The poor, miserable fellow that the Taoiseach stands over.
Again I quote from the Irish Times of Saturday, 10th October, page 9, dealing with the evidence of the Minister in court the previous day. He was asked:
What was the point of training them in the use of guns if they were not going to get guns?
His reply was:
My chief motivation in this gesture would be to convey to them that their dire straits were perceived by us and were sympathised with by us.
He was asked:
May I take it that your purpose or idea, in permitting the enrolment of a number of citizens from Derry in the FCA, was simply to make a gesture of sympathy to the people of the Bogside?
He replied:
I think that would be accurate.
Again, no denial that it was his purpose, his idea, to permit the enrolment of people from the Bogside of Derry.
Again, he was put the question:
Did you think it was going to be of any practical assistance to the people of Derry?
The Minister replied:
My principal objective in ordering this action was to indicate to the people of Derry that they had our sympathy and the refusal of an action of this kind of ours could be misunderstood by them as a total rejection of their plight.
Again it was his order which caused these people to be trained there in arms.
This, then, is the Minister who spent the first eight and a half minutes of his speech today attacking the Opposition because they were criticising him and spent the last 18 minutes of his speech in like attacks upon the Opposition because he said they were defaming him and his family. I had not heard his family brought into this at all. It would be most unfair to criticise the family of any Member unless we knew that the family was in some way or other involved. His family have never been involved by us and if he puts that baby in his arms he can throw that baby out. We have not put it there and we will not have it suggested against us that we are unfairly criticising people who are not in this House. The Minister is here. He has answered in the House and, having answered in the House, he is accountable to the House and the House has a right to criticise him.
Before I go on to the general philosophy of Fianna Fáil, which apparently justifies this kind of misleading statement, I want to deal with two questions which were addressed to the present Minister for Defence, Deputy Cronin, in the House on the 21st May last. My esteemed colleague, Deputy P. Hogan, asked the Minister for Defence if citizens from Northern Ireland were brought into this State any time last year for special army training; on whose authority this was arranged; the extent of the operation; whether he was informed of it beforehand; whether he gave approval; and whether any financial commitments fell to be met by the State. Deputy P. Belton asked the Minister for Defence if civilians were afforded the training facilities of the FCA in Donegal recently; and, if so, what action he intends to have taken against the officers in charge of the units concerned. The Minister for Defence adopted the same line as Deputy Gibbons had attempted to justify on the 8th May last, that people were no longer civilians once they had the jacket of the FCA put on their shoulders. He said the position was explained by the present Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries in the Dáil on the 8th instant. The Minister went on to say, and this is interesting:
While, under Defence Force Regulations, a person ordinarily resident outside the State is not, subject to certain exceptions, eligible for enlisting in the FCA, it has not been the practice of attesting officers to question the addresses within the State given by potential recruits as their place of ordinary residence.
Here, again, the great cover-up, the statement that it is not the practice to recruit people into the FCA outside the jurisdiction of this Dáil which our Constitution recognises for the time being as applying only to the Twenty-Six counties. It is not the practice and it is not the practice either to query their addresses. At column 2171 of the Official Report for the same date Deputy P. Hogan, as a supplementary, asked the Minister a perfectly straightforward question:
Is the Minister satisfied that citizens from Northern Ireland did not participate in any training activities under arms in the Republic?
The Minister replied:
I have no such information.
Deputy Gibbons acknowledged under oath in court that he ordered it, he initiated it, he directed it. He gave his motives for doing it. He then stated that the whole matter was called off when the Taoiseach got to know about it, that the Taoiseach considered it and the Taoiseach stopped it and that the nine people in question were sent back to Derry. On the 21st May with that information known to the senior officers in the Army, known to the officials of the Department of Defence, known to the Taoiseach, possibly known to senior officials of the Taoiseach's Department and known also to the man who was promoted to the position of Minister for Defence, they come out and blatantly say in the Dáil that they have no information relating to the training of citizens from Northern Ireland in arms in the Republic. They were not even asked whether they were citizens while they were training. They were not asked were they civilians while they were training. They were asked whether any citizens from the North of Ireland got training in arms in the Republic. The only honest answer to that was: "Yes". That was not the answer that was given but the Taoiseach remained silent. The Taoiseach has remained silent over all this, leaving the mugs to do the dirty work but he has appointed them, he promotes them, he keeps them in his Cabinet, he asks this Dáil and the Irish people to endorse his conduct, to say that it is all right to mislead because, according to the Fianna Fáil doctrine, you may lie if you are under attack in the Dáil.
