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Dáil Éireann debate -
Friday, 1 Dec 1972

Vol. 264 No. 4

Offences against the State Act (Amendment) Bill, 1972: Second Stage (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:
To delete all words after "That" and substitute:—
"Dáil Éireann declines to give a Second Reading to the Bill on the ground that it contains matter which is unnecessary and excessive and which is repugnant to basic principles of justice and liberty and the long established fundamental rights of citizens."
—(Deputy Cooney.)

Outside there were 2,000 or 3,000 people and about 1,500 Garda. This was a build-up to frighten the people. Out there, there were many people who would jump onto any bandwaggon but to me the irresponsible people were the newspapers who should have given a lead. On Tuesday the newspapers were against this Bill. The next day they were on strike. I know it was not the fault of the newspaper owners. It was the fault of the unions. The people should have been fed the information, and they were not. On Thursday morning the newspapers were still against it. This morning they want a compromise. These are the people who are supposed to give a lead. They blame the politicians and say we are not consistent. We are a hell of a sight more consistent than that.

We have had the Fianna Fáil Party for the Provos. Three months ago for six weeks running The Irish Press were backing the Provos and now they are for the Government. I wonder why. Did the whip come from here? I do not know whether it was for political reasons or for reasons connected with circulation.

The Minister for Finance mentioned the case of a journalist who gave information which would not be printed. I wonder have we got to that stage. I do not often agree with Deputy Blaney. I admire his ability but I think he has turned the wrong way. He has gone pro-IRA and I am against them. He said this Bill was introduced because Stephenson or Stiofáin, or whatever you call him, was put in jail. Because of that there was an uproar and this Bill was brought in. If that man decides to go on hunger strike I cannot stop him. As Deputy Browne said, there are many other people on hunger strike. Nobody bothers about those who are on hunger strike down in Portlaoise. While people are marching up and down here worrying about him, what is happening to the 30 or 40 people who were maimed in the Abercorn?

I have known the Minister for Finance for a long time. I stood with him in Dublin North-East when it was a five-seater. I have a tremendous respect for him, while I disagree with him politically. Yesterday he came in here and stooped to sewer politics. He should have been defending the Bill or explaining it to us, but he spent his time attacking Fine Gael and chopping them. The last time Fianna Fáil did this, they did it to hide their own problems. That was just shortly before the Arms Trial. They said Fine Gael were split down the middle and, within a week, four of them were gone.

The Minister for Finance mentioned a newspaper report, a garbled report untrue in toto, and he added to it and threw it across at us here. What he was really doing was trying to put Fine Gael in the position that they were objecting to this Bill for party politics and, in fact, worse, that somebody in Fine Gael was trying to take over, which is untrue and wrong.

I say now to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Colley, that the Fianna Fáil Party are using this Bill solely for party political gain, not in the interests of Ireland. The talk around the House now is, "We will win". That is the only reason why Fianna Fáil are pressing this Bill. I should like to warn the Taoiseach that it is my solemn belief that he will be beaten. I do not agree with the papers. The former Prime Minister in England, Mr. Wilson, thought he would canter home a couple of years ago. He was beaten. Things looked better for him than they do for the Taoiseach. Many young people are influencing their parents. We have had the case of the television authority being sacked. They were sacked and replaced by Fianna Fáil men and a Labour man—I do not know whether he is in Labour; he is Fianna Fáil. Last night I was with a man outside the House who had taken too much to drink. Another man asked, "What will you do with him? Put him on the board of Telefís Éireann. You do not need any qualifications for that".

This Bill was commented upon in the North of Ireland. Everybody was against it, including Captain Brooke. He was not much help to us down here. The one man who was for it was Bill Craig.

The speech of the Minister for Finance, Deputy Colley, yesterday was despicable, trying to change the truth. Every party in this country is for law and order. Let that go on the record and let it be published abroad by the newspapers. There may be individual exceptions but the parties overall are for law and order. I cannot guarantee that 100 per cent of Fianna Fáil but Labour I am certain of because they have come out openly since 1922. So are 99 per cent of the people for law and order. This law and order should be guaranteed without taking away the rights of the individual. The only difference between the parties at the moment on this Bill is that we think it is taking away the rights of the individual and Fianna Fáil do not. There is the old saying about Fianna Fáil looking into their own heart to discover what Ireland wants. They might find to the contrary. We should get a formula for changing the law whereby the three parties could back the Bill to implement it. If there were an agreed Bill, any subversive organisation would have to pack up and go because they would know they were finished. They would know that no authority would exist in the State but the elected Government. In the North there are various parties and they disagree.

I am not thinking about whether I am in Dáil Éireann or not. If the Government want this vote there will be an escalation of violence throughout the country because the more repressive the law the more reaction you will get against it. If the Government let this go to a vote and if they go to the country, I am telling you—it is on the Taoiseach's shoulders—there will be two or three persons killed and the chances are that they will be Fianna Fáil. I do not want anybody killed while standing for election but I am afraid that will happen. O.K., you will canter home. That is a great thing. You will leave civil war behind you or, if not civil war, at best, you will get martial law. Every country that has had to fight for its independence has ended up with a military dictatorship or a dictator. At least in Ireland we have a democracy. I doubt if we will have it if this Bill goes through. We are a democracy and I hope that that position will not be changed.

If the Taoiseach wants to put the country into turmoil, let him go ahead. In my view, section 3 (2) is diabolical and should be deleted forthwith. In the South in the last 15 years great strides have been made. Trade unions, employers, Government and Opposition had a lot to do with it. There has been co-operation between unions and employers and in some cases at least there has been recognition of the employee as an individual, not in all cases but there has been a movement towards this. If we get this election with guns in it, it will put us back 20 years, not only economically and in tourism. Deputy P.J. Burke said it speaking as a Fianna Fáil TD, I say it as an individual, that we should think of Ireland and forget party politics. I do not care about the results of the election. I will be in to win but if I lose I shall not die but I would hate to see an election where guns would come to the fore. We need the co-operation of all parties and the Government have got that in regard to the North of Ireland from Labour and Fine Gael. We need the co-operation of the three parties, not one individual party, to maintain law and order.

Since we all agree on the question of the maintenance of law and order, why should one party say that they have the God-given right in regard to law and order when up to that point they had not bothered about it? We should now agree on a policy for law and order. Any differences should be in regard to economic, industrial and social policy. This is what we should be discussing in the Dáil. One party should not try to get the better of the other. I will hardly gain any votes by praising a Deputy of another party who happens to be in my constituency, but in all fairness to Deputy Cruise-O'Brien it must be said that the Government are now coming around to his way of thinking. As a businessman who has many premises in Dublin I am aware of the possibility of losing business as a result of my opposition to these measures, but I cannot support them because they would escalate the violence. I would be sorry to see any Opposition party going down. In the case of our own party my vanity would be hurt rather than my pocket because my salary amounts to only £400 after the deduction of tax. However, I do not think we will go down as a result of our stand on this issue. If Fianna Fáil are again the cause of civil war in this country, let that be on their heads.

It is not my intention to plead with this Government, who are implacable in their determination to introduce this Bill almost in the fourth year of this Dáil. It is not my intention to ask these defenders of law and order to please have mercy on the Opposition, to please defer an election. If the Government are saying to the Opposition almost in Lloyd George terms: "Accept this Bill or else the consequence will be an immediate and terrible election", I am saying to the Government "Let us have the election." If it is the Government's belief that there is surefire victory for them in such an election, let us test the issue.

This Bill has been named the IRA Bill by the media but we could not accept it in any sense because our fundamental position is that the existing law is not being applied by this Government and that the only problem that has worsened the security position and led to the growth of the illegal organisations, has been the cowardice and the lack of political will on the part of the Government to enforce the laws they have.

As we look at the Bill we cannot understand how the Minister for Justice can say that the Bill does not transfer the onus of proof to the defendant. In God's name we cannot see how such a statement could be made in all seriousness by the Minister when we look at sections, such as section 3, subsection (2) (b), which reads that

In paragraph (a) of this subsection "conduct" includes omission by the accused person to deny published reports that he was a member of an unlawful organisation, but the fact of such denial shall not by itself be conclusive.

The Minister says that this simply admits such statement as evidence, but what weight is to be attached to such evidence? In any ordinary court the evidence is brought in by the chief superintendent and the statement shall be evidence that the person accused was then such a member. This is not normal admissibility of evidence. It attaches great weight to the evidence of the superintendent and, as has been asked during the debate, what kind of cross-examination could lead to the displacing of evidence coming from such a source in any trial. In practical terms it transfers the onus of proof to the accused. Therefore, the golden thread throughout our criminal law, whereby a person is innocent until proved guilty, is set at nought by this Bill. How can the Government expect co-operation from any Opposition in relation to such measures. They do not need one extra comma in the existing legislation to enable them to enforce the law.

Such has been the cowardice of the Government during the past three years, such has been their nurturing of the only thing animating the party— that is, the sustaining of political support in every constituency—that they have not acted at any stage except simply to buttress and save their seats in the Twenty-six Counties. During that period there was rich game for any politician in the South who wished to stroke Twenty-six County susceptibility, who wished to raise Twenty-six County passions and prejudices on the unity question. The Government charged with grave responsibility during that time have played that game throughout. I would lay at the door of the Government the necessity for introducing special courts because this necessity arose from their cowardly silence. Although the special courts act on the usual rules of evidence, the departure of the jury is an impairment in the carrying out of justice. It is a diminishing of the existing system.

Last summer I appeared on a television programme in Belfast with Mr. Paisley and he made the charge that we had to bring in special courts because we could no longer trust juries. What lead did the Government give during that time to the civil juries of this country? How many Ministers, before Christmas 12 months, spoke out on the menace of the anti-democratic organisations, the illegal groups? We had careful statements from them. For instance, we heard the Minister for Finance telling the IRA to stand aside. Such were the statements that were wrung from the lips of these reluctant Ministers who are now here in full strength on the side of law and order as if they had invented the terms.

This is no IRA Bill as we see it, although the Government and their supporters may say so. The Bill is a threat to the liberty of every ordinary man and woman in the country. We cannot trust this executive with the extraordinary power demanded in this measure. The Bill is framed deliberately to raise the temperature in the country and to provoke opposition. It is a scaremongering Bill. Let us look at section 3, subsection (1) (b) where we are told that "conduct" includes omission by the accused person to deny published reports that he was a member of an unlawful organisation, but that the fact of such denial shall not by itself be conclusive. If the daily journal in some small town in Bangladesh were to report that I am a member of an illegal organisation and if I do not happen to hear it, it would be possible that some touring Minister might get a translation of the journal and have me brought before the courts. These are the absurd provisions of this Bill. If I am not tuned in to the happenings in Bangladesh, I suppose my omission to deny the charge would also be laid in evidence against me. Suppose, for example, that I speak about the necessity for regional Government in this country—certain organisations have been talking on that topic recently as if they invented the concept—is anybody to say that this is a reasonable inference that at a particular time I was a member of an unlawful organisation? The test is if one is able to connect outlandish and absurd situations with clauses in this Bill it should surely be proof of its ineffective drafting and its unsatisfactory nature.

The Bill is designed also to label, as we have seen speaker after speaker from the Government benches do, opponents of the Bill as supporters of illegal organisations. It is an outlandish charge but I suppose with the industry and the diligent application of Members opposite in the approaching election some of it may be made stick. The Government and their advisers may be making a mistake there. I have trust in the good sense of the ordinary people and I believe we can answer that charge and get rid of that smear in the approaching general election campaign. I do not rule out the possibility that we can bring the attention of people back in this election campaign to prices, housing and economic difficulties.

It is not an impossible task and I warn the Government not to be too sure of the result of this election about which they think they are so confident. The Government should not be too confident about it. We have all seen faces in this House glowing in anticipation of a certain result when a referendum or an election is held. The ballot box hides mystery and produces strange results. I am confident that when we expose, as we will up and down the country, the repugnant features of this Bill the people will give their verdict against this Bill.

I will suspend judgment as to the outcome. I am not saying that the issue is the most advantageous to the Opposition because it was designed as a trap for them but I am confident that in an election campaign, and with a consistent approach by the Opposition to the repugnant features of the Bill, followed by a strategy to bring before the electorate the real problems, we can, in fact, face the Government and get a satisfactory result.

The Government, of course, may rely on the benign figure of the Taoiseach who has a most attractive reputation to go with the election campaign that this Bill is designed to lead into. He has a most comforting and consoling reputation for such a Bill and such an issue. It is up to the Opposition to talk clearly, calmly and without propaganda about the elements in this Bill and the threat it imposes for the liberty of every man and woman in this country. We have seen the ultimate in political cynicism in the course of the debate on this Bill. We see the very people charged with law and order in this State over the last three years who did not live up to their responsibilities come now with this nightmarish measure saying they are so anxious to catch up on the chores and the duties they did not live up to and looking for support for this Bill. How many of these Ministers at various times in the last three years condemned the private armies? I am not narrowing this charge down to the usual few referred to in this connection. I say that in 1969 and the period after 1970 that I know from conversations in this House that there were Parliamentary Secretaries and Ministers, who are still Ministers, who were encouraging groups in the North in the idea that an armed campaign in the North could lead to results leading to unity. Those people are in good standing with the people opposite who are now seeking to impose law and order.

One is doing one's bit for Ireland.

One is led to the conclusion that the proper enforcement of this Bill would lead to the jailing of the majority of the Members of the present Government. If Members opposite are acting in conscience on this Bill they should voluntarily go forth to the 23 chief superintendents and make their statements if there is any honesty left in them. From what we have heard in the last couple of days they are the very paragons of honesty in this country at the moment.

We had sad experience of running election campaigns on the Communist smear. This will be the Provo smear. The irony will be that the people attempting to apply the green paint are the very people whose actions led to major bloodshed. They encouraged people to think that a vain effort at armed insurrection and an armed campaign could lead to unity. These are the very people now wrapping the flag of law and order around themselves.

There is a trap, as I said, set for the Opposition by the Government in the Bill. We are giving the Government the opportunity to brand all of us who vote against this Bill as Provos. That is the grand opportunity we are giving this Government. Just as sometimes there is no choice for a Government but to take decisions which do not advance their own political fortunes—if the Government are worth their salt they have to shrug off that unfortunate choice and take the path which leads to serving all the people of this country—so also there is a time for an Opposition to refuse to compromise. An Opposition must, in fact, with their eyes open, walk into a trap set by a Government, when they have no other choice.

That is our position. We will be smeared as Provos. The Bill is designed to provoke opposition and as we see in brutal contributions here from Members of the Government the issue is that you are either for the IRA or you are for democracy. I say to the Government: "Unleash the Provo millionaires who have supported you in the past. Let their cash flow out into the campaign in this approaching general election. Let us see how this issue will be settled. If your advisers in Mount Street say that this is a good issue let us see what the result will be. This plan hatched in Mount Street suggests that it will be a sure success for you but I doubt that". It is now up to all the people in the Opposition not to be cowardly in the face of this smear. We can answer it and our record over the past three years is there for everybody to see.

Who are the people in this House who are not for upholding law and order? The majority of those in the benches opposite are the people who for the past three years have prepared the terrible situation which is now being exploited by them for election purposes. This Government have at all times only considered their political fortunes in the Twenty-Six Counties. They considered that to be the touchstone of their existence. They have abided by that principle in terms of their treatment of the Northern question. They refused to declare openly what their plans were to get unity by consent and agreement. They refused to deal with the Opposition on an equal basis to get a united approach from this House on the matter of unity. They displayed no courage on the Northern question. They have this week shown how lacking in courage they were in the light of the tiny items they are putting before the people in the referendum. They are shrouding all their work on the North in secrecy, refusing to be open with the Unionists who may be interested in joining in conversations with us.

The Government have again in this measure considered solely their own political interests. They have judged the time to be right, in terms of their own electoral fortunes, that this issue would be the best issue on which to keep the electorate off the real issues affecting ordinary people up and down the country, the cost of living, jobs and houses. They have, by this measure, made a football, a political plaything of liberty and the fundamental institutions of democracy. They have given joy to these people.

I have never seen how the unity of this country can be advanced by the fall of democracy in the South, and I see the imposition of this Bill as an inroad into the democratic institutions we have, as an attack on liberty from within by the Government set down here who are nominally saying to the people "We are out to get the IRA", when in fact they are attacking the rights of the ordinary people. They are therefore giving joy to the most reactionary Unionists and dismaying any people in the North who are seeking a peaceful settlement based on unity, consent and agreement.

Take this very debate and the manner in which Fianna Fáil have approached it. Their speeches from the very outset have not been addressed to the terms of the Bill. They have been reaching out to the chapel gates which they will be traversing this very weekend. Take the case of the Minister for Finance. In the entire course of his speech, he ignored the Bill, but he takes on the leader of the Labour Party. All I can say is when we look at the record of this Dáil, we find on the Government side silence for a great number of years. On our side, whatever may be said about us, we spoke up at a time when it was necessary, as we felt, but unpolitical. We did it deliberately, knowing that it was unpolitical, and with no apologies about it being unpolitical; but we felt it was important to speak out if we were going to be faithful to the complexities of the unity question. That always involved the challenge of unpopularity in the South. We always knew that and we knew it was not good politics, that it is never good politics to attempt to get unity by consent and agreement and to speak out faithfully in this Assembly in Dublin on the complexities of that question.

The people opposite, always on a Twenty-six County basis taking refuge in cowardly silence in years past, now come out clamouring for law and order with this measure; but Deputy Colley made this attack on Deputy Corish and accused the Labour Party of sheltering "Provos". I would refer the House to the policy agreed by the Labour Party in Wexford, which was long before the Health initiative, where in democratic session we met and considered the great issues of violence and unity and came down solidly in favour of unity based on consent and agreement. Did the Fianna Fáil Party in any of their well-advertised Ard Fheiseanna over the past three years debate this issue openly and honestly with their cumainn? No, they were involved in that period of fighting about who should be in charge of the loot over the past three or four years, fighting over one or other alibi of their court appearances over the past three or four years. These were the issues discussed at the various Fianna Fáil Ard Fheiseanna. We could have been silent if we had wished to adopt a similar practice, could have passed on the other side. We did not do so and we have no regrets for not doing so.

