Following the Minister's reply to-day to parliamentary questions and various supplementaries, I am indeed not surprised that the attitude of the Department of which he is Minister should be such as he expressed it. I do admit, of course, that irrespective of who is in power the impersonal attitude of the Department of Finance continues to be one of callous indifference to the difficulties—financial mainly—of the officers employed on the preventive staff on whose behalf I am speaking at present. It is an amazing thing that the biggest employers of labour in the State, namely, the Government, have hitherto proved themselves to be the least considerate when it comes to a question of compensating their employees following injuries sustained by them in their service to the State.
I refer to the callous attitude of the Department and when I do so I may say that I am not unmindful of the difficulties confronting the Department in this matter. But associated as I am intimately with the men of the preventive staff of whose precarious mode of life in the service of the State I am a daily observer, I simply cannot reconcile the Department's attitude with the risks daily incurred by these people in the carrying out of their duty.
It is an astonishing thing that in a number of cases the rates of compensation are left entirely to the Minister's discretion. Surely since the Border became the curse it is to-day the Government has had ample opportunity of legislating for those people who are carrying out the duties of land frontier's men here. In the past, prior to the division of this country, the coastguard men were empowered to use weapons in order to prevent smuggling and it is an astonishing thing that to-day—I am glad of it actually and so are the men—such provision does not exist. I assert, however, that when these people are risking their lives on behalf of the State—as everybody must admit—if they decline to be armed and if it is not considered judicious to arm them at least they should be provided with an armed escort. Particularly must one assert this in view of the fact that when members of the Garda Siochána consider that they are going to incur a certain amount of risk in the course of their duty they are in a position to demand a military escort. I do not want to compare the position here with that obtaining in Northern Ireland where the police State empowers customs men there to be accompanied by an armed escort of Royal Ulster Constabulary men in the course of their duties. However, one must surely come to the conclusion in view of what I have said that the time is being reached when, with the perfecting of smuggling methods and the devices of these ingenious people, the smugglers will use every effort to further their interests and eventually will stop at nothing to achieve their object.
As I have said before in this House, living as I do straddle-legged across the Border, I have witnessed the departure from my town of patrols of customs officers, harmless decent individuals, who start off in their motor cars to patrol the mountain passes and lonely roads along the Border. Hither-to—though I do not believe without exception—they regarded this as a quite harmless pursuit and thank Heaven until recently they escaped unmolested. What is to prevent them, however, without ever getting out of the car, from incurring dangerous risks due to the smugglers' ingenuity, say by cutting a trench in the road and ambushing them along various points in the mountain passes?
Because of all this it really appears to me that the time has come when the State must decide either to protect those officers or else to hold out to them the reward of adequate compensation should their duties on behalf of the State involve them in temporary of total disablement. The staff of the Customs and Excise in this country, as in other countries, do run certain risks, but surely no one would dispute that the land frontier's men are in the front trenches of our fight against the smuggling fraternity.
Frankly, it has often occurred to me, even before this recent tragic incident of the assault on those frontier's men, that they appeared to have a nebulous type of job. They seem to be nobody's baby. They were unarmed and they were not protected by any force. It always occurred to me that they were running a certain amount of risk and I am sorry to say that my fears in this respect were borne out.
When one gets down to consider the question of actual compensation, it is an astonishing thing that, irrespective of whether an officer is so incapacitated as to be unable to return to his duties, or whether he is able to return to his duties in a modified way, there is absolutely no provision made for pain and suffering in his case. Not only that, but, in the case of officers who come under the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1934, the medical fees payable do not exceed the sum of £5. The Minister assured Deputy McGrath to-day that, so far as these injured officers are concerned, all reasonable expense will be met from State funds.
I should like to ask the Minister for how long will he pay the medical expenses and hospital expenses from State funds. When I recall the case of one of these injured officers at present in Monaghan County Hospital, suffering from what is called an extensive fracture of the skull, to say nothing of his other injuries, which rendered him—and he is a great friend of mine—quite unrecognisable to me, I wonder how long will this State benevolence regarding his hospital and medical expenses continue. In my opinion, this man will never be fit to resume his former occupation. In the case of the man Rafter in Dundalk, a customs officer who had an accident on the train, the Great Northern Railway won the case when an action was taken against them and the State won their case also.
