Deputy O'Sullivan and others referred to visiting committees. I have found that one of the major matters was with regard to complaints. There might be complaints about, for instance, the Portlaoise prison, about conditions in other prisons or about visiting committees, but I found for some extraordinary reason— which might be for propaganda purposes—that all the complaints centred on the Curragh detention prison and this made me consider the matter. I found that although the maximum number on a visiting committee should be 12 and the minimum number six, when I arrived at my office the number had dropped to six and on my desk was a resignation from one of the six. This would have left me with a committee that was under the minimum stipulated. I appointed seven people; they included old people, late middle-aged and middle-aged people. The people appointed included the former Deputy Boylan, Deputy Bermingham, a former secretary of a semi-State company, a former bank manager and a farmer. There were no arrangements for travelling expenses but I did not think it was sufficient merely to have a local visiting committee. The committee I appointed are having their first meeting today.
I visited the prison and spent three hours there. I inspected it with the help of the Secretary of my Department, the Adjutant General and the Governor of the prison. As I pointed out in my opening speech, the food supplied will have to be as good as the Army food. The instruction has been given, and I corroborated it, that, within the limits of prison regulations, the food should be the same as that in the Army and should be cooked by Army cooks. I might remark that there is nothing new in this; my predecessor made the same ruling.
As I pointed out in my speech, because this prison is not the same as an ordinary prison it has one disadvantage. In the past when an Army detainee had his breakfast he was put to work draining football pitches—I understand all drainage of the football pitches at the Curragh was carried out by detainees —or he was given other fatigue duties. After tea the detainee was put into his cell at 9 p.m. and this continued for the duration of his sentence. That situation meant that the people who planned this prison had not the necessity to provide as much dayroom accommodation as would be required in an ordinary prison.
I wish to remind the House that there is no justification for all the criticism my predecessor and myself have suffered regarding the Curragh prison. It has been stated that it is unfair to place prisoners in it. There is the added disadvantage about this prison that, as former detainees could have been anywhere in the Curragh complex during the daytime, there are not the high walls that surround many other prisons. My predecessor and myself have had to do certain things; I have had to provide a separate exercise ground for two prisoners.
Because of the wrecking of Mountjoy prison I have had to look after these people who were led astray. They are opposed to the State and to our democracy and it is a tragedy that their energies and intelligence were not devoted towards working for the State. It is my job to make sure that they remain in custody, not merely as a measure of punishment but also for security reasons, for the term the court has decided. However, these people will be treated in a humane manner. I reject completely the constant pleas for unsupervised visits. We are dealing with people who naturally enough wish to escape and if unsupervised visits were allowed, messages and material could be passed to them. Such visits are not allowed in any prison. I have inspected the visiting rooms and I wish to assure the House that they are perfectly normal.
I have visited people in Mountjoy Prison. There was a table with a glass partition about nine inches high in the middle of the room and the visitors sat on one side and the prisoners sat on the other with a prison officer present. An exactly similar situation exists in the Curragh Detention Barracks. Any of the propaganda which Deputies may have heard—for some unknown reason all slanted at this prison—may be taken to be entirely erroneous so far as my full investigation was concerned. I want to assure the House and the country that it is my job to see to it that there will be no escape from there—I would remind the House that there was an escape from there last October. I am also charged with the good health and the proper treatment of prisoners and this charge will be carried out to the full without any discrimination of any kind.
Deputy Briscoe mentioned the people on bomb disposal work. The people of this country are now awakening to the fact that there is a necessity for such people as Army experts. A person who defuses a bomb at risk to his life is surely not only an expert but almost a hero. We have these people in the Army, and we have such training in the Army. It is highly necessary. As more nefarious and horrible weapons arrive —if they do arrive; and we may as well accept that some of them did arrive—we must see to it in every possible way that they do not cause loss of life. I hope and I think these weapons do not arrive through this part of the country.
The Russian rockets which are now being used in the North of Ireland are dreadful weapons. So far they have not been used successfully, through lack of training we would think, but they did arrive. There are also bombs of the most modern type. There are bombs which with a lesser weight and size could create far more loss of life and damage to property than the conventional type of explosives more normally used. The bomb disposal experts to whom Deputy Briscoe adverted are our front line experts in this field.
