I move:
In view of the far-reaching changes implicit in Ireland's proposed membership of EEC, Dáil Éireann is of opinion that the conditions of membership, before being accepted, should be submitted for decision by the people by way of referendum.
For many years now, the position here in Ireland has been that the Taoiseach has tried to lord it over political affairs generally and to suggest that he is the infallible, final arbiter of all matters relating to industry and business and political affairs generally. In recent years, as his power has grown, so has his arrogance and so has his virtual claim to infallibility. Whenever he makes any statement now, it has virtually to be accepted, or else he brings into action all the overt and covert weapons at his disposal in order to eliminate opposition to his views. In the past 18 months, he has attempted to steamroll through the country an attitude or a policy in relation to the economic pattern here which is a complete reversal of the policy which he has advocated for over 30 years, the policy of protectionism.
It seems to me that he was forced to take this decision to advocate the removal of protection, the removal of tariffs which had been his favourite policy for so long, because it had been impossible for him to conceal from the public that far from being a competent or efficient or able administrator, or architect of a viable industrial arm for Ireland, he had in fact been a most disastrous failure and had been unable to conceal this fact from the public by virtue of two simple devices. One was his failure to create an efficient industrial arm. This has resulted in approximately eight per cent. to 11 per cent. people unemployed on an average over all those years. In addition to that, anything up to between 750,000 people and 1,000,000 people have had to get out.
That was the measure of his failure over the years but the failure was concealed from the public and for that reason he was able to go on as if in fact he had been a successful Minister for Industry and Commerce and had created a viable industrial arm in this country. Now the moment of truth for the Taoiseach came when he was faced with the decision of whether he would look for full membership or associate membership of the EEC, whether he would go in with the big boys or go into the junior school, as he saw it. When the time came to look for membership of the EEC, it was quite clear to him that full membership was the important justification of his political virility. It became that in his mind and for that reason he rejected any suggestion that he might consider the desirablility of associate membership with certain advantages —which I hope to outline later on —as opposed to full membership and the great dangers involved for our people, particularly in respect of the creation of avoidable unemployment which would follow from insisting on becoming a full member. To him, our becoming a full member clearly would establish that Ireland had become an independent country, with an independent viable economy which could sustain any industrial or business opposition from even the most powerful concerns in Europe.
In volume 197, No. 6, of the Official Reports, at column 923, we asked the Taoiseach whether we would look for associate rather than full membership of EEC and we suggested that Ireland was not economically ready for full membership. The Taoiseach replied:
I reject the implication in the Question that Ireland is an economically backward country, unable to assume the obligations of membership of the European Economic Community.
This is the first question I ask the Taoiseach: does he still believe that to be true? Does he still believe that we are economically able to assume the obligations of membership of the European Economic Community? If he believes that, all right; let him get on with it and pursue his application in Brussels. It is standing there in our name and it is an application for full membership. He thinks we are capable of membership; he did only a couple of months ago on 30th November, 1962. I suggest he was bluffing then and I suggest he knew he was bluffing and that he was trying to mislead this House and the people. The best proof of that is now that the British application has been completed. That was another line which he had, the undertaking he gave us that:
When the negotiations with Britain have been concluded, it is expected that the negotiations with the other three applicants for membership will be disposed of quickly and will be completed about the same time.
What is the present position? What is the Taoiseach going to do about our application for full membership? The British application has been dealt with and now it is up to the Taoiseach to show the country that he was genuine in his belief that we could seek full membership as soon as the British application was dealt with. I suggest that that again was part of the Taoiseach's bluff which over the years he has succeeded in getting away with by creating a suggestion of efficiency. Of course, he happened to be the one-eyed king in the land of the blind. That was his position, but all the time he has been operating on the assumption that he would not be faced with this particular predicament and that he would be able to get in under cover of the British application, it having been accepted.
It is rather like the story of the wren and the eagle and the wren saying that he could fly higher than the eagle and when it came to the test, the eagle to his amazement found the wren was a few feet above him. How did it happen? The wren went up in the tail-feathers of the eagle and that is what the Taoiseach hoped would happen, that he would be spirited in quietly behind the British application and that he would then be accepted as part of the whole British economic unit. Now, he is faced with this moment of truth and in spite of the fact that the British eagle did not become airborne, he is faced with the position of either repudiating his former statement that we were fit for full membership or looking for some alternative from of membership. His difficulty now is that he cannot look even for associate membership because he was so short-tempered with the whole idea of associate membership that he does not appear to us to have given it any serious consideration.
We have brought this motion before the House because it is quite clear from the Taoiseach's statement to the House that he intends to carry on with this bluff and continue with this idea that we should be in a position to seek full membership. Quite obviously, he is hoping that the people's memory of his application and of his assertions about our ability to go in will fade away and that in time the people will forget that we ever looked for full membership and by manipulation of the communications system here which he so regidly controls, radio and television and newspapers and other media that he has at his disposal, he will be able to create the idea that he never in fact intended to look for full membership, and any arrangement that the British come to for their own salvation he will accept and become part of it and then the whole thing will be forgotten.
One of the most disturbing factors in this whole campaign by the Taoiseach has been his remarkable success in hypnotising virtually all the political commentators, these self-styled and so-called economists with very few exceptions, the newspapers, the radio writers, the business men, chambers of commerce, European economic movements and all these organisations all over the country into believing this great mirage built up by the Taoiseach through his public relations officers that we were in a position to decide when we would go in, what we would do and so on. We had to make, of course, some adaptations and then we would be readily accepted by General de Gaulle. I do not think it rested finally with de Gaulle as far as we were concerned. I do not think the decision would rest with him but would rest rather on the simple case of our position of political ineptitude and the fact that we could not be accepted into a cartelised society of this kind with very high-level, highly-efficient industries and survive and, in our own interests, they would find it impossible to give us admission.
