Skip to main content
Normal View

Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 13 Jul 1972

Vol. 262 No. 9

Committee on Finance. - Vote 3: Department of the Taoiseach (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:
Go ndeonófar suim nach mó ná £175,000 chun íochta an mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31ú lá de Mhárta, 1973, le haghaidh tuaras-táil agus costais Roinn an Taoisigh.
—(The Taoiseach).

Acting Chairman

Deputy O'Leary has about 27 minutes left in which to conclude his contribution.

I have been saying, regarding the analysis which concludes that British power is the major obstacle obstructing the path to unity, that the present generation of British politicians, both Tory and Labour, are only too anxious to close the last chapters of British entanglement in Irish affairs and that the real opponents of unity are the Protestants of Northern Ireland. Their political allegiance has lain always in safeguarding the British connection. Whatever happens now or in the future there is little reason to conclude that any radical recasting of their attitude will take place in respect of the British connection.

We do no service to the idea of eventual unity based on agreement and consent between the two parts of Ireland by pretending that the allegiance of the Protestant Irish to the British connection is an aberration merely of temporary duration. Any peaceful progress towards unity must accommodate that view of allegiance to the British connection.

I agree with both the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste in thinking that the most urgent imperative before us in the Northern situation is that of achieving peace as soon as possible. I would not be talking of the long march towards eventual unity were it not for a widespread Southern delusion that we are on the threshold of unity. It is in the interests of the peace that we desire that that delusion should be dispersed. One consequence of the recent campaign of atrocities committed by the IRA is that conditions in which real talks leading towards unity can take place have been postponed indefinitely.

Any talks on achieving eventual unity and any real progress in that direction have been postponed, in my estimation, until the 21st century. All commentators agree that hatred and division between Catholic and Protestant have never been worse in Northern Ireland. It would appear that both the Provisional IRA and the UDA are involved in an escalation of violence to the pitch of reaching general civil war in the Northern area. Both organisations are involved in this for different reasons but there will be the same bloody result in consequence of their similar actions.

That is the automatic consequence of the continued campaign of violence by the IRA and of the response which must come from the UDA. I criticise the attitude that is prevalent in this House among apologists of violence, that is, that the campaign of violence has been responsible for the disappearsation ance of Stormont. I do not contest that it has contributed to the disappearance of Stormont but I believe that the disappearance of Stormont is evidence simply of a shift of opinion on the part of Wesminster politicians. I am making the point that the root of our problem in this island does not lie in Westminster. It lies on this island. The dissension on the island is caused mainly by the differences between Catholics and Protestants. If the cost of removing Stormont was an armed campaign it was a grievous cost but I do not believe that campaign was responsible totally for Stormont's disappearance. I believe it was too high a cost if the removal of Stormont has been bought at the expense of this total hostility now existing between Catholics and Protestants in the North.

There was a great deal of wisdom in what the Tánaiste said this morning, and do any of us visualise that we may advance from the present Northern position to full round-table talks on unity in the near future? Is it not clear —and there was much sense in what the Tánaiste said—that an essential intermediate stage in any advance towards eventual unity must be the emergence of a society in Northern Ireland which permits Catholics and Protestants to work together in a just administration. So, some form of Stormont will more than likely return in a year or two. It is possible that the continuation of bombings may force a further weakening of Westminster's resolve on the Northern issue but it is clear to me, and I cannot see any circumstances changing this conclusion, that the creation of an acceptable, democratic, united Ireland based on respect for law would be impossible in the wake of general civil war in this island.

The most likely result of a continuation of the present IRA terror campaign with its response from the UDA, after many hundreds of deaths, after what would be an extension of the incipient sectarian strife now existing, would be a political settlement in which there would be large-scale re-location of population in the Northern areas. We would not see in the wake of civil war a united Ireland, but a smaller totally Protestant Northern Ireland and a larger Catholic Republic. We would arrive at what could be termed a sort of Israeli solution to the problem. We would not have a united Ireland such as the patriots dreamed of, or their supporters envisaged but two ugly new states.

The first law of each resultant statelet, in the wake of that civil war, would be general hatred of the inhabitants of the other statelet. All cultural and social life would be poisoned by that ever-renewing hatred of Orange for Green and Green for Orange. The first law of the Green state would be hatred of the Orange and vice versa. While Europe went about its business, Ireland North and South would not be the beacon of light and liberty among the nations imagined by our patriots but a charnel house of rancour and hate, a morgue of memories. That is what our island would become in the wake of that civil war—two ugly states animated by supreme hatred for each other.

We condemn violence every day, but condemnation without political good works is not sufficient. It has become almost fashionable to say that nobody is on the side of violence and yet violence continues. We cannot passively join that general queue to the abattoir which appears to be the consequence of the prolongation of the present sectarian strife. We can passively join this queue to the abattoir which is under the joint management of the IRA and UDA. This is a terrible prospect. No matter how we analyse the problem, we are called upon to make certain proposals, to act. More than condemnation of violence is necessary. The logic of the violence which has engulfed the northern area is this: the IRA violence will provoke UDA retaliation and in this continuing escalation, condemnations of violence will be mere whistling in the wind, without effect.

In that situation, elected political leaders of the minority will be bypassed and will no longer have any place except to explain the latest atrocity on the minority side, or to blame the majority. Their only function will be to go to television studios explaining actions for which they are not responsible.

I believe they should now negotiate and enter into talks with the Whitelaw administration and so try to arrange for the release of the remaining internees. They must certainly not stay out of talks because of the taunts of the IRA that they are selling out on the internees. They must talk with the Whitelaw administration and consider how the withholding of rents and rates campaign can be speedily terminated. They must try to make contact with elected Unionist representatives to see if those elected in the Northern area can come together for the greater good of their own community. They must not be held back by the campaign of violence from these talks because to condemn violence without doing anything is to permit violence to win and permit the men of violence to feed on the blood of their fellow countrymen. Elected minority leaders must take part in talks immediately and see what settlement can be achieved and must not be held back by criticism coming from men of violence. If they do hold back, their hour will have passed and that is the real danger at present.

What must we do here? I suppose we must first clarify our own inherited attitudes on the Northern question and how it can be settled. There is talk of changing the Constitution but the most important change in any Constitution we can devise for this part of the country would be a clause setting out the legitimate constitutional ways of achieving the unity of the country, laying down in cold, legal form how this should be done and the peaceful means to be adopted and ruling out all methods of force. There is a great deal of confusion in our attitude. In the official attitude in the South there is a great deal of ambiguity regarding the settlement of the problem. While we mean to achieve it by peace and agreement we are vague about the steps towards that peace and agreement and violent methods are not ruled out. I have already said the division of the communities in the North is now wider than ever but one consequence of the recent campaign is that the hatred—I think that is not too strong—felt by Northern Protestants for the Republic, because, rightly or wrongly, they blame the Republic for the emergence of the IRA, is now greater than ever.

We must set down clearly how we propose to gain the unity of the country. The peaceful means by which it is to be gained must be set down. Nothing dramatic can bring about unity. A delusion held by some editorial writers is that somehow there is a glorious task before us and that unity may be achieved at any weekend. A whole series of small steps must be taken if we are to begin to make any progress towards eventual unity.

As I said, the first imperative is to gain peace. Without peace the threat of a continuation of civil disorder in Northern Ireland poses a real danger to democracy in the rest of Ireland. People said here today that they support law and order. How safe will law and order be in this part of the country if a large scale massacre occurs of the minority in a certain situation in the Northern conflict? That type of happening is quite possible if the shooting continues. It is quite clear that the involvement of this State in a large scale civil war situation in the North cannot be totally avoided and cannot be totally ruled out. Such an involvement will spell disaster for democracy here.

Law and order may command sympathy from many people here at present, but that may not always be the situation if the violence in the North continues to increase. Our elected leaders must speak out on the proper means that must be adopted to settle the division of the country. We must not be vague. We must not permit people to suggest that there is some relationship between our own ideas on unity and the methods and activities of the IRA's and of people who do not respect the democratic will of the majority. We must dispel any such notion.

I regret that the Offences Against the State Act prevents known IRA members from appearing on our television screens so that their programmes and policies can be examined. What we must criticise about the appearance of these people on television is the reception of their ideas in an uncritical manner. Very often their opinions are not properly contested with counter arguments. I regret that we are not in a position to see some of the people controlling the armed campaign facing tough interrogation and proper discussion and questioning on our national television service.

Since we are the people who say we are looking for this eventual unity based on peace and consent and agreement, we must have a Constitution which does not permit any Unionist to suggest that it reflects the religious bias of the majority of the people on this side of the Border. I am not saying this would change by one iota the allegiance of Protestant Irish to the British connection, but it would deprive Unionist spokesmen of arguments. Since we are the people who are looking for unity, we must be practically fanatical in excluding any sectarian bias from our legislation.

We must provide an educational system from which any idea of separate education for Catholics and Protestants must be banished. We must anticipate the kind of united Ireland which we say we seek. All around us we can see a lack of interest in the united Ireland which we are all supposed to favour. The kind of Ireland we have built up in this part of the country gives no sign of anticipating the model of a future united Ireland.

We must lose no opportunity of meeting the men of violence and countering their arguments. The politicians must do their best in regard to the Constitution. We must ensure that our social welfare benefits, and so on, are improved, that our educational system is secular, that our Constitution is secular, and that there are no laws which reflect the bias of one religion.

Our theologians could have a look at the mixed marriage regulations. Of all the places in Christendom this country is one area where relations between Catholics and Protestants must be put on a human level of mutual respect. The fact that a Catholic cannot marry a Protestant or a Protestant cannot marry a Catholic without signing away his or her liberty to decide the religion of the children is often cited by Protestants in the South as a reason for their disappearance as a major part of the population. If the united Ireland we seek is one in which the communities can come together, religious laws which say that the religion of one partner in a marriage must swallow the religion of the other must be changed. I remember reading that at the start of this century religious law on this matter was more lenient than it appears to be in 1972.

I would suggest that our Hierarchy, our clergymen and our theologians who say they are on the side of reconciliation should go back to their tomes and come up with the requisite authorisation showing that a man can be a Christian in good standing without insisting that his wife should renege on her religious beliefs. It is very important that such a change should be made. This is a job the theologians could do, not the politicians. I hope theologians will take on this task.

There is a whole series of things we must do, constitutional, political, and so on. Last September or October the Taoiseach suggested that this was a democratic State in which there could be a change of Government when the electorate felt like it. The sincerity of our convictions on the kind of Ireland we would like to see created is tested by what we do in the part of Ireland we control, and by the kind of politics we practise. Many people in this House want to assist in the construction of an alternative Government. The leader of our party in a speech of June of this year gave ample evidence of our readiness to enter into discussions about participating in a Coalition Government or an inter-Party Government after the next election.

The Labour Party have signified to the public that we will not stand in the way of the legitimate right of the electorate of the Irish Republic to have a choice of Government. The Taoiseach rose to the challenge about the moving of the writ for mid-Cork. In the same constituency in 1965, I think, his predecessor suggested that the electorate should consider the by-election as no mere ordinary by-election but as the signal for a general election if the Government candidate was rejected. The Taoiseach could suggest a similar interpretation in this by-election.

The Deputy has two minutes to conclude.

The electorate of mid-Cork have the opportunity to give the first sign to the Government that a change is needed here. We need a change for several reasons: 16 years in office, a tired Administration, an Administration down on their luck, an Administration depending on very meagre talent. In his address to the Press correspondents at Westminster the Taoiseach suggested that ours was a democracy which permitted of changes of Government in contradistinction to Northern Ireland. He would not be showing any lack of responsibility by interpreting the result of the mid-Cork by-election as a signal for a general election.

There is now a realistic alternative to Fianna Fáil. Between the Opposition parties in the House there is the possibility of creating an Administration which could introduce policies on welfare, economic planning, and so on, and restore the confidence of the people of the State in the institutions of the State. The defence of the country does not lie simply in withstanding attacks on the Curragh. We must also demonstrate that our democracy is mature enough to say to one set of politicians: "After 16 years it is time you rested."

I am confident they will make that choice. Some of the greatest proponents of the desirability of alternative government in this part of the country are in the Parliamentary Party opposite. I will not name names, but there are members of the present Government Parliamentary Party who will be voting with the Taoiseach tomorrow night who are strident advocates of the necessity now, in the national interest, of an alternative Government coming into power and I would hope that the Taoiseach need have no worry about being irresponsible. He has risen to the challenge of moving the writ in mid-Cork and he would be fully responsible in saying to the electorate in mid-Cork: "Depending on a certain result or the failure to nominate the Government candidate into Dáil Éireann on that day I will call a general election." That is the responsible thing that should be done and we need a clean out, top and bottom, in this State.

We have covered a good deal of ground already in this debate and I do not propose to follow altogether Deputy O'Leary on some of the points he has made. Indeed, in relation to some of the points he made, especially in regard to the North, I think one could say that there is a fair measure of agreement on the questions he raised. None of us in this House is blind to the fact that we are living very close to a very serious civil war in the North and, therefore, I feel that while this debate lends itself to matters such as the guerrilla warfare at present going on in the North, I shall leave it to other Members of the House on this side to deal more adequately with this whole question.

I would refer for a moment to a reference made to the All-Party Committee on Irish Unity. As a member of this Committee, I hope it will succeed in its objective and I would remind the House of our terms of reference and in this context suggest that people expect far too much from a Committee such as this. However, this Committee, I suppose, is one of the elements which could bring about, maybe, a better image of our attitude towards our opponents or alleged opponents in the North. There has been some comment on this in the Press, and indeed in political circles, and as the Committee is now sitting, I would not wish to prejudice the proceedings which are going on at the moment, but I would ask the House to remember our terms of reference. If I may quote a paragraph from the statement issued by the Taoiseach on the setting up of the Committee and naming its members. it is:

With a view to contributing to a peaceful settlement of the Northern Ireland situation it has been agreed to set up an inter-Party Committee to establish a common ground between the parties represented on the Committee on the constitutional, legal, economic, cultural, social and other relevant implications of a united Ireland and to make representations as to the steps now required to create conditions conducive to a united Ireland.

Whether the proceedings of the Committee are successful or not, I would hope as one member of the Committee that we would find the common ground suggested whereby we might be shown or be seen to have this common purpose in relation to this whole matter.

All of us, I think, who believe in constitutionalism and in the institutions of State down the years deplore every assault made on the Border, and I said in this House before that time and again in the course of our history here, whenever we made an approach towards promoting better relations with the North, we had guerrilla warfare breaking out in our back garden. It is not easy to stem the desire for guerrilla warfare. Those who think that we can shoot our way into unity may be thinking in this direction because of our history, but whether they do or not or regardless of their motives, we condemn roundly any effort at this shooting match.

It was often said also in this context that we did not do enough down the years to promote a spirit of better understanding. I want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that every time we moved in that direction, someone shot up our effort. If one recognises the fact that today in the North there are a large number of British troops on the streets and they are hardly able—in fact, they are not able—to contain the damage which is being done there, it is very hard to think that we would be able in our circumstances to watch a Border which stretches right across the country.

Therefore, I would say to people that, when speaking on this subject, they should have recognition of this fact, and apart from this, there was always the unfortunate idea abroad in America, amongst certain leaders there, that force would be the ultimate solution of the Border and time and again when representatives went from this country to America, they found themselves at loggerheads with these people there and we found invariably that money and materials found their way in here to these illegal organisations. We also found that it is very difficult to stem it, by reason of the fact of history, by reason of the fact that such a high proportion of our people are in America. So that I should like to suggest that when we come to criticise our alleged lack of activity in promoting better relations with the North down the years there should be recognition of those facts.

I would also please ask that, whilst the proceedings of this committee are in progress, that too much should not be expected ultimately from the committee. If we are able to find common ground and to improve our institutions, so much the better. I would welcome this move. I shall not say any more in regard to this whole matter.

Deputy O'Leary referred to the moving of the writ for the mid-Cork by-election. It is nothing new to me that a writ should be moved in this House for a by-election. I can recall many an occasion on which we were challenged to move such a writ. I can recall the famous occasion when Deputy Flanagan challenged the then Taoiseach to move the writ for the by-election in Cork city and it was a Fianna Fáil representative who emerged from the contest.

There is this aspect to be taken into account: the Labour Party, for reasons best known to themselves, have decided to make a move towards a united front or coalition government and the Fine Gael Party seem very anxious to promote this idea. It can be said that politics is the art of the possible. It can be added that its practitioners cannot afford the luxury of anger or certainty. This is a new move. Up to now there have been coalitions that came about after the event. It will be interesting in the extreme to see how this plan works out. We are not afraid of it. We would not be mature politicians if we were. We are willing to take our chance in mid-Cork against the united Opposition.

I would remind the Labour Party, who led a very strong campaign, and a very honourable one I may say in passing, against the Referendum, of the naked fact that thousands of Labour supporters voted in favour of entry to Europe. In this context I would also remind the Labour Party that there is, apparently, an end to the brainwashing which can be done on the members of that organisation.

While I am on that subject, let me compliment in a high degree the members of the labour unions throughout the country who voted for entry into Europe and who are adult enough at this stage of our development to have done so.