On Saturday, 10th October the Irish Times reported the court case of the previous day and gave this evidence from Deputy Gibbons. When reference was being made to the quotation which I gave earlier of the 8th May when I said that the Taoiseach had evidence which suggested that people had been trained in arms in the north of Ireland I pointed out that Deputy Gibbons interjected: “That is not true”. He was questioned about that in court at considerable length. I do not want to go into it all. I have already indicated that the Taoiseach, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, the Minister for Defence, were all aware that this had occurred. It was misleading to the nth degree to suggest it was not so. Deputy Gibbons was asked:
Do you think that your reply to Deputy Ryan was not something of a half truth?
He said:
I am suggesting what Deputy Ryan said was inaccurate.
So be it. My conscience is clear and I have no doubt about the view of the 12 jurymen on that particular issue or what the verdict would be by the people of Ireland if they were asked who was telling the truth and who was being accurate. Deputy Gibbons was then asked:
Would you accept that in this instance you had told the truth but only half the truth?
His reply was:
This was a Dáil debate.
He was then asked:
Is that your answer Mr. Gibbons, that one is not bound to tell the truth in a Dáil debate?
He sharply replied:
This is a Dáil debate in which Deputy Ryan and his colleagues are seeking to demolish the Government and the Government Party.
Is that not extraordinary? This is the doctrine of governmental behaviour, the guideline for governmental behaviour, which the Taoiseach stands over, that when the Government are under attack in the Dáil they are entitled to lie, they are entitled to tell half truths, they are entitled to hold back, they are entitled to refuse to answer questions. God knows we have known here for years and years that we were not getting the truth in reply to Parliamentary questions.
What has happened? Unfortunately, this is the tragedy for this country, that instead of the people seeing where the blame lies they are inclined to repudiate all the institutions of this State and to have a desperate lack of faith in them. When that lack of faith becomes all pervading, as I fear it is becoming in this country, then democracy will be destroyed overnight. Anybody last week who had the privilege of hearing Madame Helen Vlachos, the newspaper owner from Athens who refused to continue to publish her newspaper under the censorship of the colonels, would have realised just how easy it is for democracy to be overthrown and dictatorship to be installed. It happened in Greece on a normal day, on a quiet day, when there were no rumours of conspiracy and when there were no known dangers threatening the State, when everybody was at ease. They woke up in the morning to find democracy had been overthrown because some people, apparently with their own standards as to what the country should do, decided to reject democracy and to impose their will. I fear for this country. This is the kind of concern which ought to be affecting our minds tonight, a concern for the institutions of this State, and for the survival of our little State here. We could be a great little State amongst the greatest in the world but we have belittled, cheapened and ridiculed ourselves. We have demeaned ourselves to ourselves and before the world. This is an appalling state of affairs and those primarily responsible are the Taoiseach, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries and all the members of the Government.
There is one thing which makes me wonder. Have we heard everything yet? Deputy Haughey, and what he described as his fellow-patriots in court, gave evidence that, when the Taoiseach was out of town, relaxing in Cork or having his well-entitled rest, it was Deputy Haughey who was in charge. One wonders where the Tánaiste was. Why was he not consulted? Is he the boy who is left, as we suspect he is, or has been for years, the fellow who is never considered, whose views are never considered? It was not to Deputy Childers, the Tánaiste, the senior member of the Government, the man next to the Taoiseach, that Deputy Blaney, Deputy Haughey, Deputy Gibbons or anybody else went to when crisis, doomsday or some matter of dramatic importance arose. No, it was always, according to Deputy Haughey, and this was not contradicted by anybody else, to him.
We are asked to endorse as Tánaiste a man whom nobody in the Fianna Fáil Party will speak to. God knows apparently it is difficult enough for Ministers to communicate with the Taoiseach who apparently has his touchables and his untouchables. The untouchables cannot communicate with him except through one of the higher people like those who have now been dismissed. Apparently, the Tánaiste was never to be used either when he was still in town when the Taoiseach was away or even as a conduit pipe to get to the Taoiseach. Mark you, Deputy Erskine Childers, the Tánaiste, lives in my own constituency just down the road from me. If anybody is ever in any difficulty in contacting him and gets in touch with me I will be his messenger boy and drop down the road to see him. He is hardly ever out of town at weekends but apparently he was never consulted at all. His counsel was never sought. That is an extraordinary position. One wonders that the Taoiseach would have about him somebody who is apparently of such little consequence.
