Committee on Finance. - Vote 46—External Affairs (Resumed). – Dáil Éireann (17th Dáil) – Thursday, 12 Mar 1964

General MacEoin

I rise to support the motion standing in the names of Deputy Dillon and others, but before doing so, I should like to comment on the statement of the Minister in introducing his Vote. I wish to join with other Deputies who complained, legitimately, I believe, that the Minister omitted reference to our application for admission to the Common Market. Deputies will remember that this time last year great stress was laid on the prospect of our immediate entry to the EEC and the advantages that would entail. In fact, our future economic development was based on the assumption that we would join the Common Market at an early date. In omitting to refer to this serious and important matter, the Minister was guilty of a grave dereliction of duty and I trust he will inform the House of what his intentions are and what our hopes for the future are in this respect when he comes to reply.

From the defence point of view, I should like to express some views on the Cyprus question. With Deputy D. Costello, I subscribe to the view that if we can do anything—and I think we can—to bring back peace to that troubled island, we should make every effort to meet the wishes of the United Nations to send a force there. It is, however, imperative that we should have full information on the objects of such a force. It is well to recall that on a recent visit to Northern Ireland, the British Prime Minister asserted that partition in Cyprus would be impossible and could not be considered. He was standing on ground where that outrage has been imposed by a British Government without the support of a single Irish member of Parliament.

This is a matter that should be continuously before our minds. Every effort should be made to deal with the problem of discrimination. Discrimination is there. Our fellow citizens are suffering grave hardships in that territory. Of course, the truth is that anybody not in Fianna Fáil suffers the same hardship here. Indeed, there have been boasts that it is only right that even briefs be extended to those who have an interest in politics to encourage them to take part in them. I shall not develop that. It shows the trend of thought within the Party now in Government.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister for External Affairs would have no responsibility.

General MacEoin

It relates to External Affairs to the extent that I am submitting the Minister and the Government had a guilty conscience. They could not easily charge the people in Northern Ireland with offences of which they themselves were partially guilty.

In relation to the motion standing in our name, the action of the Minister for External Affairs did not surprise me at all. It did not surprise a number of my colleagues that the Minister would be a party to the suppression of material facts that, in justice, should have been mentioned. The fact that they jump from 1923, when we joined the League of Nations, to 1933 implied that they made application to join. Unless you read it carefully, you would believe that they applied to the League of Nations, and in a short time afterwards, Mr. de Valera became President of the League. In 1923, I was a Deputy and an Army officer. I know the circumstances in which it was proposed to make application for membership to the League of Nations. I am aware that the then Leader of the Opposition outside the House— they were members of the House but not in it—sent a telegram of protest to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations demanding that we not be admitted. But the big point was that under no circumstances should the Treaty of 1921 be registered as an international instrument. The argument was that if such registration took place it would bind us for all time. We argued in this House at that time that that was not so, that the purpose was to put it on an international plane. All credit to Mr. Cosgrave and his Government of that day. They succeeded in having that registration take place.

I am happy to say that the advice of the then international law adviser to the League of Nations was given to me at that time on Lake Geneva with our representative in Geneva, who was not recognised, the late Mr. MacWhite. I carried that memorandum back from Geneva to the President of the Executive Council, Mr. Cosgrave. It was a big mistake on the part of the Minister for External Affairs that he did not include the telegram he sent protesting against our admission to the League of Nations. It would be an historical document of great importance. They made it a matter of grave importance at that time. Ladies went up and down with placards protesting against our entry into the League of Nations. We took the Presidency of the League of Nations in 1933, but we do not give any credit or thanks or mention the names of those who made that possible. I do not want to denigrate anything Mr. de Valera did, and I have no intention of doing so. I assert, however, that when a Deputy of the Fianna Fáil Party can say in this House that they wrote this book to suit themselves at the taxpayers' expense, it is an outrage on all public decency.

