I move that the Executive Powers (Consequential Provisions) Bill, 1937, be read a Second Time. This Bill is really a corollary to the Act passed here on the 11th December last, the Constitution (Amendment No. 27) Act. That amendment of the Constitution removed all reference to the King and to the Governor-General and transferred all those powers and functions to the Executive Council. While certain executive powers governing the Constitution were dealt with in that Act, there were certain other powers and functions that are governed by ordinary law, charters and other instruments that were not covered or dealt with. It is to meet that that this Bill is now being introduced, so as to make perfectly clear what was the intention at the time that Act was passed, on the 11th December, 1936. It also makes provision with reference to the late Governor-General, which I do not want to deal with now. I can deal with that when replying.
Committee on Finance. - Executive Powers (Consequential Provisions) Bill, 1937—Second Stage.
There is one question which the Minister might answer. At the time the Governor-General was appointed did he make a condition that if he accepted that office he should be provided for for life?
I could not answer that. I do not think there was an understanding like that.
Would the Minister, before he sits down, give the Dáil some idea as to the reasons for the rather extraordinary generous provision that is being made for the late Governor-General? Surely it is unfair to expect the Dáil to discuss the question without getting any indication of the Government reasons for this proposal. There must be a reason.
As the Deputy knows, the position was that the previous occupants of that position were in receipt of £10,000 a year.
For doing something.
Mr. Buckley was in receipt of £2,000, and allowance. The basis on which this provision is being made for the late occupant of the Governor-Generalship is that he must be set up in some way; he must get a house. He has to give up—he has already given up—the house that he occupied as Governor-General. He has to secure for himself a house, and I do not think anybody will say £500 a year is an over-generous allowance for a man in his position. After all, during the four or five years he was there he was responsible for a definite saving; perhaps there may be some adjustment in regard to income tax, and I might not be quite correct in saying that while he held office there was a saving to the State of £32,000, but there was a saving of almost that amount. In view of the very small allowance he was in receipt of while he was there, I think it is only right that some provision should be made for him so that he should be able to secure a house, and £500 a year is not an over-generous allowance.
I might point out that some reference was made here to certain other moneys that have to be provided. Part of that is in relation to rent. The position ended on 11th December, so far as the Governor-General was concerned.
Without notice?
Without notice. Some adjustment had to be made with regard to rent, and that came to £153. When you make provision for a maid, a gardener and so on, the total would amount to £213. I can give the details afterwards as to how that £213 is made up. That is the other provision that is referred to and that has to be made. Then there is a sum of £42 13s. which is for a telephone and a chaptain and which has been made direct from the Department of Finance.
Would not that come out of the £2,000?
No.
Before I come to the piece de resistance of this Bill I should like to remark in passing that the Minister assumes that air of innocence which always characterises him when he is getting Bills through the House; there is no man more fitted to get a Bill of this type through this House than the Minister, and I presume that that is the reason the Minister for Justice was asked to introduce this measure. There are a number of points upon which I would like a little clarification. I am sorry the Minister did not go a little more elaborately into the details of this measure. Section 2 to the ordinary layman is rather a complicated affair and it is a pity that the Minister did not explain precisely what it means and what is the reason for introducing it. I gather that, roughly speaking, what happened is this: that in that insatiable desire the President has of trying to make political capital— although in this case it turned out to be something of a boomerang—out of troubles on the other side, in great haste we passed legislation last December and that has left us now in rather a mess and Section 2 is meant to clear up that particular mess. How far it does so, I do not know.
Am I right in assuming that what it amounts to is this: that certain prerogatives that were previously enjoyed by the King and Governor-General are now more or less divided up between the Executive Council and various Ministers? I see that the Minister quite agrees with me in that. There is one point I should like him to clear up and that is the point raised by the Minister for Finance last week. Perhaps the Minister for Justice will clarify my mind on the matter. It makes me extremely uneasy as to the position of the President, the Minister for Finance and even the Minister for Justice. I gathered from the explicit statement of the Minister for Finance last week that up to December last he and others, the President too, were Ministers of the King. Was that the position up to last December? Silence?
The Minister is not going to answer every question.
Nobody can deny the charming smile of the Minister, but it is not an answer to the question. It is a statement by a Minister of the Government, made after the introduction of this Bill and after he had seen this Bill. I presume this Bill was before the Executive Council and also before the Party. I cannot imagine the Government bringing in a Bill of this kind without the approval of the full Executive Council and without the approval of the Party. Therefore I assume the Bill has the full blessing both of the Ministry and the Party. The Minister for Finance must know what he was talking about, although I admit it is a large assumption, but still we must assume that. Last week the position was that up to December, 1936, the President, the Vice-President, the Minister for Finance and other Ministers were Ministers of the Crown. I want to know what are they now?
We did a number of negative things last December. We cut out the King, but did we make any positive provision for the holding of office by a Minister of something or other, say, by the President, who was, up to then, the chief Minister of the Crown in this country? I must say that he and the Minister for Finance concealed the fact very well until last week, when there was a parade of it here by the Minister for Finance. He showed the great prerogatives he had enjoyed as Minister of the Crown. He could run people down in the public streets and an action could not be taken against him. I want to know is that regularised in this Bill? I am not quite sure that it is. I want to know what is the position of the President, the Minister for Finance and other Ministers. I gather they have ceased to be Ministers of the Crown. I wonder?
Another thing that is not clear to me is that certain rights are still reserved to the King in this Bill. In other words, internationally we belong to the British Commonwealth of Nations. Roughly speaking, that is what Section 2 of this Bill, making a reference to the second Act of last December, amounts to. Therefore from the point of view of our status we belong to the British Commonwealth of Nations. That sums up the reference made to the External Relations Act of last year. But apparently internally we are a kind of republic. I suppose other people regard us as being members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, but, to quote a famous phrase of the President in the year 1921, we regard ourselves as being a republic. Is that the position under Section 2? Perhaps the Minister will take the opportunity of clarifying that when he comes to deal with the situation.
Coming to what I might call the main purposes of this Bill, we find it is to provide what does seem an extraordinarily generous allowance for the Governor-General. Now, the Minister was rather unfortunate in drawing a comparison. He drew a comparison between the £10,000 a year voted for the previous Governors-General and the £2,000 taken by the last occupant of the office. Candidly, I do not know whether he is still Governor-General or not. That even is not clear. We tried to secure last December that he shall have no statutory function, but whether he is still Governor-General or not I do not know. Perhaps he is, but anyhow one thing is clear—that the two previous occupants had a lot to do. They spent that £10,000 in the ordinary work of entertaining foreign visitors and others. Let us make no bones about it. In common with other Deputies, I have a certain desire that the present Governor-General should do well. I wish him well.
I have nothing to say against the present occupant of the Governor-Generalship. I want to make that quite clear. We should realise what were the conditions on which he took office. The Minister may remember —I do not know whether he personally participated in some of the amusing but by no means edifying incidents that took place when there was a regular sauve qui peut of the various Ministers out of various houses. When the Governor-General of that day made his appearance on the scene, sometimes one would think that it was the rout of an army that occurred. It was sometimes so great that they even forgot the people that they brought with them to the party in their desire to escape. We have seen incidents in which the head of the Executive Council made every effort to take precedence, physically and geographically, of the then Governor-General by walking before him. I am not speaking of the present occupant of the office. We saw these things happen. Apparently it did not suit—I do not like to use the word vanity. Shall I say the sense of what was due to his own position in the case of the President. The Minister knows that that led to a vacation of the office by the previous occupant of the Governor-Generalship. The circumstances were most regrettable in which that occurred. We all know what led up to it.
We all know that for a couple of months the office was vacant, until finally for some reason that was never revealed either to this House or to the country the position was filled. Apparently the condition on which the position was filled was this, that the future occupant was deliberately to do nothing—I want to stress that point and I am not blaming him—but that is the case so far as the public can judge, and I think there is no doubt about the facts. I do not think the Minister or any other Minister can deny it: that the one condition on which he took office was that he was to do nothing. He was to be not a rubber stamp to sign Bills, but he was to keep out of the public gaze and do nothing. His whole work was to exist, and nothing else. That was a different position altogether, I suggest to the Minister, from the comparison he made between the £10,000 a year paid to the previous occupants and the position of the present occupant. I call him the present occupant because, candidly, I do not know whether he is so or not. Anyhow, my meaning is clear.
The two other occupants of this high position filled various tasks in this State. Again and again they were utilised by the State to entertain foreign distinguished visitors, and I am convinced that out of that salary they made nothing whatsoever; that they spent it and more than spent it in the work of the State. The position was entirely different in connection with what is described euphemistically as "the last Governor-General." What the exact significance of "the last" is I do not know, whether they regard him as already ceasing to be Governor-General or whether there is to be no other—again I am not quite clear on that matter. But, in his case, the one thing that he was asked to do was to keep out of the public gaze: "Do not appear in the same place, especially with the President and, if possible, with any of the Ministers, and if they do happen to make an appearance slip away as quickly as possible. Let there be no difficulty about that extraordinarily difficult question of precedence." For that purpose, for doing nothing, not for carrying on the work of the State—remember again I have no criticism to offer against the individual —but for doing absolutely nothing, and because he did absolutely nothing he was given a salary of £2,000 a year, double the salary of a Minister. He was given not merely a salary of £2,000 a year, but other expenses for the upkeep of his establishment amounting, on the average, to another £2,000 a year. The allowance for his house and for the maintenance of an official residence was £1,200 a year. There was also an allowance for travelling did public interest. What travelling did he do in the public interest, except to scurry out of the way of Ministers? What else was he asked to do in the public interest?
I feel that the Minister appreciates my point. The position was "for the Lord's sake keep out of the way: don't let us see you and for that you will get £75 a year for travelling expenses—so you ought to be able to keep out of the way." I do not object, but the sum is generous even for that. He got a chaplain. That is all right. He got a private secretary as well to attend to the enormous business of doing nothing. Again, there is no one in a better position to appreciate the value of a private secretary than the person who has had one and who is now without one. He had a private secretary to look after the enormous business of doing nothing. That, shall I say, seems rather an extravagance. Therefore, when the Minister for Justice made the comparison between the salary of the other Governors-General and the present occupant, I think he was rather unfortunate. Remember that the man got not merely £2,000 a year for doing nothing, but because he did nothing and on condition that he did nothing.
Now, I have never raised my voice against the salary paid to the present Governor-General owing to the office he held, but I did think that the office should either have been abolished or that it should have been properly kept up. What was done was that we had one of these silly compromises that was satisfactory neither to economy nor to dignity. That is what is really wrong with the position. I have nothing against the present occupant of the position, but it is surely rather peculiar that a man who has got for four years a salary of £2,000 a year for doing nothing, an allowance of £2,000 a year to live in a house so as to help him to do nothing, should now get a gratuity of £2,000 for doing nothing and £500 a year to enable him to do nothing for the rest of his life. That, as I say, is a peculiar position, and, mind you, this Bill comes before the House with the unanimous blessing of the Fianna Fáil Party. That comes as a revelation to members on this side of the House. The Minister, of course, is quite innocent. I know that neither he nor any of the other Ministers ever spoke in the old days about the Governor-General's salary and what a crime it was to pay it. It was useless to point out to them then that the other two Governors-General spent all that money in the work of the State, but here we have a situation in which the Fianna Fáil Party is enthusiastically throwing in its weight behind a Bill of this kind.
I know that the President in his Constitution is anxious that women should not do anything, but that men should, and that the less they do the higher the salary they get, comes from a man who himself only gets £1,700 and his Ministers £1,000 a year each. The occupant of this position, who did nothing, got £2,000 a year, the top salary in the administration of the State, and he got it because he did nothing. In addition, he got an official residence and something for the upkeep of that official residence as well. In the circumstances, to bring forward an omnibus Bill of this kind, containing a regularisation of the general executive position, and, possibly, a regularisation of the position of the Minister for Finance—the ex-Minister of the Crown up to last December—as well as a regularisation of the position of the Chief Justice, with this effort of extreme generosity on the part of the Government, is rather surprising. It is also surprising that the ordinary back-bencher of the Fianna Fáil Party had nothing to say on the matter, and that it had got full approval of that particular Party. There are, perhaps, one or two other matters to which I may refer. There is a section in this Bill dealing with the question of charters. That section says, in effect, that the Executive Council may, whenever they think proper, make any adaptation or modification of any statute or charter which, in the opinion of the Executive Council, is consequential on the passing of the Principal Act. In other words, within their own discretion, they can decide whether or not the charter needs modification as a result of this Bill, and then they can change it. Evidently, the courts have nothing to do with it. Why is that? What is to prevent the Executive Council saying: "We think this is consequential," and then going ahead and making the change? I presume, according to this, that the word of the Executive Council is the last word in connection with a matter like that. Theirs is the last word as to whether a thing is consequential or not. They can therefore make any change they like on the pretence that it is consequential.
