I desire to move the motion standing in the names of Deputy McGilligan and myself:—
That Emergency Powers (362) Order, 1945, be and is hereby annulled.
The motion refers to a particular Emergency Order signed last August dealing with a certain section of deserters from the National Army. The Order is not one over the name of the Minister for Defence; it is an Order signed by the Taoiseach himself. I want to make it very clear at the start that in moving for the annulment of this particular Order I am in no way defending deserters or approving of desertion. The points on which I desire to move the annulment of the Order are many. First of all, I think on the face of the Order it will be clear to anyone who reads it that this Order is not aimed at deserters merely because they are deserters, or because they deserted the Army at a time of emergency. This Order is framed specifically to deal with a certain section of deserters, deserters who joined the armies of the United Nations. If that is so, the Order is imposing penalties not for desertion but penalties continuing over seven years for those who served in the armies of the United Nations.
The Order in question refers to deserters who have been absent as deserters for a period of 180 days. This is a very tiny country. We have very efficient services in the country—an intelligence service, secret service agents, a rather big police force in proportion to the area and population, a highly efficient police force. We have machinery, a system, in the country whereby nobody can purchase as much as a fraction of an ounce of tea without a ration card. It is beyond belief that with all that machinery at the disposal of the State any deserter could be absent for 180 days without being taken into custody and dealt with. It is because of all those circumstances that I say that this Order is not an Order to punish deserters, but an Order to punish a special class of deserters. We have, in the Defence Forces Act, renewed, year after year, since the 1st October, 1924, ample machinery for dealing with desertion or any other offence within the Defence Forces, and I would not challenge any action taken to deal with deserters or with desertion in the ordinary way. We have gone through five years of the greatest war the world ever knew or ever will know. All through that time we had deserters or were dealing with deserters, and yet we wait until the war is over, and then bring out an Order which sentences this unfortunate small section of deserters to seven years' destitution, seven years' starvation. We lay it down in the Order that these men, if they return, can get no work whatsoever under the State, under a local authority, under any board or authority established by this Parliament—that their discharge or dismissal from the Defence Forces is not a discharge for the purposes of the Unemployment Assistance Acts. In other words, through the machinery of the State, we do everything possible to ensure that for seven years these men and their families are sentenced to absolute destitution and absolute starvation.
We are doing that in a Christian country and under a Constitution that is festooned with phrases about Christianity, God, et cetera. I am objecting to this, and I am moving the annulment of the Order, because it is a most brutal, unchristian and inhuman Order. I do not care whether the number of men concerned be few or many; nobody with any humanity or Christianity in his make-up would stand for a seven years' punishment of that sort, no matter what the crime was. As I said, we have been dealing with deserters. We have been dealing with them over a period of five or six long years—a period of emergency. We have been dealing with deserters for a period of 22 years in all. Even during the emergency, people deserted from the forces, because they did not like soldiering and wanted to side-step the hard, arduous life of a soldier, and when they were caught within the country, the sentences were comparatively light. Many of them, when they were taken into custody, were kept for only a few days in the guard-room and then discharged from the Army, and the Minister knows that as well as I do. The sentences were very light, considering the state of emergency that existed. But we wait until the war is over, and until there is some possibility of these other men returning, and then bring in an Order of this kind.
Let us think back. The Minister found himself, in a time of emergency, without an Army, or without an adequate Army, and every Party and every Deputy in this House put behind them any old divisions or dislikes, forgot past dissensions, and got out, one and all, shoulder to shoulder, to give this country an adequate Defence Force and to recruit an Army up to the requirements of the country. It was the Army of Parliament. It was the Army of all Parties in Parliament, and the response was reasonably good. The response was not up to the mark that the Army officers required, and yet the Government of this country was all the time, day after day, through the machinery of the State, allowing men who—many of them—were too selfish to join their own Army in a time of danger, to go abroad and work for comparatively fabulously high wages in the munition factories of belligerent States, and there was no disability or no penalty put in the way of these people. Instead of that, you had the State facilitating their exit from the country. Others came along and joined the forces of this country—young men, brave men, men anxious for soldiering, seeking adventure, and believing that there was a real danger to this State. They did their task and carried out their duties for one or for two years or for longer. Then, in their judgment, they came to the conclusion that the danger of actual invasion had passed and if the menace that threatened the country was to be met, the place to meet it was at a distance—to meet it at a distant point, pin it down there, and crush it there, and, as a result, some of them left and joined the forces of other armies.
Now, any one of us who reads in the papers or knows anything of the horrors of war can have some little picture of what those men went through, of their experiences and their agonies. Yet, when the war is over, and when they come back, hoping to come back to a mother, to a young wife and to the little children, they find the Government of this State stepping in to sentence them to seven years' starvation, seven years' destitution, and to find themselves branded, as far as the State can do so, as pariah dogs, as outcasts, untouchables, who cannot be employed or maintained here. They find the Government of this State sentencing them to starvation or exile not for the crime of cowardice, not for the crime of deserting this nation in a time of danger, but for the crime of going to assist other nations in what they believed was a fight for the survival of Christianity in Europe.
We read in our papers as recently as last week a long and touching letter from a young Irish priest who had been in captivity, and some of whose colleagues had been murdered and others tortured, and we read of his feelings on the day the relief forces reached that camp, and of the relief and joy of those who had been in captivity, but particularly of their relief to find that every second soldier that they met with in that relieving column was a Kelly, Burke or Shea. We read of the way that young Irish priest thanked God that Irish mothers had produced sons who, within the periphery of the world, had faced death in order to come to the relief of such young Irish priests and save them from murder and torture—men who went from battlefield to battlefield to bring assistance to these Irish priests—and yet these men are now to be branded as pariah dogs and outcasts.
