Go n-aimnneoidh Dáil Éireann an Teachta Cathal Ó hEochaidh chun a cheaptha ag an Uachtarán mar Thaoiseach.
I move:
That Dáil Éireann nominate Deputy Charles J. Haughey for appointment by the President to be the Taoiseach.
Nomination of Taoiseach.
The occasion of the election of a Taoiseach is not any ordinary debate. We are not here merely as representatives of parties seeking office in competition with one another on this occasion. My task is correspondingly difficult. In a way that has no precedent I am conscious of speaking for a large part of the Irish people, regardless of party, and I am very conscious of the difficulty of responding adequately and sensitively to this unique situation. I must speak not only for the Opposition but for many in Fianna Fáil who may not be free to say what they believe or to express their deep fears for the future of this country under the proposed leadership, people who are not free to reveal what they know and what led them to oppose this man with a commitment far beyond the normal. I hope that some at least may feel able to express their feelings, their very real patriotism and their deep concern for Ireland, but few or none may be able to do so. If that is the case, this task falls to others and, in the first instance, to me. I trust I may be equal to it, that I may say what needs to be said and can be said, recognising how much I cannot say, for reasons that all in this House understand.
I take no pleasure in what I have to say. I have known Deputy Haughey for more than 35 years. I have never suffered insult or injury from him nor exchanged with him bitter words at any time. I would find my task today easier if we had not had this long relationship with each other, a relationship that was never intimate but never hostile. But I must do my duty regardless of these personal considerations. At the outset I must recognise his talents—his political skills and the competence he has shown in the past in the administration of Departments. These are important qualities in a Taoiseach, but they are not enough.
This country has had six heads of Government since the State was founded. These were: William T. Cosgrave, Eamonn de Valera, John A. Costello, Seán Lemass, Jack Lynch and Liam Cosgrave, all different kinds of men, God knows, but they all shared one common bond. They came into public life to serve this country and stayed on with that single purpose. None of them was ever alleged, even by his most unrelenting enemy—and some of them had unrelenting enemies on both sides—to have entered public life for any motive but the highest. Moreover, whatever their contemporary opponents may have said of them, whatever history's interim or later verdict on them may be, all were men who commanded the trust of those close to them. From a recollection of their virtues we may draw sustained hope for the future of this State.
Deputy Haughey presents himself here, seeking to be invested in office as the seventh in this line, but he comes with a flawed pedigree. His motives can be judged ultimately only by God but we cannot ignore the fact that he differs from his predecessors in that these motives have been and are widely impugned, most notably but by no means exclusively, by people within his own party, people close to him who have observed his actions for many years and who have made their human, interim judgment on him. They and others, both in and out of public life, have attributed to him an overweening ambition which they do not see as a simple emanation of a desire to serve but rather as a wish to dominate, even to own the State.
This judgment will be contested by others. It cannot be more than an imperfect assessment of the man but it is incontestable that this view of him is widely and most passionately held by people in his own party. If elected, he will be the first in a line of hitherto patriotic men who will have been viewed in this way by many contemporaries and many of his colleagues.
The second aspect of the election of this man as Taoiseach which must disturb deeply every democrat is that, whatever may be the result of the vote—and I think that is a foregone conclusion—he knows, I know and they all know that he does not command the genuine confidence of even one-third of this House, never mind one half. No previous Taoiseach has been elected in similar circumstances.
Formally, of course, he will secure a majority of votes. He will fulfil the constitutional requirement to form a government. He will then constitutionally be Taoiseach. As democrats we must respect the forms of democracy, even when the true spirit of the democratic system is not breathed into these forms but though we must respect these forms we are entitled to comment on the emptiness of this formality. The feet that will go through that lobby to support his election will include many that will drag; the hearts of many who will climb those stairs before turning aside to vote will be heavy. Many of those who may vote for him will be doing so in the belief and the hope that they will not have long to serve under a man they do not respect, whom they have fought long and hard, but for the moment in vain, to exclude from the highest office in the land. These men and women who, while they may give their formal consent, withhold their full consent in the interior forum include a clear majority of those who have served with him in government, who know his abilities better than most but are repelled by other defects which they see as superseding all considerations of mere competence, political skill or adroitness.