I want to refer to some matters which one may deal with in this debate. This is the debate on the Adjournment; it is also a debate on the Taoiseach's Estimate for the year. In the course of his opening remarks the Taoiseach dealt with a number of matters, first, the economy, then the EEC and, lastly, the North. I shall not go over all these matters. I shall confine myself to making specific remarks on certain aspects of policy.

Some of our economic progress during the year was attacked. We had some criticism from Deputy Cosgrave, who spoke here earlier in his usual well-informed and courteous manner, but he did criticise certain matters. Before I go on to that point let me say that he dealt with the role of his party in the Referendum campaign. He and the members of his party are entitled to be complimented on the work put in, the time given, the ground covered, and so on, in the period leading up to the Referendum.

One of their members, not a Member of this House, the late Mr. Michael Sweetman, played a very active role in that campaign, as did others from various organisations, who died in that fearful fatality less than a month ago. A special word of praise should go to the late Mr. Sweetman and his colleagues for the amount of information they produced, the amount of research they carried out and the time spent in bringing up the standard of education regarding the aims of the European Community and in regard to the European institutions in general. That should be said in this House and now is as good a time to say it as any.

Deputy Cosgrave spoke of the price of consumer goods and of the increased charges in relation to health and education. Let me take health for a moment. I do not want to go into the matter in any great detail. Two weeks ago we were dealing in the House with the Estimate for Health and the Tánaiste, who is also the Minister for Health, made quite clear on every occasion on which he spoke the danger of increasing costs in his Department. He pointed out, for example, the high labour content involved in his Department. He indicated the rise in costs brought about by any adjustment in pay. We all subscribe to the view that nurses and doctors attached to hospitals should be paid well. Yet we hear this criticism of rising costs in health, just as if we could make health immune to rising costs. This is something beyond the power of any Minister or Member of this House.

There is no need therefore to go over the ground that has already been covered on the Estimate, but one would need to stress on one point: that the Minister made a decision last spring in relation to the local rates which helped local authorities considerably when, for example, over and above the 50 per cent which he provided from his Department in the health costs to local authorities he got the consent of the Government to give a supplementary grant of 9 per cent to the local authorities in order to ensure that the health rate would not increase over 30 pence in the £ in any area.

It is often suggested here that we could run a fancy scheme not based on any special financial system, but the health system in this country is based on a system of financing which is not easily replaced. On the one hand it rests on the Central Exchequer and on the other hand on the local authority. When people talk about rates they forget that we have three or four reports here on the rating system, and I think there were a similar number in England. The British Government sought a report on the rating system there and no better plan was advocated in any of those reports.

Therefore, when we come to speak of increasing costs and where those costs are levelled, one must have at the back of one's mind some alternative. Usually the people who make those sweeping statements about increasing costs in health do not come up with an alternative.

Deputy Cosgrave also spoke of our aim to bring about a more rational plan for progress in education and he quoted criticism from other quarters. Some of those quarters are often circumspect in revealing to the public their own attitude on the question of education. People have been calling for a White Paper. The Minister did much better than a White Paper. He may issue a White Paper—it is up to the Minister and the Government—but he did his work fairly well. He sent off the officers of his Department to the various areas where he proposed to proceed with community schools—one might call them pilot areas—to explain to each group of people there the plan which was envisaged.

Apart from some criticism, some of it extreme enough, I think the plan is generally acceptable. In our circumstances and on our income, when we embark on any scheme, we must recognise the fact that we should have to raise the amount of money necessary to finance that plan. I would also ask the House, if we have not made progress in education, what are we doing? Only today Deputy Corish asked the Minister for Education for the amount of expenditure by the Central Government and local authorities each year since 1960 and, secondly, the total expenditure as a percentage of the GNP per head of the population each year. The Minister issued a tabular statement from which I am quoting. It can be seen there that expenditure on education has risen from £17,000,992 in 1960-61 to over £89 million in 1971-72. I understand that it is approaching £94 million this year. As a percentage of gross national product, the figure has also risen from 2.8 to 5.1. Therefore we must be making some headway on the educational front. I suggest that we are, in fact; otherwise we would not at this stage be embarking on a scheme to develop and restructure our whole educational system. This is aimed at providing equal opportunity for all. This may not be in line with some of the aims of those who criticise such a scheme but, nevertheless, I suggest it is a good scheme. If we look at the hundreds of new and attractive schools, fully serviced, throughout the country we see some progress. If we look at the free primary school transport system again we see some progress. If we look at the post-primary scheme for secondary and vocational education, we see some progress. If we go on from there and look at third level education we see some progress. It may not be all the progress we would like to see, but it is still substantial progress.

Reference was made to the referendum. Prior to the referendum—I should like to remind the House of this lest it may be forgotten—the Minister for Foreign Affairs about a year ago had additional negotiations, shall we say, with the EEC authorities in which he negotiated special terms, first of all, for the car assembly industry and he did much better than many thought he would do. Secondly, he won a number of concessions in regard to other important matters. He won the concession on fishing limits. He won the concession on the retention of the tax relief system in respect of export profits; this is calculated to promote industry and to create job opportunities.

We are told that there will be a European Community summit in the autumn. No doubt at that he will point to the difficulties which face developing countries and make, I assume, some reference to our regional plans. One would hope that the Community would adopt in full the regional planning schemes which, in my opinion, are best calculated to solve some of the problems about which we hear so much today.

We are all well aware that it is undesirable to have a declining rural population. This trend is, of course, common to most countries today. The movement of people from rural to urban areas is governed by many factors. A person may migrate because he may think that he will have better prospects in the city. As a rule, urban areas have large pools of labour. There are many reasons why good workers move from the country to the metropolis. They may desire better services, better communications, better prospects of third level education, and so on. All these amenities and facilities inevitably exert a pull. I am rationalising now.

There is another side to this migration from the country to the town. Power on the land, as on the factory floor, often begets its own problems. It promotes greater output per worker and, in general, I suppose it makes work more congenial. It sometimes, however, engenders a desire in the worker to acquire a greater skill aimed ultimately towards higher pay. This type of worker very often migrates from the country to the town. There are many elements which tend to encourage migration of this kind. Unfortunately migration causes an imbalance in rural life. It changes social and economic conditions. This is apparent in practically every area. At one time this migration was confined to those parts of the country where the land was poor. It is not so confined any longer. The emphasis may vary. There may be different degrees of migration. There may be different reasons for migration.

The Deputy has two minutes left to conclude his speech.

I will conclude by welcoming the Government's action in taking steps to correct this imbalance in the rural community as was evident in their statement regarding the regional plans of the IDA. It is to be hoped that the smaller towns of Ireland will be able to secure a fair share of industry. Under the targets set out in the IDA plan, the cities would absorb 52 per cent of the total prosperity resulting from the plan and the remainder would go to the rural areas. It has been said here that the Buchanan Report was being left aside. If I had sufficient time, I would develop this point but all I shall say now is that the Government's policy of equal distribution of industrial development is very welcome.

There are two points I wish to make in the first instance in relation to what Deputy Carter has said. First I would like to say that the relatives and many friends of the late Michael Sweetman will appreciate greatly the tribute that Deputy Carter was generous enough to pay to him. Secondly, I do not wish to develop the point in regard to the Buchanan Report but I cannot agree with him on that. The Buchanan Report is not sacred and I, as well as many others, have criticised it. Basically what the IDA have done is to move back towards the concept of a disperse development policy of such a character that it does not seem to offer the possibility of sufficient development of any part of the country outside Dublin that would provide a base to attract the kind of large scale industry which this country needs and which should not be located in Dublin. Unless we develop several large centres outside Dublin on a scale that can accept easily large industries employing a couple of thousand male workers with the adequate provision of housing, water supplies, et cetera, and unless we can get centres that are big enough to be self-generating and self-developing without needing permanent assistance, we will not solve our labour surplus problem.

It has been one of the greatest disappointments in respect of this Government that after ten years of stalling they have gone back to where we started so that all the hopes of all those who supported unanimously the policy of growth centres which alone can give us sufficient growth, have been dashed. The decision to abandon this policy has been tragic.

On the economic situation I would say first that the action of the ICTU and the unions in reopening wage and salary negotiations is one on which they must be congratulated. When the original proposals were rejected overwhelmingly it was not easy for the ICTU to re-open the issue. Yet, they did so and they put the issue very straight to the unions concerned. They did not try to mislead them into thinking that any great improvements in the amounts of money could be achieved and the negotiations open now on a realistic basis and in the hope that other improvements can be effected in the package which will not be of an unduly inflationary character but which will provide the possibility of agreement and the avoidance of industrial unrest which at this stage in our development could be particularly damaging. It is an indication of great responsibility on their part that they have taken this action despite the continued refusal of the Government to grapple with the question of an incomes policy, and despite the fact that almost seven years after the NIEC report had laid down the principles of such a policy, the Government have done nothing even to begin to implement it.

Nothing has been done to offer the kind of re-assurance that workers need and to which they have a right, the reassurance that any restraint on their part will not lead to greater resources falling into the hands of the well-to-do and that restraints in wages will not mean larger dividends. The failure of the Government to tackle that problem has made it difficult for the unions to play their part but they have done so responsibly. The Government have a duty to them now to respond, even seven years later, and try to devise an incomes policy that will offer the necessary reassurance and enable the unions to continue to pursue this policy of responsibility and gradually to abate the level of wage and salary claims and, consequently, of prices so that we can get out of the inflationary spiral in which we have become caught because of past failures of the Government.

I was concerned this morning to hear the Taoiseach sound a note of complacency—I am sure he did not intend it to sound that way—when he talked of a 3 per cent growth rate as being not bad considering our difficulties in the tourist industry, et cetera. A 3 per cent growth rate is not good enough after two years of stagnation, thereby giving us three years of below normal growth. Indeed we have not yet got any guarantee or promise from the Government that next year, the fourth year of this cycle of slow growth, we will get out of these difficulties and reach a stage where our growth will return even to normal, that is, to the inadequate level of the 1960s. All we have is the statement in the EEC document and, taking a long term view and given this Government will not be in office for ever, it could be true that in the latter part of this decade our growth rate would be approaching 5 per cent and that in the 1980s it could be more than that. For the immediate future the prospect is not encouraging and neither was the Taoiseach able to give us any encouragement. It is disturbing that we should have to sound such a note and that he could offer us no more than this rather complacent remark about a 3 per cent growth.

There are many aspects of Government policy that concern us on this side of the House but, for the moment, I shall simply list a few because there are many other matters as well as economic policy on which I wish to speak. In particular we are concerned about the failure to look ahead to the problems that free trade will create in the years immediately ahead. We are concerned at the persistent failure to identify in advance the areas in which free trade will create problems and where efforts should be made to provide full employment. It seems so obvious that this needs to be done that it is inconceivable that during a long period the Government have failed to take any action in this respect. Such action was advocated first by the CIO in 1962. The suggestion that it is impossible to foresee where the difficulties will arise is one that we cannot accept. It is impossible to foresee anything in this life with certainty but one can foresee many things with sufficient probability to provide a basis for action. If that were not so, all planning would become impossible. Looking at our industrial structure, it is possible to see which areas are most likely to run into difficulties. It is possible to make sure that industries in the areas most likely to suffer are given special preference and encouragement. That has not been done and in some parts of the country the result has been tragic and will be even more tragic within the next couple of years as the problems of free trade, because of the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement and in due course from EEC membership, will affect particular areas.

Regarding the disadvantages of EEC membership, the losses which we have identified all along as being likely to occur will occur within the next couple of years. Of course, in the aggregate they are tiny by comparison with what will be the gains but it is not much consolation to a man who loses his job to be told that, as against his losses, there are vast gains to accrue to other people in other parts of the country at other times. Failure to utilise the extra resources that EEC membership will create gradually as we go into the latter part of this decade is something which we cannot accept. It has been a persistent weakness of this Government that they have not tackled this problem.

There is also the problem that we face now of the taking over of Irish firms and the creation of cartels and monopolies of a kind that are undesirable and which make our country even more vulnerable to foreign takeovers because when small Irish firms are linked together into large combines a situation is created in which objectives for speculators outside the country become worth looking at, big enough and vulnerable enough to be interesting. The Government do not seem to have any policy on this. There is no suggestion that the Government are willing to try to ensure that where key industries of vital importance to this country are threatened they will be kept in Irish control. The policy of this party, as set out in our industrial policy, is that where such key industries are threatened with a foreign take-over they will be taken over by the State and run by the State rather than allowed to fall into foreign, private hands. I am sure this policy will have the support of the Labour Party also. I wish it were also the policy of Fianna Fáil and that they were not prepared, as they appear to be, to allow free industries to fall into the hands of foreign interests simply because of a predisposition in favour of private enterprise, even a foreign private enterprise as against native public enterprise.

For a policy of this kind I visualise as necessary to be pursued, changes would be required in the existing organisational structure of the Government in industrial matters. We have set out our policies here and in our policy document, of setting up a holding company to hold the shares in the manufacturing companies that are in State ownership and to use that company constructively to develop State ownership, to act as a buffer between political pressures and the commercial activities of the State bodies and to eliminate some of the criticisms that can be levied at the moment against State enterprises because it is unfairly favoured through its easier access to capital.

Our policies are designed to eliminate these difficulties and to clear the way for expansion of State enterprise especially where the alternative is a foreign take-over. This will require a new approach and the initiation of a new body to do this work and to hold the shares in the various companies and to provide the necessary expertise to ensure that we get the maximum return from State enterprises active in the manufacturing field, perhaps the part of State enterprise that has been least successful and where most needs to be done to achieve a better return and make it possible for these areas to expand.

We need a complete review of tax policy, of which we see no sign from this Government. I find a growing acceptance of the need for a capital gains tax. A couple of years ago the old argument was: "Do not do anything that would be a disincentive to the initiation of new projects," but that argument is no longer used so loudly. Even conservative people now accept that a capital gains tax is desirable. I have spoken to some of the wealthiest people in the country, people you would not think of as people concerned with any form of socialism, I can assure Deputy Cruise-O'Brien, who feel that the failure to have a capital gains tax in this country is indefensible.

In the last few days I spoke to a stockbroker who, commenting on recent take-overs, felt we needed a more radical policy. It is interesting to see how rapidly opinion has evolved even among people who would be regarded by some people on the left as props of the capitalist system. Many of these people now realise that the capitalist system as we operate it has grave defects and that radical changes will be needed if it is to survive and serve our people as an economic system must if it is worthy to survive.

We need to ensure that our taxation is redistributed. I shall not dwell on this because we spent the whole of yesterday from 10.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. on it and failed to presuade the Government to take the necessary step to achieve a more redistribute operation of our tax system through the value-added tax and the zero-rating of food. Clearly, the Government are not prepared to do this and we had the extraordinary message given to the House yesterday that so long as Fianna Fáil is in power there can be no reduction in any expenditure taxes because the Government are incapable of ensuring that the benefits are passed on to the consumer. I thought those words from Deputy Colley sounded the death-knell of the Government because no people would accept that the Government are incapable of running the country's affairs as the people expect them to be run.

When people hear this message, and I can assure Deputies on the other side of the House that I shall do my best to make sure they do hear the message from Fianna Fáil that there can no longer be tax reduction because the Government cannot ensure that they can be passed on to the public, they will lose such confidence as they have left in the Government. The Minister rejected any idea of reducing VAT on any item on the grounds that you could not guarantee that the benefit would pass on to the consumer and that nobody could guarantee it.

That is very narrow.

Very broad, I thought, dangerously broad for the survival of the Government. More widely, there is the need for a negative income tax which would combine our taxation and social welfare systems. Our present system of taxation and social welfare is inadequate because it makes no provision to help people on low incomes who may need assistance. It enables us to help people who are sick, who are widowed, or unemployed, but not to help people who, although they have jobs, are by virtue of their inadequate salaries and the inadequacy of social policies in the provision of housing, in a position of poverty. We need a system whereby the tax system can pay out as well as take in money and in which the system of redistribution of income will no longer be in two separate categories, insulated from each other and incapable even in the aggregate of providing social justice. We need a system to combine the two. These are the sort of reforms that a change of government would secure, reforms which anybody can see will not come from the Government which, at this stage, is too long in office.

Leaving the internal economic side I regret very much that we have not had the opportunity of a special debate on EEC. I regret that the concern to get out of this House as quickly as possible has led to such pressure on those of us trying to deal with the Business of the House that it has meant the elimination of this debate. As I said to a colleague yesterday, it was poetic justice that those who were so keen to get everything wound up are going to spend three weeks in Cork when the whole purpose of winding things up in the case of some people was not, I think, to be in Cork—I am not addressing myself to this side of the House. I find it hard to believe from the enthusiasm on the Government side for getting everything wound up and getting us out of here, first on the 21st, then back to the 14th——

This comes well from the greatest gasbag in the place, according to the Irish Independent.

That is not a very constructive remark. It is rather unlike the Parliamentary Secretary who is usually more courteous than that.

It is true. I have been saving it up.

It is off his chest now and I hope he feels more comfortable. It is a pity we have not had an EEC debate because we are approaching the Summit, which, of course, may be postponed. But it may not be postponed and if it does occur it occurs three or four days, as I understand it, before the Dáil resumes because I was horrified to hear that, despite the arguments given me by people on the other side of the House that the Dáil should adjourn early so as to come back early at the end of September or early in October to deal with the mass of EEC legislation, the Taoiseach announced this morning that we shall not come back until much later in October.