We read in the same papers of the horrors that were perpetrated in certain prison camps, and what it meant to those afflicted human beings that were interned in these camps, when the armies of their deliverers came along. When the humanitarian forces behind these armies came along to try to revive the half-dead bodies of the people who went through all that in order to bring this relief, we in this Christian country, cannot do anything better for the Irishmen who took part in the bringing of that relief, than to say, in effect: "You have gone all through the horrors of Belsen merely to suffer a sentence of seven years' starvation."
It is only three months since we discussed in the Dáil the continuation or otherwise of the Emergency Act, and the Taoiseach, speaking in an apologetic tone, told us that it was only necessary to continue these appalling powers for a period—for a junta in secret to make laws for certain dangers. We were told that, as far as it was humanly possible, and as rapidly as possible, one power after another contained in the emergency enactments would be dropped. With these words still echoing around the building, the Emergency Act is used to bring in this particular Order. An Emergency Act, which has a life of only 12 months, is used or abused to impose penalties upon people for seven long years. I believe, in the first place, that it is illegal; in the second place that it is unconstitutional and, in the third place, unchristian. When I ask why it is done, the Minister for Defence throws up his hand. Is there not ample machinery for dealing with deserters? We know what public feeling in this country is with regard to these men, that they are being looked upon as fools, and merely sentenced to one or two months' imprisonment. In view of the hardship, the dangers and the sufferings of these men elsewhere, the general good sense of the public was that, whatever their offence, they had sponged the slate clean and there was sympathy with the mothers, wives and children.
In the early part of this year, questions were put to the Minister from various parts of the House, and his reply was that probably he would "chuck" the whole thing, that these men might be struck off the register or something like that. Then, like a bolt from the blue, we find Ministers skedaddling, washing their hands of responsibility, suggesting that the ordinary disciplinary code laid down year after year since 1922 was not drastic enough, and not terrible enough to deal with these men, that this starvation Order must be passed —seven years' starvation, seven years destitution or seven years' exile. What is the good of talking about emigration, talking about national hæmorrhage, saying that the youth of the country, through economic stress is driven abroad, when we frame Orders under the Emergency Act to exile people or to drive them out for seven years, merely because of their action? These penalties are not for desertion. Let the Minister tell us the sentences imposed and the number of cases in which no sentence was imposed for deserting the forces of this country. This is an Order designed and aimed at one particular section of deserters, and it is not to punish them for desertion. It is to punish them for service elsewhere, for service abroad. If the proposal of the Minister or the Army was that the ordinary course would be followed, that the ordinary machinery laid down from the beginning for dealing with desertion would operate, my voice would not be raised. If an army is to be maintained at at all, it is necessary to maintain discipline and to punish infringements of the military code. It is necessary to deal with absentees. It is essential to deal with deserters coming under the emergency regulations. When the war is over, it is better to forget rather than to revive old feuds or point the finger of scorn at men who may be accused of desertion, but definitely cannot be accused of cowardice, as against the fellow who left, not to fight, either at home or abroad, but merely because he could not stand soldiering.
I do not believe this could be done at a more unfortunate time. The world is distracted with war, is crippled and bleeding as a result of war. Statesmen all over the world are trying to heal the wounds and to repair the damage of war, to replace enmity with friendship and, perhaps; in no small country is it more imperative that we should try to cultivate friendly relations with our neighbours and with others, than in this country. Our whole attitude during the war has been misunderstood and distorted to the detriment of this country. Now that the war is over, we should not supply fresh fuel to the flames that are already there. No thinking man could read that Order as anything but an Order to punish those who served in the armies of the United Nations. It discriminates between one type of deserter and another. This country is nearly exhausted, without supplies. A Minister went across to England recently to establish contact, or to try to reopen essential contacts between the two Governments, to try to remove misunderstanding, to try to create a spirit of friendship and here we have an Order of this kind, an Order stimulated by malice, seething with hatred, oozing with venom. No one who reads that Order would say that that description is exaggerated or uncharitable.
The Minister may grin. The Minister knows that we grew rich on the sacrifices, the sufferings and the hardships of others. We got untold wealth because the war passed us by and the least we can do is to be charitable, to be understanding with regard to the men who went through the flames of that war, to the men irrespective of nationality, who met danger at far distant points and pinned it down and crushed it there. If we had any of the spirit of soldiers in our make-up, we would forget the past. We would hold out the hand of friendship and allow those men who soldiered through the toughest times anybody ever soldiered through, come home without penalty, and without scorn to rejoin their homes and resume a life of peace. There is no one going to tolerate or to believe that it is either Christian or fair to sentence these unfortunate men to seven years' starvation, seven years' destitution. Let us realise that we are not only sentencing the men themselves but sentencing the families—the mothers, the wives and little children. I urge the Government to annul that particular Order, to annul it even if it is only as a gesture of burying the hatchet and of giving some little evidence of a desire for better understanding on both sides of the water. If we will not do it as an act of statesmanship or as a gesture of friendship, let us do it as the outcome of a Christian impulse rather than; as a Parliament, be branded with a brutal and inhuman outlook for sentencing even one man or one family to seven years' starvation.