Deputy Cogan moved to report progress on the last occasion. It was my impression that Deputy Davin had finished his speech and that Deputy Cogan moved the adjournment. However, if Deputy Davin had not concluded, he may resume now.
Committee on Finance. - Vote No. 63—Army (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the motion:—
That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration.—(Deputy O'Higgins).
Deputies Davin and Cogan rose.
As a matter of fact, Sir, to be quite candid, I asked Deputy Cogan to move the adjournment, but I had not finished myself. However, I shall give way to Deputy Cogan if he wishes, but Deputy Murphy, in my hearing, moved the adjournment.
So did Deputy Cogan, in my hearing.
Well, Sir, I looked up the Official Report.
I call on Deputy Davin.
There are two or three points on which I should like to have some information from the Minister in connection with this Vote. On previous occasions in this House questions were addressed to the Minister for Defence, or to the previous Minister for Defence, asking for the number of additional Army officers and men who had been called up following on the outbreak of the European war, and the Minister said that it was not in the public interest to disclose that information. Will the present Minister now tell the House, the members of which, equally with himself, are responsible for the expenditure of the ratepayers' money, what was the number of officers and men who were called up to the Army subsequent to the outbreak of the present war and what was the number of these officers and men who were subsequently demobilised under that particular sub-head, if it is a sub-head, in the Estimate? I should also like to hear from the Minister how he arrived at the rates of wages or salaries, if you like, of the officers and men who were recruited for the coast watching service. He has certain figures here showing the cost for the employment of lieutenants, second lieutenants and members of the crews, which is dealt with under sub-head P (2). Then lower down on the same page, there is an item connected with additional pay provided for officers and men. Would the Minister give us the inclusive cost, or charge, or rate of pay, per week, for lieutenants, second lieutenants and members of the crews recruited for the Marine Coast Watching Service, and would he also tell us how their rates of pay, salaries or subsistence allowances were arrived at in such cases? I should like to know whether the lieutenants and second lieutenants are men who have had marine or merchant service qualifications; whether the men in charge of these patrol vessels and so on are men who hold masters' tickets—I am sure the Minister understands what I mean by that.
What qualifications have the men in charge of the vessels or the officers immediately under them in work of this kind, either at home or abroad, and when the rates of pay or salaries or subsistence allowances were fixed were they related to the rates of pay and conditions of service of the men presently employed in the merchant service either across-Channel or foreign-going?
I would also like the Minister, if he would not mind doing so, to state whether there has been any increase in the figures provided for ration allowances of N.C.O.s and men, whether the rate per day or per week has been increased since the outbreak of the European war or since the cost of living has gone up, as it has gone up by about 20 to 25 per cent. or, if no increased provision has been made for the N.C.O.s and men under the heading of rations or allowances in lieu of rations, whether any such proposal is at present under consideration. These are a couple of matters I would like the Minister to deal with when he is replying.
It is a matter of regret that the National Army is not as popular as it should be with the people of Ireland at the present time. We know that in the past, when this country was seeking its independence, people looked forward to an Irish Army as something glorious, something which they would be proud of. To-day if people think of the Army at all they think of it as a huge devouring monster that is consuming £3,300,000 per annum of the taxpayers' money. If the Army is not popular to-day I would like to say that it is not due to any fault of the officers or men of the Army. I do not think there are any soldiers in the world who are more efficient than the Army of this country. I would like to say also that wherever the Army has been brought into contact with the civilian population or has had to interfere with the civilian population the Army has always shown itself very courteous and efficient. I think that is a matter which reflects credit both upon the officers and men of the Army. What is causing widespread complaint throughout the country is the enormous cost of this service and people are asking what useful purpose does this enormous expenditure serve. We know that since 1931 the Army has increased in cost from, I think, £1,100,000 per annum to £3,300,000. The cost has been practically trebled.
The common people of the country, looking at the matter from an ordinary common-sense point of view, will ask what benefit do we derive from this enormously increased expenditure? The Army is called upon to serve two functions, that is, to protect this country from external aggression and to maintain or to assist in maintaining order and upholding the State. As far as protecting this country is concerned, I think it is generally agreed that our Army cannot do anything effective from the point of view of protecting this country from any big military Power that would think of taking this nation under its protection. I think that an Army costing £1,100,000, as in 1931, an Army much smaller and much less expensive than we have at present, would be just as effective as an Army costing £3,300,000. If any big military Power were to consider taking over this country they would not worry very much as to whether our Army was one of 4,000 men or 5,000 men or one of 12,000 or 13,000. It would not make any material difference. I think that both from the point of view of resisting external attack or of dissuading a belligerent Power from invading this country it does not matter very much whether we have an Army of 4,000 or 5,000 or an Army of 13,000 or 14,000. If we proposed maintaining an Army sufficient to prevent a foreign Power from considering the invasion of this country I think we would have to consider raising an Army of at least 50,000 and probably 100,000 men. An Army of 12,000 or 13,000 men would not make any material difference and would not be taken into consideration by any Power that might consider it desirable to invade this country.
The second purpose for which an Army might be required is the preservation of order. If the Government claim that the increased expenditure this year as compared with 1931 is necessary in order to maintain order in this country, that, I think, is the strongest indictment that could be brought against the present Government. We must remember that in 1931 we had a Government which was not as popular, I think, or did not claim to be as popular with the forces that would be likely to cause disorder, forces of ultra-nationalism, as the present Government claim to be. Yet, in 1931 that Government was able to maintain order with an Army costing one-third of what the present Army costs to-day and that Government had to uphold a Constitution which was not as attractively worded as the Constitution which we have at present.
Since 1931 many constitutional changes and many other changes have been brought about at great expense to the people in order to meet the claims of those who profess to be ultra-national or ultra-patriotic and in spite of all those efforts that have been made by the present Government to satisfy the claims of the republicans and other people who want to separate this country from Great Britain, we have to face the fact that to-day the taxpayers are called upon to pay £2,000,000 a year more than under the previous Government. That, I think, is a terrible condemnation of the present Government. It shows that in some way or other the country has deteriorated. It shows that the Government have failed to increase the civic spirit of those people and to intensify the desire for law and order in this country and, as a result, they are compelled to inflict upon the taxpayers an added burden of £2,000,000 a year as compared with 1931. I think that is a matter which the Government should take seriously to heart. The taxpayers of the country are not prepared to go on shouldering that enormous burden for all time, and the immediate task of the Government should be to consider ways and means of bringing the cost of the Army back to what it was in 1931.