Furthermore, I should like to say a few words in connection with this matter of external relations. Who is it that declares war under this Bill? I admit, of course, that, with that optimistic outlook that sometimes characterises them, the Executive Council do not always foresee the possibility of war; but let us suppose that such a thing should occur, and that, in the midst of international trouble, this country is invaded. Who declares war in that case? I am speaking now from the legal point of view, and, possibly, the Minister can clear up that matter?
After all, however, the main thing in connection with this Bill is this extraordinary award that is proposed to be given to the person who has been occupying the position of Governor-General. It would be bad enough to give an award to a man who, having been appointed to a position, had neglected his duties; but here is a case where a man was given a position on the distinct understanding that he should do nothing while he was in that position. Why should that man be given any award? It is not a question of his being appointed and failing to do his duty; it is a question of his being specially appointed to do nothing. That is, to my mind, what requires justification.
It seems to me that the proposals of the Government in relation to Mr. Buckley require an immense amount of justification, and I think that, in that regard, the Minister hardly treated the House with justice, or even with fairness, in abstaining from any explanation that would enable us to comment on his case.
I notice that in some quarters it has been suggested that Mr. Buckley already has performed an act of great generosity in accepting so small a salary as he has been accepting and in handing back a portion of what his predecessor was getting in the same office. It seems to me, however, that that argument has no validity if, as I assume, the salary he was to receive was determined at the time of his appointment—if when he was appointed, he was to receive £2,000 a year of a salary and £2,000 a year of an allowance, and no more; and I have not the slightest doubt that an understanding was reached on that point before he was appointed. We were told, at the time, that he was making a very magnanimous sacrifice, in the interests of his country and because of his personal esteem for President de Valera, in accepting that post—that it went very much against the grain for him to accept such a post—but now it appears that, in addition to remunerating him amply for that sacrifice, we are to reward him heavily for withdrawing him from a post the occupation of which went so much against his feelings. Surely, there is a serious illogicality in that. I put a question to the Minister, which appeared to me to be highly relevant: whether or not it was agreed that, if Mr. Buckley accepted that appointment, he was to be provided for for life. In order to justify these proposals that are now before us, it seems to me that that should be so and that, in addition, we should be assured that Mr. Buckley made a substantial financial sacrifice in accepting this position. So far as we are aware, he made no such sacrifice at all.
Quite frankly, I have opposed the Estimate for Mr. Buckley's office year after year. The reason I opposed it was that I considered the Estimate to be altogether excessive in comparison with the duties to be performed. I think there is no reason why, out of the £4,000 a year Mr. Buckley has been receiving as Governor-General—£2,000 as salary and the balance as an allowance—he should not have been able to save up about £2,500 a year, so that, in the course of the last four years, he should have been able to accumulate a capital sum of about £10,000. Certainly, so far as the State is concerned, he could have done that, and the State would have had nothing to complain about, since the State put him in a position that involved no expenditure. As Deputy O'Sullivan has pointed out, the only thing the State asked of him was to do nothing and to keep as much in obscurity as he could. On one occasion I compared Mr. Buckley to a remittance man in Canada. The position of a remittance man in Canada is that he gets so much a year to remain in Canada and on no account to show his face at home. In the same way the unfortunate Mr. Buckley was marooned in Monkstown and expected to remain there and to let us forget his existence. We were only reminded of his existence when, each year, his Estimate appeared.
In order to justify this, it appears to me that the Government have got to establish three things: First, that Mr. Buckley sustained a financial loss as a result of his appointment; secondly, that there was an agreement that some such proposal as this should be made when he retired, to provide for him; and, thirdly, that nobody else was available for the position on better terms because I cannot believe that somebody else could not have been got on much better terms so far as the State is concerned.
So far as I know, the position of Governor-General never has been regarded, either here or in any part of the British Commonwealth of Nations, as a lucrative appointment. It has always been regarded as an honourable appointment, but certainly not as a profitable one. So far as I know, in the last 100 years, at any rate, there has been no case of a Governor-General in any part of the British Commonwealth of Nations getting rich or expecting that, when he retired from that honourable but unprofitable function, any provision would be made for him. Certainly there has never been a case, before this, of a Governor-General having been in fact provided for for life.
There may be some adequate explanation and excuse for all this. I hope there is, because I like to think the best of the Government and not the worst, on a matter such as this. On the surface I feel obliged to say frankly that it has the appearance of an unsavoury piece of jobbery. I hope it is not that. I am not stating it is that. I am only stating that, in default of explanations that have not been given to us, that is what it looks like. I hope the Minister will take us into his confidence and say everything that is to be said about Mr. Buckley's financial circumstances at the time he accepted this office and about the terms of the agreement he made with the Government to accept this office, so that we can judge of the propriety of the proposals placed before us for consideration. Failing that, I shall feel obliged to vote against the Bill.
There is something very puzzling about this Bill. I have remarked that, as in the case of all measures which deal with constitutional questions, even remotely, there is a characteristic lack of candour about this measure and a determined attempt to obscure as much as possible. What exactly is the intention in the Bill, and what exactly is the position of this State? We have in the second portion of this Bill a section which is consequential on the Act of last December, defining the external relationship of this country. We remember that that Act of last December was introduced and drafted with such an intense desire to obscure its meaning and deceive the people that, whereas it was obviously introduced with the intention of getting rid of a King, when the Opposition examined that Bill as introduced, it was discovered and agreed that if that Bill had gone through in the form in which it was introduced, instead of getting rid of a King we would have found ourselves fixed up with a King and a half Consequently the Bill was withdrawn, altered and re-introduced in a different form. That Bill at least laid down definitely, as it is now the law, that for certain purposes the King was retained as the link linking this country with other Commonwealth countries and as the recognised head for the purpose of external relations. Section 2 of this Bill is more or less consequential on that.
I do not pretend to be sufficiently deeply versed in constitutional law to be able to pronounce judgment on the type of Bills that are being introduced here latterly. I accept the opinion of others, but I think it is rather regrettable that Parliament is called together and asked to discuss and pass legislation which is deliberately designed to be misleading and obscure. That portion is rather difficult to follow, but the portion dealing with the Governor-General is unfortunately only too clear. The only thing I have got to say is that I am sorry that the Minister adopted the particular line he did in introducing this Bill. It is characteristic of the Minister that when he has an awkward Bill to handle he has always been very candid and generally brief. The brevity was very marked to-day. The candour was marked only by its absence. I am afraid that the lawyer in the Minister more or less obscured the Minister. It is the duty of a lawyer in professional life to win a case as best he can, but it is the responsibility of a Minister introducing a measure to give an open account of that measure, to explain what every section means and why the various sections were inserted.
I am sorry, too, that the Minister in his very brief remarks made a rather unfair and deliberate effort to mislead the Dáil when in two or three words he gave us to understand that the State saving during Mr. Donal Buckley's four years' tenure of office of Governor-General was approximately £32,000. On the face of it that might appear to be correct, but that statement was all the more unforgivable because it had the appearance of being correct. It is true to say that his predecessors received £10,000 by way of salary and allowance. I believe it is equally true to say that the late, or present, occupant of that office received £2,000 by way of salary. I think that was free of income-tax. He received a further £1,200 for the upkeep of an official residence in which no official business was to be done. He received something in the neighbourhood of £500 a year for a private secretary and chaplain. He received £50 for the use of a telephone, to do what I do not know, unless it might have been to back greyhounds, but it was certainly not to do the business of the State, although the State had to pay £50 for his telephone messages. He received £75 for travelling expenses, but not on the State business, and £300 a year for the upkeep of a motor-car to carry him, certainly not on State business. That particular list of salary and expenses paid to him comes to £4,150 a year. His predecessor had £10,000 a year. I am not very conversant with the income-tax paid by people who receive huge salaries, but just offhand I would say that the amount of income-tax on £10,000 a year would be £4,000, so that previous Governors-General received £6,000 a year.
I think they had allowances, too.
I am talking about salary. He received £6,000 a year. This particular individual received £4,150 a year, and the Minister tells us that in four years approximately £32,000 was saved. The previous Governors-General carried out certain functions, certain duties, certain responsibilities. State entertainments were given out of and under the expenditure of their Department. If we are to reach a fair figure for the economies effected by the change of salary, we have got to see how much was paid by way of the cost of State functions and entertainments, either by any individual Department, or any Minister as head of a Department, or the President as acting head of the State, because all these State functions, banquets, dances, teas, lunches, and so on, which, in the last four years, have been given by the President or one or other of the Ministers, were merely so much replacement for the functions that heretofore were carried out by the Governor-General. Such expenditure has got to be subtracted from the expenditure of those Departments and added on to the £4,150 a year which Mr. Donal Buckley received, before we can arrive at anything like an approximate figure to indicate whether there was a saving at all, or what that saving was. The official residence in the Phoenix Park has been maintained. Its grounds and gardens, its buildings, its ruins, have been maintained, although it has been lying idle. State money is still being spent on that particular residence, even though it is empty. I would suggest to the Minister and to the Dáil that it is entirely beside the point whether or not there has been a saving effected in the last four years.
Hear, hear!
Even if there was a saving, it is apparently our considered opinion now that that saving was a mistake. We dealt last week, and will be dealing next week, with an instrument which is reconstituting a ceremonial head of the State. Apparently it is our opinion that the kind of petty economy of the last four years was unwise from the point of view of State prestige, and we intend to revert to the original position of having some very high functionary who will carry out all the ceremonial functions as head of the State. Presumably we will be returning——
To top hats!
——to an expensive establishment of one kind or another. I said before that it was entirely beside the point—I might almost say irrelevant—as to whether or not there had been a saving in the last four years. The only point of importance, and the only thing that matters before anybody in this Dáil is justified in voting away public moneys in the way we are asked to do it here, is the point made by Deputy MacDermot— whether, in fact, the Governor-General's contract included a provision for a gratuity at the end of his term of office, and for a pension of £500 a year for the rest of his life. He did agree to accept that job, that office, on condition that he did not work but received a considerably smaller salary than his predecessor. That was the case made to the Dáil, and there was a responsibility on the Minister for Finance and others, who came to us asking us to vote that money every year, to inform the House if there were any other obligations. We never got any hint, any whisper, any indication, that in addition to that £4,000 a year for doing nothing we were also bound to give him a gratuity at the end of his term of office, to pay all his bills, and to give a pension of £500 a year for life. I want to know clearly and definitely if there was any contract or understanding to that effect.
If there was not, I want to know this: Is it purely out of generosity, when dealing with other people's money, that the Government brings in these proposals now? I cannot credit it. I do not believe, much as I differ from the present Government, that they are so thoroughly reckless with regard to their responsibility as custodians of the people's money that they are going to chuck it away in thousands and in half thousands per annum, in order to pad the pockets of any individual. I cannot believe that, and I do not believe it. I believe that some form of pressure has been put on the Government to drive them into introducing this legislation. If that is so, the Dáil is entitled to know what is the pressure, and who is twisting the screw. If the Government, opposed to us as they are, happen to find themselves in the position of being the unfortunate victims of excessive pressure behind the scenes, if they will only be frank and open, they will find many others to help them in getting rid of that pressure, but I do not think, as things are, that they will find many to help them in chucking away public money in the way it is suggested to chuck it away here. The whole story has got to be told. Sooner or later it must be told.
What has provoked, or incited, or induced the Government, in the heights or depths of an economic war, when they have cut pay and allowances and salaries, to become quite suddenly so generous to one individual? Is his position so desperate, so pathetic, after drawing £16,000 in four years for doing nothing, that he has got to be a person specially singled out from the whole country to receive a lump sum of £2,000, to get all little liabilities of £15 or £20 or £40 paid out of the public purse and to be subsidised for the rest of his life at the rate of £500 per year? Surely that cannot be a voluntary act of Government. Or is it that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first drive mad? Is it that the strain of five years in office has driven every member of the Executive Council "looney"? Do they think that anybody—even the most loyal member of their own Party organisation—is going to stand for that kind of thing? There is surely some reason for it and, if there is, the reason should be stated.
Mr. Donal Buckley appears to me to be a business man. It is a pity that he was subsidised in idleness. It is a great pity that that man was not filling a representative position abroad. We might be able to pay this money if we had had people who were capable of making a good business bargain. He appears to be the man we have missed for the last five years because, on its face, this document has all the evidence of having been dictated by a shrewd and hard businessman. If we vote this money, no matter what Party we belong to, we have got to justify it. We shall all meet constituents who are hard up against it, unable to pay their debts, on the verge of bankruptcy. We shall meet those who are bankrupt, with families depending upon them. The material difference to these people between damnation and salvation would be a fraction of £2,000. Such people are clamouring to the Government for help. Legally, the Government is unable to help them. How is anyone to go down and face such people or how is any member of the Dáil to say we can do nothing for them while, at the same time, we are able to give £2,000 in cash and £500 a year for life to an individual who drew £16,000 in four years for doing nothing and on condition that he would do nothing? I advise the Minister and the Government to take the Dáil into their confidence. A few words in an undertone is not sufficient introduction or explanation of a Bill of this type. If we start doing this for Mr. Donal Buckley, we shall establish a dangerous precedent —a very dangerous precedent.