Who are the men, three out of ten Members of this assembly, who have placed their full confidence in Deputy Haughey, electing him to the leadership of his party? Do they include the members of the party opposite who, whatever criticism may be and has been made by us and others of their political judgment, are recognised outside their party as within it as people of integrity? Do they include the Taoiseach, because he is still Taoiseach until his successor is elected? Do they include Deputy Colley, Deputy O'Malley, Deputy O'Donoghue, Deputy Wilson, Deputy Faulkner, Deputy Dennis Gallagher, Deputy Molloy, Deputy Woods? I need not continue with the list and no one need feel slighted if I omit honourable names. These are people who are respected outside Fianna Fáil as within it for their genuine patriotism however much we on these benches may at times have to question their judgment or the wisdom of their policies in the national interest.
It is not from such as these that Deputy Haughey won his majority. His majority comprises men judged inadequate in office in the past; men ambitious for office but disappointed of it hitherto; men fearful of losing office because they backed the wrong horse; and, above all, at least 18 men who scraped home narrowly in 1977 and who, fearing for the seats that were so unexpectedly won for them by the gamble of the manifesto, have now switched their bet to another gamble, the gamble of Deputy Haughey.
The motion before the House concerns the suitability of Deputy Charles Haughey, Minister for Health and Social Welfare, for the office of Taoiseach. Members who may or may not have supported him are not under discussion.
Deputies
Hear, hear.
We are electing the leader of this State and I will not be silenced in doing my duty in this House as I see it. I want to say one thing more in fairness to Deputy Haughey's supporters. Not all of them are drawn from these categories. They include also a few people who are not personally motivated, but who are inspired by a narrow and dangerous nationalism that is the antithesis of everything Tone and Davis stood for—a patriotism that effectively, even if they do not admit it even to themselves, excludes one million Irish men and women from the nation as they conceive it; men and women who do not believe in seeking unity by agreement but who crave after unity by constraint; men and women who, whether they themselves realise it or not, think in terms of imposing one Irish tradition on those who, with their ancestors for generations past, had honoured a different but also an Irish tradition. These men and women who voted for Deputy Haughey on grounds of idealism—misplaced as I see it—and free from personal interest are, I believe and the great majority of almost five million Irish people believe, not merely misguided but dangerously misguided.
Taken together these groups of self-interested and fatally misguided defectors from the Republican tradition of 1798 and 1848 make up three Deputies out of every ten in this House. Yet, this motley minority may, and I think will, at the end of this debate make this man Taoiseach.
Why so? The Irish people are entitled to ask this question. What worries me is whether I can honestly answer, if asked what the reason is, other than that, though many on both sides of this House have honourably struggled to break free from Civil War politics, nevertheless these politics, through the shackles of the party system that emerged from that Civil War, still bind some of the Members of this House in thraldom.
If those on both sides of this House who see the dangers for this State that lie almost inexorably and fatally embedded in the nomination now before us cannot find it possible at this moment to come together in face of this danger and make common cause for Ireland, can we truthfully say to our electorate, some of them born almost 40 years after that event, that there is any reason for this other than the origins of the parties to which we belong—origins that many of us had hoped were now totally irrelevant to the contemporary political life of this State?
The long shadow of that darkest hour of our history, when Irishman fought Irishman, when families were divided, brother against brother, husband in conflict with wife as happened in my own family—that long shadow which many of us had led ourselves to believe had long since lifted, darkens our understanding here today and inhibits this House from dividing along the lines of deepest conviction, along the lines that divide those who honestly seek Irish unity by agreement, and by agreement only, from those who, while they talk of peaceful means, still think at least subconsciously of constraint. It also divides true patriots from mere political opportunists.
