Vol. 212 No. 1
I now move:
That Dáil Éireann approve the nomination by the Taoiseach of Deputy Brian Joseph Lenihan for appointment by the President to be a member of the Government.
I may say, for the information of the House, that I propose, if this motion is approved, to assign the Department of Justice to Deputy Lenihan.
It is no part of my interests or intentions to comment at length on such measures as the Taoiseach may think it expedient to take to paper over the cracks in his own administration. He tells us the Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Smith, placed his resignation in his hands. Certainly, if we are to judge from the newspapers and radio, Deputy Smith seems to have been constrained to place it in the hands of everyone else in the country before he could persuade the Taoiseach to admit it had been placed in his. However, that is their affair and I do not propose to pursue it further, but when I hear that the Taoiseach proposes to replace Deputy Smith in the Department of Agriculture with a TD for North East Dublin and to replace Deputy Lenihan in the Fisheries Branch with another TD for North East Dublin, I then come to the proposed appointment of Deputy Lenihan as Minister for Justice.
Now it has long been the custom in this House to wish any new entrant on ministerial responsibility good luck in the administration of the duties of his office. This event will be no exception to the general rule. But I am bound to direct the attention of the Taoiseach to certain facts in connection with this appointment and to invite his reassurance that his appointee to the Ministry of Justice will pull up his socks and show some greater sense of responsibility than heretofore we have been led to believe he is capable of showing.
The Taoiseach will remember that since the House last met there was a by-election in Roscommon. I think it is in the interests of us all to maintain in our public life a vigorous and energetic contest both within this House and on the hustings. That is a healthy thing. But we ought to be circumspect that we make no allegation against one another or against the Parties representative of our own people calculated to reflect upon them unless we have the gravest reasons for doing so. This is particularly true of a Party which keeps its own private "Pravda" in circulation. The issue of Wednesday, 8th July, of our Irish "Pravda" which is the official organ of the Fianna Fáil Party, published flare headings "Forged Letters Sent to F.F. Supporters". These allegations were made on the authority of the Minister for Local Government and Deputy Lenihan.
That is not true.
You are a Minister now, you know.
And you are in the House.
I propose to read what "Pravda" says. It is a sign. If Deputy Lenihan begins his career by repudiating the Minister for Local Government, this is a high recommendation to me. The man who does that shows some fitness for the post of Minister for Justice. I must quote the evidence of the printed word. I admit that on the occasion of this remarkable transaction Deputy Lenihan was cast very much in the role of second fiddle but he did not fail to squeak under his master's bow.
Deputy Blaney, the Minister for Local Government, led off:
There was a surprise development in the Roscommon by-election last evening when Mr. Blaney, Minister for Local Government, called a special meeting of Fianna Fáil election workers in Boyle and strongly condemned the circulation of forged letters purporting to have been sent to voters by Mr. Brian Lenihan...
Mr. Blaney said that a large number of these letters had been delivered through the post. They were post marked in Dublin...
The House can picture Deputy Blaney, knee-deep in these letters, picking up an odd envelope here and there out of the pile and discovering that they were "franked with a 3d. postal machine stamp, and dated"—all of them—"July 1. He wanted to warn the voters not to be gulled by this trickery."
Mr. Blaney continued:
When Fine Gael could not win one way they tried to win another way. This last minute effort to catch votes is the lowest form of electioneering I have ever heard of; the worst type of vote-catching ever tried in any part of the country.
"I can only describe this new low as an indication that Fine Gael have found the ground slipping from under them in the past few weeks. They have pulled this dirty trick out of the bag at the eleventh hour to try and recover what they have lost. I hope the intelligent people of Roscommon and Leitrim will not be misled by this despicable form of political trickery."
Mr. Blaney then read a letter which he said was one of those referred to.
There was no doubt in anybody's mind that the poor man was smothered in this mountain of letters and that here he was picking up one of them to read. The report in "Pravda" continues:
It was delivered to a voter in Kilmore area, near Carrick-on-Shannon...
The letter, read by Mr. Blaney, was written in pen and ink and the Minister said that an effort had been made to imitate Mr. Lenihan's handwriting.
That is true.
The report continues:
During the election campaign, Mr. Lenihan wrote personal letters to his constituents appealing for support for Dr. Hugh Gibbons, the Fianna Fáil candidate.
Asked to comment on the letter last night—
—here comes in the second fiddle squeaking under the appropriate bow and here is the squeak—
—Mr. Lenihan said that he repudiated it as a fake and the lowest thing ever prepetrated in Irish politics.
"It is so contemptible," he said, "that I feel no further comment from me is necessary.
I think of this picture of the pair of them, draped in a snowy white robe, standing in the midst of this mountain of forged correspondence from which the Minister was picking a sample at random——
I was not there.
——in the absence of his poor deluded colleague so that the Minister for Local Government not only sought to deceive all the electors in Roscommon but made a hames out of the poor Parliamentary Secretary who is now the Minister for Justice, an innocent, decent creature.
Thank you.
Wait a moment. I must call the attention of the Taoiseach to the innocence and unsophistication of his new nominee. He says indignantly: "I was not there when it was done." God knows, he ought to know his colleague, the Minister for Local Government, well enough, even in the short time he has been in public life.
There was a sequel to this distressing incident. We now discover from official sources the dimensions of the mountain of forged correspondence in which the Minister for Local Government was floundering and in regard to which the nominee, the Minister for Justice, expressed his pained dismay. As reported in the Sunday Independent of November 1st last, the following statement was issued by Garda Headquarters:
In reply to an inquiry at Garda Headquarters, a Garda spokesman said that the police investigations in the matter of the election letter in County Roscommon were completed. The investigating officers were satisfied that there was only one letter and that it was forged by a local individual in the Carrick-on-Shannon area as a practical joke and that criminal proceedings were not warranted.