Hear, hear!
Once that precedent is established, there will, I fear, be a great many demands on the public purse, and I do not see how these demands can be denied. There may be, as I say, a case for this proposal. There may be some defence or some justification. But if there is any justification or any explanation, nobody in the Dáil has heard it yet. I strongly advise members of all Parties to pay attention to this fact: they are not just voting or chucking away their own money. If the position of the Governor-General is so pathetic that something has got to be done to pave with gold the path he will travel for the rest of his life, then let those who believe in that kind of thing get together and subscribe their own money. This is a proposal which puts the responsibility on every Deputy here of making that over-generous and extravagant provision for an individual and to do that with his eyes open and understanding, when he does it, that it is not his own money he is voting but the moneys of the public, entrusted to his care in the belief that he would not be reckless, extravagant or over-generous with that which does not belong to him.
My remarks on this Bill will be largely interrogatory. I notice that the Bill is not described as an Amendment of the Constitution Bill, and, consequently, that its legal effect cannot be in any way to change the Constitution. It is set out in clause 2 that "every power, function, duty and jurisdiction which, immediately before the passing of the Principal Act was, by any means whatsoever, capable of being exercised or required to be performed by the King or by the representative of the Crown ... shall be, and be deemed to have been, as from the passing of the Principal Act, transferred to and (as the case may be) capable of being exercised by or required to be performed by the Executive Council". Surely that provision cannot have legal effect if it necessitates a change of the Constitution. As I said, I am speaking interrogatively. When the Principal Act and the External Relations Act were brought in, there seemed to be a desperate attempt to remove the King and the Governor-General from the Constitution, but it was not done completely. The Governor-General was left a certain function and, while the Government make this grand statement, this Bill can have no effect in the way of making any change in the Constitution.
The Bill is not put down as an Amendment to the Constitution Bill. It refers to "every" power which was exercised by the King or the representative of the Crown, but then we have the clause "save where and in so far as the exercise or performance of such power, function, duty or jurisdiction is, by virtue of an amendment of the Constitution effected by the Principal Act or by virtue of the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act, 1936, conferred or imposed on some other person." I speak from memory and I am open to correction, but it seems to me that Constitution Amendment Act No. 27, which is referred to, still left a certain function to the Governor-General. That being so, it is clear that that function cannot be transferred to the Executive Council except by an amendment of the Constitution. This Bill does not purport to amend the Constitution.
With regard to the External Relations Act—again I speak from memory and may be wrong; I am open to correction—it seems to me that no provision was made to empower the Executive Council to decide as to declaring war. Consequently, there, again, this Bill fails to change the Constitution. The Minister should explain that part of the Bill much more clearly. In fact, this Bill would require the attendance not merely of the Minister for Justice, but of the Minister for Finance and of the President. It is no use addressing the Minister for Justice in regard to External Affairs. I notice that the officials of the Department of Finance are not here to assist in regard to the second part of the Bill. I regret they are not here. I foretold that some Bill of this nature would be required. We discussed the matter some years ago at the Public Accounts Committee. I pointed out then to the officials of the Department of Finance that the legal salary of Ministers was £1,700 and that the legal salary of the Governor-General was £10,000. Secondly, the holders of those offices had a legal right to claim that full amount.
There was one way in which the pretence of the Government could have been made a reality. The Government could, in the case of Ministers, have given the full salary to them, minus income-tax, and then have taken back from them such difference as there was between the legal salary and the amount which the Government advertised Ministers were taking. The same applies to the Governor-General. I noticed that, with regard to Ministers' salary, the Estimates put it down at £1,000 and then put down: "Income-tax, say, £150." With regard to the Governor-General, the only information given to the Dáil and to the country was a lie. It was stated in a note to the finance accounts that the Governor-General's salary was £2,000, free of income-tax. There is no such thing known to law as a salary free of income-tax, and the only purpose of putting down that figure was to mislead the Dáil and the public. Incidentally, through this attempt to mislead the public, we are now being committed to a most uncalled-for expense and yet, I admit, a payment we are legally bound to make. The only way to ensure, while the law remained, that the salary of the Governor-General was £10,000 was that he should receive the £10,000, and then hand back to the Government the difference between his legal salary and what the Government thought he should receive and what he himself had agreed to accept.
It was perfectly clear to me when I dealt with this matter at the Public Accounts Committee that if the Governor-General received his £10,000, to which he was legally entitled, and handed back the difference, £8,000, in that case, by law, he should have given up more than £2,000 in income tax.
The only other way to do it was that he should receive the £10,000 and that he should then hand back the difference between what would remain with him when he had paid income tax on that and a net sum of £2,000. If that had been done, the public in this country would have had to be told what his true salary was, that is to say, the salary announced in the finance accounts would have had to be such sum as would, when income tax on £10,000 was deducted from it, amount to £2,000, and that, of course, would have revealed that the Governor-General's salary alone, apart from allowances, was between £5,000 and £6,000. Instead of that, the Minister himself, when he introduced the Bill, repeated the false statement that so much money was saved. The Governor-General's legal salary was £10,000, and the salary he actually received, depending on allowances which he might be due to get and other sources of income on which he was due to pay income-tax. I work out at something in the neighbourhood of £6,000; but, in order to let the dishonest propaganda of the present Government loose on the country and in order to enable them to say "The other man was getting £10,000 and this man is getting only £2,000. Look what we are saving," they had to falsify the accounts and state a salary of £2,000, when legally it was £10,000, and when, in fact, working it out roughly, it was about £6,000.
If the Government had been honest with the country and, as I say, had given the amount as £10,000 and had taken back from him such sum as represented the difference between £2,000 net income and £10,000, minus income tax on £10,000, there would be no reason for the second part of this Bill. But, as it happens, the Government going around saying what economies were being performed by them have actually put their successors into the position of having to pay a debt which they themselves contracted. I am subject to correction in this, but I think the Governor-General—and I presume that is why it is done—is making a claim for arrears of pay, because, by law, he was entitled to £10,000 on which he was bound to pay income tax and, instead of that, in order to humbug the people, he was given £2,000 and told "You need not pay income tax." Having received only that amount, he can now claim the difference of £8,000, out of which has to be deducted the full income tax on £10,000 for that period of office. It appears to me—the President or the Minister can correct me—that this part of the Bill is the result of a claim, negotiation of that claim and terms agreed to, as a compromise to this debt which is legally owing to this man.
The Government undertook to pay £2,000 and to pay some expenses and, mind you, he received a very full allowance for expenses—£2,000— which was not to be accounted for. There was no account to be given of that sum before the Public Accounts Committee. His functions, when he was installed in his house, we know. I know a case of a diplomatic representative who went out to see him, and who gave him an invitation, and his reply was that he was not even allowed to go to a tea party unless ordered to do so by the Executive Council, and the Executive Council never ordered him to do it. Here is the position as I interpret it and foretold it at the Public Accounts Committee. When a man's legal salary is a certain amount, he has a claim to it, and the only way in which you can get rid of that claim is to pay him that money. If he agrees to accept less, the only way in which to meet the situation is to pay him the full amount and take back the sum he agrees to surrender. If the Government had done that, they would have had to state his salary as the £2,000 net he receives plus the income tax on £10,000 such as was paid by his predecessors. That was not done in order that a false situation would be created and in order that Ministers could go around and say: "Look at the saving we are making. The other man got £10,000 and this man is getting only £2,000." It is not true at all. The other man got less than £6,000 in actual net as compared with £2,000, and this man, I calculate, got about £6,000 as compared with £10,000 received by his predecessor. But, for that difference, we now have to pay £2,000 down and £500 a year for the rest of his life.
The salary of the Governor-General was due to be paid out of the Central Fund for the various years of this Government's office. What have they done? In order to economise during their time, they have just passed the buck, as they say in America. They have gone around pointing out how economical they are by not paying their debts and have passed on their debts to their successors. The position before this House, so far as I understand it, seems to be that the Governor-General, or the late Governor-General—I do not know which—has a claim to some sum of money. It will be something like the difference between £6,000 and £10,000 for the four years or so he was in office. He can make that legal claim but no money can be paid unless it is voted by this House. I believe the legal position is that though you may have a claim against a government, if it is such a claim that requires money to be voted, you cannot enforce that claim unless Parliament votes the money.
We are in the position that we could resist this claim being made upon us, in disregard, presumably, of an agreement made some years ago, by admitting that this man can go to the courts and claim the money, but at the same time we are sitting here and refusing to vote it. I just want to point out that that is how I understood the situation. I am sorry the Finance officials are not here, because it is only a couple of years ago that I pointed out to them that this claim would be made. They were very careful, but they did try to suggest to me that one need not worry about that. I regret to say that I happened to be a true prophet, and it is most unfortunate that I did happen to be a true prophet, because I am temperamentally a pessimist. As the Minister has given no explanation, I give the House what seems to me to be the palpable explanation of it.
The Government let a legal debt accrue to that man. Whether they had an agreement with him which is now disregarded I do not know. Through that they have had to come to some sort of a compromise with him—to compromise on the amount. The compromise is for £2,000, plus the payment of certain debts, plus £500 per annum, which means that Ministers who were going round with the story that he had only £2,000 and that his predecessor had £10,000 were blatantly dishonest. Through not acting until now, the future Government of this country is committed to paying moneys that the Government should have been paying during this time. They may have thought that they had a firm agreement. But what is the good, when you are dealing with certain people, of having a firm agreement unless it is also a legal agreement? It seems to me that the Government brought in this Bill to put themselves right with the law.
We have been listening to a speech which I can only call characteristic of the Deputy. The attitude of mind shown by it is so contemptible that really I wonder whether I should try to follow it.
Try to answer it.
He challenges us to correct him. He makes all sorts of insinuations based on nothing but—I do not like to say his own view of what might be done by him, but when people attribute to others things of that sort I am inclined to attribute it to their own minds very much. However, to make some of these points clear, I take first this question of the provision that is being made in this Bill for the former Governor-General. He is the former Governor-General, and has been the former Governor-General in fact, in law, since the 11th December last. I hope that point is appreciated. That is definite; that is the advice that the Government has got. This is supposed to be a bargain. There was no bargain. A certain position arose when the previous Governor-General refused to accept the views of the Government on certain matters and relinquished his office. There were Bills urgently necessary in the Dáil. I think it was about November. At the time I happened to be in Geneva. The line of action I had intended taking could not have been taken because time did not permit of its being taken. We had to make our measures legal. It was necessary to have a Governor-General to sign these Bills, and we had to get a Governor-General. I and my colleagues thought of all the men in the country who would be prepared to carry out the full intention we had— the policy that was behind our whole programme. It was very important that we should get a man who could be absolutely depended upon to do that. It would have been necessary for whoever took it to make very great sacrifices—sacrifices that nobody would make except he did it for a good cause. In the very same spirit with which that man came out in 1916, when, I think, he was already 50 years of age, he said he was prepared to do it. He tried not to do it, but he said: "If you say to me this is a duty which you think I ought to render to the country, I am prepared to do it." I said: "Yes; in the same way as I would ask, if I were in command of a corps, a man to undertake a difficult and, if you like, a dangerous task. I ask you to volunteer to do it." In that spirit he took the position and in that spirit he acted and made it possible for people who are not fit to black his boots to talk about him as Deputy Fitzgerald talked just now.
There was no bargain. He was entitled as Governor-General to get £10,000 per year, and, if it were his predecessor had it, £7,500 of that would be free of income-tax. Only £2,500, so far as I remember, of that was subject to income-tax. In addition to that, there were allowances. I will read out the sums paid for that establishment over ten years. In addition to that there were more sums provided for entertainment than have been provided by us, who have otherwise provided for the entertainment. So that the sums which we asked the House to vote here every year contained the whole story. Deputy Fitzgerald talked about our deceiving the people by saying that the Governor-General was getting a net sum of £2,000. If you want to calculate what would be the sum—if the Revenue Department, knowing the total income from various sources had to find the sum—it is possible, if you wanted to make a mathematical calculation, to say what was his salary before income-tax would have been taken off in giving him a net £2,000. The fact is clearly stated that he had a net salary of £2,000, arrive at it as you will. We could not legally keep that money from him. What he did was, to say to me: "If I get £2,000 net, I will take no more." It was accordingly arranged with the Finance Department that a sum equivalent to that should be paid to the Governor-General per year.
Was that after his appointment?
