I move:—
That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration.
It will be noted by most observers on the foreign affairs of this country that the Minister, and the Government of which he is a Member, have maintained what can only be described as an equivocal silence on the principles which guide the foreign policy of the present Government, and in the speech which he has just read to the House the Minister has maintained that silence. For those who do not follow in great detail the speeches of the Minister and the activities of his Department there will be some value in the remarks he has made to the House in that they afford a brief résumé of what the Department, and the Minister as head of the Department, have been doing over the last 12 months or so but, for those on this side of the House and outside it who feel the country is entitled to know what are the principles of foreign policy which this Government are following, there was nothing in the Minister's speech to indicate what that policy is, or to give us and the country what we are entitled to know, namely, the principles guiding him in his activities in the United Nations and elsewhere.
Because of this equivocal silence it has been our task to try to interpret the Minister's speeches and votes in the United Nations and to ascertain from these speeches and votes what principles are guiding the present Government, what principles are informing and moulding the actions and votes which they take and give in the United Nations Assembly. For the purpose of trying to ascertain the views of the Government on this important matter we, on this side of the House, have asked the Minister whether he agrees with the principles which we suggested should guide our actions in the United Nations. We asked this question on more than one occasion and I make no apology to the House for asking it again because, if it is wearisome to the House to have repeated what we say should be the principles guiding this country in the United Nations, the blame must lie on the Minister and the Government who have not answered the question.
I want to repeat that we have asked the Minister on more than one occasion whether he accepts the three principles of action which our Minister for External Affairs laid down in, 1956, and that the Minister has refused to answer the question. I hope note will be taken by those who concern themselves with these matters if the Minister, in the course of his reply to this debate, again refuses to answer the question. I want to recall to the House that in 1956 the Minister for External Affairs of the then inter-Party Government made a speech in which he laid down the three principles of action which would guide his Government in the United Nations. He said, first of all, that it would be our task in the United Nations to secure the observance of the Charter of the United Nations Organisation; secondly, it would be our task to maintain a position of independence, judging each question on which we have to vote on its merits; and, thirdly that we should do what we can to preserve the Christian civilisation of which we are a part and, with that end in view, support whenever possible those Powers principally responsible for the defence of the free world in its resistance to the spread of Communist power and influence.
The question which I would have thought would have been a simple one to answer is whether the Minister and the Government accept those three principles? If he does, then the debate on this Estimate may take a very different turn, though we may be forced to criticise the Minister and the Government for errors of judgment in the application of these principles, but if he does not accept them, then there is a wide divergence of opinion between the two sides of this House on the foreign policy the country should adopt. As I say, because of the absence of any clear statement of principle from the Minister or any of his colleagues, it is our task to try to interpret what has been said and done, and to try to gauge from what actions have been taken in the United Nations Assembly and elsewhere what are the fundamental principles of action directing the Government's policy. That task has not been an easy one for us, one reason being that the Minister's own colleagues have interpreted in rather different ways the actions taken by him over the last three years.
Deputies no doubt will recall that the Tánaiste referred to the present Minister as a non-committed statesman, and he criticised his predecessor for what he called stringing along uncritically and unthinkingly behind the Western bloc. Apparently the Tánaiste thought there was a considerable difference between the Minister for External Affairs in the present Government and the Minister for External Affairs in the previous Government. He felt our Government was stringing along uncritically and unthinkingly behind the Western bloc whereas his Government did no such thing but, quite recently, a member of Fianna Fáil spoke at a debate in Kilkenny and his view was that there was no great difference between the foreign policy put forward by this Government and that of the previous Government. Deputy Booth's view was that the foreign policy of this country had not altered except in degree and what he described as political emphasis.
The Minister and his colleagues have spoken little on foreign affairs. The Minister has spoken not infrequently in the United Nations but, on foreign policy as such, little has been said by him or any of his colleagues either in the House or elsewhere.