We come to another extraordinary episode in this sordid and frightening playacting. On the 2nd April, in common with all his ministerial colleagues who were not attending to their duties but were seeking to win a by-election to hold them in office and to help them keep their hands on the loot, Deputy Gibbons then Minister for Defence, was being transported to the constituency of Kildare in a State car when he was held up by a member of the Garda Síochána who handed him a piece of paper containing a number which he was to ring immediately. Apparently he did not know who he was to ring. He rang from the Fianna Fáil headquarters in Naas and he spoke to Deputy Blaney the then Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, the man who was supposed to be concerned about protecting our fisheries but had not even got a rowing boat to protect them.
Deputy Blaney, since dismissed from the Government, but on whose support the Government still hope to rely, indicated to Deputy Gibbons he was going to do something rash. I wonder what rash thing Deputy Blaney had in mind to do that day. It must have been really dreadful because Deputy Gibbons, in order to stop Deputy Blaney doing something more rash, rang up the Chief-of-Staff of our armed forces and gave him a direction to move 500 guns from some safe secure place to Dundalk together with the appropriate ammunition.
This is one of the ironic twists of this situation. The Taoiseach quite recently, perhaps on his return from New York or some other place, said that the first two national priorities of Fianna Fáil were the restoration of national unity and the restoration of the Irish language. The ironic aspect of this sordid Naas episode is that the Minister for Defence decided to speak in Irish on the telephone to the Chief-of-Staff so that nobody would know what they were talking about. Here we have the Minister for Defence using the failure for Fianna Fáil's second national aim to make sure that the achievement of the first national aim is absolutely impossible in our time. Was there ever a greater condemnation of the Fianna Fáil Party, of its total failure in its two principal aims that they use Irish so that nobody will understand it in order that they can use arms against fellow-Irishmen so that they will hate the rest of the people and never unite with them?
This is just typical of the lack of thought, the stupidity, the hypocrisy of the Taoiseach and his Ministers in whom he now asks us to vote confidence. They continue to play down other opinions and attitudes suggesting that they alone are the great custodians of the Irish Celtic heritage and that without their remaining in office it would be utterly and completely destroyed.
We have not heard the end of this sorry story and we will not, I fear, hear the end of it as long as the Government remain in office. Surely it should be apparent that the Government must go. The national interest requires nothing else. There is unexplained still £99,999 9s of public money voted by this House for the relief of human distress and misery in the streets of Belfast and Derry. We do not know what, if anything, ever got it. Maybe it is as well that decimalisation has not come in for the nines might have gone on forever. All the Taoiseach would say up to now is that he was assured that none of the money voted by this House had been used for the attempted importation of arms. All we know now apparently, if we are to rely upon the testimony which Deputy Gibbons asks us to rely upon, is that some £20,000 or £30,000 of that money was certainly not used for the purpose for which it was voted by this House.
Therefore, the nation is entitled to an immediate and detailed account of all that money. We believe that all the forces of the Garda Síochána, the Army and the courts are not of themselves sufficient to get an appropriate account of this money. We voted that money on behalf of the Irish people. We voted it for the relief of human misery and distress so that people's wounds might be bound, so that the hungry might be fed, so that the unclothed might be clothed, so that those without bedding might get bedding, so that those without a roof might get a roof above them, without discrimination as to whether they were Protestant or Catholic. That was the will and the wish of our people, and I do not think there is .0001 per cent of our people south of the Border who would wish that money to be spent in any discriminatory way. We wished it to be spent for the relief of our kith and kin without regard to their religious or political convictions and that was the direction which was given.
What do we find? We find that the Irish section of the Red Cross was again subverted and perverted by the Government, by agents of the Government and Ministers of the Government, for the purpose of using that very money voted for humanitarian reasons in a way contrary to the interests of humanity and the interests of the Irish people in particular.