I wish to deal now with the omission of Griffith and Collins. I will accept what the Taoiseach said the other day—that this State was founded in 1919—but who was responsible for its establishment in 1919? Who was the father of Sinn Féin who established the principle of remaining at home here and establishing an Irish Parliament? Who stood down in the interests of unity from the Presidency of the Sinn Féin organisation in 1917? Arthur Griffith. Who worked here in poverty and hardship for Ireland when he could, if he wanted, have secured a good remuneration that would have allowed him and his family to live in very comfortable circumstances? He is not to be mentioned.

When the Dáil was established and when the then Prime Minister was in the United States, from 1919 to 1921 Arthur Griffith carried on the Premiership until he was arrested. When he was arrested, who then carried on the Premiership? Michael Collins. Not only did he carry on the Premiership and control of the Government, but he was also Minister for Finance; he was the Director of Intelligence, he was the co-ordinator of all activities within the enemy ranks that could be to our advantage. Yet he is to be ignored. When the Minister for External Affairs, in green trousers and green socks, can get a whole big photograph in this book, I cannot understand why four lines could not have been given to Collins and Griffith or to the fact that there was a Government from 1922 to 1932. In my opinion, the green socks the Minister had on were the green socks of the Army uniform in which he served to September, 1922. The Minister for External Affairs, as he is now, was then an Army officer, the same as myself, accepting the Treaty.

Mr. Aiken

That is not true. I never had a uniform. I never accepted the Treaty. I accepted the Dáil.

General MacEoin

I shall assert what I am going to assert and I do not want help from anybody on my own benches or elsewhere. I shall assert the facts as I know them. Not only that, but he was a paid Army officer at the same rate as I was paid until September, 1922. I say that he got the same imprest account as I got from the Minister for Finance. I only know that the Auditor General and the Finance officer here in the Department of Defence made sure I accounted for every farthing I got. I shall leave it at that. But I know the Minister could not treat Collins decently. He could not have that generosity that he should have had to a person like Collins who did so much for the person who was then Commanding Officer of a Northern Division. Collins went further. Collins appointed him a commander of certain forces in 1922 and he accepted it.

Mr. Coughlan

That is a revelation.

General MacEoin

I feel that the Government and the Minister for External Affairs cannot tolerate the names of Collins or Griffith because they are jealous of their achievements. They cannot tolerate the names of Cosgrave or O'Higgins, McGilligan or anyone else who built this nation and who built this Parliament from 1922 against tremendous odds—and I shall not put it any further than that.

Mr. Aiken

You put it too far. You will get your answer.

General MacEoin

I am sure the Minister for External Affairs would like to take me by the neck, but never while I am alive and while there is a breath in me, will he close my mouth or make me withdraw any statement of fact that I make and I make no statement that is not a statement of fact and that I cannot prove.

The Minister very blandly took out this document today—Handbook— and this other document produced by us, this booklet entitled Ireland. There is not a single photograph of a Minister, the Taoiseach or anybody else of that inter-Party Government that produced it—not in a white shirt, not in a blue shirt, not in any shirt, green socks or no socks. It is produced as a factual statement, giving credit to the people who helped to found the State.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

On all sides.

General MacEoin

Yes. It did it objectively and nobody complained of that then. It was accepted as an objective statement. The Saorstát Éireann Official Handbook, though, is produced as a series of articles with the name of the writer attached to every article. Anyone who liked could challenge any assertion made by any one of those people. It could have been challenged then. The Minister took out these two books today and falls back on them—for what? He fell back on them for a justification for the production of this Handbook.

Mr. Aiken

Griffith and Collins were not mentioned in the article on history in that book.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

Nobody was. No name was mentioned.

Mr. Aiken

But this is the gravamen of the charge—that we should have mentioned them.

Mr. Barrett

There is no gross misrepresentation in it.

General MacEoin

If the Minister cannot have the ordinary decency to listen and if he interrupts, he may expect perhaps something more than he wants. I shall not be diverted from my line of argument, which is that whether this State was established in 1919 or 1922 the founders of this State were Collins and Griffith. Even if I knew it to be the truth, if the Minister for External Affairs said it, I would begin to doubt it.

Deputy Dolan told us you wrote it for your own benefit. Will you use the nice word to him that he used to me? The Minister for External Affairs and the Fianna Fáil Party never want to hear anything except what suits them and what pleases them.

