstrong was actually murdered. The President said that there was a situation which, if allowed to continue, would actually threaten the foundations of the State, and he was perfectly right to say it. As I see the situation at the moment, there was a movement going on in this country here inevitably bound to get strong enough to kill the existence of this State if it were not checked. You do not need to get the majority of the people in it. If you have 20,000, which is a very small minority, and does not count in a constituency, armed and unscrupulous spread around the country, they are sufficient to cow all ordinary decent law-abiding citizens.

Are there that many?

I doubt it, but from week to week and from month to month they increase and become stronger, because it was perfectly safe; it was a grand opportunity to be a Robert Emmet or a Wolfe Tone. You could go around and intimidate Deputies, or shopkeepers; you just said it was "on behalf of the I.R.A.," and the shopkeepers thought that the best policy was safety first, and they were not taking any risks.

They intimidated poor Deputy Anthony all right.

On the occasion I was speaking about, the President got up and referred to it as a very real threat. The intimidation of witnesses and jurors was going to make justice impossible in this country. He quite rightly referred to it. What always happens is this. Take for example this country and what we would call a Balkan State or Mexico. We care for this country so much that the least falling away from what we think are the best and right principles are things we must cry out against and resist. There are many other countries, Germany for instance, which have a bigger percentage of people touched with Communism than we have, but it is more important to us because we feel we have something dearer to lose. In Germany or any other country you like on the Continent they recognise that it is one of the ordinary things which happen, but we who care for the moral or every other aspect of our people are necessarily going to resist it. In other countries they do not mind so much an attempt to undermine their moral character by these doctrines. Consequently we cry out more than any other country. There are all sorts of murders in certain cities of America. It is fairly bad. If the number were halved next month the people would be rejoicing and would say that things are fine. If we had the same proportion of murders in Dublin we would be crying out and saying that the country is going to the dogs, and quite rightly. It does happen that we who believe in the very highest nature of our people have the name of being rather like what is called the Balkan States. When we get up and warn our people that there is a threat to the well-being of our country people outside say "here is the Irish Free State much like one of those Balkan countries." We are told there is a new development there. They presume our norm is something appallingly bad, and consequently when we call attention to a bad state of affairs the thing must be so bad that it calls for headlines over the papers. On the other hand we are not satisfied to have the moral standard of our people merely as in Germany, France or any other country. We perhaps have deluded ourselves that it is traditionally something higher, and when it is falling down to the level of one of these countries it is something disastrous, something to call the people's attention to. Most people who come from outside think that we began somewhere lower than they did and must be down to some inconceivable depths by the time they got here. I understand I am not to wind up.

It is time you wound down.

Deputies of a certain type appear to act in a funny and elephantine way. Every word they utter shows that they have been impregnated with that anarchy they preached in 1922. I have time and again got up here and done my best to try to assist them out of that, and what happened? The only way you can do it is by pointing out to them where the fundamental subversive side of their argument and speeches lies. What I think some Deputies on the Labour Benches would like us to do would be to cover our eyes to everything. "If we do not see it it is not there," says Deputy O'Connell. "If it is not proved by documents it does not exist," says Deputy Lemass. Possibly my preaching over a long period of time will tend to improve that tone.

In rising to propose a hearty vote of thanks to the reverend lecturer for the mixed theology and mixed philosophy and mixed political theological philosophy which we have unfortunately been subjected to over a period which I thought was never going to end, I feel that I would be entitled on this occasion to quote:

"We thank with brief thanksgiving

Whatever gods may be

That no life lives for ever,

That dead men rise up never;

That ever the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea."