I would like to believe that there is still hope, still a possibility, that we could face this crisis in our affairs, throwing off these shackles and coming out from under this shadow. Perhaps it is too much to hope of men and women who are under intolerable pressures of tradition and convention at this point. However, if it does not happen today, that does not mean that it may not happen at some point in the middle future. For the mixture of men and motives artificially concocted to create a formal majority for Deputy Haughey when this debate ends must be frail and fragile; it cannot survive indefinitely the pressures on it imposed by his—I must say it—flawed character.
There will be those around Deputy Haughey who will scoff, or perhaps purport to scoff, at these reflections. Some of them who see power as an end in itself rather than as a means to serve the public interest, may claim to see in what I have just said nothing more than regret that we on this side of the House cannot come to power now through a realignment of forces in this House. They are welcome to this interpretation which would accord with their view of politics.
But others will understand that I have spoken in these terms not from ambition but from conviction. Yes, I and those around me have the ambition to serve this country in office, a task for which we are seeking to prepare ourselves. But we can bide our time, all the more confident in the verdict of the people because of the choice inflicted on Fianna Fáil by a narrow majority of its members in circumstances which are already the subject of bitter recrimination within that party. I know that those who chose Deputy Haughey for the most part did so because they thought it to their electoral advantage. They will, I believe live to rue that misjudgment. By their action they have torn asunder their party, and no amount of patching or crack-papering can put it together again whole, so long as Deputy Haughey remains its Leader. These divisions will have inevitable electoral consequences, consequences which they have failed to foresee, so confident were they that, if only their candidate could be bulldozed into the leadership, all would be well.
If I were speaking here in party terms, if I were thinking narrowly in terms of the welfare of this party, I should be welcoming in a relaxed way the imminent advent to power of Deputy Haughey. I know that many decent people in every part of Ireland who have cast their votes for Fianna Fáil candidates are repelled by the thought of Deputy Haughey in power and, however skilfully and energetically he may strive—he will strive skilfully and energetically, he has those qualities—during the next year or two years to apply his undoubted talents to the task of Government, he will not persuade these people to cast their votes for a party led by him, even if that party were to be a united one, which palpably it will not be.
But if Deputy Haughey as Taoiseach is an uncovenanted bonus to Fine Gael, a precipitating factor that will bring to our support many good and patriotic people of integrity who for many years have cast their votes for Fianna Fáil under Deputy Jack Lynch, he cannot be seen in the same light so far as the national interest is concerned. On this occasion I have to say, with regret—even some bitterness—that the interests of my party and the nation do not coincide. I have the interests of this nation sufficiently at heart—I think in saying that I speak for my party also—to prefer to take our chance with another Fianna Fáil leader who would not provoke such mistrust amongst the electorate and who would be correspondingly harder to beat, than for the country to have to take a chance with Deputy Haughey.
Why is it such a chance? There are many reasons. I shall give only a few; some are not to be raised even in this privileged assembly. The first is that there is a question-mark that remains over a man who was accused of conspiracy to import arms to the IRA and after he had been found not guilty of that charge chose to seek the plaudits of the crowd for a man who represented that organisation at that time, saying of him: "he is one of the finest persons I have known in all my time in public life and politics". For nine long years after that day—nine long years—he refused to utter one word of condemnation of the IRA until faced with a question on this issue at a press conference following his election to the leadership of his party. I say "refused" advisedly. Deputy Haughey disingenuously told his questioner at the press conference on Friday that the reason he had never expressed any condemnation of the IRA up to that moment was that: "up to now responsibility in regard to Northern Ireland policy has been something for the Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs".