To conclude, because other pressing business calls all of us, Yeats in some poem said "I have never despaired of the people", nor do I. If the media wizards attached to the high command in Mount Street, aided as I have said by the millionaire revolutionaries of whom we have seen a lot over the past two or three years, if it is their considered opinion, obviously based on the sensitive messages brought back by their various analyses over the past week—nobody can tell me that it is in a spirit of induction that we have this decision to go to the country; I would say it is based on very careful samples mathematical of the various income groups in various parts of the country and based on this computer intelligence—the Hatch Street command are ready to go to battle. All right; we will join issue with you and let us see. We make no boasting prognostications about the result but I will say to the Government this: beware that you have not made an error, beware that the reputation of your leader may not suffer in this campaign and beware of the commonsense of people in the general election.

It is significant that there are no Fianna Fáil speakers offering.

They are all ashamed to speak.

We expected and the House was entitled to expect many Fianna Fáil speakers to come in here and justify the Bill to the people of Ireland. Instead, the few Fianna Fáil speakers who did come in were not particularly interested in explaining this Bill or its effects to the people of Ireland. There was a particular speech for which I was present which saddened me and lowered the status of this House in no uncertain fashion. The Minister for Finance came in here as a senior Minister and we were entitled to hear from him a defence of this Bill but we got no defence of this Bill from him. Instead, we got a guttersnipe's speech, a speech worthy of a street corner boy, and it was sickening to listen to him. It was sad to sit here and to feel that a senior member of the Cabinet could lower himself to make such an irrelevant speech on such a very serious occasion.

I quote the Minister briefly. He said, according to The Irish Times of today:

Deputies who went through the lobbies to vote against the Bill were giving aid and comfort to the enemies of Irish democracy.

I wish to refute that statement. It is a calculated and misleading statement. Who in this House can seriously put forward the argument that anyone in Fine Gael ever gave succour to the members of the IRA or any other subversive organisation? Who can seriously put that forward? Nobody, because the history of the Fine Gael Party is well known. The IRA and many other subversive organisations are anathema to the Fine Gael Party, always have been and always will, but that is not the case with the Fianna Fáil Party. I will pursue that matter at a later stage.

This House knows full well and the people of Ireland know full well that the duplicity of the Fianna Fáil Party in the past four years has led to a very unsatisfactory state of affairs in our Republic and has certainly led to and helped to create in no small way the disastrous situation which has developed in Northern Ireland. The silence on the benches of Fianna Fáil in the past few years is shocking for any democracy. They have not only by their words but by their actions supported the Provisional IRA in their activities in the North of Ireland. How can we trust the Fianna Fáil Party to implement this legislation, obnoxious though it be, if they have not implemented legislation already on the Statute Book, and there is sufficient legislation on the Statute Book, to put down any subversive organisation, but the Fianna Fáil Party for devious reasons have refused to see the law to be implemented in the courts of this country.

The Taoiseach has said that the law was found over the past three years to be inadequate or insufficient. I refute and challenge that statement. It is the type of speech which has been coming from Fianna Fáil speaker after speaker. It is a misleading statement and one calculated in no small way to mislead the people on this vital matter. The Fianna Fáil Party have never seriously gone about suppressing the IRA in recent years and they will never seriously do so because there are too many skeletons in the cupboard. It has been said here today that the Fianna Fáil Party was indeed the godfather of the IRA. Certainly, the present Government and their supporters on those benches are the godfathers of the Provisional IRA. It is very important that this should be stated in this House and that the people should know this because we are facing an election. The people should also know that it is possible to beat Fianna Fáil in this House and at the hustings.

The Northern Ireland situation is so sad that one is reluctant to speak about it except on a very serious level but I can safely say that a large part of the blame for the situation in Northern Ireland in the last few years has been the narrow interpretation of republicanism expounded by the Fianna Fáil party since the establishment of this Republic. It is largely they who have been responsible for the sad situation in Northern Ireland. Down through the years that party have done little to reconcile Catholics and non-Catholics in the North or to reconcile Northern Ireland with our Republic. The attitude of that party has been to divide the two parts of the country. De Valera himself has been the arch contriver of this division. He is now President of this country.

The President should not be referred to in a derogatory way.

He is speaking of the past.

Very little was done down through the years by former Taoiseachs of the Fianna Fáil Party to help ease together the two ways of life in our country. Instead, a very narrow and introvert line of republicanism has been the catch-cry of the Fianna Fáil Party and has been the cause of this sad division. I ask you to remember, when we have the election, that our country is still as divided as it was 50 years ago. We, as a Parliament, and we, as a nation, must bear our share of the guilt for not trying to reconcile in a positive way the non-Catholic and Catholic ideologies.

The 1937 Constitution has been a source of much criticism. It is a document which is most unacceptable to non-Catholics, both within the State and outside it. What have the Government party done to change the Constitution? It is now 35 years old. Surely it is time to put a new Constitution before the people, a Constitution which would not divide our country but would in some small way help towards the reunification of our people. Despite the machinery available, despite a number of appeals to change the Constitution, there is only one relatively minor attempt—I do not know what will happen to that if there is a general election—being made in relation to two sections of Article 44.

A Constitution alone will not unify our country. It must be backed up by action, and the action of the Fianna Fáil Government in relation to law and order is deplorable. This has been only too evident in the last few years. I have said that there is no new legislation required to suppress and contain subversives within the Republic. I stand over that statement. Are the Government aware, or do they care, that it took approximately 1,500 gardaí to protect Leinster House on Wednesday night, supported, I understand, by Army personnel, because there was a demonstration held only 100 yards from the gate? That demonstration called for, among other things, the downfall of this Parliament. Are the Government not aware, or do they even want to note, that under section 28 of the Offences against the State Act, 1939, there is a prohibition on meetings within a half-mile of Leinster House? What moves were made last Wednesday night to implement that law? I am not aware of any. This is a current example of how the Fianna Fáil Government turn a blind eye on matters of vital importance to the integrity of this Parliament and of the Government themselves. I should like the Minister to answer that. What new legislation is required to apprehend the gunmen who opened fire in a civilian hospital last weekend? None. No new legislation is required in relation to any person who holds a gun in this country. Yet, they were able to break into the Mater Hospital and fire on gardaí. We have frequently seen on television volleys fired by people in semi-military uniforms over graves and monuments. What action was taken against them? What effect do the Government think this kind of action has on young people? The blind eye has been turned too often.

I should like to refer to another matter covered by the 1939 Act concerning interference with military or other employees of the State. Section 9 (2) states:

Every person who shall incite or encourage any person employed in any capacity by the State to refuse, neglect, or omit (in a manner or to an extent calculated to dislocate the public service or a branch thereof) to perform his duty or shall incite or encourage any person so employed to be negligent or insubordinate (in such manner or to such extent as aforesaid) in the performance of his duty shall be guilty of a misdemeanour and shall be liable on conviction thereof to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.

How many times have gardaí been abused, challenged and encouraged to leave their posts? In this Act of Parliament there is sufficient power to apprehend and to convict people who are guilty of these activities but precious little has been done by the Fianna Fáil Government. A blind eye was turned because it suited the ghost of narrow republicanism that exists in the ranks of Fianna Fáil.

Section 27 (1) of the Offences against the State Act states:

It shall not be lawful to hold a public meeting which is held or purports to be held by or on behalf of or by arrangement or in concert with an unlawful organisation or which is held or purports to be held for the purpose of supporting, aiding, abetting, or encouraging an unlawful organisation or of advocating the support of an unlawful organisation.

Subsection (5) states:

In this section the expression "public meeting" includes a procession...

How many public meetings which have called for the downfall of the Dáil have been held? We have read of countless such meetings and we have seen them on television calling for anarchy. Why has section 27 not been used against people who took part in these public meetings? The reason is that it has not suited the Government Party. I am sorry Deputy Haughey has left the House as I wish to refer now to Volume 11 of the reports of the Committee of Public Accounts, for Tuesday, 9th February, 1971, because this matter relates specifically to the Bill before the House. I asked a question of Chief Superintendent John Fleming and I got the following reply:

I know that Mr. Haughey had a meeting with one of the leading members of the IRA and he also promised him £50,000.

That is the sworn testimony of a chief superintendent who was head of the Special Branch. That man had nothing to gain by making such an allegation; it is possible he put his own future at risk by making that statement.

In the context of the Bill before the House, one wonders what Deputy Haughey might say if Chief Superintendent Fleming decided to go on the stand before a court and, under section 3 (2) of the present Bill, to make the same allegation? Might it not be concluded from that statement that Deputy Haughey was a member of the IRA? One wonders if Deputy Haughey would think that restricts his personal liberty or offends his rights under the Constitution. Deputy Haughey is still a member of Fianna Fáil—in fact he is a vice-president of the party, but he is also the man of whom the Taoiseach said there was a taint of suspicion. This is a clear example of the present structure of the Fianna Fáil Party and it is sad that it was necessary to make this accusation. Nevertheless, it is necessary to put it on the record.

With regard to the special fund set up by the Government in 1969 in relation to the North of Ireland, members of the committee which were set up to handle the money were personally sanctioned by the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Haughey. One of those people is known to be a member of the Provisional IRA. We know that a sum of £40,000 of the money voted by this House was not spent as the House intended. It has been alleged that a large part of the money was given to the Provisional IRA. This is a sad reflection on the Government. Nevertheless, it is important that this fact should be noted in the House now that we are facing an election.

It is very important that the people should know exactly the composition of the Government party who are engaging in a smear campaign, an unjustified campaign of vilification against the Opposition parties, unjustified because the record of the Fine Gael Party is one of being 100 per cent for the administration of law and order and for the suppression of illegal organisations. That was not questioned here when I put it to the House a few minutes ago. It has been alleged by one Fianna Fáil speaker after another that if we vote against this Bill we are helping illegal organisations. That argument is untenable and it is important that the House should understand that. We have in Fine Gael always been in favour of law and order. Also, we have always tried to maintain a democratic balance in regard to individual freedom and personal liberty which is important in any democratic society. It is very important that every citizen should feel that his personal liberty will be protected in the courts of law and that individual freedom to express opinions and attend meetings will be protected by the Government and the courts. If that balance is unduly upset, as happened in Northern Ireland, the reaction can be worse than the intention, or indeed the performance under the policy adopted by the Northern Ireland Government, to deprive citizens of their basic civil rights. That has been proved in the recent history of Northern Ireland.

The facts are clear. Fianna Fáil have reneged on their duty to preserve law and order in the past four years and have turned the blind eye time and again to cases which merited prosecution. Many prosecutions were stopped by phone-calls from Fianna Fáil TDs to the Minister's office, or by private approaches to senior police officers. Perhaps in some cases only minor offences were involved; yet every attempt by politicians which succeeds in perverting, in however small a way, the course of justice damages the fabric of our society and our system of democracy. However small the offence, whether it is unlawful parking, drunken driving, or a hit-and-run case, every successful attempt to pervert the course of justice is damaging to democracy. This has been going on under Fianna Fáil for many years. But a time must come when if such activities continue they will eat through the fabric of society and we shall become a sick society. Then we shall have a proper fear for our democracy. Fianna Fáil have been neglectful of their duty in the real implementation of the law and the proper use of democracy; they do not give a hang for it. It is sad, but it is a fact.

What have Fianna Fáil done about the things that affect the everyday lives of our people in the last few years? We now have over 70,000 people unemployed, and the highest rate of inflation in western Europe. The problem of solving these practical problems was neglected by Fianna Fáil who did not even attempt to resolve them. They have been far too fond of trying to ensure their own perpetuation in office.

On the Estimate for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs earlier this year I spoke of the corruption and political patronage that have been the life blood of the Fianna Fáil Party through the years, jobs for the boys. We had the very recent example of the dismissal of the RTE Authority and their replacement by a Fianna Fáil authority; by definition it must be Fianna Fáil or sympathetic to Fianna Fáil.

The Deputy is getting away from the Bill.

I shall merely refer in a general way to political patronage and corruption because every Fianna Fáil man who gets a job because he is a Fianna Fáil man is a damaging instrument to our democracy. This eats through the fabric of society and the spirit of our people because every citizen is equally entitled to a job, to fair play and equality before the law. This has not been the case because Fianna Fáil are not a truly democratic party. In the famous phrase of one of their leading Ministers it is a slightly constitutional party. That is quite so and has indeed been proved. Because of the neglect of the Fianna Fáil Party in recent years and their refusal to see that the law is carried out in full, because the police have been hindered in carrying out their duties, not by people outside the Government or outside the Oireachtas, but by instruments of the Government, we have reached a very serious situation.

Courts have been denuded of juries in certain cases; convicted people have been removed to military detention camps and this Bill has now been introduced. It is important to understand why: it is because in the last few years the Government have not taken sufficient steps to ensure that subversive and illegal organisations were kept down. It is important that the people should understand that we in Fine Gael cannot trust this Government to implement this legislation because we know they have not seen to it that existing legislation has been used to the full. We know it and the people of Ireland know it and no matter what the Fianna Fáil members say we are prepared to be judged by the people on our stand in relation to this Bill, because our stand is a democratic stand and one that is in keeping with the true aims of democracy.

The Government should have been agreeable to amendments to section 3 (2) of the Bill which provides that the evidence of a chief superintendent shall be admissible in a court. An accused person is entitled to rebut that evidence and to be given a good deal of freedom in so doing. The citizens of this State have a right under the Constitution to attend meetings but section 4 puts them in danger of being put in jail for attending such meetings. There should have been a time limit set on this Bill. A time limit of 12 months has been suggested. These were all reasonable amendments, and these were the minimum amendments we would have sought on Committee Stage. However, I am not a legal expert and I will leave it to a more senior member of the party well versed in this matter to deal with it.

The Minister was not amenable to accepting amendments or to allowing the pressure of democracy in this Parliament to be seen to be working. It would not be a defeat for the Government to accept amendments. It would have been an exercise in democracy, but the arrogant, jackboot attitude of the Minister, which is so like that of his fellow Ministers, means that the matter will now be put to the people. We have no hesitation in going before the people because we have always stood for law and order. We shall explain to the people that we have no confidence in this Government who have not stood for law and order but who have, when they found it necessary, perverted the course of justice.

I am confident that my party will do very well in the coming general election because we can hold our heads high in respect of our record in Government. The people, in their wisdom, will put out this Government who have done a great disservice to the people by introducing this Bill.

I have listened for many hours to speeches on this Bill. The Bill has been gone into very thoroughly by speakers on every side, but to me this Bill is simply an election Bill. The Bill has been designed to bring about an election and to create the climate in which an election could be held on this issue of law and order.

The media have labelled this "the IRA Bill", and this is a very convenient title for the Government. It is, I believe, the title the Government would have chosen for the Bill if it had not been an amendment of a particular Bill.

Because of the sections which make the Bill probably one of the most heinous pieces of legislation that has been introduced in the last three years, it has united every section of the Opposition. People who have absolutely nothing in common except that they sit on the Opposition benches have united to oppose this Bill. The provisions in the Bill were designed so that this would happen. The Government are being made to appear the good boys—the man on the white horse fighting against the bad guy on the black horse—the maintainers of law and order as in the old Wild West. Anybody who does not agree with them is for the bad guy, for the gunman and the bomber. If he opposes the Bill on the basis of any section that may be in it this does not make any difference to the Government. He finds himself conveniently labelled as being in favour of the IRA, being in favour of the bomb and the bullet.

The Minister for Finance, Deputy Colley, in a very poor speech last night, labelled the Opposition as irresponsible for opposing this Bill. I say that the Government are irresponsible in introducing this Bill and in fighting an election on the Bill, if necessary, and I do not think there is any doubt in anyone's mind in this House but that there will be an election on this Bill. The most disappointed man in this House would be the Taoiseach if he were to win a vote on the Bill, and I doubt if he will even allow a vote to be taken on the Bill in case he does win the vote. I think he has decided right now to go to the country and to try to label the Opposition parties as the parties of violence, the parties who support the IRA against the democratic institutions of this State.

The Minister for Finance charges the Opposition with irresponsibility, but surely if the Government themselves were so responsible in the last three years they could have introduced this Bill on several occasions. I was a member of an all-party delegation that went to Britain in 1970. While we were there we were telephoned by our respective Whips in the dead of night to return home immediately, that there was a Government crisis, that the institutions of the State were in danger and we must return home for discussions in the House. On that occasion the danger to the institutions of the State did not come from irresponsible people from across the Border or in our midst but from the Government benches. On that occasion and after that occurrence, no Bill like this was introduced.

Last November there was a story in the Sunday papers that there was a move by certain elements in the country to kidnap certain Ministers. There was a threat of internment. On that occasion that threat was not because of any kidnapping. No such thing was likely to happen. The threat was to make the House agree to the Prices and Incomes Bill. An attempt was made to get the Opposition to accept the Prices and Incomes Bill or else at the behest of the Taoiseach internment would be introduced. Surely that was another indication of Government irresponsibility. We had the Forcible Entry and Occupation Bill. An attempt was made on another occasion to introduce the Criminal Justice Bill. All these things were done by the Government to secure by the backdoor method one or other of their objectives in the economic or social fields.

The Government are suggesting backdoor internment in this Bill. They know well that the Opposition could not accept that. This is simply for election effect. It is a great piece of stage management to give the impression that the country is about to be overtaken by irresponsible elements. Over the last few evenings as Deputies left the House they saw a huge number of police and military surrounding the House. This was arranged to give the impression that the Government were in imminent danger. The television cameras were in the area and they could not help but pick up the huge number of military and gardaí in the precincts of the House and outside it.

