I just want to make two or three observations on this Estimate. One is that I am concerned about a situation, in which I believe the Minister sympathises with me, that relates to a serving soldier who contracts a disease while in the service and as a consequence thereof is released from the Service on grounds of ill-health. The illness is not directly attributable to his service. Nevertheless, he enters the Army as a man in the whole of his health. He falls ill. The Army determines that the nature of his illness is such that he is unlikely thereafter to be able to endure the rigours of Army life, and they let him go. That chap goes home and, as a result of the illness, he may be unable to do heavy work for years.
I recognise that some principle must be established founded on the principle that is in existence that where a soldier's illness is directly attributable to his Army service, he should be entitled to permanent pension so long as he is disabled, but where a soldier's illness is not directly attributable to his Army service, I think it is a hardship to turn him out and simply say: "Go home now" and it is not in line with the practice in the Civil Service. The practice in the public service is that if a member of the Civil Service falls ill of a disease which is not in any way attributable to his service, he is on full pay for six months and he is on half pay for six months, and then if there is no prospect of his recovering, he is released from the service, but usually there is a very humane approach and he is given the credit of the longest possible period of sick leave before this machinery begins to operate.
I cannot see, when we take a young chap into the Army, that he is not entitled to at least the same consideration and it would make a great difference to a chap who comes home to a country home sick, if he were in a position to say to his parents, or whoever he was coming home to, that he was on full pay for the first six months and on half pay for the next six months but at any rate for the next 12 months he would not be a burden upon them.
I want to urge upon the Minister that the principle exists and is accepted throughout the whole public service. The financial burden on the Department of Finance would be microscopic, but it would be a very genuine evidence of interest in and solicitude for the ordinary soldier's welfare that such provision should be made.
I have the uncomfortable feeling that the zeal of the Department of Defence for the protection of the Exchequer is so great that there does tend to spread through the Army a feeling that money counts a great deal more than just treatment of the ordinary soldier and I am quite certain that that does not represent the feeling of Deputies. I think it is a great mistake to allow that atmosphere to grow. The feeling on all sides of the House would be that we do not think a serving soldier should be treated with that cold detachment which a strict Treasury approach would justify. We ought to recognise that serving soldiers are very directly in the service of the State and that this House in their regard represents the State. The soldiers are in a very special sense the public servants of the State as distinct from the Government and the more we do to fortify and strengthen that view, the better I believe it is for the Army and the better it is for the community which the Army serves.
I am often struck by the fact that the splendid tradition of discipline in our Army is such that they accept philosophically a great many vexatious regulations which other branches of the public service have machinery for remedying through their present machinery of arbitration and conciliation. It is manifestly not possible to introduce arbitration and conciliation into the armed services of the State but our inability to make that kind of provision for the serving soldiers ought to put upon us here a corresponding sense of obligation that we should be peculiarly solicitous to see that any unreasonable handicap applying to their service is recognised and remedied by us as promptly as it would be if the machinery of arbitration were available to the serving soldier.
I do not want to make the case that I regard the Department of Defence as being inhuman and so forth. The Minister for Defence is, perhaps, too much directed by the Treasury approach to the Army. He has an obligation to constitute himself a more aggressive champion of the rights of the serving soldier as against the Treasury than it appears he has done in the past. In the specific case to which I refer, I suggest the Minister should say that any soldier who becomes ill while in the service of the State, if his illness is not directly attributable to his service, should be entitled to treatment not less generous than that which is habitually accorded to a civil servant.
I was shocked recently when the Minister read out the answer to a question put down by a Deputy as to whether it was true that serving soldiers in married quarters in barracks in Dublin had to get power plugs installed at their own expense in the married quarters which they inhabit because it was not an Army practice to provide power plugs in the married quarters of the Army in the city of Dublin. I do not believe there is a Deputy in this House or a rational person in the country who believes there is any authority here setting accommodation to tenants anywhere, other than oneroom tenement houses, who would expect the tenant to take up his residence without a power plug. Just imagine a woman with a family of children and a husband, who cannot use an electric kettle, who cannot use an electric heater in her room where there are children going to bed or where a baby may be sick. Think of all the uses that an ordinary person makes of a power plug and the convenience it is to have it and the inconvenience it is to be without it.
These are the little things that make service in the Army exasperating not only to the serving soldier but to the officers who want to feel that they are making proper provision for the men who are serving under them. Some of the barracks in which we are housing soldiers at the present time were built before the Crimean war. Doubtless there have been adaptations made to them but buildings over 100 years old require a great deal of adaptation before they become agreeable surroundings in which to raise a family.
I suggest to the Minister that it is unreasonable and unrealistic to ask married soldiers to take up residence in married quarters where there is not as elementary a convenience as an electric power plug. I would ask the Minister to bear in mind that what may appear small matters all mount up into the kind of evidence which carries conviction to a soldier's mind that those who employ him are not much concerned with his welfare and, what is worse, must carry conviction to the minds of officers who resent that kind of treatment of their men, that their views are not given the kind of consideration which the officers of the Army should be entitled to.
