——particularly having observed the fact that the Minister made a note when I was speaking. It is also not unreasonable that I should base my anticipation on the Minister's past conduct or upon what public opinion may now be of the Minister. The section to which I have referred is, therefore, one which should never have been put into a Bill which was submitted to the Oireachtas and the Minister stands, with his colleagues in the Government from the Taoiseach down, as unqualifiedly condemned for all time as unfit to hold the reins of office and, indeed, unfit to be members of a democratic Parliament for ever having conceived and given birth to such outrageous proposals.
Section 31 is equally offensive. That is the section which gives power to impose conditions in regard to, or to prohibit meetings and processions. In the past I have condemned efforts on the part of the present Government, and the Minister in particular, to misuse the Garda Síochána. The Garda are as fine a body of men as any country could have as a police force. They have given unselfish and impartial service to all sections of the Irish people irrespective of politics, religion or social background. But in recent times there have been very obvious indications that the Government were bent upon trying to use the Garda Síochána for political purposes. We have seen on many occasions, where industrial and other disputes arose, that the Garda were obliged, on Ministerial direction, to impose or threaten the full majesty of the law and to bring before the courts and to hold before the odium of public condemnation citizens who were never wrong before. We have seen that as soon as the political purposes of the Government had been served by such a process the Government could just as quickly direct the Garda to stop such actions and just as quickly could release from jail the people whom we were asked, days beforehand, to consider as enemies of public peace and public order and the welfare of the State. This is an improper use of the law officers of the State. It is an abuse of the police force. It is grossly unfair to members of the Garda Síochána who should be the friends of everybody and not made the tools of the Government because they fear demotion or unpopular transfers or some other penalty which a ruthless or reckless Government would not hesitate to use.
In an atmosphere in which we are aware of the Government's behaviour in that regard we must, therefore, be doubly anxious about their proposals in section 31 which would give a right to a police force directed by them to impose conditions in relation to public meetings both as to time and place. Such restrictions and conditions are not necessary in statutory form. So far as our people are concerned, as I have said before, the overwhelming majority give notice to the Garda and are only too glad to comply with suggestions which they may make regarding the time and place of public meetings. It is only proper that people should give such reasonable notice and that people should have such reasonable discussions with the Garda but if we cannot achieve a consensus of wisdom by such processes we shall never do it by making it statutorily necessary to have such consultations.
Therefore, apart from the fact that sections 30 and 31 are evil in themselves we should not have them on the Statute Book and they should not be proposed for it because as they are evil they are also unworkable and would lead to greater chaos and disorder and more anarchy than anything we may already have. Some years ago, for instance, the present Government for the first time made it a law to obtain Garda permits for certain collections. Since then there have been several cases of serious disorder and near riot because certain people, for their own strange reasons, decided that they should not seek such permits. Such legislation has not prevented any undesirable collections taking place, using the word "undesirable" in inverted commas. I am using it in that way because certain people might regard them as undesirable; others might regard them as highly desirable. Such legislation has not prevented the type of collections taking place which it was sought to prevent at the time the legislation was going through this House and the Seanad. In the same way, even if sections 30 and 31 of this Bill were to be passed into law, they would not prevent public meetings and public demonstrations of the kind which the Minister and the Government say they are seeking to prevent; they would go ahead. People who will not at the moment perform the reasonable action of consultation with the Garda are not going to observe the law which seeks to impose this on them as a statutory duty and which seeks to impose penalties on them for failing to discharge that statutory duty.
So that, here we have a purposeless Bill, an evil Bill and a provocative Bill which will create more trouble than could be avoided. It is a Bill which would only bring the law into contempt; it is a Bill which would only bring the Garda into contempt; it is a Bill which serves no useful purpose but which, unfortunately, serves very many evil and undesirable purposes and therefore those who conceived it, that is to say, the members of the Government, must certainly be very, very strongly condemned, indeed.