An unbelievable miracle has been accomplished; he has, in fact, stopped. Now the House has had a wonderful treat, and I wish to God we had a talkie of it to send all round the country; if the people of the country had a talkie of that speech, and were told that that was the justification for tearing up the Constitution of this country, God only knows what they would do. You have had an example to-night of a responsible man speaking upon an important subject, and you have had the opportunity of examining the kind of testimony that is good enough for him. Did you ever hear anything so confused in your life — except, perhaps, another speech from one of his colleagues? The whole thing has been disgraceful. He says: "I have not looked into the facts,""I do not know what it is,""I think,""I am speaking from recollection,""My recollection is so-and-so,""Has anybody else got the papers?" That is the kind of testimony which was introduced when he was felon-setting a man to put him in peril of his life before a courtmartial. It is a damned disgrace; that exhibition that you had there was a thoroughly discreditable exhibition. It was beneath contempt, yet it is an example of the kind of testimony and the kind of witnessing which they think will be good enough to put before their Tribunal. You had a weird series of stories about some organisations which did contain a certain percentage of Communists and non-Communists. You had an elaborate argument as to the gradual growth of Communism. You had a sort of lecture on the inevitability of the gradualness in the growth of a certain political criminal philosophy. We had a criminal society which in the mind of the Minister was over a period of years asymptotically approaching Communism. That is the sort of stuff we had, and because there was some organisation which was supposed to be asymptotically approaching Communism we are asked to believe that this whole Catholic-agrarian-peasant proprietorship State had developed into a State in which it was in danger of active participation in Communism. What sort of stuff is that to get even from a Minister? Is the Minister aware that there is an influence in this country, and that there is an association, not declared to be illegal, which has this programme that I am going to read as its policy? Listen to this programme, and remember this organisation is not suppressed! It is not named in these proclamations. It says: "Don't pay your debts." Did they know there was such a society? "Don't pay your annuities." It says both of these things. Do they know that? "Confiscate the whole of the deposits in the Irish banks." Did the Minister know about an organisation which says that? "Destroy in the possession of their owners all the National Loan." I am asking the Minister now does he know of any such society? Do you know of any such society? Do you know that that is going on?

Sit down if you don't know.

I will not sit down at your dictation at any time.

Deputy Flinn ought to try and conduct himself.

I asked a question and he answered it.

The Deputy asked a question and the Minister rose to answer it.

I will give way to the Minister if he likes.

If the Deputy has that information, I want him to give the name of the association.

I intend to give it, but that is not half its policy.

We would like you to give it.

"Don't pay your debts; don't pay your annuities; confiscate the whole of the deposits in the Irish banks; destroy in the possession of the owners all the National Loan; destroy the whole of Great Southern debentures; confiscate all the Treasury notes, English and Irish; and confiscate all the legal tender notes. Take your land for nothing, and refuse to pay the mortgages which the banks now have upon that land." Does the Minister know that that organisation is in existence here? He ought to know if there is a policy in active operation to do that. Should not even these ignorant Ministers know that it is going on? Now the Minister wants to know the name of that organisation. The Bank of England and the National Government.

He does not even know it now.

He does not understand it now. I have got to explain to him the meaning of it. Again I am going to repeat it: "Don't pay your debts; don't pay your annuities; confiscate the whole of the deposits in the Irish banks; destroy in the possession of the owners the whole of the National Loan; destroy all Great Southern debentures; confiscate all the Treasury notes, the English notes and the legal tender notes; take your land for nothing; refuse to pay your mortgages to the bank on the land." If you devalorise the £ — and the £ has been devalorised to a certain extent, and its devalorisation has been gloried in as a triumph by the Government; if you claim that devalorisation of the £ as a triumph, you refuse to pay your debts, you refuse to pay your annuities, you confiscate the whole of the deposits in the Irish banks, and you destroy in the possession of the owners the National Loan. You destroy the Great Southern Railways debentures and the whole of the deposits in the Irish banks——

The Deputy is infringing the Standing Orders. That is the fourth time he has repeated that statement.

It is necessary to emphasise this.

The Deputy will have to observe the Standing Orders.

I am observing them. I am agreeing with you. The Minister could not understand it until I did repeat it. Now that is Communism of the most blatant and glaring character. It is Communism of the most glaring character applied to the few. The Ministers not merely have nothing to say against it, but they glory in it. They ask the people to profit by it. These are the moralists! They ask the people to profit by a policy which enables them not to pay their debts. They say that it is going to be profitable to Ireland. It is a policy which would destroy the deposits in the banks. That is a profession of Communism of the most naked character.

When some other society over a period of years gradually approaches to a condition of Communism, then the Constitution goes to hell in a night. That is the sort of Communism to which they do object, while they take to their bosom this adder of Bank of England Communism.

What is happening? The Constitution is to be suspended, and then we are going to have a suspension probably of the elections. We have had a previous repudiation as far as this Government could arrange it, a repudiation by the Army of the decision of a General Election. These are the people who are talking about Constitutionalism and about obedience to the law. These are the people who are deliberately organising anarchy. That article, written as far as we we know, by the Minister for Finance and published in the organ of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, was a direct incitement to the Army to organise anarchy. Yet because other people belong to associations, the names of which most of us have never heard, are suspected of following in the Minister's footsteps, they take to themselves the power to put upon any man they choose suspicion, and in the process of putting on a man suspicion, the power of putting him in peril of his life by a closed court-martial. Where is the justification for that? The justification is in that ridiculous playacting you saw there for an hour and a half. That man should be carried around the country on the back of an ass's cart and asked to make that performance continuously before the people. Then they would know what the Government has sunk to in this House.