Yes, after his appointment. It had nothing whatever to do with it. He was legally entitled to get £10,000 every year as his salary once he accepted the position of Governor-General, but he knew our general policy in that regard. When the question arose of settling what provision was to be made for his establishment, the sums were so adjusted that he got £2,000 as his salary. His establishment was calculated independently, and a separate provision is made every year for it. On what basis does the Deputy talk when he suggests that we were deceiving the country? Everybody in the country knew. We had made it clear in the Estimate time after time, and this question of the amount that he was receiving was brought up, and the amount that was being independently provided for his household. It was being provided and he practically did not control a penny of it. It was being otherwise expended. His secretary and so on—all these things were provided for independently—there was an independent amount paid. So far as his establishment is concerned, he had not the handling, so to speak, of a penny of the money. There was a definite Estimate for certain amounts for certain purposes. It was all provided there.
I take it it was used for the rent and upkeep of the house?
For the purposes of his establishment. I cannot put it any more generally than for the purpose of his establishment. It is interesting to take some figures which I asked to be prepared for me. Taking it in comparison with the sums that were paid in the past——
You cannot compare them.
Why not?
Because he was doing nothing.
What was he not doing—going to Punchestown? We were able to do as much by way of entertaining by what has been given since as the former Governor-General did.
They are not comparable.
It is quite true he did not have such a large establishment and he did not distribute amongst other members of the community as large sums as the previous Governor-General did. I do not want to say that the previous Governor-General put it in his pocket.
Would the President just mind telling us——
I do not mind telling the Deputy about anything.
Would the President mind telling us if the Revenue Commissioners examined the accounts and saw how much was spent out of the sums given?
My information is this, that it was £7,500.
Does the President know that as a result of an examination by the Revenue Commissioners the Governor-General was shown to have spent——
My information is that £7,500 was put aside as the sum which was not to bear income tax.
Why?
My answer to that is that in addition to whatever entertainment sum the former Governor-General was given, there was an extra sum given. In the years in which I compared them there were additional sums greater than the sums which were provided when the immediately previous Governor-General was in office. The Deputy does not want to hear these sums but I will give them to the House. Taking the year 1923-24, the total sum provided for the whole office was £24,309; for 1924-25, £34,470; for 1925-26, £27,600; for 1926-27, £26,000; for 1927-28, £26,000; for 1928-29, £28,000; for 1929-30, £26,000; for 1930-31, £25,000; for 1932-33, £25,000; and for 1933-34, £21,000. That gives an average for those ten years of £26,000 odd. That was what the upkeep of the establishment cost during those years. There are questions in regard to what one might call the allied service—the Board of Works, buildings, furniture, fire, light, etc. Now with regard to these last four we have for 1933-34 a sum of £4,674 of a total; for 1934-35, £4,160; for 1935-36, £4,166; and for 1936-37, £3,225. Therefore, whereas there was an average of over £26,000 for the ten years I have given, the average in the last four years was less than one-sixth of that sum, about £4,000. So if we talk about the expenses of the establishment there is no question whatever and there is no doubt whatever as to the big change with regard to the amount that was spent. As far as the people of this State are concerned, the view of the vast majority is that the Governor-General, who acted in accordance with the advice and policy of the Government within the last four years, was doing the will of the Irish people very much more than the Governor-General who was acting in accordance with the advice of the previous Government.
Now, with regard to the amounts, the Governor-General, as I told you, got a salary, and whereas there was £10,000 available out of the Central Fund, the net salary he got was £2,000, arrive at it as you will. If you subtract that £2,000 from the four sums I have given you (£4,674, £4,160, £4,166, and £3,225), you will get the amount that was spent on his establishment each year. These sums were directly spent for items of service over which he had no control. So that there was no possibility of his turning to his own purpose any money provided for those services. These were the minima that were essential.
There are some words in this Bill which I dislike to see there. If I had known Deputy Fitzgerald had originated them by some references elsewhere, I would have voted against their being in the Bill at all, because they imply something about which there should be no question, that special care should be taken, lest, the Governor-General, having been entitled to these moneys which he voluntarily surrendered, at some other time an action might lie against this State in respect of them. Suppose he was to die and his legal representatives made a claim. It was to prevent that that these words were put in on the suggestion of the Finance Department, in order to prevent the possibility of something that might possibly happen in extraordinary circumstances. That is why these words are there. They are there by way of a safeguard, to prevent in any circumstances any claim being made by anybody on foot of the fact that there was a sum of £10,000 a year which the former Governor-General could have drawn and did not draw, but voluntarily surrendered without any bond or anything of that sort. That is why this thing has been done. Otherwise this is a surrender for the time being. There was no formal document with regard to this surrender. It was simply surrendered. These words are there because the Department of Finance, with the care with which they look after the public purse, wished to have them there. Their suggestion has given rise to this idea, that the Governor-General was giving something and was not giving something.
I did not say that.
The former Governor-General did not put in any claim. I have responsibility and so has the Government responsibility in this matter. We asked a man to leave his home and put himself in a position which would practically debar him from going back to his ordinary business. We have a duty in the matter. We know that he could not make provision for his future. He had to give up his home. What we say should be provided for him is what we are asking the Dáil to provide under this Bill, a sum of £2,000, which is the equivalent of portion of the salary which he has been accustomed to take every year and give him, so to speak, this one moiety equivalent to the salary that he had been taking for three or four years past.
What is that for?
I am explaining what it is for.
What is the justification for it?
The justification for it is this: I asked this man to come away from whatever work he was doing at the time. We know he was in business. I asked him, at an age in which people cannot go and pick up the threads of their business again, to give up his business. He handed over his business at the time to a member of his family. It was quite obvious that that man could not go back and start again.
Did he not know that he could not go back and start?
Yes, and he knew perhaps he could not go back in 1916. But he went and did it because he felt it was his duty to do it. I wanted him at that time to do it. It was not anybody's suggestion but my own. As Minister for External Affairs and as President, I made a suggestion to the Government. I looked around amongst all the men I knew to get a man who would play this part, a man I knew who would not act otherwise than the way he did act during those four years. Those who know the man will agree with me that the choice was a good choice, and I leave it to any person on the opposite benches to deny that.
Does the President suggest that the two things were analogous—his position in 1916 and the taking up of the Governor-Generalship? Does he suggest that the two posts were just as dangerous?
I am looking at it from the point of view of the circumstances in which I asked him. I asked him to do a job which he disliked very much doing.
What was that? He did not do anything.
Well, I would be a long time—but perhaps I had better leave the thing alone. The point was that we took the responsibility, in the public interest, of asking this man to leave his business and devote himself to a position which would inevitably mean that once he left that position there was no other position he could very well get back to. Having done that, I feel it is our duty, representing the people in whose service he was, to see that this man is not left in the position to which we have brought him now. We took him out of his position and he cannot very well go back to any other position for obvious reasons, and I say it is the duty of the State in a case like that to make provision for him.
I say that the sum that has been saved through his occupancy of that position over that period of years compensates us ten-fold for the sum that you are asked to provide in this instance. He is an old man now, relatively speaking, and the provision we are asking you to make by way of an annuity of £500 a year would be purchased for a little over £4,000. In one year alone the State has saved more than the entire provision that we are asking you to make for him. The estimate of £4,000 represents the present value of the annuity based on the ordinary expectation of life at his age. If he wants to get a home, he can purchase a house with the £2,000, or he can use that £2,000 for any other purpose. We are not specifying it for any particular purpose. We are saying that this man has served his country well. He came away at our request to get into this position, and we are doing this as a duty, not because he has asked us to do it, but as a clear public duty.
When we asked this man to take this position we had an obligation not to leave him in the position he would find himself in if no provision were being made. The total value of this proposal would be about £6,000. In the last year alone more than that sum has been saved out of the salary available from the Central Fund in respect of the Governor-General. In the circumstances I think it is not an extravagant provision at all. I am standing over it and the Government are standing over it, and I am quite prepared to defend it anywhere. There was no bargain and no demand.
As regards the provision against all possible claims, I forget the exact words, but I know I dislike them intensely. The Department of Finance felt that wording was necessary to cover the possibility of claims of any kind, and they inserted them. The actual wording is: "the following sums in full satisfaction and discharge of all claims by him under the Governor-General's Salary and Establishment Act." I dislike this phrase intensely. I did suggest at the time I saw this thing that these words should not be there.
Surely the President knows that his heirs could make a legal claim unless that wording is there?
The fact is that there is no claim being made. The Deputy evidently realises that, and if that is so, why all these suggestions of unfair dealing?
I merely point out that unless those words were there his heirs could claim.
Those words were put there to protect the State against any possibility whatever, not that there is at the moment any claim of any kind being made by him.
I am merely pointing out there might be a legal claim——
The Deputy had plenty of time in which to talk, and if he would stop interrupting me now it might be just as well. With regard to the other matters in the Bill, so far as the constitutional position is concerned, this measure creates no new position whatever. In the main, it is consequential upon what was done on the 11th December last. It is necessary only to this extent, that there were certain statutory functions of the Governor-General the performance of which otherwise had to be arranged for. This arranges for the performance of these functions by the Executive Council, and that is all. So far as the position created on the 11th December is concerned, this does not alter it. All it does is that where certain statutory and other functions performed by the Governor-General were not provided for, they have to be provided for in a consequential measure such as this. I do not think there is any other question raised that it is necessary to reply to.
In defence of a man outside, whom I am sure the President would not like to misrepresent——
The Deputy has not hesitated to misrepresent other people outside——
And neither has the President. I want to refer to an official document——
——and inside as well.
I may inform Deputy Fitzgerald that he will not be permitted to make a second speech, and the Chair will not allow him to read a statement. If the Deputy wishes that statement to be read there is an obvious way of dealing with it.
I feel that a man has been misrepresented, his whole position has been misrepresented, and I merely want, as the Dáil has been misled in the recent speech——
The Deputy is now endeavouring to make a second speech notwithstanding my ruling, and I cannot allow him to proceed further.
The reference of the statement which I was anxious to quote is the report of the Public Accounts Committee for the financial year 1932-33, printed on 13th December, 1934, page 112. The statement of the Secretary for the Department of Finance, in reply to Deputy Murphy, is numbered 817.
Perhaps I should preface my remarks by indicating that anything I shall say when speaking on this matter will have no personal reference to Mr. Donal Buckley, although I might be tempted to say very strong things. I can only describe this as the most scandalous proposition that has ever been brought before this House. The President has made no proper effort to justify it. He spent a considerable portion of his time telling the House what we already knew, the amounts the previous Governor-General had got in various years by way of salaries and allowances, and he made a comparison with the amounts the last Governor-General received. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the Bill we are discussing. In fact, those items were completely isolated from the Bill. If one were to follow the President's example, one might argue that the previous Governors-General, even if they did get the many thousands that the President said were voted by this House, performed certain duties and circulated great sums of money amongst the shopkeepers of Dublin and other places in the country. They spent all they got and in doing so helped many citizens. I might argue otherwise in relation to the late holder of this office, but I do not want to do it.
There is no justification whatsoever for this Bill. So far as Mr. Donal Buckley is concerned, my recollection of him when last I saw him in this House was an affable, genial Irish gentleman against whom I could not say one word. He was at that time a member of this Dáil, enjoying no salary but an allowance of £360 a year to meet his expenses as a Deputy. I hope that Deputies on the opposite, as well as on this, side of the House realise that if a member of this House performs his duty in the way that he ought to, there is no profit out of that allowance. It passes out of a Deputy's hands like water through a sieve. If a man performs his duty here in a manner that will be satisfactory to his conscience and to the people who elect him, instead of making a profit, he will be at a loss. It is to Mr. Donal Buckley's credit that he did serve his country as a member of the Dáil, and for that he received an allowance of £360 a year. By reason of that he neglected his business, but no more than any other member, and he did not ask any compensation from the Dáil for that. On that I might say that there were other members of the House who gave up their business in order to be able to attend to their Parliamentary duties. Some held high office in the Government for a number of years. When they ceased to hold those offices they did not ask or receive compensation.
What is one to think of the mentality of a Government which derided the office of Governor-General, as the present Government Party did in this House and in the country, and which now comes forward and asks that compensation be given to the last holder of it? The President put it in words that I perhaps would not be prepared to use: that he appointed Mr. Donald Buckley, and that Mr. Donald Buckley agreed to be put in the position, commonly called in America, of a yes-man: that, as the President himself said, "he was a person who could be absolutely depended on to do as I asked him to do." Because it pleased the President to appoint a yes-man in this State for a period of five years, to be at the President's beck and call, and to do what he told him to do and nothing else, this country is now being asked to give Mr. Donald Buckley a lump sum of £2,000 and a pension of £500 a year.
We debated this afternoon a Bill affecting the agricultural community, the Pigs and Bacon Bill, in connection with which the question of compensation for minor curers arose. Some of us objected to the producers being called upon to pay that compensation. When the Minister for Agriculture asked where else they should find the money, I felt inclined to make the retort: "From the same source that you are finding a lump sum of £2,000 and a pension of £500 a year for Mr. Donald Buckley." The sums of money involved in this Bill would be sufficient to buy out two or three of the minor curers who are being legislated out of existence by the Government. One wonders if this gratuity and pension are being given to Mr. Donald Buckley to compensate him for the indignity that he was subjected to—in being compelled to accept such a sinecure, an office which it is difficult to conceive any man of independence accepting. Is this compensation for the compulsory confinement that he endured for five years? I remember asking, when the Estimate for the salary of the Governor-General came before the House in recent years, whether we could have an assurance that the Governor-General existed at all.
