My understanding is that the judges of Northern Ireland are appointed by the Lord Chancellor of England and that the political appointments system which did exist in England was abolished a while ago. I am not saying judges in Northern Ireland may not have acted mistakenly or wrongly on some occasion. It may well be there was bias in some cases, but the appointments system in respect of judges to the High Court or other judges is one which is not subject to political influence in Northern Ireland. In any event, even if it were, I do not see that they would be any more inclined to join in another system where the influence would work the other way.
The Taoiseach also spoke about the reform of the RUC and the B Specials, the elimination of the repressive element that existed in an armed police force and a militia which was outside control, as he said. However, the Taoiseach who brought in the Criminal Justice Bill is not in a good position to talk about repression. He also spoke about local authority reform in Northern Ireland, while under him Dublin Corporation and Bray Urban District Council were not only abolished but have been kept abolished. The Taoiseach can make a case that because they did not strike a rate it was necessary to get rid of them, but no case can be made for refusing to reinstate those authorities, their offence having been purged. For the Taoiseach to talk patronisingly about local authority reform in Northern Ireland, having left these two areas without local representation, will not carry conviction.
I noticed one thing the Taoiseach did not refer to in relation to reforms in Northern Ireland. He did not mention the introduction of an ombudsman. Why? Because the Taoiseach does not intend to introduce an ombudsman down here to protect people against administrative abuse. This has been a rather selective approach to reform in Northern Ireland.
Having gone over that catalogue in the Taoiseach's speech and having contrasted his attitude to Northern Ireland and reforms there with the performance of Fianna Fáil down here, I wish to reiterate what I said at the outset. I am not saying things are as bad here as in Northern Ireland, but there are defects in our system for which the present Government are peculiarly responsible in a number of cases which make it hazardous, to say the least of it, for the Government or its leader to lecture the North of Ireland on their way of handling these same matters. To put it the other way round, I think the Taoiseach who has delivered this homily has an obligation in conscience, in reason, to set about righting the defects here which are the direct equivalent of, if less serious in character than, those in the north of Ireland. Our criticism of Northern Ireland and the regime there would be so much more powerful if we set about changing our own society.
We must recognise that just as the concept of freedom which lay at the root of the whole Protestant ethos has been distorted in Northern Ireland into repression, so also Tone's concept of republicanism here has been distorted into something quite different from its origins. Both of these are noble traditions. We do not, perhaps, like always to remember it—most of us are Jacobites at heart at least in Irish affairs—but the Whig revolution of 1688, whatever about its unattractive features, was designed to and did secure certain freedoms. Catholics had to wait a century and-a-third to benefit from these freedoms, and in the meantime they suffered the penal laws.
In any event, a certain foundation was laid in the Whig revolution at that time and when the Protestants of Northern Ireland, Orangemen, talk about freedom as being something guaranteed to them by the Orange Order and by their Williamite traditions they are not just inventing something. They are referring back to something that was a reality which has become distorted in their hands. Nevertheless, there is something there of which we have a genuine pride and it is something from which we have benefited. The freedom of speech and freedom of association which we enjoy as an inevitable part of our way of living is a British tradition which finds its origin there. We in being proud of our tradition are in some respects being proud of the same thing as the Protestants of Northern Ireland, although we do not trace it back in quite the same way and although we have not distorted it in the same way as they have, into an instrument of repression. Therefore, when we have someone in this House speaking about the ideals of Tone and, at the same time, speaking about our people, 500,000 of our people—the 500,000 being Catholics—you are seeing a very weakened and distorted form of Tonism. I referred to it in an earlier debate as deviationist Tonism, to be polite about it. We all have our traditions of which we are proud. Many traditions have gone to make up this island but we at times distort them to our own advantage or what we see as our own advantage. We here are as guilty of this in our own way as the Orangemen in Northern Ireland.