Last year after the deaths in Derry as a result of brutality by the British Army many of us took part in a parade organised by the trade union movement. People from all walks of life paraded on that day to the British Embassy by way of O'Connell Street, Grafton Street, Nassau Street and Clare Street. The shops were closed but many had windows damaged by petrol bombs used by irresponsible elements in the community. There was no move then to introduce this Bill or to eliminate those elements. When we arrived at the British Embassy those of us who genuinely wanted to show our feelings by joining in the day of national mourning expected to walk by the embassy to let those inside report to their superiors the feelings of such a large number of the community. Irresponsible elements took over that march and had their plans well laid. They destroyed the embassy. There were more police on the Gallery last night listening to Deputy Blaney than there were in the precincts of the British Embassy that day. Certain gentlemen were allowed to place coffins outside the premises. Others were allowed to enter Merrion Square and throw petrol bombs and any fool would know that the coffins were incendiary devices— boxes loaded with rags and petrol— and when the petrol bombs hit them they went up in flames. One man was allowed to climb onto the building and break the window so that the bombs could be thrown into the embassy itself. There was little or no opposition to those people on that day. Some of us were disgusted at what happened.

On the last two nights we have seen hundreds of military and police protecting this House when there was little or no danger to it. Why were other places not protected in the past? Why was this Bill not introduced when those other occurrences happened? There was a greater threat to the democratic institutions of the State on those occasions. Irresponsible elements were heard to say that they wanted to march on Leinster House. I came back here and the House was guarded by two ushers with a chain and a padlock at the Merrion Square entrance. That was all the protection the House was getting on that occasion.

This has been stage-managed so that the country would be forced to believe that we were in imminent danger and that the Government needed this legislation and if it was not accepted the country would be asked to give the Fianna Fáil Government by their votes the right to bring in this Bill. It is the same sort of production as we have seen in the making of epic films like "Ben Hur" and "Quo Vadis." The Taoiseach will come in and dissolve this Dáil or suspend the sittings and over the weekend then dissolve it. If the Taoiseach thinks that the people of Wicklow or the people of Ireland will react in the same way as he can expect certain elements to react in this city, as they have done over the past few days, he will be surprised this time. We know that the Government cannot fight an election on any of the major issues facing the country at the moment. They cannot fight on the issues of the economy or the issues of social justice at this time. They would not dare to go to the country on those issues. Over 70,000 people are unemployed. Prices have gone sky-high since the introduction of VAT and since decimalisation. A convenient issue has to be found for the Government. They are running out of time. Economic experts have told them that an election on that basis would find them in the minority. The greatest threat is provided by the talks in progress between this party and the Fine Gael Party on a united front in the next election. This is really the thing that worries the Government. This has always worried the Government. In the last two elections the Opposition were not united in the ballot boxes but, on the next occasion, possibly next spring or next summer, there will be a united Opposition, or possibly much sooner and I contend that the real reason for the introduction of this Bill is an attempt to force an earlier election.

There is no great threat to the institutions of this State. We have enough law, enough repressive legislation, enough of the kind of thing that is in this Bill, to deal with any of the elements causing any problems in our community. The people will not accept the "backdoor internment" proposed in this Bill. When the media get around to it, they will not describe this as "the IRA Bill"; they will label it, as it should be labelled, the "backdoor internment Bill". Will the Government like to fight the issue on that basis? I can assure them that, if they think it will be a walk-over, I will be very glad if there is an election in the next few weeks and I will be glad that the constituency of Wicklow will cast a united vote against the Government on this Bill.

I am pleased to have this opportunity of expressing the view of a backbencher of our party. Because of our numbers we do not all of us always get an opportunity of talking on every measure that goes through the House. Indeed, we are sometimes taxed to that effect. I should like now to put my humble views on record. I am fully behind the decision of the Government in bringing in this Bill. I am at one with my party on this Bill. The Bill is necessary. A strong Bill, such as this Bill is, is essential to deal with a desperate situation. Our Minister for Justice, with his experience, and the experience of those who are best fitted to guide and advise him, knows that the law, as it exists at the moment, is not capable of dealing with these subversive elements, subversive elements which succeed in flouting the law and getting away with it. We all know this.

The arguments we have heard advanced on the opposite benches, particularly on the Fine Gael benches, as expounded by Deputy Cooney, appear to rest on the assumption that the law as it exists, if properly implemented, is capable of dealing with a threat posed by the enemies of this State. Deputy Cooney rather belaboured this argument in giving his side. His leader, or the man who up to lately was the leader of that party, did not seem so thoroughly convinced. The only difference I could see between the shadow Minister for Justice in Fine Gael and the real Minister for Justice is that the shadow Minister and his satellites are playing their traditional role of hurlers on the ditch who imagine that, if they got the opportunity—thank God, the people gave them that opportunity on only two occasions, and they were brief ones; they were very quickly demoted again to the sidelines—they could do wonders. The real Minister for Justice does not indulge in vague imaginings. He deals in realities.

We are the Government of the country and the first duty of any Government is to govern. Our Minister for Justice knows that there are loopholes in the law, loopholes we now intend to close. We have been asked why we did not spell out the loopholes, why we did not expose the chinks in the armour of the security of the nation. It should hardly be necessary to remark that this would be a very foolish thing to do because it would provide opportunities for those who wish to bring down the State. There is nothing as detrimental to the morale of any nation as charging a person, whom we all know in our hearts has committed an offence and who is a member of an illegal organisation, and then seeing that person go scot-free. We have had instances of people caught leaving the scene of a crime, the scene of a shooting incident, who, when they were caught, did not actually have guns on them, but whom we all knew were guilty, and yet we could not prove they were guilty.

Deputy Sherwin last night and Deputy Blaney this morning let their case rest on the allegation that there was no emergency here. I doubt if the people in Dundalk and the people in Dublin, where a bomb went off recently, would agree with that. I say that there is an emergency. There is intimidation of journalists and witnesses. There is picketing of courthouses. All that adds up to an emergency in my opinion. Garda and Army personnel in my constituency have been subjected to attack and to gross insults by those people who declare themselves the "People's Democracy". I am sure the Garda and the Army personnel involved in these incidents would agree that we have here a state of emergency. Only this week they were once more insulted. They were struck with stones and sticks and informed by the leaders of the "People's Democracy" that they would be back again for Christmas to ensure that both the Army and the police did not enjoy the festivities. It is essential that officials, be they clerks in a bank, postmen doing their rounds, Army or Garda personnel, be allowed to carry out their duties without hindrance. This they are not being allowed to do now.

We have had an extraordinary charge levelled at us by the Opposition. We have been charged with doing nothing for the past two years. Some speakers actually charged us with helping the Provisional IRA in their work. We are now told that the measures we propose to deal with the IRA and other subversive elements are too harsh. Can anyone explain to me why this remarkable change of heart should have come about? I should like an explanation of that if any of the Members on the Opposition Benches would care to give it to me.

We have, too, evidence of a remarkable political somersault in the Fine Gael Party. Indeed, the only one who did not as yet take part in the political acrobatics of that party is their late Leader. I would term him one of the few honest men on the opposite benches. I remember some years ago—I think it was Deputy Harte, if I am not mistaken—who referred to the then Deputy Kevin Boland as one of the few honest men on our benches. I hope history will not now repeat itself and that Deputy Cosgrave, as a result of these remarks of mine, will not follow in the path of Deputy Boland.

We have had the "doves of peace"—Deputy L'Estrange has been foremost amongst them—warning us about the drift to anarchy. On every occasion on which he could do so Deputy L'Estrange warned us about this and taxed us with allowing people to break the law with impunity. These "doves of peace" are now transformed into the mongrel foxes Deputy Cosgrave mentioned. Indeed, I think they have been transformed into vultures.

There is an emergency here. There was an emergency last Sunday in the Mater Hospital. After the events in that particular hospital, when the patient was transferred to the Curragh —a necessary step, in my opinion, for the safety of the person himself and of the other patients there—we had a clamour from the benches opposite and we were told that he should be transferred to an intensive care unit. I cannot for the life of me see the logic in this because, if a person sincerely decides that he wants to die no medical aid will avail him. Deputy O'Connell, who appears to have free and frequent access to the Provos on any and every occasion — more frequent access, maybe, than Deputy Corish would like—admitted he could not promise, if the patient, Mr. Stephenson, were changed to another hospital for more intensive care, there would not be another attempt to rescue him. I should mention here that the legal adviser to the leader of the Provisional IRA saw fit to refer to the General Military Hospital on the Curragh as an abattoir. That is a rather unusual statement from the legal adviser of a group of people who were prepared to turn the Mater Hospital into a slaughterhouse a short time before that.

Is there an abbatoir on the Curragh?

There is of course. We read today that they are happy with the services and the attention. They seem to be much happier today and to have changed their minds again. Such people who do not know their own minds from one day to another do not deserve mention. I know the military hospital on the Curragh. I know the staff and the doctors and nurses there. On one occasion I got treatment there, after an accident on the hurling field. I am confident that it conforms to the very best in any other military encampment.

Deputy O'Leary was very much taken up with thoughts of the forthcoming general election. He was confident, he said, that the judgment of the ordinary people of Ireland would vindicate them. I must admit that on this I am of the same mind as Deputy O'Leary. The ordinary people of Ireland I know want the Government to govern. They want the Government to enforce the law. I am confident that, if this Bill becomes law, as it will, when it is enacted, no decent law-abiding person has anything to fear from it. The people who have reason to fear this Bill are members of illegal organisations, subversive elements who want to undermine the foundations of the State. Whether they are provisional or Official IRA, or the various elements that latch on to them, I do not know. They are the people who have reason to fear this Bill.

I doubt the purity of the motives of many of these people. Some of them, I am sure, are sincere in wanting to see a united Ireland. Others, I am convinced—and they have expressed this view—are very interested in seeing the downfall of the State. They have announced that, since they have accomplished the downfall of the Northern State, they are now prepared to turn their attention here. I doubt, too, if the proceeds of the various bank raids and other coups have found their way into truly republican hands.

I have faith in the courts and the judges. I have faith in the integrity of the Garda. We have had evidence of their integrity over a long period, and more recently, too. I have not got a legally trained mind but I should like to refer briefly to section 3 (2) which seems to cause a lot of concern to the Opposition. This has been continuously misrepresented to such an extent that the people down the country, gullible people, have believed the misrepresentation. They are now asking me is it true that the evidence of a chief superintendent can send a person to jail. That is the propaganda that has been advanced.

And quite right, too.

The evidence of a chief superintendent will be evidence only. He will give that evidence and he will be subject to cross-examination.

Was the Deputy ever in court?

I was there as a visitor. Was the Deputy ever there as a visitor?

I was in court in connection with proceedings of some importance in which I beat the Government.

The chief superintendent's evidence will just be evidence. It will be weighed and decided. It will be decided beyond all reasonable doubt. If a judge in this country decides something beyond all reasonable doubt, I am satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that justice will be done. In this Bill we are proposing to deal with the subversive elements, whether they are IRA or tartan gangs, or whatever elements are enemies of this nation. We know on this side of the House what we want to do. There is no shallowness or insincerity about us. We know our minds on this. I will ask those opposite: "Have you decided what side you are on? Look around you and decide how it is that such strange bedfellows could find such common ground on this occasion."

For example?

The young tigers and the mongrel foxes have come together. Deputy L'Estrange who was so worried about the drift to anarchy, the different elements of the Labour Party and other fringe elements, Deputy Seán Sherwin who espouses the cause of the IRA, the standard-bearer of Aontacht Éireann, an imposter because Aontacht Éireann has yet to supply a Member to this House and the only reason he is there is that he is a renegade, and Deputies who were expelled from or left Fianna Fáil for some reason or other. They have now found common ground and the only reason they are uniting together is that they are against the party we represent. That is the only common ground they have.

Are the Government beaten?

I can assure the Deputy that we are not beaten.

What is all the fuss about?

There is no fuss. We have faith in the ordinary people. We want to pass a necessary law to curb our enemies and the Opposition have to decide now whether they want to do that or not.

The enemies of Fianna Fáil.

We want no favours. We ask for no favours. We make no compromise. We put our cards on the table. We withdraw nothing. We have told them what we want and we are ready, if the occasion demands it, to let the people judge us and to decide who is right and who is wrong. I am confident they will decide we are right.

I do not wish to speak at any great length because, if my information is right, it will not make much difference. In view of what Deputy Power has said, and particularly in view of what the Minister for Finance said last night, there is an obligation on me to speak personally on this issue. Before doing so, I should like to recall—and I take a certain amount of pride in this—that I have tried to be as responsible as any Deputy could be on this issue since 1969. I have tried to be an Irishman before being a politician. At times I felt I could have got bonuses in terms of votes by being a politician, but it was my opinion from the outset that this was a human conflict in the North of Ireland and that, if we seriously believed in trying to settle that conflict we must approach it by fair means and that, if we were to play our part, there was an obligation on us as elected representatives of the people to place before the elected Government of the day any information available to us which we believed would be of assistance to the Government in arriving at conclusions.

Having listened to the main speakers from the Government party yesterday evening, I have become completely disillusioned, because the message that came across to me loud and clear was that the Fianna Fáil Party were now using the Northern conflict for political ends. For the first time, the Northern conflict has been introduced into the political arena of the south. When the Minister for Finance suggested, as Deputy Power has just done, that any person who voted against this Bill was on the side of anarchy, I got up on a point of order and asked him was he seriously suggesting that I, as a Deputy who had spoken out against the IRA, and who had said in this House that I did not want to represent that type of society, was on the side of the Provisional IRA, because I was opposing repressive legislation.

Does any person in Donegal believe the Minister for Finance? Deputy Cunningham, who is sitting in the Taoiseach's seat, did not open his cheeper on this issue for the past three years. He does not know which way to run, whether in the Blaney direction, or the Lynch direction. Do not interrupt me. Let me say this. Deputy Cunningham will have an opportunity to follow me in this debate. I shall be glad to hear his views. Many people in this country, and particularly in North-East Donegal, want to know at this stage where does he stand.

And they do, and you are not telling the truth.

Am I not?

No. They do know perfectly well where I stand.

I say to Deputy Cunningham——

The Parliamentary Secretary.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government—we will give him his full title. I say to the Parliamentary Secretary that I believe in law and order and I stand for law and order.

And the Deputy is suggesting that I do not.

I have not said that. If the Parliamentary Secretary would listen to what I am saying, I am saying that his colleague, the Minister for Finance, who challenged his leader for the office of Taoiseach in 1967, suggested that any person who voted against this Bill was on the side of anarchy and lawlessness. That is what I am disputing. If the Parliamentary Secretary wishes to take the side of the Minister for Finance, then I will debate the matter with him. Does he wish to say that he does not stand on the same ground as Deputy Colley? Does he wish to reiterate and support what the Minister for Finance says: "that by virtue of the fact that you walk through the Division Lobby tonight"—I hope being beaten—"and support repressive legislation, the history of this country for the last 50 years will be rewritten?" Does he seriously suggest that history can be retold? Does he seriously suggest that society will forget that his party flirted with anarchy for the last 50 years, paraded with lawlessness and created the Provisional IRA? Does he seriously suggest that society will forget about this and does he go further and say that because of their misdeeds, I am to be condemned for opposing repressive legislation?

I plead not guilty to all those charges.

Do you? You have a very short memory. I bow to the attitude of the Fianna Fáil Party. They are slick manoeuvrers. They know how to con people, how to gull people. When Deputy Colley got up here yesterday evening he was using what I describe as political cosmetics.

The Minister for Finance.

The Minister for Finance, gorgeous George, was giving us all a face lift with his political cosmetics. He was sounding the bell of election politics. He was buying votes out of the political pond of Northern Ireland in order to be reelected. The matter is much more serious than that would imply. I do not wish it to be said that because I am going to vote—and vote I will— against the repressive measures, for reasons which Deputy Cunningham knows are valid, I recognise that the Official IRA, the Provisional IRA, the UDA, the UDF, are part of our society. It is a shame after 50 years of freedom for a Deputy to have to admit that, because none of us has ever tried to build a society which these people could identify with. I can say this much, that I will share the blame, I will carry the same amount of blame as any other Deputy of this party, for failing in this direction.

Recently someone said to me there were two types of Irish people alive today: there was the person who believed in violence and the person who believed in peace. What that person could not understand was that the person who believed in violence had the courage of his convictions to use violence but the person who believed in peace was not big enough to use peace.

We have had arguments from the Fianna Fáil benches. Deputy Power has just said that over the last 40 years Fianna Fáil have been in power except for two short breaks and he took pride in the fact that the Irish people had given an Opposition only two short trips before, as he suggested, being taken off the field and being replaced by substitutes. Let us take the 40 years that Deputy Power has been talking about. In what way has the Fianna Fáil Party lived up to its obligation of unification of the country? In what way have they tried to bridge the great divide North of the Border? They stand condemned, even in the eyes of the most moderate Protestant opinion North of the Border, for not trying to suppress violence. No, they encourage violence and they used the IRA at a time when they became a nuisance value to the Northern Protestant community many of whom—and make no mistake about this—are as good Irishmen as I am and by many standards much better. I am just the average one in this House—no better, no worse, than anyone else. You stand condemned in the eyes of the Northern moderate Protestant who, if he saw any identification with a united Ireland, would reach out and try to find a level of identification with us. You stand condemned because when he was being bombed and shot, when his children were being killed, when hate was being poured into his society, when he had no friends from any part of the British Isles, you did not do anything to stop the murder that was taking place in his society. For that, I do not think the Fianna Fáil Party can ever be forgiven by that Northern Irish community.

I wonder why this Bill was introduced. I know that people want law and order. I was speaking to constituents of mine, people who vote also for Deputy Cunningham, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. I had reasons not to be in the House. As I said yesterday evening, I do not have to put forward those reasons. I had an opportunity of mixing with people in North-East Donegal. I recognise their desire to have law and to have order. They, in their frustration, would be inclined to say, "Yes to your Bill. This is very necessary because society must be protected against subversion". I, too, fell into that trap and my first and immediate feeling was, "Yes, something has to be done to protect society against the anarchists". But, when we stand back and examine what it is all about, I ask myself do I really want law and order or do I want law and order that is backed up by repressive legislation and my answer is quite clear: I want law and order but I will not back repression.