It now seems possible that the Summit will occur without this Dáil having debated the vitally important issues involved which include, for example, all the problems of the European Parliament; the proposals of the Odell Report for the reform of the European Parliament and extension of its powers; for the creation of a position in which there would be an element of co-decision between the Parliament and the Council of Ministers; proposals for direct elections of vital importance for this country because we shall find it very difficult— impossible, I think—to provide the personnel to man the Parliament and the committees of the Parliament so long as they must also be Members of this House, as is the present requirement, until the reform of direct elections is introduced.

I wrote an article on this several weeks ago setting out the facts as I knew them then. I discovered on the day the article was published, in talking to the Secretary-General of the European Parliament, that I had underestimated the problem because I had assumed, perhaps rather naively, that a Deputy from here would be expected to be a member of one committee. I discovered that, as the average committee membership is 29, and as there are 13 committees, and only 136 members of the Parliament, on average for the committees to be properly manned every Deputy from here would have to be on three committees. I discovered that in the European Parliament many Deputies are members of three committees and others are members of two.

As, in fact, even to be a member of one committee will involve between 60 and 85 days out of the country, to be members of two or three committees, as will be required of us if we are to protect the interests of this country in the European Parliament which will be of growing importance, would require Deputies from this House to be out of the country for something like 120 days on average. In view of the distances involved, it will not be possible for us to combine satisfactorily membership of the European Parliament on that scale with membership of this House.

Under our multi-seat PR system, which is unique in that the electorate has a free personal choice and is not presented with a party list on which the man who goes to the European Parliament is put at the top by the Party to ensure his re-election—because we have this personal voting in a multi-seat PR system which we have very good reason to retain—it will be difficult for Deputies who have to spend 120 days out of the country, plus whatever days are required for travelling backwards and forwards, to retain their seats against an assiduous constituency member of his own party in the same constituency. Therefore we have a unique problem and we should be discussing it in this House so that we could give guidance to the Government as to the line to take at the summit meeting. Yet we are not having such a debate to discuss it.

There is also the question of monetary union and agricultural policy and the link between the two, and the vital importance to us of moving to a monetary union to protect the agricultural policy, and the political implications of that, which are not fully realised. If we wish to protect the agricultural policy we ought to be aiming for a monetary union. If that monetary union were to be democratically controlled it would require a vast step forward towards a more federal kind of Europe. If we maintain the kind of Gaullist attitude which emanates from Ministers and Deputies on the other side of the House, we will sabotage our own vital interest in the matter of agricultural policy and monetary union. These things should be discussed and debated. Yet they are not to be discussed because of the premature termination of this session.

We also have the problem of regional policy which we have not begun to discuss except in very crude terms, in terms of Buchanan, but not in European terms at all. There are other matters we should also be discussing, for example, the problem of the appointments to the Commission. I should just like to throw out the thought that it is very important that the appointments made are of the best possible people. It seems likely that the Irish Commissioner will be a Minister of this Government. The Party opposite have an unfortunate tradition of jobbery. This started in the 1930s. One can understand why a Party coming to power after the period of the civil war felt it necessary to appoint some of their own supporters who had, equally necessarily, been excluded from jobs in the 1920s.

It is 40 years later now and the tradition still persists. It is very important that the Fianna Fáil Minister who becomes the Commissioner will take the proper decisions, because he will be playing a very important role in decision-making on the Irish appointments, that they will be free of any considerations of jobbery and that the best people will be appointed. I hope this will be the case. It may be the case. I am not suggesting that it necessarily will not be, but I emphasise the importance of this, and it is an aspect of the problem which we should be discussing.

Finally on the EEC, Deputy Carter congratulated the Government on the success of the negotiations. What I said at the beginning I said badly and I was consequently and rightly misunderstood by Deputy Cruise-O'Brien. What I was trying to say at the beginning of the great debate on the EEC was that the negotiations taking place about entry were not really difficult or important because, since we were adhering to the Rome Treaty, the terms were set and only minor variations and transitional arrangements could be agreed. I think I was right in that because we all knew in advance what the terms would be.

Now that we are in, there is an immensely important and difficult problem of negotiation to be overcome. I do not believe this Government are equipped to do that. From anything I heard about their efforts so far in the very easy and simple job they had, suggests that they are not protecting adequately the interests of the country. Reports which come back from Brussels indicate that the people there are puzzled as to why our Government are not standing up for our interests and why they are not doing what other Governments are doing and why they are giving in far too easily. Even those with whom they are negotiating are puzzled by this. I can assure the House that when there is a change of Government that will change also.

I turn now to the issue which is in all our minds at the moment, the issue of Northern Ireland and all that is at stake there. So much has been lost in the past year. All the gains of the Civil Rights movement have been lost effectively. The reforms are overshadowed and the possibility of creating in the foreseeable future a viable society in Northern Ireland has been undermined by the violence which has taken place there. The rampant sectarianism of the Provisional IRA has done lasting damage to the possibility of creating a genuine community within Northern Ireland or bringing the two parts of the country together.

Where this has led to we can now see. It has led to such anarchy that it appears that the Provisional IRA were unable to maintain the truce. During the truce there were endless murders. As far as one can make out from the identity of the people killed, they certainly were not all killed by Protestants. I am sure that the Provisional IRA tried to maintain discipline but obviously so many anarchic groups have come into being in the situation they created that control proved impossible and, to cover their failure to control the situation, an ending of the truce was necessary apparently. That is one interpretation of the situation.

Now in our own part of the country we are disgraced before the world. The heading in the evening paper, most misleading, is: "Gardaí protect Orangemen". From what appears underneath it should read: "Hooligans attack Protestants".

Or: "Gardaí protect Irishmen".

Yes, indeed. We are told:

During the rioting, three people were hit by shotgun pellets, a garda car was burned, the Orange Hall was attacked with petrol bombs...

"It was a wild, hell of a night here," Mr. Fleming said. "Many Protestant businesses are wrecked and in the present mood anything could happen"...

A Garda spokesman said that they had done this peacefully——

——the Orangement had marched——

——earlier in the day on their way out and had been doing it peacefully for as long as he could remember.

They did not do it peacefully this year. At about 1 a.m. an attempt was made to set fire to the Orange Hall, using petrol bombs and incendiary devices. The report goes on:

Crowds of people, many of whom had spent the intervening time in public houses, roamed the town, breaking windows and in some cases looting from broken shop fronts.

This is what has been going on in the past 24 hours in this part of Ireland. That is how some people think they will re-unite Ireland—by starting sectarian warfare against innocent Protestants in this part of the country.

What action will be taken on that? How will we rally our people, because we have a duty to do that? We must insist that the old shibboleths are abandoned and that in this part of the country we shall start a fresh before too much damage is done. We must abandon the idea that we have a right to Northern Ireland. It is true that Northern Ireland was artificially created originally, and that it is an artificial area, but its artificiality is irrelevant at this stage. It has been there for 50 years and any attempt to re-unite Ireland without the consent of the majority there would be fatal and would lead to a civil war twice as bloody as any that could happen now within the area of Northern Ireland.

Yet there are people in this House who will not accept that, and who continue to assert this claim. One of the great problems to be overcome, and which I hope the all-Party Committee will overcome, is to get away from that attitude and to get a total acceptance of the concept of re-union by consent, and only by consent. This will not be easy. There are people in this part of the country who are not prepared for changes down here, who do not see the need for them, and who are not prepared to give up this claim. To persuade them we must be persuaded ourselves, all of us in this House. We must lead the campaign to persuade our people that we need to change our society down here redically.

I know there are people who find this difficult and who say: "Why should we change the tidy, cosy little Catholic State we have set up for those so-and-so Northerners?" It is a point of view, and they are entitled to their point of view. I believe they should be put to the test and I hope that in Deputy Carter's warning that we should not expect too much from his Committee he is unduly pessimistic. I hope that from this Committee will come a clear proposal for a new Constitution, devoid of any of the elements in the present Constitution which people, and especially Protestants here and in the North, find objectionable.

I hope that new Constitution will be put to the Irish people and that they will have a right to say whether or not they want it. If people decide that they want to keep things as they are, to keep a cosy, Catholic State in 26 counties, let them vote against the new Constitution and we will know where we stand. Let those people who want to create a new Ireland vote for it. I believe they will be in the majority if we in this House give the leadership for that purpose.

We have to ask ourselves how much do we know about the North, how much do we care about the North? How many people from this House visit the North with any degree of frequency? How many of us have been trying to make contact with the Protestants of Northern Ireland and trying to offer them the reassurance of personal contact? How many Members on the other side of the House have done so? When I go to the North, I am constantly asked "Why do we never see anybody from Fianna Fáil?" They understand that members of the Government cannot be going up there but why are Fianna Fáil backbenchers not doing what Fine Gael and Labour backbenchers and frontbenchers are doing, going up there and trying to make contact.

They will be all in Cork for the next three weeks in the national interest. This is their supreme contribution to Irish political life.

When the three weeks are over, I hope we will see many people from here up in Northern Ireland in August, September and October, because apparently we are to have three and a half months holiday this year. Let us use these months when the by-election is over, having had whatever rest we want ourselves, to get into contact as much as possible with people in Northern Ireland and try to get across to them that we are not seeking to impose something on them against their will, that indeed many of us down here will stand and fight against any attempt to force them into this country against their will, that we will seek to protect their rights as Irishmen to decide their future.

But do we care? Do we care enough to suppress the IRA murderers in this part of the country? Do we care enough to change our Constitution, to purge it of those things which are objectionable to a religious minority? Do we care enough to reject totally the claim to Northern Ireland and the whole idea of an all-Ireland plebiscite which is constantly resurrected to the detriment of any possibility of a union of minds and hearts between north and south?

Do we care enough to treat the hooligans of St. Johnston as public enemies and sectarian pariahs? Do we care enough to give the hand of friendship as warmly and as sincerely to Protestants in the North as to Catholics, to show that we care for them, that we understand their disorientation at this time, when all they had been led to believe has suddenly been overturned or undermined, that we understand how they feel and that instead of gloating over the fact that their hopes have turned out not to be well-founded, we can feel for them in their disorientation?

Are we able to make that effort, because certainly it is not coming across? Any time one goes to Belfast, one does not find the Protestants there conscious of any feeling that there is any sympathy for them down here. No message of sympathy is coming through. Do we care enough to show them Christian love, to turn the other cheek when in their misery and fear and confusion, they berate us, often unfairly, as at the Orange demonstration the other day? Do we care enough to do that? Are we finally, and this is the final test, prepared to stand against anyone who suggests that we should accept reunification on any terms except with the consent of the majority in Northern Ireland? If we do care enough to do these things, there is hope; there is hope for peace in Northern Ireland and hope for a genuine unity in the whole island in time to come; but if we do not we are fooling ourselves, we are hypocrites and we are paving the way for civil war in Northern Ireland and, perhaps, in the whole country and certainly postponing the day of reunification in our lifetime.

That is the test, and I cannot say that I detect in this House the sense of urgency—a sense of despair at times might be the appropriate feeling— needed to give us the impetus to do the things which need to be done. I do not detect that. All that an individual member can do is to try to arouse the conscience of the House as best he can and some Deputies have tried to do this. I listened to Deputy O'Leary, the last speaker on the Labour benches, and hearing him, I felt there was not much more to be said. With everything he said I was so totally in agreement and it was so well expressed that for a moment I thought there was not much point in my speaking, but being who I am, I did not allow that to deter me from making a few remarks, as Deputy O'Donovan will readily understand.

I feel that this is the great issue of our time. Can we make the effort of imagination, a very difficult thing to do, necessary to meet the situation? Can we abate the fires of extreme nationalism, which are easily lit in all of us, sufficiently to allow Christian love to take their place and so that to us an Orangeman becomes somebody for whom we genuinely care, whom we want to make happy, whom we want to reassure and whom we want to help, instead of someone whom we want to get the better of? That is the test. It is the test by which, I am afraid, at this moment many of us in the Republic fall and all of us, indeed, from time to time.

It is not easy to forgive the prejudices of centuries and it is not easy, because we have all been brought up in different ways in narrow traditions, to break out of them and none of us is free from these prejudices. I have been trying to write something on the subject recently and when I had written it, I gave it to a distinguished Church of Ireland clergyman in Northern Ireland to get his views to see whether there was anything in it which would be objectionable to the members of the Protestant community. I was trying to write something that would not contain anything that could in any way be offensive. He had to suggest many deletions. The unconscious prejudies of 45 years in my mind were there and however hard I tried to eliminate them there were still things in the book which from the point of view of a northern Protestant would have grated.

It is a measure of the task which is facing us, with the difficulty before us that even those of us with the greatest goodwill, concerned above all else to achieve this union of minds and hearts, will not find it easy always to act and to speak in the way necessary to achieve that objective, and for many who have not begun to think in those terms it is a very great task indeed that lies before them, but it is the task facing the nation. At this moment, above all moments, in this debate at this time in the summer of 1972, this is the matter which should be most present in our minds and I hope that, like Deputy O'Leary's speech Deputy Cruise-O'Brien's speech and those of others from these benches—Deputy Cooney, Deputy Harte and Deputy O'Higgins will be speaking—and speeches like that of Deputy Childers will echo through the country and that this debate will be reported in a way and read in a way that will give a lead to public opinion in this country and then this debate may be part of the beginning of the approach to a new Ireland.

We share in this debate with the people of Northern Ireland the appalling common tragedy which still prevails there by reason of the current sectarian and political strife in the North. We certainly share as individual Deputies the personal suffering, bereavement and injury sustained by families in the North and those from Britain who have also suffered during the past four years. I must confess that, looking around here since this morning, I deplore the cursory interest of Members of this House and particularly of the Government Party in this debate. Just look at their benches at present—empty except for a dozing Parliamentary Secretary—on a key issue.

I have not had the privilege of a week in Galway.

On this key issue of Northern Ireland, we must feel that this House has not made a very distinctive contribution. I would point out that this morning when the Taoiseach spoke, only 48 members—one-third of the membership—even bothered to turn up to hear. There were about 28 Fianna Fáil Deputies and 20 odd from the Opposition. This is a measure of the true concern of this House about Northern Ireland and it is an illuminating statistic. I think therefore the time has come when, at least on the part of those of us who are prepared to talk, there should be some very straight talking about the current situation because we feel that this House seems to be alarmingly unaware, unresponsive and disinterested in the communal havoc being wreaked in Northern Ireland.

It does not yet seem to have dawned that there is a civil war in progress in Northern Ireland. I am not interested in whether one wants to count it as four dead or five dead or 400 dead. The fact of the matter is that at present we have smouldering civil war in Northern Ireland and this should be the almost total preoccupation of this House. What do we do? We decide to adjourn until the 25th of October next. We should be honest enough to appreciate in this House and in the Republic that the bitter and harsh outcome of the IRA campaign of violence is that the people of this island, North and South, are today more divided, more embittered and more disunited than at any time in our history.

The Deputy is even ashamed of his Cork heritage.

The Deputy in possession has only a limited period.

He said he regretted his Cork heritage.

All the bombings, all the political assassinations, all the hooded murders and the mutilations of bodies that have taken place in recent weeks prior to people being murdered, all the loss of jobs, permanently in many cases, have only served to confirm the bitter belief of the Northern Unionists that we in the Republic overtly, or by force or by acquiescence, want to coerce them finally into unconditional surrender, into a Catholic, green, republic.

I do not think this has, as yet, dawned fully on the House and on the electorate. I think we have failed to appreciate this. Has it yet dawned on the people in the Republic that the rate of emigration from Northern Ireland is currently five times that of 1971 and that hundreds of skilled workers and their families are literally baling out of the North permanently? One can imagine the haemorrhage that is to this island. I do not think it has fully dawned on this House that we are witnessing and have witnessed in the past 12 months the economic demolition of Northern Ireland essentially, provocatively and deliberately by the Provisional IRA aided and abetted by the Official IRA when the thought has struck them and when they felt like turning their ideological strategy into their version of action.

Therefore, we are witnessing the political, social and economic collapse of part of this island and it has not yet fully dawned on the electorate what is going on. What do we get in response? A bit of wishy washy PRO stuff from the Taoiseach, a little bit about a regional parliament. That is the solution he sees to it, thrown in between a little bit of political horseplay about the mid-Cork by-election. This is the measure of the response from Dáil Éireann and the Republic.

I am sorry to say that most members of this House are not terribly different from the Taoiseach in that regard. Most members have held their tongues in their cheeks. Some of us have held our tongues in our cheeks in the hope that the strenuous efforts of our colleagues in the SDLP towards a ceasefire would bear fruit. Others have held their tongues in their cheeks for the past four years, since 1968 when the civil rights movement began, because they are scared stiff of losing a few first or second preference votes at the polls in the next general election. It must be said to Northern Ireland and to the country as a whole that the vast majority of Dáil Deputies and Senators have kept their mouths shut on Northern Ireland for the simple reason that they are afraid to speak on unpopular issues in the Republic and they are afraid they might lose a few votes in an election.

Hear, hear.