As I have said, the Army serves no useful purpose in regard to external aggression. I have no doubt whatever that if this country were attacked by any external Power, the Army, for its size, would give a fair account of itself. It would do as much as could be expected from it, but the most that any Army of, say, less than 50,000 men, properly equipped, could do is to make a protest against invasion of the country. It might be a very heroic protest, as I am sure it would, from what I know of our Army, but it would be ineffective and, therefore, the immediate duty of the Government is to bring down the cost of the Army to the 1931 figure, to set about reducing the number of men in the Army and to set about the constitution of a small permanent Army—an Army, as I would suggest, of men who regard service in the Army as their permanent employment. I think that taking men into the Army for a few months, for a year, or even for two years, is not desirable. If the Army is to be as effective as it could be, it should be composed of men who look upon service in it as a career and who are prepared to devote the greater part of their lives to service in the Army. They could always be relied upon to be 100 per cent. loyal to whatever Government the people of Ireland might elect and would act as a stabilising influence in this country.
I notice provision in the Estimates for what are known as military lands and for the employment of herds. My opinion with regard to military service is that members of an army always have a certain amount of leisure, and it is right that that should be so. An army is a machine, if you like, which is used only in time of emergency and, therefore, the greater part of a soldier's time is occupied in waiting for such an emergency. On that account, soldiers must have a considerable amount of leisure, and I think that leisure could be usefully employed by the Army authorities by the provision of a certain amount of work, by acquiring and utilising a certain amount of the land adjoining any military barracks, so that members of the Army would be given an opportunity of engaging in useful civilian employment during their leisure moments, and acquiring skill in employment which would be useful to them in after life. They could also be given opportunities of acquiring skill in various trades, in horticulture, and so on, which would make them more useful citizens when they have served their period in the Army, and also help to reduce to a certain extent the cost of the maintenance of the Army. We read in the Press that the French Army has been employed on a vast scheme of cultivation of crops in the war zone, and I do not see why it should not be considered desirable that in times of peace—and this country is still at peace—the Army should be encouraged to do useful work of that kind. It may be suggested that every available moment of a soldier's time is taken up by the ordinary guard duties and training, but I think that cannot be possible, because I do not think it possible to employ the time of a soldier continually in training. Military training imposes a certain strain, and relaxation from that strain is required, and I suggest that a change of work is as useful and desirable for members of the Army as sending them out on recreation.
There is one other matter in connection with the Department of the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures. I notice that the Minister is not here, and he was not here on the last day the Estimate was before the House. His time is probably so completely taken up with co-ordinating the various defensive measures of the country that he cannot find it possible to afford time to come to the House. One of the duties of the Minister is in respect of the censorship service, and there is in charge of this service a controller with a salary of £1,500 per year and a chief Press censor with a salary of £700, rising to £800. While I agree that in war-time censorship is necessary to a certain extent. I am not satisfied that the duties of the censor have been fairly exercised.
When a body of citizens in the country decided to press for an improvement of their conditions by withholding their supplies until they had secured these better conditions, the Press censor intervened to prevent that body of useful citizens from stating their case and explaining to the people, through the Press, that they intended to organise a strike and setting out the purposes for which they intended to strike. By the intervention of the Press censor, a great deal of confusion was caused amongst the general public, inasmuch as they were not aware of the step taken. There have been a number of other strikes in the country and in the city since then, but the Press censor has never exercised his authority against any section of the community except the farmers. That is a very remarkable situation—why the farmers should be singled out for penalisation in this way.
Some of the officers of the Minister's Department are constituted as a military tribunal. In connection also with that farmers' strike, I noticed a number of farmers were brought before the Military Tribunal.
The Minister for Defence has nothing to do with that. It is a matter for another Minister.
I merely want to remark that in regard to other strikes where violence was used, such as the stopping and the burning of lorries, nobody was brought before the Military Tribunal. I do not know whether the Minister for Defence had anything to do with the mobilisation or the calling out of a section of the Army to commandeer farm produce during the strike and to bring that farm produce into the city to feed the elephants in the Zoo—that was the excuse which was given for the commandeering of the farm produce. I have never heard of the Army being used for that purpose before. The elephants in the Zoo may not be the only creatures in this country who suffer from hunger. I have never heard of the Army being used to collect food, even one crust of bread, for any of the poor in the city. Apparently it was considered good policy to use the Army to commandeer farm produce in order to feed wild animals. I think actions of that kind tend to bring the Army into disrepute. I suggest the immediate task of the Minister is to scale down the personnel of the Army, to let any man who has an aptitude for civilian life go back to it, and concentrate in the service of the State only those men who have made up their minds to remain in the Army for a considerable number of years and who are likely to give permanent and efficient service.
Though we have had during previous debates—not, I understand, during this debate—two Ministers whose salaries are provided for in this Estimate, and though, on previous occasions, the House pressed, and pressed very hard—I do not think there was a single speaker on these benches who did not press for information on certain matters—we got absolutely no information of the slightest value from either of the Ministers concerned. I can well conceive that the present Minister thinks he has two duties to fulfil. One is to look after the general administration of the Army or, as it seems to some of us, to mess about with the Army. That duty he fulfils according to his lights, as his predecessor did. He has another duty, however, and that he makes no effort even to pretend to fulfil. It is a duty both to this House and to the Army, namely, to make some attempt to justify a sum of money amounting to close on £4,000,000. I am referring to the Vote that we are discussing formally at the moment, but I called attention before to the fact that under other Votes there were other large sums of money voted for the Army, and if you deduct from the total sum of £4,400,000, which is the amount that is being voted for Army purposes, £600,000 roughly, the amount spent on Army pensions, you come to a sum of about £3,800,000.
Although frequently he has been challenged on every debate, challenged by practically every speaker, to show that he is giving any kind of value for the increased expenditure which he has sponsored and which his predecessor was sponsoring for the last 21 months, or seven months, as the case may be, he has never attempted, not once, to show that he has given any return to the nation for the money that he is demanding from the nation. Again and again he has been challenged, but he has been silent on this point when giving his so-called replies to the debates. He has dealt in his replies with a few minor points that will usually be raised in the course of any debate, but the main issue he has shirked, and that is neither fair to the House nor to the Army. If he wants to be fair to the Parliament or to the Army, I suggest he does make some attempt to prove that this money is being usefully spent. Deputy Cogan talked about popularity and unpopularity. I am not discussing that. The people, in fairness to the Army, should know why this additional sum is necessary.