We have only to look at the present position of trade to see what that position is: our decreasing exports, the decrease in national output, the fact that we still have a declining employment figure and substantial emigration. This is not a picture that we believe could fool anybody into accepting this community and saying: "This is an efficient society which is ready to measure itself against, say, Belgium, West Germany, France or Italy." I can only say it is the dream of a madman. Anybody who faces those realities and says we could measure up on equal terms to these communities is obviously a person who lives in a fanciful world of his own. It is, of course, an end-product of the Taoiseach's living in the virtually closed society which we have, an uncritical society, a society in which the person who does object is immediately slandered, hounded down or generally blackguarded by those whose actions he is merely questioning.
One of the most disturbing things is the fact that the Taoiseach has been allowed to get away with this in a completely uncritical way by the main Opposition Party. I can appreciate that Deputy Dillon has always wanted European association and so on but I believe, in the interests of democracy, he had a responsibility to put the other side of the question to the public and let them decide on its merits. I cannot really expect the Taoiseach to do that. It was not his job but I think the Leader of the Opposition had a responsibility to say: "While what the Taoiseach says has certain merits, we believe there is another side to the picture."
There was a good case for showing that, in fact, there would be very considerable unemployment as a result of seeking full membership, that is, seeking dismantlement of tariffs by 1967 or whatever it might be, rather than seeking associate membership and getting between 12 and 22 years for tariff dismantlement and so allowing Irish industry to adapt itself. I do not give two snaps of the fingers for Irish industry—I do not believe in private enterprise industry—but I believe there would be very great hardship imposed on the people if there were this sudden throwing open of our industries to this overwhelming competition from Europe.
I believe this to be true. This idea has been reinforced by the Government's findings in the CIO reports which I think make very gloomy reading but which, I think, expose better than anything else—even though they are not carried out as efficiently as they might be for reasons which do not enter into consideration now-the fact that Irish industry is very unprepared as it is at the moment for competition from Europe. Two out of three of the reports so far published disclose that about 40 per cent. of those engaged in manufacturing industries will be declared redundant as a result of closures. The various CIO reports tell this story. In the boot and shoe industry, about 1,000 will go and in the pulp and paperboard industry, about another 1,000. In the motor-car industry, there will be about 2,000, plus another couple of thousand in ancillary or feeder industries.
While, as I say, two out of three reports show 40 per cent. redundancy, the third shows a closure altogether so that the figure of 40 per cent. was reasonable. It could amount to anything up to 100,000 disemployed as a result of this decision. That would cause fantastic hardship for many people and their families and I think it was an irresponsible action on the part of the Taoiseach to take that decision without trying to ameliorate it in some way. That could have been done by seeking associate rather than full membership.
There is no use in saying, as Ministers have been saying: "We will find work for these people or we shall have work for them." If the Government believe that to be the truth—I do not think they do; it is a further part of their bluff—why not start practising? There are 63,000 unemployed at present and 23,000 had to emigrate last year. The Government could start practising finding work or alternative employment for those 86,000 people. Surely the Government cannot continue to believe they will get away with it and confound Abraham Lincoln's dictum: "You cannot fool all the people all the time." Do the Government believe that they can fool all the people the whole time? I believe they have come to the end of that era of misleading people and miscalculating on their continued credulity.
It can be demonstrated, and I shall take the opportunity of doing it in the fuller debate, that the Taoiseach has been concealing facts from the public, misleading the public, serving the people half-truths and giving them generally a mish-mash of wishful thinking which bears no relation at all to the facts.
Probably one of the most shocking betrayals on the part of the Taoiseach was the decision to abandon military neutrality. The first information we had of this decision was given in a New York paper, that as a result of our application for full membership, according to the Taoiseach, it was essential. He had abandoned the policy we had over the past 40 years, a policy which had brought us prestige in the United Nations. Indeed, it was the only time we had any kind of reputation in world politics. But, suddenly, neutrality became a dirty word to the Taoiseach. While the Minister for External Affairs, at one end of New York was advocating that we should not take sides in the Cold War and should not look for Polaris or any other kind of missiles, at the other end of New York, the Taoiseach was offering Ireland for all these appalling installations concerned with the extension of the Cold War. This is the kind of hypocrisy that has done so much damage to the Irish cause.
The Taoiseach went on to suggest at that time, in making this departure from our accepted policy over the years—a policy which had paid wonderful dividends and had given us a measure of prestige in the world—that he saw no signs of public opinion opposed to this departure. This is not true. At one meeting I attended, at which there was a non-party type of platform, only half a dozen people in a room of 500 or 600 believed we should depart from neutrality. We have the declaration of the Taoiseach's former leader, Mr. de Valera, an extraordinarily sane sort of comment at Col. 930, Vol. 122 of the Official Report:
I want to make it quite clear to the House that so long as Partition exists there is no use talking to the Irish people about crusading for anybody.
There were various other similar remarks to the effect that, so far as we were concerned, we were neutral, and that neutrality is and continues to be a national policy.
In addition to that statement, there was a motion passed by the Trade Union Congress in Galway last June. In this they advocated two things: (1) that associate membership should be examined by the Government and, (2) that the Government should not take any other stand in regard to military commitments other than those involved in our membership of UNO. These two statements are important—Mr. de Valera's from the prestige point of view and that of the Trade Union Congress from the point of view of its membership and its representation in the country. But the Taoiseach simply pushes this aside and makes it appear as if there were no body of opinion at all opposed to his view. In addition, he indulged in one of the most scurrilous witch-hunting campaigns I have ever known here in attacking people like myself and Deputy McQuillan because we oppose——