That includes—if I may speak as a Corkman, going down to speak in mid-Cork next Sunday morning—the Cork puppeteers of Jack Lynch. Have we ever heard the views of Seán Brosnan, of Tom Meaney or of Flor Crowley?

The Taoiseach's puppeteers. The views of Seán French, Pearse Wyse, or Gus Healy? The silent Cork puppeteers of Dáil Éireann.

You will get your answer.

"Let Jack say what he might say. We will stay quiet because we will garner the republican votes from mid-Cork and we will parade the old IRA men through mid-Cork with the pipe bands in the next three weeks and three cheers for the Fianna Fáil candidate." That is the level of political consciousness of this House in the context of Northern Ireland and that is the kind of by-election campaign we will face in the next three weeks.

There are not a dozen Deputies in this House who have made their views known and who have spoken with conviction on Northern Ireland. Leaving aside the Ceann Comhairle and Leas-Cheann Comhairle there are 142 Deputies. Only about a dozen have given any sort of leadership in this House including, for the most part, those present here this evening. Too many Deputies and too many Senators have adopted the usual ambivalence, the usual equivocation. Take the typical one where we all break down, the question of somebody being shot, somebody being murdered or killed. To many Deputies and Senators the killing of a gunman who would exchange rifle fire with the British Army, is the subject of total, vehement protest. However, if you kill an aged Unionist Senator on his doorstep in "self-defence", or so the Officials classified it, it is different. Those wonderful ideologists should all have last night looked at the RTE programme, "The Common Fascist". That was a very good programme, an instructive one for politicians, for upcoming candidates for Fuehrer in this country. If you kill in a cold-blooded manner an aged Unionist Senator on his own doorstep it merits a kind of subconconscious approval. For example, did we ever hear Deputy Cunningham speak about the Senator who was murdered by the Official IRA or about what happened yesterday in Donegal?

His lips are sealed.

He is silent tonight about the sectarian outbreak in this part of the country, in Donegal.

And the Irish Press.

The Irish Press is all right! These are the kind of things that make me very irate and which make me say to my friends in the trade union movement in Northern Ireland, the few hundred friends I have up there: “You would be mad to touch us, you would want to have your heads examined because we are not worthy of a United Ireland or even of your friendship.” To many people here if a Protestant working man is shot by a member of the Provisional IRA in Belfast that is his bad luck, but if a Catholic working man is shot going to work in Belfast in the crossfire between the British Army and the IRA it is an unholy outrage.

Apart from about 12 Deputies I have never seen in parliamentary debates of any self-respecting republic more selective sensitivity about the degree of sympathy and the degree of condemnation which should be extended in any given circumstance of any given killing. That is why there are 400 dead Irishmen and women and that is why 5,000 people are maimed for life in Northern Ireland, because we have all been so beautifully selective. The Taoiseach stands out in that selectivity. His speech today was a little bit more on the side of peace, a little bit less on the hard line. That is about all that is in it. A little bit of the regional parliament thrown in as if that would mean anything. It was a speech in which there is still too much of the double talk and the double think, nice things to all men,

The Taoiseach hopes that by being the most respectable, charismatic politician in the Republic he will solve the problem of Northern Ireland, he will carry the day when he shakes hands with Brian Faulkner in 1985 over the bodies of about 10,000 dead Irishmen. The only thing I would advise the Taoiseach to do is to count his fingers after he has done so because Mr. Faulkner is quite capable of handling him even if he is now a third rate politician in the setting of Parliamentary action. To those who have been working for a peaceful solution to the political and sectarian problems of Northern Ireland I would say that in our despair we must not give way to the situation and we must not adopt the typical public reaction in the Republic of saying: "Let them fight it out in the North. Let both sides kill themselves and when there are enough of them dead we in the Republic will say that we were right. We will then move in with our new Constitution and three cheers for a united Ireland".

The first guarantee that we must seek is that the whole population of Northern Ireland need the elementary, very trite, but humane precondition of peace and security in their own homes, on the streets and in their jobs, in an atmosphere in which both communities must be able to get together without threat to their lives. This is something which we certainly should be striving for to the best of our ability in the Republic. I do not think we should be under any illusions about the strategy of the Provisionals in Northern Ireland. If they can on any given occasion cast themselves in a defensive role then they will use that fact to their advantage. If they cannot do so they will officially and offensively indulge in shooting and bombing as they think fit. It is a very simple double edged strategy. That is the harsh reality of IRA strategy in Northern Ireland.

The harsh reality is that under the pretext of rescuing the minority from Unionist domination and from the British Army in Northern Ireland, although that has become a little bit tarnished now, they seek to set up both North and South their version of a fanatical military dictatorship in this country. That is the true ideology of the Mac Stiophains and the O Bradaigs. Let this House be under no illusion about their particular ideological attitudes. If they were to gain control of the executive functions of our common country I can assure everybody that the taste of military dictatorship that we would get in this country would leave the British Army, Long Kesh and the portraits of the common fascists which we saw on the RTE classic film the other evening, which sent a thrill of horror through many of us, in the shade.

They have the good propagandistic competence to cloak their deeds and their statements in the usual nationalistic rhetoric, which, when you strip it means that they want political power, North and South, at the threat of a gun barrel. It is our responsibility as elected public representatives to develop a united public opinion and to represent it effectively. Only that kind of opinion vehemently opposed to the IRA in the south, to the UDA in Northern Ireland and within the majority can now break the deadlock in Northern Ireland. The men of violence in the IRA and those they have created in the UDA are now the chief obstacles to a solution to the real prospect of any ending of the current civil war in Northern Ireland. Let us face up to it; that is what we have.

It is fair to say that in many of the policies of the IRA over the past four years and of the Provisionals in particular they have provoked the emergence of the UDA and the UVF. If they have done so they now see in no uncertain terms that their atrocities, their mutilations, their tortures and their bombings have certainly reared a monster in the midst of this country. One must speak in a very depressing context here. It is fashionable and politically popular for politicians in the Republic to condemn both the UDA and the UVF. This is part of southern politics. This is the easy way out south of the Border, but is resented when politicians decide to denounce the cold blooded strategy of the IRA in Northern Ireland.

I do not believe it is fully appreciated yet by many people in the Republic that the Provisional IRA are now playing once again in the current full-blooded war situation with the lives of the people of Belfast and Derry. The women from Derry who came to this House during the past two days have told us that in no uncertain terms. We take their word for it. There can be no prospect of building up reconciliation and rebuilding the bridges between the two communities in this island without an end to the violence of the IRA in particular. It is essential that we classify the activities of the IRA for what they really are. They are acting as terrorists in the worst sense of that word in its national and international meaning. We should have no equivocation on that kind of definition.

It is a matter of grave national concern that these self-appointed custodians of democracy should have succeeded for the first time and, I hope, for the last time in bombing themselves on to the conference table with the British Government. We challenge those self-appointed custodians of Irish democracy that if they want to put their policies to the acid test and if Mr. David O'Connell, John Stephenson, Rory Brady or Seán Ó Brádaigh—it is irrelevant whether one uses the English or Irish versions of their names as far as I am concerned they have defiled the name of Irishmen—we in Dáil Éireann challenge them to fight the mid-Cork by-election and they can face the 50,000 electors in that constituency. Let them put their deposits where their mouths and revolvers have been in the past few years. We ask those future candidates for Fuehrerdom in this country to put their money on the table in the mid-Cork by-election.

Time and again we in the Labour Party have repudiated unequivocally any attempt to achieve a united Ireland by force of arms and, therefore, as far as we are concerned we will never sit down with those who advance their political views in Irish politics by the bomb and by the bullet. We deplore the fact that anybody in this island should, in fact, fall into this trap. Those people owe no allegiance to any Irishmen but themselves and they owe no allegiance to any policy or any constitution in this country except their own provincial paper republics, written by themselves for themselves alone. It is illuminating to note their recent actions in regard to the truce. We were all appalled by the manner in which the so-called cease fire was called. We saw the callous, indiscriminate bombings and shootings that went on right up to the 11th hour of the calling of that truce. We saw the robbery after robbery of citizens in Northern Ireland and of places with financial resources in the North by those who were the peace lovers calling a truce.

Is that the way to go about a truce? As far as we are concerned it is a mockery of the concept of a ceasefire. We saw the British administration in the North blundering in relation to the Lenadoon incident. It was an unfortunate affair. Had Mr. Whitelaw been in Belfast I do not believe it would have happened. But what happened? One small mistake in an arrangement where an allocation was made by the Northern Ireland Housing Authority an allocation made, incidentally, by an authority whose offices the Provisionals had bombed and burned out in every town in Northern Ireland; it is ironic to hear the Provisionals defending the actions of the Northern Ireland Housing Authority when they do not recognise them and they burned out and bombed out every one of their rent offices and administrative offices in Northern Ireland. Therefore we saw a contrived situation with Mr. Twomey and his gauleiters deliberately smashing the truce because it suited them at that time to smash it and to resurrect bloodshed in Northern Ireland and keep their names in the paper on that basis. Even Bernadette Devlin had the wit to say they were playing into the hands of the UDA on that occasion.

It seems to me, and I am fully conscious of the appalling difficulties facing Mr. Whitelaw—and I have great regard for the efforts of that man to try to normalise the situation in Northern Ireland—that he made a narrow political judgment, a serious political error, last Friday. It was a blunder of the first magnitude. It was a serious blunder. It is something from which he can recover. It was something from which we can recover, because I do not believe that men who are responsible for murder, assassination, political and sectarian murder, for hoodings, shootings of fellow Irishmen, who mutilate them and torture them before they shoot them in the name of the Irish Republic, I do not believe that those men, simply because they turned off violence for a couple of weeks, will automatically win a place at a conference table. As far as I am concerned these are men who are inhuman and they will turn a truce on and off only when it suits them. Therefore, they turned it off when it suited them to turn it off.

Some people have created a precedent in this regard. I must confess openly that I was not very pleased when Mr. Harold Wilson accepted, in a very devious manner, in a manner which I personally deplore, an invitation to meet the Provisional IRA leadership. He did not even have the courtesy to inform the Taoiseach or the Leader of the Labour Party before doing so. He must bear some responsibility for setting a precedent in that regard; he must have some responsibility for his too-clever-by-half arrangements at the time, because all that has happened from the meetings of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Whitelaw with the Provisional IRA is that the IRA are generally enhanced in their own self-importance and self-esteem.

It may have, in a transient way, enhanced the self-esteem of Mr. Wilson but certainly I think he, too, will now have some regrets in that regard. I claim, as a Labour Party representative who has met Mr. Wilson, and as an Irishman, in particular, the right to say, and let there be no illusions about this, that many British politicians would sell out democracy in the Republic and in Northern Ireland to get a settlement of the situation in Northern Ireland. As far as we are concerned we say to Mr. Heath, to Mr. Wilson and to Mr. Whitelaw: "Democracy will prevail North and South" and that is the rule of the law of the island not just using democracy when it suits them to meet certain people in Northern Ireland. Let us get that quite clear.

I think it is also true to say that perhaps my colleagues in the SDLP may have sold the idea to the Provisionals that if they called off the truce they might perhaps meet Mr. Whitelaw. That was a brave effort. Personally I can say this, because I said it to them directly, because I have the greatest reservations about the exercise and because I have always believed that both the Provisionals and Official IRA have been playing for much higher stakes, stakes which do not include the SDLP, Mr. Whitelaw, Harold Wilson or any elected public representative. Their stakes include their preconditions and the penny has dropped in that regard, over the past few weeks. I expressed that viewpoint to the SDLP leadership on at least two occasions that this was, shall we say, the name of the game. I think those of us in the South—as a Corkman knowing Mr. Daithi Ó Conaill, I can say those of us in the South can claim to have some knowledge of the cultural mentality of those who went to school in the South of Ireland bearing no illusions about some of their mental make-ups in that regard. Unfortunately successive British Cabinets and public servants do not really understand the culture of the men of physical force and they tend to blunder on again and again. Because they were able to do it in an Aden or a Palestinian situation, where there was not a real one million left to talk about afterwards, they think they can apply the same solution to Ireland. I am afraid they will have to put on their thinking caps again.

Therefore I think we have got to sift the propaganda from the reality of the situation. I think we have got to sift it very carefully and we have to be very careful about who to believe. For example, there is Mr. O'Connell. About seven or eight weeks ago he was reported in The Sunday Press as saying that my colleague here, Deputy Cruise-O'Brien, was responsible for the graves of Irish soldiers from the Congo in Glasnevin. Did the Editor of The Sunday Press take it up? Not a word. There was not a word. Did anybody write a letter to The Sunday Press? Not a word. Did anybody even bother to point out that Deputy Cruise-O'Brien was not even in the Congo when the event happened, that it was subsequent to that that he was posted by the United Nations to the Congo? Oh, no. But if you are a good propagandist the smear or the lie will operate. This is the kind of hypocrisy that we have in that regard.

Has anybody dared to challenge the Provisionals in relation to their statements in respect of internment? Any member of the SDLP or any erstwhile republican, whether North or South, who would dare meet with anybody, even in the seclusion of the Commons in London, and discuss Northern Ireland was assured of a "sell-out of the internees". Yet they had no hesitation in selling out the hostages in Long Kesh, the Provisional IRA hostages in Long Kesh, to get them on their private helicopter from County Derry to Belfast and on to their private planes. It is necessary that that be pointed out. They perform their duties under the democratic authority of Dáil Éireann and we will repudiate and oppose as a political party, by every means in our power, any attempt to usurp the legitimate authority of the State in that regard. As far as we are concerned, the security forces of our Republic will have our full support in bringing before the due process of the law those individuals who incite to violence, who rob banks, who carry arms and ammunition with intent to endanger life.

The members of both Houses of the Oireachtas must never abdicate to the men of violence the function of political leadership which is the function of democratically elected representatives in a free society, in a free country, in a free part of this island. Our democratic institutions are very far from perfect. They are very inadequate in many respects and they are in many respects unresponsive. Three years in this House would drive one to despair in trying to make them a bit more responsive, less imperfect and more adequate. Bad and all as they are, we on this side of the Border will not allow them to languish simply because of the attitude of those who favour democracy by the gun. If democracy fails on this side of the Border it will not be the responsibility of the Labour Party; it will be the responsibility, I would think, of the 120 elected Deputies in this House who have shut their minds and their mouths on the national question right through from 1968, and these men who, in my opinion, do not deserve to represent their constituents in this House.

Our country is not the political private property, either North or South, of any group of politicians either in the Unionist Party, in the Fianna Fáil Party, in the UDA or the IRA. It is the common property and the common heritage of all the 4½ million people who live and who must work on this island and who, whether they like it or not, must learn to live in a pluralist and in an interdenominational society.

The late Michael Sweetman, who made a distinctive contribution to this country in recent years, who was a Republican, in the true sense of the term, although he did not speak or sound like one at times, in his calm, rational approach to affairs, stated in his recently published pamphlet, which was published as The Common Name of Irishmen, published by his friends at the request of his wife, said:

The re-establishment of some kind of self-government in Northern Ireland is the kind of solution on which agreement is most likely to be reached between the two communities in Northern Ireland. It is the solution that would go closest to meeting the aspirations of each since both communities are now seeking some form of self-determination.

He went on to say that he considered it possible to construct a system that would give Northern Ireland at least as great a degree of self-determination as it previously had while making a return to the old sectarian type government impossible and, he suggested additionally, the use of PR.

I endorse that view of the late Michael Sweetman and I endorse the view expressed by Deputy Corish this morning when he asked the SDLP and the now British resident administration in Northern Ireland and the other elected representatives to get around the table without any preconditions, and to Hell with the IRA. Let them bomb themselves into subjection in this country. They should do the work for which they were elected; get around the table and negotiate structures for Northern Ireland which will bring sanity to that community. The Taoiseach, Mr. Lynch, has a long way to go before he can claim to operate particularly in that regard.

The Deputy has only three minutes.

I would say that the Taoiseach still lives in the partitionist corridors of thought, although he rightly took on Deputy Blaney, Mr. Boland and Deputy Haughey, and dealt with them quite effectively, but he has acted belatedly on every single issue in relation to Northern Ireland.

That is complete nonsense.

I have less than three minutes. I reserve the right to speak. I want to say in conclusion that the Taoiseach talks and talks about changing our laws and practices to make them more adaptable, not only to modern life, but also to a free, united country and a united people. Frankly, it is all just talk and more talk. He has unnecessarily and dishonestly dodged almost every single constitutional issue that has come up. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Hillery, apart from his flying gimmick visit to the Falls Road two years ago has contributed only marginally. He has done precious little indeed in the past three years to seize the opportunity presented to him, above all, the opportunity to cut across the divisions in this country. The Taoiseach has done far too much washing of his hands in public and so have the leaders of the Churches in this country.

I ask the Taoiseach, therefore, to spell out in unequivocal terms the price to be paid on this side of the Border for national reunification in economic, political and social terms. He has not done so yet. Has he in this House ever attempted to define the rights of the minority, where they would begin and end, in relation to a united Ireland? Has the Taoiseach ever dealt openly with the legitimate questions which the Protestant minority in Ireland raise, whether it is Article 44 or the education system or the question of mixed marriages, the question of adoption, the question of the Irish language, the question of family planning, the question of social services or the question of economic and social development North and South? All we have had today is a statement about a regional parliament in the distant, misty future.