Deputy Briscoe made the point, and I take the point, that in the event of one of these gentlemen losing his life there is a case for a more generous approach to his dependants. Happily, so far as I know, this has not occurred at least during the past few years, but Deputy Briscoe's point is salient and should be looked at and I will do so. He also wished me luck and I thank him for that. He instanced the case of a soldier with 37 years' service, with four years out of the Army during that period, and a pension of £40 a month. His widow got nothing. I should like him to communicate with me or my Department about this matter because it appears to be out of line. We will have it looked up and we will see to it that if there is any error—I do not think there is—it will be corrected.
The vexed question of married quarters and overholders was raised by several Deputies, including Deputy O'Sullivan and Deputy Briscoe. I should like to deal generally with married quarters at the moment. During my short period of office I have addressed myself to this question. The general policy whereby local authorities would build houses in proximity to known permanent barracks, in which soldiers could live as ordinary citizens and report for their duties at the barracks, is not meeting with as much success as we would wish. One of the obvious places that comes to mind is Kildare. One also thinks of Naas and the Curragh. As far as I know, Deputy Bermingham is a member of Kildare County Council and he was quite critical of what was occurring. During the next couple of months, to speed this up, one of my duties will be to interview county managers or secretaries of local authorities and see if we can set up a scheme and do something positive in this regard.
By and large, I would think that the point made by Deputy Byrne and Deputy Dowling, that soldiers are better living outside barracks, if possible, is valid. The applicants for houses with local authorities include applicants from married quarters within barracks, and somebody made the point that the only way you could bring the Army into line in this regard would be to go in and do the dreadful deed of condemning married quarters. Since I became Minister I have not had the opportunity of visiting married quarters but I will do so. The fact that my Estimate was taken first gives me a chance to get on the road.
I did have an opportunity of visiting all the married quarters in the Curragh Camp during a recent by-election in Kildare. Frankly, I was appalled. Over the years when it came to making economies in the Army, married quarters seem to have been neglected. Money was saved on married quarters. Possibly it was thought that it was not right to have these huge rows of married quarters in the barracks and that the soldiers should be accommodated outside and this may have led previous Ministers and the Department to decide to let married quarters die a natural death. I would hope that, under the aegis of the National Building Agency, perhaps, and with the goodwill of the local authority and the goodwill of the Department and myself in relation to sites and land, we could do something to deal with the problem of married quarters.
For the first time in my reply I am expressing a criticism on the basis that in some cases married quarters are dreadful. I was shown around the married quarters of a man and his wife and four children and it was not fit accommodation for them. There was nothing he could do about it. His life was the Army and he had to put up with it, because outside, the local authority may have been making sounds but they were not producing houses. I will have to investigate this and try to get a proper relationship between local authorities and the Army, and try to get the building scheme which is under way at present enlarged so that Army men will be able to live outside barracks in houses which are proper for themselves and their families.
Deputy Briscoe raised the point about pensions for widows of soldiers. I have not addressed myself to that matter since I became Minister but I am advised that some thought has been given to it. All I can say is that I will examine it. I will have to take a copy of this debate with me everywhere I go to see what I said I would examine. I will have to see how I can activate those matters which I wish to activate.
Deputy Bermingham said that a widow was disqualified from getting a pension to which she was entitled because she did not apply within one year of her husband's death as she did not know she should. This seems to us to be a little off beam. If Deputy Bermingham would be good enough to let me or the Department know what the situation is we will do our very best. We will certainly see that if any injustice has been done—and I do not think it has been—it will be righted immediately.
We are in a dreadful position in regard to overholding. If you give a man a house for 20 years and it comes to the end of his stay in the Army and somebody else needs the house, you have two needs and one supply. If you have two children and one slice of bread and the minimum allowance is one slice of bread, then one child goes hungry. I know it is difficult when a man has been from 20 to 25 years in a house and has served loyally during that period to be asked to move away. I can see no short term solution here but I think of it as almost being in the sphere of the social worker—that there should be some planning towards the setting up of the soldier outside after he leaves the Army, and that includes his house. I wonder if a scheme could be devised whereby we could have subsidised loans for such soldiers, if we could have some sort of arrangement with building societies or if the sort of thing I am thinking of in relation to local authorities and the pressure we should put on people to get a move on in this regard would not help in relation to overholding.