In what way, I ask the House, would that allocation of responsibility preclude any Minister in an Irish Government from expressing his abhorrence for the IRA, for its murders and robberies North and South, its orgy of destruction, its threat to our democratic institutions, institutions which it refuses to recognise in this State and which its spokesmen recently threatened to destroy? If Deputy Haughey abhorred the IRA and wished, as any decent man would wish to do, to clear his name of any sympathy with them after the experience of being accused of conspiring to import arms for their benefit, he could have done so at any moment since that trial ended, in full accord with the policy of successive Governments. He chose, most deliberately, not to do so. He refused to entertain questions on this issue from journalists. He preferred to maintain an indecent ambiguity over his attitude until safely ensconced in the leadership of his party. Did he fear that if he had any earlier than Friday afternoon last said the words, "I condemn the Provisional IRA and all their activities", he might have received less enthusiastic support for his candidature from some of the—the politest word is greener—members of his party? Now that he has the job, does he feel he can safely condemn what he was so careful to avoid condemning for nine long years? The question mark on this issue which Deputy Haughey has chosen deliberately to allow to linger around him for all those years is one reason—the highest of all reasons—for refusing him confidence. It is one reason why so many of his colleagues do not have confidence in him.
The second reason is that, arising from this deliberate ambiguity Deputy Haughey, as leader of his party and, perhaps, soon as Taoiseach, is and will be an obstacle to Irish unity to be achieved by agreement. No one with that background of silence—to put it no higher—could, by any stretch of the imagination, offer reassurance to Northern Protestants looking southwards, as many have begun to do in search of a permanent solution in conjunction with the people of this part of Ireland. As an Irish nationalist who, I believe, with the exception of Deputy Harte, has devoted more time than any other Member of this House to the cause of peace in Ireland and of a new political relationship between North and South I cannot endorse the candidature of a man who seeks to be Taoiseach of this State, but who in that capacity will represent a barrier to unity by agreement.
Thirdly, while I have already remarked on Deputy Haughey's political ability and administrative competence he has shown himself, especially and most relevantly in this decade, more concerned with public relations and less with achievement than is acceptable in a Minister. He has been in the Departments of Health and Social Welfare. He neglected the latter Department almost totally, while in the former he dragged his feet on all awkward issues, from contraceptive regulations to nurses' pay, putting in time until his moment should come to replace the man he had for so long worked to undermine. In passing, I must repeat what I said on the Bill dealing with contraception which was that this legislation by the very terminology it contains and uses to describe forms of family planning is denominational. By its introduction Deputy Haughey reinstitutionalised denominationalism in Irish legislation in total disregard of the principles of republicanism, at least as Tone and Davis understood them and in equal disregard of the interests of bringing North and South together which he claims to be committed to. On the blatant hypocricy of this Bill, taken in conjunction with his protestations of republicanism which suddenly blossomed for the Pádraig Pearse centenary, he deserves to be rejected as Taoiseach of this State, a State whose people aspire to unity by agreement between the people of North and South.
The fourth and final reason, as far as I am concerned in this debate why Deputy Haughey is to be rejected is his failure to articulate any idealism that might inspire the younger generation and because of his own life style. This failure to articulate any idealism that might inspire that generation makes him particularly unfitted for the task of leading into the eighties a State half of whose population are under 25 years of age. It is on those four grounds, amongst others to which I do not propose to refer, that I propose the rejection of Deputy Haughey's nomination as Taoiseach.
I have not found that speech easy to make. It is distasteful to have to argue the merits of an individual rather than a policy and to reflect so critically on the performance and character of a parliamentary colleague I have known for many years. I am conscious also of the tension between the duty I owe to the State in speaking frankly on these matters and the duty I owe to Parliament not to overstep the mark by entering into areas inappropriate for debate, or by using harsher language than is minimally called for by the occasion. I am sure that fault may be found on both grounds with what I have said and I beg the indulgence of the House if I have offended in either respect. I have had to decide where my duty lay and although I have seen public advice offered as to the desirability or not of making such comments, I have had to decide in the interest of the State as I see it to reject that advice and to take any criticism that may come as a result. I move, in the name of my party, and on behalf also, I believe, of many who will have to remain silent during this debate, and may not even feel free to vote with their feet according to their inclinations, the rejection of the nomination of Deputy Haughey.
