I pointed out, on Wednesday last, that as far as the disturbances in Limerick were concerned the necessity that subsequently arose to baton the people, and clear some of the streets, need not have arisen had the police earlier in the night not allowed crowds to congregate in the neighbourhood of the dance, where they gathered before the dance. As in the Murray case in Cork, completely irresponsible action was shown. The Minister told us that matter is being inquired into. He left it to be inferred that what was being inquired into was the charge against the police officer who was trying to shoot the person he was supposed to be minding. What the House wants to know is: how is it possible that police business can be carried on in Cork if a Guard like the one protecting Murray can be charged with such an offence?
The Minister disclosed a very extraordinary state of things in reference to the complaint by Deputy Cosgrave and myself with regard to the action taken up by the police authorities. There used to be a practice amongst the old R.I.C. in the country, when they wanted to inconvenience a person who was obnoxious to them, even to the extent of driving him out of his employment, they ostensibly placed a police guard to watch such a person. I suggest that the Minister is descending to that particular type of tactic. When one sees the kind of explanation given, in reply to the complaint made, one is driven to no other conclusion with regard to the Minister's action. The Minister declared that, to anybody not acquainted with the facts, it might appear as if we had some grievance. He said: "For any of us here to suggest what is the best method of protection is rather a difficult thing." And subsequently he said: "On the other hand, however, everything has been done to try to embarrass the police themselves by the way those people have accepted their protection." And he says that it is an abuse of the privileges of this House to come in and make some of the complaints that we have heard made in these particular matters. The House is asked to take it for granted that the police and the authorities have difficult and delicate duties to perform; that they are doing them with the greatest conscientiousness that they can possibly bring to bear upon them; that they are being deliberately obstructed by Deputies who are being given that protection, and then an attempt is made to suggest that we are suffering no grievance. The Minister has made certain statements in reply to complaints made here, but it would appear that he has not gone to the trouble to investigate these complaints in any single detail.
I would ask the Minister to throw his mind back to June of last year. Up to the 1st June of last year there was the military protection party for Deputy Cosgrave and myself that we have already spoken about. On the 1st June, the officer who supervised these parties came and told Deputy Cosgrave and myself that the military guard was being changed and that a police guard was being put on. A police guard was actually put on, and from the 1st June, when they were put on, until 3rd June when they were taken off, so far as I was concerned I gave them every single convenience and piece of co-operation that had been previously given to the military guard. I wrote to the President, whom I considered responsible in the matter, and pointed out that considering the type of precautions they had been taking up to then: considering that I had got no explanation as to any change in the situation and considering that the guards who had been introduced to me by an officer told me, in reply to questions, that they had no particular instructions, I suggested, and very definitely thought so, that the Minister and whatever colleague of his was in consultation with him in the matter were doing a thing that was very inadequate for the purpose they seemed to have in mind. I put certain simple questions: questions as to what exactly the protection was being afforded for, and as to what particular type of instructions either the detectives or the police driver had. The result was that, without dealing with these queries at all, the police guard was removed and the military guard was restored on 3rd June.
I challenge the Minister to say that the police who were put on in June last did not get the same accommodation in my grounds: that they did not get every possible facility and every possible assistance while they were with me as the military guard had got. At the time that the change was taking place I made the representations that I thought were necessary with regard to it. The next change was when the person was put on my military guard about whom subsequently the Abbey Theatre complaint had to be made. I learned at that time from Press circles that a change was being made in my protection party for the purpose of carrying out espionage and I protested. As I said before, I did not pay very much attention to it, but I protested against the change being made in the personnel of the guard at that particular time without anyone having the courtesy, or whatever else might be involved in it, to acquaint me. I was told in reply that the guard who had been changed was an ex-officer. He was an Irish speaker in poor family circumstances. It was a charity to put him on because he had a little allowance for it. After that I had no further complaint to make. When another was put on I simply asked: had he been an irregular. I was told that was a matter for the military authorities. I was too preoccupied with other matters at the moment to pursue it.