I do not approach the overholder as a person who is a great sinner but as a person who is in a cleft stick. I am aware that the present situation is that the overholder suffers penalties on the basis that he does not get his pension as long as he overholds the house. That is like the case of the carrot and the stick. We are trying to encourage him to get a house elsewhere and leave the accommodation he occupied as a serving soldier. As long as the thinking is that the serving soldier should have it, that is a legitimate approach but we must take into account the sympathy we should have for a man who has served long and loyally. As I am Minister for only a short time I would not be competent to say if most people in Army married quarters are long or short service soldiers. I think that most of them are long serving so it is hard if a person has to leave his place of residence after so long. I shall do something about this because I see it as a long term problem and one which we will have to solve as best we can.
Deputy de Valera mentioned the stop-go attitude in relation to Defence and suggested that it should never occur again, and I agree with him. If I have any experience or knowledge apart from my political experience it is on administration in business and I have some contempt for the annual profit and loss account and the annual balance sheet. If you want to plan nowadays, if you want to do your job right, you have got to plan over a period of five or ten years and one year is no use at all. The cutting down one year and the giving back the next year—if there is a great criticism and heavy pressure that something has been neglected, you then plunge in and you produce the bank book again—is not the way to do it. I agree with Deputy de Valera that the right way to do this is on a planned basis over five or ten years' thinking.
This means that you admit, perhaps, that some of the things that are desired might not get done until three or four years' time. If that is the truth, is it not better to admit it, because by so admitting you might get them done in two or three years' time instead of in three or four years? A great degree of forward planning is necessary. I intend during my time as a Minister to provide the push forward for what I find to be a most loyal band of people in my Department and in the Army to try to get that forward planning. This is absolutely necessary in the case of the buildings we have. If you wanted to have the sore thumb I suppose you would go back to the married quarters. We have to sit down now and think out how we can get moving on a non-stopping vehicle, within the amount of capital that can be provided for the Army. There is no use in saying that this State should spend too much on the Army. The proper amount should be spent on the Army, which in my view is something more in 1973 money terms than is being spent at the moment.
I can see the places of difficulty and the places of neglect. The situation must be corrected, but it will not be done in 1973. If the planning is done and if the infrastructure starts to build up, then I can see a much better situation for this loyal Army. I take Deputy de Valera's point and I agree with him. If energy on my part and whatever little intelligence God gave me can make that happen, the Deputy may be assured that such will occur.
Deputy de Valera mentioned the question of producing items of equipment locally as a further development of the armoured personnel carrier idea. I look forward to seeing this prototype armoured personnel carrier. I have not yet visited where it is being manufactured. Some criticism has been made of my being too light on my foot and hopping into helicopters too often. I am sorry to say that that criticism will be further fomented if people are not convinced of what I am going to say. I came into this Ministry to do a job and if a helicopter gets me faster from here to there and if I can do three or four visits in one day instead of two, I will go by helicopter and I will accept all the criticism. I do not care about the small thinkers because they are the sort of people who will end up with married quarters in the conditions they are in today, in 20 years' time. That will not happen in my case. Whatever I can do by modern means, whatever I can do by employing whatever energy I have I will do.
I have not visited the apprenticeship school at Naas but I hope to get there soon. Before I became Minister I heard some criticism of that school and yesterday Deputy Dowling criticised the standard of equipment used to train these people. I want to see if it is bad and I want to see what are the deficiencies. In relation to the provision of equipment for training apprentices I positively guarantee this House if there is any deficiency there it will be corrected immediately. I hope in the Army we can give the opportunity to more young men to come out after their period in the Army with a trade, to be better able to fend for themselves in the world than before they came into the Army.
I know Deputy de Valera is interested in inventions as he has that type of inquiring mind and that he is prob- ably very interested in the fact that an armoured personnel carrier has been produced which might even sell to other nations and certainly can be of use to us. The thought that the Deputy has produced, that we should go further than that and avail of any opportunity to do something for ourselves, is highly relevant and comes back to the question of apprentices. If there are opportunities to go into other fields, to give more young men more experience and if there is within the apprentices who come in and within the forces dealing with this particular aspect in the Army somebody who can by expertise, knowledge and a bit of inspiration, produce something that will make us a little better than the others, I am all for it. I should like to be able to expand this apprenticeship scheme and to create a situation whereby young men would have greater opportunities in the Army for the expansion and the exercise of the gifts God gave them.
I want to say that I am advised, and I accept absolutely, the fact that Army duties and the question of arms means that everybody cannot spend all his time in the apprentice school. There will be, of course, many young men who join the Army who do not want to do anything except soldiering. They might perhaps become specialist soldiers. They may want to be drivers. They could perhaps have a special aptitude that the officer in charge might discern and he might direct them. Leaving aside drivers, carpenters, fitters and all the rest, there still will be a large number of young boys in the Army who will be soldiers as such and who will carry out the duties of soldiering that are so necessary, not in a specialist but in a general way, under their officers until they come to the stage of promotion.