I cannot doubt that these matters have been brought to the attention of the Minister for Defence by the Chief of Staff or by members of the Army Council, and I hope that hereafter the Minister will constitute himself a more aggressive champion of the Army in getting these amenities for the men which make all the difference between treating them like human beings and treating them like robots. There is nobody, as far as I know, in this House who feels detached from or indifferent to the Army. I am perfectly convinced that any Minister for Defence who asserts himself against the Minister for Finance in matters of this kind will find that he will have support from every side of the House in remedying such oversights.
Provision is made in Subhead AA of this Estimate on which I should like to ask the Minister for further particulars. It relates to military educational courses and visits and makes provision for £12,000. I do not know if that is the annual provision in this Estimate for staff courses abroad for the officers of our Army. There is a great danger in our circumstances of an Army of a small island State such as we are becoming more and more cut off from world developments in military science in a time such as that in which we live.
Almost every weapon system and every aviation system begins to be obsolescent on the day it leaves the drawing board, so rapid is the development in military science in recent years. Unless our Army is kept in constant contact with developments of the most up-to-date military powers, they will find themselves in an embarrassing situation when called upon to collaborate with the armies of other powers, particularly in United Nations work, in that they represent an obsolescent force which is simply not up to date with the developments that are taking place in military science throughout the world.
There is no means by which we can put at the disposal of our Army all the most recent discoveries of military science except through the Staff Colleges of friendly powers. I should like a reassurance from the Minister that adequate provision is being made for the officers of our Army of all ranks, from lieutenant right up to the top, to have adequate access to the Staff Colleges of friendly powers so that our Army may be fully informed of the practical application of all that is most modern in military science, strategy and tactics. The provision in this Estimate does not seem to me to be adequate for that purpose and it is one of the matters on which the Minister should be in a position to reassure us.
The Minister spoke of some equipment which had recently been secured and which the Army anticipated they would take back with them from Cyprus. He was referring possibly to a certain kind of armoured car. I want to put it to the Minister that it is of vital importance for the morale of our Army that they should have access to supplies of the best and most up-to-date armaments we can afford. Now that very well may mean that in certain branches of equipment, we may have to throw our hats at it and simply say, in regard to heavy artillery and certain other branches of equipment, that our Army is certainly not equipped and does not propose to enter into competition with other armies at all. But there might be a good deal to be said for taking a radical decision along those lines and saying that, in respect of those types of armaments with which we propose to supply our Army, nothing but the best is good enough.
That is one of the advantages of having a small Army. A small country can afford to equip it, albeit in certain restricted spheres, with really modern up-to-date equipment. Our obligation to participate in the United Nations peacekeeping operations reinforces, I think, the urgent need of putting our minds to that problem forthwith. I think a good point of departure would be to say: let us envisage the kind of assignment we will be prepared to accept from the United Nations for our Army and, for that strictly limited kind of assignment, we now propose to give them, and maintain hereafter, an equipment which will compare with that of any army in the world. In respect of the heavier armament, we must look to the United Nations to provide it, if that be required; but for the normal armaments necessary for the efficient prosecution of the kind of peacekeeping tasks our forces may be called upon from time to time to do, they should go to them with equipment that will compare with that of any other Army in the world. I think that is a reasonable stipulation.
If the morale of the Army is to be maintained, they are entitled to expect that their legitimate requirements, at least within that limitation, shall be provided by this House. I do not think that would impose an intolerable burden on the Exchequer, but I do suggest that, if this State is to maintain an army, it has got to face the fact that an army consists of more than men and uniforms and armaments. Perhaps the most important element in an army is its morale and no army can maintain its morale if it does not know that its officers are, first, keeping abreast of all that needs to be known in modern military techniques and, secondly, that for certain limited spheres of activity, its equipment is as good as that of any other army in the world.
I recognise at once that, once you have set that standard, you have to accept that these spheres of activity are strictly limited because we simply cannot afford to provide an army in every variety of armaments equal to the best. But I believe we could afford, within a carefully chosen, prudently delineated area, to provide them with the best; and I believe, if we do that, we will make the most effective contribution of which we are capable to morale and that, in my judgement, would be a very real service to an Army of which we have every reason to be proud.
Let me conclude on that note. One of the great dangers abroad in the times in which we live is that rising generations do not recognise the inestimable treasure that this State inherited in the morale of its Civil Service and its Army. The morale of the Army was born very largely in a period of voluntary service in which men undertook all sorts of fantastic labours and faced fantastic dangers because they were convinced of their patriotic obligation to serve their country without counting the cost. That tradition was carried over into the National Army and it is the taproot of the Army we have today. These splendid traditions need to be nourished and sustained by appreciation and the only way this Parliament has of expressing its appreciation of these standards of conduct is to communicate to the Army our genuine solicitude for the welfare of the officers and men.
Welfare of the Army is not primarily a matter of comfort and clothes and food and amenities, though these things ought to be there. The welfare of the Army, as I understand it, is principally the provision of access to knowledge and equipment which will enable officers and men to feel the equal of any army with which they are called upon to serve. I do not think we are doing all we could do to give effect to these objectives and I suggest to the Minister that he should bestir himself and consult with the Army Council as to what requires to be done and then see that it is done.