Therefore, the questions related to the future relationship of the people of this country have not been teased out by this House and I submit that we have a long way to go before we can claim to have been honest in that regard. The Fianna Fáil Party have dodged the issues and they have acted dishonestly, without leadership, in this context. The people of Northern Ireland see the growing gulf in the Republic between the haves and the have-nots. The Protestant community regard us in the Republic as a reactionary State. Whether we like it or not—I do not agree with all they say— they regard us as a theocratic State in which we will deny them the civil liberties they now enjoy and in which they fear they would have a lower standard of living. These are their legitimate fears. I do not think the Taoiseach has done very much to allay those fears in the past two years, apart from the generality of saying that we will be fair, the kind of rubbishy interjection that Deputy Michael O'Kennedy went on with on RTE on two successive programmes, to which he made no contribution but rather equivocated.

I want to pose one question: how many of the suggested 40 per cent minority in Northern Ireland are really yelling to join the Taoiseach's Republic? I expect he would be very surprised to learn that a substantial proportion of them at present would not be prepared to join. The leaders of the Churches in Northern Ireland must also accept their responsibility to recast their rigid social structure within which Catholic and Protestant are given no real incentive to come together. When Catholics and Protestants do not share marriage together. cannot share a pub together, do not even share a song together, cannot share children together because, if they marry one must go one way, the other another, is it any wonder that, in a country where everybody claims to practice Christianity on a Sunday, where there is an inflexible and rigid interpretation of the teaching of Christ, that the separated Irish Catholic and Protestant should crucify one another from the opposite ends of the same street, and more often the same working class street? The politicians and the spiritual leaders, North and South, have failed miserably. We in this Dáil over the last four years have also failed. Apart from about a dozen Deputies who have even bothered to contribute, we have a long way to go before we shall deserve to ask the people of the North of Ireland to join with us in a united Ireland.

First of all, I wish to have a ruling from the Chair in relation to the order of speakers. Is it right that two Fine Gael speakers should follow in succession to one Fianna Fáil speaker? That has happened repeatedly during the course of this debate. We have now had two Fine Gael speakers, and the second has just finished, and this is unfair to Government Deputies.

Where is the Government Deputy?

Where did that happen?

It happened here in this House. Deputy Desmond was the last speaker.

Are they not all one now?

(Interruptions.)

Speakers have been called in their proper order one, two, three. Deputy Joe Lenehan, a Fianna Fáil Deputy, spoke after a Fianna Fáil Deputy.

You still have not clarified the situation for me, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

I want to quote from The Irish Times of 8th July last in relation to a member of the Labour Party or the then Labour Party, and the heading is: “Coughlan explains his vote for F.F.”. It goes on to say:

The Labour TD, Alderman Stephen Coughlan, has explained to the leader of Fine Gael, Mr. Cosgrave, why he supported Fianna Fáil in the Limerick Mayoralty elections.

He visited Mr. Cosgrave following a letter from Senator G.E. Russell to the leader of the Labour Party, Mr. Corish, complaining about his support and the support of three other members of the Labour Party for Fianna Fáil.

This clearly indicates to me that they are now one party. It is on that basis I want to have a ruling as to why the Chair has allowed two Fine Gael speakers in succession. The Fine Gael Party are here now, but there is no Labour Party. There are no members of the Labour Party in the benches at the moment. This statement made by Deputy Coughlan explaining to Deputy Cosgrave why he supported another candidate clearly indicates that the merger is full and absolute.

We have heard one of the Labour speakers here criticising the Taoiseach and the social advances and the general policy of the Fianna Fáil Party. He referred to a variety of other matters in relation to members of Fianna Fáil and I shall deal with those later, but this same Deputy spoke about dignity, about his efforts to bring more respect into politics. At the same time we must examine the situation of the people who have now left the Labour Party and gone to Fine Gael. Let us take Deputy Desmond, the man who has just spoken. Deputy Desmond compiled a list here some time ago for the Evening Herald which was published under the pen name of Maurice Hickey. This was a list giving information of the number of times Deputies voted in this House.

Would the Deputy tell us about the people who left Fianna Fáil?

——notwithstanding the fact that this information is available in the libraries throughout the country.

Northern Ireland is bleeding to death. Has the Deputy anything to say about the North?

I want to speak about the responsibilities of Deputies in this House, and I want to protect the Leader of the Fine Gael Party. This is a dirty, scurrilous article designed to show up the Leader of the Fine Gael Party because he voted only seven times between January and June. It was very unfair of Deputy Desmond to compile this list in order to get at Deputy Cosgrave, who is a representative of the same constituency.

Tell us about the ex-Ministers.

Maybe it was unfortunate that Deputy Cosgrave was missing so often from this House but it is hardly fair for another Deputy to devote his time to compiling a list in order to character-assassinate the Leader of the Fine Gael Party. Now that they are all together it is quite clear that he does not agree with Deputy Cosgrave and that Deputy Cosgrave can only last a certain period of time having undergone this character assassination by one of the Deputies who have now joined the Fine Gael Party, namely, Deputy Desmond. I want to say how much I felt for Deputy Cosgrave when I read this article indicating that he voted only seven times while the other leaders voted double that number of times.

Of course that is not the end of it. Deputy Desmond, on this trail of character assassination, will go much further as time goes on in order to get additional information in relation to Deputies. The private lives of Deputies, the number of times they visit the bar, the number of times they go to the restaurant or other places in this House will be noted down by a man with a mind like that of Deputy Desmond. I can only hope that Deputy Desmond will in future devote his time more constructively and deal with the problems of his constituency and the country instead of composing articles which are absolute nonsense, when the people have given their answer on so many occasions and will give it in the future to the people who do not attend this House. It is depressing that this new allegiance is going to be one with so much strife within it, that the present leader, who is not wanted by some of the members of the Labour Party, will go under the knife from time to time through a series of articles passed on to correspondents and published under other names. I am fairly high on this list. Maybe I missed two divisions when I was on parliamentary duty else-where——

So were others.

There were others and there were other reasons. These figures do indicate that in regard to that part of the list which refers to those who voted the lesser number of times, 25 per cent of the Labour Party did not vote or voted the minimum number of times, while the other parties have a better record. Deputy Desmond should check his facts in future and so ensure that even his own party has a clear record. As the House can see, there are only two parties here at the moment, the Fine Gael Party and the Fianna Fáil Party, and that is the way it will be in the future. We are glad this merger is taking place. Fine Gael are welcome to it. So are the Labour Party. Their attitude in the course of this discussion left much to be desired and Fine Gael are welcome to them. As to the dignity of the House and the alleged efforts made by Deputy Desmond and other members of his party to bring dignity to the House, let us have a look now at the Irish Times of Friday, 16th June, in which Deputy Thornley criticised the Labour Party for supporting the Prisons Bill. He said he believed the Labour Party had gone temporarily berserk. I think he is right.

But the Deputy is not sure.

I am absolutely positive he is right. As a matter of fact, I do not think there is anything temporary about it. They have all gone over the top. They must have when they align themselves with the Fine Gael Party. Deputy Thornley went on to say that, just like another lady, he wished to make use of the platform—that is, this House—in order to make trouble. He said that when people accused him of breaking the rules of "that place"—that means Dáil Éireann—it was just like breaking the rules of a brothel. This is the statement of a so-called responsible representative of the people, a man who was, at one time, paid out of public funds as an expert on political affairs to tell the people the type of individuals we were, the kind of House this was and what people like him would do if they got in to rectify the situation. "Just like breaking the rules of a brothel". I wonder could the Labour Party tell us anything about these rules? I do not know anything about them. I doubt if there is any similarity. But Deputy Thornley appears to be an expert on this and, if there is something in what Deputy Thornley says, then the rules should be changed. Now I have examined the rules and I do not think the rules here would ever offend anyone. But Deputy Thornley, as a Member of this House, a member of the Labour Party, the party which wants to inject dignity into the House, and dignity and understanding into the political system, which wants to show responsibility, come along and says it is just like breaking the rules of a brothel. Fine Gael are welcome to Deputy Thornley now and, now that Fine Gael are associated with him, they will equally by associated with this type of mentality. I hope the Leader of the Labour Party will be able to explain to us about these rules. We have not heard very much about them. There was no condemnation of Deputy Thornley so what he said must be accepted.

Deputy Thornley goes on to tell us that he never thought he would see the day when nine members of his party, including his leader, would walk into a repressive lobby behind the Taoiseach, Deputy Jack Lynch. Of course, times have changed since the 16th June. Deputy Thornley goes on further to speak about playing risqué politics. I do not know what he means by risqué politics and I think Deputy Thornley should explain to the House, in this House, the statements he made some time ago criticising this House, the behaviour of Deputies and the type of policies. I think he is quite wrong and I want to defend the Deputies here on both sides of the House, including the ex-members of Deputy Thornley's own party, who are now in the Fine Gael party. Many people in this House are, I am quite sure, at a loss to know what Deputy Thornley means by all this. I think he should be brought before this House to answer for this kind of nonsense about brothels, about risqué politics, about temporary berserkism, though the latter is about the only correct statement he made about the Labour Party. Nevertheless, he should be called on to explain. I doubt if any member of Fine Gael agrees with him or with this scurrilous kind of statement. It is even worse than Deputy Desmond's and his was bad enough.

On a point of order. Are we discussing the Taoiseach's Estimate or what appears in the national newspapers?

In this Estimate the scope of the debate is very wide.

Wide, yes, but he does not have to take off into space.

I am defending the responsible Deputies in this House. I want to point out that some Deputies are irresponsible and, if Deputy Harte wants to support brothel rules, he is at liberty to do so. Would he tell us what they are? I never heard the word before. Deputy Harte is now supporting Deputy Thornley and, in doing that, he is supporting the statements Deputy Thornley made.

Supporting what?

Supporting the statements made by Deputy Thornley which I read out.

I did not hear the Deputy. I am a bit hard of hearing.

If the Deputy wants to defend Deputy Thornley, he can do so. The statements are on the record and, if the Deputy reads the record, he will know what the statements are. "The Labour Party appear to be following the trend of just keeping the show on the road, no matter who they are hurting"— this was Deputy Thornley's impression of his colleagues in the Labour Party. They would do anything to remain in, anything for power. They were just keeping the show on the road. We all know that. Again, this is a condemnation of the people who have gone over to Fine Gael. As I say, Fine Gael are welcome to them. He further criticised the members of his party and he said half of them were in bed during the EEC campaign. We all know that. Probably a great many of them are in bed now because they are not here. This was Deputy Thornley, who has now joined the Fine Gael Party, and I am quite sure he will have many colleagues in that party who will support every line of what he said. We had Deputy Harte trying to stop me.

I just asked the Deputy what he was talking about.

He tried to interrupt me because he did not want me to project the true image of what Fine Gael has just got over. On 12th June we had the vice-chairman of the Dublin Regional Council of the Labour Party calling on the Labour TDs to salvage their reputations. They did that, of course, by throwing their weight in with Fine Gael. By coalescing with Fine Gael they have salvaged their tattered reputations. This was their solution. They have met this man's complaint in full and they will certainly rate very highly in the opinion of the vice-chairman of the Dublin Regional Council of the Labour Party now that their tattered reputations have been salvaged because they have aligned themselves with the Fine Gael Party.

Before I come to the more serious matter of dealing with the Fine Gael Party, I want to call on trade unions now to examine the situation and examine the Irish Times and the morning papers of Friday, 9th June, 1972. That is not so long ago. Irish Transport and General Workers' Union: Labour move on policy: TD members criticised. The statement says a warning by Mr. Moore that additional financial support to individual election candidates would be reviewed by the executive committee. It said that the union contributed £1,500 per year to the Labour Party and £300 to each candidate at election times, but that there was a general view that, if the trade union which helped Deputies were to dictate policy, a real crisis would arise between the unions and the party. The workers of this country should realise that the political levy they are paying will be helping now to support Fine Gael because of the coalescing of the two parties. I wonder how many Irish workers will support the political levy from now on. I would urge all workers who are paying the levy to ensure that they contribute no longer to the furtherance of Fine Gael. Of course, some of the money paid by the union to the Labour Party will be passed to Fine Gael as a result of the merger. However the £300 given to each candidate is a serious matter and there is much rethinking in respect of it.

The General Secretary of the Union, the former Labour Deputy, Michael Mullen, warned that the ITGWU must not be taken for granted by the political wing of the trade union movement. He said that the union might review the financial support to members who were exploiting the labour movement for private glory and self-interest. These are the individuals who talk of dignity, understanding and responsibility.

We have had Deputy Thornley's description of the types of places he frequents. We have had also Deputy Desmond's statistics in relation to the attendances of Deputies in the House and now we have the former Deputy Mullen's statement about the movement being exploited by some members of the political wing of their own glory and self-interest. These people have been told by the vice-chairman of the regional council that they should salvage their tattered reputation. Before this debate ends they will need to come in here and clear their names and it is my belief that it will be difficult for them to do so. It was a great relief to us to learn that Fine Gael and Labour intended merging. In other words, Fine Gael are going socialist and the Labour Party are going conservative. Perhaps we will have an explanation before the debate concludes. This merger was not the first effort that was made because the person who got the job of kite-flying, Deputy O'Connell, made an advance to Ian Paisley before making an advance to the Fine Gael Party.

The Deputy's choice of phrase "made an advance" could be misleading.

Deputy Harte is now indicating his industrial school type of education.

The Deputy has paid me a compliment: I did not go to school.

Deputy O'Connell invited Mr. Paisley to offer himself as a candidate in the Dublin South West constituency but of course the Reverend Paisley would have nothing to do with that gang. He was much cleverer than the Fine Gael Party, At any rate the second fiddles came in and when the bait was nibbled, Deputy Corish made his statement in Inchicore regarding the Coalition.

This Labour Party who have passed over now to Fine Gael and who might be known more appropriately as the permissive party tried to develop here a sick society. We do not wish to see any such society develop. What we desire is a society that is suited to the needs of the Irish people and we can maintain this without the type of legislation that the Labour Party attempted to introduce. That party tried to ensure that contraceptives would be available by the boatload. On the other hand they attempted to introduce a Bill that would prevent people smoking cigarettes. If they had got their way young married couples could look forward to a future of nothing but the pill and the pipe. That, then, was the Labour Party's contribution to this Session. That was the type of society that they wished to see develop and, apparently, that is also the wish of Fine Gael.

It is important that Fine Gael know what they are getting in joining with the Labour Party. I would not wish to see Fine Gael walk into this merger with their eyes closed. Deputy O'Connell has stated that never during his lifetime would Labour form a Government. That is true but of course it was known to many people before Deputy O'Connell stated it in public. Prior to the last general election they had a policy known as "The New Republic Policy." However, after the election they did not have a party as such because they had lost so many members. Now that they have joined with Fine Gael, they have neither party nor policy. The people can see now the type of acrobats that are in the Labour Party.

I hope that as this marriage between the parties matures there will be fun in the coming election campaign because there will be plenty of ammunition for the speakers. Deputy Coughlan has admitted that if he wishes to leave the House now he must seek Deputy Cosgrave's permission and must account for his actions. Deputy Thornley had much to say about the nine members of his party who supported Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on the Prisons Bill but that man has no respect for law and order. It has been reported that the Deputy referred to this Parliament as "a madhouse". While I have certain reservations about some members, I would not consider that description of the House to be justified although when I saw Deputy L'Estrange making that dreadful mistake yesterday, I thought he had gone mad.

Time will tell. We will win the by-election and that is all that matters and then you can face the electorate.

I shall deal now with the Fine Gael Party and their leader.

Deal with Fianna Fáil. Does the Deputy agree with the Taoiseach's policy?

The leader of this party has spoken here today.

At one stage the slogan was "Back Jack", then it was "Sack Jack" and not it is "Hack Jack".

Do not worry.

Seven have left already. It is down to 68 from 75.

We have many more than you have.

Go to the country and see how many you come back with.

We heard all this before. We know the type of party Fine Gael are.

(Cavan): I think Deputy Dowling is practising the three card trick.

Did he find the lady yet?

It is obvious that somebody found the lady. Again, I would draw attention to the fact that there are only two parties in the House, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The Labour benches were vacated long ago and there is nobody there now. When I began my speech I wanted a ruling in regard to the fact that two Fine Gael Deputies were allowed to speak in succession as against one Fianna Fáil member.

That did not happen, of course.

I pointed out that an article appeared in the Irish Times which indicated that this was a fact. I merely want clarification of it.

Has the Deputy nothing to say about Northern Ireland?

I want an explanation from the Ceann Comhairle. I am entitled to that.

Tell us what happened to the soldiers and the gardaí at the Curragh last week. Would you stand for that?

This article which appeared on 8th of July was in connection with Deputy Coughlan's explanation of his vote for Fianna Fáil. It said that Deputy Coughlan explained to the leader of the Fine Gael Party, Deputy Cosgrave, why he supported the Fianna Fáil candidate for the Limerick mayoralty. The article said he visited Mr. Cosgrave following a letter from Senator G.W. Russell, Fine Gael, to the leader of the Labour Party, Mr. Corish, complaining about his support and the support of three other members of the Labour Party. This indicates that they are all one and that there was some mix-up and the whip of the Fine Gael Party down there, Senator Russell, complained to Deputy Corish and then Deputy Coughlan visited Deputy Cosgrave to explain his action.