We should also recognise some of the strictures about this part of the country by people in the north, for example, strictures about clericalism in the Republic, which in the past at least had a good deal of foundation. What we tend to forget is the extent to which in this respect we went backwards for a period. I myself grew up in the belief that there has been a great deal of progress towards greater freedom, a great deal of progress away from undue interference by the Catholic Church in matters that did not directly concern it, that this has gone on continually and that things are getting better all the time. It is only as I have grown older and read more I found this country had a strong, healthy kind of anticlerical tradition throughout the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century which died largely with independence, and that for several decades we went sharply backwards.
There is no comparison between the independent-minded attitude of Irish political leaders in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century towards the Church and the attitude adopted by our Irish political leaders towards the Church in the 1930s—vide the Constitution and much else besides. When the Protestants in Northern Ireland accuse us of not having full freedom in some respects, of being unduly influenced by Church authorities in matters that should not directly concern it, they are not speaking of something imaginary, but of something that has been a reality. Of course, like most things, it is out of date. Just as our picture of the North of Ireland is a stereotype which is many years out of date, their picture of the Republic is many years out of date. They seem to believe we are still back in the thirties and forties or, perhaps, even in the early fifties, the period of the mother and child scheme. The fact that there has been a great change here has not, perhaps, impinged on them and that is probably our fault in failing to put it across.
We should face the fact that the first couple of decades of the history of this State were not happy in this respect and that the fears Protestants had had some foundation, not that we ever adopted any repressive or bigoted measures against Protestants, but we did seek to create, to their discomfiture if no more, a Catholic State, and this found its expression in the peculiar and unhappy wording of the 1937 Constitution, and found its expression in other ways, too, right up to and including the period of the mother and child scheme.
Look at it from the point of view of the Northern Ireland Protestant and let us see the way this country evolved: how the healthily independent attitude to the Church authorities which had characterised our people and our politicians right up to this century, and well into this century, evaporated and weakened with independence and under how much clerical influence Irish politicians fell during the first 30 years or so of the existence of this State. If we face this we can perhaps begin understanding their viewpoint and come to grips with it.
Of course, their fears are exaggerated, their concept of clerical influence here goes far beyond anything that was ever the case but certainly in this part of the country we have not been throughout the life of this State by any means as careful of the feelings of our Protestant compatriots, those of us who are Catholics, as we should have been. We did seek to create a Catholic State in which they would be tolerated, with no discrimination in employment or housing or anything but in which they would have to live in an atmosphere which was officially Catholic and not simply Catholic by majority. That certainly is something which the Protestant who does not have to live here, who lives in the North of Ireland and wishes to remain there must have found distasteful. We must face this fact and face the fact that this country in this respect went backwards for a period of 30 years and although we have since recovered much ground and have a much better and healthier relationship from the point of view of the Church as well as the State, this is not by any means widely understood in the North of Ireland.
We should listen to criticisms made by people in the North of Ireland of our State. Some of these are misconceived and simply wrong, such as the reference to the allocation of houses made by Mr. Faulkner. Some are propaganda, designed for home consumption; some of them have elements of truth and wherever there is an element of truth in an allegation made by a Northern Minister we should examine it and see what we can do about it. It is no answer to the point that he makes to say that we do not need an ombudsman, that our TDs are so active that there is no problem. This is palpable nonsense. The function of an ombudsman, of investigating the files of Government Departments where a case is made that injustice has been done is one which no TD has ever been permitted to fulfil in this country. The suggestion that either by questions in the House or by representations to Government Departments the injustices which an ombudsman occasionally reveals could be brought to light is not worthy of a moment's discussion. This pretence that we do not need such a man here but that they need him in the North of Ireland does us no good, when we find Brian Faulkner boasting about their ombudsman and jeering us because we have no similar institution. While we might accept that there is perhaps greater need for him in the north than here—I am not too sure of it in this particular instance—but whether there is a greater need or not there is a need for him here and the resistance of Fianna Fáil to any kind of inspection or control of the activities of the Government machine other than by Ministers is something that has to go, if we are to convince people in the North of Ireland that they will get the same fair treatment here as they now expect to have in the north.
