The Minister can look after the other 12. These four members expressed that view in respect of this piece of tyranny which the Minister for Finance is now perpetuating. No justification whatever is to be found, either in this country or outside it, for the tyranny which the Minister is endeavouring to perpetuate under this draft scheme of arbitration. In Great Britain, full-time officials of Civil Service organisations are frankly recognised, and, apparently, their contact with the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not bring down the British Empire. In the United States, the full-time officials of Civil Service organisations are also frankly recognised and there, apparently, it is not considered that any great damage is done, because of that, to the industrial, financial or economic stability of that vast country. In Australia, full-time officials of Civil Service organisations are fully and frankly recognised. In New Zealand and in South Africa, the same practice operates. Even in the Six-Counties, the Government recognise a full-time official of a Civil Service organisation. When we survey that portion of the world which consists of Great Britain, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State, we find that the only portion of that territory where full-time officials of Civil Service organisations are not recognised is that small piece in which the Minister for Finance, who promised arbitration in 1932, functions. These other countries have not been shaken by the full and frank recognition of the right of Civil Service organisations to be represented by officials of their own choice.
In many of these countries, the standard of prosperity of the people is immensely better than it is here. Most of these countries have much more complicated problems to deal with than we have. Yet, in each and every one of them, there is full and frank recognition of the right of Civil Service organisations to be represented by advocates of their own choice. Here, under what is described as a republican Government, pursuing a radical policy, a Government which, we are sometimes told, is a poor man's Government, a definite and deliberate attempt is made by the Minister for Finance, with what measure of backing from the Executive Council I do not know, to nullify the right of Civil Service organisations to be represented by persons of their own choice. This condition in the Minister's draft scheme of arbitration to prevent full-time officers from being selected to represent their members before the arbitration tribunal is nothing less than a calculated piece of anti-trade union bias, and discloses the real mentality of the Minister for Finance in the matter of trade union organisation and as regards the principle of organisation amongst Civil Service staffs. The tyranny which he has sought to embody in this draft scheme of arbitration has no parallel in countries still subject to democratic government. The only democratic country in the world that I know of where it is sought to perpetuate this piece of tyranny is the Irish Free State, under the present Executive Council and under the present Minister for Finance. I do not know that that is anything of which the Fianna Fáil Party, claiming to be a republican Party, a radical Party and a poor man's Party, are entitled to boast.
That does not end, of course, the limitations in the Minister's scheme. He appoints the chairman. He has two vetoes over the cases to be dealt with. He restricts the right of full-time officials to go before the arbitration board if the members of the organisation they represent so desire; but, on top of all these restrictions, he wants to impose a further restriction, namely, to have a final veto over any award that is made by the tribunal. The staff, therefore, can go to play a game with the Minister for Finance. They can win the game, but the Minister for Finance wants to have the right to chalk up the score. The staff can win the game, but the Minister for Finance keeps the score board and makes sure that he does not lose on the manipulation of that instrument.
This is the Minister's scheme of arbitration. This is the scheme of arbitration to implement the promise made by the President in Rathmines. This is the scheme of arbitration which is to implement the promise of the Minister for Finance when he said on the 10th February, 1932:
"Yes, the Fianna Fáil Party has already indicated that it is prepared to investigate the grievances, particularly in the lower ranks, of the Civil Service, and to provide, for the purpose of settling disputes, an arbitration tribunal subject to the overriding authority of the Oireachtas."
This is the scheme of arbitration which is now offered by the Minister for Finance in fulfilment of that very specific promise made by him on the 10th February, 1932, over his own signature. The scheme which is being offered to the service organisations is a thoroughly and absolutely unsatisfactory scheme. The service was promised in specific and definite language by the President and by the Minister for Finance and by a number of other members of the Fianna Fáil Party that an impartial tribunal would be established to settle differences, subject to the overriding authority of the Oireachtas. We are offered now a spurious, counterfeit scheme which the Minister nicknames arbitration in fulfilment of this definite and specific promise made by him and other members of his Party. The service was promised arbitration in 1932. Now it is offered a miserably anaemic advisory board with none of the functions usually associated with arbitration, and devoid of all the essential features commonly associated with the machinery of arbitration in every circumstance in which that machinery is invoked for the settlement of disputes.
Is it any wonder then that the service organisations have contemptuously rejected this miserable scheme which was offered to them by the Minister, a scheme which does not fulfil what the Minister promised to give and what the President promised to give in 1932: a miserable scheme which is not arbitration, which is even a very poor type of advisory board. Of the many organisations in the Civil Service only one puny Departmental organisation, with a membership to put it generously, of about 100 could be induced, in the first instance, to accept the Minister's scheme. I doubt if, even now, when they see the weaknesses, the pitfalls and the muzzles with which this scheme bristles that any single organisation could be induced to give the Minister's scheme a trial.
