I was a little surprised at the intervention of Deputy Mulcahy, who is a distinguished and very experienced member of the Legislature. I was surprised by his suggestion that while he saw that there were certain loopholes in this legislation we should trust the Minister and the Government in the circumstances and allow this Bill to go through. I was deeply interested because my memories are so fresh of the debate which took place earlier on today here, when we were discussing the Order of Business and the interpretation of certain legislation concerned with C.I.E., in which the Taoiseach was reminded of what he had said when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce. He pointed out, quite rightly, "It is not contained in the legislation, so I am not bound by any reflections I may have made at that time". It seems to me that that as much as anything else of general principle would reinforce our contention that whatever we intend should be the law binding any Government. We are not particularly concerned about this Government or its successors but any Government should be precisely guided in any action that it may be called on to take in future in another contingency such as the one we are concerned with at the moment.
We accept completely, with the reservation I have made in other debates, the need to send out the reinforcements required by the Government. We have accepted that principle but I must remind Deputy Mulcahy again that we all pass away but legislation is permanent and whatever any of us may decide to-night may be the law under which some future Minister, who does not share any of our views, even though they may be diverse at the moment, may bind the Legislature or the country to the letter of the law as he reads it.
So, I would appeal to Deputy Mulcahy, if he has any doubts about the powers being given here, not to depend on the goodwill of future Ministers or the present Minister but to bind him very precisely to whatever he has in mind in relation to future actions of this kind.
The suggestion has been made that we could put down a motion. Everybody knows that I would very much like to discuss in great detail this Congo situation and that I failed to have been allowed to do so. I am not questioning that at this stage but, clearly, I did not have as full a debate as I would like to have had. That may not be of very great importance in so far as I am a minority but it is important that whatever views any Deputy may have on any particular subject and which represent a point of view held by any minority of people, he should be allowed to put them forward here. I am sure that is a point which should have occurred to Deputy Booth. I am sure Deputy Booth cannot give us an undertaking that if we were to put down a motion of censure in relation to the activities in the Congo, which I could justify I think, that we would get a debate on that motion before this Dáil dissolves, do not mind before the Dáil rises for this recess, before the Dáil dissolves completely. In fact, although they did not say it, that was a dishonest evasion of the real point at issue in this whole question—the reason for which this amendment was put down—namely, Parliamentary control, democratic control. Whether we are right or wrong and whether our views recommend themselves to the other members of the House, is immaterial beside the fact that we have a right which is a sacrosanct principle in our Parliamentary democracy. That is the point that is at issue here, not whether the military will be allowed to use machine-guns or old fashioned weapons or whether they will be allowed to go on ten-day patrols to one part of the Congo or another.
We are involved in the most delicate political situation that has faced this country since the last war or perhaps even since the appalling Civil War. We are facing a deteriorating situation in the Congo. The Taoiseach and the Leader of the Opposition agree that it is impossible to forecast what is going to happen in the Congo in the next few months. Nobody can tell. There is the awful possiblity of a civil war involving 12,000,000 people, a situation which does not bear thinking about. We, with our own knowledge of our own civil war tragedy, must understand that is a situation which may present itself with great speed to the Government.
The Minister may be presented with the problem of what action he proposes to take should these unfortunate people decide on civil war. The whole United Nations conception is a wonderful one which we all back to the hilt, but it is in its toddling stage, in its absolute infancy. It is inconceivable you could give a measure of the situation such as exists in the Congo to the Minister until we know what is involved in our guarantee to the United Nations.
I am completely at odds with the Taoiseach on this question. He holds that our commitments are of one kind while I hold they are of another. None of us knows until we have had considerably more experience of this action how far we will be committed in any activity in the Congo or elsewhere. If the United Nations takes over Algeria and its problems from de Gaulle we shall have another terribly difficult situation. In the quickly changing and unfortunately deteriorating situation in the world—in Africa, Asia and elsewhere—I think we must here retain as close a control on the Army as we have up to the present retained.
The Army is merely like the Garda or any other part of the services— an instrument of policy. It has no independent right of expression at all in the taking of political decisions. Every action we take is a political action and the Army carries out our political decisions and we feel those political decisions should be retained here in the House and by the House and that we should not surrender any of our sovereignty, as Deputy Booth suggested we had done, in our participation in this operation.
Neither do I accept his suggestion about what he called our ill-informed debates. I can only describe that as being a very insolent reference. Why should our debates be ill-informed? Admittedly, we are not fully informed at times, but to the best of our ability we inform ourselves and it is to that purpose that we put down Questions and intervene in debates—so that we can ask people who have the information that we cannot have for the correction of any misapprehensions under which we may be labouring, or any false conclusions at which we may be in danger of arriving, from the facts at our disposal. That is the whole purpose of the Parliamentary democracy in which we believe.
Because of the serious nature of the present situation we feel the Dáil should continue to reserve to itself the final power to send out those troops after examination of the problem and after, as the Taoiseach has explained, the decision has been justified. I have had very bitter experience of attempting to get information as a result of Parliamentary Questions. I have been pilloried here by the Taoiseach simply because I ask questions. When we were discussing the motion on the Congo, we heard the Taoiseach tell the Leader of the Opposition that he would not give Government time, even to the Leader of the Opposition, for a motion unless he himself were allowed to write the motion. I think that must dispose of the suggestion that there is any satisfactory way of dealing with this difficult question other than by bringing it before the House.
Anyone who examines the actions of the Government in this matter objectively must concede that they have certainly changed their minds from the time they took action at the beginning. The Taoiseach's subsequent actions are a complete reversal of the Government's original action. Consequently, we cannot accept the suggestion that the Taoiseach or the Government are the best arbiters, are the most infallible arbiters, in taking any decisions in relation to our soldiers.
I would say again that we press this amendment. I would add the suggestion that if the Minister wishes, if he really is solely concerned with the matters he referred to—the lorry drivers and the dentists—if he feels he would be confronted with that kind of problem, his draftsmen would give us a new section which would meet with the wishes of the House.