I do not know whether this is a set practice or not, but I do stress that no two Ministers can show more clearly by their attitude their contempt for Parliamentary institutions than the present Minister and the other of the heavenly twins who sometimes sits beside him. I am sorry that the other heavenly twin, the other Minister, is absent at the moment. His sole duty up to the present, so far as we can see, has been to come here and sit beside the present Minister and, so to speak, hold his hand while this Minister was holding his silence. That has been his whole contribution since the great swopping of Ministries took place last September, at the outbreak of the war. I am not sure that this open contempt for Parliamentary institutions is not part of a settled policy on the part of the Government. They can, undoubtedly, make a very serious contribution to the so-called breakdown of Parliamentary institutions in this country, and they are doing it, but that a Minister should come here after repeated challenges, introduce an Estimate of such magnitude and make no effort to justify the amount of money in that Estimate, confining himself to a few statements about figures and refusing to tackle the main question, is something that we must emphatically protest against.
What is the justification for the expenditure? The Minister cannot say he was not asked often enough. Taking the debate that took place here last March, I think every Deputy who spoke from these benches definitely put that question to him. What is the justification? I would advise the House to read the Minister's so-called reply to that particular question. What was it? Something like this: Last September the Government had a responsibility, and it was a heavy responsibility. We admit the responsibility was heavy, but what was not shown to us was how the Government shouldered that responsibility. What was not proved to us was that the manner in which they tried to shoulder that responsibility was the least bit of good to the nation. He pointed out that other small nations were calling up their man-power and, therefore, apparently we were to do it. He has been asked since then on every occasion on which it was possible to ask him, what benefit accrued to the nation from that calling up of man-power. I have given you his answer. Did he attempt to show that that increased man power in the slightest degree strengthened our defences against actual or potential attack? He did not. I have given you, I think, and I challenge the Minister to show the opposite, the whole case practically of his reply, with this vague addition that it was necessary to provide for the security of this country. What he did not say was how man-power without modern ammunition and equipment would contribute to the safety and security of this country. Having dealt with a few minor points, in his innocence he omitted to deal with the main challenges and he finished by saying: "I think I have dealt with all the points that have been raised." He said that, having specially omitted the two principal ones.
He has not shown us that the mobilisation of last September was justified. He has not shown us that doubling or trebling your man power, and not your ammunition, is a contribution in the present conditions of warfare to the safety of the country. He did not attempt to do it, and then he calmly tells this House that he thinks he has answered all the points raised. The one thing he forgot was to justify his own Estimate. That was his attitude last March. But he had an opportunity between that date and this to sit down and consult his advisers and ask them to put up a case. It was his duty to do so, seeing the amount of criticism levelled at him on that occasion, not merely to assert that the Government with a full sense of its grave responsibility thought this was an excellent thing to do. It was pointed out to him then that there was no justification and no vindication of the step taken by the Government. The mistake made in mobilising was pointed out at the time it took place, and on every opportunity which was since given to the Deputies of this House. He should immediately have tried to right the situation. In part gradually the situation was to be put right. One after another the men were to be driven back out of the Army into the civil employment they had left. But having discovered their mistake in calling up the men, they did not tackle the situation as logically or as drastically as they should have. To save their faces the pace of leaving the men out of the Army had to be slowed down. For that immense expenditure had to be kept up. At any rate, what the Minister has never done at any period was to show that our Army, no matter what the numbers were, was properly equipped to repel a serious attack from any invader, any great modern power. He has not shown that our Army is at all equipped to face that situation. He has shirked that issue whenever it was put before him.
I put it to him that whether you have an Army of 5,000 or 14,000 men, if they are not equipped in modern fashion you are simply sacrificing their lives and nothing else. Is there any indication that we are equipped? Can the ammunition promised be secured? Has there been any advance in that direction? Will he think it necessary to make a case for the expenditure? He need not; for he can rely on those Deputies who will vote any sums of money that the Government will ask without putting to themselves the awkward question whether any value is given for the expenditure of that money. Of course, he will do nothing of that kind. But in fairness to the Army, he should make a case for the expenditure, and he should show to the House that it is not pure waste of money, as the bulk of the people believe it is. That has been stated in this House again and again, and no attempt made by the Minister to refute that case for himself, or for his absent colleague.
I do not know what the policy of the Government is. I am not going to ask the Minister what his defence policy is. I do not believe he has any. The Government may pretend that they acted on information when they mobilised last September. If so they communicated that information to nobody. They gave no indication that they had any information which the general public had not that compelled them to state that the mobilisation that they were responsible for was justified. Is it the view of the Government, from the secret information which they had not got, that there was a danger of invasion last September and that that danger is diminished to-day? Is that the view of the Government? Possibly the Minister will think he is asked to give away European secrets if he attempts to answer a question like that. If that is not the view of the Government, what is the justification for mobilising last September and cutting down now? There was no justification at any time for calling up those men. It dislocated business. It interfered with the ordinary life of the country, and there was a huge expenditure of public money. I can only repeat that the Government found itself in an unaccustomed situation last September, and their only means of convincing the country that they were doing something to meet the crisis was by spending public money.
It now appears from the Estimate before us that they have not a proper equipment for the Army. If any crisis occurred in the way of invasion, what is the good of 14,000 men if you have not armed them in modern fashion? You were going to spend large sums on equipment and on armaments and you have not spent it. Why? Because you could not. It was not such a long time ago that the Minister told us he was going to get ammunition. He was asked where. He said he would not tell where. I should say that to anybody looking at his Estimates the answer is quite clear. He did not know. Perhaps he had ordered. Apparently he was still under the impression that ordering was the same as getting the ammunition. We do not know now when he will get the ammunition. At a time when he thinks it is necessary to keep a large Army, double the size that would be necessary for internal purposes in this country, he can say that the great bulk of the money that he is to spend on ammunition and warlike stores is not going to be spent within the next 12 months. He budgets for £400,000 this year, but £2,000,000 extra is to be spent, the Lord knows when. He has placed contracts. When are they going to be fulfilled? Let any man put himself that question and the answer is obvious—at the end of the war.