The Governor-General's salary is not in this Bill.
Compensation in lieu of the Governor-General's salary is in the Bill and, therefore, I presume one is allowed, when speaking of the compensation, to refer to the thing itself. We are asked here to vote compensation to Mr. Donald Buckley, the last Governor-General, for the loss of office. I do not know if any other case is being made for the Bill. I do not know if there has been any loss of office, because the President said that he had reduced the position to that of an acting yes-man. This was a gentleman who lived in retirement at Monkstown or somewhere else, to whom we voted a salary and allowances each year for five years. We did that without having any actual evidence before us that he was alive. By repute we knew that he was alive, but that was all. As far as we knew, he did nothing; there was no evidence put before the Dáil that he ever did anything. Now the country is being asked to compensate a man who filled a sinecure like that, a man who did nothing. If the President made the case that Mr. Donald Buckley had suffered in health as a result of his enforced confinement in Monkstown during the last five years I, and I am sure many other members of the House, would be quite willing that he should be given a compassionate allowance. If he had suffered in health I would regret it just as much as any member of the House.
The case made for this Bill is that Mr. Donald Buckley should receive this lump sum and a pension of £500 a year because he had to neglect his business during the years that he held this office; in other words, during the years he occupied this sinecure. On that reasoning every member of the Dáil should be compensated because, as I said before, the business of Deputies who conscientiously attend to their parliamentary duties suffers. Their business is neglected, and why not give them compensation? The President has made no case for this Bill, and he knows it. There is no precedent for this measure. We had two previous Governors-General. They did something while in office. There are different views held, of course, as to whether what they did was beneficial or otherwise for the country. But they certainly did something. They spent money freely and helped to put money in circulation. They did not receive compensation or a pension, and if they were to be compensated as the President is compensating Mr. Donald Buckley, their allowances and pensions would be much larger than his, because they gave up whatever business or profession they were carrying on at the time and devoted more time to the duties of the office than Mr. Donald Buckley did. At a time when there are many people, if not destitute, at least in want, in this country, it is scandalous that a measure like this should be introduced, and that we should be asked to vote a gratuity and a pension to a gentleman who, as the President himself admitted, had really no work to perform. I do not think that any terms that one might employ would be too strong to condemn this measure. I, and I hope many other members of the House, will vote against it. None of us have any but the happiest recollections of Mr. Donald Buckley when he was a member of this House, but no matter who the holder of this office was, or the Party he belonged to, it would not alter my condemnation of a measure such as this.
The President's justification for this measure, as I understood him, was that the late Governor-General took up this position at the request of the Government, and that it would not be easy for him now to take up again the threads of the business he was engaged in previously. As I listened, I wondered—if one wanted to use that phrase—how many people in this country would be entitled to compensation or pension? Let us take the President of the Executive Council himself, or the members of the Executive Council. Supposing they lost office to-morrow, I take it that it is probable that they could not take up the threads of life which they had had before they went into their present positions. The same thing, of course, applies to their predecessors in office. But is that a justification for the awarding of compensations or pensions of this nature? If such awards are to be made, where is it going to stop? Where are you going to draw the line with regard to people who have given their services? Are all such people to get pensions and compensations for the rest of their lives?
I say that this question of pensions has gone too far in this country. I say that, here and now. I have said it before, and I repeat it. People in the country are now saying that it will soon be a question when every second person in the State will have a pension. If the Governor-General took up that position, I take it that he took it up in the full knowledge of what it meant, and that he enjoyed the remuneration accompanying his employment. I take exception to this policy of giving pensions to people, such as the Governor-General—and I couple with him the members of the present Executive Council as well as the members of the former Executive Council—just because they have given good service. It appears to me that there is no justification for the proposal contained in this Bill. The last Governor-General was compensated for any services he gave, and there is no use in talking about what salary his predecessors had. I remember very well how the Fianna Fáil Party talked about the salary of his predecessors, and I was waiting to hear what Deputy Corry would have to say about this to-day. I remember the Fianna Fáil Party proclaiming that they would have no pensions and no salary over £1,000 a year. I am sorry that Deputy Corry is not here. I should have liked to hear him, and I was waiting to find out what he would have to say about this.
I am not going to have a silent vote on this Bill. I look upon this Bill as being the result of the greatest piece of corruption that has ever happened in this country. As Deputy Curran said, the Fianna Fáil Party, before they came into office, made capital out of the matter of the salaries of previous Governors-General. Now, however, we see the effect of the situation created by them. We see, here, that the Governor-General is to get a pension of £500. I should like to know from the President what that would amount to, at the present rate of interest, if it were capitalised.
The Deputy must remember that it is only an annuity.
Well, would it not work out the same way?
It must be remembered that, to buy an annuity of that or a like amount, for a man of 70 years of age, would cost less.
Yes, but then, in this case there is the question of a lump sum, and that, at 10 per cent., would be about £8,000, before you were finished with it. However, what I was going to say is that, at this rate, it will mean that there will be no end to the corruption that is going to prevail in this country. I can say, as I think I have said before, that, in the 40 or so years that I have been connected with public life in this country there was never so much corruption as there is to-day; and I say that, if proof were needed of that, the proof is to be found in this Bill. As I said before, I am not going to give a silent vote on this Bill. The position the people have been put into as a result of the economic war and the policy of the Government is that, the more they do, the less they get; but, according to this, the less the Governor-General did, the more he is to gain.
What exactly the duties of the Governor-General were nobody except the President knows. Nobody knows what were his duties or what he did, and yet he is going to be presented with a pension which, I believe, is entirely unjust, so far as the people of this country are concerned. Nobody can deny that there are many people in this country to-day who are very badly off. They have been put into the position that they are not able to support themselves or their families. If you go to any church gate in the country—of course, Fianna Fáil are hardly in a position to face a crowd at a church gate in the country—you will find that the people, due to the policy of the present Government, are not able to support themselves or their families, and yet you have this proposal to make this gentleman a present of £500 per annum. I shall vote against it, and I hope that the Deputies on all sides of the House will support me in voting against it.
Deputy MacDermot asked two pertinent questions. First, he asked was there an agreement with the Governor-General at the time he agreed to take over office, and, second, what sacrifice had the Governor-General made in taking up that office? I understood the Deputy to say that, if he did not get a satisfactory answer in regard to that, he could only come to the conclusion that it was a piece of political jobbery. Have those questions been answered, and, if so, have the answers been bona fide? The President told the House that he had an agreement with the Governor-General. It seems to have been an agreement of this character: that the Governor-General said to him—I take it that it was as a result of a question—that if he got £2,000 a year, that was all he wanted. Deputy MacDermot wanted to know what were the sacrifices that the Governor-General made. The President told Deputy MacDermot and the House that the Governor-General had made great sacrifices: that he had given up his business, and that it was not possible for him, as a result of holding this office of Governor-General for the last four years, to go back to his business.
Well, let us test that. Somebody has told us that the Governor-General is about 70 years of age. I take it that he was in business all his life before he took up this position of Governor-General. In other words, there were 66 years of his life apart from the four years, that he spent in this office of Governor-General. Now we are told that the President looked all around the country to find a man to fill this position, and yet the man he found was a man of 66 years of age, running a business somewhere down the country. Does anybody suggest that that man was making any sacrifice? According to the President, the Governor-General handed his business over to his son when he took up this office; and that, again according to the President, he was making a sacrifice in doing so. Where was the sacrifice there? If he were 66 years of age, was it not time to hand over his business to his son, or to somebody else?
I should like to know is that the justification for a Bill of this kind. I agree with what Deputy MacDermot has said, that this is a piece of jobbery. It is a piece of jobbery. What is the justification for that piece of jobbery? The justification is, as we all know and as the country knows, that the sacrifice this man made was that he permitted himself to be taken and used by the President in a way that no other man with any bit of backbone would permit himself to be used. He had to be stuck in a hole somewhere. I understand there is a plague of rabbits in this country at present and that the Imperial Chemical Company have produced some substance which, if blown into the rabbit holes, will kill all the rabbits. We are not going to do anything of that kind with the gentleman in this hole. We are going to shoot at him with golden bullets, this man of 70 years of age who made this extraordinary sacrifice for the people! Why, the people of the country did not know that he existed for the last four years! They did not know whether he was alive or dead. The only thing we knew was that we were asked to vote his salary every year. This is the boldest and most audacious piece of jobbery we ever heard of anywhere. Contrast all this blowing about patriotism with the treatment meted out to Lord Snowden, who died on Saturday. He was a man who struggled for democracy all his life, and who, for the most of his years, was in broken health, suffering intense and violent pain. He retired from the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer in Great Britain, one of the greatest offices in the world. He went out of office without a penny pension and died a poor man.
He was made a peer, was he not? That was his reward.
Why did he not get a pension? He rendered great service to his country. What comparison is there between the services he rendered to his country and the service rendered by the gentleman to whom we are asked to vote this money? Has he rendered any service of importance, any service that we ever heard of, during the four years that he has occupied this office? We hear a lot about democracy and about the plain people. Is this not opening wide the floodgates of corruption in this country? Can there be any doubt about it? Is the House aware of the gravity of the step Deputies are asked to take in passing a Bill of this kind? We are the trustees of the public purse; we are the guardians of the people's money. We are supposed to be critical of how every penny taken from the taxpayers is spent. Here this Bill is lashed up to us and we are asked to pass it. Why are the benches over there so vacant at present?
Yours are just as vacant.
But you are 77. Where are they? I wonder would it be grossly offensive to make a suggestion in that regard?
Not a bit.
I would suggest that there are two reasons for the absence of Deputies over there. The first is that Deputies over there got into office by making capital out of the salary paid to one man in this country. They used that matter up and down the country. Secondly, after they get into office, a Bill such as this brings out publicly the insincerity of their attitude on the question of salaries and pensions. I should like to see paraded on those benches opposite the number of Deputies who have provided themselves with pensions since they came into office. Yet they got elected because of their apparent disapproval of voting these big salaries and pensions. Did they tell the poor boys and girls, whom they gathered about them prior to the last two elections, that they were going to get pensions for themselves? This is nothing short of legalised corruption, legalised jobbery. If I were to support this Bill, and any man were to charge me with legalised corruption, I would have no answer to it. We are using the power which the nation vested in us, as trustees for the public, to carry out legalised corruption and legalised jobbery.
Let us not mince words about it at all. I am the last man in the world who would object to paying any man a reasonable salary, provided he was worthy of the job and did something for his salary. I have never questioned the payment of a salary to any man who was worthy of it. I have always believed, and still believe that a good man is worth any money in reason in any job—I do not mind what it is. He may be a street-sweeper, a Governor-General, or a managing director of the biggest firm in the world. The person who does not appreciate merit and pay for it accordingly will lose in the long run, because somebody else will appreciate it and pay for it. But here we are asked, without justification, to vote a large sum and a large pension to a man who did nothing. We are told that he sacrificed himself, that the sacrifice had to be made. The President looked around the country for a man who would sacrifice himself, the sacrifice apparently being that he should degrade himself and hide himself away. He is some sort of obscure specimen——
He did not degrade himself in 1916.
The President looked around the country for a yes-man, and this was the gentleman he selected. If the President wanted a yes-man, let him compensate him. Let the President be honest; let him compensate him out of his own money. Nobody will object to his doing that, but do not ask the people of this country to pay it. We are told that he sacrificed himself and that he played a noble part, the noble part which he played being that he allowed himself to be stuck away in some place for the last four years. Nobody knows where he has been for the last four years. We are told that he served the country well. He served the country well by keeping himself out of sight. He would not be permitted to go even to a football match. Somebody has said that he was not permitted to go to a party where he might drink even a cup of tea. That is playing a noble part! Is that in keeping with the dignity of a man who was supposed to be head of the State? He may be the representative of an English King. I do not know whom he represents, nor do I care, but he was paid for doing something, and he should have done something and not merely permitted himself to be stuffed away in this fashion. We have never known during all these years where he was. He suddenly appears now to be handed over by this Government a sum of £2,000 down and £500 a year for the rest of his life. That is his reward. Is it any wonder that there are 22,000 men and women out on strike in the city looking for sufficient to keep them alive, to put them in a position to buy the necessaries of life?
That is going on outside in the city. Those people who are on strike now, and living on strike pay—a man with a wife and family probably getting £1 a week strike money—are living out there while we are in here doing this. We are asked to believe that a man who got £2,000 a year for four years— a man who was 66 years of age when he took up the job, and should have retired from business then, if not before—made a sacrifice by taking that job. Now we are asked to give him £2,000 down and £500 a year for life, while thousands of people outside, in the city alone, not to speak of rural Ireland, have not sufficient money to buy the necessaries of life. This House can do that if it likes.