What are the things that need to be done here if we are to be able to say to the people in the north "You have nothing to fear. If you join with us you will find yourself in a State in which the way of life will be congenial to you, with your different traditions"? We must distinguish here between the different things that have to be done. In the Constitution there are things which in one way or another are offensive to people in the North of Ireland and constitute obstacles to a union of minds and a union of the country. There are laws we have which are inappropriate and undesirable and which would certainly give rise to misconceptions and do not encourage people in the north to want to be associated with a State which has such laws.
Then again we have laws which, perhaps, do not suit the views of people in the North of Ireland and with which they would be unhappy but which reflect very seriously a tradition of our own and which we are entitled to retain, telling them that they can in this sphere have their own separate legal system. We must therefore distinguish between these different things —the constitutional changes required, the legal changes required and cases in which their laws may be different from ours but where there is no necessity for us to change ours but where we need to make it clear that if we ever came together they could retain their own law. This needs study and I am glad that a committee has been set up to study it. However, I am not by any means happy that it is an inter-departmental committee. These are matters which are so essentially political that I do not think such a committee can grapple adequately with them. I should have been much happier if the Taoiseach had told us that a Cabinet committee had been set up, even perhaps a Fianna Fáil Party committee, to look at this matter, with the insight that politicians have into these problems and which the civil servants cannot be expected to have. I hope the review will be extensive and constructive and some political decisions will emerge which will help to make changes here and which will help in some way towards bringing the two parts of the country closer together.
We all know that our Constitution needs to be reviewed from this point of view. The Article on which most attention is concentrated is Article 44.2.3 which concerns the special position of the Catholic Church. We know that this has no legal significance and it was intended simply as a statement of fact, but it is so open to misinterpretation that it should go. On this there is unanimous agreement, excepting at least one member of the Labour Party, in this House and amongst the Churches. There are other Articles which need to be looked at. There is the Article which makes the dissolution of marriage unconstitutional. Apart from the fact that the phraseology of this Article has given rise to serious legal problems because of conflict with international law there is the fact that in the North of Ireland, for good or for ill, divorce does exist and for us to have a Constitution which says it cannot exist in the national territory is hardly going to encourage people in the north who believe this is an essential part of their liberties to want to join us. I would have doubts about changing our divorce law. That is a matter for ourselves. One could argue it either way. The case is a very difficult one on which to reach a clear decision but it should not be and should never have been in the Constitution and was not in the first Constitution. It should now go without prejudice to whether our laws should be changed which is a quite different question and one on which I have no clear view.
There is also Article 44.2.6 dealing with the acquisition of religious property by the State. I am not sure why special protection is required for religious property as against property generally. There was something similar in the first Constitution and it may be that by common consent in both parts of Ireland it needed to be retained. I do not fully understand why, as it seems to me that all propery deserves some protection. It may have been introduced originally, and I think it was, for fear that the Irish Government would confiscate property of the Protestant churches as many of those churches were, in our view, Catholic churches originally, and in other countries a change of regime has led to a change in the control of churches. This needs to be looked at anyhow to see if there is any need for it or to see if the inclusion of a special provision with respect to religious property is desirable or undesirable.
Another section needs to be looked at because of repeated statements or implications by the Government or civil servants that it stands in the way of necessary reforms in regard to housing. It needs to be looked at in this context vis-à-vis the North of Ireland because in Northern Ireland there is no such inhibition. I am referring to the section dealing with private property which has been quoted as meaning that the Irish Government cannot acquire land for building purposes without paying the full development price. I do not see how it can bear this interpretation but if, in fact, the position is that whereas in the North of Ireland land can be acquired at its agricultural value, as was the case with Craigavon, and this cannot happen down here, and that the provision of houses at a reasonable price is impossible because of this then it seems to me to be something which should be looked at in the context of relations with Northern Ireland. If I were a person concerned with housing there I should be very slow to join a country in which it was impossible to acquire land at a reasonable price because of constitutional inhibitions. That is something that should be looked at.
