I shall deal with that in due course. But what surprised me was that certain members of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party should have been satisfied with the deductions in the Bill from civil servants' salaries. Deputy Belton, for instance, who unfortunately is absent at the moment, made many speeches in violent opposition to the proposal to reduce the salaries of civil servants. I must say that it came as something of a surprise and a shock to me to hear him make those speeches. I have here the "Civil Service Journal" and I find that on September 15th, Deputy Belton was so impressed that one-twentieth of the country's income was required to carry on the economic war that he said let the Government impose a 20 per cent. imposition on the salaries of all civil servants, university professors, and others. On September 15th, Deputy Belton was advocating a cut of 20 per cent. in the salaries of civil servants, university professors and others. And the others, of course, included teachers, Guards and members of the National University. No one will accuse Deputy Belton of consistency, but they might, if they listen to him here speaking so many times on this Bill, accuse him of an undue and unusual persistency. I would like to hear him defending his retreat from the position he took up in September 1931. Of course, asking Deputy Belton to defend his change of front is like asking a weather-cock to excuse itself for turning round with every wind that blows. I am rather surprised, as I have said, that the Deputy did not get up and endeavour to give effect to the principles which he enunciated on 15th September, 1931, when he was endeavouring, as he always does in every Party, to become leader of the then newly-born Farmers' Party. They say that coming events cast their shadows before. Possibly that is the reason why Deputy Belton evinces a sort of longing to occupy the seat that is occupied by Deputy Fitzgerald at present. The House will have noticed that when Deputy Cosgrave is absent Deputy Belton seizes the opportunity to occupy his seat to enjoy the momentary prominence that falls upon an occupant of that position in this House.
I was saying that no person could accuse the Government of breaking their pledges in regard to the Civil Service. We did say that we did not propose to impose any super-cut upon the civil servants whose salaries were of the order of £300 or £400. But we have been accused of breaking pledges to the transferred officers. In connection with the transferred officers and with the civil servants generally and, indeed, with all the public servants who are affected by this Bill, there has been on the part of members of the Opposition many covert incitements—incitements, to disloyalty, incitements to treachery, incitements to mutiny, incitements to disaffection of all sorts. We had Deputy O'Sullivan getting up and, with that hypocrisy which one must on this question associate continuously with the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, saying that he did not think there was any danger of sabotage. He then employed very subtly the weapon of suggestion to create, if he could, discontent in the service by saying: "But even if there was no decided purpose not to give the same service as was given before, the actual discontent existing in the service, at the unfair terms imposed, is bound, taking human nature as it is, to act on the efficiency of the service given to the Government. It is only human nature that it should be so." Deputy Costello pursued the same line of argument as did also Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, Deputy Davin and the others.
Now I think it should be made quite clear that if these cuts are imposed the Government will not tolerate any slackness in any branch of the public service. I do not believe that the great majority of the public servants would for a moment be affected by these covert incitements, but there may be men who will be misled by them. and if there are, Deputy Costello, Deputy O'Sullivan or Deputy Davin will not be powerful enough to defend them from the consequences of that disloyalty. We have heard about the effect on the Guards and on this one and on that one, and about the necessity for placating this public servant and that public servant. Any public servant in this State will have loyally to abide by the conditions prescribed for him within the service of the State by the Government of the State. If he does not, he will have to find employment elsewhere. That goes for everybody, because there are any amount of able young men who would be very glad to step into their places at present and give just as loyal service as any existing public servant.
Deputy Costello in the course of his speech said: "We have our international responsibilities and also our national responsibilities. We have our duties as well as our rights in reference to other members of the family of nations. As I said, during the various stages of this Bill, we will in the course of our discussions on economic matters, not to talk about political matters, be up against the best political brains and the best financial brains in the world, and if our problems are to be solved, if we are to get the best that can be got out of these discussions and negotiations which will inevitably have to take place, then we must have the best brains we can get, and we must pay the best salary we can afford for these brains." With the last sentence I am in the fullest agreement, but I am not in agreement with the implication there, that the people who are at present in the service of the State have a monopoly of the brains, have a monopoly of the zeal, have a monopoly of the ability, or of patriotism, or of enthusiasm. I do not want to be taken as reflecting at all upon the present public servants. There is no man who has better reason to be grateful to the present public servants than I have. I know how well and how loyally they have served me. No tribute that I could pay to them would be too high. But I am not going to accept the position, and I do not think the country is going to be fooled into accepting the position, that in the public service at the present time there is a monopoly of the brains, a monopoly of the enthusiasm, a monopoly of the energy, or a monopoly of the ability in this country. There are just as good men outside the Guards, outside the Civil Service, outside the ranks of the national teachers, outside the ranks of the post office, and if there is any question of disloyalty, if any person is misguided enough to take the statements of Deputy O'Sullivan and the others at their face value, these people are going to find themselves very sorely let down.