I read portions of this Bill with considerable amazement. I found it difficult to understand on what grounds the Fianna Fáil Party, which has in the past devoted so much of its time to criticising high salaries and allowances, could possibly justify a Bill of this kind. Prior to 1932 we were all familiar with large posters which were exhibited throughout the country on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party, criticising persons who got pensions for their national services in this country. Persons with pensions of £2 per week did not escape the bitter criticism of the Fianna Fáil Party at that time.
Hear, hear.
We are to take it that up to that period, judging by the posters which were exhibited on behalf of that Party, that the Party regarded those pensions as something which could not be justified, even though the persons concerned rendered service in the national movement in this country.
And were poor people.
Yet here we have a Bill introduced by the very same Party to hand over a sum of £2,000 in lieu of notice to the ex-Governor-General, and, as if that were not good enough, in order to solace the feelings of that individual he has to be given a blank cheque in addition to clear up the odds and ends of matters that were left unattended to when he got the precipitate notice from the Government.
To get the dishes washed!
In case even that would not be sufficient, the Government feels stung with anxiety as to the future of this person, and proceeds to hand him out a sum of £500 per annum. I had to rub my eyes when I saw this provision in this Bill sponsored by a Party which in the past, at all events, has been loud in its denunciations of pensions very much less in amount than the pension provided here, even though the former pensions were provided for persons who had done work a million times more valuable to the nation than the work which was performed by the ex-Governor-General during the past four years. I am not going to be tempted, no matter what my indignation may be in regard to this Bill, into making any derogatory references to Mr. Donal Buckley. I believe him to be an eminently respectable gentleman, held in high esteem by a very large section of the community, of which I am glad to say I am one, but one must consider this Bill apart altogether from one's admirations or feelings towards the recipient of these sums. One must look upon this as a matter of principle, and, looking at it as a matter of principle, I cannot for the life of me understand what justified the Executive Council in formulating such outrageous proposals as are contained in this Bill. We have been told, in justification of it, by Ministers and by the Government Press organ, that the ex-Governor-General saved the country a substantial sum of money by working for the insignificant salary of £2,000 per year; in other words, that he was a cheap Governor-General, and that the State put some money in its pocket by putting that person in to fill that particular position. But that is all beside the point.
The fact which remains is that we have paid £1,000 a year more to the Governor-General during each of the past four years than we have paid to the Minister who has introduced this Bill. When we are talking about the comparative costs of State functionaries, let this Government remember and let the country remember that during each of the past four years the Governor-General was twice as costly to this country as any Minister in this country. That is the perspective in which we must look at the Governor-General. That is the real yard-stick to put on the Governor-General, and not the fantastic and outrageous salary of £10,000 a year which was paid to his predecessors.
That could not be justified by any reasonable body of people, nor could £2,000 a year be justified for whatever functions, if any, the recently demised Governor-General performed in his particular position. Yet, we are being asked to make this lavish payment to a man who during the past four years as Governor-General has done practically nothing for the very handsome salary of £2,000 a year which was paid to him. What have been the functions of the Governor-General during the past four years? Everybody knows he has lived the life of a recluse. Everybody knows, of course, that the man has been compelled to live a hermitical life, locked up in the building provided for him by the Government at the State's expense. I wonder whether the Government regard that as a kind of sacrifice, as something which they ought to pay for in this particularly lavish way? So far as one can see, his only outward functions were to sign an occasional Bill during the past four years. Judging by the scale of salary he was paid during that period he probably got £100 for every signature he put to a Bill. Yet, for work of that kind, the Government comes along now to make a grant of £2,000, and a blank cheque for whatever the Governor-General likes to fill in, and a pension of £500 a year. One would imagine that a person with such menial tasks to perform during the past four years, and with such generous wages for performing those menial tasks—£10,000 in four years, because that is the way it will work out when this Bill is passed—had already been generously treated by the State. I, personally, do not regard Mr. Donal Buckley as having made any great sacrifice, either personal or national, when he was called to render those menial services to the State at a salary of £2,000 per year. Hundreds of thousands of people in this country could be got to discharge tasks of that kind for a very much lesser salary than was paid to the Governor-General during that period.
I was interested in examining the reasons given for the payment of this pension to the ex-Governor-General. The claim for the payment of it could hardly be based on the assumption that he was overworked, or that he performed any exceptionally arduous tasks during the past four years, nor I suggest can it be urged in justification of this Bill that he made any sacrifice of a personal or national character, having regard to the salary which he was paid. On what grounds, then, is it sought to justify this Bill? Is it sought to justify it on the grounds that Mr. Buckley was compelled to make certain business sacrifices? The facts are entirely opposed even to that conception of justification for a Bill of this kind. In 1932 Mr. Buckley was an unsuccessful candidate for the Dáil. He was then called to serve as Governor-General, to the tune of £2,000 per annum. After giving four years' service he is now to be given a State pension of £500 per annum.
Is there any civil servant or member of any State force in the country who would get a pension of £500 a year after four years service performed in such congenial surroundings as those in which the ex-Governor-General performed his duties? Recently, on the Post Office Estimate, I urged the Minister for Posts to give a gratuity to a part-time postman—Dan McGrath— who had served the Post Office for 51 years. Dan McGrath, a part-time postman of Tipperary, could not get a farthing gratuity from this Government although he had served the State for 51 years, but Dan Buckley, who served the State for four years, gets a pension of £500 per annum, with £2,000 thrown in. How, in the name of Heaven, does the Executive Council justify that lopsided treatment of an individual under this Bill and the miserable, niggardly treatment of the other official who served the State for 51 years and who had not the 200th part of the ex-Governor-General's salary? A sum of £500 a year is, apparently, necessary to solace the ex-Governor-General.
The generosity of the Executive Council in this matter is in very marked contrast with the niggardly treatment meted out to old I.R.A. men who have been trying to get pensions under the Army Pensions Act. I had a letter the other day from a woman in Carlow whose late husband was certified by a doctor with well-known Fianna Fáil sympathies to have lost his life as a result of his incarceration in British jails. The woman said that she had read with considerable interest a speech by the Minister for Defence in which he said that it was the policy of Fianna Fáil to put not merely butter on the people's bread but to put on a little jam as well. This woman, with six children, without a halfpenny of income except the miserable pittance she may get in the form of home assistance and with notice of eviction lying on the kitchen table, said her trouble was not to get bread with butter and jam but to get any bread at all. Her husband had a claim in for a pension for four years. No decision has yet been come to on that claim, but, if this woman is awarded her husband's pension, it will not amount to £500 a year. Yet, in a couple of months after the abolition of his office, we find a Bill introduced to pay a sum of £500 a year to an unnecessary functionary such as the Governor-General. Old I.R.A. men cannot get decisions on their pension claims. When they do get decisions, they find that the amounts are niggardly and miserable and do not take adequate cognisance of the services they rendered. Not a single one of them, I suppose, got a pension equal to that which it is proposed to give in this case. Hundreds of them got niggardly, miserable pensions for their services to the nation. All the generosity and all the munificence is reserved for the ex-Governor-General.
I understand that the ex-Governor-General is a native of Maynooth. In Maynooth a man with a wife and five hungry children will get only 12/6 a week unemployment assistance. A sum of 12/6 a week in Maynooth, to which the Governor-General will probably go back to reside, is expected to keep a man with a wife and five children. But, when it comes to an ex-Governor-General, he cannot exist on less than £500 a year. If 12/6 is good enough for a man with a wife and five children living in the same place as the ex-Governor-General, will the Executive Council tell us on what ground they justify the payment of this sum for services which were not worth anything like a pension of £500 per annum? We are told that people in receipt of unemployment assistance cannot get a halfpenny more than they are getting— and this from an Executive Council which proposes to pay £500 a year, plus a tidy stipend of £2,000 in lieu of notice.
I cannot help thinking that the generosity enshrined in this Bill is in very marked contrast with the treatment meted out to, at least, one employee of the ex-Governor-General. I have no permission from the person concerned to say what I am now about to say. But what I have to say will stand the searchlight of truth, and I put it before the Dáil so that it may see the two sides of this problem. If Deputy Briscoe were in the House, he would probably confirm what I am going to say, because he knows the facts. A man came to me recently and said he was an employee of the Governor-General to whom it is now proposed to make these payments. He had been employed there for four years and lost his employment in consequence of the abolition of the office. He is a widower with three young children depending upon him. His employment with the Governor-General was not insurable under the Unemployment Insurance Acts. That employment was precipitately cut off and, since then, he has not been able to get any outside employment. He was dismissed and not a farthing compensation was given him nor did the State try to absorb him into any other employment. Contrast the treatment of that man with three young children depending upon him, with the treatment of the ex-Governor-General, who is being treated in a manner which almost rivals the play, "Brewster's Millions," which some of us saw some years ago. I should like the Executive Council to get somebody to justify this proposal apart from their majority in this House which can be regimented to vote for this Bill, even though many of them do not like the Bill.
The Government is now proposing to set up a committee to inquire into the salaries and other emoluments of Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries and officers of this House and the House to be created. Why not ask that committee to examine this matter, even though it be normally outside its terms of reference? Why not get an impartial examination by a committee of that kind, so that the nation as a whole may learn of the grounds on which it is sought to justify such a lavish payment as is proposed in this Bill? This Bill has no authority at all behind it except the authority of the Executive Council who are looking on this matter not in an impartial way but purely in a Party way. There is no justification whatever for the lavish payment provided for in this measure. If the Government wanted to make any amends which they felt they ought to make to the ex-Governor-General, they could very easily have set up a committee to see what compensation, if any, should be paid to him. They could easily have asked this other committee which is being set up to examine and report on the matter, but the Executive Council know perfectly well that no impartial body in the country could be got to recommend the payment of a pension of £500 a year, plus a lump sum of £2,000, plus a blank cheque, to a man who has performed the trivial, menial tasks of the ex-Governor-General during the last four years. This is an outrageous Bill. It cannot possibly be justified on any grounds of loss, on any grounds of sacrifice whatever. It is purely a Bill to give a pension to a Party supporter and there is no justification from any national standpoint for treating the ex-Governor-General in this generous way. I am opposed to this Bill. I think no case whatever has been made for it. I do not think there is any authority from the people to treat this ex-Governor-General in this way, and I challenge the Government to take off the Whips and try to get this Bill passed on a free vote. They know perfectly well that they dare not do it.
My comments will not be very many on this matter, but, first, I want it to be clearly understood that anything I say is not to be taken as reflecting in any way upon Donal Buckley. He was, and is, a very decent man, and all I want to say is that my objection to this Bill is an objection to a pension for a Governor-General. Deputy Tom Kelly thinks that this pension is being granted to him because he was out in 1916. There is already on the Statute Book a Pensions Act for dealing with such cases and, as Deputy Norton has rightly pointed out, the best of them will not get a pension of that amount. Even lumping them all together, 1916, 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1923, they will not come up to £500. This whole question is befogged by the Government's representations. They are in a difficulty because we know all the things they said about the previous holder of the position and about the salary of £10,000 and so on, prior to taking office. Deputy Fitzgerald endeavoured to point out, by way of explanation what the actual salary of the previous holder was; £10,000 was put down, but, as established before the Public Accounts Committee, £6,000 of that were for expenses in the national interest. These expenses are now being incurred under the Department of External Affairs for banquets in Dublin Castle, and so on, but the Revenue Commissioners found—the reference is page 112 of the Public Accounts Report of 1934, in reply to question 816—that the figure of expenses out of the £10,000 was £6,000, spent by the Governor-General on State functions, acting, I presume, under the instructions of the Government of the day, and that £4,000 was his net salary.
The Government of the day in 1934 certainly gave no instruction to the effect that £6,000 was to be treated as expenses. We had no control over that.
Did the Deputy say anything of the sort? I said that the functions given by the Governor-General to which this expenditure referred were very probably functions given by him at the direction of the Government of the day. Is that incorrect?
That is incorrect, so far as this Government is concerned and so far as 1934 is concerned.
I hope the Minister will be as meticulous in speaking as the President was when he spoke a moment ago. The President said that when he called on Dan Buckley to occupy the office of Governor-General, it was nearly as grave an undertaking as going out in 1916. Is that the way to treat this House or the country, that the head of the State should make a statement like that or that the Minister for Finance should butt in with the remark he made just now? The Revenue Commissioners found that the expenses the Governor-General had were £6,000 and the sum that should be classed as salary was £4,000, which was then subject to income-tax, and they assessed the previous holders of the office on £4,000. When you take income-tax off £4,000 of salary, you will find you will not be very far above the £2,000 the present holder has.
This is all humbug. I do not think there is any other word I can use. The Government finds itself in a difficulty now, and they were in that difficulty from the moment they assumed office. They had gone around the country telling the people that the Governor-General was receiving £10,000, that the President and Ministers of State were too highly paid and that they were going to cut them down. They did it, and when they took office they found it was not all as they expected it to be. I think this is simply a case of chickens coming home to roost, and it is good enough. They are taking some steps, I believe, to correct that, but so far as Mr. Buckley is concerned, I only hope the man will live for the next 999 years, that he will live to the age of Methuselah's cat, so that we will have a living memorial to the hypocrisy of the Fianna Fáil administration and that he will not be blown up by Deputy Tom Kelly, or anybody like him, and thrown off his horse.
