In the form in which it is here in the official record it does contain a fundamental truth. I will come to that a bit later. I want to repeat to the House that I did not take the initiative in this. The moneys had lain there since 1924. Any organisation that felt it had a claim, including the present organisation claiming, could have made a case before the court if they felt they were entitled, over that long period. They did not do so. I did not feel, from the public point of view, that we were compelled to do so either, until the death of the surviving trustee brought the matter, through the executor of that trustee, to my attention, and he suggested that this matter should be cleared up. My approach to it was this: These funds have been lying there for nearly a quarter of a century—almost a generation— and, if they are going to be disposed of, it is better that they should be disposed of, if possible by agreement, by the people who were immediately concerned with their collection and who knew precisely what they were collected for. I felt that there was no point anyhow in not going ahead, mainly because this generation knew what the funds were collected for and that they would be able to dispose of them in a manner which would be consonant with the purpose which the subscribers had in mind. I was asked to bring in legislation and deal with it. I think I pointed out at the time that I regretted the matter had arisen but, as it had arisen, that we were prepared to do it, at least that I was prepared to recommend to the Government that it be done, but that the first thing that should be done would be to get in touch with the existing officers of the organisation who were the governing body at the time and who were entitled as long as the funds were there to dispose of them. They had been handling the funds of the organisation from one Ard Fheis to another and they could have used them any particular way they wanted.
As a matter of historical interest, after the signing of the Treaty—some time in December, 1921—there was a meeting of the standing committee, and on the proposal of, I think, the late Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins I was unanimously chosen as trustee. There had been two trustees in the organisation at that particular period. There had been two treasurers, but there was no trustee and, in view of the possibility of a difference of opinion, I was chosen, at that particular time, as the sole trustee. One of the treasurers—Mrs. Wyse Power— approached me, probably at a subsequent meeting, and asked me did I wish to have steps taken to transfer the property of the organisation to my name. As I had hoped that the organisation would be able to find some way of keeping together, I did not wish to take any action that would seem to indicate any pressure or any particular desire to get control of the funds as trustee, and I said there was no hurry about it. There were two meetings of the Ard Fheis of Sinn Féin at that particular time. One held in February was adjourned to a date in May. At these two Ard Fheiseanna an effort was made to keep the organisation together, ending up in the Pact which meant that the organisation was the organisation that contested the then General Election. I do not know if it paid the expenses of both sides in that particular election but, at any rate, the organisation had not divided. The organisation only could be regarded as having divided and gone different ways when the Civil War started.
I believe that we have a duty to the people who subscribed that money. I believe that in particular I have a personal duty, apart from anything else, to try to see, first of all, that the trust be defended, although I am not making any claim as a trustee in virtue of the decision that was taken at that time, and that the national moneys that were subscribed be not wasted. That has been my attitude towards it. The executor of the late Mrs. Wyse Power, Judge Wyse Power, went to meet the various people who were still alive, and when you look through the names you see how very few are now alive. He went to those people, urged them that they should come to a meeting with me, that we should sit down and try to arrive at some scheme so that I would be in a position in coming to the Dáil to give a scheme agreed upon by the surviving members of the executive of the organisation which at that particular time controlled the funds. As I told the Dáil already, there was only one dissentient to coming together and trying to work out some sort of a settlement. I believe that dissentient was interviewed later and I do not know to what extent he was willing to waive the opinions which he had at the beginning but, at any rate, at that particular stage a plenary summons was served on Judge Wyse Power and on the Attorney-General, clearly served because it was known—the matter having been spoken of—that these consultations were taking place and that legislation was contemplated.