Let us recall the heading Forged Letter Sent to F.F. Supporters described by Mr. Blaney when he read the letter——
A letter.
——as one—one—of those referred to. Now, I can understand Fianna Fáil's distress at the prospect of losing this by-election. I can understand the exertions of the Minister for Local Government, anxious to vindicate the reputation of those he was proud to describe as his "Donegal Mafia". He brought them all to the scene of operations. They were to be used for the purpose of intimidating those whom he could not otherwise persuade.
That, of course, is untrue and the Deputy, Leader of the Opposition, knows it.
Be quiet.
I shall not be quiet.
You have said too much already.
I will not be quiet.
A forged letter was sent. Does the Deputy admit that it was forged?
Forged by whom?
By the friends of Fine Gael and they know that. Senator Tom Fitzpatrick knows about it.
The Minister was caught out.
I was not caught out.
Who forged the letter?
Fine Gael supporters forged it.
A Minister of this Government proclaimed before the world that in this country we had sunk to the level of forging documents for the purpose of corrupting public life.
This incident caused me no surprise but it would be wrong if it were to pass in silence on the occasion of Deputy Lenihan's appointment to the Government. He has defended himself here today. He says he was not present when the Minister for Local Government made this ingenuous statement in regard to the letter he had in his possession. He disclaims all responsibility for what, it appears, I am afraid, must be described as a falsehood, that there were many letters when in fact there was one which bore in its text irrefutable evidence that it was a practical joke. I do not want to pursue this unduly but——
We will prosecute .
There is your first job.
There is a paragraph omitted from the letter as read out by the Minister for Local Government.
There was nothing omitted from the letter I produced to the Press reporter who took it and it was not the Press reporter of the paper the Deputy now quotes.
I am quoting "Pravda".
I do not care what the Deputy is quoting. I shall give him what was said in its proper place.
Firstly, the thing was manifestly a practical joke and the Minister describes it as of a magnitude designed to swing votes in Roscommon.
The Deputy cannot show that was said. The letter was forged and the letter was opened. The mail was tampered with——
Deputy Dillon is entitled to speak without interruption.
This was an instance of the sordid level to which someone, too far carried away by a passion to win an election, can allow himself to sink. I suggest to the Taoiseach that it is doing a disservice to the public life of the country when violence and acrimony are carried to these lengths. I am glad to hear Deputy Lenihan dissociating himself from the falsehood——
I did not: I merely stated facts.
——which was given circulation by the Minister for Local Government but I think it is right to sound this note of warning on the occasion of this proposed appointment. He must not be so credulous in future particularly when dealing with the Minister for Local Government and he would always want to look twice at everything and get it in black and white before he believes it as gospel from his colleague.
In black and white there is what I said in Roscommon and that is on the back of the letter now in the possession of the Minister for Justice, and I want that produced——
You told a lie.
I told no lie.
You did, and you were caught out.
I did not tell a lie.
You tried to behave as a political bully and you were caught out.
And the Taoiseach stood over it.
You made a hames of it.
Are you prepared to have an inquiry about it?
I am prepared to have a prosecution about it.
Deputies should be allowed to speak without interruption.
To the proposal to appoint Deputy Lenihan as Minister for Justice the Labour Party have no objection and I can, on behalf of my Party say, that as an individual we wish him well. We cannot divorce this proposal, however, from the circumstances in which it became necessary to nominate Deputy Lenihan to be Minister for Justice. The Taoiseach at the beginning of his short speech referred to the resignation of Deputy Smith, formerly Minister for Agriculture. I think he must have been appalled as many people in the country were, at the hysterical outburst that Deputy Smith made against the trade union movement. I should like to get an assurance from the Taoiseach that he does not share these views——
That does not seem to be relevant.
Surely it is relevant in that the Taoiseach referred to the resignation of Deputy Smith as Minister for Agriculture.
Yes, he just referred to it.
And because Deputy Smith resigned, it was necessary to nominate Deputy Lenihan.
And we are discussing Deputy Lenihan now.
I do not want to go into this in detail. I wish to be as brief as the Taoiseach was in referring to Deputy Smith. I should merely like to protest against his hysterical outburst. I may say that rather than attack the trade union movement the members of any Government in this country over the past 40 years should, on the other hand, pay tribute to the tremendous work that has been done by trade unions in the country and by their leaders. Every Government must recognise that the Irish trade union movement, represented particularly by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, has played a very prominent part in the development of the economy, apart from what they have done for the workers of the country in regard to wages, conditions of employment and such matters. I should therefore like to have an assurance—I presume the acceptance by the Taoiseach of Deputy Smith's resignation is in itself a repudiation of his views—that such is the case. I also want to put on record that I, on behalf of the Labour Party, protest against these hysterical allegations and ask the Taoiseach to repudiate what Deputy Smith said in the past three or four weeks.
There are one or two things I should like to say. First, I want to point out that of the 14 Ministers in the Government, only three sit for Dublin city constituencies and therefore I do not think it can be contended that Dublin city is over-represented in the Government, although, in my view, it is the qualifications and experience of individual Deputies which should operate in the mind of a Taoiseach when choosing any Deputy for Ministerial office. Deputy Dillon has chosen to occupy the time of the Dáil with certain trivialities with which I do not propose to deal. I can say, however, that we are all glad to see that he has recovered from his illness during the Summer Recess and is as happily irresponsible as ever.
The Taoiseach was not particularly responsible when he did not act on Deputy O'Higgins's letter.
I do not think there would be any advantage in dealing with the matter Deputy Corish has mentioned, nor do I feel it is necessary to give any assurances.
We assume the Taoiseach does not think as Deputy Smith does.