(Interruptions.)

Would Deputies allow Deputy Dowling to make his speech?

If devices are used here to ensure that two members of the Coalition or Fine Gael Party get speaking time as against one member of the Fanna Fáil Party that is absolutely wrong. The article in relation to Deputy Coughlan fully explains the situation. I want to ensure fair play for members of my Party in regard to speaking time.

Yesterday some members of the Fine Gael Party and Deputy L'Estrange in particular certainly embarrassed their colleagues and the leader of the party and the organisation.

Certainly not.

The leader was absent of course. According to Deputy Desmond he is never here. That is the knifing machine brought out to try to dislodge the man. I do not agree with that technique. It should not be repeated. It is amazing that during the holiday period——

All this is because the Fianna Fáil Ministers were going abroad on holidays and this stopped them and that is why they are annoyed because we are compelling them to go to Cork. We will compel them to go to Cork, Kerry, Glengariff and so on and spend their holidays there.

It would be a working holiday.

(Interruptions.)

I am asking Fine Gael why they have endeavoured to deprive the farmers of an opportunity to exercise their vote. This was a deliberate effort to try to ensure the farmers would not vote because Fine Gael were aware that due to the weather situation the farmers had great leeway to make up.

The Ministers were going abroad and the Taoiseach was going abroad and we have upset that.

Fine Gael want to ensure that farmers will not have an opportunity of recording their votes.

They will spend the next three weeks in Cork instead of in the Bahamas.

Will Deputy L'Estrange please stop shouting? If the Deputy cannot behave himself——

I am not going to the Bahamas, whatever about being put out by the Chair.

This is the joke of the night. He is going to some L'Estrange land.

Deputy Blaney has the Parliamentary Secretary in a corner and he is afraid to open his mouth. Your county council voted for a Fine Gael chairman the other day. Tell us about that.

These interruptions may put Deputy Dowling off his speech.

(Interruptions.)

Deputy Dowling's interruptions are certainly irrelevant.

Will the Fine Gael Party indicate why they have attempted to deprive the farmers of an opportunity to cast their votes. They know the farmers have a lot of time to make up because of the weather and this is the only device they could produce to deprive these people of votes, people, who no doubt would vote for Fianna Fáil. I am certain that however inconvenient it is they will vote for Fianna Fáil and so ensure continuity of the policies that are being implemented and the promises that are made——

We know about the promises; tell us about the policies.

This was also a device to ensure that the workers who would be going on holidays in this period and leaving the area would be deprived of their votes. They want to deprive the workers in that constituency of their votes because they know they will be on the holidays which many of them have already booked. They also want to deprive the farmers of their right to vote. This is a very serious situation.

Are you afraid of the Irish people? You may be annoyed because the Taoiseach and the Ministers cannot go to the Bahamas——

Let us not forget that only on two occasions since 1932 did the Irish people make a mistake. That could happen to anybody.

They made a big one when they put Fianna Fáil into office.

This move to deprive a large section of the community of their opportunity to vote is one that requires very full explanation. I hope that when I get into the constituency I will be able to have a word with some farmers and put across to them my point of view about the efforts of Deputy L'Estrange and the Fine Gael Party to deprive them of their vote. There are other people who work in factories who have good employment, and they are entitled also to record their votes. It is unfortunate that many of them will be on holiday during the by-election. This is sabotage to ensure that two vital sections of the community in Cork will not have the opportunity to record their votes. I understand that Deputy L'Estrange has been told to shut up by the leader of his Party after yesterday's affair.

It is a pity the Deputy's leader did not tell him to shut up.

Fianna Fáil are embarrassed because they cannot go on holiday.

It is rather unfortunate that this has taken place.

We welcome the challenge at any time. Now Deputy L'Estrange says it is rather unfortunate that this has taken place and I agree with him.

It is, for Fianna Fáil Ministers.

Order. Deputy Dowling has one minute left.

Far too long.

I should get some injury time.

The Deputy has injured the reputation of the whole House.

I got a lot of rude interruptions from Deputy L'Estrange and Deputy Harte. I want to thank the Chair for the protection I got. If I did not have the protection of the Chair I know the type of freedom of speech we would have here from the hecklers we have heard. If we did not have an official Chairman we would not get an opportunity to open our mouths. I wonder what would happen if they ever got control? Not only could we not speak here but there are other places where we would not be permitted to speak. In conclusion——

I think the Deputy has concluded. I am calling the Fine Gael spokesman.

I bow to the authority of the Chair. If you tell me my time is up I accept that without question unlike the people on the far side of the House.

I participated in the rude interruptions to Deputy Dowling but I now realise that it is very difficult to turn from that and become very serious on a subject which is foremost in the minds of the Irish people at this time. The only comment I want to make on Deputy Dowling's speech is, God save Ireland if that is the effort made by Government Deputies. It is very entertaining to listen to him in this House but, while this is happening, there is a terrible human problem in the North of Ireland, a human problem that is at the point of civil war.

In previous speeches I have always maintained that it was dangerous even to mention civil war. The Northern State has been at the point of civil war for a variety of reasons since the Civil Rights Movement started, and started justifiably, in that part of the country in the late 1960s. For a variety of reasons civil war was headed off. The situation has become more and more serious. For the first time despair entered my mind in the past fortnight. I always realised that while the Provsional IRA conducted their campaign of violence in the North somehow, somewhere, there were men who could talk commonsense to them and persuade them that theirs was not the right road to re-unification.

However, when the Ulster Defence Association, having been provoked, in my humble judgment, into becoming reactionary, started putting up barricades in Shankill, Belfast, the writing was on the wall and unless something was done quickly I knew that violence would erupt which would take lives. Needless to say, when lives are taken in Northern Ireland, they are not always the lives of the man with the gun, the man throwing the bomb, or the man throwing the stone, but an innocent mother going out to take in somebody from the streets. The brother of Mrs. Margaret Doherty, one of the mothers who came from Derry yesterday, was shot dead in Derry on Bloody Sunday going to comfort a young boy who was dying and shouting that he did not want to die alone. The late Barney McGuigan was holding a handkerchief in his hand when he was shot dead. He was an innocent person. This story can be repeated daily.

A friend of mine was shot down in Portadown last night, Jack McCabe. I did not know him very well until I met him accidently not so very long ago. When he discovered who I was, we entered into a conversation and, when he heard my point of view, his parting remark was that I had taken a very responsible stand on this terribly complex issue and that he hoped there were more public representatives South of the Border who believed in the things I said. He was shot dead last night and he was seeking reconciliation.

Deputy Desmond said here today that the rate of emigration from the North is five times greater now than it was in 1970. It is not the members of the IRA who are emigrating. It is not the members of the Vanguard or UDA who are emigrating. It is the honest-to-goodness Catholic and Protestant people who want to live in peace and harmony in the North of Ireland, and who want to create a society North of the Border in which Catholic and Protestant can live together. These are the people who are emigrating.

It is really not Catholics and Protestants who are fighting. They are just convenient words we use to group them. If Catholics and Protestants were fighting they would be fighting about things like Transubstantiation, or the secrecy of the confessional, or why a Catholic priest cannot marry and a Protestant minister can. These are the things that caused religious wars in the early ages. This is not a religious war. It is a war of power. Power is the name of the game and it is not now confined to the Unionist camp. This is why the Unionist Party maintained their domineering forces in the North of Ireland for the past 50 years: not because they were pro-British, not because they were anti-Catholic, not because they were in favour of Protestantism, but because they wanted power. Power is the simple answer.

A power game is now taking place for a variety of reasons. The Unionist camp is breaking into pieces and people on the IRA side think they can become men of power, little Napoleons, but none of them with the courage to stand before the electorate. One of the greatest things a public representative has in my judgment is the opportunity to mould public opinion. I have never failed to say where I stood on this issue. Perhaps I have criticised at times when it was unfair to criticise. Perhaps I have refrained from criticising at times where I should have criticised, but I never failed to say where I stood on this issue. The type of Ireland I want is one in which my family can grow up as ordinary Christians, and in which their families in turn will not have their lives taken away from them by a bullet or a bomb.

Deputy Barry Desmond gave a list of Deputies from his native Cork who have not yet put on record their attitude towards this terrible problem. While the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government is sitting in the Taoiseach's seat I want to say that I have yet to hear what he has to say on this issue. It may be unfair to put him in that position but I accuse Deputy Cunningham of not informing public opinion in County Donegal. Deputy Blaney has stated where he stands. To a degree Deputy Brennan, Minister for Social Welfare, has stated where he stands.

My constituents know where I stand.

I hope so. It is fair to say that public representatives can mould public opinion, and too few Deputies have stood up to be counted.

And too many people have said too much over the past two years. That is part of our trouble as well.

Yes, there is something in what the Parliamentary Secretary says. Sometimes silence is golden and I believe that particularly over the past six months silence would have been golden by people south of the Border who possibly were speaking three feet off the ground, but 60 miles south of the Border. It is far too easy to make a speech in a city hotel in Dublin, far too easy to call a branch meeting in any part of rural Ireland, and make, in a written statement, some criticism of what is happening north of the Border. It is far too easy to purchase votes by this method, but any Deputy elected to this House has an obligation on him, in a debate such as this, to make a contribution. It is here a Deputy should be speaking. We can stand back and criticise; we can criticise the IRA north of the Border for the terrible deeds they have carried out in the name of Ireland. They have not carried them out in my name—I have never given my consent to this type of reunion.

Neither have I.

We can stand back now and criticise the UDA for fighting against it, but I wonder if any of us were brought into the same environment, in what way would we react? On the first occasion when this became a serious debate in September of 1969, immediately after the riots in Derry and Belfast I remember saying in this House that there were people in our society who had the power of drawing battle lines, a small group but they had this power. They had no other gift, but when battle lines are drawn, there is no opting out—you go to your own side. I made an earnest appeal to Deputies and to people throughout the country to stand back and not to be emotionally involved because when a person is emotionally involved, he cannot rationalise the situation.

There are many things one could talk about in Northern Ireland and when one would have finished talking, one would remember that there were other points that one could and should have made. What can anyone say at this stage that has not already been said many times? Very little, but I would like to put in my words, my type of thinking on this issue. I do not have to declare my allegiance. I was born into a Catholic family with a nationalist background south of the Border, or rather, on the Republic side of the Border in County Donegal and when the chips were down I would not have to declare which side I am on.

It is no great boast for anyone to say where he stands, but a very strange thing happened in St. Mary's Church in Creggan on the Tuesday evening of the funerals in that city after Bloody Sunday. With a couple of friends of mine, I was standing at the front of a very packed chapel when the funerals were arriving in the church. There were three coffins already there and one coffin was being carried up the aisle, the remains of John Young. John Young was a boy of 17—not involved —but he was shot dead. He was being carried up the aisle by his three young brothers and his best friend. As they approached the altar rails to leave the coffin down beside the other three coffins, the reality of the whole thing hit the brother carrying the coffin on his left shoulder in front, and he broke down and there was a very sorrowful scene. Grown-up men had tears in their eyes; cameramen were unashamedly crying; and I too am not immune from that kind of thing.

I thought what had happened in a society to allow 13 people to be butchered. In what way had politicians failed in the past so as to create such a situation and in what way are politicians going to fail in the future to ensure that in ten or 15 years time, this will not be repeated, that it will not be my three young sons carrying their youngest brother up the aisle. People in the south tell us that the British must get out of Northern Ireland. The British have nothing to do with this issue just now. They cannot be forgiven completely. They are responsible and they cannot be exonerated completely—but when you brush away the cobwebs, you are left with the bare reality that there are a million people north of the Border who do not, at this time, wish to join a southern Irish society, and if this is what the exercise is all about, then we have to ask ourselves why have these people taken up this position, why do they hate us so much, why are they prepared to put up barricades, why are they prepared to go out in murder squads and shoot innocent people indiscriminately?

Why does a human being react like this? Is it all their fault or are we in some degree to blame? Have we tried to create a society with which a Protestant in the North could identify? Have we seriously sat down and tried to figure out the phrase used 50 years ago that partition was a stepping stone? Have we tried to understand the Northern Unionists?

Very recently before the death of the late Dr. Gibson, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, I had the pleasure of visiting him in his office and he put the position to me in a very simple way. He said: "You know, it is very easy for a person to love his wife, his father, his mother, his sons and daughters and all members of his family and his friends, but it is not so easy to love your enemy." Likewise, it is very easy to understand your father, your mother, the members of your family and your friends and it is not so easy to understand your enemy, but it can be done if we try.

The Northern Unionists, as I see the situation, will cause civil war if we try to force them into this part of this island. We move from a position of saying that we will not use physical force, that we will not coerce but will seek peaceful means. When we say these things, what do we really mean? We say that we will not coerce and it is a nice phrase, but what does it mean? Does it not mean that you are not going to force one million Protestants into a southern Irish State and if it means that, following it to its logical conclusion, it means that you are giving them the right to live there? If you say that you are not going to use force, then you are saying to them that you are not going to use force to change that position but what is more, you are not going to allow anyone else to use force in our name. When you say we seek peaceful means, this again is a pious platitude. How often have we sought peaceful means? Politicians in the past have refused to acknowledge the de jure recognition of the Northern State and perhaps rightly so because as time went on the Northern State became a sectarian state and our recognition of that state would have been a recognition of a sectarian parliament, something I personally would not subscribe to.

Whatever happened in the past, we are now left with the problem of how do we play our part in solving the human problem north of the Border. I do not want to live in it and if I do not want to live in it then I should try to do something to solve the problem. People say: "How do you forgive British soldiers for beating up and shooting people and destroying property?" Then you ask: "How do Protestants forgive Catholics for allowing the IRA, or others responsible, for carrying out deeds?"—maybe not with their consent but certainly they were tolerated. How do you overcome this terrible bitterness, the hatred and mistrust? I do not think you can solve it by politics but I do believe that it can be solved by applying basic Christian principles. If something is wrong it is wrong and it cannot be made right. If it is wrong for the Protestant Unionist to do it it is equally wrong for the Catholic Republican to do it. Anything which is right today is right because it was right yesterday. It will also be right tomorrow. When the fifth Commandment was given it meant the same thing as it does now. When life is taken, whether by the forces of the Crown or anyone else, it is murder. But we will have to overcome it. We will have to learn to forgive. Strangely most of us are prepared to forgive but there are people who are not prepared to forgive.

The situation I see now is one not of despair but of reality. If anything has come out of the Northern troubles it is that they have made people south of the Border and people north of the Border re-think their position. When I say that there are 1,000,000 Northern Unionists not prepared to join us at this point in time I do not include every Unionist because there are Unionists prepared to consider it if we present a society of which they can be part. There is a percentage of them who will never consent to it. When I say that there are a half million Catholics north of the Border who want reunification I do not believe all the Catholics in the North of Ireland would vote for reunification in quiet times. They would do it now out of spite rather than out of good judgment.

Reunification at this point of time is not on. I would like it. My choice would be reunification but it is not there. Therefore, we must ask ourselves from what position do we move. Shortly before the death of the late Michael Sweetman, he and I had a conversation and we agreed that there were five possible ways in which the Northern State could move: The Whitelaw administration; UDI; full integration with Britain; the re-setting up of a Northern State; reunification. Let us take them in that order. The Whitelaw administration is not a final solution. UDI is not acceptable to the southern Parliament, to the Westminster Parliament or indeed to the Catholic people and many of the Protestant people north of the Border. That is not a solution. Full integration is possibly more acceptable than the other two and I would not rule it out as an interim measure. The setting up of a Northern Parliament is another consideration to which I would give my consent in the short term. The final and most important step is reunification. What type of reunification? Do we have to force Northern Unionists to give up their heritage, their culture, to either live an artificial life or to change their way of going or do we recognise that their culture and heritage are part and parcel of this island and if we want reunification we must make room for them?

Towards reunification there are two ways in which I think the Northern State can move. One is full integration. I am not personally in favour of this although I would prefer it possibly if the Northern Unionist is not prepared to share power north of the Border. So the position rests with the Northern Unionist. If he wants the re-establishment of a Northern Parliament by consensus he must recognise that he cannot have it without the consent of the Northern Catholic in the same way as if we want reunification we can never have it without the full consent of the Northern Unionist.

People may say we never want to see Stormont back again. I do not want to see it back again. While we were fighting a civil war south of the Border 50 years ago on the question of partition the issue was really not partition, the issue was the setting up of a Northern Parliament. If the British Government at the time had said: "There are 26 counties in Ireland which desire independence and we are prepared to give them independence: the other six will continue to be ruled from Westminster" and if a Northern Parliament had never existed, would the sectarian politics which have bedevilled that State over the last 50 years have taken place? Would, in fact, the people North of the Border, Catholic and Protestant, even aspire to reunification now if the sharing of power had been part of the settlement?