There is going to be an expenditure of several millions on military stores but we shall have to wait until after the war to get these stores to meet any crisis that may arise in the country. Then we will probably get a good bargain. Probably you will get twice as much for your money as now. That is as good as any defence the Minister has made for his policy up to the present. But it is simply playing with the situation. I presume the Minister knows there is a war on and that countries have been invaded. He has seen the extraordinary part played by modern inventions, by mechanised methods of warfare, by aeroplanes and so on. What provision has he made for these things? Does he think that man power alone, not properly armed will be able to do any of the things that he pretends this Army is to be called upon to do, namely, preserve our independence against a serious invasion from a big power or preserve our neutrality? Countries much better armed in a modern way than we are were not able to do it, and yet the only contribution that has been made to the defence of this country is to increase expenditure, not bothering whether he gets any return in the way of increased efficiency to deal with a dangerous situation or not. That he leaves to the future.
We have a peculiar situation as regards the matter of material. A sum of £460,000 is estimated to be spent this year. We do not know whether it will be spent or not. The Minister or his predecessor estimated expenditure before, but it is not spent. We were able to discuss that last March, slightly more than a month ago, when on a Vote for £1,000,000 we simply had to take a token Vote for £10 because of the interference with the spending capacity of the Minister in that respect. Anyhow, he estimates, and only estimates remember. He does not know whether he will get it or not. The £460,000 roughly covers the purchase of the following warlike materials. We have first the aviation section. Would the Minister tell us the number of aeroplanes and the type, or is that a secret that dare not be told to this House, that must be kept from the British from whom we must purchase them, or from the Germans who certainly seem to have a great deal more information about the defence of this country than the Minister has given to this House?
Will he refuse to give the information to the House because it might endanger the defence of this country if he did? The various warlike stores are set out. For fighting vessels there is the figure of £172,000. One reason, and one good reason, for these fighting vessels is that they give his colleague the appearance of something to do, but it is mere appearance, because the Minister himself is responsible for it, not Deputy Aiken. Even the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures apparently will not be busy upon that. What he is busy on, well, who knows? This House was never told, but as that is a separate item I can revert to it afterwards.
We then get the statement that the sum of £2,196,000 odd is in respect of outstanding orders against which deliveries are not expected within the financial year 1940-41. When are they expected? We are not told. All that we are told is that they are not expected in the coming 12 months. As I say, the best chance is after the war. Then you will have done something to justify your existence as a Government, that faced this enormous European and world crisis in a way that it should be faced. See what they are! You would imagine they are things that ought to be there if we were serious. I do not say that even if you were to get them to-morrow they would bring our Army up to a position to stand against the mechanised and modern methods of modern armies. It is not a question of the capacity of our officers or of the bravery of our officers and our men. That is not in question, but men with practically bare hands cannot fight against the modern machinery of warfare. It is not a slur on the Army to say that because it cannot do it, but it is a slur on the Minister that he should expect them to do it.
"Guns and carriages, £850,000"—to be delivered when? To enable them to face the crisis? Has the Minister arranged with the belligerents on both sides when the crisis is going to hit this country? Has he asked them not to do it anyhow until the 12 months are up, because he may hope to get this equipment then, though he does not say it? There is the figure of £750,000 for ammunition and so on down the list. £148,000 for aircraft. Those who have taken the slightest interest in military matters—I confess I know nothing about them and I am only speaking as a Parliamentary Deputy—know the rate at which all these modern machines of warfare and destruction can get out of date—aeroplanes particularly. Is the situation this, that these things may be delivered to us when they are old models, and is that the contribution the Minister has to make? He has already contracted for the delivery of certain things. I presume the contract is there—so he says, anyhow. It would look very much as if what he has contracted to get may very well be out of date, if he gets them before the end of the war. They may be very much out of date by the time he gets them, and there are obvious reasons that that is quite likely.
I have asked the Minister for the number of aeroplanes. I do not expect he will give the information. He has never given information to this House on more important matters than that. I think he resents this House asking why nearly £4,000,000 should be voted for defence services. He thinks that because of its wisdom the Government feels the weight of responsibility so much that it is almost crushed under it, that is enough, and that the only business of the House is to keep silent and to vote the money. All that we do ask is, if we vote money, that at least an attempt should be made by the Minister to show that value is given for the money, but he has consistently shelved that question. I think it was another Minister, the supreme Minister of all, who said on one occasion:
"Oh! if we did not take these measures, and anything happened, you would be the first to criticise us."
Was that the reason the Government mobilised the Army—to escape criticism and not to defend the country? What we criticised you for is that you took measures that were in our view completely unnecessary and exceedingly costly, and that you never made a single effort to show that these costly efforts were of the slightest use. If you think that you are justified in plunging this country into big expenditure so that people cannot say to you afterwards: "When the crisis came why did you not do something?"—that is not a sufficient excuse, I put it to the Minister, for spending millions of public money now, and contracting to spend more millions of public money.
We come, then, to the extraordinary, the occasional apparition that we see in this House—the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures. The Minister who is in charge of this Vote was asked last March by several Deputies on this side of the House, what were the functions of that Minister, and what was the reason for his existence as a Minister. In his reply the Minister said: "I think I dealt with all the questions raised," but did not say one word on that. The question was raised by several Deputies. I opened the debate myself, and I stressed the importance of an answer to that question. The question was also raised by Deputy MacEoin, Deputy Cosgrave and Deputy Linehan. The Minister was pressed to give an answer, and he could not give an answer. Anyhow, he did not give an answer. Therefore, we must assume that he could not give an answer. What does this Minister co-ordinate? The Cabinet, is it? Is he a kind of Minister for neutrality or something in the Cabinet, or what is he?
What is his justification there? Surely not the answer that he gave by way of interruption in the debate when he said: "I gave my colleague, the Minister for Defence, a statement to make about the censorship." We are to be solemnly told here that it was necessary to appoint Deputy Aiken Minister for Censorship, and give him the name of Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures. Was it a way of getting rid of him and pensioning him? What does he do? Does the Minister think that the House and the country are not entitled to an answer to that plain question? What does he co-ordinate? Is it the navy and Army? I see that the Muirchu is no longer what it was, but is now fully brought up to date and is under the charge of the Minister, and that the people on it must have military experience. Apparently, his fellow Minister has nothing to do with that. The small craft, the M.I. and so on, are under the Minister for Defence. So far as we know, the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures has nothing to do except to come in here and hold the hand of the Minister for Defence while the Minister is refusing to give information.
He will not even give it now.