Deputy Norton has rightly pointed out that men with records, men who gave service and suffered injury, hardship and wounds are being treated in a most niggardly fashion by this and— I am going to say it—the previous Government, but that in cases like these Fianna Fáil can take the big jump and give a man £500 a year pension for a Governor-Generalship. If the President got up to justify it and said: "The Governor-General was out in 1916 and took part in all the activities of 1921, 1922, 1923"—as I am aware he did—"and instead of putting him through the military service pensions code we propose to give him a pension of £500 a year," I would say more power to him; it is recognition at last for people who gave service. That would be tip-top, but it is not for that this pension is being given. It is for the abolition of the office of Governor-General about which so much has been said. I want to stress this point as to the relative salaries. The difference between the salaries of Donal Buckley, James McNeill and Tim Healy—Lord have mercy on him —is not £1,000, and then you have the President of the State, and the national organ of the State, the Irish Press, declaring that £32,000 was saved in four years. It is easy to see that there is an uneasy conscience behind this and that there is a general election in the offing. There is another reason that the Government could put forward in defence of this measure, but they have not done it. Every Government that falsely or illegally imprisons a person for any length of time and then gives him a free pardon has to compensate him. I think that the proper justification for this compensation and this pension would be as compensation for imprisoning Dan Buckley for four years in Monkstown.
Without any cause.
Illegally. If the Government put forward that as a reason, I certainly will vote for this, because I think it was an outrageous hardship on the poor old man to bring him to Monkstown and keep him a prisoner there for that length of time, except when you let him out for a trip down to Lahinch or some place like that—but even then his escort was with him; he was not let free even for that time.
Mr. Hogan
He knew a good place to go to.
I did not mean to give Lahinch a free advertisement like that, but it is a good place, and I am glad the Deputy drew the special attention of the House to it, because Dan knew it was a good place and he went there. I advise the Minister for Finance when he is over the strain of this to go there too.
Mr. Hogan
Patronised by the Governor-General.
Seriously, no justification has been put forward for this measure. I am glad that Dan Buckley had not to wait to win a sweep prize to be looked after for the rest of his days; that the Government have done it; but I regret their doing it for an ex-Governor-General and not for an ex-Divisional Quarter-Master of the 1st Midland Division in 1922 and 1923. If they were giving it to him for that, and if the Minister for Education stated here in the House, "I am putting this forward because, as Quarter-Master of the 1st Midland Division in 1922 and 1923, he rendered good service to the country and served with me," I would then say that there was some justification for it. But it is not for that. It is for acting as the King's representative in Monkstown or, alternatively, it is compensation for this false imprisonment, and therefore I am going to vote against this Bill.
The attitude of the Opposition Party, as expressed in the newspaper organs which represent their point of view and here in the Dáil, has certainly changed somewhat since 1934 when the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, a prominent member of the Opposition Party, suggested that the £2,000 being granted to the Governor-General should not be assessed as salary at all. In column 112 of the Minutes of Evidence of the Public Accounts Committee of 20th June, 1934, the following is reported:
"Chairman: I quite agree that the present Governor-General might have everything free of income-tax but that would be on the ground that he had no income, only an allowance for expenses. Therefore, I think that the £2,000 should not be assessed as salary at all. It should appear in the Estimates or in the Appropriation Accounts as a payment made to him in relation to his expenses and should really be under sub-head B as an allowance to the Governor-General for expenses. If it is not an allowance for expenses, then he is bound to pay income-tax and the salary he draws is the complete amount, including any that may be deducted for income-tax.
"Deputy O'Reilly: What amount was the Governor-General assessed upon?
"Chairman: £4,000 per year."
Is the Minister aware that when he purported to quote from what Deputy Fitzgerald said, he did not finish the context?
"Therefore I maintain that the Finance Accounts statement is either a false statement or incomplete." The position, at any rate, is that the £2,000 which the Governor-General is receiving was considered by Deputy Fitzgerald then to be an amount which could properly be treated as expenses.
Oh!
There was no suggestion made at the time that the amount was excessive or outrageous, and, in fact, it is quite clear, even from the small portion of the evidence which I have read to the House, that the question of £2,000 being such a huge sum, as is now pretended, was not in question. Our position is that we have taken responsibility for bringing this matter before the Dáil, and we are prepared to say to the Dáil that we have examined this question and that we are quite satisfied that the proposal which we have now placed before the Dáil only makes what we consider sufficient and proper provision for a gentleman who has held the office of Seanascal in this State.
And Governor-General, too.
Imputations have been hurled at the Government that there is some question of corruption and jobbery in this matter, and I think I can best answer the rather sneering remarks of Deputy Norton by pointing out again, if it be necessary, that before Deputy Norton was very prominently known in Irish national affairs, Domhnal O Buachalla had a long and honourable record of service, which was not alone shown in his work for the Gaelic League and for Irish industry, but which was proved beyond a shadow of doubt when, although a comparatively old man, he went out in the Easter Week Rising. Deputy MacEoin has suggested, by the way, that the President, in his speech, stated that Mr. Buckley's taking up the position of Governor-General was somewhat on a par with his going out in Easter Week. Of course, the President said no such thing. In reply to an interruption to the effect that Mr. Buckley knew he would not be in a position to return to his business, the President said, "Yes, and in 1916 he knew he might not go back."
If it is pretended that there is anything in the record of this gentleman to show that he was at any time disposed to take the easy line in national affairs, or to place the question of emoluments or remuneration in the first place, I think the sneers of Deputy Norton might perhaps be justified. But, I certainly think it is rather strange that a Deputy who represents an area from which, Dan Buckley happens to come should institute comparisons between matters like unemployment assistance, the old I.R.A., and so on, and the proposal now before the House —analogies which are entirely irrelevant, and which, in any case, are not intended to be, let me say, honest, but to give an entirely false impression to the country. It is my duty, at any rate, to express to the House the view of the Government—that we are quite satisfied that this provision which is now being made by us, and which we have placed before the Dáil, must be made, and we hope that the House will agree to it.
On other occasions we have heard complaints being made that men who have given honoured public service and have held high positions in the State should not remain unprovided for. One knows the difficulties they may sometimes have in taking up their ordinary avocations. When a period is extended to five years, or as often happens, to ten years, then it becomes extremely difficult for people who have given service in their own way to the country to come back and take up the threads where they left them off and pursue their work in the ordinary way. These considerations apply in a special manner to Mr. O Buachalla. He was called upon to take up a specially important position, to which in one way or another a great deal of odium had been attached, and which undoubtedly rendered it extremely difficult for any Irishman, particularly for one of Mr. O Buachalla's well-known opinions, to take it up with that spirit with which he would in other circumstances, no doubt, have taken it up. In the particular circumstances of the time it was an extremely difficult position for Mr. O Buachalla to accept. It is because we realise that he made a big sacrifice that we are making this provision now. It was not in accordance with his own wish he accepted and occupied the post, but because of a desire to give of his best in whatever position the Government required, that Mr. O Buachalla took up the post. The question of emoluments never arose at the time. So far as he was concerned it was not mentioned. At no time did we consult Mr. O Buachalla about the question of emoluments.
When I heard the lamentations of Deputy Norton about this provision of £500 a year and a lump sum of £2,000 which is provided for Mr. O Buachalla, and when I read in certain newspapers rather vicious attacks in connection with the Government and the action it has taken up, I wondered those newspapers did not in any way dissociate themselves from the personal attack on the gentleman in question. When I hear of these things, I feel that it is our duty to lay before the House the considerations which prompted us to bring in this Estimate and to make this provision. The first consideration was the feeling that we took a gentleman from his ordinary business and put him in a position which at that time was the highest position in the State.
Oh, oh!
We felt bound and we feel only too glad to have the necessary provision made for him if he is suddenly——
——kicked out of office.
When the last two occupants of the office drew emoluments that were very much greater in a single year than Mr. O Buachalla has drawn altogether, there were no complaints. Indeed, what the last occupants drew in a single year was almost as great as what Mr. O Buachalla has drawn in four. The position then was that apparently any figure that was mentioned and agreed upon by the Government of the day was considered fitting and suitable for the person who held the position of Governor-General. As far as I remember, the expenditure during the period of the two previous Governors-General ran up to about £26,000 a year of which about £10,000 represented personal salary. Even in this year's Estimates the personal salary for Mr. O Buachalla stands at a figure of £10,000 although during the four years in which he occupied the office he has not taken in personal salary the amount he is entitled to draw in a single year. So that while the other Governors-General have drawn sums amounting to £48,000 or £50,000 during their periods of office, Mr. O Buachalla has, on account of the substantial refund made to the Exchequer, taken a salary of only £2,000 a year. He got only £8,000 in all against £48,000 or £50,000 drawn by his predecessors.
He is going to make up for lost time now.
He is only getting such a sum as we considered reasonable having regard to the fact that he was given short notice of the termination of his office.
Did he not know that when he took office?
Deputy O'Leary will get an opportunity of making his speech.
I have made it already.
It is not usual to make a second speech on the Second Reading.
We have all done it in our time.
I was saying that Mr. O Buachalla was called upon at very short notice to terminate his office. Ordinarily his period of office would naturally have to end about the end of this year, so that apart from whatever financial loss might be incurred by reason of the fact that no notice was given by which proper arrangements might be made for the termination of his services, the fact was that at a very short notice, arrangements had to be made by him. The office of Governor-General was suddenly abolished and the Government are not going to take up the position that the gentleman who against his will and entirely out of a feeling to do whatever his duty to his country called upon him to do, and to do it at a rather critical stage, is to be left unprovided for when he relinquishes that office in circumstances into which I need not enter. When the general prestige of the office of Governor-General was by no means inviting, even to the most mercenary person, when there was a good deal of odium attached to it, Mr. O Buachalla came forward, not through any desire of his own, as was consistent with his whole career, or for any prestige or personal advancement but solely on national grounds and because he believed it was his duty to do it in the national interest. Then we are going to see, as the Government that was responsible for putting him in that position, and as the Government that is equally responsible for terminating his services rather suddenly, that provision will be made for him.
Deputy Norton referred also to the question of some employee of the ex-Governor-General. They were, as far as I remember, some employees of the previous Governor-General. They were not employees of the State. If they had been State employees, no doubt the question of their absorption into other employment might be considered, but as they were not, the question of providing alternative employment cannot be regarded as a State obligation. Having regard to the fact that Mr. O Buachalla held the highest position in the State, that he drew only a fraction of his salary and that the total expenditure of his establishment during the term that he held it was less than £5,000 a year, whereas previously and up to the term of office of the late occupant, it had run up to £26,000 a year, there is clear proof that we are cutting down the emoluments now to the barest minimum consistent with attaching some degree of dignity and comfort to the position which Mr. O Buachalla held. It was fixed at a very minimum and there is no use in Deputy Norton or anybody else pretending that a person who occupied that position could live on the allowance of a Deputy or that, in the nature of things at that time, he could exist on any lesser sum or have smaller sums allowed for both his salary and expenses than were allowed when he took up office.
If I were to institute a comparison between the salaries and allowances of trade union leaders and the amount which persons in receipt of home assistance, or unemployment assistance, or persons who are in a very destitute state, receive from the State, I have no doubt that I could make a very interesting if rather invidious comparison. I have no desire, either in the case of Mr. O Buachalla, or anybody else, to go into these personal matters, but I certainly think that Deputy Norton has been distinetly unfair to Mr. O Buachalla when he made the suggestion that in some way that gentleman is responsible for raising this question or that he is in any way interested in getting any profit or emolument from the State. Deputy Norton has entirely neglected the simple question that we, as the Government of the day, are the persons in a position best fitted to judge this matter. Having all the facts before us, and having considered all the relevant circumstances, we consider that the provision that is proposed is proper and suitable, and we do not propose to go further into the personal issue or to go into the personal affairs of the gentleman in question.
Deputy MacEoin suggested that the Government should have done this in some other way. The Government have come before the Dáil in the manner in which this matter should be dealt with. We have no notion whatever of shriking public opinion on this question, or of shirking opinion here in the Dáil. We believe, when the question is fully understood, and when regard is had to the nature of this position, the emoluments of Mr. O Buachalla's predecessors and the circumstances under which he took up the office and eventually relinquished it, it will be considered by every person capable of examining this question in a judicial manner that we are only doing what is right and proper.