Let us take the word "partition", a word which is very confused in the minds of the Irish people and was acceptable to me for a particular meaning until I too tried to study the word and figure out what it means. We have used the word "partition" to describe the Border which divides North and South when in fact the Border and partition are two different things. The Border to me is the dividing line between two political systems. A line on a map is meaningless if you have a society on both sides which identify with each other and respect each other's laws. Partition is something more real. We had partition in County Donegal yesterday evening when the Orange band was attacked by Catholics. You have partition running between the Falls Road and Shankill, between the Irish Street estate in Derry and the Bogside, you have partition dividing the Tunnel and the rest of Portadown and partition divides Ballymena. You have partition dividing virtually every townland, farm, street, people, because when people refuse to co-operate with each other socially, when they refuse to acknowledge their being, when they kill, maim and murder each other, that is partition. You could still have partition by the removal of the Border. The removal of the Border is no issue. The issue is the removal of partition in the sense I have described it. I believe we must rise above our own level because since Parnell no Irishman can truthfully say: "I have led an Irish nation." No Irishman can come out of the hall of fame and say: "I have led Catholic and Protestant, Nationalist and Unionist. I have led the Irish people." We have had great men but we have had sectional leaders. We have never had a national leader. We have had leaders of the Northern State and we have had leaders of the Republican State but we have never had a leader of both States.

The Taoiseach's speech today was criticised from these benches but I can say it is the first time that we have got away from the phased withdrawal of the British troops in the North, the withdrawal of financial aid, a public declaration on the part of Westminster. These phrases are meaningless. They are delightful to read and to hear provided you are living in Southern Ireland and provided you oppose the establishment of Unionism in Northern Ireland. What does the withdrawal of financial aid mean to the Northern State? Does it not mean that you are asking the Catholics in Northern Ireland to continue to pay their rates and taxes as if they were living in another part of the United Kingdom but they should accept less benefits and a lower standard of living than other UK subjects? Is this the type of United Ireland for which we are asking Catholics to make this type of sacrifice so that we could be one? This is not realistic.

We talk about the phased withdrawal of British troops. What will we replace them with? Does anybody think that if a United Nations force came into the Falls Road or the Shankill that they would not be shot? Does anybody think that if the British Government gave their consent to the Irish Government to patrol the Bogside or patrol the area between the Protestant and Catholic parts of Portadown that they would not be shot at? Of course they would. The phased withdrawal of British troops is meaningless. It is dishonest for any Deputy in this House to get up and advocate it, having discussed the matter privately with me and having agreed with my point of view that it was meaningless. However, it is delightful for his constituents to read and possibly grand for the republican-minded people in his constituency to hear. The net result is more votes but no progress.

The British Army, in my judgment, came into the North of Ireland as a peace-keeping force and if they get back to that peace-keeping force I will tolerate them until such times as the Catholics and the Protestants find political solutions that can let them live together. Have we not a part to play in helping them to live together? I believe that the Taoiseach, having got away from this phased withdrawal of the British Army and the withdrawal of financial aid position has made a statesmanlike statement today. I, as an Opposition Deputy, will give 100 per cent support to that type of leadership in the South of Ireland. When he says to the Northern Unionists and the Northern community that he wants some kind of Irish Parliament North of the Border I know what he means. He means a Northern Irish Parliament to which the Catholics will give consent and the Protestants their free will. If that is the type of proposal which the Taoiseach has in mind I give it my wholehearted support because I believe that the honourable compromise between the people who refuse to accept the Border, who refuse to accept any other settlement but reunification and the people who are not prepared to join with us at this moment is if we cannot unite this country under one Parliament then let us try to unite it under two Parliaments which will co-operate economically, politically and socially, that will respect the institutions of each other. If this type of settlement has laws that if anyone commits a crime one side of the Border he will be collected and properly put back to the other side, then we are getting near unity.

The people North and South of the Border want peace for justice. We hear certain individuals saying that they want peace with justice. This phrase was coined by the IRA. Within weeks we had the loyalist women of the Shankill saying it when they left Mr. Whitelaw's office so abruptly. What does peace with justice mean? How can anyone have peace without justice? If the Northern Unionists want a Northern Parliament again they better realise that they cannot have the Northern Parliament without the consent of the Catholics North of the Border and they cannot have a Northern Parliament which does not get the respect of the Southern Parliament. If they are not prepared to do these things then I suggest that we agree that the British Government should have full integration with the Northern State until such time as the majority there realise that their right identification is with us.

Recently I attended a meeting in Shankill, Belfast. A group of Catholics and Protestants sat together. They invited two Conservative Members from London to address them. A lady from the Vanguard movement was also present. She was a member of the Unionist Party and the Orange Order. We also had a gentleman present who was a Republican and a former Provisional. Before the meeting started the two Conservative Members and the two Belfast people got into conversation and it was very obvious to the rest of us that although the lady from the Vanguard movement and the former member of the Provisionals did not agree they had more in common with each other than they had with the two Conservatives who left the meeting and said they could not make head or tail of it. They admitted they were strangers in what they called part of the United Kingdom. Of course they were because this island is Ireland. The tragedy of it is that we have two political systems, one refusing to recognise the other and we have never tried to find our own level. We have never tried, politically speaking, to rise above ourselves to recognise the difference of the other person.

The Deputy has four minutes left.

As I said, the Taoiseach made quite a remarkable speech today and it is one to which I will give my full consent. I now want some Northern person, be he Unionist or otherwise, to lead the Northern State into a parallel position so that we can arrive at a solution much earlier than will happen if the violence continues.

There is not really much more I can say in four minutes except that in the week before Bloody Sunday I was in England and I was being entertained by the editor of a newspaper who afterwards took me to his home. This was shortly after the three young Scottish soldiers had been shot in Belfast. An English Catholic said to me—she was in favour of reunification, for her own reasons—that she could not understand why Irishmen shot British soldiers. She said that the IRA should remember that you do not find a supporter of the Conservative Party a private in the British Army. He is generally a supporter of the Labour Party whose brothers and sisters had been out campaigning for a Labour government or the Labour Party in the last general election and, because of that campaign and because it was against the Conservative Party and because the Unionist Party had close identification with the Conservative Party, that young boy found himself in the North of Ireland defending something in which he did not believe and he could be shot for doing it.

This is the thought of an English Catholic who has no connection at all with Ireland other than to say that she believed the British troops should not be there. I wonder if I could get this message across to the Provision IRA who also come from the working-class. Are they shooting at members of the working classes when they shoot at British soldiers? Or are they shooting at a member—truly believing and fully supporting a capitalist system.

The Deputy's time is now up.

If we want to avoid civil war and put an end to the killing it is time people who believe in peace —men and women, Catholic and Protestant—stand up in greater numbers and say so and act publicly to demonstrate so because if a civil war takes place in this island it will not be the gunmen and the bombers, it will not be the people who want to wage civil war who will be killed, it will be the children and the mothers and the innocent and the people who do not wish to die.

Deputies from my own party and Deputies from other parties have spoken very largely about the North of Ireland, but there were other things in the Taoiseach's speech and I want to refer to three of them. I want to talk about the present economic situation in Ireland; I want to talk about the EEC and I want to talk about the national wage agreement and the whole area of wages, prices and profit. I want to talk first about the economic situation and specifically about inflation. In the Taoiseach's speech this morning—and I am quoting from the unrevised transcript—he said:

In the case of prices the most recent figure shows that the increase now, at an annual rate of about 6 per cent, compares favourably with a rate of about 9 per cent for 1971. This downward trend is expected to continue...

That is a rather confident note on which to dissolve the Dáil for three months, to give us a cheerful message going away, that this desperate problem of inflation is, in fact, on the way to solution. It would be nice if we could believe him but I want to indicate that this is, first, factually inaccurate and, secondly, misleading. The situation in regard to inflation is vastly more serious. I will quote, not my own calculations, but a reasonably neutral source The Economist of 1st July, on pages 84 and 85. They refer to the great risks that before countries have managed to control cost inflation they will again find themselves confronted by a demand inflation which will endanger future possibilities of growth. That is a considered opinion of the commission looking at the economies of the Six and the Ten. They go on to consider the six members and the four applicant countries, country by country. In the section on Ireland— I am now quoting from page 85—they say:

Ireland's biggest obstacle is its rampant inflation which has slowed down only marginally from 10 per cent last year to around 9 per cent now.

The Economist, on 1st July, gives the current figure for inflation at 50 per cent more than the Taoiseach gave us this morning. Which, in fact, do you believe?

On the same page of The Economist, on the question of who inflates faster, comparing the ten countries, the answer is Ireland; first, inflating the fastest of the ten but, secondly, the slope of the graph which indicates the rate of inflation has increased in the last quarter of 1971 and the first quarter of 1972. Is the Taoiseach right to say that the downward trend is expected to continue or is The Economist right to say, in this graph, that, in fact, the rate of inflation even up to now has been increasing? I believe the Taoiseach is wrong and I believe that The Economist is neutral and right on this issue. I often find the comments of their Irish correspondent a bit hard to take but factually they are a very reputable magazine and I think that is the way it is.

That was the way it was until a few weeks ago because these figures reflect the last quarter of 1971 and the first quarter of 1972 but what has happened very recently makes the Taoiseach's statement that the downward trend is expected to continue not just wrong but ridiculous and irresponsible? A number of things have happened. First, we have decided to introduce the value-added tax. We did not have to, on joining the EEC; we chose to. The Italians put it off year after year because they knew it was inflationary. We have a headline in today's newspapers that the Minister for Finance tells us that VAT is not inflationary. If it is not inflationary in Ireland, then Ireland's experience will be contrary to the experience of every other country in which it has been introduced. Telling us that VAT is not inflationary is taking us for fools. It is saying something which is offensive to our intelligence. However, we have had the introduction of VAT which will, of course, increase the rate of inflation which was already speeding up again at the beginning of this year and which The Economist says is 9 per cent at present.

In addition we have had a devaluation in Britain and of course with our £ tied to the British £ we have devalued as well. The Taoiseach does not consider that devaluation is a profoundly serious matter, specifically for prices. It is prices that it affects. I am again trying to be neutral and not trying to search all of the availabe sources to dig up hostile quotations and I will quote from last Sunday's The Observer and The Sunday Times and from the two most recent issues of The Economist—in other words, mainline sources of information which are not prejudiced either way. In “Business News” in last Sunday's Times in an article by Malcolm Crawford it was stated and I quote:

After all, floating down to $2.40 means an extra 2 per cent added to the rising cost of living.

That is what he says in Britain. If it means it there it means it here, but the Taoiseach does not think it important enough to mention the floating down, the devaluation. He says the downward trend in prices is expected to continue so we have got 1 per cent from VAT and we have got 2 per cent from the devaluation of the £ along with the 9 per cent which, according to The Economist, we have already. That makes 12 per cent for the year, not 6 per cent. We are moving into a period in five slices, starting in January, 1973, levelling our food prices with the EEC food prices. But since EEC food prices are fixed in units of account the devaluation of 8 per cent means an additional rise of those EEC food prices of 8 per cent.

So, in addition to VAT and to other devaluation effects we have the effects on the unit of account food price of the Community to which we have to adapt but the Taoiseach says the downward trend is expected to continue. This is not just wrong, it is offensive, because it treats people as idiots. Of course, he did not think it up himself. His economic advisers ought to be a little more serious with the public.

I think they are political economists.

Possibly, more than economic advisers. That is one explanation.

We do not need to spend a lot of time on the effect of inflation except to say that the people it hits are the people on fixed incomes, be they pensions, or the accrued result of interest on savings. It hits the poorest, the old, the weak, the ill, the social welfare recipient and the people who have heavy family commitments. If you have 100 per cent more income than you need, it does not matter very much if it goes down by 10 per cent in a year, which is what 10 per cent inflation means. It does not matter if it goes from 200 per cent to 180 per cent of your needs. But, if you have 100 per cent of your needs, which is the situation in most of the country, and it goes down by 10 per cent, you do not have the wherewithal to maintain your standard of living.

The Taoiseach says it is not going to happen; inflation will get better or else, apparently, bless you, it is not very important, because in the whole of his opening of this adjournment debate there was no suggestion as to what he would do to control inflation. What was implicit in that was that it did not matter. It may not matter to him but to the old, the sick, the weak, the poor and the young—who are a very significant part of this society—it matters profoundly.

Again, I ask you not to take my estimation of the significance of continuing high inflation for a society. Let me quote again from a recent source, The Economist of 8th July, an article on page 19. They are talking about the possible political crisis in Great Britain and they are talking about the serious calamity that might be needed to bring to power Mr. Enoch Powell. I would find that an awful though, but it is relevant. That is what they are discussing. They say what is this calamity. They give an example of the sort of calamity that might bring about the social breakdown in Britain that would result in the triumph of Mr. Enoch Powell. The example is 10 per cent inflation a year for two more years. That would end public confidence in the present political parties. These are not my words. I am not being alarmist in an adjournment debate. That is The Economist of last weekend talking about something else —10 per cent a year for two more years. That is what we have—10 per cent a year—with the prospect of its getting worse. The Taoiseach does not think it is important or pretends that it is going away.

Perhaps that is enough about inflation, except to say that when we are faced with a crisis in the North and with the possibility of its being exported—or imported—down here—a serious crisis will be a crisis for the whole island—with a policy which permits this sort of inflation to go on, which is recognised by every book on economics you choose to consult as profoundly destructive of the fabric of society, a Government which allows that to go on at a time of national peril are derelict in their responsibility. I was very shocked by this omission and this inadequacy in what the Taoiseach had to say because in general the tenor of his contribution was, "Go home for the summer holidays. Everything is fine". Is everything fine economically? We have the most open economy probably in the world. We are a part of the sterling area, the only remaining part outside the UK, intimately bound up economically with how the UK does.

Not looking for a hostile source, in last Sunday's Observer, Alan Day, a very reputed economic commentator, in the Business Observer, page 19, said:

Our economic problems now appear so intractable that the prospects for political and social stability in Britain in the next few years seem less hopeful than at any time I can remember.

That is Mr. Alan Day about Britain's economic plight but the Taoiseach says "Go home happily. It is fine" and, indeed, the devaluation is so unimportant that it does not even rate a mention.

One could build up these quotations. In the Sunday Times, Frank Giles, on the leader page, is describing the present situation in Britain. He sees in Britain a crisis of inflation and a general sense, not so much of floating as of drifting. The leader page of two major British Sunday newspapers express the same thought. The Sunday Times and The Observer both said it last weekend and when they sneeze we get influenza but “we are fine, bless you, go home happily, my children, because your papa Taoiseach will make all these horrid things go away”.

We are going to Cork for a change.

This is the level of interjection that makes one despair of Parliament.

If you add to that scene the crisis in Northern Ireland and add to that the crisis in our tourism, not of our making, with the spin-off effect of diminishing tourist returns, and if you add to that the effects of devaluation not on our food prices but on the price of things we import from outside the sterling area—add those things together and you have an economic scene which is not grave at this moment but which surely calls, firstly, for recognition of its seriousness and, secondly, for some action to prevent the threat to our economic wellbeing becoming a reality. I will revert to that when I am closing because I want to indicate the things I would wish to have seen in the Taoiseach's speech, the things we have to do economically if we are to avoid the serious peril that responsible commentators are widely declaring to exist in Britain and we have reasons to think that our peril is more acute than Britain's at the present time.

I want to talk about the EEC—I would not wish to express it immodestly—but as the person most identified with the campaign to persuade the people not to become a full member of the EEC.

I hope the Deputy will have more luck with the House than he had with his own supporters.

I recognise that we were defeated heavily on this matter. I recognise as a democrat the decision of the Irish people. I accept it. But because 80 odd per cent of them thought differently, it does not make me change my mind. I believe they made a wrong decision. I believe they made it on the basis of misinformation. I also believe they will live to regret it. There are times when one has to declare one's opinion regardless of the number of persons who will disagree with it. My opinion remains that our economy will be profoundly damaged by full membership and that we will rue the day we decided to become a full member. I say that with no pleasure and I know that politically it is impossible to say later on to people: "I told you so". There is no mileage in that. I hope to be proved wrong, but, in fact, the decision of the May referendum as far as I am concerned is water under the bridge. It is a decision taken which I accept, for myself and for the Labour Party. We are therefore faced with the situation: what do we do? It is not so different from the situation of a parent who has a child who does something the parent does not wish. He does not stop loving the child; he does not cut it off; he does not pretend that the thing has not happened. We were the only people who could see the European Community, warts and all. A few tiny warts are now being recognised by the pro-EEC people, but they are still inclined to show it without any blemishes. However, for those of us who saw it warts and all and who have seen the warts grow bigger in the last two months, we have a duty not just to participate but to protect this country with all our strength against those dangers which we were able to predict and which we see growing more threatening, not less, with the passing weeks. We have a duty to participate precisely to prevent our prophecies coming true, to try to stop those results happening to this fragile economy.

Let me offer some thoughts about the institutions and the democracy and about the way the Community will go. There are a number of separate economies emerging; there are a number of separate Governments making very feeble efforts at merging. Our only protection now is not the prevention of the growth of the Brussels institutions but the strength of those institutions so that they can protect us against the naked economic might of the fused economies of Germany, France, Benelux and now Britain. We do not need weaker institutions in the Community now but stronger ones, because only institutions can protect us against the economic processes which will otherwise destroy something as fragile, as peripheral and as weak as our economy. We do not need less democracy at Community level; we need more, because only strengthened communities with democratic control can possibly produce the reforms which we will need for our protection. I am always glad to be able to find in a speech the Taoiseach makes one thing with which I agree. I was able to find one thing in my reading of his speech today that I agreed with, because he says, and I quote from the unedited transcript:

In our view a comprehensive regional policy for the enlarged Community is an essential part of the measures necessary to deal with these economic imbalances.