You are asking too much of the man. There are limits to what any man can do. He is not any longer Minister for Defence, but so far as silence is concerned, his successor certainly went further than he went, and that is a great length. Here we have what really amounts, so far as the public life of this country is concerned, to a scandal; I mean in this sense, that on several occasions the Government have been challenged to justify the Minister for Co-ordination of Defensive Measures, and they have never tried to do so. Their conception of a parliament is that Parliament has no right to raise this question, and their conception of the country is that the country has no right to ask this question. The one duty of the country, so far as the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures is concerned, is to provide the portion of the taxes necessary to pay his salary. Its duty and its rights begin and end there.
I ask the Minister for Defence to say what are the functions of that Minister. He is not the Minister without Portfolio, or is he? When that extraordinary provision was being made in a Bill before this House I must confess that I thought the Tánaiste had his eye on that as being an excellent job for him. I see the Parliamentary Secretary almost agrees with me in that. But now I am not so sure that it has not been gripped from him. I will put it that I think the Tánaiste would be much happier as Minister without Portfolio than in showing his great financial ability in bringing this country through the crisis in financial affairs that threatens the whole world. But apparently the post is occupied. Therefore we must assume that the counsel and advice of Deputy Aiken are so important—looking after the Cabinet to see that they do not fall into any mistakes—that he is really the Minister without Portfolio. If he has that power of counsel he certainly has concealed it remarkably well from this House. He has not given any counsel, advice or information to this House that he could possibly avoid giving. It is amazing how much information he can avoid giving in these respects.
As I say, there are things in his duty to the country which the Minister takes lightly—I am not sure that he takes his duty to the Army any more seriously—that the Minister ought to consider. I can never convince myself that there is any real effort to cut down expenditure. I called attention on the last occasion, and I do so now, to the fact that all the expenditure—I am leaving out military pensions—for which the Army is responsible is not shown in this Vote. You will get other large sums of money when you turn to the Estimates of the Office of Public Works. I wonder whether all this expenditure is necessary. You have now, counting the large barracks, almost as many barracks here as in the British time. Is that necessary? I am speaking purely as a layman, and I wonder is it wise to have your Army scattered all over these barracks. Do you think that for an Army of 6,000 or 7,000—the number you had up to the crisis and which you met so ably last September by this mobilisation order (!) —all these barracks were necessary? Were new ones necessary? I have heard an excuse—I do not know what the value of it is—given by a layman for what occurred last Christmas in the raid on the Fort, namely, that we have not sufficient men to go round to do all these fatigue duties—I think that is the technical term. We have not sufficient men to go round. We have them in every barracks. If we had fewer barracks we would have less men engaged in that kind of work and they might be doing more useful work. There certainly was a place where, I presume, they could have done useful work last Christmas and they did not do it.
You have, as I say, in the Estimate for the Office of Public Works provision for a number of new quarters and for married quarters. You have to recondition them not only in one barracks but in nearly every barracks. It would strike the ordinary person that a little more concentration would not merely be more economic, but might work out better for the Army itself. I see a provision here in the Vote for the Office of Public Works for a magazine. Do you not think that you have had enough trouble with one magazine? However, this might not be so harmful, because you may not have ammunition to put in it. Therefore, it may not be so disastrous as the other magazine already in existence. You have two and a half pages here of works. Are they necessary? Apparently having got barracks at one time, you cannot give them up, and you want more. I do not know what the defence for that is. We are not going to get it when we come to debate Vote No. 10, namely, Public Works and Buildings, because the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance will say quite rightly, "The Army asked for these". It was not he who pressed you to take the buildings; you must have put up a case to him for them. It was not the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance who went to the Army and said: "Will you have a couple more buildings? We would like to give you some." Naturally the defence that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance will put up is: "It was the Department of Defence that came to me and said ‘We must have these buildings'". If there is to be any defence put up for this, it ought to be on this Vote. Just as we are not able to discuss other things, because another Minister is responsible for them, it is plain that this question of new buildings should be defended by the Minister.
On Islandbridge barracks there is a total expenditure of £80,000, on McKee barracks, £60,000, Portobello barracks, £9,000; married quarters £20,000; camp equipment for use of the Command, £12,000; reconstruction in Baldonnel area, £134,000. That last may be necessary to a large extent and is a new service. Cork has one barracks, and it is necessary to do something to bring it up to date. Then there is the Magazine, £61,000. What Magazine? Is it the old Magazine? Do you want two Magazines to defend? What is the money for? When is the work to get through? Is it a Magazine that is to be built this year for ammunition that you are not going to get? Everywhere we have evidence of the desire to spend money, but no evidence and no justification for the belief that the country is going to get value for it. That is our main objection to this Vote; that so far as we are concerned this Department is represented in this House by what for practical purposes, amounts to a dummy.
I do not know what the striking distance of the M. 1s is. Is it a fact that these vessels are not capable of taking to the open sea in rough weather? I do not know whether they are or not. Is it a fact that they have no kind of offensive weapon between machine guns and torpedo tubes? I heard it stated recently that there are two types of ships in our Navy, one that can go fast and catch a boat but cannot keep it, and the other that cannot catch a boat but if it catches it cannot keep it. By boat I mean a trawler.
Another item concerns the purchase of transport. I know that there are certain countries in Europe that have for other purposes purchased transport, but that it has not been properly used or properly kept. I have no doubt the Minister will say that transport here is properly housed and kept. Is that the case? Where is it properly housed and kept? Possibly the House had better not get that information. Possibly that is information to keep back, except from people who might want to capture transport, and the House might not know anything about it. The total expenditure is very great and, as far as we can judge, no effort has been made by the Minister, except his ipse dixit, to justify it. So far as we can judge no addition has been made to the defensive powers of the country.
I wish to call attention to a few minor points but they are of importance to those concerned. If my memory serves me right, the Minister or his predecessor assured the House on several occasions, that he had received promises from many employers of their willingness to co-operate with the Government in the Volunteer enlistment scheme, and that any of their employees who were called up in the Volunteers would be reinstated in their employment when demobilised. Notwithstanding such assurances, there have been cases of men not being re-employed when demobilised. That was very harsh treatment towards these men, especially at a time like this when it is almost impossible to find new employment. I ask the Minister to have special inquiries made into the matter, with a view to seeing that those men get back their jobs, and also to make a further effort amongst employers to get their co-operation in that respect. I think the Minister should take some punitive action against the few employers who have acted so meanly towards these men. Deputy MacEoin referred to the delay that took place in the payment of allowances to the wives and families of serving soldiers. I hope the Minister will remedy that injustice of which I heard complaints. I have been told that Volunteers find that there is undue delay about being paid. Many of these men have families living in Dublin and they are dependent on these allowances for the provision of bread and butter. They cannot wait several weeks for payment.
