I move amendment No. 1:
In sub-section (2), line 33, to delete paragraph (a).
The object of this amendment is to delete the provision in this Bill whereby a sum of £2,000 is to be paid to the ex-Governor-General. When discussing the provisions of this Bill on the Second Reading, I indicated that I had no personal objection whatever to the last holder of the office of Governor-General and that no remarks of mine were to be construed in any way as reflecting upon the standing of that gentleman in the community or his services to the nation in other years. My remarks on this and on the next amendment are not to be taken as in any way reflecting upon the last holder of the office of Governor-General. I want to discuss this, the next amendment, and, indeed, the whole Bill, in an impersonal way, and to deal with this matter as I would deal with it if provision were being made for some person other than Mr. Donal Buckley.
I said on the Second Reading that the provisions of the Bill were, in short, a complete recantation of everything that Fianna Fáil previously professed to stand for. The more one examines the Bill and the more one studies the gyrations of the Party in recent years, the more true that statement of mine becomes. At one time we used to have declarations by the Fianna Fáil Party that it was an unpatriotic thing for any Deputy to accept a salary of £360 per annum; that it was a sacrilege against the nation that any Deputy should dream of expecting a salary of £360 per annum. I think the proposal was then made that Fianna Fáil Deputies would not accept any salary but that, instead, they would put their entire salaries into a national fund for the development of Irish industries. I never saw a balance sheet relating to that fund. I do not know what dimensions the fund has reached. One gentleman who claimed to know something of its origin and its development told me that there were only two subscriptions and that a third person inquired was there any money in it for lending to people in distress.
After that declaration by Fianna Fáil, that it was quite improper for any person to accept a salary of £360 per annum, we had a further campaign by the Fianna Fáil Party through the country, a poster campaign, setting out at considerable length, and no doubt at considerable expense to themselves, a list of pensions which were being paid by the State to people who fought in the Black and Tan war and to people who served in the National Army. Fianna Fáil paraded the whole country and said: "These pensions are a disgrace; we do not stand for these pensions."
Some of the pensions were less than £100 per year, and were given to people in very poor circumstances, so that, from taking no salary as Deputies, they progressed to not standing for pensions to persons who served in the Black-and-Tan war and in the National Army. Then, of course, we had another grandiloquent declaration by Fianna Fáil that Ministerial salaries were too high and that it was an outrage on the nation that a Minister should receive £1,700 per annum and Parliamentary Secretaries £1,000 per annum. At the cross-roads throughout the country the Fianna Fáil Party denounced the payment of those salaries to Ministers, and when they came into office, they decided that the salaries of Ministers should be reduced to £1,000 per annum, and we had a certificate from the President of the Executive Council that £1,000 per annum was sufficient salary for a Minister. We have now reached the stage at which the Executive Council has gone on record as declaring that a salary of £1,000 is sufficient for a Minister for Justice, or any other member of the Executive Council, and when we consider this whole question of providing a pension and a lump sum to the ex-Governor-General, we must bear that declaration by the President and previous declarations by the Fianna Fáil Party carefully in mind. When the Second Stage of this Bill was being discussed, the Minister for Justice said that the Governor-General was receiving less than his predecessors. We all know that, but who, least of all Fianna Fáil, could possibly try to justify the payment of a salary of £10,000 to any Governor-General? Everybody knows that the previous Governor-General's salary was outrageous, that there was no justification whatever for paying it, and it carries very little weight for the Minister for Justice to tell us that the last Governor-General endeavoured to struggle on on a salary of £2,000, which is twice as much as the Minister for Justice is expected to live upon, although he performs a thousand times more work than the ex-Governor-General did.
Let us see on what ground this lavish expenditure and this bounteous generosity to the ex-Governor-General can be justified. On the last occasion we discussed this Bill, the Minister for Education made a long speech in which he endeavoured to show some justification for the munificence of the Government towards the ex-Governor-General. What are the facts of the situation? We are not considering now Mr. Buckley's record during his lifetime. We are considering the situation whereby a man, in 1932, was asked by the Government to accept a post at a salary of £2,000 per annum, plus expenses. The man agreed to accept the position at that salary, and it was in many respects a very generous salary. It was particularly generous when you remember that the man, apparently, consented to be virtually a prisoner in the mansion provided for him by the Government, and that he apparently carried out all instructions given to him faithfully, so far as the Government was concerned. So far as social amenities are concerned, the man may admittedly have imposed terrific sacrifices upon himself, but let us remember that the man was paid a salary of £2,000 per annum for whatever duties he was supposed to have discharged in that office.