Last year the Minister departed somewhat from the practice which he had heretofore adopted. Up to last year he had treated the House in a most perfunctory manner. He had given a brief introductory speech in Irish which an accountant from his Department could as well have done and in replying to the debates in this House, up to last year, he spoke very briefly and did not deal with many of the matters on which this House and the country were entitled to get his views. But, last year he did depart from that practice and he spoke at some length, as he did this afternoon, giving an outline of what he had done and said in the United Nations for the previous twelve months but, as for principles, it was very difficult to discover any concrete statement other than a few observations which can only be described as of a most platitudinous nature.
Last year, when introducing his Estimate, the Minister said—he was dealing with world problems then— that our part in regard to such world problems was to make the best contribution we could to the consideration of the issues involved as they arise at the United Nations. We were to do the best we could. I hardly think that such a statement can be regarded as an important statement on foreign policy.
In his reply to the debate the only statement that could be regarded as anywhere approaching a declaration of principle was when he said that the rôle of the Irish delegation in the United Nations—and I am sure at this point many Deputies were interested to know what the rôle of the Irish delegation was—was not to exhaust our energies in denouncing injustice and war, much as we detest them, but to make constructive contributions to the search for true peace. The first statement was that we were to do the best we could and the second statement was that we were to work for true peace.
I do not think anybody in this House would disagree with those views, nor anybody in the world for that matter. If the Minister were to wish that all men would be good or if he were to wish that he would have fine weather on his holidays, we would all support such views also but, for statements of foreign policy, we find little or nothing there and nothing in to-day's speech to the Dáil.
There is, however, one matter to which I should refer en passant. During the course of his reply last year to the debate on the Estimate the Minister criticised some of the speeches made in the course of the debate. He criticised in particular Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Dillon and described them as “loud mouths” and bellicose participants in the cald war. He clearly indicated that such types of speeches were not the types of speeches that should be made in the United Nations General Assembly. It is a curious thing that within a few months after that the Minister himself and bellicose participants in the cold war, and I think quite correctly, in the motion he put down dealing with the matters that arose so tragically in Tibet.
The Minister having criticised us on this side of the House for what he called this loud-mouthed and bellicose participation in the cold war, did himself in quite a significant degree participate in the cold war and was criticised in the United Nations for so doing, for having dispelled the rather weak ectoplasm of the spirit of Camp David, for threatening to break down the mood of détente that was then thought to be in existence, and the very criticisms which were levelled against us by him last year were levelled against him in the United Nations Assembly a short time subsequently.
For these reasons, as I say, we must search around to try to discover what the Minister's attitude is towards world affairs and, in particular, our rôle in the United Nations. I want to say unequivocally that I do not regard our country as being an uncommitted country and I do not regard it as our rôle to be such a country as the uncommitted groups in the United Nations, such as Yugoslavia, Egypt or part of the Afro-Asian group. We I repeat, are not an uncommitted country and if it is the view of this Government that we are, if it is the view of this Government that we should take up a more neutralist position than that of its predecessors, then I think, as I said earlier, there is wide divergence of views between the two sides of the House.
The reasons which make us believe that the Government are taking up a different attitude from that of their predecessors are the type of speeches which the Government, through this Minister, have made in the United Nations and the way they voted on a number of crucial issues.
The Minister made very brief reference to the vote of the Irish delegation on the question of the representation of China. I want to refer to it at some greater length because I think it is of considerable importance. To my mind, there are two possible attitudes to be taken to what is, after all, one of the great world problems of the present time, namely, the problem of Communist China.
It is possible, first, to take the attitude that it would be desirable and in the interests of peace that Red China, the Peking régime, should be represented in the United Nations; or, it is possible to take the other view, namely, that it would be dangerous for that Organisation, that it would increase considerably the Communist influence in the Far East, that it would disrupt the admittedly tenuous links that are there in the Far East at the present time keeping the peace and that, for these reasons, at the present time it is undesirable that Red China should become a member of that Organisation.