Deputy Lemass is an agnostic. That comes well from a Government who used the Front Bench of their Ministry the other day for Party purposes, and for the benefit of Party purposes publicly to declare themselves in the face of Europe, heretics. The Minister for Justice, Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney, is an alumnus of Clongowes and of Downside. There, at any rate, he must have known the teachings which are found in the penny catechism. I know he knew more than that because I sat beside him in a class of spiritual philosophy. He cannot have been ignorant that for the purpose of passing this Bill, and for the purpose of suspending this Constitution he deliberately declared a gross, blatant and flagrant heresy in the face of this House and in the face of the world. Because what a Catholic Minister of a Catholic State does choose to say standing in his place in the Assembly of Parliament, goes out to the world, and a heresy so uttered is promulgated to the whole world. The fact that it was promulgated for Party purposes will not prevent it being a scandal and a slander. "Accursed be ye by whom scandal cometh." The Minister chose for the purpose of buying votes, for the purpose of creating a condition in which he could get votes, to send out to the four winds of the earth a scandal against the teachings of the Catholic Church, Oh, they are a bright lot of play-actors and heretics. When they are not doing that they are potential poisoners. A nice lot. Now I am not going to appeal to that Front Bench. I appeal over them to the ordinary back bencher, and over their heads to the 500,000 Catholic Irishmen who voted for them in the past. I do ask that the Catholic electorate of this country shall consider whither it is going, and that it shall consider for what purposes the name of its religion, the doctrines of its Church and the teachings of its ministers are being used by these people. Are they being used for the purpose of producing peace in our time in this country? When have they shown any sign of a desire for peace?

You had a speech from Deputy Aiken the other day, a speech whose significance will grow with every day which passes from its delivery. That was a speech which in my opinion, taken in conjunction with the speech of our leader, has made a fundamental alteration in the position in this country. It is a speech which no young man of decency or good conscience can turn his back on without taking a very serious responsibility.

An Ceann Comhairle resumed the Chair.]

There is an opportunity for peace in our time, and men who turn their backs on it take a responsibility for which they will have to answer, not merely to the people, but to the God of Whom they have made such political use in the last few days. Surely it is time, on the very simple terms which have been offered, that we should make peace with one another?

What are the terms upon which we are asked to come together? That this Dáil shall declare nothing more and nothing less than the old historical demand of the Irish people to be free and to be one is the policy of this country. There is nothing else of any sort, kind or description demanded of any man. We are called upon to declare that that is the end to which we are working, and to the attainment of which we will subserve all other things in our lives, so that the old aim of an Ireland free and united shall be the declared purpose of the people. Is there any difficulty in accepting that? Once that is accepted, every other thing about which there is difference between us can disappear. Once that is accepted, complete loyalty can be put behind this Dáil for as long as it exists as the authority over this part of Ireland and as the trustee for the rest of Ireland; that it shall submerge that authority in the authority of an all-Ireland Parliament, when the opportunity comes. There can be put behind this Parliament then the authority of every man in Ireland who professes nationality as his political faith. There will be a moral claim, and there will be a power to say to a man: "Whatever you may feel in relation to nationality, you must recognise that here there is a body which represents the overwhelming majority, not merely a mathematical majority, but the overwhelming majority, not in numbers only, but of the hearts and minds of the people of the country." We will be entitled to say to a man that the mere fact that he is prepared and anxious to risk or lose his life does not entitle him to fight for the attainment of that object, or to stump the rest of his fellow-countrymen to a fight for the attainment of that object, at a moment when he has not behind him that authority and support of the people of this country which is necessary for the success of that object. Surely we can get agreement upon that?

Do they want to have trouble in the hope that they are going to get a reward afterwards? I have not willingly come to that belief. I have told this House before that the thing that brought me into this place was the misuse they made of the opportunity they had at the time of Kevin O'Higgins's murder, over his dead body, to unite the people of Ireland again in conscientious regard of their obligations both to God and to their country. They turned their back on peace on that occasion, and now this opportunity has come again to make out of this disaster success, to make for this country peace, and out of this horrible position of disunion and strife, in which we are all suspicious of one another, all guilty of envenomed speaking and its consequences, to build on that common recognition of our responsibility to this nation, the courage and the Christianity to come together. I want peace in this country. I tried to get it in every way that I could. I do deliberately thank God that we have been privileged to hear, in this House, a speech which has so much promise for the future as the speech which we have listened to from Deputy Aiken. I pray that every Irishman will see as far as is humanly possible that he will sink his own individuality, prejudices and opinions in every way that is possible, so as to co-operate in the movement which that speech started, and which the courage and love of country of the members of this House should bring to a successful and an honourable conclusion.