These are some points amongst others. The most important point is the basic question of Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution. Here we have never really made up our minds and decided what it is we want to do. Are we still vestigially thinking of the reconquest of Northern Ireland or do we genuinely now believe, as we say we do, that Partition can and should end only with the consent of the majority? That is the policy of this party. It is the policy of the Labour Party. Expressions to this effect, but never so explicit, have been made by the Fianna Fáil Party and its leader. Possibly it is the policy of the majority of the Fianna Fáil Party. I believe it should be made explicit.
If this is, in fact, national policy then that is, in fact, recognition of Northern Ireland. If that is so, then the separate regime must remain until its people, by a majority, change it. When we talk about reunion then what exactly do we mean? You cannot, as Deputy Cruise-O'Brien quoted me as saying, recognise diplomatically a non-sovereign State. We recognise the Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, although the Minister for External Affairs was strangely silent when asked to confirm this yesterday. We recognise Northern Ireland, which constitutes a legal unit, and we recognise the authority of the British Government over that area. We cannot recognise it as a State because it is not a State. We say that Partition can and should only go with the consent of the majority. This is the only kind of recognition we can give. Let us give it formally and make a formal statement that that is our position.
If that is the case then Articles 2 and 3 need to be looked at because they are couched in terms incompatible with this concept of recognition coming only from a union of minds and hearts. On the legal and administrative side there are other matters to be considered. On the administrative side we have the use of Irish as a weapon for examination purposes and for entrance to the public service. So long as we retain this, so long are we dividing our island and telling the citizens in Northern Ireland that they are not wanted here. The alternative is saying: "Yes, come in, but you will never get a job in our Civil Service so long as you do not learn our language." So long as the Government continue that policy they are not sincere. There are different minds in this State at the present time. We have not recognised this fully and until we do so there will not be the union of minds and hearts for which the Taoiseach says he wishes.
Again, we have provisions with regard to contraception which are an obstacle not only to reunion with the north but to the union of hearts and minds amongst our own people in the different communities that go to make up our State. The time is past for us to maintain a law of this kind, a law which supports the viewpoint of the ecclesiastical authorities and a minority of theologians in one particular Church. The law should not involve itself in matters of theology and private conscience. In this the Taoiseach is particularly to blame because of his dishonesty and double thinking. He told the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis that there was nothing to prevent people who wished to do so using contraceptives. I questioned him on that and I pointed out that their import was prohibited and so they could not be bought here; the only alternative was for people to make their own.
This kind of double thinking will certainly not persuade anyone in Northern Ireland that there is any real interest in this part of the country about trying to create conditions under which people could come together. This law is undesirable because it is an intrusion into the sphere of private morality and involves taking sides in a theological dispute between churches. It is an obstacle to the union of minds and hearts among the religious communities in this country and, a fortiori, to the union of minds and hearts between north and south. We should take our courage in our hands and abolish it for the anachronism that it now is. We may have our private views about contraception but our private views should not enter into a matter of this kind. There must be honesty in this when talking about it to our friends in the north. That does not mean that we are prepared to align our legislation with theirs in every respect. There are views we hold as a matter of conviction which may not be held as matters of conviction in the north.
There has been a successful union over many centuries between England and Scotland and, as in the case of Scotland, there are things in which we would want to retain our own practices. If the law on abortion in the north bears any relation to that in England I do not see any reason why we should change our law in that particular respect. This is a matter of public morality. If, in Northern Ireland, they have different practices, I do not think we should insist that recognition means their dropping their practices any more than they should insist that we should drop ours or change our code of public morality. There is room for different legal systems and different public morality, but let it be clear that there is no use in saying we will adopt the practices that exist in Northern Ireland while, at the same time, refusing to examine what is inappropriate in our own community. The public service should be looked at and dealt with. That does not mean we should blindly change over. There is no reason why different attitudes should be a barrier to unity.