That means that it is not realistic to say to parents who you would wish would regard the Army as a way of life that would improve their sons over a three year period or perhaps longer, that everyone who joins the Army will come out with a trade. You cannot and should not say that. It is just not on. At the same time you can try to develop the technical aspects of the Army. You can look forward to the situation where with more boys in apprenticeships, more people in certain specialist occupations, you can produce a more efficient defence force, a defence force that will move further away from the concept of footsloggers. That is a long-term project. It is a development to which we must address ourselves as having some merit.
The question of recruits was mentioned by the last speaker. It is true that in the last weeks there has been a drop in the number of recruits. That is seasonal. It is true that the number is under establishment. I intend to press forward with a recruiting campaign. As I see it, and I have clearly made my point and all sides of the House will take the point, security duties for some years to come will be necessary in aid of the civil power. While that is the case we need an army of a certain establishment and therefore we must have a flow of recruits. I would put it to the parents of the country that in the conditions of life prevailing at the moment, where people are involved in all sorts of difficulties with drugs, and so on, for a boy who joins the Army at 18 years of age, the three years of Army discipline, outdoor life, good food, interesting occupation, would provide him with a period in which he could make up his mind as to whether or not he would like to make the Army his profession or would prefer to enter some other profession. While not implying that there would be a general opportunity, because of the dishonesty of doing that, there would be opportunities for boys within the Army to become apprentices to some trade or other. A boy could go to Baldonnel and get an apprenticeship in the Air Corps, which is highly valuable. The minute they are ready and right they go to Aer Lingus. That is a wastage we cannot stop. The man serves for his period and when that period has expired he has a right to do what he will. I wish I could project to parents the idea that working under the most conscientious officers, the most kindly and understanding officers, a young boy could very easily find in the Army something that would make him right for life, that would make a man of him. There are opportunities for apprenticeships but these do not extend to all of those who join the Army. I could not say that they did unless I were a dishonest man.
Boys who join the Army would provide for the nation a service which is necessary for the nation. We need at present security forces and need them badly. The security forces must be kept at a certain level. Who is the true patriot? I want to suggest to the House that the true patriot is the boy who joins the Army, does his training, carries out his duties, is paid for that and well paid, all found, and comes out a better man after three years, having given that formative period of his life to his country in a time of need. Do not let anyone think that this is not a time of need.
Deputies were confused about the title of the Naval Service and Slua Muirí. I must confess that, like other Deputies, I used to call it Slua Mhuire, until I realised that the title did not refer to the Blessed Virgin but to the sea. The situation is that young boys are based in Limerick, Cork and Dún Laoghaire. The phraseology in my opening speech in relation to Slua Muirí was my own. It was to the effect that something had to be done about it or else it would die a natural or, looking at it in a different way, an unnatural death. I regard the Slua Muirí situation as a totally unnatural situation. There is no point in taking young boys at a time in their life when they have stars in their eyes, if they happen to be interested in the sea, and giving them, between them all, five open boats and not even one further opportunity whereby they can go on some other type of boat and get more advanced type training, possibly under sail, or become a naval rating in our Naval Service or go further and become a cadet. There is a snag in relation to the Slua Muirí people becoming cadets in that if they do two years there, they may have gone beyond the age limit. So, they might well be the force that would produce the young ratings in the Naval Service.
One has to think also that there have been courses in the Army and in every army whereby non-commissioned officers become officers. There are various suggestions that one could make to the people who are so receptive in my Department in this regard as to how this force could be developed into something that would be a feeding ground for the Naval Service either in the form of ratings or in the form of ratings who might become officers at a certain stage or, in the case of boys who had joined at a sufficiently young age, naval cadets.
I must consider this in the most serious way. Some Deputies across the House suggested that I had a background of the sea. I admit completely to having two wet feet, I am so fond of it. That means that I must discipline myself and not go overboard in relation to one section of the service to the detriment of another. I would not accept, unless I could be convinced otherwise, the suggestion that is on my desk that there might be a number of power boats costing £40,000 each and that would be all there would be to it. I wonder whether or not the necessary degree of training would be provided in those boats for this colossal expenditure. Deputies may take it that as far as An Slua Muirí is concerned I shall certainly work hard to see what is the proper way. I am convinced that it had been entirely neglected, that nobody bothered much about it and that it would die a natural or unnatural death.