I will vote for the amendment put down by Deputy O'Higgins, and I ask the House to vote for it, and to reject this proposal of the Government to squeeze this amount of money from admittedly already overtaxed taxpayers for the provision of ways and means of destruction. This is a time when much constructive work requires to be done, and when many people now unemployed could be engaged on such work. Many taxpayers have a struggle for existence.
Last week Deputy Mulcahy challenged the Minister for Defence, the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures, the Parliamentary Secretary, and the Fianna Fáil Party— catch-weights, all in, and nothing barred—and demanded their intervention in the debate for the purpose of casting some light on the Estimate. I am a man who has been trying to avoid fighting all my life, and I never try to answer questions until I have been asked them. In my particular little section of the Department of Defence I did not find any type of criticism that needed any answer. Deputy Mulcahy suggested that I made one intervention in the debate, and that was, as he said, to utter a few words under my teeth to Deputy Giles. I believe every man in every Party should get fair play, and whether or not he has a case to make he should be allowed to make it, or to try to make it. I do not think I have ever interrupted any Deputy. Deputy Giles and I suffer from certain disabilities. We are both country men and we are more used to work than to be talking about work, and because of that, we find it rather difficult to clothe in satisfactory words any ideas we may have. For that reason, for Deputy Giles and myself, there is even more latitude than for a very eloquent Deputy like Deputy O'Higgins. I want to say that I do not like an accusation of that sort to be made against me because I am inclined to play the game. I did not interrupt Deputy Giles on the occasion of his speech. This is not a plea on my own behalf that I should not be interrupted. I am not particularly interested in that respect. I am responsible for a certain small amount of the expenditure that it is proposed to undertake as a result of this Vote.
I am confronted with several methods of meeting the Opposition attack on the proposed defence expenditure and organisation. I have already explained, to the apparent satisfaction of so severe a critic as Deputy Dillon, the activities of the Department in relation to A.R.P. Deputy Davin has a habit of missing the tide. I hope the schedule in the North Wall will not be affected by Deputy Davin's new promotion. He prepared a speech on A.R.P. a couple of months ago.
I did not. That is a mistake.
Unfortunately, he was not present when the matter was discussed. Even though all the problems that affected him two months ago were, to the satisfaction of Deputy Dillon, resolved in this House, Deputy Davin felt that the midnight oil should not be wasted, and that we should have the benefit of his ideas on the problem of A.R.P. I answered all those questions but I may come back to the Deputy again.
Attack is often the best line of defence and I could make my defence of the Estimate by attacking many imbecilities which seem to be a feature of the opposition to any Government proposal. Finally, I have decided to take the line which I shall indicate. While it is possibly the most difficult line, it is the line that, to my mind, is most beneficial and most straightforward in so serious a matter as that which confronts the country. I propose to assume that while the Opposition believes that its main business is to oppose it is anxious to co-operate with us in what is, in our common opinion, the best method of dealing nationally with the present situation. In last week's debate, the criticism of the Opposition boiled down to two main points and a minor point—the illegitimate black baby of A.R.P.—which nobody wants to recognise. The two main points raised in the debate were the inadequacy or absence of any Government defence policy and the inefficiency of the machine which is to implement that defence policy if we need it.
The defence policy of a Government is affected and conditioned by things external in a way that the policy of no other Government Department is affected. I do not think that it should be discussed in the same fashion or along the same lines as Government policy in any other Department of State. Again, policy and planning, particularly in the Department of Defence, are very much interwoven, and discussion of Army plans in public does not seem to me to be good military practice or good defence practice. A Government in a democratic country is elected on a declared policy and part of that policy—a very important part—is concerned with defence. In discussing the policy of defence in time of war or imminent danger, the most that can be expected from a Government is a statement of the objective at which the Government aims and—in very broad outline only —a statement of the means by which it hopes to reach that objective. It has been said here in the Dáil and throughout the country that the policy of the Government at the present time is neutrality. What is meant by "policy"? Whatever the dictionary may say, I would say that policy is a considered line of action, adapted to circumstances, and directed to the achievement of a desired objective. What is our objective? I am not in the confidence of the Cabinet nor do I know what plans the Army Command have for the defence of the country. I said to an Opposition Deputy who argued with me one time about the question of defence that, in my belief, there should not be any Parliamentary Secretaries. A Parliamentary Secretary is a very humble person. He does not know much. He has to believe what he is told and do what he is told, and he hopes that the Opposition and, particularly, the people in his own constituency will do the same.
I have no particular and special information at my disposal. I think it was Deputy Mulcahy who said that we have no information other than that supplied by the much-censored newspapers and the Dáil debates. I have not any more information than Deputy Mulcahy. If I were to say what is the objective of the Government at the present juncture, I would say that it is at least the preservation of the measure of freedom we already have —as Deputy Dillon said, the preservation of the Irish race in all its vitality and vigour. Deputy McGilligan said last week, and I agree with him, that neutrality is spoken of in this House and outside this House as if it were some sort of closed compartment in which people could hide and as if people, having opted for a policy of neutrality, could have the assurance that that neutrality would be respected by everybody else.
Deputy McGilligan knows, and I know, that neutrality is not a bombproof funk hole in which the people of the country can hibernate until after the war. He knows there is danger, real danger, to this country. He knows—we have seen it in the newspapers—that if there is a possibility of a fight between the belligerents for the possession of Iceland and Greenland, then surely there is tremendous danger of a fight between the belligerents for the possession of this country. He is not asking, as Deputy Mulcahy asked: "Where is the danger?"
Deputy O'Higgins, opening the debate, said that we had got no information with regard to the position of this country, the defence plans of the country or the dangers confronting the country. I say that I do not know what plans the Army have for the defence of the country. I do not think I am entitled to know what plans the Army have.
Why not?
It would seem to me to be enough for the Government and the political Parties to state as exactly as possible what their military and defence objectives are and to entrust to the Army leaders, the military experts and technicians, the forwarding and the implementation of plans for securing these objectives. So far as the danger confronting the country is concerned, Deputy Esmonde speaking in this debate said:
"This time last year I do not think any individual here could have believed that within 12 months the face of Europe could and would have changed to present the picture which it presents at the present time. If there had been a prophet here 12 months ago who could state that Poland, Denmark, Norway and parts of Finland would have disappeared within 12 months, I think such a prophet would have been laughed out of court."