When Deputy Cunningham and I go before the Donegal electorate I will debate publicly with him, as I have done in the past, this very issue, because Deputy Cunningham knows that I could not in conscience support the type of legislation put before this House by his party. I could not support that despite the fact that I have very good relations with members of the Government and with the Taoiseach, Deputy Lynch. I respect the Taoiseach. I expect that he has found himself in a very difficult position. He is not without criticism but, then, who in the Fianna Fáil Party could do any better at the moment? I respect him because as a human being, having his own views on what way this crisis can be resolved, he must take with him a party that finds its roots in republicanism in this country. It is to his credit that he has taught a few of you manners and that was well overdue.

In spite of those good relationships which I have and which I publicly stated on a number of occasions, Deputy Cunningham knows that I could not in conscience vote for this type of repressive legislation because there is no difference between this type of legislation and the legislation which introduced internment in August, 1971 in Northern Ireland. I do not know what part Deputy Cunningham played in trying to head off internment in the North but I can tell the House that during the four weeks of detention which preceded internment, I found myself going to and from Belfast and the people whom I went there to speak to were not the people I used to meet and whom we referred to occasionally as "our people". I went to meet the Protestant people who also saw the dangers of internment and who were trying to have it averted. These people were doing their best to persuade the Unionist Party to understand that that action was counterproductive and that counterproductive measures solve nothing. Neither will this repressive measure before us solve anything. It must be recognised that in society at present there are people who do not identify with the Government's thinking or with my thinking either. There is no good in closing our eyes and hoping these people will go away. The aim must be to build a new society, a society that will embrace not only the Northern Protestant Unionist but also the type of people who are now being referred to as subversives.

Some time ago I came across the biography of General Ulysses Grant. I learned from it that General Grant fought and won the bloodiest war that the world has ever known—the American Civil War—when neighbours of divided view literally butchered each other with whatever was available, knives and bayonets if they had no guns. Under the most severe pressure, he refused to be pushed by his own supporters into introducing measures which in his judgment were unfair because he believed that to construct the America that was to become the United States was to construct a society in which everyone had a part to play. That was more than 100 years ago but this country has not yet got the message. After 50 years of independent government—speaking politically I suppose I am right but, economically, I suppose one could ask a big question— we have not matured enough to realise that Fianna Fáil have not got the monopoly of good opinions in this matter. We have not matured sufficiently to understand that in the ranks of Fine Gael there are people who wish sincerely to build bridges, that in the ranks of the Labour Party there are people who wish sincerely to play their part but, no, Fianna Fáil say: "That is not your game. If there is to be a united Ireland it will be on our conditions. It will be the united Ireland that we plan."

The party of reunification.

Yes, the party that was formed in 1927 on that issue. The British Conservative and Labour Parties have a bi-partisan policy on Northern Ireland. Mr. Heath takes into his confidence Mr. Wilson when issues are being introduced in Westminster that affect the North. Is it not a sad reflection on the present Government that the Taoiseach could not have taken into his confidence Deputies Cosgrave and Corish? It is not necessary for me to state that these two Deputies are as interested in law and order as is the Taoiseach. Neither should it be necessary for me to repeat on every occasion on which I speak publicly on the Northern situation that I am absolutely opposed to any use of force whatever. Your inconsistencies in your approach to the Northern crisis has left this part of Ireland in such a situation that southern public opinion would be such that if I speak my mind clearly and honestly as an Irishman, trying to reach out to the Northern Protestant, there is the belief that this guy, Harte, is a West Briton or a Catholic Unionist when all I am trying to be is an ordinary Irishman trying to create conditions in this island that will allow my family and other families and those who come after them to live as they are entitled to live.

I oppose this legislation because I do not consider it to be necessary but if I thought it was necessary I would be likely to support it. Looking back over the past 18 months and reflecting on the different occasions on which it was my duty to report to the authorities on certain matters of public disquiet but about which no action was taken, I ask myself what was lacking in our society during that time. Was it the lack of legislation or was it of public conviction on the part of the Government? The answer is too obvious. If at this stage the Government put forward the argument that they do not have sufficient legislation to convict subversives, is it not fair of me to ask them what they have been dithering about during the past three years?

When I have occasion to write to distant relatives in reply to letters received from them and tell them what is happening here, I find myself concluding any such letter by saying that all this trouble is part of our society and that I am ashamed to admit to being part of it. We are all part of it and it will not be put down by repression. That has been proved time and again and the Northern scene bears witness to it. We remember the hue and cry there was from the Government benches in this House when Brian Faulkner introduced internment. We heard from them that this was repressive legislation and would be counterproductive. Must I go over the story of what happened in Northern Ireland immediately after internment? None of us can ever forget.

I do not suggest that we will have a similar situation south of the border but I do suggest that when 12 or 20 people who met in Queen's University in 1965 or 1966 to start what we described later as the civil rights movement, those people did not see then the far-reaching effects of their simple little meeting. I suggest that they did not realise what it would cause not only in Northern Ireland but in this part of the country too. I do not think any of them thought that less than six years later more than 600 people would be dead, that Government Ministers in the South would be sacked, that properties would be bombed and destroyed, that hatred would be so bad that Catholics would have stopped talking to Protestants and Protestants to Catholics. I wondered, when I walked out of this House this evening and saw up to 500 university students sitting on the roadside in Kildare Street and Molesworth Street if they really knew what street politics is about. Street politics is, in my judgment, the weapon used by the people against a Government which introduces repression. If that is the price the Government want to pay, let them understand their decision before they take it. When you start street politics you cannot just switch it off. It is not possible to switch on and off. If you want to pay the price of street politics in the city of Dublin— this is where it will start—go ahead with your repressive legislation this evening. Go ahead to the country, when you are beaten in the vote, and tell the people what you want to have is law and order. I will tell them what you want to have.

Mr. J. Lenehan

They cannot be beaten.

You want to have powers which make you answerable to no one. We have had people talking about the Provos. Let us not stick our heads in the sand and believe anything other than what we are told by people closely associated with the Government party of how the Provos began. I remember, in a lengthy telephone conversation from this building to the Falls Road in January, 1970, speaking to a member of the Stormont Parliament, asking him if there were many IRA gunmen in the Falls Road district at that time. I was told there were not many, but if the amount of money coming from the city of Dublin to pay those people to come on the streets at night to shoot each other if they could not find British soldiers or policemen to shoot—remember that is what they did—kept coming, then, before December, 1970, not alone would there be fewer than 30 but there would be more than 3,000. If anyone wants to identify this person the simple knowledge of who represents Falls Road in Stormont will give the answer.

We now have the Fianna Fáil Party telling us that, if we vote against this type of legislation tonight, we are supporting the Provisional IRA. Do they forget the paper called The Voice of the North? Do they forget who financed The Voice of the North and who edited it? Do they forget for whom he was public relations officer before he took up that position? We have reached a time when southern politics are being influenced by the Northern scene, when Deputies are now counting the bonus votes they will get by clambering on to the bandwagon of the tragedy in our country. If my information is right an election will be held this side of Christmas. Over the next three weeks, irrespective of whether there is a solution found for Northern Ireland, and not caring if families are bombed to eternity, politicians this side of the Border will be deciding that the more emotional, the more republican, the more anti-British, the more anti-Unionist and the more anti-Provisional they become, the bigger the vote they will get on polling day.

At this stage, having given loyalty to the Government as an Opposition Deputy and feeling no regret about the stand I have taken, I find myself asking what thanks I have got. What thanks have people like Deputy Cruise-O'Brien got for being brutally frank with the southern community? What thanks has Deputy Corish got for keeping his party on the rails? What thanks has Deputy Cosgrave got for taking a similar line? We have all been used by the Government. We have been asked to be responsible. I hope we have met the demands of the Government, but we have not been acknowledged.

We are now told that because we oppose repressive legislation we are on the side of the "baddies" in our society. The theme in the general election campaign is: "Do you favour law and order or do you favour anarchy?" It will not be: "Do you favour fairplay or do you favour repression?" I would like to conclude by saying that, if there is to be a general election, I will make my position clear to the electorate. I stand for a society in which all the people on this island of Irish parents and grandparents, irrespective of what their religious views and beliefs are, will be able to live together. If people who have supported me feel that this stand is not shouting for one's own team, then I am afraid someone else will have to represent them in this House.

I believe in being Irish first and being a politician second. I am afraid the Government have fallen short of my standards in this regard. I would like them to aim at the same standards and play the game fairly. If it is to be a ruthlessly-fought election, then I will meet that challenge. If it is to be a well-debated, constructive, responsible campaign, then I will accept that. I believe this country can no longer jog-trot along in the way it has over the last three years, saying that we have not got enough legislation to convict those people. The people in Donegal who might read this speech know exactly what I am talking about without my having to enumerate the different things going through my mind at this moment.

On one occasion, perhaps about 12 months ago, a young waitress in the town of Lifford, walking harmlessly to Strabane which is in the same parish, was shot dead. I do not think there is any person in the parish of Clonleigh or within 25 miles of the scene of that tragedy has any doubt in his mind as to who was responsible. I wonder why the authorities did not arrest the people concerned. If someone happens to come out of a public house and uses obscene language, if someone forgets to get his car taxed or forgets to get his driving licence, he will find himself appearing at the next sitting of the district court, but to this date nothing has happened about the death of Bríd Carr. This is one of the shames I carry with me and which I suppose the people of my community carry also, that we knew that in our society, in our community, there were people who were responsible for that young girl's death. I do not think the Government needed this type of repressive legislation to get convictions in that case.

That is why I believe I am justified in saying to the Government that they are now using a steamroller to crack a nut and now telling the people that because of their failures of the past three years to back up law and order, to comply with the mandate the people gave them to protect society against subversion and to govern this country in the manner which we expected them to govern, they must have this legislation. They have failed and so much so that they now shamelessly come before us and say: "We had not got the powers to rule the country in the way we wanted to rule it", but it took them three years to make up their minds about it.

During those three years many things happened which are no credit to any Member of this House, no credit to any members of the forces of law and order, no credit to any person who calls himself Irish, because this is not the society we want. The society we want is a peaceful society with which all people can identify, a society in which each person will be able to call himself Irish without being spat at by someone who might use the word "renegade", in which a person who wants to call himself Irish will be belittled by people who think they are super-Irishmen and super-patriots, who believe that their brand of nationalism is the purest and that any person falling short of this is just an Irishman by birth and by accident but not really and truly Irish.

Let me say in conclusion that I had the privilege of speaking on the last day of the 17th Dáil and the last day of the 18th Dáil. I think I have now had the privilege of speaking on the last day of the 19th Dáil.

Unlike other speakers in the debate, who said they would detain the House only a short time, I will detain the House only a short time. I think everybody in the House and in the country knows what is in this Bill and it is therefore unnecessary for me to examine it section by section, clause by clause. This Bill sets up a police state. Let us be clear about that. There were quite sufficient powers in the Offences Against the State Act passed here in 1939, part of which was subsequently found to be unconstitutional but the rest of which has remained in operation ever since.

When that Bill was going through the House, I heard the late Professor John Marcus O'Sullivan say from the Fine Gael benches across to the Taoiseach, Mr. Eamon de Valera: "I would trust nobody with these powers", and the then Taoiseach replied: "I would only trust myself with them". Are we now expected to give huge additional police powers to the Government of this country? If anybody had said that to me when I came back to this House in 1969, I would have said he was out of his mind. Yet we have seen the fabric of this State go to pieces completely in the past three years. No words that may be used by any member of the Government can wash out the reference in subsection (2) of section 3 to a senior police officer, and no matter how long he talks, nobody can wash out the particular kind of reference, that what this man believes he can give evidence about in court. One does not have to have been in court very often to realise that if you bring your beliefs before a judge, he will tell you to go away, to take a jump in the Liffey. You will not say it for very long if you say that you "believe" but this is the case from now on as far as particular police officers are concerned,

The Labour Party are the oldest political party in this country. To their credit, they took no part in the civil war but they paid a high price for that, a price which they are still paying. Notwithstanding that history of having no connection whatever with violence, the members of this party were last year accused in this House, in my hearing, of being supporters of murderers. Who made that accusation? The very man who is in charge of this Bill, the pocket Napoleon we have here, who is going to change the whole attitude of this country, he thinks, and going to have people in the courts guilty unless they prove themselves innocent. I am not a lawyer, but I thought I knew what proof was— mathematical proof and logical proof —but to my surprise, I found that legal proof was a completely different thing, a completely different kind of animal. Legal proof is something that can stand up chapter and verse. The trouble about this Bill is quite simply that judges are bound by statute law and it has been their customs and their tradition that, no matter how much personally they may disagree with what is in the statute, they have to implement it.

It is not the Labour Party who created the people now called the subversives, the Provisional IRA. The Provisional IRA were spawned by the Fianna Fáil Party. We all know that. We may have differences of opinion about various things in this House but there is no question about the truth of that statement. At this moment of time —a popular phrase I hear used now but I cannot remember having used it myself—perhaps it is a significant moment and perhaps not—it is the Minister for Justice backed by the Government who is subverting the common, law which by tradition gives certain rights to ordinary people.

Why did the Fianna Fáil Party set up the Provisional IRA? They did it because the Official IRA, who have behaved very well in recent times, have kept their word since they declared the truce. There is no man in this House who knows fewer members of the IRA of either type than I do. I am not aware that I know a single member of either group. The Official IRA had become known as a progressive left wing organisation. They were regarded as socialists and that would not do for the party of the big money, the conservative party. Therefore, they set up this illegitimate organisation and having set it up, they find now that it is a Frankenstein with which they have to deal. If they had not set it up, we would not be in this House now facing a general election on a law and order campaign, by the way. Law and order my foot! This is an attempt by the Government to divert attention from their own failure.

It has been pointed out—I realise this is an awkward point I am going to make—with force that is coercive for me at any rate that the particular chief superintendent who will be involved— I am talking about the cases now which do involve subversives—is a man whose evidence, to any ordinary person, is extremely suspect. As has been pointed out here, when asked any awkward question he can plead privilege. It is the ultimate in nonsense that people's freedom, people's rights to go about their ordinary business, can be sworn away by a man who can plead privilege the minute he is asked an awkward question. Anybody who goes into a court realises that judges have more regard for the evidence of policemen than they have for the evidence of ordinary people. There are a number of reasons for this. They are more skilled in giving their evidence. They are very often more careful. I think this is as it should be, a police officer should be received better than an ordinary witness but not when it is done in this outrageous fashion.

The long standing legal position in these islands—that is why the expression "Coercion Acts" came into being—is that a person is innocent until he is proved guilty. In certain continental countries it is otherwise. Now under this Bill in the year 1972 because the Government have made such a mess of the ordinary affairs and we are now next door to bankrupt, they trump up this excuse to create an issue upon which they believe they can win a general election.

The difficulty about this legislation is not that anybody here wants to defend subversives or to support them in any way but the people who are in this subversive organisation I am talking about that was created by the Fianna Fáil Party have shown an unrivalled capacity for precluding the Government from proving that they are members of that organisation. It is the business of the Government so to apply the law and to pass such law as, without interfering with the ordinary citizens, will enable the State to convict those people if it is a crime to belong to a subversive organisation of this sort. If that is a crime it is the business of the Government to deal with it without passing this kind of disgraceful legislation.

The fact is that it does not matter what judges may think personally of the evidence. I realise an effort has been made in the last few days to say: "It is only evidence". That is not the way it is in the Bill. As it is in the Bill, it will be coercive on the judge, regardless of what his personal opinion may be, to apply this subsection of section 3 which destroys the rights of the ordinary citizen under the common law. This Bill strengthens in an outrageous fashion an Act which should now be repealed. If the Government had come into the House with a proposal to repeal the Offences Against the State Act, do they really believe there would have been any substantial opposition in this House? There is a pretence that the institutions of State are under pressure. I would need to believe in fairy tales to believe that.

A couple of nights ago we had institutional force on a massive scale here. At the back entrance to Leinster House a military force was drawn up, gardaí by the hundred. There were four or five times as many gardaí there as ordinary citizens who, quite rightly, kept away down at Merrion Square. I am talking about the massive display of force.

President Nixon would not have as many in his bodyguard.

Memories of 1963 in America are quickly forgotten.

Memories of 1969 are quickly forgotten here too.

(Interruptions.)

In the 1930s in this country the Government were able to carry on in infinitely more difficult circumstances than exist now without any of this legislation. The legislation which is now being strengthened was not passed until war broke out, until 1939.

Captain John Brooke in the North, who has not been noted for his liberal views, has referred to this Bill. He showed more regard for democracy in this whole island than do the Government. I agree with him 100 per cent. He believes that this Bill if it goes on the statute book will destroy the democratic good name of this Republic.

Last Monday night I watched BBC television and I heard a commentator make an interesting point about this Bill. He said that the Bill contains some of the most far-reaching powers a stable conventional democracy can arrogate to itself. Have we not a stable conventional democracy here? I take it everyone knows what a democracy is although people on occasions have spoken about their form of democracy in relation to Russia. Of course, this shows that one can make a word mean anything one likes and this has been done frequently in Acts of this House.

Recently the Minister for Foreign Affairs said the European Communities Bill was the most important Bill that had come before the House. That Bill was not a proper piece of legislation but this Bill is a proper piece of legislation in that what it intends to do is carefully defined. In fact, if it is put into operation with full force we will have here a complete police state as bad as exists anywhere in the world. It can be asked if one would not trust the Taoiseach, Deputy Lynch. I would trust the Taoiseach, Deputy Lynch, but what guarantee have I how long he will be here? Quite frankly I hope he will be here for a short time only—this is not personal—

Will the Deputy trust the other fellow?

Does Deputy Gibbons mean Charlie?

Will the Deputy explain what he means by "the other fellow"?

I mean the man who will succeed him.

There are a number of people on this side of the House who will not interfere with the rights of the citizen in the fashion of this Bill. If this Bill should become law the new Government will wipe it out when they come into office just as the then Government wiped out the massive taxation that had been put on in the supplementary budget in 1947 by Deputy Aiken. That enormous amount of taxation increased the price of practically every commodity but when they wiped it out it was forgotten in a few months.

What about the transatlantic airlines?