As I say, there are people, honourable people, who hold these two separate views, divergent and different. I myself believe that the arguments are overwhelmingly against, at the present time, the recognition of Red China by membership of the United Nations. Neither of these is the Government's view. The Government try to take up a middle position which I believe to be an intellectually dishonest one and a nationally damaging one to this country. The Government say that they have not yet made up their mind whether Red China should be or should not be in the United Nations. The Taoiseach last year came into the House and said the Government had not yet made up their mind as to whether Red China should be in the United Nations or not. It was repeated by the Minister for External Affairs.
What facts are lacking, what information do the Government want that they have not got in order to make up their mind as to whether it is desirable or not that Red China should be in the United Nations, and when will they make up their mind? Supposing the Minister is successful in the Assembly next Autumn and supposing he gets his discussion on Red China and supposing there is a vote to be taken on the issue of whether the Peking regime or the Formosa régime is to have the China seat in the United Nations, what is the Minister going to do? Will he telegraph home to his colleagues to ask them then to make up their mind? Surely it is an intellectually dishonest position to say that the Government have not yet made up their mind? The facts are there. The facts can be weighed up one way or the other. To say that the Government, after three years of experience of this matter, are not able to know which way they will vote, seems to me to be a most extraordinary statement.
The Minister's position was, however, that not having made up his mind on the matter as to the representation of Red China, he was in favour of a discussion of the subject. Let me recall to the House the words which the Minister used addressing the Assembly last year when he said that he was in favour of discussion on this matter. He said he was in favour of a discussion, not a formal and inconclusive confrontation of rigidly opposed views but a careful deliberation leading to a generally-acceptable, constructive solution. This must have caused some amusement even to the most hard-boiled and experienced delegate in Turtle Bay. Rarely, I would suggest, could delegates to the United Nations Assembly who are accustomed to meaningless phrases and platitudinous aspirations have heard them both so deftly combined in a statement such as that given by the Minister.
There was to be a discussion which was to lead to "a generally-acceptable, constructive solution." I presume that many of the Deputies who are interested in these matters will have read the debates in the United Nations Assembly on this matter. The Minister was present and had been present for two hours previously. He said he was not in favour of a formal and inconclusive confrontation of rigidly opposed views, but the facts of the situation, as known to anybody who reads the debates and as they must have been known to the Minister, were such that it would have been impossible to have a debate of that sort on a subject of that nature and the pages of the United Nations Assembly's debates practically burn with the denunciations of the Americans and of those who supported the United States on this matter by the Communist group.
It may be desirable, it may be a nice idea to have a gentlemanly, fair and reasonable discussion on it but to think you are going to get such a discussion in the circumstances of the present time is, I suggest, illusory and dishonest because it must be known that such a type of discussion could not be held. If there was no prospect of such a discussion; if in fact all the scars of the cold war were to be exacerbated again, if in fact the type of discussions held in previous years in which there was this confrontation of bitterly opposed views—if that was the type of discussion to be held surely it was our duty, even if in favour of such a discussion, to vote against it under the circumstances.
I think I cannot put it any better than the Greek delegate who spoke in the United Nations Assembly on this aspect of this statement of the Minister on the matter. The Greek delegate said that the settlement was the goal and not the discussion and if, in fact, the discussion which the Minister favoured was to make more difficult the settlement which we all desire, I think it was our duty, even with this equivocal attitude of not making up our minds on the matter, to vote against the motion then before the General Assembly.
The Minister has made no reference in his remarks to the proposals made by him for several years concerning disengagement in Europe. In fact, the Minister's proposals in this regard amount to suggestions for the neutralisation of Germany. His proposals, with regard to disengagement, are directly contrary to the declared foreign policy of the West German Government and the Government of the U.S. I can see no reason for the Minister's suggestion in this matter; it is wrong for him to suggest—as he did in the reply to the debate last year —that there were certain professional military men who do not like his proposals. It is wrong to infer that it is only professional men who are against such proposals as his for disengagement in Europe.
A book published quite recently deals with this problem of disengagement. I think there have been over 100 different types of proposals put forward under the generic term of "disengagement." I certainly am not going to deal with them all or with the Minister's own particular brand but, to suggest that disengagement in Europe has been opposed only by a few military men, is not the truth. Disengagement in Europe has been espoused by the British Labour Party; it has been supported by some elements in the Social Democrat Party in Western Germany; there are no other political groups that I know in Europe that have supported any of the existing proposals for disengagement.