The Minister suggests that the members of my old military protection party were transferred, and that these were the people who were guarding me in the new circumstances. Yes, two, these two. As I say the transfer was made in these astounding circumstances. No notification was given to me, good, bad or indifferent, until ten days afterwards, and then the notification was conveyed by a police officer who told me at first that he did not know whether the protection party was going to be armed, and who later reluctantly, suggested that they would be, while information as to any other kind of instructions given was withheld. It was in these circumstances that I was expected to co-operate in the fullest possible way in a delicate matter of this kind. I wonder does the Minister really suggest that he is honest or serious when he says that we have not given the police in this particular matter the co-operation the police are entitled to have. I suggest to the Minister that either he or whoever is responsible—some police officer or some other Minister—stepped in to create as intolerable a situation as he could for Deputy Cosgrave and myself, and that in doing so he has utterly disregarded the consequences to the police themselves. There is no co-operation, good, bad or indifferent on my part at any rate with the Minister or with the police in this matter, and there is not going to be in the circumstances which I have detailed here.
The Minister for Defence was able in June of last year to send an officer to explain what was being done, just as the Commissioner of the Guards was good enough to acknowledge the communication, to say that he regretted the inconvenience caused in June, and that the old order of things was being restored. People can be courteous and can be reasonable. They asked for co-operation in June last year, but that is all gone now. It began to go in the autumn of last year, but it is very deliberately gone now. As I say, in doing that the Minister utterly ignored the reactions of this matter on the police themselves. In the first place there is a definite reaction on the unfortunate men who have to work in such very difficult and unnecessarily laborious circumstances. To give the Minister only two examples: on the 15th April I had occasion on a Sunday morning to leave at 9.30 for Charleville. A car load of detectives was waiting outside the door. They started off. They did not know where they were going. They found themselves in Limerick about midday, and in Charleville sometime in the afternoon. I returned to Limerick late that night, arriving at a friend's house about 2 o'clock. All of them had been on guard until 2 o'clock in the morning, but one unfortunate man, a member of the party who, remember, had left Dublin at 9.30 on Sunday morning, arrived back in Limerick somewhere about 2 o'clock on Monday morning, had to remain on guard outside that private house in Limerick until I started on the return journey for Dublin later that day, so that he did not perhaps get a wink of sleep from early on Sunday morning until whatever hour he got to bed on Monday night.
On the 5th May I had occasion again to go to Limerick. I left on a Saturday about midday and without the protection party, as, I think, I said before. They turned up at about 12 noon on the following day. They saw me for about half an hour and followed my car in the Killaloe direction. They could not see quickly enough around a corner and lost me again for five or six hours. On the return journey they saw me again for about ten minutes beyond Killaloe on the road to Nenagh, where they again lost me. They could only imagine where I was going, just as they did in connection with my journey to Bray. They lost me again on the Limerick road and did not see me again until Monday morning. I think it is intolerable that the Minister should create such a state of affairs by the action, or the want of action, that is taken in approaching this matter— action that would subject any member of the Guards to the humiliating position that these men are being subjected to, and the effect that all that must have on the minds of the Guards.
I suggest that all that is reflected by some of the reports that the Minister read out in connection with my visit to Bray. In one of these reports the Minister says that I and my wife went on foot to Harcourt Street Station and concealed ourselves there from the Guards, but that when we arrived at Bray the escort was there before us; that the Chief Superintendent's report states: "General Mulcahy appeared none too pleased at seeing the escort in front of him, but made no comment and neither did the escort." I do not know what comment the Chief Superintendent expected that I should have made. Was it that I should have shouted "Up Dev." or something like that? Apparently the effect of all this on the minds of the police authorities in the city is this: that a Deputy and his wife cannot walk to a railway station in Dublin and sit down in a railway carriage for the purpose of going a journey but it is noted down, a report being sent to the Minister stating "they concealed themselves in a carriage." The Chief Superintendent's report says:
"Having got on to the station platform, the General and Mrs. Mulcahy apparently concealed themselves, as when the member on foot arrived there he was unable to find them and a search of the station premises was made by the escort party but without result."