Another statement made during the course of the debate has been that we were breaking some sort of pledge that was given to the members of the Gárda Síochána by our predecessors. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, Deputy Davin, Deputy Costello, Deputy Corish and Deputy Murphy, all in one form or another repeated that statement. But of all of them Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney did himself and his Party the least credit. The statement has been made that this decision to cut the pay of the Gárda Síochána in 1931-32 was a tentative decision only. That is not so, and Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney knows it. He knows that a pay order was prepared for submission to the Representative Body of the Gárda Síochána and that the moment that pay order had been submitted to them the cuts became effective. There was no such thing as a provisional pay order. It was a gun ready loaded to go off at the moment the Representative Body could be called together. The Representative Body of the Gárda Síochána knew that so perfectly and so well that rather than be called together and permit that pay order to be promulgated and made effective the Representative Body dissolved itself by every member of it handing in his resignation. That is the only reason why the cut was not put into force in January, 1932—this cut of 5 per cent. upon the Gárda Síochána, a much heavier cut than we proposed to impose on them. Because, mark you, more than half of the ranks of the Gárda Síochána will be excluded altogether from any reduction in pay under this Bill. Those in the Gárda Síochána who are married men, and who enjoy special allowances because they are married men, are going scot free under the Bill. It is only the single men whose pay is being cut. Under our predecessor's proposal every member of the Gárda Síochána, whether married or single, whether he had family responsibility or not, would have been cut, and only, as I said before, that the Gárda Representative Body, by dissolving itself, defeated the purpose of the Government, those cuts would have been in operation in March of 1932, when we first took office, and we would not now have had the necessity of coming to the Dáil to get these special powers to impose these cuts. It was denied by Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney that the original pay orders promulgated to the Gárda had any reference whatever to the cost of living. I read for the House, on, I think, the Committee Stage of the Bill, the original memorandum which accompanied that pay order and it was quite clear, on the text of that memorandum that the pay of the Gárda Síochána was definitely related to the cost-of-living figure. Deputy Corish and, I think, Deputies Davin and Murphy said that pledges were given to the Gárda by Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, when he was Minister for Justice, and ex-Deputy Blythe, when he was Minister for Finance, that the pay of the Gárda Síochána had reached bedrock. Here are the exact words of Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney on this matter. Speaking in the debate on the Gárda Síochána (Allowances) Order, 1929, on 8th May, 1929, as reported in Vol. 29, Cols. 1660-1661 of the Official Debates—and he might have been me defending this Temporary Economies Bill in the House— he said:—
"I have before me the memorandum which accompanied the penultimate order and it is this:—"
almost my exact words
"It is not proposed that the rates of pay of the force should be subject to variation to meet trifling or temporary fluctuations in the cost of living, and the rates now proposed are based on the cost-of-living figure of 85 (above pre-War) and are intended to be applicable while the cost-of-living figure varies from 70 at the lower limit to 100 at the higher limit (above pre-War). These rates will accordingly be subject to readjustment if the cost-of-living figure passes outside that range."
With these words, the quotation from this memorandum which accompanied, in the words of Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, the penultimate order, ended. He went on to say:
"It has not passed outside that range. That is the promise made by my predecessor. That is a promise, as I have told the Representative Body of the Civic Guard, that will be honourably observed. The rates of pay of the Civic Guard will not be altered, and I take it that since that is a promise made by a responsible Executive, that promise must be binding on all future Executives."
Speaking later in the same debate, Mr. Blythe, the then Minister for Finance, took up the running and said:
"But, obviously, if something occurred which caused the cost of living to come down 25 or 30 points a new situation would be created and the value of the pay on the present scales would be very considerably increased if that happened."
I think it must be clear from these words that there was no undertaking of the nature implied by Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney or by Deputy Corish, Deputy Davin or Deputy Murphy in the course of their speeches given to the Gárda Síochána in the debate which took place in May of 1929, and, therefore, in proposing the deductions which are to be made under this Bill we are not breaking any pledges which were given to the members of the Gárda Síochána and, as I have said already, we are, in fact, treating them with much more consideration than that with which they would have been treated by our predecessors if they had been in office and not we. I do not know whether it is necessary for me to say any more on this matter. I have kept the House at some length, but the misrepresentations to which we have been subjected have been so many and so varied that were I to take up every point that was raised in the various speeches that have been made in the course of this debate I am afraid my speech would become almost interminable, and certainly, much less endurable than I think it has been.
There is, however, just one statement made by Deputy Dillon on which I should like to join issue. He has implied that these cuts are imposed because we made a declaration of war. I think that to talk like that is to talk in terms of overemphasis. There has been an economic dispute between ourselves and a neighbouring country. We have each endeavoured to assert and maintain our rights but we have done nothing more than to endeavour to assert and maintain our rights. We have not endeavoured to take anything that does not justly belong to us or to keep anything that does not justly belong to us. There need have been no war and there would have been no war if only the people on the other side of the water had been prepared to submit this issue to the arbitration of an international court.