As I indictated in a statement made last Friday it will be my party's intention to vigorously oppose the nomination of Deputy Charles J. Haughey for the position of Taoiseach. We do so for purely political reasons. There have been some suggestions that our opposition to the nomination of Deputy Haughey was inspired by personal considerations. Our opposition is based on an examination of the political record of Deputy Haughey over a considerable number of years. It is based on three things: his economic and social policy and philosophy and the non-expression of his thinking on the question of peaceful conciliation between the communities in Northern Ireland and the eventual reunification by agreement and by conciliation of the peoples of this island.
Irish society today is being widely commented on by many leading personalities representative of a wide spectrum of Irish life. We have heard comments on the sad state of our society by leading churchmen of all denominations, leading businessmen, social workers and trade unionists who have abhorred the development of our society into what it is today, a society of materialism, sectional strife, and naked self-interest with a large section of our people living in conditions that can only be described as human misery. There is, added to that, a total lack of social concern at the top of our political life. While all the comments have been made regarding the state of our society very few people have tried to analyse when that development really commenced, what was the main impetus in that development and who were the main motivating forces behind that development. I believe that Deputy Charles J. Haughey played a major part in allowing events to occur which have brought Irish society to the state it is in today. I further believe that if, as it appears on the cards, Deputy Haughey is elected to the top political post in the country today the trend towards the type of society we have developed into will be very vigorously enforced and accelerated.
When we cast our minds back to the mid-sixties we recall that there appeared on the Irish scene in the political and the business world a group of young, well educated, very clever, highly articulate young men, who also had one other quality, they were totally ruthless and they had a clear indication of what their personal ambition was. They also had a clear insight as to how their personal ambition could be fulfilled. They had another thing in common, a philosophy of life that was dominated by the principle that the end justifies the means. Those people, small in number, set out to acquire great personal wealth, influence and political power. The pinnacle of the success of their personal ambitions was during the period when Deputy Haughey occupied the position of Minister for Finance in the late sixties. The philosophy of life which those people hold is also held, I believe, by Deputy Haughey. He was the political counterpart of the group of ambitious, ruthless young men of the middle and late sixties and being of the same mould or, as he might prefer it, out of the same stable, he was only too willing to ensure that as far as he could, by virtue of the political office he had, he would facilitate them in every way in the achievement of their ambition, the acquisition of great personal wealth, influence far out of proportion to their numbers, and the sympathetic ear of one of the most politically powerful men in our society at that time.
Those people, with all those dubious qualifications achieved their ambition. They did not choose to enter into the normal business and commercial life of the country, which under its rules is a capitalistic society by the wishes of the majority of the people, although this party disagree with that system. They chose to operate in what could only be described as a grey area of Irish business and commercial life, the area of the land speculator, the office builder, the gerry house builder. They identified those areas as being lucrative which they knew, properly facilitated by the laws of the land, would enable them to reach their stated personal goals.
They were enabled to reach those goals. Some curtailment was put on the activities of those gentlemen later but the fruits of their activities, the attainment of their vast personal wealth, influence and power had an end product which is still in Irish society. Its physical effects can be seen all around us in our capital city and our other cities, particularly in the inner city areas. The moral effects of those gentlemen and their activities can be seen in the sharp decline in moral standards in Irish society today. When I speak about moral standards I am not referring to sexual behaviour. There are other forms of moral standards. The results can be seen at any political or, unfortunately psychiatric clinic, any day of the week. The results of the unbridled activities of those gentlemen and their end product have been very considerable human misery for a large number of our people. They can be counted in broken homes, broken marriages, marriages that, given the basic human necessity of homes, could have been successful and happy marriages. They can be seen in the number of young housewives who have had nervous breakdowns or are being treated because they are on the verge of nervous breakdowns.