I do not want to dwell on these matters because they are not relevant to the Bill but I am glad to have aroused members on the Government benches from their apathy. When a Government try to impose a fascist regime the whole object of the exercise is to make the people feel apathetic and to take it quietly. This is done by pretending that certain legislation is directed at "roughnecks" and the like and will not apply to ordinary individuals. Is it the case that, in view of the enormous budget this year, the Government are in difficulties and know that people have discovered this fact? This year the budget was 2½ times more than when I came into the House a few years ago. Perhaps the Government have realised that if they wait another six months to have a general election they could not win it because people would be well aware of the state of affairs in the country.

Does the Deputy agree we will win this election?

There have been surprises in election results before and Fianna Fáil may be in for the biggest surprise of their lives. It has been proved conclusively that the Government have only one ambition, namely, to cling to office no matter what happens. They are determined to stay in office in circumstances where any other democratic Government would have toppled. Fianna Fáil cling to office like limpets—in fact, they have about the same amount of brains as limpets because people of genuine ability would not do what they are doing.

Yesterday morning a letter was published in the newspapers from a district justice, a man whose job it is to help operate our legal system. He said that the object of this strange piece of legislation now before the Dáil appears to be to give the power of internment of suspected IRA men to the police for whose action the Minister is responsible while making a clever and ruthless effort to pass the onus of making the order for imprisonment to a judge, for whose actions the Minister is not responsible. In other words, this is internment without the name of internment; it is the setting-up of concentration camps without calling them concentration camps. It does not matter that I might not think that much of the people who will be put in the concentration camps but it is surprising the way tyranny develops.

This is the beginning of tyranny in this country. District Justice Sweetman has pointed out that every judge before his appointment makes a solemn declaration that, without fear or favour, he will administer justice in accordance with the law but what can he do when he is faced with what many lawyers believe to be an unjust law? Each judge must handle that dilemma on his own. I shall leave the matter to Deputy O'Higgins to deal with.

The custom of judges has been that they regard the making of laws as the function of Parliament, the function of this House basically, and anything done in this House, subject to the right of the Supreme Court to decide on the constitutionality of Acts, is the law. But that is subject to another piece of statute law, something that is superior to ordinary statute law which is, in itself, in fact, a piece of statute law.

In conclusion, Mr. Sweetman writes:

I would ask you to publish this letter before the Bill is passed in its present form; otherwise, I would be risking imprisonment for myself and perhaps for you too.

That is fair comment on this Bill. As I said already, other people have gone through the Bill and it would be quite easy to go through it, item by item, section by section, and prove the various points I have made, but it is not necessary to do that in view of this debate on the matter.

My horizons will not be as wide as those of many who have spoken before me. I propose to support the Bill and I do so for reasons which are personal rather than anything else. I have not the time and, perhaps, not the ability to go into questions of law, order and evidence as deeply as I should like and at such a time I must draw on my personal experience. I found myself, on returning home one night, in the unpleasant situation that my house was picketed when it contained nobody but my wife and children. On one occasion I was visited by the sergeant of the local gardaí who was making arrangements with me and my wife that if anybody came that we thought should not have admission we could communicate with him. I have had the experience of reading that a group came down from Belfast and inspected the local power station the main source of our economy there. I have had the experience of reading of a Garda from Roscommon who was murdered in this city and, if I recall correctly, a witness with great reluctance gave evidence. From reading the papers I recall a number of court cases of people who actually pleaded guilty to the charges made against them but were aquitted. I know of cases where witnesses refused to give evidence through fear.

I do not wish to have my personal experiences repeated and as far as I can see the danger that they will be is more likely to arise. Throughout the debate much reference was made to the courts, to evidence, to the judges and all the paraphernalia of the law. I have had some experience of the courts, perhaps, not a lot. I have always had great admiration for the judges and lawyers and always felt they had an anxiety to bring in a just verdict. As far as possible this verdict was dealt with humanely. In the days when the Workmen's Compensation Act was in force I attended a number of these cases as a witness. When the Act was abolished I paid tribute in the House to the humanity of the judges who tried those cases. For this reason I have absolute faith in the judges. The previous speaker, Deputy O'Donovan, to my mind, made the most important statement on this Bill. He said that he defeated the Government in the courts, thereby establishing that an individual can beat the Government if he goes the right way about it.

There has been discussions as to what chief superintendents will say and will not say. Deputy O'Donovan invited Deputy O'Higgins to enlarge on some matter for him and I should like to hear him enlarge on the question of evidence. Throughout the debate the suggestion was thrown out that just because somebody gives evidence the judge accepts it. This almost presupposes that there is only one party in every case. In my experience there are two parties in most cases that come to court and both sides give evidence and in nearly all cases the evidence of one side is rejected and the evidence of the other side accepted, perhaps, not in toto: the loser does not have his evidence rejected in toto, either. I should be very interested to know if, in fact, a judge has not the right to reject any evidence offered if he believes it is not correct. He establishes this by examination or cross-examination on a particular question put to the person in the witness box.

Arising out of that, I thought, listening to Deputy Cooney yesterday, that he did not deal with this aspect of the Bill. He dealt with it as it has been dealt with in public. I understand that if this Bill becomes law and is used in court it will not be there in isolation but will be there along with all the criminal law that has gone before it. And this is the way it will be used in court. In this way, I understand, it can be circumscribed.

Many different points have been raised in the debate. One was the question of liberty. This is vitally important and this made itself apparent to me when I found my house picketed. The liberty of my family might or might not be interfered with. Nobody likes to take away anybody's liberty but we must understand what liberty is. Liberty must not interfere with other people's liberty and at the times of great stress one of the contradictions in society is this: in fact, to preserve your liberty when it is under pressure you must interfere with the liberty of all citizens. This happened in the first world war. The British Government, the one we knew best, had to introduce laws curbing the activities of the citizens. It happened to a greater extent in the second world war with all the rationing restrictions, restrictions on the movement of people, and so on. At that time it struck me that the state was almost as much of a dictatorship as the states it was fighting against on the grounds that these were dictators. It appears to me that this will always be the situation.

Democracy is another word that was thrown around. The number of unsigned telegrams one gets is amazing. I make a point of replying to telegrams and I should be delighted to get addresses but for some reason they are not signed. I got an unsigned telegram yesterday from Carrick-on-Shannon to say that there is a silent march and they are asking me to protect democracy. There was a certain silence in Carrick-on-Shannon throughout the year because the tourist season was not as good as it might be.

On the question of democracy, the only people who are subject to democracy are the people who come into this House, county councillors and others elected by the public. If the people do not like us they can vote us out of this House. How many organisations who are assuming authority outside this House can be voted out of authority? I was talking to a constituent of mine the other day about these problems and he said: "If I do not like you I can vote you out of Government. If I do not like Telefís Éireann I can write to them but I cannot make much impression on them and I cannot put them out of business. If I do not like what the Provisionals are doing I dare not even write to them or open my mouth to them. In the long run you are the only people who are subject to the democratic process." This is something we should not lose sight of.

I sat through a certain amount of the debate yesterday and I heard Deputy Cooney and Deputy Oliver Flanagan speak. The latter's contribution was somewhat hysterical. I heard Deputy Noel Browne speak and I thought his contribution was very sincere and moving. It was of interest to me that they placed so much blame on the schools for the difficulties in which this country finds itself now. This recalls to me one occasion when I spoke to Mr. Jerry Boland, who was Minister for Justice in the 1957 to 1961 period. I expressed the view to him then that if the schools of Ireland taught history as it should be taught, many more young men would have been taking part in activities such as are taking place in the North of Ireland. I said that both the Church and the State went out of their way to prevent history being taught in Irish schools because they did not want this trouble from the young men of Ireland. This is in direct contradiction to what my colleague, Deputy Browne, has said. He seems to have had a different experience at school from what I had. I certainly was not taught history that would provoke militancy. I went to a diocesan college. The man who taught me history there is still alive and I should like to take this opportunity to pay him tribute as a first class history teacher. He taught us a great deal of history in a very intelligent manner, to such an extent that much of it has remained with me since. I cannot recall that at any time he used the subject for emotional reasons, although his family were associated with the republican movement of the period.

Deputy Browne also suggested that young men who are fighting in the North are in the same position as those involved in the 1916 to 1921 activities. This is an opinion with which I do not agree. The situation is quite different. The people of the 1916-1921 period expressed a desire in two elections for a particular type of government, but this was frustrated by the British Government and when those concerned found they could not get that in a constitutional manner they decided to fight for it.

After 1932 the situation changed completely because those elected had not to take the oath and Parliament was open to people of all beliefs and principles. To achieve their aims they had not to resort to violent means. It has often been said that this Dáil represents the will of the Irish people but I have always had the feeling that this was not 100 per cent true. The groups who advocate violence should be represented in this House. They should declare to the people in a constitutional manner that if they came to power they would use the forces of the State to achieve unity by violence. It was a pity that in 1957 when there were four or five Deputies elected that they did not come in here and establish such a party. I do not want to be misunderstood in this regard. I believe that if this happened much of the activity that is taking place outside the House would not take place.

As a person who has given evidence in court I would like to refer to the evidence which Mr. O'Kelly gave in court. From time to time doctors have found themselves in the difficulty in court that when they claim privilege it is refused to them. If I were placed in this position——

The Deputy will appreciate that this case is still sub judice.

I am sorry. People discussing the Northern problem should have some idea as to how best we can reconcile our two peoples. The visit of the late Mr. Seán Lemass to Captain O'Neill in Northern Ireland was one of the biggest contributions that any man in this country made to unity and, secondly, it was Mr. Lemass's greatest achievement. The development of this approach, which was already taking place through co-operation in regard to electricity, drainage, tourism and so on, was the slow, cautious means of solving this problem. At times reading about Mahatma Ghandi one was inclined to think that this civil rights business, this refusal to co-operate, would probably hurry things up a bit, and I remember when Mr. Austin Currie sat into some house that he felt was wrongly allotted, believing that it was going to start then but it was some months afterwards when it started.

In other countries many organisations start off with good intentions. They may be more aggressive than people like, but always tagged on to these organisations is a certain section who want to create trouble for their own reasons and they bring the organisations into bad odour. This is something that happened with the civil rights movement in the North though at that time, it seemed to be innocuous.

I was not in the House, but I understand from what Deputy Harte said that a Deputy who spoke here earlier took some responsibility for the establishment of the Provos. He, and subsequent speakers, suggested that this would be attributed to the Fianna Fáil Party. I want to repudiate that. It is not correct or fair that this attribution should be made.

There is another point I should like to make. I referred to the fact that a power station was used by an organisation from the North. If, at some time, certain people put an explosive there, and they were picked up on the road two or three miles away and had northern accents, but could not be otherwise associated with this crime, the Garda could not detain them for longer than 48 hours. From experience I know what the attitude of the people in my area would be in those circumstances. Section 2 could deal with that to some extent. Most other points have been adequately covered. I just want to put on the official record some of my thoughts in regard to these matters. One of my main reasons for supporting this Bill is the fact that I myself have been subjected to certain intimidation.

At this stage, in this debate, it would be a very courageous Deputy who would try to strike a humorous note. I shall not attempt to do so, but I recall listening to speeches when this proposed Bill was first announced by the Minister; it was announced on television. A Minister told the people that he had been concerned about the inadequacies of our statute law and had been working for many months on a Bill to amend the law to enable him to deal with the IRA. One could not but have visions of midnight oil being burned and the Minister hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, scribbling, writing, reading, drafting, cogitating, consulting, and having conferences, and the results of all this going into the Minister's magnum opus, into something that would enable him to do what he wished to do with a new piece of legislation designed to put teeth into the little tiger and give him a way of dealing with the IRA.

Last Monday we got this Bill containing three sections and a definition section. After all the months, and months, and months of cogitation, conference and worry we have a Bill containing a title section, a definition section and three other sections, two of which are repeats from the Offences Against the State Act. Immediately I saw this I began to wonder at the bona fides behind it and I was struck by the coincidence of events. Last Saturday morning an astonished Irish public read of the sacking of the RTE Authority. Last Saturday night a satisfied Irish public read of the conviction of Mac Stiofáin. On Sunday we had the clarion call made by these pseudo-militants to converge on Dublin city and, on Monday morning, the mountain having gone into labour, produced this mouse.

That was no coincidence. That was all deliberate political play-acting by the Government. Having realised what was going on, I looked at the Offences Against the State Act. I will not go through it in detail, but these are the powers and these were the powers available to the Minister for Justice for years back. Section 6 provides that every person who is a member of an unauthorised armed force shall be guilty of an offences and liable to ten years' penal servitude. How many times in the last few years have armed men, wearing berets, strode around forming fours and posing for photographs, firing shots in the air? Each single one of those was liable under that Act to be convicted for felony and sent to jail for ten years. Their photographs were in the papers; their identity was known to the Minister for Justice and to the Garda Síochána but no action was taken.

Section 7—intimidation or obstruction of the Government, the Legislature, the Courts or the Judiciary—a felony punishable with seven years' penal servitude. How often did we see in the last few years mobs collected in different district courts throughout the country for the purpose of intimidating and obstructing the process of justice, with the gardaí present, looking on, with the photographs of these people in the newspapers, with their identities known, and no action taken by the Minister for Justice or the Government?

Section 15—unlawful drilling, manoeuvres or training, or coming together to meet for that purpose, a misdemeanour punishable with imprisonment for two years. How often in the last few years did we see that and no action taken? Other provisions of the Act provide for every known facet of illegal activity; every known symptom is dealt with in the Offences Against the State Act, an Act passed by this House after years, and years, and years, of experience of illegal IRA activity. And that Act was brought in and passed by experts, by people who knew from the inside what the IRA were. There is not a single threat and not a single activity the IRA engage in that is not covered by the Offences Against the State Act. Meetings can be prohibited. Processions can be banned. The publication of all kinds of documents can be prevented. Every person seen in or near a place where a crime has been committed, or who could reasonably be suspected of committing a crime—Deputy Dr. Gibbons referred to such a case—can be arrested by a Garda officer, can be brought to a Garda barracks, can be detained for 24 hours, for a further 24 hours, can be asked to give an account of his movements and, if he does not answer or gives an account which is not to the satisfaction of the Garda questioning him, he can be sent to jail for six months.

There is provision in the Act for special criminal courts. We have them now. There is provision in the Act for different forms of prosecution for different offences. This Act has not been enforced. One might ask can anything more be required? I would say that there might, perhaps, be some extra facility in relation to evidence, something minimal, but there is no defect in the Offences Against the State Act which justified Government inaction for the past three years and there is nothing which justified a worried, anxious and determined Minister to sit pondering month after month, biting his nail, searching his soul, researching into the law and all the rest of it. There is no defect in our present code of law.

Consequently, I and my colleagues very quickly began to suspect from the moment of the publication of this Bill last Monday, from the paucity of its provisions, from the fact that it repeats, as I will show in a moment, two sections of the Offences against the State Act, that all this is part of an exercise in the political conning of this Dáil and it is being done by a Government who realise they can no longer afford to do nothing in relation to the IRA and they are now anxious to explain their delay over the past three years and to produce an excuse for their political cowardice since 1969. That is what this Bill is about. They failed to take action when action was needed. They lowered the confidence of people in our institutions. They allowed armed bravados to intimidate people and it is only when the picket goes on the houses of Fianna Fáil Deputies that we see action.

Bodenstown, the GPO, the firing of shots outside the GPO, armed military funerals throughout the country, a town in County Wicklow cordoned off for a bank raid, the murders of Garda officers, all these things have gone on, to the eternal shame of the Fianna Fáil Government. All these things were permitted. No effort was made to enforce the law. But they could not afford to continue in inaction because they realised that not merely the patience of the people here at home but the patience of people outside was running out. They were forced to take action.

What action did they take? They abolished the Radio Telefís Éireann Authority and they rushed in with this Bill in an effort to provide a political alibi for their political cowardice.

We have had an extraordinary situation in the lifetime of this Dáil.

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted and 20 Members being present.

Since 1969, in the lifetime of this Dáil, we have seen gross intimidation by the self-appointed leaders of subversive groups and organisations, people who give Press interviews, people who issue press releases and all the rest of it, and not one step taken by this Government to enforce the law against them. Why, I ask, and the people ask why? The answer is perfectly clear. The reason no action was taken up to this was that inside the Government party were sympathisers and active associates of the IRA.

Let us not forget the arms scandal. Let us not forget that two Ministers were implicated, according to the Taoiseach, and subsequently charged. Let us not forget that another Minister and Parliamentary Secretary left the Government in sympathy with those men. What were they supposed to be doing? What was the allegation against them? That they were importing arms to put in the hands of the Provisionals in Belfast and Derry— this in the lifetime of this Parliament, and this coming from the Fianna Fáil Party.

We know that the Ministers implicated, according to the Taoiseach, were only the big fellows. There were many other sympathisers inside Fianna Fáil, and they are still inside Fianna Fáil, hidden and quiet now, but identifiable. The dissidents were not merely the six who left. There are those still inside the party who sympathised openly just two years ago at the time of the arms scandal. They are still inside the ranks of Fianna Fáil and, because they were there, no action was taken up to this. The law was not enforced because to do so in the past two years would have been political suicide for them and for their leader. Let us look at the record, and a miserable record it is. Section 19 of the Offences against the State Act provides for the making of suppression orders against unlawful organisations.

That was during the war time period.

That was during the war time period, as the Deputy said.

That was just at the start of the war.

It provides for the making of suppression orders against unlawful organisations and, until a suppression order is made, no organisation is unlawful. It is surprising to note that only one suppression order was made under the Offences Against the State Act. It was made in September, 1939, and it declared to be unlawful an illegal organisation known as the IRA, otherwise the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Oghlaigh na hÉireann. That is the only suppressed organisation under the Offences Against the State Act. No suppression order, no declaration of illegality, has been made in relation to the two distinct organisations that have grown up in the past 33 years, one of which has a Chief of Staff called Goulding and the other a Chief of Staff called Stephenson. Those two organisations militant, aggressive organisations, illegal armies outside the Constitution, outside the control of this House, recognise no law except their own law and seek to intimidate ordinary people in the courts of this land. These organisations have not been suppressed. Why? Because the Fianna Fáil Government had not the courage to do it. To suppress the Provisionals at any stage up to this would have caused a political fissure inside Fianna Fáil. There are Fianna Fáil Deputies listening to me who know well that I am telling the truth and hitting the nail on the head.

