I rise to oppose this motion because this is a motion which deals with the making of special provision in relation to the last holder of the office of Governor-General. We object to giving a large sum of money and to endowing the last holder of the office of Governor-General with a pension of £500 a year. I venture to think that this is one of the most extraordinary and one of the most audacious attempts —and I hope it will proceed no further than an attempt—ever made to endow an ex-follower of a political Party now in power with a pension for life, a pension which he has not earned by any service whatever. It is going back to a very old and very bad system. I suppose that there are few members in this House who are not familiar with the history of the Irish Parliament prior to the Union. I suppose that there are very few members in this House who are not aware that the Government of that day exercised its power largely through the distribution of patronage, which consisted in giving sinecure offices and pensions out of the Civil List. It was largely because of the exercise of that power of giving sinecures and of endowing political followers with pensions that that Parliament was brought into the disrepute into which it subsequently fell. It was through methods such as that that the Union was passed. We are getting back to that old system. I want to say that when a member of the Executive Council loses his post in the Executive Council and, because the Seanad is dissolved, gets a high post in the Civil Service, if that is not exactly a sinecure, it is getting perilously near to being one, and certainly it is unjust to the other civil servants. But here you have got a pension naked and unashamed. You are giving a pension for no other reason than the fact that while he was a member of this House he was a faithful follower of the Fianna Fáil Party. No other reason can be alleged.
Mr. Buckley was appointed to the post of Governor-General by His Majesty the King on the recommendation of the Executive Council. We were told in this House—and, I presume, correctly and truly told—that by a fixed agreement he was to receive a salary of £2,000 a year. He was also to be given the right to inhabit a suburban residence somewhere, I think, in the vicinity of Blackrock. I am not quite sure where the residence was. Those were the terms of his appoinment. Mr. Buckley had lost his seat in Kildare. His merits for this post of Governor-General seem to have been that he had voted faithfully with his Party while he was a member of this House. The people of his constituency having grown weary of him and having selected another person to represent them in the Dáil, this provision was made for him by the Executive Council. That seems to have been the sole reason why Mr. Buckley was selected for the post of Governor-General of this State. His salary was fixed, and on those terms Mr. Buckley entered into office. There were other terms, of course, We know that Mr. Buckley was appointed on condition that he never showed himself in public. Mr. Buckley was appointed on condition that he took no part in any State functions or in any State affairs. Mr. Buckley was appointed on condition that he lived the life of a hermit, the life of a recluse, and that nobody would be aware of his existence.
The sole function that he performed during his term of office was the signing of certain Bills sent up by the Oireachtas for his signature. I should say that, roughly, he signed about 50 Bills per annum during his four years of office. That would be something like 200 times he wrote his signature and, as a reward for writing his signature some 200 times, he received £8,000 in cash. He had nothing else to do. There was no entertaining; there was no acting as social head of the State, as he was supposed to act. He was living the life of a recluse. I do not know whether, when the Clerk of the Dáil brought Mr. Buckley up those various Bills for signature, he was allowed to see Mr. Buckley, or whether Mr. Buckley resided in his suburban residence as much under President de Valera's lettre de cachet or as much concealed from the public eye as the famous Man in the Iron Mask was concealed from the public eye under the lettre de cachet of Louis XIV. But there he was, receiving his £2,000 a year, and not showing himself or not being allowed to show himself or enter into the social life at all. Why, that man's £2,000 a year must have been £2,000 clear to pocket; £2,000 a year to be banked up; £2,000 a year to fall back on as a nice little nest-egg when his term of office was over. Surely one might say that Mr. Buckley in Blackrock had just as much chance or just as much opportunity of expending money as had St. Anthony in the desert. He was living the life of a hermit, and possibly, carrying it out to the full, living the life of an anchorite also. Anyhow, he was there in his complete seclusion, having nothing to do with his money except to bank it up for the happy period when his office would come to an end, and he could live for the rest of his life in comfort on his savings.
