asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the total cost to date of the publication Facts about Ireland; the total number of copies published or on order; if, in future, similar journals for circulation abroad will be sub-edited by representatives of all political parties in the State; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Cost of Publication.
33.
The total cost of Facts about Ireland to date has been £32,628. The total number of copies published and on order is 161,563.
I do not consider that it would be appropriate to have this or similar publications sub-edited by representatives of all political parties as suggested in the Deputy's question.
Would the Minister indicate the method of editing this publication? Does he do this editing himself or does he delegate to an officer of his Department the right to use his own discretion with regard to editing and with regard to the pictures contained in the publication? Is there a political editor? What is the set-up? Having regard to the fact that this is costing a tremendous amount of rate-payers' money, the House is entitled to more information regarding the procedure adopted by the Minister's Department in the editing of the publication.
So far as this occasion is concerned, I was asked for a decision about reviewing what was in the document. Since it was little more than the bringing up-to-date of statistics and developments since 1969 I decided that there would only be the addition of new statistics and developments and that it would not be necessary to have a serious review.
As the Deputy may be aware, there was controversy here from the Fine Gael benches regarding the first edition because of what they considered were too limited references to the early leaders of their party. It was pointed out by the then Minister for Foreign Affairs that the document was not intended to be a history; only a small part of it was historical and, in fact, it dealt with the setting up of the economic, social and political structures. The references to which they took exception were no more limited than a reference to the same person made in a document produced by the Department when their own Government were in office in 1950. A later edition had photographs of the early governments of the State which, I think, redressed whatever imbalance they considered might have been created.
The publication Facts about Ireland had something the earlier document did not have. It had references to written histories which had the independence and detachment of the historian and took away from the idea of any Minister or civil servant writing history for this purpose. Therefore, people interested in history could read in Facts about Ireland references to books on history, written by historians. This was absent in the earlier booklet.
Do the Fianna Fáil Party never write history? I think that party have written a lot of history.
I thank the Deputy.
The Fianna Fáil Party should be ashamed of what they have written.
They have falsified history.