I think Deputy Esmonde was right and, with the example before us of what has happened in the past 12 months, he would be a rash man to-day who would prophesy what would happen in the next 12 months. Deputy Esmonde says that the only way in which we can keep ourselves from invasion is by showing ourselves to be men of peace. Deputy Esmonde has a good deal of military experience and a good many years ago when he thought his services were needed, in defence of an ideal which he believed in then, he became a soldier. I find it difficult to believe that in spite of his avowed pacifism he would not to-day be prepared to defend an ideal which is closer to home, closer to all of us. He reminds me in his pacifism of a very well-known soldier, the late Brigadier-General Crozier, who after a lifetime in warfare, became in his old age a pacifist. I would suggest to Deputy Esmonde that A Brass Hat in No Man's Land is a much more interesting and stimulating story than the book of the pacifist, The Men I Killed. Impossible idealisms are not the best national policy.
Men of good will without arms have always been conquered by men of ill-will with arms. If we had not an Irish Army mobilised here to-day in Ireland, if we demobilised the Army and hoped to preserve such independence as we have by a show of pacifism, how many hours would pass before we would have another army in Ireland? There might be two armies in Ireland disputing for the possession of the country. The British Empire, think of it what we will, was not built up by men who lacked foresight and energy, and Britain could not defend herself to-day if she were not led by men of the same foresight and energy. If you had no army of your own in this country, the morning hostilities began between England and Germany, that very morning you might have had Britain disembarking an army on our shores for her own defence and Deputy Esmonde's pacifism would be of damn little use to him then.
We got a gem as usual from Deputy Dillon. Deputy Dillon said: "If Great Britain reoccupies this country we have got to start the same kind of war that we fought against them before, guerilla warfare, which may go on for our lives and the lives of our children and their children's grandchildren... which warfare will go on for 700 years". Does Deputy O'Higgins not know that that is tripe? I find little comfort in the prospect of getting out the British, or the soldiers of any other nation who landed here, in 700 years time. There seems to have occurred some sort of sea change in Deputy Dillon's attitude towards the things which men on this side of the House and men on the other side of the House believed in and fought for. Deputy Dillon speaks so intimately of flying columns one would think that he was a member of one of them. If he talks about guerilla warfare and getting the British out in 700 years' time anybody who knows anything about it knows that he is living in the long, long past. The year 2640 is of very little use to me as a date for getting the British or the Germans out, if they came. I have a number of small children, as a lot of Deputies here have, too. There is a rising generation of children and I should like to pass on to them at least the measure of freedom that we now enjoy. I should like to pass on to them a country reasonably prosperous and one with a guarantee of tradition behind personal liberty and democracy. I think that the best way to get the British out of here is to keep them out and the only way we can hope to keep them out is by having an army and a public opinion here prepared to make all sacrifices with that intent. What I have to say of Britain applies to Germany with equal force.
Deputy O'Higgins says:—
"I do not believe that it is tactful to go out of our way to give offence to any country."
From such a pugnacious individual as Deputy O'Higgins that is unusual.
"I think that the most offensive thing that we have done was to mobilise immediately we got an unsolicited assurance from the German representative that the neutrality of this country would be respected."
The most offensive thing that we in this country could do would be to leave another nation in doubt as to our attitude.
Deputy Hughes said a threat was made against this country that, if we continued to supply food-stuffs to Great Britain, certain measures might be taken to prevent our doing so and that this might mean a visitation from bombers. We must tell those who are responsible for that statement—if the statement has been made—that we insist on our rights to carry on the normal trade which is necessary for the life of our country. This is not swashbuckling; it is not Chauvinism. Like Deputy O'Higgins, I should prefer a successful defence, even though it may not be as spectacular as a glorious failure. I agree with him there. This country is just tired of moral victories, as the Fine Gael Party ought to be. The defence policy of this Government is the building up, the training and the equipping in the best manner open to us, of the Army; and the mobilisation of all national opinion in support of that Army. So much for policy.
In the debate here last week, a good deal of criticism was aimed at the Army. Personally, I may say that I have always had a tremendous affection for soldiers, even though they may have been ranged on the side to which I did not belong. There is something genial, something devil-may-care, about the soldier's attitude towards life which is altogether different from the attitude towards life of the careful business man. He is not always counting the cost—in fact, the very profession he adopts points out that he has not counted the cost much. I have not the civilian attitude towards life that has been displayed here by certain members of the Dáil in relation to the Army. I trust I will not be regarded as a British imperialist when I say that Kipling sensed that anti-soldier attitude when he said:—
It is Tommy this and Tommy that,
And chuck him out, the brute;
And welcome Mr. Atkins
When the guns begin to shoot.
There is imminent danger of guns beginning to shoot at the present time, and it is about time that we showed a little bit of respect and confidence for the soldier and for the Army. Such respect and such confidence would have a great effect for good in the Army and in the nation.
We have been trying to find out where the guns are going to shoot from, to warrant all this expenditure. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary could help the House.
Not so many years ago when Deputy Tom Dowdall found out that Fine Gael was not such a good proposition as he thought and when he decided——
I hope we will not have his correspondence with the Fianna Fáil Party published.
——to throw in his lot with Fianna Fáil, he was in Blackpool making a speech and, because it was considered by Fine Gael that he was a great loss, they sent down a special heckler of big-gun calibre, like Deputy Mulcahy, to put him off his stroke. When the heckler asked Deputy Tom Dowdall a question his reply was: "I am a very bad speaker, and if you let me finish my speech I will answer you afterwards."
The Parliamentary Secretary will answer us, then?
The Deputy knows that I am not used to speaking and am a little bit deaf also, and cannot grasp everything at once. Now, I have not had much contact with the Army, nor have I had much contact with a lot of the officers of the Army, but I have had some contact with senior officers of the Army and I will say that I was tremendously impressed by their ability and by their energy and I was impressed further by another thing, and that is the fact that they considered their profession as being something more than a mere way of making a living and that they also have a very high sense of their duty to their country and an interest in its welfare. Deputy O'Higgins criticised the Volunteers and the method of recruitment and organisation of the Volunteer force. When the Volunteer force was organised some years back, the idea of a Volunteer force was new. Ideas are not always perfect at the beginning and you cannot expect that your idea of a Volunteer force is going immediately to produce an army, booted, spurred, equipped, armed and disciplined, right off the reel. As the years have gone by, however, the organisation of the Volunteers has developed progressively, and the Volunteers have developed a keen sense of discipline and a keen sense of duty, and I know that the Army Command is quite satisfied with the progress made by the Volunteer force and also quite satisfied that it can mould the Volunteers into a very fine body of soldiers.