I move: "That the question be now put."

I am accepting that.

I think that is an absolute——

I know what the Deputy thinks.

I hope you know what Deputies think of you.

Question put: "That the question be now put."
The Committee divided: Tá, 73; Níl, 56.

  • Alton, Ernest Henry.
  • Beckett, James Walter.
  • Bennett, George Cecil.
  • Blythe, Ernest.
  • Bourke, Séamus A.
  • Collins-O'Driscoll, Mrs. Margt.
  • Conlon, Martin.
  • Connolly, Michael P.
  • Cosgrave, William T.
  • Craig, Sir James.
  • Crowley, James.
  • Daly, John.
  • Davis, Michael.
  • Doherty, Eugene.
  • Dolan, James N.
  • Doyle, Peadar Seán.
  • Duggan, Edmund John.
  • Dwyer, James.
  • Finlay, Thomas A.
  • Fitzgerald, Desmond.
  • Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
  • Good, John.
  • Gorey, Denis J.
  • Hassett, John J.
  • Heffernan, Michael R.
  • Hennessy, Michael Joseph.
  • Hennessy, Thomas.
  • Hennigan, John.
  • Henry, Mark.
  • Hogan, Patrick (Galway).
  • Holohan, Richard.
  • Jordan, Michael.
  • Keogh, Myles.
  • Law, Hugh Alexander.
  • Leonard, Patrick.
  • Lynch, Finian.
  • Mathews, Arthur Patrick.
  • Brennan, Michael.
  • Brodrick, Seán.
  • Byrne, John Joseph.
  • Carey, Edmund.
  • Cole, John James.
  • McDonogh, Martin.
  • MacEoin, Seán.
  • McFadden, Michael Og.
  • McGilligan, Patrick.
  • Mongan, Joseph W.
  • Mulcahy, Richard.
  • Murphy, James E.
  • Murphy, Joseph Xavier.
  • Myles, James Sproule.
  • Nally, Martin Michael.
  • Nolan, John Thomas.
  • O'Connell, Richard.
  • O'Connor, Bartholomew.
  • O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas.
  • O'Leary, Daniel.
  • O'Mahony, The.
  • O'Reilly, John J.
  • O'Sullivan, Gearóid.
  • O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
  • Reynolds, Patrick.
  • Rice, Vincent.
  • Roddy, Martin.
  • Sheehy, Timothy (West Cork).
  • Thrift, William Edward.
  • Tierney, Michael.
  • Vaughan, Daniel.
  • White, John.
  • White, Vincent Joseph.
  • Wolfe, George.
  • Wolfe, Jasper Travers.

Níl

  • Aiken, Frank.
  • Allen, Denis.
  • Blaney, Neal.
  • Boland, Gerald.
  • Boland, Patrick.
  • Bourke, Daniel.
  • Briscoe, Robert.
  • Broderick, Henry.
  • Buckley, Daniel.
  • Carty, Frank.
  • Cassidy, Archie J.
  • Clancy, Patrick.
  • Clery, Michael.
  • Colbert, James.
  • Cooney, Eamon.
  • Corish, Richard.
  • Corry, Martin John.
  • Crowley, Tadhg.
  • Davin, William.
  • Derrig, Thomas.
  • De Valera, Eamon.
  • Doyle, Edward.
  • Everett, James.
  • Fahy, Frank.
  • Flinn, Hugo.
  • Fogarty, Andrew.
  • Geoghegan, James.
  • Gorry, Patrick J.
  • Goulding, John.
  • Harris, Thomas.
  • Hayes, Seán.
  • Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
  • Houlihan, Patrick.
  • Jordan, Stephen.
  • Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
  • Kent, William R.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • Kilroy, Michael.
  • Lemass, Seán F.
  • Little, Patrick John.
  • Maguire, Ben.
  • McEllistrim, Thomas.
  • MacEntee, Seán.
  • Moore, Séamus.
  • Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
  • O'Connell, Thomas J.
  • O'Kelly, Seán T.
  • O'Leary, William.
  • O'Reilly, Matthew.
  • Ruttledge, Patrick J.
  • Ryan, James.
  • Sexton, Martin.
  • Sheehy, Timothy (Tipp.).
  • Smith, Patrick.
  • Tubridy, John.
  • Walsh, Richard.
Tellers:— Tá: Deputies Duggan and P.S. Doyle; Níl: Deputies G. Boland and Allen.
Question declared carried.
Main question put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 73; Níl, 55.