A major part of the responsibility for that sad, sick part of our society can be traced back to the appearance on the Irish scene of these same young hot shots of the sixties. The term "mohair suit" was not used to describe a mode of dress. It was a term that described a philosophy of life, a philosophy of life that meant that there should be unbridled opportunity for the economically strong, the clever, the sharp; a philosophy of life that totally exploited the basic needs of the majority of our people. Apart from the normal intelligence which most of us have, only one thing was needed, that was, a total lack of scruples, a total lack of principle and a total lack of either personal or business integrity. These gentlemen had all of these things and they were guided, and are still guided, by that same philosophy: that the end justifies the means irrespective of what the consequences are or would be upon their fellow Irishmen and women. I say with total personal conviction that Deputy Haughey was regarded by them as their political champion and the one whose ear they had to ensure that the way was made quite clear for them to engage in that type of operation.
Anyone who doubts what I am saying should have been here last Friday around noon and seen the specimens of so-called Irish business and commercial life that, after a number of years, were again emerging from underneath the stones under which they had been hiding. Some of the people who are here today are here because they anticipated, probably correctly, that after the vote through the lobbies the gravy train that is fuelled by human misery will go into full operation again. We can anticipate an acceleration in the deterioration in our national society. We can anticipate further division on sectional grounds, further human misery, more broken homes, and more and more personal wealth being accumulated by a small group of people, along with influence and political power. That is one reason why this party opposes the election of Deputy Haughey as political leader of this country.
Deputy Haughey, through a successful PR operation, has managed in financial terms over a difficult two-and-a-half years to portray himself as a man with some social concern. I think it would be legitimate to examine his record over two-and-a-half years in two major social ministries dealing with the most deprived and underprivileged section of our community. As far as the Department of Health are concerned, there has been a fade by a skilful PR operation of limited success in that Department. We have had a great deal of publicity on television and in the press on dental hygiene, although apparently the party are not too concerned with political hygiene. We have had free toothbrushes for the children, although many of their parents are not in a position to buy toothpaste. We have had an emphasis on jogging, good health and clean living, from our sex life to our drinking and smoking habits. All of these things are admirable in themselves. Deputy Haughey enjoys the reputation among the public of being a brilliant administrator, but in the areas that matter, and matter most to the people, his tenure in the Department of Health can only be described as a failure.
We have seen the sleight-of-hand attempted on the Family Planning Bill. He saw that a confrontation with the medical profession would be politically damaging to him at a time when, above all else, that could not possibly happen. Instead of confronting the doctors to ensure that there was adequate health care for the majority of our people, he choose to buy them off with public funds—not because he did not realise that, if we are to have an adequate health service for the majority of our people, a confrontation with the medical profession was necessary but because he realised that a confrontation with that profession would be prolonged, would be bitter and would damage what was uppermost in Deputy Haughey's mind: to get to the position in which he now finds himself in this House today.
One can admire Deputy Haughey's political skill, his tenacity and the determination over a long period of time with which he pursued his ambition. However, at the end of it all I was left with a rather sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as to the way that personal ambition was pursued. Ambition is not wrong. Ambition is necessary and desirable in political leadership. However, the question must be asked: is it not at least equally important what is motivating that ambition and, above all, how the attainment of that ambition is pursued? I have already answered that question, as far as Deputy Haughey is concerned—the end justified the means.
As regards the other major social Department over which Deputy Haughey presided for two-and-a-half years—the Department of Social Welfare—there was not even the fade of the PRO operation to try to cover up the dismal failure of Deputy Haughey in that Department. I have some knowledge of that Department, from the last administration. In that Department, there were a number of issues needing to be tackled, lying on Deputy Haughey's desk, of which I shall mention just a few. There was the pay-related pensions scheme, which was at a very advanced stage when the last administration left office; it has not been heard of since. There was a Consolidation Bill which had won the approval of all sides of the House as being a necessary and very desirable advancement in the area of social welfare. These issues were not tackled, not because they were difficult but because the Minister responsible for the administration of the Department of Social Welfare was otherwise occupied. His mind was on other things; he had not time to give his undoubted administrative and political skills to the administration of a Department which catered for the most deprived section of our community. His lack of understanding of the position of recipients of social welfare and of the major problem of poverty in our society is perhaps best illustrated by his attitude—on taking up office and persisted in over the last two-and-a-half years—towards the National Committee to Combat Poverty. He has obstructed the work of that committee in every way possible, short of taking any action that would have political repercussions against himself. That, also, would run contrary to his persistant aim of maintaining his personal ambition to be where he is today—leader of Fianna Fáil and yet to be voted Taoiseach in this House.