The Deputy is talking nonsense and it is typical of him. It runs in the family like a wooden leg.

Why is action being taken now when up to this no action was taken when action was necessary. Suddenly something is to be done. Who cracked the whip? I suggest the whip was cracked in London and the orders came from there. Action is to be taken, not because of what is required in Irish circumstances and in Irish conditions, but just because the story must appear right outside this country and to the Prime Minister of Britain. In the decades gone by, in the days of the first Government of this country when this problem was there, as it is today, except that there were different leaders and the personnel were different, when this kind of legislation had to be brought in, when extra powers had to be given to the military and the Garda authorities and to the courts, decisions were then taken without anyone outside the Government having the impertinence to interfere with Irish decisions. They were taken by the Irish Government for Irish reasons and were exclusively the responsibility of the Government of this country. Today I doubt if that is so.

The Government say this Bill is necessary and that they have to get it to do their job. If that is so, perhaps the Minister or some member of the Government could explain to the House why this Bill was not introduced three years ago when this Dáil was first elected. If it is necessary now, it was necessary last year and the year before. Why was it not introduced? The powers contained in section 2 enabling a Garda officer to ask for an account of a person's movements, a person he suspects of being involved in the commission of a crime, are also in section 52 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, precisely the same powers. In 1956-57 many members of illegal organisations were convicted of the offence of failing to give an account of their movements. Why has that not been enforced? The Taoiseach said it was contrary to the Convention on Human Rights. The Convention on Human Rights of November, 1950, to which this country has subscribed, contains in Article 5 the conventions that the signatories regard as appropriate in relation to personal liberty.

Article 5 provides:

No one shall be deprived of his liberty save in the following cases...

One of the cases is:

The lawful arrest or detention of a person effected for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence or when it is reasonably considered necessary to prevent his committing an offence or fleeing after having done so.

I should like the Taoiseach to explain to this House in what way, in what sense, section 52 of the Act of 1939 contravenes that convention or any part of it? It does not. I accuse the Taoiseach of trying to cod this House by putting forward that as an excuse for not operating section 52.

The strange thing is that in introducing this Bill the Minister never mentioned the Convention on Human Rights as being a reason for not enforcing the powers already there. The Taoiseach threw it in afterwards expecting, presumably, that no one would bother to look up the convention and see whether he was right or not.

I assert that the powers contained in section 2 of this Bill are already in the Offences Against the State Act and that there has been no reason whatsoever why the provisions of sections 30 and 52 of the Act of 1939 have not been used.

In regard to the other section which creates an offence—section 4—again, if one looks at the Offences Against the State Act one will see that the provisions in section 4 are already contained in sections 7 and 27 of that Act.

In these circumstances we have two sections purporting to create new offences which, in fact, are already in our law for the last 33 years. This whole thing is a political trick. It is done to try to save the credibility of a Government that fell down on its task.

In public life, a Cheann Comhairle, one has on some occasions to decide what it is right to do and then do it no matter what the consequences may be. I believe that this is such a moment. Everyone in this House, particularly every Deputy in the Opposition, has a responsibility—a responsibility to those who sent him here, a responsibility to his colleagues also, to observe and watch legislation, has a particular responsibility if the legislation is dealing with individual liberty and may be restrictive of it. We have a responsibility which we cannot renege on, a responsibility to examine carefully each proposed piece of legislation and if we think it goes too far, if we think it is excessive, if we think it is unjust, if we think it is wrong, we have a responsibility to point that out, to seek amendment, to oppose, no matter what the consequences may be. I believe this is such an occasion.

No one can accuse me, I hope, of having any sympathy with the IRA. I am one Member of this House whose family experience indicates that I could have no such sympathy. My grandfather was killed by them and my uncle, as Minister for Justice, was slain going to Mass. I cannot ever be regarded as in any way sympathetic to illegal organisations or that kind of element, to those who do not recognise the authority of this Parliament. I am and I hope always will be, a democrat in the proper sense of that word.

Having said that, I and my colleagues here tonight say that in this Bill, repetitious though it may be, there are certain provisions which we regard as potentially harmful to the individual and, therefore, unjust. We refer in particular to section 3, subsection (2). We refer to the wording of section 4 which seems wide enough to cover an innocent bystander at a meeting or a procession and we point to the fact that this unusual legislation, this repressive and restrictive legislation, is proposed as a permanent part of our statute law and we feel that there should be a time limit upon it.

If we have come to these conclusions as Deputies of the Opposition and as democrats, we have the obligation and the duty to try to get our point of view understood, to get the legislation, if not amended, opposed, and that is what we are doing here and now, loud and clear.

My party is concerned for law and order. My party built this State. My party and its leaders established this Parliament and defended it when the Fianna Fáil Party was outside sneering and jeering, marching and drilling. We will take second place to no single party in this country in relation to the traditions of democracy and to the observance of law and order in this State. But, we want to see Parliament work. We want to see this Dáil work as a Parliament. We want to see things take place inside this Dáil whereby people can see that their work is being done, that the legislative process is not merely the handing down of a decision from a bureaucratic Government and everybody is supposed to say, "Yes, we will do that". This is a Parliament, a place for discussion, a deliberative assembly and it is our duty to see that it functions as such and, when we see in this kind of legislation errors and areas of possible injustice, it is our responsibility to point them out and to try to seek a change.

On behalf of this party Deputy Cooney and I asked the Minister for Justice today whether he would be kind enough to see us because I was concerned at the dangers involved in this situation. My colleagues and I were concerned, too, that we should do our duty as an Opposition. At 1 o'clock today the Minister for Justice, together with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, received Deputy Cooney and me. We discussed this Bill and pointed out that we sought three amendments.

In relation to subsection (2) of section 3 we sought an amendment which would provide that, if the accused person swore on oath that at the material time he was not a member of an unlawful organisation, that should be a conclusive answer to that particular charge. We told the Minister also that we wanted an amendment to section 4 which would exclude an innocent bystander. We told him too that we wanted a time limit on the Bill and we suggested six months in this respect.

The Minister and his colleague listened very courteously to us. In fact, we discussed the details of these possible amendments for about half an hour. At the end of that time I said to the Ministers that, if they indicated that they would meet our point of view along these lines on the Committee Stage of the Bill, we would not move our motion to refuse a Second Reading. The Ministers told me, and I accepted it entirely, that they were bound by a Government decision and they undertook to communicate with me later in the afternoon. We know that the Government met in the afternoon, apparently for some hours. At about 4.30 p.m. a message was conveyed to me by the Minister for Foreign Affairs to the effect that the Government were not prepared to give any undertaking in relation to amendments. What does that mean? It means that an arrogant effort is being made to make this Parliament not function. In a situation in which we have a Bill that was issued hastily and which has three glaring defects the Opposition are to be told that there will be no amendments of any kind. I assert that that is making a farce of this Parliament.

Hear, hear.

It is obvious that this measure was intended all the time to be part of a political gimmick and nothing else.

Does the Deputy support the two bombings that have occurred a few moments ago?

I am aware of them.

Do you support that activity?

Do not be a bloody ass.

Give us the means to deal with these people.

You have had the means but have taken no action against them during the past three years.

The Deputy is a filthy pup.

Order. Interruptions must cease.

It is appalling and disturbing for me to learn, as I was speaking, that there have been explosions in this city, one, I understand, at Liberty Hall and one in Sackville Place. I have been told that people have been injured. The terrible thing about violence is that it begets violence. Everybody has a deep responsibility for this. The bombers of today may well be teaching the bombers of tomorrow. It is the bad lesson that has been learned in the past by those who never recognised democracy or the rule of law or the authority of Parliament that leads violent men to violent ends like this.

Members of the Government helped to set up the Provisional IRA by giving them money.

These are the things that cause these difficulties in our society. I regret that, from time to time in our community, we disagree. We have never learned properly to abide by the decision of the majority. There are far too many people who insist on having their own way; and, in seeking to have their own way, they are driven to trying to achieve it by force. I will not say anything more about that, but that is why we have illegal and subversive organisations in this country doing today what they did 20, 40 and 50 years ago, doing the kind of things which mean the negation of democracy.

I am concerned with this legislation here because the situation is now that the Government are prepared to force this legislation through the House. They will not consider amendments and will not listen in any way to the reasoned suggestions put forward by this Parliament and when we react, as is our duty, when we say: "You will not do that in a democratic Parliament", we are accused of being against law and order and of fomenting strife and trouble. If they think they are going to get away with that, they had better think again. The people of this country will not stand for that kind of double dealing.

Standards have been lowered in this country since 1970. The Minister for Finance used to talk of low standards in high places. There has been an appalling lowering of standards in high places in the last year. The Government have failed to do their duty. They have allowed people to be intimidated by open breach of the law, and every member of that Government has shirked his duty because of the political disadvantage entailed. Maybe time heals. If there is to be an election, perhaps we can be told whether Deputy Haughey is being taken back into the Cabinet. That is something the people will like to know. They will like to know exactly what kind of a deal has been made during the past six months or so. This legislation is unnecessary. Mr. Stephenson was arrested, charged and convicted. He was arrested and charged with, among other things, a speech he made 18 months ago. At any time in the past 18 months he could have been arrested, charged and convicted, but it was not done. Do not let the Minister say that it was the tape that did it. The fact is that the detective officers went shrimping and caught a big fish and he had to be charged. He was charged and convicted. It demonstrated that the law was there all the time to be enforced. The little tiger had teeth all along but there was not the will and the determination to use them. This is a parliamentary effort to provide an alibi for a Government that failed to do their duty that can no longer be inactive. They are forced into action and this Bill is supposed to give them credibility.

We have been listening for the past few days to a debate on a Bill which the Government endeavoured to put to the House and to the country as being a very important one. But as time passes, as the minutes tick by, it appears as if the introduction of the Bill, as Deputy O'Higgins said, is part of a very well-laid plot. That the plot may, in fact, recoil on the Government has yet to be seen. I regret, while we are discussing the Bill here, that explosions are rocking the city. If anybody would tell me that the people who, according to the Government are to be caught as a result of this legislation, are causing those explosions in an effort to stop the Bill I think they should have their heads examined.

It is a horrible thought. I could not for the life of me see what earthly use to the Provos the explosions which occurred after the meeting in O'Connell Street the other night would be. Is it not strange that it should be at that time that some of the illegal organisations in the North which are not illegal here should come down here and cause an explosion? Is it not extraordinary that tonight, as the debate on the Bill draws to a close, explosions come again. The thought must come into people's minds that there is only one group of people who can gain by those explosions and they are sitting on the benches across there.

God forgive you.

I am making the statement here and your Minister for Justice can reply to it when he is replying to the debate.

A Deputy

It is all very well stage-managed.

The Taoiseach came in here yesterday and spoke about the Provos. He spoke about the connection between the Provos and the Labour Party. He referred to the Labour Party as being friends of the Provos. All of you read The Irish Press, I think. The Evening Press this afternoon carried the headlines: “IRA Link Admitted by Blaney”. It was not admitted by Blaney. It was bragged of by Blaney, not Neil Blaney the backbencher here, the Independent, but Neil Blaney, the Government Minister. He is the man who admitted that, as a Government Minister, he was involved in the setting-up of the Provos.

Who was with him? According to the Taoiseach at the time, and according to the court which tried the man, one of the Fianna Fáil vice-presidents, the present vice-president, Deputy Haughey, who was also a very important Minister. I have great respect for the ability of Deputy Haughey. For the life of me I could never understand why he became involved in this. There must be some peculiar little twist which those of us who came to know him did not know about. He was a brilliant man and, in my opinion, is a brilliant man.

It is a shocking situation that we now have what I consider to be a trick Bill introduced by the Government in an effort to create a general election situation so that the Taoiseach, the respectable man, can lead the party into the election, stand next June for the Presidency and be replaced as the leader of Fianna Fáil by you know who.

That is a fairy tale.

We will wait and see. I heard the Deputy talking about fairy tales before. When the row started about the arms trial, the importation of arms into this country for use in the North, when the Provos were established, when the £100,000 disappeared, there were in this House a few big fish mainly Deputy Blaney and Deputy Haughey. As with fish, they were attended by a number of little fellows. They were not that small. I do not think Deputy Flor Crowley could be described as small. There was also Deputy MacSharry who made the famous statement in Sligo about what he would do with the non-Catholics in this country if things went wrong. You had Deputy Allen and there was Deputy Briscoe who is now being lauded as the man who will show the way for ecumenism in this country. He also felt we were not going far enough with our republican ideas. The man who was shouting a few moments ago from the Fianna Fáil benches, Deputy Davern, also belonged to the small group who were travelling around the House with the two big fish holding meetings of the "Letterkenny Parliament" on the lawn, who would not come into this House to take part in the proceedings. That is well known to anybody who is a regular attender here for many months. They all stayed outside; they went to the restaurant but would not come in here to take part in the debates. Those people did not agree with what the Taoiseach, Deputy Jack Lynch, was doing.

You think of this happening, and then you had the sheer audacity of the Taoiseach in the House yesterday pointing across here saying the Labour Party were friends of the Provos. Somebody made a comment here on the first day of the debate which some people considered to be a little bit in bad taste. I did not consider it so to be as I considered it to be terribly accurate. He referred to the Provos as the illegitimate sons of Fianna Fáil. What else are they? Is it not true that, because of the fact that certain well-placed members of the Fianna Fáil Government considered that the Official IRA were not doing enough in the North, they encouraged other people to break away from them and set up the Provisional IRA to take part in the activities they have been taking part in since then?

I want to make it very clear to the House that the Labour Party down the years, when Fianna Fáil were in the hills, were in this House helping to defend democracy, making it possible for parliamentary democracy to work. They took no part in the civil war, although they took a manly part in the fight for freedom before it. We have accepted the sneers and barbs of Fianna Fáil for long enough, but now that they have asked for it they are going to get their answer. As far as we are concerned, Fianna Fáil have proved themselves in the Bill before the House to be the greatest lot of chancers this country has ever seen. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Colley, a man for whom I have a fairly high regard, came in here and followed the line that the Labour Party, individual members in particular, are friends of the Provos, that they want to do away with law and order and that they want to create chaos in this country.

I did not say that.

The Minister for Finance has for years been accusing me of misquoting him. Every time I repeat anything he says, he says he is misquoted. Either he or I will have to stop talking——

There is a message in that.

——because I can only repeat what I hear, and what I heard was that he accused—and perhaps the Minister might read the debate later and see whether or not he did accuse —the Labour Party of being involved in a big way in encouraging and supporting the Provisional IRA movement.

I said that your were facing two ways.

The only people I see facing two ways, the "pulla-pusha" birds of this country, are the Front Bench of Fianna Fáil because they want to have "Republican Party" on the election posters which will be out in a couple of days, in small letters and in brackets. The Minister for Foreign Affairs can smile because he will not be involved in it at all. He is a lucky man—he will be gone away—and I am sure he is thanking God that he is able to get out from this outfit anyway. They want to be able to say "Republican Party" in small letters on their posters and to tell everybody else the wonderful people they are and that for the world they would not be seen lying down with Republicans. Now the game is up because they have introduced here something which they thought they would be able to get away with and which they now find is blowing up in their own faces.

We had yesterday evening Deputy Dowling resuming one of his old roles, that of the chief mudslinger of Fianna Fáil, except that this time, as befits a man of his present position, he puts on his gloves before throwing the mud. He came in here to tell us what should be done and about lawful and unlawful organisations. I would like again to remind the Government that the only reason unlawful organisations have been getting on so well in this country is that the Government would not allow the authorities to deal with them. I have been sorry for the Garda authorities. They have been doing their best in very trying circumstances and they have been time and time again thwarted by people who did not want to have it said publicly that they were bad Republicans but had not the guts to come out in the open and say either one thing or the other.

I have been reading two little books over the last few days to refresh my memory. One is Orders for the Captain and the other a book written around the same time, Arms and the Men. If the Front Bench Members of Fianna Fáil have not read those two books, I would voluntarily subscribe to the purchase of a copy for each of them because they then might see what they are supposed to have done, and they have not denied doing. This is the extraordinary thing about it because the documentation contained in them is nearly as bad as the documents in the Public Accounts Committee inquiry into the £100,000 which disappeared and never came back. Indeed, I was reminded the other day of an arms dealer somewhere on the Continent who, when asked what arms he sold to the gentleman who went over representing certain members of this Government, said he did not sell any arms, he bought them.

We have, of course, a number of people who are with the Government, supporters of the Government, who were described in various ways by speakers from the Government benches and each of them has explained his own case here: Deputy Sherwin, who has definitely left the Fianna Fáil Party, Deputy Blaney who was expelled and Deputy Brennan who was expelled and Deputy Foley who resigned. They spoke here and spoke pretty well according to their lights, but it really struck me as rather peculiar that in all the comments they made, they did not say they were going to vote against the Government tonight. They said they were not going to vote for them, but even when Deputy Blaney was asked by way of interruption here, if he was going to vote against the Government, his reply was: "That is a very good question." I would like to see these gentlemen coming in here and putting their votes where their voices are and let us see where they stand.

I believe that if we can persuade them to vote in the way in which they should vote or the way they talked about voting, the Government will be defeated here tonight, and if the Government are defeated tonight they will have got their wish and it is a wish they will regret for a long time. They have given the impression in a number of ways that nobody except a crowd of irresponsibles is objecting to the passing of this Bill. They try to prove that protection for this House is badly needed. They had literally hundreds of guards out there last night, standing around frozen with the cold, and wondering why the heck they were brought away from their duties because there was nobody there except themselves, and the same happened tonight. They had all sorts of spotlights, radio vans and what have you, and military out on Leinster Lawn the night before. As one Deputy said earlier, at the time when there was a rather serious threat to the House, the only people there were the ushers and they successfully kept the invaders away.