Bad as the scheme was, unacceptable as the scheme was, shadow though it was of the promises made by the President and by the Minister for Finance in 1932, the service organisations endeavoured to secure a conference with the Government in order that their views on arbitration and the Government's views on arbitration might be discussed, and an effort made to reconcile the differences and to bridge the gulf between the organisations on the one hand and the Executive Council on the other. One would imagine that, with the headquarters of the Government in the City of Dublin, and with the headquarters of all the organisations being situated in the same city, there would not be any difficulty whatever in obtaining an interview with the Minister for Finance or some other members of the Government, or perhaps, with some officials of the Department of Finance in order to discuss these matters, but no! The Minister for Finance does not do things in that simple way. That is too smooth and too simple for the Minister for Finance. The Minister wanted as complicated and as cumbersome a method as could be devised in order to have this matter discussed. He wanted to have the views of the organisations on his own scheme. That was prescribed by him as a necessary condition of any consideration by him as to whether he would subsequently arrange a conference. The Minister was told by the service organisations that the Government's scheme of arbitration was utterly unacceptable to the service organisations, and he was asked to arrange for a discussion on a scheme which would embody certain essential features of arbitration which the service organisations desired to secure.
The service organisations indicated that they would regard a scheme of arbitration which would be acceptable to them as of necessity including five essential features. I shall read for the House those five essential features prescribed by the service organisations, so that the House may have an opportunity of passing judgment on whether the claim made by the organisations in this respect was in any way unreasonable or extravagant. Bearing in mind that they were freely promised by the Government that an arbitration board would be established, the staff organisations asked the Minister for Finance to convene a conference to discuss an arbitration scheme containing the following essential features:—
"(1) The chairman of the board to be appointed by agreement between the Government and the staff organisations.
"(2) Each party to be free to select its representative on the board and its advocates before the board.
"(3) Each party to have the right to bring before the board any claim within a previously agreed category without veto by the other party, the board alone having the power to decide whether a particular claim falls within the agreed category.
"(4) The Government to give effect to the award of the board, subject to the overriding authority of Parliament.
"(5) In the event of a dispute as to the meaning of an award, the board to determine its own findings."
These were the five reasonable features which the service organisations desired should be embodied in an acceptable scheme of arbitration. One would have imagined that, having been promised by the Government that an arbitration tribunal would be established, that having been told by the President that he believed it was only right that such a tribunal should be established to decide the matters in dispute, there would have been little difficulty in securing a conference with the Government to discuss so eminently reasonable a claim as that put forward by the service organisations. But it was not so easy to secure a conference with the Government. The service organisations were treated to long, verbose letters from the Department of Finance telling them that the Department of Finance wanted their detailed views on the Government's draft scheme of organisation, although they had been told in a number of letters that the scheme was utterly and absolutely unacceptable because it was not a scheme of arbitration at all.
Efforts were made by the Service organisations to try to stop the interminable correspondence which threatened to go on in the matter by pressing for a definite conference, but the Minister for Finance was like Pharaoh —the more efforts were made on the subject, the harder his heart became. The President was then asked to intervene in order to end the deadlock which had arisen between the Minister and the Service organisations and, instead of the President trying to deal with the matter along some new and reasonable line, we were treated to an exhibition of logic-chopping from the President, explaining why it was not possible to make the scheme any better. We were told by the President that the scheme submitted by the Minister for Finance goes as far as is compatible with the Constitution. Fancy the President, in 1937, being concerned with the compatibility of his promises with the enforced Constitution which he has denounced in this House on dozens and dozens of occasions. For every other purpose, the Constitution has been periodically denounced by the President, but in respect of arbitration it was a very sacred and sacrosanct document which could not be touched by the President, and although he would mutilate it and carve it up for any other purpose— and is about to do so again shortly— he was not going to subject it to the most minor surgical operation in order to get over the difficulties which he alleged he saw in respect of giving effect to his promise to establish an arbitration board.
We were told by the President in his letter that the scheme goes as far as is possible, having regard to the constitutional difficulties, but never once were we told in the correspondence what exactly the constitutional difficulties were. There were obscure, and, at times, verbose reference to constitutional difficulties, but never once, in all the letters which were written by the President and by the Department of Finance was there any precise indication of the impediments which were found in the Constitution to prevent the President honouring his own freely expressed promise. Not a single lawyer of eminence was produced in support of the claim made by the President that there were constitutional difficulties which prevented the introduction of a better and more acceptable scheme. Not a single lawyer was produced by the Government to support their contention.