Some sections of the Bill do not merit the same condemnation. In fact, some of them are highly desirable. The section which seeks to impose very severe penalties for carrying offensive weapons is most desirable. Our only regret is that it was delayed for so long. Section 22 is one which we in the Fine Gael Party welcome without any hesitation, but we are tempted to remark that it is unfortunate that it took the Minister so long to bring in section 22 as a proposal to this House. For too long we were told that it was impossible to legislate against flick-knives, to legislate against dangerous weapons of that kind, because of the difficulty in distinguishing between a pocketknife and a domestic knife on the one hand and a dangerous weapon on the other. It reminds me of the difficulty which we were told the draftsmen had for many, many years in trying to define "nursing home" and because they could not define "nursing home" we went for many decades without the legislation necessary to supervise nursing homes. Similarly, we have had, unfortunately, all too many cases of serious injury being inflicted and serious crime committed because of the Government's tardiness in providing a section such as we have in section 22 of the Bill.
I just wonder whether it goes quite far enough. Some instruments can be used which can inflict serious damage which one might not call knives. I know that one such weapon is a steel comb with a long steel handle on it which with any amount of even unqualified skill can easily be converted into a dangerous stiletto and I would hope that any steps which can be taken to restrict any weapon of that kind would be taken. I do appreciate, of course, that the section which refers to "any other article whatsover made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person" would probably cover something of that kind, but if there is any danger of anybody escaping the wrath of the law by saying that an article was more a comb than it was a knife, I hope the Minister will suitably amend the section.
To our mind, the ordinary laws which apply to the carriage of firearms should also apply to knives and any penalties which at present attach to the unlawful carriage of firearms should apply also to the carriage of knives. We are aware of two recent cases of tragic deaths in Dublin which are sub judice and therefore we do not want to go into great detail in relation to them but it does appear that they were related to the carriage of knives. These and other cases must cause us very deep concern and anything which can be done to hasten legislation to prevent the carriage of knives like that ought to be taken.
It is our regret that this very essential and urgently needed reform of the law should be put into a Bill which necessarily will take a considerable amount of time going through the House. As far as we are concerned, we have a solemn obligation to hold up any sections of this Bill which would seek to restrict the proper liberties and rights of our people and I would join with my Fine Gael colleagues in appealing to the Minister to withdraw this Bill and immediately to re-introduce a Bill which would contain the several sections of this Bill which are urgently required. Such a Bill could be given very expeditious passage through the House and we could at greater length, perhaps, then discuss the objectionable sections. I think that is the proper thing to do and if the Minister reflects carefully he ought to see the wisdom of that proposition. There is a real possibility that, if the Minister does not do that, this Dáil will be dissolved before the Bill becomes law and it will lie with another Government to introduce the measure necessary to deal with the agreed sections of this Bill. I think the Minister has done some good and he ought to get the credit for it. If he wants to get the credit for it, the simple thing to do now is to withdraw this Bill and to bring in an unobjectionable one dealing with the matters which require urgent attention and in relation to which everybody is agreed.
There are people more qualified than I to discuss in detail other sections of this Bill. Indeed, they have already done so. I suppose it is more a Committee Bill. Once one has asserted certain points of principle it becomes after that a Committee Bill and we can deal with it more properly at that level.
I should like to conclude by saying that any law which attempts to restrict the liberties of people, of even the most disreputable member of the community, is a law which attacks everybody. Any legislation which purports to control the actions of sections of the community who are regarded as unacceptable is legislation which curtails the freedom of everybody in that community. Therefore, we must resist attacks upon even the most disreputable members of our community when the cost of such attacks is that the liberty of everybody is interfered with.
There is, of course, justification for imposing penalties on wrongdoers. This justification springs from the necessity to protect other members of the community, but a Bill such as this, which seeks in many sections not to impose penalties for offences but rather to curtail indiscriminately the liberties of people, is a Bill which goes to the very foundation of our democratic way of life and one which is, therefore, totally unacceptable. It seeks to restrict our civil liberties. It seeks to restrict our civil rights. It does this without conferring any benefit on anybody, except whatever passing benefit the Government of the day might think would accrue to it by restricting the liberties and rights of certain people to assemble freely and express themselves freely and lawfully. Because of that we, in Fine Gael, oppose this measure on this Second Stage. We regard it as a measure which interferes with the essential rights and liberties of the people. We would ask the Minister, therefore, not to conclude this Second Stage without giving an assurance that he will withdraw entirely the sections to which objection has been taken so that on Committee Stage and Report Stage a quick passage can be given to those sections which are acceptable.