Tá.

  • Alton, Ernest Henry.
  • Beckett, James Walter.
  • Bennett, George Cecil.
  • Blythe, Ernest.
  • Bourke, Séamus A.
  • Brennan, Michael.
  • Brodrick, Seán.
  • Byrne, John Joseph.
  • Carey, Edmund.
  • Cole, John James.
  • Collins-O'Driscoll, Mrs. Margt.
  • Conlon, Martin.
  • Connolly, Michael P.
  • Cosgrave, William T.
  • Craig, Sir James.
  • Crowley, James.
  • Daly, John.
  • Davis, Michael.
  • Doherty, Eugene.
  • Dolan, James N.
  • Doyle, Peadar Seán.
  • Duggan, Edmund John.
  • Dwyer, James.
  • Finlay, Thomas A.
  • Fitzgerald, Desmond.
  • Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
  • Good, John.
  • Gorey, Denis J.
  • Hassett, John J.
  • Heffernan, Michael R.
  • Hennessy, Michael Joseph.
  • Hennessy, Thomas.
  • Hennigan, John.
  • Henry, Mark.
  • Hogan, Patrick (Galway).
  • Holohan, Richard.
  • Jordan, Michael.
  • Keogh, Myles.
  • Law, Hugh Alexander.
  • Leonard, Patrick.
  • Lynch, Finian.
  • Mathews, Arthur Patrick.
  • McDonogh, Martin.
  • MacEoin, Seán.
  • McFadden, Michael Og.
  • McGilligan, Patrick.
  • Mongan, Joseph W.
  • Mulcahy, Richard.
  • Murphy, James E.
  • Murphy, Joseph Xavier.
  • Myles, James Sproule.
  • Nally, Martin Michael.
  • Nolan, John Thomas.
  • O'Connell, Richard.
  • O'Connor, Bartholomew.
  • O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas.
  • O'Leary, Daniel.
  • O'Mahony, The.
  • O'Reilly, John J.
  • O'Sullivan, Gearóid.
  • O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
  • Reynolds, Patrick.
  • Rice, Vincent.
  • Roddy, Martin.
  • Sheehy, Timothy (West Cork).
  • Thrift, William Edward.
  • Tierney, Michael.
  • Vaughan, Daniel.
  • White, John.
  • White, Vincent Joseph.
  • Wolfe, George.
  • Wolfe, Jasper Travers.

Níl

  • Aiken, Frank.
  • Allen, Denis.
  • Blaney, Neal.
  • Boland, Gerald.
  • Boland, Patrick.
  • Bourke, Daniel.
  • Briscoe, Robert.
  • Broderick, Henry.
  • Buckley, Daniel.
  • Carty, Frank.
  • Cassidy, Archie J.
  • Clancy, Patrick.
  • Clery, Michael.
  • Colbert, James.
  • Cooney, Eamon.
  • Corish, Richard.
  • Corry, Martin John.
  • Davin, William.
  • Derrig, Thomas.
  • De Valera, Eamon.
  • Doyle, Edward.
  • Everett, James.
  • Fahy, Frank.
  • Flinn, Hugo.
  • Fogarty, Andrew.
  • Geoghegan, James.
  • Gorry, Patrick J.
  • Goulding, John.
  • Harris, Thomas.
  • Hayes, Seán.
  • Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
  • Houlihan, Patrick.
  • Jordan, Stephen.
  • Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
  • Kent, William R.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • Kilroy, Michael.
  • Lemass, Seán F.
  • Little, Patrick John.
  • Maguire, Ben.
  • McEllistrim, Thomas.
  • MacEntee, Seán.
  • Moore, Séamus.
  • Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
  • O'Connell, Thomas J.
  • O'Kelly, Seán T.
  • O'Leary, William.
  • O'Reilly, Matthew.
  • Ruttledge, Patrick J.
  • Ryan, James.
  • Sexton, Martin.
  • Sheehy, Timothy (Tipp.).
  • Smith, Patrick.
  • Tubridy, John.
  • Walsh, Richard.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Duggan and P.S. Doyle; Níl: Deputies G. Boland and Allen.
Motion declared carried.
Report of motion agreed to.
Top
Share