Deputy Coughlan adverted to this situation and while I do not know if his figures are correct, and therefore do not accept them, he said they had at present only about 12 people going to Sarsfield Barracks in Limerick and that the nearest they got to the sea was when they got water from the tap. That may represent a degree of hyperbole which is allowable but I cannot and, indeed, have not in the recent past, indulged in that figure of speech but the position is that this situation must be corrected and either we admit that there is no future in this or we must say what we intend to do. This is something that must be tackled seriously.
Deputy Davern thanked me personally for a number of things and wished me well and I thank him for that. He raised a point which I shall ask the Department to take up. It would appear to be a very undesirable position, if it is true, that our London Embassy does not recognise the Organisation of National Ex-Servicemen. I do not accept rumours but I completely accept that Deputy Davern believes this to be so. I shall ask the Department to see if there is any suggestion that when ONE contact our London Embassy they are brushed off, or anything like that. I do not believe it is so but if better relations can be brought about we shall see what can be done.
Deputy Davern also referred to the matter of one year's training not being enough for an officer. He was referring to a crash course which is entirely a sign of the times. One of the first pleasant duties I had, in fact, was to commission these cadets at the Curragh. As my predecessor knows, they worked very hard. They were given a crash course because we needed junior leaders. They will be fostered and will not be thrown to the wolves because they did a crash course and got through double as much as others in the same or less time. They will be watched and developed but the course was a sign of the times and of the need for security. These young men behaved marvellously and looked very well and I have heard nothing but praise for them.
I should like to deal with the question of barracks and give my general view on the subject. The Department have some valuable property, principally in this city. Deputies approached this matter in widely diverse ways. Some said they wanted the barracks sold and others wanted barracks built: some criticised the barracks. I am advised that modern Army thinking is that you should not have a large barracks within a city, that you run into traffic problems and you are to some extent a sitting duck and that in the proper concept of a barracks, particularly in regard to riot control and civil disturbance and, as we had not so long ago, a series of serious bombing incidents, you are better off with your barracks and personnel outside the city. With radio control and with modern vehicles you could arrive quickly at the trouble spot. This is the modern thinking on the matter.
We have very valuable properties, notably Cathal Brugha Barracks. Some Deputies said this was highly valuable property, that it should be available for the nation, that there should be schools in it and that we could improve the life of the Dublin people by using it, and so on. The Army is not Barnardo's Benevolent Fund. As my predecessor knows, capital funds for the Army in future, no matter what Government are in power, will be one of the factors slowing down development. Even when your planning is right and you get it going you must be able to get the capital for it. There is a large capital fund residing in the property that might be disposed of and I hope that in a planned and proper way that large fund will be directed towards the Army in the years to come. Despite that, it would be quite wrong for anybody to say that if within the areas to be disposed of—whenever the decision is made—there was a prime necessity for something such as schools, arrangements could not be made in that regard: of course they could. But I would expect and, as Minister for Defence, would hold strongly that the Army has need of large capital sums for those things that have not been done in regard to building, for married quarters, for modernisation plans, and so on. If within its complex it holds valuable building sites which would yield big capital that capital and probably more with it should be spent on the advancement of the Army.
For anybody to conjecture about millions of pounds at this stage would be quite wrong and we are talking in millions of pounds. If we are to have an Army—and everyone now accepts that we need an Army—we must give it a fair deal and therefore we must do forward planning. That should be one of the most interesting and satisfying experiences and I look forward to it.
Deputy Davern also mentioned the matter of more attractive payment for Border duties. I have not had time to address myself fully to that question but I am aware of the exigencies of these duties. I have seen patrols leaving Longford Barracks, with food which they had to cook themselves in their vehicles, to do 13 hours on patrol before returning to barracks. I am aware of Army personnel doing 80 to 100 hours per week, admittedly some of it on stand-to, but in the barracks and away from wives and families. I know this happens on Border duty and I want to thank personally each one of these people who is putting in that much effort. It is because of them that subversives are not in a position to cross the Border with complete immunity. The soldiers and the gardaí are the patriots and the people who should be tops in this country.
Deputy Davern, Deputy O'Malley and others spoke about an incident in Fermoy. I want to be quite clear on this. The Army on the request of the civil power will act and if somebody slipped through our fingers in Fermoy, the position is still the same.