The idea of a détente in Europe is, of course, one with which every person would agree. The attitude of the Christian Democratic Party as expressed in the Council of Europe, the attitude of the Liberal Parties and of the Socialist Parties, with the exception of the British Labour Party, and some of the German Socialist groups, has been that any proposals dealing with disengagement would be to the disadvantage of the West and to the advantage of the Communist bloc. Then the Minister goes out to the United Nations and makes proposals for the neutralisation of Germany and disengagement in Europe which are directly contrary to the expressed foreign policy of Powers friendly to this country and directly contrary to the views of influential people in Europe and elsewhere, people to whose views we should have particular regard.
As I am dealing with this proposal of disengagement and the attitude of the British Labour Party on it, may I say that it might not be a bad thing if the Minister were to give up his subscription to the New Statesman and Nation? I find myself in considerable sympathy with a number of views of the British Labour Party but I am not in sympathy with any views expressed by certain wings of that Party on foreign affairs. It does, indeed, happen all too frequently that the funeral baked meats of the New Statesman and Nation are coldly furnished forth in the United Nations by the Minister. It is a curious, almost ironical development, that the Minister, who believes in the restoration of the Irish language, who thinks that because we speak English we shall be under the dominance of Great Britain or an alien culture, should be so influenced by British Labour Party thinking on this problem. To think that the views of the British Labour Party on foreign affairs are the views of all progressive, Liberal and Socialist people is wrong and is not the fact as the Minister would find if he took the trouble to discover what the position is among the Socialist Parties of Europe. He would find that the British Labour Party is very frequently opposed by the Socialist groups on the Continent, particularly by the French Socialists, by the Austrian Socialists and by the Socialists of the Benelux countries.
We said that it would be an elementary principle for any Government to seek to avoid by their actions and by their speeches unnecessary offence to friends of this country abroad. We have been accused by various parties, sometimes of boot-licking, and sometimes of stringing along behind the Western bloc because we were of the view that it was an elementary principle that one should have regard to the views of one's friends and not give unnecessary offence to them.
The Government, and the Minister in particular, have endeavoured to pose as seagreen incorruptibles; they have endeavoured to signify that they will not play politics and that they will have regard to every measure that comes before the United Nations strictly without regard to the views of anybody else. It has been, I think, worthy of note that, in fact, the Minister has had particular regard to the views of some countries that are traditionally friends of this country. I refer particularly to France. The Minister's attitude, generally speaking, with regard to the French has been correct but I desire to point out what, in fact, his attitude has been.
About 18 months ago at the United Nations General Assembly the Minister made proposals against the wider dissemination of nuclear weapons and he suggested that they should be kept by the existing nuclear Powers and that they should not be disseminated further. Who were the existing nuclear Powers? They were the United States, Britain and Russia. It was not until the earlier part of this year that France became a nuclear Power. But France was included in the Minister's resolution of 18 months ago and it was suggested then by the Minister that the four nuclear Powers should maintain their nuclear weapons and not distribute them any further. France was not then a nuclear Power and France was not a nuclear Power this spring when again these proposals were brought before the assembly.
That may have been good tactics. France may have been included in order to get votes for the Resolution but that was not the attitude of the Minister. In addition there was the extraordinary position that arose when it came to the Sahara test vote when, in order to become a nuclear Power, France had to set off her own bomb. The Minister apparently accepted that but he gave no support to the French view that they were entitled to set off their own bomb. He indicated that perhaps, after all, the French should not let off the bomb that would make them a nuclear Power.
Having gone a bit far on the Sahara resolution, he felt he should not support the Pakistan resolution in favour of self-determination for Algeria although the previous year the Minister had voted for a resolution of a similar character. The Minister may have been right on the vote for the Pakistan resolution and he may have been right in including France as a nuclear Power, when everybody knew she was not, but to suggest that we are stringing along behind our friends and have no views of our own and that the Government have declined to do so and will not play politics does violence to the truth. The fact is that that principle is an elementary one of politics, national and international. Our criticism of the Government is not that they have not adopted that principle but that they did not have proper regard to it when a number of important matters came before the General Assembly.