Before I go away from it, I want to repeat that I do not believe that the people responsible for the explosions in this city could have been the IRA because they would be damned stupid to do it. If it was the responsibility of one of the Northern organisations, orange organisations, of course they have a free run here because they are not declared illegal and I regret very much the situation which has resulted in three explosions, with two people I understand dead, and we must offer their relatives our deepest sympathy. It is too bad that anything we are doing cannot stop this sort of thing, but I would ask the Minister for Justice to say does he consider that he has not got the powers to deal with anything that has happened up to now?

It is quite true that the Taoiseach came in here and said that a certain section—section 52, I think—of the Offences against the State Act was against the European Convention on Human Rights. Deputy O'Higgins says it is not, that there is no doubt at all that it does not contravene that convention, but is it not an extraordinary thing that if it is in contravention of it, no effort was made by the Government even in this Bill to remove it from the statute book, or do the Government think that the Bill, if it ever becomes law, will stand up to the Convention on Human Rights? Is it not true that this Bill is even worse than the section to which the Taoiseach referred? Surely the Minister is not serious when he suggests that this Bill is a way of dealing with the matter differently from the way in which the previous Bill was to deal with it? I suggest to the Minister that he has all the powers he requires. In fact, I believe he has a lot more powers than he is entitled to have and yet he has not been dealing with subversive elements in the country.

I mentioned a few minutes ago that we in the Labour Party have a very proud record in this country of not being involved in any of these schemozzles which are carried on. An effort was made to pinpoint one of our Deputies and he gave a personal explanation here. He gave his reason for going to the Mater Hospital. He said it was on humanitarian grounds to try to alleviate the suffering of a man who was there under guard. I regret very much that it has been necessary for Deputy Thornley to come here and make that explanation. Possibly his action was not politically wise, but then we are not all wonderfully wise politicians, and I would accept that Deputy Thornley, being a very humane man, did what he did in the best interests of the person he was attempting to succour.

I would also point out that while I differ as widely as is possible from Mr. Seán Mac Stiofáin and what he stands for and have never under any circumstances given any support and will not give any support to the IRA, at the same time, I have a grudging admiration for a man who has got the strength of character to bring himself to death's door for something he stands for. It is all right for those who have just come out of the restaurant having had their tea to be critical of somebody who has not eaten for a number of days. I commented when somebody asked me recently if I wanted Seán Mac Stiofáin to die that if he died at least it was his own choice. The 640 odd people who died in the North had no choice and the people who are supposed to have died in this city had no choice. That still does not take away from the fact that I have a grudging admiration for somebody who is prepared to give his life, as apparently this man is, for his principles. I do not agree with them; I could not disagree more with them, but at the same time we must be honest about those things.

It has been said that only a group of dissidents, a group of people who do not really count, are opposed to this Bill. I assume they include the Fine Gael and Labour Parties in that. I have a telegram here from Navan Chamber of Commerce. It says:

Resolution passed unanimously. We the members of Navan Chamber of Commerce are opposed to oppressive legislation as embodied in the proposed amendment to the Offences Against the State Act, 1939.

This came from a group of businessmen, without any influence from me or anybody else. I have here a letter signed by ten teachers in the vocational school, Kells. It says:

We the undersigned teachers of the vocational school, Kells, County Meath, deplore the introduction by the Government of the Offences against the State (Amendment) Bill, 1972, as a complete distortion of normal justice in a free and democratic society.

I could go on and on—letters, memos, phone calls from responsible people. Turn on the television and what appears on it? A group of priests. Dissidents no doubt, in the Fianna Fáil vocabulary, because it was a Fianna Fáil front bench man who some years ago referred to a respected cleric in this city as a so-called priest because he did not agree with what he was doing.

We have all these people who apparently agree with us that the Government have enough power to deal with this sort of thing and are trying to get power which they are not entitled to. I listened to and read the Minister's speech when he opened this debate. Either the Minister is misinformed or he is trying to misinform this House because he suggested that there was no change in the rules of evidence, that when a person was accused by a chief superintendent of being a member of an illegal organisation that did not have to stand. He said he was entitled to cross-examine the chief superintendent. We all know that the chief superintendent has only to plead privilege and the man or his legal adviser will not be allowed to cross-examine him. All that has to be done if this Bill becomes law is for a garda for any reason—and I have great respect for the Garda and for their restraint at the present time, the great restraint being shown by them and by the Defence Forces—to point to a man and say he accused him of being a member of an illegal organisation, take him to court where a chief superintendent will repeat that because the garda told him he thought he was a member of an illegal organisation he is one and there is no defence to that.

For God's sake.

The Minister need not pretend that this is not so because he knows it is. He knows the idea behind the whole thing is to carry on what was started a few months ago by the Government, an attempt to get a grip on everything in this country so that the opposition to Fianna Fáil will be worn down.

The law as proposed is so wide that the Unionists in the North have expressed the opinion that they would like to have some of the powers which are to be bestowed by this Bill and they would be able to do things which they are unable to do at present. Why we, who claim to be such a freedom loving people are being asked to support the Bill which is to take away the freedom of so many people on a flimsy excuse I do not know. Would the Minister not admit that what he is asking us to do is to give him the power of internment? Is it not true that instead of introducing internment —which, incidently the Taoiseach mentioned about two years ago that he might have to introduce in certain circumstances—we now have the Minister for Justice under another guise attempting to introduce internment? I do not know what Fine Gael are going to do about this Bill. I am sure they will vote against it. Whether they do or not we in the Labour Party will vote against it because we are perfectly satisfied that the Bill should not appear on the statute book.

Somebody mentioned earlier that Mr. Mac Stiofáin could have been arrested on a number of occasions and was not arrested. It is true that a few short months ago Mr. Mac Stiofáin was in Liberty Hall and not alone was he not arrested but he was given a guard of honour leaving it. I think eight gardaí had to accompany him safely to his car. If the State claim that they were looking for him, as we understood they were, why did they not arrest him then? Is it not extraordinary that they knew that he was going to make a tape and they knew what was going to be on the tape when they arrested him, because if they arrested him on chance surely they could have arrested him on chance on a previous occasion? The charges which were made against him included the tape and also included something he was alleged to have said on other occasions. The whole story of the Government in this case makes very bad reading. Can the Minister tell me what exactly has been achieved by the arrest and sentence of Mac Stiofáin? While I am not going to defend him or anything he does, it is rather remarkable that his arrest has resulted in the exact opposite to what the Minister said he hoped to achieve by having him arrested.

Let us turn for a moment to this question of internment. The Minister must be aware that the rate of killing in the North following the introduction of internment increased enormously. It may be truly said that the conflagration in the North caused by internment has been the biggest trouble that has hit this island for many years. Yet the Minister suggests that the way to solve our problems here is to intern certain people. The Minister already has the power to arrest and try people. The Government have not used it for some extraordinary reason, or not so extraordinary when one thinks of what the Government are doing. They have now come along with this peculiar sort of Bill and are expecting to get it passed in this House. If it is defeated, as I expect it will be, they will have a general election and will claim they are going to fight it on the law and order issue. I should like to make a comment on that.

A few days ago on the RTE news programmes at 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. there was a comment that the issue would be whether the Government or illegal organisations would have the right to rule the country. That was a most improper comment to make on the national radio station because the issue is not as was stated. The issue is that the Government want to take powers to which they are not entitled. If they are defeated in this attempt they will have an election and attempt to hang around our necks the charge that in some way we are responsible for what has gone wrong.

It might be convenient for the Government to do something like that. They must have an election next year and the economic trends show that things are not getting better. If they are able to claim they are running an election campaign on a law and order issue they hope people will forget rising prices, rising unemployment, bad housing and social services and all the things that affect the people of this country. They are hoping that they can bluff the people, as they have in the past, by claiming they are the knights in shining armour, the people who will defend the country against the "baddies" on this side of the House. No doubt Deputy Crowley will return to west Cork where he will explain to the people at the church gate that if they vote for Labour they will run the risk of the parish priest finishing up in chains.

I will tell the people the truth.

The Deputy will get his opportunity but that little hare will not run again. We have nailed that one, once and for all.

It appears Deputy Cruise-O'Brien's influence has extended to Fine Gael through Deputy FitzGerald.

I would ask Deputy Crowley to cease interrupting.

I want it to go on record that if this Dáil is dissolved tonight it will be the desire of the Taoiseach. The Minister for Finance and of many Deputies in Fianna Fáil to hang around the neck of members of the Labour Party the brand of being friends of the Provos. The brand that they are in favour of bringing in an alien doctrine to this country will not work. I have tried to trace the history of the formation of the Provos, who supported them and where they got their money. It is rather ironic to find that the people responsible for putting them into the race are now claiming that they are attempting to put them out of action. Fianna Fáil's chickens are now coming home to roost and the party have got to live with what they created.

I want to make it doubly clear that the Labour Party are as much in favour of law and order as anyone else in this country. The Labour Party are always prepared to stand up to their responsibilities, not only when it is popular but also when it is unpopular. Anyone who reads the Official Reports of this House will find that Members from our benches expressed their views and were prepared to take the consequences and that is what we are doing now.

I know that it is easy to stir up outside a story that someone is trying to cause trouble. I heard from one of the Fianna Fáil Deputies the story about the picket outside his house and I sympathised with him. All of us in public life have to accept those things. We may get phone calls or letters but if we cannot accept them we should not be in public life. I think it is quite fair, as Deputy Hugh Gibbons has said, that anyone who wants to have a go at a politician should do so to the politician, not to members of his family. Members of our families have nothing to do with our political lives and they should not be involved in any way in what happens here or outside the House. There will always be petty-minded people who think they are achieving something when they picket a house or make comments over a phone. The Labour Party have stood up to this kind of thing but we resent it when it is done to our own families or to the families of other Deputies.

The Minister for Justice stated categorically in this House that the Bill was brought in after consultation with the police authorities. I do not know what he meant by "police authorities". Did he mean the gardaí on the beat, the superintendents or the Garda Commissioner? I should like the Minister to say at what level this consultation took place. I have gone to considerable trouble to find out where the consultation took place but down the line they did not know anything about it and they certainly do not want to be saddled with those powers. A decent garda does not want to have on his shoulders the responsibility of being judge and jury, which is the case if he identifies someone as a member of the Provisional or Official IRA or any other illegal organisation. There are about 27 chief superintendents throughout the country; is it suggested that they are the people who will go into court? When a chief superintendent says a person is a member of an illegal organisation he is signing a jail warrant for that man unless the person can prove otherwise. I understand it is practically impossible to do this; how can one prove one is not in an organisation if this is the case? I should like the Minister to explain how he thinks this will work. What is proposed in this Bill is not Irish law and we do not want it to be introduced now.

On a point of order——

The Deputy should sit down and allow Deputy Tully to make his speech. There is no point of order involved here.

Is the House aware that two people have lost their lives and 40 people have been injured in O'Connell Street?

That is not a point of order. I have told the Deputy to sit down.

Yesterday the Taoiseach said that the people who caused the bomb outrage on Sunday night were members of a certain organisation. From his crystal ball can the Taoiseach now say who was responsible for this outrage? If the Taoiseach knew who was responsible for the outrage on Sunday night, have they been arrested? Surely if the Taoiseach knew who they were action should have been taken and they should be behind bars. There is no point in someone coming here and pretending he knows something which is not correct. Deputy Burke has mentioned the fact that two people have died but we were aware of that already. Our bush telegraph is as good as the Deputy's——

May the Lord have mercy on their souls.

We have already said that but that will not be much consolation to them or to those who are in this world, whatever it may do for them in the next.

I do not want to embarrass the Deputy.

I have been listening to Deputy Burke too long to be embarrassed by anything he would say. The Offences Against the State Act, which this Bill is supposed to amend, has only been used, as was again pointed out by Deputy O'Donovan recently, in the last few years against one group who possibly the then Minister might consider was an illegal organisation; it would not be the type of organisation perhaps that he would consider should be entitled to get on, and that was the National Farmers' Association. Strange to say, the Minister who used it against the farmers was the Minister for Agriculture at the time, Deputy Charles J. Haughey. He found it necessary or found it possible to introduce a section of the Offences Against the State Act for the purpose of locking up farmers. Since that time very many people have paraded outside the gates of Leinster House. None of them has been arrested. Most of them, I assume, were town dwellers. There is, I know, a tendency to deal with the country man in one way and the townsman in a different way, and it appears this has come true in this case.

If the Minister for Justice found it possible to arrest members of the National Farmers' Association under the Offences Against the State Act and send them to jail, it should be possible without any additional powers for the present Minister for Justice to arrest anybody, particularly those who apparently can parade openly and break the law openly, and put him in jail without putting in jeopardy ordinary citizens who if they are going about their business can be arrested under the proposed legislation and locked up and there is not one darn thing they can do about it.

This Bill is another of the Fianna Fáil red herrings we have had over the years. The Minister's purpose in introducing it is to cloud the real issues before the people today: the high cost of living, unemployment, and the failure of Fianna Fáil to rule the country properly. There is already in existence a law adequate to deal with the situation but what we lack is a Government with the guts to enforce it. That is why we have the situation we have today. The purpose of this legislation is to get Fianna Fáil off the hook. It is rather strange that they had the power to arrest the leader of Sinn Féin.

Which side is the Deputy on?

Would Deputy Burke cease interrupting?

The purpose of this Bill is to show that "Honest Jack" is going to face up to the situation that he has failed to face up to in the past. He is a weak leader, a leader who has stood idly by. He is like Nero fiddling while Rome was burning.

That is what the Deputy is doing tonight.

There is hardly a week goes by that Deputy Burke is not photographed with all the heroes laying wreaths on the graves of men who were misled by the same party over the years. It was a grand thing, when they came into this House first, to see them assembling a machinegun down in one of the phone booths of this House.

That has nothing to do with the Bill.

If that happened today——

Would the Deputy please come to the Bill?

These are things that have happened.

50 or 60 years ago.

No, 1927. This country is full of dissidents, but the party opposite have had their share of them, and only that our leader cleared them out what would the situation be today?

Which leader?

The leader who has taught you law and order and whose father before him taught you law and order.

You have no leader now.

Deputy Burke spoke about two unfortunate people who were killed, but the blood is not on our hands; it is on the hands of those on that side of the House, the same as it was for Collins and for O'Higgins and others, and they are responsible for the young men on whose graves they are now laying wreaths and rattling their bones. It cost a lot to educate Fianna Fáil on law and order and they are still paying the price for it today. As the previous speaker said, the chickens are coming home to roost.

Let us recall what some of our Government members did some time ago. They were not throwing oil on troubled waters in the North of Ireland but throwing oil on the fire. There is another group up there called the UDA who at one time were going to kick the crown into the Boyne. Now they say they love the crown, but if you ask me it is not the crown but the half-crown they were always fond of. Around this House tonight there are many gentlemen in groups sweating it out. I have seen a few of them, Tacateers and the cheque book gangsters who are the supporters of Fianna Fáil.

That has nothing to do with the Bill.

I want to give the background of the party——

That does not arise.

It arises at every election, and if there is an election tomorrow morning these Tacateers will be coming out with their cheque books. We have taught Fianna Fáil all about law and order and will continue to do so.

This is merely a face-saver for Fianna Fáil to get them off the hook for what they have failed to do for so long. This Bill, to say the least of it, is repressive. I feel that if they get away with this they will try further. If this Bill is put through I could be subject to being interned also.

No chance of that, Deputy.

You did a lot worse. You tried it on my father and he was a Sinn Féin Member in the Tan days. He was not an opportunist like a lot of them now. The record is a good one, so far as I am concerned. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary would try to contain himself. I know it is an unfortunate position to be all nerves; he is going to lose a lot of money after this. I would give him one bit of advice. He is entitled to send out 20,000 or 30,000 Christmas cards. Get them out immediately. You will be out before that.

We meet here in this House under dark clouds. Explosions are taking place here in our city. Citizens of the Twenty-six Counties are being killed. We offer our deepest sympathy to the relatives of those people. A grave responsibility rests on each and every one of us, whether in Opposition or in Government.

Deputy P.J. Burke spoke a few moments ago about backbone. If the Fianna Fáil Government had backbone and if we had had leadership in the country for the past three years, if the Government were prepared to do their duty and not to allow the position to drift from chaos to chaos, we would not now be facing the anarchy that we are facing. The Government stood idly by when they should have been doing their duty. Unfortunately, due to past history, they were not in a position to do that.

I speak as one who, in this House, consistently over the past three years opposed the IRA, the subversives, in this country. Time after time over the past three years I appealed in speeches throughout the length and breadth of this country, for the Taoiseach to lead from the front, to do his duty to stop standing idly by. He refused to do that and because of his refusal the country tonight, perhaps, faces anarchy. I appealed to the Taoiseach on numerous occasions. Time after time he made a skit of me in this House. He got up, from where the Parliamentary Secretary is sitting tonight, and spoke about "L'Estrange's drift to anarchy". I appealed to him three years ago, when there were only a couple of hundred IRA men in the country. Even in the course of a speech last year I appealed to him, and I pointed out that there were only 500-800 IRA men in Northern Ireland, but there were 20,000 members of the British Army, armed to the teeth with modern, up-to-date equipment and tanks, and that there were 8,000-9,000 UDR people, also armed, and a further 4,000-5,000 of the Special Branch there, and yet the IRA were bombing, blasting, killing people and ravaging the cities of Belfast and Derry.

I said then that unless the Government acted against those irresponsible, subversive elements in our community there would be an over-spill here and we would face the same difficulties. Three years ago I appealed to the Taoiseach on numerous occasions to go on television, as he did when the farmers of this country threatened a strike. The Taoiseach then said he would use all the forces of the Army and the Garda Síochána to put down the farmers of the country. I appealed to him to speak on radio and television and, remember, I had the help and the backing of the two Opposition parties. I asked the Taoiseach to say that in so far as he was concerned there was not going to be any further double-talk, inaction or selective justice but that he was prepared to govern. The Taoiseach said that last week, but it is a pity he did not say it three years ago. If he had done so, we would not be in the turmoil in which we are today.

