I am anxious to get further information on this matter, because when the Taoiseach left for Canada he was interviewed by Press representatives on the boat and he stated then, according to the report published in the Independent Newspapers, that his visit to Washington was entirely unofficial. Subsequently, he arrived at Montreal and, again quoting the report published in the Independent Newspapers, he said, when questioned as to the purpose of his visit: "I am a lawyer. I am here as the guest of the Bar Association and for that period I have shed my political capacity and status." That was in the Irish Independent on the 31st August, 1948. If, as is now disclosed, the Taoiseach's visit to the United States and Canada was an official visit, for which the Dáil is being asked to vote money, it is rather difficult to understand why these statements which I have quoted were made by the Taoiseach at the time that the visit occurred.
The matter is more than of academic interest, because the House will recollect that during the course of his visit to Canada the Taoiseach not merely made there important pronouncements bearing upon the policy of his Government of which the people of this country learned through Press reports, but he also made other statements which appeared to be of even a more controversial character, statements which certainly aroused not merely a number of controversial discussions here but which provoked also an explanatory announcement from the Government Information Bureau.
I assume this is the occasion on which any questions relating to that visit should be raised. Every official act of a Minister, or almost every official act of a Minister, comes before the Dáil eventually and generally in the form of a request to the Dáil to vote money to defray the expenses associated with that act. We are now asked to vote money to defray the cost of an official visit by the Taoiseach to the United States and to Canada—a visit which the Taoiseach himself appears to have described at the time as unofficial. Having regard to the events which characterised that visit, I think the Dáil should be slow to vote the money without getting some satisfactory explanation of these events.
I do not want to widen the scope of this discussion to cover ground which was adequately surveyed in debates last year; but it will be recollected that shortly after the Taoiseach arrived in Canada the people of this country were startled to read in the newspapers that he had made the following pronouncement. I am quoting now from the Irish Independent of the 7th September. The Irish Independent quoted the Taoiseach as having made this announcement in the course of a radio broadcast; that appears not to have been correct. The Irish Press reported the statement to have been made in the course of an interview; subsequent inquiries appeared to establish that account to be more accurate. The announcement was to the effect that: “Ireland was prepared to come to the aid of Canada if ever the Dominion were menaced by a communist country.” Later, in the course of an address to a body called “The Canadian Club”, the Taoiseach appeared to have reiterated that undertaking. The report which appeared in the Irish Press on the 11th September, 1948— and which had been cabled by the United Press Agency—stated that “Mr. Costello strong aligned Ireland against any possible Soviet aggression. He told his audience that Ireland will do her utmost to preserve peace but warned that ‘to-day the very basis of civilisation that produced us is being undermined by the most formidable enemy. Throughout the world despairing multitudes sit parleying in the Valley of Indecision.’” The report then continues:—
"He added that Ireland would support the struggle for safeguarding democracy and liberty."
That announcement by the Taoiseach, following his previous announcement, reported in the Irish Independent as made in the course of a radio broadcast but, as I believe, more accurately reported in the Irish Press as made in the course of an interview with the representative of a Press agency, appeared definite and seemed to imply that a decision upon policy had been made and was being announced—a decision upon policy on which the Irish people had not been consulted and which represented a very decided change from the attitude previously indicated in Ministerial utterances, and certainly a very decided change from the attitude indicated in the utterances of these Ministers before their election to office.
Later, however, there was a statement issued by the Government Information Bureau. It was a very ambiguous statement. It purported to deny or to correct the statements previously attributed to the Taoiseach; but, in fact, it does not appear to have done anything of the sort. The statement which was issued on the 14th September, 1948, is as follows:—
"The following statement was issued by the Taoiseach, Mr. J.A. Costello, in Quebec on Sunday night, the Government Information Bureau announced yesterday: ‘My attention has been directed to statements in a certain newspaper to the effect that in my address to the Canadian Club at Ottawa on September 10th, I defined the attitude of Ireland in the event of war. The text of that address was circulated to newspapers and agencies. The subject of the address was Irish-Canadian friendship and the role of Ireland in Canada in securing international co-operation for permanent peace on the basis of Christian principles and ideals. I did not, in that address or elsewhere, define the attitude of Ireland in the event of war. In my Press conference in Ottawa on September 7th, I stated categorically that Irish national unity is a prerequisite to Ireland's joining the Western Union of Europe for defence purposes. This statement was widely published in Canada and the United States of America."'
Anybody reading carefully that official announcement issued by the Government Information Bureau would see at once that the Taoiseach did not deny in it that he had made the actual statements attributed to him. He may not have regarded these statements as defining the attitude of Ireland in the event of war, but they were certainly interpreted here—and apparently interpreted in some quarters in Canada —as defining the attitude of Ireland in the event of war. Uncertainty as to the position was not reduced by an announcement made by the Tánaiste, Mr. Norton, on 20th September. Mr. Norton, according to a Press report——