There seems to be a tremendous objection to the Volunteers by the Opposition. That is an ancient objection arising out of the lack of a proper appreciation of military matters. During the American Civil War, General Johnston of the Confederate Army, when he saw a regiment of volunteers passing by, said, like the members of the Opposition, that he would not give one company of regulars for a whole regiment of volunteers. On the other hand, the famous general in the American Civil War, Stonewall Jackson, said that the patriotic volunteer, fighting for his country and his rights, makes the most reliable soldier on earth, and Stonewall Jackson proved it. A Deputy here referred to the Volunteers in this country as casual soldiers. A casual soldier is an accidental soldier, and accidents happen in every army.
Yes, and in every Party, but I hope this accident will not be too serious.
It is one of the purposes of discipline and organisation to get rid of these, and that has been done relentlessly and ruthlessly in the Volunteer force. The word "casual" in the mouth of a Deputy, referring to soldiers, is a bad one, but the use of such words as "corner boy" and "ragamuffin" by another Deputy sounds to me very evil. The same Deputy made reference to a number of young soldiers who flung away their rifles in order to grab at a few apples. Well, I think that the legend of Atalanta is not more far-fetched than that. I know that after the raid on the Magazine, when bodies of troops were around the country, I was held up on the roads a dozen times by Volunteers, and I and my companions were kept covered in such a way by the Volunteers that, if they were as nervous as I was, I would not be speaking here to-night. That has been my experience, not once but a dozen times, and the statement that a number of soldiers threw away their rifles to grab at a few apples is one which I beg to doubt very gravely.
Deputy Norton talked of the coldness and inhumanity of the treatment received by certain officers as a result of the inquiry into the Magazine raid. He said that this was quite unworthy of the Minister and of a public Department. National policy is solely a matter for the Government and solely their responsibility, and it is not a matter for discussion by the Army. Army organisation is a matter of technique and one on which the Government and the Army would find many matters of profitable discussion, but it seems to me that Army discipline, except in the extreme case of a mutiny by an Army command, is entirely a matter for the Army. Deputy Dillon spoke a few nights ago about the release of certain prisoners, put into a guard room or imprisoned in some other way, and he stated that these men were imprisoned for insubordination and were released, over the heads of their officers, by order of the Minister.
Many Deputies in the Opposition say that neither the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence nor myself knows his place or knows his position, but, certainly, if it can be proved that any Minister interfered in a matter of discipline in this fashion, then he should not be a Minister here. I do not think that Deputy Dillon does his duty to this Dáil or to the country if he knows of such a thing to have happened that he would not try to elucidate the full facts here and bring them before us. An undisciplined army destroys itself. In the interests of its own safety and preservation, army discipline must be maintained and there must not be interference by outsiders in the question of army discipline. As I see it, this question in regard to the Magazine raid was not a matter for the Minister. It was a matter for the Army chiefs. Every Army officer with the least shadow of intelligence knows that indiscipline will smash an army. The Government and the Minister for Defence must entrust the preservation of discipline to the Army Command and be advised by them and must support them in this matter with all the forces at their command.
I would like to tell Deputy Norton that an army is not organised along the lines of a trade union. Freedom of action is necessarily much more circumscribed and methods of enforcing discipline naturally much more drastic. G.K. Chesterton in some book of his told the story of a man who came along to join the British Army, and when asked his religion he said he was a Methusalite. When he was asked to describe the tenets of that religion he said it was to try to live as long as he could. He had a poor conception of his religion. If his religion was to try to live as long as he could he did not come into the right church. He had a poor conception of the implications of military organisation. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and we are all natural-born Methusalites, but an army is a fighting machine, the units of which may be faced at any time with battle, murder and sudden death, and the methods of training and discipline must be directed towards the overcoming of the natural human repugnance to pain, suffering and bloodshed. It must be welded into one unit acting under one directing mind and its training must be hard and Spartan-like. Duty must be always and forever the din in the soldier's ear, and it must forever be the example given to him by his officers.
Dereliction of duty on the part of a private is an evil thing. On the part of an officer it is a criminally evil thing. I am a very fearful individual. I have always found it difficult in times of trouble to allay my nervous apprehensions and control my fears and if I had been in the Magazine as part of the company that held the Magazine I would probably be the "windiest" man in the Magazine but I would be dead now.
You might have been kidnapped.
I do not think that this matter of how the officers, who were responsible in any way for the defeat, the great defeat, this country suffered in the loss of that Magazine, were dealt with should be raised here. It is entirely a matter of Army discipline. I am sorry that Deputy Norton was not here so that he could listen to the lecture but I hope he will read the debate and we might come back on the matter again.
That is what Hitler says, of course.
What did he say?
I will tell you and you can tell him after this.
Deputy Davin, as I say, made the speech that he had prepared six or seven weeks ago.
Is that correct?
He could not allow all that effort and all that midnight oil to be wasted.
I had not a word of a note.
I think any argument that was needed to be made for A.R.P. and for the carrying out of A.R.P. was made by me five or six weeks ago in this House. I am not satisfied in any way that the A.R.P. service has progressed in the manner that it should, and I am altogether dissatisfied with the attitude of members of the Opposition and some members of our own Party in relation to the question of producing a proper A.R.P. service. Criticisms have been made from the Labour Benches about the trench centres and the conditions of the parks, and Deputy Mulcahy is concerned with the question of the trenches in Merrion Square.
And whom we are going to hide from there.
I think that I asked Deputy Mulcahy not to interrupt me. I will answer all his questions afterwards if he will have some patience. I know that for 20 golden years or more he has been a very impatient individual. I do not think by any means that shelter trenches are an ideal A.R.P. preparation. I do not like trenches. I think it will be very difficult to induce people to take shelter in those trenches if we have any such thing as an air raid. I move the Adjournment.
Progress reported.
The Committee to sit again tomorrow.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until Thursday, 25th April, at 3 p.m.