Really, this situation, since the publication of this Bill, has been grotesque, and the more we discuss it the more grotesque it becomes. I do not really know whether some new tradition has not grown up in this country now. There was a time in our fathers' and grandfathers' day, and in the day of those who went before them, when, if you did make a sacrifice for the country, and if you did get a certain amount of popular esteem for your patriotism in making that sacrifice, you considered yourself more than adequately rewarded for what you had done. You felt you had done your public duty and you made no more bones about it. But now, if you keep a dog that barked at a Black and Tan, you hurry in and call loudly for a pension. If you take a job for which you get £2,000 a year and expenses and a free house, when it is taken from you, you come in and clamour for a pension. And you not only want a pension, but you want a lump sum and your debts paid.
Has it ceased to be a meritorious thing to serve your country at all? I must say there are more disagreeable ways of serving your country than taking £2,000 a year and a free house and expenses, though some people may find that a great trial, a heavy cross to bear. Is the fact that in undergoing that trial they have served their country not sufficient reward without this elaborate financial provision being made? I would have no complaint at all if this decent man had taken the job and said: "The salary is £10,000 a year, and so long as that is going I will take it," put it in his pocket and made no bones about it, taking what the men before him got and asking no different treatment. But what has happened? In order to discredit and insult the predecessors of Mr. Buckley in this office, when Mr. Buckley was made Governor-General he was induced by the President of the Executive Council to make a handsome gesture, to vindicate President de Valera, in saying that the salary of the Governor-General was excessive. Mr. Dan Buckley said: "I will be glad to do the job for £2,000, and indeed that is ample," and there was a great virtue in that.
Comparisons were drawn between the rich man's Government, extravagant President Cosgrave lashing the public money on his personal friends, and ascetic, pure-souled President de Valera getting his patriotic supporter to come forward and accept a simple solatium. The whole country was lost in admiration at this wonderful gesture. There were pathetic speeches made from the Fianna Fáil Benches about the nobility and handsomeness of Mr. Dan Buckley, how he stepped into the gap and, being really one of the plain people, asked only a fair salary and would take no more the scorned Saxon shilling. But when you paint the Saxon shilling green, white and gold, Mr. Dan Buckley is prepared to take his share of it as well as everybody else, and not only that, but a larger share than anybody else asked for. He wants what no Governor-General ever expected to enjoy, a life pension.
So far as Mr. Buckley himself is concerned, I wish him long life to enjoy it. I hope he will beggar the Treasury before he lies down to die. I hope he will beggar the Treasury and that he will have health and happiness for many a long day. It is nothing short of grotesque when one throws one's mind back to the song and dance that was made about the disinterested rejection by this noblehearted patriot of the remuneration granted to other Governors-General. Now a Bill is being brought in to pay his debts, to give him a lump sum, and to furnish him with a life pension. My God, when you compare that with the position of men who were run off their holdings into poverty on the roadside and who never dreamed of asking the country for anything, but went to the roadside or emigrated because they believed it was their patriotic duty to do so; when you think of the men who ran out of this country with prices on their heads, who left their wives and families to fare what way they could; when you think of men who spent, in their sickness as well as in their health, long terms of imprisonment, hard labour and penal servitude, and never dreamed of asking anything of the country, what can you think?
Here you have a gentleman whose sole contribution in respect of this pension—do not let me be understood as in any way aspersing or belittling anything this man did in 1916; it was a very gallant thing for a man of his age to do, but that is not being considered in regard to this pension—whose sole activity is that he took a job at £2,000 a year, more than the man probably ever earned before in his life, that he got a comfortable house in Dun Laoghaire and found himself better off than he was before, and, as the Minister for Education says in moving accents, occupying the highest position in the State.
I do not know whether President de Valera will compliment the Minister for Education when he examines the Official Reports, because I think the President was labouring under the belief up to now that he occupies the highest position in the State. However, from this on he will have to realise that up to very recently he was playing second fiddle to Dan Buckley. I do not know how he will like that, but that is the fact as stated on the authority of a member of the Executive Council. For that immense sacrifice of occupying the first position in the State at £2,000 a year with allowances and a fine house, he is to have all his debts paid, debts contracted and arising out of the occupancy of that position, and is to get a lump sum of £2,000 and a pension of £500 a year. When you compare him with the unfortunate patriots who thought they were patriots in the last century, and when you compare their contribution to the fight to make this country free, and the reward they got with the historic labour that has been done to justify the award of this pension, and the measure of the award, it is certainly enough to make a cat laugh.
Nobody here wants to sneer at Mr. Buckley himself, and I believe if the decent man was let alone that he would have done this thing in the right way. He would have taken his £10,000 a year, and said nothing about it. But what makes me sick is the hypocrisy, the fraudulent hypocrisy of the Fianna Fáil Party who induced this poor old man to get up and make a show of himself before the whole country, and who did it to get a little bit of cheap political capital four years ago. They "cashed-in" for all they were worth at that time. They were the Government of the plain people; they did not believe in high salaries; they did not want any extravagances, and they now force this respectable man to come hat in hand clamouring to get what he magnanimously rejected four years ago. This is a very nasty business.
Let us clear up one point because an attempt is being made to confuse the issue. Mr. James MacNeill was the Governor-General of this country, and the late Mr. T.M. Healy was his predecessor in that office. They made no bones about taking their salary. They sought to have no part of their expenses removed from the Appropriation Account or from the Central Fund service when it was laid before the Dáil. An attempt is now being made by the Minister for Education, and by the Minister for Finance, to suggest that the finding that £6,000 of that £10,000 was spent in expenses arising out of the office of the Governor-General, was a finding made by the Executive Council. That simply is not true. It was a finding submitted by, I think, the Minister to the Revenue Commissioners who declined to accept his certificate, and insisted on their right to check over the Governor-General's accounts. They did so check them, and having done so declared that they found that £6,000 of his salary was properly charged to expenses and they then levied income-tax on the remaining £4,000, which brought Mr. MacNeill's salary and Mr. Healy's salary down probably to the neighbourhood of £3,000 a year or less.
Now, they made no complaint about that, and they desired the people to believe that they were getting £10,000 from the Treasury and all their expenses. They insisted on that appearing in the accounts to be debated in Dáil Eireann, and the matter was debated very eloquently by President de Valera. In column 493, volume 25 of the Parliamentary Debates for 1928, Mr. de Valera made his position very clear. He said:—
"We are against the spending of that £20,000 because we believe that there ought not to be a penny more than is absolutely necessary spent on any Administration that is not reproductive... We believe that from £10,000 to £15,000 can quite easily be saved on that establishment."
Then he proceeded to compare the Governor-General here with the President of the United States, and he said it was wrong. He made a speech of about half an hour, but it is not worth reading it because he repudiates it all in what he is doing at the present time. The point that I want to make is this: that those men insisted that whatever moneys they got would be made the subject of debate in this House, and that there would be no covering or concealment. They held themselves open to whatever weapons might be hurled at them by the Fianna Fáil Party, and plenty were so hurled.
This man is held up as a reformer, as the person who, in his rejection of the full salary, vindicates all that President de Valera had said when he was in opposition and vindicates the attitude adopted by the Fianna Fáil Party when in opposition. And now we have this Bill. It will leave a nasty taste in everybody's mouth, and to tell the truth the most regrettable part of it is that this decent man should be made the subject of as much ridicule and jest as he must be throughout the country when the people come to read this. If he had been let do it decently, nobody could have pointed the finger of scorn at him. I believe that, so far as Mr. Buckley is concerned, if he had been let alone he would have taken whatever salary attached to the post, and then nobody could have any reason to complain; but through the hypocrisy of the Fianna Fáil Party he is being manoeuvred into a position in which it is extremely difficult for him to justify himself. He will be left open to a great deal of adverse comment all through the country which really should not fall on his head, but which ought to be directed at the people who made a tool of him, and who manoeuvred him into the humiliating and shameless position in which he is found to-day. There are some matters arising on this Bill which can more properly be raised on the Committee Stage. I, therefore, propose to postpone any further observations that I have to make until the Committee Stage is reached.
The only thing grotesque about this debate is the futility of the Opposition. If I am in order in doing so, I think I may describe it as hot air, meant not for this House but for the country for the coming elections. The President has given the House some figures as to the saving in the amounts paid to the late Governor-General during his four years of office. He said they averaged about £4,000 per annum. During the years that the office was occupied by the late Mr. T.M. Healy and Mr. James MacNeill it cost the State about £26,000 a year. The comparative figures, therefore, are £26,000 a year for ten years or so, and £4,000 a year during the last four years. That means a difference of £22,000 a year. If you multiply this last figure by four, you get £88,000. The interest on that sum, at 5 per cent., would be over £4,000. The sum so saved to the State was sufficient to meet all that was given to the late Governor-General in the way of salary and expenses, and makes a good answer for the proposed payment of a gratuity of £2,000 and a pension of £500 a year to him.
You are a good business man.
It is a very easy thing to be a good business man when you have figures like that, and, no matter what attempt has been made by the Opposition to cloak the actual state of affairs, the figures are there for everybody in the country to see for them selves, and no attempt that has been made, or that can be made, to mislead the people, will succeed in doing so, so long as the figures are there. The figures prove that if Fine Gael, or Cumann na nGaedheal, as the Party was then called, were still in office, the office of the Governor-General would have cost this country, in the last four years, £104,000, as against the £16,000 that the country had to pay for that office while Mr. Buckley held it. These are the facts, and, no matter what speeches may be made, the people of this country will not be misled so long as they can see these figures for themselves.
I think it comes rather badly from the Fine Gael Party—or Cumann na nGaedheal, as it was formerly known— to pretend to get such a rude shock with regard to the granting of gratuities or pensions in this country. The granting of gratuities or pensions is not a new thing. It is certainly not a new thing so far as the Fine Gael Party were concerned. Big gratuities and big pensions were given in the past. They have not been attacked by us, and I shall not attack them now, but, according to the speeches we have heard to-day, one would imagine that it was the first time in the history of the Free State Government that such a thing as this had happened. One would imagine, to listen to the speeches that were made, that such a thing as this could not have happened in the time of the Fine Gael Government. We all know what happened; but perhaps we will be told that, if gratuities or pensions were given then, they were given for good service. I am not saying that they were not given for good service, but I do say that when this sum is being voted for Mr. Buckley, he certainly gave good service, so far as any of us can understand the meaning of good service, and so far as anybody can appreciate it.
We have been told all about the nice salary he had, and about the amount of expenses he had to incur. We are told that his expenses were very small, having regard to the nature of the position he held. It must be remembered, however, that he came forward at a time in this country when we believed that a certain advance had to be made, and that he did his job faithfully and well. We had to find somebody in whom we could place implicit faith, and, no matter how people may sneer now, anybody who knows Mr. Buckley's record in the past, knows that that position must have been very distasteful to him. Nevertheless, he did that job, and fulfilled his trust faithfully. We know, of course, that there are people, such as Deputy McMenamin, who do not understand such things. We know that there are people who think that anybody would jump at the chance of £2,000 a year, but many of us know that there are sufficient people still in this country who are not prepared to sacrifice their principles for the sake of £2,000 a year, and I think we can say that we are all glad to know that there are still people in this country, such as Mr. Buckley, who are not willing to put the question of money before the question of nationalism.
However, I do not want to go into the hypocritical statements that were made here to-day. As I have said, the plain, ordinary people of the country can see for themselves the difference between the money it would have cost this country, if somebody else were Governor-General, under the régime of the former Government, and what it has cost while Mr. Buckley held that office. When we took the lowest possible estimate of what the expenses of his office must have been, we found that he has not been able to save anything or to provide for the declining years of his life, and I hold that it is the duty of this country—and I think that every decent and honest Irishman will accept it whole-heartedly—to see that he, having accepted that post in accordance with the wishes of the President of the Executive Council, should have at least enough to live on in the declining years of his life. That is what we have come to this House to ask for, and we have come to ask for nothing more. I do not think there is anybody who does not appreciate what Mr. Buckley has done, and I must say that I do not think much of the hypocritical statements to which we have listened in this House to-day. As a matter of fact, I think that, in putting forward these hypocritical statements, the people who put them forward will not find the favourable reaction they hoped to get from the people of the country. Before I conclude, Sir, I should like to refer to one point in connection with the Governor-General's expenses, which was made by, I think, Deputy MacEoin.
No.
Well, it was made by some Deputy on the opposite side. All I wish to say is that these are household expenses. They would come out of the Central Fund in the ordinary way, and did not exceed £260 altogether.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neal.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Boland, Patrick.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corkery, Daniel.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- Lynch, James B.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- de Valera, Eamon.
- Dowdall, Thomas P.
- Flinn, Hugo V.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Goulding, John.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hayes, Seán.
- Jordan, Stephen.
- Keely, Séamus P.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Rice, Edward.
- Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C.
Níl
- Beckett, James Walter.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John Aloysius.
- Curran, Richard.
- Desmond, William.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dolan, James Nicholas.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Fitzgerald, Desmond.
- Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
- MacDermot, Frank.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGuire, James Ivan.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Norton, William.
- O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Mahony, The.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary.
- Rice, Vincent.
- Rowlette, Robert James.
- Wall, Nicholas.