For over 20 years any organisation that claimed it had a right to these funds could have made that claim in court at any particular time. They did not do it until there was a suggestion of disposing of the funds by legislation in a way that might accord with the original intention of the subscribers. When I heard that, I said all right, let them go to the courts. We waited for three years, during which time a considerable amount of money was spent by the defendants in preparing to meet that case, so that these moneys would not go to a source where it was considered they did not belong. When I heard quite recently that the bill of the defendants had already gone up to something like £5,000, I asked myself: "How long more will this continue and what will be left? Are we going to have the old thing that where money is disputed the whole money goes in legal costs?" The Attorney-General and the other defendant brought a motion for dismissal of the action unless the plaintiffs came for trial. When they were thus compelled—and only when they were compelled by the action of the defence, who had, as I have already said, gone to considerable expense in preparing their case to defend the fund—what happened? They found that their solicitor, who had not been paid, refused to hand over the documents to another solicitor. Then we had an action brought into the court to get these documents from the former solicitor and the judge dismissed it. He would not give them the order they required and then they appealed to the Supreme Court. Anybody who has had any experience at all of cases of that kind, where defence moneys can be got out of the fund itself, knows that there is no real incentive on the part of either side to bring these proceedings to a close.
Every conceivable type of motion is brought forward by one side or the other in order to try to meet the case against them at a particular time. I considered that if there was over £5,000 spent before the matter came to trial in the first instance how much more of it was going to be spent by the time they would be finished in court with all these cases. My own belief is that the court would settle this thing, if it could, by directing that these moneys be returned to the original subscribers as being the simplest and the most just way of doing it. But it is obvious that that cannot be done. There is no chance of finding out who the subscribers to that fund were. It was portion of a general fund and you probably could not get a list of the subscribers at that particular time, so that the device of returning the moneys to the subscribers is out of the question. But, of course, it is open to a court that would be considering matters of this sort. They would say, probably, "Well, what about applying it to some purpose which was common to the parties who were in the original organisation and who afterwards split away from it?"
I tried for a number of years, from 1924, to get agreement between the various parties who could be regarded as having an interest in these funds at the time they were subscribed, to get them to agree to apply them to some purpose which was common to the various parties. The one obvious thing that was in common and that remained in common all the time was the restoration of the language—the steps to be taken for the restoration of the language and help for the language movement. I failed during that particular time, and others who were trying it independently of me failed, to get that agreement. The position held by some was that these funds should be at the disposal of some particular organisation, some particular body.
It has been said that there is something unconstitutional in what we are doing. I have heard nobody trying to make a case as to the grounds on which our action is unconstitutional. I take it that this Parliament is sovereign and can make the law and that the duty of the courts is to interpret the law. We are sovereign except in so far as we are expressly forbidden to do certain things by the Constitution, and it is essential to show that we are doing something which is repugnant to the Constitution before it can be said we are acting unconstitutionally. If it should happen, through some misunderstanding or oversight, that the Oireachtas did do something which was, in fact, unconstitutional, then it would be held to be null and void to that extent by the Supreme Court if the matter were brought to the Supreme Court's attention. So we cannot, in fact, act unconstitutionally if the matter is brought to the attention of the courts. The Supreme Court is there to decide matters of that particular kind.
It has not been brought to my attention in any way that what we are doing is unconstitutional. In fact, in the opposite direction, any opinions given to me have been given in the sense that I have indicated, that there is nothing unconstitutional in this. If somebody on the opposite side says there is, then I say it can be tested in the ordinary way in which unconstitutionality in Acts of the Legislature is tested. We cannot, therefore, be doing anything that is unconstitutional—I mean, we cannot do it effectively.
On the question of what is the court that should try this particular issue, I said a few moments ago that there was a fundamental truth in what Deputy Mulcahy said before this developed on the particular lines upon which it has developed—that there was a fundamental truth in what Deputy Mulcahy said on First Reading and that was that there is something more in this question than the mere legal question of continuity, something very much more. I feel perfectly confident that if the courts should on some legal technicality decide that the body that claims these funds should get them, everybody in the country would say: "They may have decided on the legal technicality, but fundamentally they are acting unreally, that it is an unreal decision, divorced from the circumstances that then obtained and divorced from the circumstances that obtain now."