Jobbery must go if we are to convince the Northern Unionists that they have a place in this country. We must tackle the housing problem. This means an enormous increase if we are to get anywhere near what has been achieved in Northern Ireland, even before the reforms. We must push ahead in the sphere of social welfare, recognising that there are economic limits and it will take time for our economy to catch up with that of Northern Ireland, subsidised, as it is, by Great Britain. We must recognise these economic differences. Economic differences can disappear in time. Some of them arise from the exploitation of agriculture in this part of the country by British subsidisation of agriculture in the north. Contrary to what was said on the Labour Benches, in this respect the EEC will make a radical change, putting Ireland on a par in the two parts of the island.
Progress towards achieving the same standards in social welfare is good. We appear to be catching up with the north. Progress also depends on our having the kind of social conscience that, within the limits of our resources, we do all we can from this point of view.
On the question of catching up, the position is a bit complex. We have been catching up with Britain in terms of our economic growth rate over the past decade. Assuming Britain is over the hump now and her economy expands more rapidly, it is on the cards we will continue to catch up and our growth rate may be 1 per cent higher than Britain's in the next decade. This depends on our overcoming our shortterm incomes policy about which I spoke earlier. If we can overcome that we can bring our living standards close enough to what they will be in Britain towards the end of the century. The position vis-à-vis Northern Ireland is more complex because it has been expanding much more rapidly in some respects than has the British economy. I was taken aback and a little concerned to discover the disparity in growth rates between north and south in the only period for which accurate figures are available, 1962 to 1967.
Although our economy suffered a crisis in 1965-66, for the five-year period 1962 to 1967 our economy expanded by 17½ per cent while the economy of Northern Ireland expanded by about 24½ per cent. In only one of those five years did our economy expand more rapidly. Therefore, we are faced with the position that, whereas we are likely to catch up with Britain in terms of economic growth, in Northern Ireland under normal conditions a high economic growth rate has been achieved because of the economic policies pursued and the scale of assistance given by the British Government to regional development. We will have to work out the implications of a situation in which Northern Ireland may be developing much more rapidly than Britain and we may be developing at an intermediate rate, and we must relate this to the extent of the dependence of the Northern Ireland economy on Britain. Finally, we will have to make some assessment of our prospects to match the development in Northern Ireland in the years ahead. However, this is not an insuperable problem and we will be able to come near to its solution in the lifetime of many people in this House.
No economic study has been carried out into this matter. I hope the terms of reference of the inter-departmental committee are broad enough to examine this and that they will have the wit to employ expert advice to look at the matter in realistic terms.
The real problem is a psychological one. We must break away from the old attitude which was basically one of reconquest—that we would take over the north when we could get hold of it, perhaps not by military force but by getting Britain to hand it over to us against its will. This attitude is instinctive in many of us and is displayed in our reluctance to amend the Constitution in this respect and to give recognition to the north. We must break away from this attitude and develop a genuine feeling for the north and its people. We must get to the point when none of us will say "our people" meaning one religious community. It is not only the Blaneys and the Bolands who fall into this trap but we can all unthinkingly adopt a sectarian attitude in this matter. This has been evident in speeches of Government Ministers. Thy have the tendency to take different attitudes when Catholics or Protestants are being shot. There should not be any reluctance here to condemn those responsible for the killing of Protestants. If we genuinely believe what we proclaim about modern Ireland we should be as concerned about the Protestants; perhaps we owe it to ourselves to be a little more concerned about them.
On the whole, our attitudes have tended to remain somewhat sectarian, although we have put a good face on it. We will not make progress with the kind of threatening gestures made last August of "not standing idly by". We will not make progress with foolish talk of "being on the brink of a great achievement"; we will not make progress by dismissing arms found in the Catholic areas and talking always about arms in the Protestant areas.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,