Our name in international circles, if it is not mud, is a laughing stock. In the United Nations, the Council of Europe, across the world, the banana republic in the Celtic mist and fog off the western shores of Europe is a laughing stock. I was in Strasbourg and in Berlin during the conspiracy trial. All the continental papers carried accounts of the evidence that was revealed one day after another. Ireland was the joke in Europe but it was a rather sick joke for the Irish people to have to hear the laughter and the statements made. You could not blame other people: "Oh, the Irish are as bad as ever they were. The stage Irishman is still alive. They are a gas lot, the Irish. How they ever survive one just does not know." This is the kind of remark that is being passed in the international corridors, and how could it be otherwise? Goodness knows we have already belittled ourselves with undertakings which were called for in relation to neutrality and by absolving the British from any continuing responsibility in regard to the northern situation. We are now in this appalling position of having destroyed practically the last vestige of our reputation and we are now on record as having used or misused the International Red Cross for the sordid purpose of buying guns to shoot people.
This is the negation of what the International Red Cross stands for. I heard the criticism offered last week of the International Red Cross that it was the great "cover-upper" because it would not condemn the Government when it saw the mistreatment of prisoners or when it saw the misuse of public funds. The only reason why the Red Cross does not do it is that the Red Cross in order to bring necessary relief to the sick, the anguished and the dying, must not involve itself in politics. It must not, even when it knows wrong to have been committed, condemn the wrongdoer, in the hope that by remaining silent it will be allowed in to relieve the victims of the wrongdoer. To use the Red Cross for this purpose is to my mind a dastardly and unforgivable act. We have shamed ourselves before the world in every activity over which this Government have any control or ought to have control.
This Government will dissolve sooner or later. Political parties, like all human societies, have their disagreements from time to time. There are the clashes of personalities from time to time. These do not matter a great deal. They may, in fact, be of benefit to the country, be of benefit to the party. But it does matter where the people who are having these disagreements happen to be at the time they are having them, and it does matter that they should not use the institutions of the State and that they should not subvert public officials for the purpose of carrying out their intrigue against one another or because they have a clash of policy even on fundamental matters.
What has happened here and what is doing most damage to the country is not that Fianna Fáil are having disagreements. I can even respect those who have opinions on this and other matters which are in total conflict with mine. One could not but have respect for Deputy Kevin Boland who took an honourable course. We have often criticised him for his intransigence, for his lack of understanding for the other person's point of view, but he at least has had the integrity, when he found himself in conflict on a matter of principle, on a matter of policy and on a matter of strategy, to leave the Government. However, because he did leave the Government and criticised the Government that he had left, he has been drummed out of the Fianna Fáil party.
This to my mind is not the worst part of it, because at least Deputy Boland is out of the Government. Even if they detest him they can proceed without him. They do not need his support— which is just as well because quite obviously they will not get it — but there are others supporting the Government; there are others still within the Government who, I believe, fundamentally disagree with the Taoiseach in his statement that force must not be used in any way in relation to the issues concerning the unification of our country or even when our people disagree.
The Opposition parties here have had their disagreements. They are well publicised. They have been thrashed out. Perhaps they are not all solved yet. This is the way in any democracy and it is a good process. But when it happens that a Government is torn by the intrigues of its members against one another, when they are perverting and subverting the institutions of the State and the people that are in them, in the Army and the Garda Síochána, then it is time to cry halt and say: "Look, boys, sort yourselves out. Come back to the Government again if the people give you the chance, but please," and this is the cry on the lips of all our people with the exception of the diehard Fianna Fáil supporters, even from the lukewarm Fianna Fáil supporters, "hand over office to somebody else while you sort yourselves out. When you have sorted yourselves out and found out who is going to win, whether it is Lynch with Gibbons, because Gibbons ratted on his colleagues, or whether it is Hillery without Gibbons, promoting the fellows on whom Gibbons ratted or whether it is somebody else it does not matter." Fianna Fáil cannot settle this dispute. It is too deep, and they know it. It is too extensive, and they know it. It has done the country immense harm, and they know it. It has done the Fianna Fáil Party a total disservice and because of that it has done the country a total disservice. Answer the pleas of our people to get out and let into office a Government which will be agreed on fundamentals, agreed in carrying out their policies and, when they have had a chance of doing so, then the people can decide whether a reformed and united Fianna Fáil Party can ever come into power again.