Mr. Aiken

All the Deputy is trying to do is to run away from Cork and Kildare. You have "Corkitis". You are trying to kick up a row about this simply because you were beaten in Cork and Kildare.

What are you weeping about then? Certainly Governments should not write history. There are 15 histories which deal with Collins and the rest of them mentioned in that book. You gave none. You made no mention of Collins. The history of Collins that Deputy MacEoin has been talking about was not mentioned in your book.

I am arguing that the Government should reconsider this whole matter, that they should withdraw the book. The Minister for External Affairs has said that he is responsible for publishing it, that he is responsible for the series of photographs. There is one of himself, and a sum of £9,000 was spent on this production and some of it went on that photograph.

Mr. Aiken

It is all coming back very quickly. With the publicity, the sales are going skyhigh.

General MacEoin

The Government should take that step and the Minister himself should resign. I know he has always suffered from an inferiority complex and it is too bad that at the end of his days he should carry on the spleen he had against those who did so much for him. I shall leave it at that, regretting the attack that has been made upon the sacred and glorious names of Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins who worked so hard, who mastered every detail and who advocated the establishment of an Irish Parliament here by the members refusing to go to Westminster, establishing an Irish Government and effacing themselves all the time in the interests of unity and harmony. It is regrettable that people who did that great work should be ignored as if they never existed.

One of the worst offences of which the Minister is guilty is in regard to the President. The President should have a photograph on the front page of this booklet, the place of honour. Whether I like him or not or whether I disagree with him or not, I revere him and the office he holds. If any photograph were to go in in colour, it is his that should be in it. I put that to the Minister and to the Government and ask them seriously to consider that whole question.

Finally, I appeal to the Minister to make a short summary of the efforts of Griffith and Collins in the building of the State, whether it was 1919 or 1922, that they state that the previous Government secured for Ireland membership of the League of Nations and membership of the International Labour Office and secured recognition at home and abroad of our status as an independent nation. The summary should also indicate that we secured the passage through the British House of Commons of the Statute of Westminster, an Act to legalise for the British what we held was the position. The Statute of Westminster did not give us anything but it did legalise for the British the position we held that we were a free sovereign independent nation and that the other members, Canada, South Africa, and so on, were independent states. Out of all the shouting it was the only time that ever a word of tribute was paid by the then Taoiseach that there was progress made that he did not think possible. One short word, even that much in the booklet, would be something. It could be used then but could not be used ever since and no recognition must be paid to it forever.

Mr. Sherwin

I regret we are engaged on a discussion on the Civil War again. I was one of the participants. I fought against the Treaty but still I am a great admirer of Michael Collins and a great admirer of James Larkin and possibly if I were Minister for External Affairs I would have their photographs in the booklet. However, different people see things in different ways. Perhaps the Minister was trying to keep out all the participants in the Civil War. I know there is a picture of de Valera but he is the President. There is a picture of Deputy Lemass but he is the Taoiseach and of Deputy Aiken but he is the Minister for External Affairs. There is no picture of anybody except those who now hold office. Perhaps the Minister thought that if he put in photographs of Collins and Griffith, he would have to put in those of Cathal Brugha and Liam Lynch. There are strong views on both sides.

The State was not founded in 1922 but in 1919 and it was a tribute to the participants on both sides that the State was founded. What happened in 1922 had nothing to do with what was made possible in the previous struggle. The issue of the Civil War was another kettle of fish and I do not want to enter into that. There were terrible things done in that Civil War and if we were to discuss it, those terrible things would be brought in. The Opposition would be most unwise to start making too much bones about it because things happened in that Civil War of which the Opposition can be ashamed and we do not want to bring them up. Over the years we have done our best to avoid that. I happen to be President of the Old Fianna and half the members of that body are people who took part on the other side. We never discuss it. Most of the IRA organisations are made up of both sides and we attend Masses together.

I shall make one more point in regard to the late James Larkin. This is merely an outline of history dealing with leading figures and while Larkin was not a leading figure in that sense, he did enormous social work.

Dáil Éireann debate - Thursday, 12 Mar 1964

Committee on Finance. - Vote 46—External Affairs (Resumed).

Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 12 Mar 1964