Noble words. We all agree surely, but I have to record the opinion that we will not see a real regional policy in time to save us. I agree about its necessity and about the economic imbalances. The Taoiseach believes it will be possible in significant time. I do not so believe and, watching the clock, I do not have time to indicate why now, but I hope again to be wrong in that. I think the Taoiseach is right to refer to the significance of a regional policy, but if he thinks he is going to get a real one quickly then, in my view, he is quite wrong.

The other thing that everyone has been gambling on here is the great agricultural bonanza that is coming to us. In this respect I said all through the campaign that I believed the common agricultural policy in its present form would not survive. Again, I hope to be wrong, but the signs are the other way. The most recent Sunday Times, that of 9th July, in a leader page article by Frank Giles discusses the new Premier of France, M. Messmer. M. Messmer is known to think, for example, that the Common Market's common agricultural policy is a disaster for France because its effect is to retain too many people on the land for too long. But M. Messmer is now the new Prime Minister of France. The common agricultural policy is under threat from Britain, from France, from the United States outside, from the Third World countries, from the working class and from industrial employers in all of the member states.

If anybody thinks that the agricultural lobby is going to win against that line-up it seems to me that they are out of their little minds. The rate of profit on beef is higher now than it is ever going to be again, because beef has been bid up to near the Common Market prices, but we have not got the rise in fertilisers, the rise in feeding stuffs and the rise in other costs. The transition period of the next five years will see a steady narrowing of the margins, and not a widening, on beef. We have had our bonanza on beef. By the time you inflate at 10 per cent per year, if you do that at compound interest for five and a half years you have a 75 per cent increase in prices. I predicted that for food prices by the time we got into Europe. I am happy to read it on to the record because I believe it will happen by 1978. If you have that sort of inflation in costs and your milk price stays at 26p or 28p a gallon and your costs go up by 75 per cent in five years, what becomes of your margins? The margins for milk are higher now than they will be in five years time. People will see a shrinking of those margins. The people have been sold a pup, in my view.

We have said we did not believe the economy of Ireland, peripheral, fragile, undercapitalised, lacking in sovereignty, lacking in its own economic institutions could survive free trade conditions. The business brief of the Economist of 1st July has what it calls the growth league for the member states. It does not put in Luxembourg but it has the other nine, Ireland included. It gives the figures for 1970 and 1971 and an estimate for 1972. Be it said that the estimate, which is made by the British National Institute of Economic and Social Research differs from the Taoiseach's. Maybe the Taoiseach is right; maybe the Taoiseach is neutral; maybe his economic advisers are not tempted to bend the thing a little because it is for the Taoiseach's speech. Maybe the NIESR are hostile to Ireland and maybe they are wrong. In fact, their estimate for 1972 is for slower growth in Ireland. It is just over 2 per cent for 1972 going down from just below 3 per cent for 1971. Take the three years together. In 1972, of the nine countries, leaving out Luxembourg, we were second last; Norway was lower. That is an estimate for this year; we are half way through it. In 1971 we were joint third last with Germany. The UK and Italy were behind us. In 1970 we were last in growth rate of the applicants. Taking the three years, 1970, 1971 and 1972, if these are added up in respect of the members and the applicants. Ireland was last by a long way.

If I may be permitted a little arithmetic, let us say that the per capita GNP for Ireland is £1,000; it is not; I say that to make the arithmetic easy. The per capita GNP for France is £2,000, twice that for Ireland for 1970. For 1970, 1971 and 1972 the French growth is 16½ per cent, Irish growth, 66½ per cent. The increase in income for an Irishman in those three years is £65; for a Frenchman it is £330. The difference is £265 a year by which the Frenchman is richer compared to the Irishman than he was at the beginning of the period. So the major countries in the Community are, first of all, twice as rich and, secondly, growing maybe twice as fast and that means that, with every passing year, the gap of income between the richest areas and Ireland is widening and not narrowing. It means that inevitably. If studies of growth mean anything, that is obvious. But, if you have free movement of labour, will not people go where the pay is higher? Is not that the experience inside Ireland? Is not that that the experience inside the UK? Is not that the experience inside Italy? And where are the forces to prevent this process? We have these figures now, which we did not have at the time of the referendum—these figures of estimates for 1972—and they strengthen the danger of the concentration of capital into the centre and there are absolutely no areas of protection and no protective mechanisms being built. Dr. Mansholt, for the commission, says we now must go ex-growth. Growth is bad for our environment. He is right, of course. It is the human and decent thing to say and, if you were a Dutchman, it would be true but, for an Irishman, who is half as rich as a Dutchman, if we all say: “Let us go ex-growth; let the Community not grow any more”, then we stay half as rich.

Unless there is a regional policy.

Unless there is a regional policy. I agree with Deputy Cooney and I hope it will come, just as much as he does, and I believe it is necessary, as much as he does, and it will come, I hope, before we are dead—I hope, but I doubt it.

Let us turn from that now to what we do in our present economic situation. The Taoiseach's speech indicates we do nothing. The Taoiseach, in fact, never says anything in his speeches to the Dáil. He uses words to conceal his thoughts, and with great success. Then he goes off and does things. He is good at acting. And now he will get three months, or more, when we are not here to bother him, so he can act as Taoiseach with a good Executive, with no Dáil to bother him, to harass him or criticise him for what he does. In fact, what was missing from his speech is what you do at the moment with the Irish economy.

However, let us be fair to him. He did have one suggestion, if I can find it. Yes, I have it. It is a gem of the Taoiseach's political economics. A beauty. I quote from the unedited transcript this morning:

The national wage agreement was designed to bring to a halt this pointless chase between higher prices and wages.

Endorse the national wage agreement, you nasty trade unionists who are threatening that, perhaps, you will not, and this pointless chase between higher prices and wages will stop if you do that. Bless you! The innocence and the simplicity of that statement. But see the implication. The implication is that, of course, the nasty rise in prices, which we deplore, is because the workers want more money. No other suggestion. More wages are the cost of higher prices and you peddle that often enough and simply enough to the poor, unsuspecting public and they begin to believe it and act on it.

The Taoiseach knows it is not true. His economic advisers know even better that it is not true but, if you say it often enough, as Goebbels knew, on all the media maybe the people for whom it is intended, who are already the poorest and the worst off in the community, will believe it. Great stuff! I am not saying difficult things or things that people do not know. If they read even the most elementary textbook on economics they will find all this.

They do not have to be clever, or clairvoyant, or anything and, as I say, of course the Taoiseach's advisers know that there are many constituents to inflation. Wages, yes; costs/push, yes; that is a cause of inflation, sure it is, but demand/pull is also a cause of inflation. Now which comes first? Is it that prices go up for other reasons and workers have to have more wages or is it that workers have to have more wages and then prices go up? Which is it? It is a cyclical situation. It is the hen or the egg. And there are many determinants to inflation. I am not suggesting that higher wages are not one, but what I am saying is that anyone who says it is the only one is simply a liar. He is not just wrong because, it is possible, in good faith, to be wrong, but there is too much evidence of the many causes of inflation and anybody, speaking on the subject with any claim to authority implying that it is the only one, has to be dishonest. It is not just a statement.

Various sources and Mr. Enoch Powell, to mention him again, have been adamant that the unions have no responsibility whatsoever for inflation. Mr. Powell says that the only culprit is the government's failure to control money supply. There you have a money source of it. That is a third one, apart from demand/pull and cost/ push. The fourth one is the fact that we see, with the tremendous technological revolution in the world, that the big multi-national companies need incredible amounts of capital for their investments. One British oil company got credit to the tune of £350 million from a group of banks the other week just for the North Sea. One company for one area of oil got £350 million credit. Those multi-nationals, having to increase their cash flow to stay in the game, generate the cash flow by manipulating prices. You do not have a real market place arrangement of prices anymore. Again, there is nothing clairvoyant about this. Free market price termination in many areas is over. This is the truism of the economics of the last 40 years.

So that is a contribution. The capital hunger of the high technology multinational is a contribution to inflation. But the Taoiseach does not say that we have to do something about those multi-nationals or he does not say to the banks we have to do something about money supply; he does not say to industry: "You have to do something about your prices and your profits". We will come to that in a minute. No, there is none of that. Banks are well-off; industries are well off; multi-nationals are extremely well-off. But they are not causing inflation: it is the workers wanting more money. And nothing else. This is a travesty of the truth and it would be a tragedy if it were to be believed because, if we have that sort of inflation, not just the sort I have been predicting but that the economists have been predicting year after year, if you have that sort of inflation year after year, and you do not do anything serious about it, and there is nothing in the Taoiseach's speech about any effort to control inflation except to say to the workers: "Please fellows, do not ask for any more money", to give you an example of how ridiculous that is in the open Irish economy——

The Deputy has four minutes.

I thought I had a little more. I thought there was a little drift in time from my taking over from the last speaker. However, I will try to say what I want to say in four minutes. The effect of permitting that sort of inflation is to generate a sort of fury among ordinary people, men goaded by their wives when they come back from the shops, and they smash up the trade union movement; they smash up the ordinary chain of leadership; they smash up the national wage agreement and you have the sort of free-for-all the Taoiseach deplores, and correctly. You have the situation where workers use their special position to get special concessions to the disadvantage of all the weakest section of the community. You have that and, if you permit that sort of inflation, and if you do nothing about it except ask the workers not to want a significant wage increase, then you produce social disruption; you produce disruption of the chains of command and decision-making inside the trade union movement; and you get chaos, and you get the sort of holding up to ransom of the whole community by a little section who have a special position that gives them immense leeway. We all want orderly gains. We all want the thing done in a disciplined way but, of course, the exact opposite will happen.

Finally, I would like to indicate the total confusion that exists in the different Departments of Government in relation to prices. The Prices (Amendment) Bill, 1972, came before the House in February and was passed the other day. In speaking on that Bill on the 15th February, 1972, the Minister for Industry and Commerce said that he was proposing to take power to control the prices of almost all commodities. In other words, he was telling the workers not to worry; there was no need to ask for more money because prices would be controlled. However, the Minister for Finance has not heard about this because in the Dáil last night he said to Deputy FitzGerald that there are a number of the Deputy's colleagues who could tell him why price control at the retail level is next to impossible. Therefore, the Minister for Finance believes to be impossible what the Minister for Industry and Commerce persuaded the House is possible. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing and neither hand knows what the head is doing because the head is doing nothing. I do not have time now to indicate the areas of defect in the Taoiseach's speech, the areas where in matters of inflation, of protection of employment, of the strengthening of the public sector, of going ahead with regional policy, of preparing farming for the EEC and of protecting the country against the taking over of business by foreign supermarkets as well as a whole series of other areas, action could be taken now to prevent the dangers of which I have spoken. The defect of his speech is the defect of inactivity. The defect of Fianna Fáil is not so much what they have done but it lies in their terrifying inability to decide and to act. This results from their lack of talent, of brains and of courage which was never demonstrated better than in the Taoiseach's Adjournment speech. People who continue to support that Government can only be accused of having a death wish because the continuation of the Taoiseach's policies will result in the economic death of Ireland. Under those policies we will continue as individuals but we will not continue at a nation.

In speaking on a debate of this nature one must have regard to the situation in the Northeastern part of this country and, consequently, endeavour to utter words that might bring some glimmer of hope to the people in that area. One might envy those opposition speakers who have a strange facility for over-simplifying the issue of the North by insisting that there is only one reason for the unrest. Of course there are many reasons for the trouble and there is much to be done before there will be peace.

First, we must realise that peace being indivisible must be for all the people and that, therefore, to endeavour to have peace by some solution on the Shankill Road while not having it on the Falls Road would be a false ideal. Unless there is peace throughout the Six Counties there will continue to be outbreaks of violence. During the past four years the extent of the violence has been greater than ever before so that one cannot be surprised if the hopes of the people seem to be receding.

When I seek some glimmer of hope in the situation, I think of Gusty Spence, lately of Crumlin Road jail and now said to be a guest, either willingly or unwillingly of the UDA. During the week, Mr. Spence, speaking at a Press Conference, said it must be realised that the people of the Shankill Road had suffered as much from the results of unemployment and bad housing as had the people of the Falls Road. As I see it, there is hope in that statement because it indicates that at last the majority in the North are beginning to realise that the conflict is not a religious one but that the whole basis of the trouble is economic. They are beginning to realise that the Catholic on the Falls Road is not the enemy of the Protestant on the Shankill Road but is merely a competitor for the jobs that are available of which there are not sufficient. Because of this shortage of jobs certain labels have been put on people in order to deprive them of work and of their civil rights. In parts of America there is this discrimination because of colour. In Germany it happened at one time to the Jews. For 50 years in the North of Ireland, the Unionist junta have succeeded in dividing the lower paid workers by labelling one side Catholic and saying that, therefore, they are not entitled to civil rights.

Each day one is horrified to hear of the killings and the maimings and one wonders what forces in the name of any religion could commit such atrocities. Of course the situation in the North for the past 50 years has not been normal. From that situation all this violence has resulted and one must blame the wealthier classes in the North for this, who, in order to maintain their set-up ensured that they had plenty of fall guys whom they could blame for their mistakes. In that way they held on to power. On one occasion when Mr. Brian Faulkner was in Dublin he said that for as long as the workers voted Unionist the Unionists were invincible.

I am not unaware of the efforts being made by people on all sides to bring about peace. I applaud the efforts of the SDLP and of the trade unions and, indeed, of the overwhelming majority of the people who desire peace and who have paid a high price for their exploitation by the Unionists for so long.

In pointing out all the causes of division in the North, the opposition speakers never think of telling us what would unite it. They expound all the clichés ad nauseam. All the casualties have been among the lower paid workers but of course it may be said that the majority of the people in the North are in the lower-paid category. Therefore, on the law of averages, they suffer more. I do not want to see any class in the North suffering and would do anything possible to make some contribution towards peace so that the people of Shankill Road and Falls Road could live in peace, as I am convinced the vast majority want to do. But if we are to eradicate violence we must spotlight the cause of it. We know that once violence starts it is hard to stop it. I agree with Deputy Corish when he stated in Volume 258 of the Official Report that the trouble in the North over the last four years began when the RUC invaded part of the Bogside in Derry and beat a man to death and wrecked many houses. This was the spark which set alight the present conflagration.

Perhaps it is useless to continue recalling these things because where there is an unjust system and people uphold it they are never very squeamish about their methods: their whole aim is to maintain the system. Surely those RUC men were mere tools of the Stormont Government then just as are the people today who are killing, shooting and maiming people.

There are many things in regard to which we can find unity. It should be said in justice to the parties in this House and the people in the south that they have tried over the years to show that we really wanted unification, that we are prepared to make sacrifices for it. I realise and appreciate that if unity comes we shall have to make sacrifices and so will the majority in the North. To that majority I say the sacrifices they would have to make would be little compared with the sacrifices they are now making in trying to hold on to the oldest form of colonial government. Their place is with the remainder of the country so that we can build a nation such as will ensure that the people, irrespective of religion or social class will have the same rights as those at the top. Therefore, I mentioned Mr. Gusty Spence. I believe there is new thinking coming in the North and it is bound to succeed in the end as it has succeeded in other countries where there was unjust government until the people began to think and then they swept it away and gained peace.

I do not hold with those, some of them Members of the House, or those outside who preach about such things as people's democracies. We know about the people's courts in Russia. I believe that the majority in the North believe in democracy as we do and, as Winston Churchill once said, democracy is the worst system apart from all the others that have been tried. I do not suggest the democratic State we have here is perfect but I believe the basis is there for the building of a society in which all men can live at peace irrespective of their faith. It is our task to try to build this nation.

Another school of thought suggests that we must change our ways and scrap the Constitution. I admit the Constitution is 35 years old and that any document should be re-examined but first we should take stock of what is in the Constitution, of where it bears unfairly on any section of the people and if that is found to be the case and if rights are being infringed—and I mean real rights—then we must change it. But before we do that let us make sure of what we should put in its place.

I think the Opposition speakers who have chided us tonight for not condemning violence have not listened to us or, perhaps, they are playing politics. I do not know how any man who believes that all men are his brothers could possibly applaud the murders which took place in the North in the last four years no matter who committed them. We felt just as sad when Trooper Best was murdered as we did when some of the children on the Falls Road were murdered. Take Trooper Best who had no job and joined the British Army or take some of the children on Falls Road who because they were second-class citizens were doomed, if not to death, to a life which had not much to offer. When we examine the Northern situation let us go to the roots of the violence and the killing and realise that the cause was the unjust system and that some people in their stupidity or blindness thought that by shooting people and by bombing they would bring about a better society.

Perhaps violence does hasten developments but one must remember the scars left behind which can never be removed from the minds of the suffering families whose dear ones were slaughtered. We then realise that the peaceful approach is the only one. On this side we have never sought to try any other means. Fine Gael speakers particularly and some Labour speakers have pontificated too much and adopted a "holier-than-thou" attitude, lecturing the people, telling them how much better they were than the mere mortals in the North.

Debate adjourned.
Top
Share