But what do we discover here? He is going to get something more. He is going to receive some £2,000 in hard cash. That is what we are being asked to vote for here. Why is he to receive £2,000 in hard cash? There can be no reason. His office is terminated. He had undertaken, I will not say to perform the duties of his office, but he had undertaken to be a titular Governor-General for the sum of £2,000 a year. The office was abolished. Nobody had guaranteed or nobody could guarantee or nobody had the power to guarantee that the office would last for five years, or that he would remain the occupant of the office for five years. Any other Executive Council coming into office during that period of five years could have advised His Majesty to remove Mr. Buckley, just as President de Valera advised His Majesty to remove Mr. McNeill. There was no contract of any kind. We were told here in this House that £2,000 was what he was to receive; that £2,000 was what he had agreed to take. Why is he getting a gratuity of £2,000? So far we have no explanation from the Government Benches. We had eulogies of Mr. Buckley. I am not concerned with Mr. Buckley personally. Assuming the eulogies are deserved what has that to do with this matter? The question for the House is: did Mr. Buckley, because he filled the office of Governor-General, receive to the last farthing every sum of money he agreed to take? Did he receive to the full the salary for which he agreed to fill the office? Why is he to receive £2,000 as a free gift from the pockets of the Irish ratepayers? But this goes further. It does not stop there. Mr. Buckley is to receive a pension of, roughly, £10 a week for the rest of his life. Why is that? What reason can there be for that? There was never any talk of the office of Governor-General being a pensionable office when Mr. Buckley was appointed; nor could it have been made a pensionable office by the Executive Council when Mr. Buckley was appointed. Only the Dáil could have made it a pensionable office.
Now we are asked, retrospectively, to make the office which Mr. Buckley received upon one set of terms, a pensionable office, and that Mr. Buckley should receive £500 a year—approximately £10 a week for the rest of his life—as a reward. For what? As a reward for doing nothing. As a reward for occupying a post and, by agreement, doing no work when he occupied it. We have pensionable offices in this State, but we are going back to a very old principle and to a very bad principle, when we start giving pensions when no work was done. There are pensions for civil servants, for national teachers, for civic guards and for the Army. That is right. Civil servants work in their offices, the teachers have taught during their term, Guards have been policing the country while active members of the Guards, and soldiers have offered and have been willing to fight for their country. In these cases pensions are given to men who worked until the period for work had passed. But Mr. Buckley is not a person who should ever receive a pension for doing nothing, at least in this country, where pensions have been payable for 150 years. We are asked here solemnly to vote the sum of £10 a week to Mr. Buckley for life as a reward for doing nothing. For what reason? I see none except that Mr. Buckley always was a very faithful supporter of the Government Party.
Of course, this opens up a delightful prospect. I am sure every member of the Fianna Fáil Party will vote for this motion with a heart and a half. There are elections coming on. The same fate that befell Mr. Buckley in Kildare might befall other Fianna Fáil members in other constituencies. Then they will be eligible for free gifts of £2,000, and eligible for pensions of £500 a year, because they will have done precisely the same thing as Mr. Buckley did to deserve £2,000 and £500 a year; they went up for constituencies in the Fianna Fáil interests and were beaten. I am sure some of the Fianna Fáil people hope that they may be some of the happy persons to be selected for treatment in the same generous and kindly fashion, and that they will vote willingly for this motion. But how about the persons who think they are custodians and trustees for the people, who think it is their duty to look after the people's money, and not to vote it away to any man, not as a reward for services, not as payment for work done, and not as a pension for work done after work has been completed, but as a free, voluntary, gratuitous gift? If this House does not think that a proper principle, and that free gifts should be made to individuals, the House should not vote for the motion. This Bill and the Bill which follows it is, to my mind, one of the very first examples of the evils which we prophesied would inevitably come to this State if we were to have Single Chamber Government.
This is not a Money Bill, and could not be so certified, I submit, as there are other provisions in it besides the gratuity to Mr. Buckley. Does anybody think that if a Bill like this came before the Seanad it would be passed? Because we have Single Chamber Government, and because there is no check upon the majority in this House, we are faced with this position, that a majority can come in and vote away public money as a reward to an ex-supporter of their Party, and, I daresay, a personal friend of a great many of them. That is not the way in which public finance should be looked after. It is my submission to the House— and I have weighed my words very carefully—that the only way in which this motion can be described, and the only way a Bill founded upon it can be described is as a shocking financial scandal. It is that the House is asked to vote for. I daresay the motion will be carried. I am sure it will be carried. Then we will have this terrible precedent set up for future Parliaments anxious to vote away to their political supporters Government funds, or anxious to endow their political supporters or personal friends out of public funds. We will have this Act, when it becomes law, cited as a precedent and, if at any time people in this House denounce any Bill voting gratuities out of the public purse to individuals who have done no work to deserve them, it will be pointed out that under the venal administration of President de Valera such venal acts could be done. It will, therefore, be an excuse for similar venality in the hands of a Government actuated by the same want of public principle as the present Government.