There is one other aspect of the work in the General Assembly to which I wish to refer. The newspaper reports on the matter of Ireland's vote for the non-permanent member of the Security Council have been rather scanty and the Minister made no reference to it in his speech this afternoon. The reports which I have been able to get appear to indicate that the Government voted for the Communist bloc nominee against the nominee put forward by the Western bloc. Deputies will recall that there was, last year, in the Assembly a considerable trial of strength between the Eastern and the Western blocs on the question of the non-permanent seat. The Communist bloc put forward Poland and the Western bloc, and particularly the United States, put forward Turkey. As I understand from the newspaper reports, we voted for Poland as against Turkey. If that is correct I would be glad if the Minister would explain how he feels that the best interests of this, country are served by such a vote.
The Minister has made a very brief reference to affairs in Europe in the course of his remarks here today. I want to charge him and the Government with indifference and neglect of European problems. It may not be generally realised that the Minister has not spoken once since he became a Minister in the General Assembly in the Council of Europe. Deputies know that that Assembly is a Parliamentary assembly and that representatives from the Council of Ministers come there from time to time to speak to that Assembly. It is not of little significance in European affairs and it has been ignored by the present Minister who has not spoken once to that Assembly.
I understand also that he did not attend at the recent meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Council of Europe. I feel that we should realise in this country the importance of the Council of Europe, not only for Europe generally, but also for this country. I feel it wrong for an Irish Government to ignore it and that it is in our national interests to strengthen it as best we can. The Minister is not serving this country by failing to attend at these meetings, and failing to express our views there and failing to contribute what he can to the aims and objects of the Council of Europe.
The reality of the situation in Europe at the present time very substantially reflects on this country. It is known that there are differences between the Community of the Six and the Association of the Seven but it is not generally appreciated that they are very real and appear to be very deep. If there is no real coming together between these two blocs it will have very serious repercussions on our future. This country is a European power and it should play the part of a European power even though it is a small one. To ignore the Council of Europe, the one vehicle we have for expressing our views and for influencing developments, is very wrong.
Reference has been made to the future of the O.E.E.C. The unexpected and sudden demise of the O.E.E.C. is to be regretted but there is little that we can do about it. I have no great hopes for the future of the new organisation that it is proposed to build on the ruins of the O.E.E.C. Certainly on the basis of existing information it does appear that the new organisation will be an even less powerful body than the one whose place it is taking. I would have welcomed the views of the Government on the developments that are taking place there. It would be of considerable assistance if, instead of telling us that committees are meeting and that delegates are being sent to these meetings, the Government would inform us of their views and of their attitude to these developments so that we can have a full debate on them here.
It should be our task to see that the divisions in Europe are healed as quickly as possible and that the new Organisation which is coming into being will not in effect perpetuate those divisions. The Minister very correctly paid a tribute to the work of our Ambassador at the United Nations, Mr. Boland. We are most fortunate in having a person of Mr. Boland's great integrity and experience, knowledge and intelligence. We on this side of the House sincerely hope his candidature will be successful.
By way of conclusion might I reiterate very briefly the principal point I wish to make in this debate. If in fact we in this country could have a bi-partisan foreign policy, I should like to think as President de Valera, the then Leader of the Party of which the Minister is a member, said here in 1956, that there are not any wide, deep differences between the two sides of the House. That is why we are entitled to know what are the principles of action guiding the Government. If the Government believe that we are an uncommitted State, if they believe that it is not our duty to support whenever we can the Western democracies in their struggle against Communist countries, then there is indeed a deep cleavage between us. We believe that our views on this matter, and not the Government's, reflect the traditions of the Irish people, that they represent the true principles which should guide our conduct in world affairs and would serve our interests and the interests of the Christian civilisation which we and our friends in the Western democracies are endeavouring to support and defend.