What are the duties of a Governor-General? In the main, they consist of signing a Bill and living as comfortably as possible. A salary was provided in order that he could enjoy the comfort of a country mansion, and his monastic life there was occasionally interfered with by the Clerk of the Dáil calling and saying: "A Bill to be signed, sir." When you count the number of Bills to be signed, however, and even give rein to your imagination in seeing what the Governor-General might have done during those four years, the most you can get on the credit side, so far as he was concerned, is that he signed a number of Bills. When you calculate the number of Bills he signed, you find that almost every time he signed his name he cost the State, at his rate of remuneration, about £80. I know of nobody else in the country who contrives to get £80 from another person simply because he signs his name to a Bill. I would have thought that treating the Governor-General in that lavish way was dealing pretty decently with the man from the material point of view, if you look at it only from that standpoint; and living in these circumstances, performing that very menial task and not being greatly encumbered with laborious toil, the Governor-General who had been paid £2,000 per year for four years, should not have very much complaint if at the end of that period the link that kept him in that office was suddenly snapped.
After all, this ex-Governor-General surely knew the President's mind. He scarcely expected that Fianna Fáil, a Republican Party, would continue a Governor-General in office for ever, and he surely knew that all the time he was sitting on a kind of republican powder barrel, that any day it might go up and he might be shot back to the civilian life from which he emerged. The Governor-General, under Fianna Fáil administration, had no right to expect that he had the title deeds of that office for ever, and it must, therefore, not have come as any great surprise to the occupant of that office when he discovered that the Government which appointed him had decided to abolish his position. We reach a stage, at all events, at which, having surveyed the office, the duties attached to the office and the functions performed in the office by the Governor-General, we find that during a period of four years, merely for signing his name to Bills to the tune of about £80 a time, the Governor-General amassed the sum of £8,000. I do not know of anybody else in the State service who manages to get that sum of money from the State for such menial duties in such a short period. I know that thousands of people in the State cannot get a fraction of that from the Government for duties much more onerous, and with much greater domestic and citizen responsibilities than the occupant of this office.
What, therefore, justifies this generosity on the part of the Government? It cannot be said that the Governor-General was overworked, that he was appointed to this office with the title deeds to it for life or that he was led to believe that the office would last for a longer period than it, in fact, did last. The Governor-General, a shrewd old man, must have been well aware of his position in relation to that particular office and it must in no sense have come as a surprise to him that the Government had decided to abolish the post. He was put into the office to do what the Government desired and I rather imagine that one of the first admonitions addressed to him by the President, on taking up that office, was that the Government had no great desire to continue it in existence and that one of these fine days he must be prepared to wake up and find himself an humble citizen once more.
On the Second Reading of this Bill, the Minister for Education, in an endeavour to justify this proposal, talked about the services for the ex-Governor-General during 1916. We are not, in this Bill, remunerating the ex-Governor-General for his services in 1916. This Bill has nothing whatever to do with the ex-Governor-General's services in 1916 any more than it has anything to do with the services of anybody else in 1916. This Bill is designed to reward the Governor-General not for what he did in 1916 but for the leisurely duties he performed between 1932 and 1936. It is simply trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the people to pretend that the ex-Governor-General's services in 1916 have anything whatever to do with the provisions of a Bill of this kind. When we try to find out the real justification for the generosity of the Executive Council, the only explanation we can discover is that given by the Minister for Education on the Second Reading debate, when he said:—
"In the particular circumstances of the time it was an extremely difficult position for Mr. Buckley to accept. It is because we realise that he made a big sacrifice that we are making this provision now."
He went on to say:—
"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."
Taking the Minister for Education as speaking the mind of the Government, we find that the reason for this generosity towards the ex-Governor-General is that he made a big sacrifice and that provision must now be made for him. Will somebody tell us what sacrifices he made between 1932 and 1936? We have loose talk about the sacrifice made by the ex-Governor-General but nobody has attempted to give us an example of these sacrifices. If it is now contended that it is a sacrifice to take a job—a comfortable, leisurely job—of that kind at £2,000, then I do not know anybody in this country who would not gladly make that sacrifice with 1,000 times more avidity than was displayed by the ex-Governor-General. What were the sacrifices made by the ex-Governor-General? If they are so obvious to Ministers, surely they ought not to be so secretive about them. They ought to let the whole community, in justice to the name of the man who made the sacrifice, know what the sacrifices were. While we have had a lot of loose talk about sacrifices, we have not had the slightest indication from the Government as to what type of sacrifice was made. It seems now to have been a sacrifice for the Governor-General to go to the trouble of counting the £2,000.
I protested against the Second Reading of this Bill because I considered it was an outrageous Bill. To-day, the Minister for Justice tried to muster up a little indignation at the sentiments expressed on the Financial Resolution. I should like to hear the Minister for Justice or the Minister for Finance on this Bill if he were on the Opposition Benches. All the indignation the latter Minister displayed yesterday would be multiplied a thousandfold if he were on the Opposition Benches, and this were a Fine Gael instead of a Fianna Fáil Bill. The Government knows perfectly well that, so far as the community is concerned, nobody can discover a reason for the introduction of a Bill of this kind. I do not think that the Party can be terribly happy over its provisions.