I said on numerous occasions in the past, and I want to say again tonight, that I do not believe in repressive legislation. We know what repressive legislation has done in Northern Ireland. I believe in justice and the rights and freedom of the individual. I believe in law and order, but we cannot have law and order unless we have justice, freedom and liberty, and unless the Government cherish all the children of the nation equally. Unfortunately, that did not happen because when it suited the Government we had selective justice. When it suited them to let certain people go scot-free in case they would lose votes, we had no justice.

I do not like going back, but it might be no harm to quote what I said in Mullingar on 4th April, 1970. That was after the brutal murder of Garda Fallon. I said that the brutal and cowardly murder of Garda Fallon, a member of the Garda Síochána, in the performance of his duty as a defender of the citizens of Ireland brought home to everyone the importance of upholding the law and authority unflinchingly and ceaselessly. I want to challenge the Taoiseach and ask him did they do that after the death of Garda Fallon? Did the Taoiseach take the bit in his teeth and govern as he should have governed? That happened three years ago. If he had taken action then, we would not be in the unfortunate position that we are in tonight. I also said on that occasion in Mullingar that foremost among the achievements of the Fine Gael Party was that they established the basic institutions of this State with a trowel in one hand and a gun in the other. Unfortunately, we had to do that at one time. We set up the Army and the Garda Síochána, and we are justly proud of them. The Fianna Fáil Party have vacillated and dithered for the past three years. A member of theirs at one time said that they were a "slightly constitutional" party. I am afraid that the wheel has now turned the full round. To quote Banquo from Macbeth:

that we but teach

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return

To plague the inventor; this evenhanded justice

Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice

To our own lips.

That is, unfortunately, what is happening at present. As Deputy Tully has said, the chickens are now coming home to roost.

I also said in that speech on 4th April, 1970:

The tragic family left behind by Garda Fallon will at least have the consolation that he had died a hero's death. His life and death alike are a credit to the Force... I hope the Government will spare no effort to bring his murderers to book, no matter what opinions he or his companions may hold about our national rights or our destiny.

Unfortunately, that is what happened at that time because Fianna Fáil were interested in one thing, in the art of survival; they wanted to hold on to power and, because many of those people had voted and supported them in the past, they were not prepared to arrest them. Survival was the name of the game and, if there was a Nobel prize for the art of survival there is no denying that the Taoiseach and his Government would get it.

I questioned the Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice at the time, Deputy Ó Moráin. Our police force knew where the murderers of Garda Fallon were and they asked the Government to introduce section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act so that they could take them in, hold them and question them. The Government met for four hours, but there was a by-election taking place in Longford/Westmeath and the police were told, as they have been told on so many occasions, this would be a political decision that "might do our Government harm and we are not prepared to introduce section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act", and they did not do it. Had they done so the murderers of Garda Fallon could have been apprehended at that time.

I also stated in that speech:

It is the first principle of a civilised society that its guns are under the lock and key of the lawfully elected authority of the State. We are the elected representatives of the people and through us alone will basic national decisions be made.

That has been our policy since the foundation of this State and, as far as we are concerned, since the foundation of this State we have stood for law and order. We believe that the existing legislation could have enabled the Government to deal with these subversive elements, had they wanted to deal with them but, for their own political reasons, they did not want to deal with them.

The Taoiseach read this speech and the very next night, speaking in Longford on Saturday, 5th April, he replied to my speech and accused me of trying to make political capital out of the murder of Garda Dick Fallon. I was not trying to make political capital out of the murder of any member of the forces of law and order in this country because we have too much respect for them and we have stood by them ever since they were set up, as an unarmed force, by Cumann na nGaedheal. We have always backed them up and we will continue to back them up and, had they got the same backing from Fianna Fáil, instead of being told to turn the blind eye and not to arrest this person or that person, there would have been no need to introduce this repressive Bill into this House. Their instructions were that they were not to arrest if there was a big crowd. This instruction was given to the members of the Garda Síochána when they telephoned to say that So-and-So was at a meeting. They were told: "You know these decisions are political. If there is a big crowd do not arrest that person. If there is a small crowd arrest him." There was a big crowd and he escaped. The Garda Síochána had to do what they were told.

How could one expect democracy to flourish in a country where this happens? Is it any wonder we are in the unfortunate position we are in at this moment? The blame for our unfortunate position now rest fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the Government who, for political reasons, were afraid to do their duty.

I stated further on that occasion:

We are the elected representatives of the people and through us alone will basic national decisions be taken.

Had the Government lived up to that we would not be in the plight in which we are. That was three years ago and Deputy Dowling challenged me as the "law and order" man and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Colley, also challenged me. I am proud to stand up here and remind the House that I said those things three years ago. I am sorry for one thing, and one thing only: I am sorry that I have been proved correct. Would to God, that I had been proved wrong in all that I said three years ago. Had the Government acted then as we, on this side of the House asked them to act, we would not be in the position in which we are tonight.

I further said in that speech:

What have the Government been doing to allow this accelerated drift towards chaos?

I asked that of the Government and of the Taoiseach at that time. We know they did nothing then and it is only now they are trying to do too much too late. I further said on that occasion:

We have seen men who do not belong to the Defence Force in uniform, carrying arms, and go unarrested.

We did see that and I shall deal with that in a moment. They appeared on our television screens and they were not arrested. I said: "Open contempt for the law has produced only a frightened silence." That was three years ago. Unfortunately it is not a frightened silence we have tonight, but we definitely have violent explosions in our midst due to the fact that this Government refused to take action in time.

I accuse the Government of standing idly by, to use their own words, for the past three or four years. The Government did not enforce the law. As I said earlier, had they allowed the constitutional institutions of our State —by that I mean the Garda Síochána, of whom we are proud, no matter what Government may be in office—to take action against irresponsible elements, we would not be here tonight discussing the provisions of this Bill. Unfortunately, the instruction given was to observe but not to apprehend. Gardaí—I said this here before and I repeat it now—take a solemn oath to do their duty. I know respectable members of the Garda Síochána who were threatened by Members of this House. I know cases in which men who did their duty were transferred to Mayo, to Galway, to Donegal and to other parts west. I have always claimed that the Government should stand behind these men and, instead of being transferred, they should get promotion for going out fearlessly and doing their duty. It is they who should get promotion and not the men who hobnob with politicians and spend their time drinking with them. These are not the men we want leading our police force. We want the dedicated men prepared to go out and do their duty, and arrest, if necessary, certain people irrespective of class, of creed or politics. Unfortunately, in the past, too many people have not been apprehended because of their politics.

I do not want to go back too far in the past but, still, following the taunts and the things that were said to us today about having backbone I want to ask: who opened the jails in 1932 when they were elected to power and allowed out scot free men who had been sentenced to jail for shooting members of our armed forces and our Civic Guards and other people in this State? It was not the people on this side of the House because we had done our duty at that time.

Who in 1932, 1933 and 1934 sacked members of the detective force and the Garda because they apprehended Fianna Fáil people—the dividing line then was as thin as now—who were members of the IRA? I can give the names, but I think it is not necessary, of the Fianna Fáil Government of that time. These were dedicated and courageous members of the Garda who did their duty in those years but, because the people they had apprehended, IRA men, were so closely connected with Fianna Fáil they had to resign their positions and were sacked out of the Garda.

Is it any wonder that we have the frustration that we have in this country today? This may be the last occasion I may get in this House to put on record what was said by Justice William Sweetman in a letter in the Irish Independent of 28th December, 1970—and around that time the deterioration started in this country. Having given about six different examples of where the Government refused to do their duty, he gave a political one, and I shall come to it. He wrote:

But an earlier incident may be more significant in the present context. We can all remember reports of armed activities near Abbeyleix during a visit by a member of the British Royal Family. A number of men were brought before the courts.

There was disorder in the court on that day and Gardaí were beaten up. I remember that myself. It goes on:

There was disorder both inside and outside the courthouse. A few weeks later ten of the defendants who had been ordered by the court to give bonds to keep the peace on pain of imprisonment were released by the Government without the bonds being signed.

The Government countermanded the decision of the judge. They had no authority to do that, and yet they did it. Some of the people they allowed out scot free at that time are some of the leaders of the IRA today.

I want to come to another incident that took place in my county and in my home town of Mullingar. The remains of Barnes and McCormack were brought home from England to be reinterred in Ballyglass cemetery in Mullingar. There was a procession from the cathedral out to the graveyard. There were people marching that day in uniform; and, when the remains were covered over, four men stepped forward, produced guns, and fired shots into the air. Their photographs appeared in the three daily papers the next day and they appeared on television. Thank God, we had conscientious members of the Garda in Mullingar. The next day the officers of the Garda in Mullingar sent the names of the four people to Dublin to the Department of Justice and said: "Here are the names of the four men. When will we arrest them?" I want to put on record as I have at least ten times in the past three years——

Twenty times.

The Minister says 20 times. Here is what happened. The officers of the Garda Síochána sent that report and that letter has not been answered yet. Is that justice? Is that not selective justice? The Minister for Finance talked about low standards in high places. Are they some of the low standards in high places he talked about when he made his speech three years ago? I questioned the Minister for Justice about this and his reply to me was that he was not Minister for Justice at that time. I will give him credit for this. He did not say it should not have happened——

Here is Deputy Cooney. Are you for or against?

I have tried to get the Government to take action over the past three years.

Are you for action or against?

I have always been for action. If you allowed the constitutional institutions of this State to function properly over the years we would not be in the position we are in tonight.

Listen to Deputy Cooney now.

I beg leave of the Chair and the House to intervene in the debate at this stage in my position as proposer of this reasoned amendment on behalf of the Fine Gael Party. I should like to remind the House that our amendment was designed to show opposition to the Bill as drafted while, at the same time, indicating that we support all reasonable measures to enforce law and order. Tragic events have overtaken Parliament and conscious, and indeed anxious, about the fact that our amendment, if supported by those Members of the House known as the dissidents and now revealed as fellow-travellers of the IRA——

A short statement.

——might have the effect of plunging the country into the turmoil of a political crisis when, above all, in view of recent events stability is required, we have decided to put nation before party and accordingly we withdraw our amendment, but in no way conceding that a Bill of such a repressive nature as this Bill should be of more than temporary duration and subject to mature consideration later.

I am glad to hear what Deputy Cooney has said. The situation in which the country finds itself is amply demonstrated by the tragic events tonight in Dublin. On behalf of the Government and the whole House I offer the sympathy of the House to the relatives of those who have been killed and to the people who have been injured. In these circumstances I think I would be entitled and, indeed, that it would be my duty, to ask the House to give me all Stages of this Bill tonight.

While I concede that the times are extraordinary, I think the Minister should allow us some more time than tonight to consider, as I indicated in my statement, the duration of the Bill, and there are some other serious matters that might require consideration.

May I suggest that, if the House would adjourn for an hour, I could discuss the Bill with Deputy Cooney and with Deputy Cluskey.

With representatives of the three parties.

Yes, with representatives of the other two parties.

That is reasonable.

We might be able to take all stages in an hour's time.

We agree to that proposal. I should like to join with the Minister in expressing, on behalf of this party and on behalf of the House, our very deep sympathy to the relatives of the people who have been killed and to the people who have been injured. I should like to express the hope that the resolution of all of us responsible to the people will ensure that the measures we take will protect the lives and liberty of the people.

What is the proposal?

The Minister's proposal has been that the House should adjourn for an hour at this stage so as to enable the Minister with the representatives of the three parties to discuss this Bill and the Minister is seeking the Bill tonight in all Stages.

Resume at 11 p.m.

I am sorry, I have only just got in and may not have got what has gone before. What, in fact, is the position with regard to the Second Stage of the Bill at this moment?

I am sorry, I was not here when Deputy Cooney spoke and do not know exactly what was said but we of our party certainly would agree to the adjournment for one hour.

I should like on behalf of my party and myself to express our deep sympathy for those who were either killed —and I believe there were some people killed—or injured in the three explosions. Therefore, all we have to say at this stage is that we agree to the hour's adjournment.

Let me say also, in expressing that sympathy, that we condemn without reservation those who were responsible for the explosions—it is not a time for applause, with all due respect—no matter who they were, whether it was the Provisional IRA, the UDA, the UVF—no matter who they were. As far as our party is concerned, we have been consistent in this.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

What the Chair is concerned with is that the Second Reading of the Bill is agreed and the House adjourns for an hour. Is that right?

Deputy Cooney made a proposal to withdraw his amendment.

And then we adjourn.

Will you put the Bill, if you do not mind my suggesting it?

We were in the middle of a meeting and were late. We understood that the proposal was that the Dáil adjourn for an hour but that nothing else happens. To that proposal we most certainly have agreed.

That is right.

That is as I understood it.

I think the Minister will agree with that.

My understanding was that the Minister's expectation and intention was that the Second Stage be passed now and an adjournment for an hour to consider giving the Minister all Stages.

That was not our understanding. Our understanding was that the proceedings were just being suspended for an hour.

Deputy Cooney having withdrawn his amendment, although I did not refer to the Second Stage as such, I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the Second Stage was then passed.

Could I propose that the Minister would conclude his speech on Second Stage and that we have a vote?

As far as our party are concerned, we are quite agreeable to an adjournment.

I would suggest that the House would adjourn without doing any more than taking note of our withdrawal.

Business suspended at 9.55 p.m. and resumed at 10.50 p.m.

As was arranged before we adjourned, the Minister for Justice met representatives of the other two parties. Following that meeting, the Labour Party have sought an adjournment for a further half hour so that they can consider their position. We have no objection to such adjournment.

This party have no objection either to an adjournment.

Business suspended at 10.55 p.m. and resumed at 11.25 p.m.

I do not propose to make a replying speech on Second Reading and I would ask you to put the question straight away.

In the special circumstances of this debate, I should like your permission to make a statement.

It is not usual to have any statements at this stage. There has been a long debate on the Bill.

There can be one with the agreement of the House.

If it is a brief statement.

I should like, with your indulgence and that of the House, to make a short statement.

A short statement only.

Just over an hour ago I, on behalf of my party, deplored and condemned the recent horrible and dastardly outrages in Dublin, as we consistently condemned all politics that lead to violence. We do not agree that these atrocities constitute a justification for this Bill. If the Bill were in operation tonight would these bombings have been prevented? Fianna Fáil, as Deputy Blaney admitted this morning, created the Provisional IRA.

This is not in order.

This irresponsibility is out of order.

May I say, on a point of order, that this statement was in order only with the consent of the House? I think the Deputy's statement is not in accordance with the kind of statement that one would permit on such an occasion and I object to the course which the Deputy is now taking.

Deputy Corish has just made a statement which is only in keeping with some of the headlines that appeared in some of the news media today in regard to what I allegedly said here. I would ask that Deputy Corish and the news media reporters would read what I said before they start printing headlines. I find they are all in it, not just one.

People concerned with that attempt to which I referred are still prominent in the Fianna Fáil Party and in the Government.

(Interruptions.)

I am putting the question: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I do not want to be disorderly. May I finish my statement?

There can be no speech at this stage.

I merely want to say——

I have called for a Division. There can be no further statement.

The Dáil divided: Tá, 70; Níl, 23.

  • Aiken, Frank.
  • Allen, Lorcan.
  • Andrews, David.
  • Barrett, Sylvester.
  • Boylan, Terence.
  • Brady, Philip A.
  • Brennan, Joseph.
  • Briscoe, Ben.
  • Brosnan, Seán.
  • Browne, Patrick.
  • Browne, Seán.
  • Burke, Patrick J.
  • Carter, Frank.
  • Carty, Michael.
  • Childers, Erskine.
  • Colley, George.
  • Collins, Gerard.
  • Connolly, Gerard C.
  • Cowen, Bernard.
  • Cronin, Jerry.
  • Crowley, Flor.
  • Cunningham, Liam.
  • Davern, Noel.
  • Delap, Patrick.
  • de Valera, Vivion.
  • Dowling, Joe.
  • Fahey, Jackie.
  • Faulkner, Pádraig.
  • Fitzgerald, Gene.
  • Fitzpatrick, Tom (Dublin Central).
  • Flanagan, Seán.
  • French, Seán.
  • Gallagher, James.
  • Geoghegan, John.
  • Gibbons, Hugh.
  • Gibbons, James.
  • Gogan, Richard P.
  • Haughey, Charles.
  • Healy, Augustine A.
  • Herbert, Michael.
  • Hillery, Patrick J.
  • Hilliard, Michael.
  • Hussey, Thomas.
  • Kenneally, William.
  • Kitt, Michael F.
  • Lalor, Patrick J.
  • Lemass, Noel T.
  • Lenehan, Joseph.
  • Lenihan, Brian.
  • Loughnane, William A.
  • Lynch, Celia.
  • Lynch, John.
  • McEllistrim, Thomas.
  • MacSharry, Ray.
  • Meaney, Thomas.
  • Molloy, Robert.
  • Moore, Seán.
  • Moran, Michael.
  • Nolan, Thomas.
  • Noonan, Michael.
  • O'Connor, Timothy.
  • O'Kennedy, Michael.
  • O'Leary, John.
  • O'Malley, Des.
  • Power, Patrick.
  • Smith, Michael.
  • Smith, Patrick.
  • Timmons, Eugene.
  • Tunney, Jim.
  • Wyse, Pearse.

Níl

  • Blaney, Neil.
  • Brennan, Paudge.
  • Browne, Noel.
  • Cluskey, Frank.
  • Collins, Edward.
  • Corish, Brendan.
  • Coughlan, Stephen.
  • Cruise-O'Brien, Conor.
  • Desmond, Barry.
  • Flanagan, Oliver J.
  • Foley, Desmond.
  • Kavanagh, Liam.
  • Keating, Justin.
  • Murphy, Michael P.
  • O'Connell, John F.
  • O'Donovan, John.
  • O'Leary, Michael.
  • Pattison, Séamus.
  • Sherwin, Seán.
  • Spring, Dan.
  • Thornley, David.
  • Treacy, Seán.
  • Tully, James.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Andrews and Meaney; Níl, Deputies Cluskey and Kavanagh.
Question declared carried.
Agreed to take remaining Stages today.
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