One could continue at considerable length on this subject, but it is not necessary. The point has been well made. However, there is one issue, on which I would briefly comment—the question of Northern Ireland and Deputy Haughey's thoughts, attitudes and proposed actions regarding that problem. Before this vote is taken the people of this House and of this country are entitled to know, in clear, unambiguous terms, precisely what Deputy Haughey's attitude is, in relation to that disastrous situation within our national community and within our country.
Over the last nine years Deputy Haughey has acquired for himself a reputation on Northern Ireland of being a hardliner. Some would go so far as to say he was hawk. How was this reputation achieved? It certainly has not been achieved by any public statement issued by the Deputy, who has kept his head well down on the question of Northern Ireland. This reputation has been acquired by a series of nods, winks, clever silences at the right time, absences from venues where he should have been and allowing his name to be closely associated with other members of his party, and not of his party, regarding views on Northern Ireland. Deputy Haughey has managed very cleverly, through the media, to portray this image of the great republican on Northern Ireland, by speeches made by Deputy Síle de Valera, and by occasional utterances of Deputy Bill Loughnane.
The Deputy cannot be held responsible for what other Deputies have said.
I agree entirely. The Chair has made my point. Can I say this——
The Deputy can proceed on the lines of the calibre of the nominee for the office of Taoiseach——
That is why I ask this question.
——not on statements made by other persons.
Three or four weeks ago Deputy Blaney named Deputy Haughey as being close to him regarding his attitude on Northern Ireland. For a man who aspires to be Taoiseach, for a man who held a senior Cabinet position and, particularly, for a man who stands before this House today to be elected Taoiseach of this country, is it legitimate to ask if his views coincide with those which Deputy Blaney publicly stated four weeks ago? Does he support the campaign which was engaged in recently by Deputy Blaney in the United States, of seeking more money from Irish-Americans——
That is not relevant.
It is entirely relevant and has been for nine years.
That is not relevant. The Deputy cannot base his speech on what other persons do.
I was told that Deputy Jack Lynch is still Taoiseach. I am asking this question. With regard to the policy of trying to cut off money from supporters and front organisations of the Provisional IRA in the United States, pursued so vigorously and with some degree of success by the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch——
Deputies
Hear, hear.
——and by the previous administration, by me and members of my party on any contact we have had with American politicians and American people, is that policy now to be reversed? Is the incoming Taoiseach's policy the same as that expressed, apparently on his behalf, by Deputy Blaney, that this money should flow again to the front organisations? Is the incoming Taoiseach's policy the same as expressed on his behalf by Deputy Neil Blaney, that this money should flow again to the front organisations for the Provisional IRA? Surely they are legitimate questions that should be answered by Deputy Haughey before the vote on his succession to the highest political position in this land.
Hear, hear.
I have only two or three more things to say and I shall be quite brief.
Hear, hear.
(Interruptions.)
Do not be too encouraged, boys, you will be hearing from me again, often. The people about whom I spoke, the speculators, the dealers in land, the peddlars of human misery, who I believe form Deputy Haughey's main political constituency, will take great heart from his apparent election as Taoiseach in this House today. As far as this party are concerned, we also have reason to take great heart from it because it is now in clear terms, unobscured by the personal qualities of Deputy Jack Lynch, what that party really stand for and what is their real political constituency, what price ordinary people in this country have to pay for the pandering and the catering to that small, vicious group of men of no conscience. We take heart from it because we believe, and believe sincerely, that the vast majority of the Irish people, particularly the young, will oppose the decline of Irish society in that direction, that they will recognise the socialist policies of this party as their rallying point and as the most effective way in which to give voice to that opposition.
If Deputy Haughey is today elected Taoiseach by the votes of the Fianna Fáil Party I can only say this to him: in my opinion he is undoubtedly entitled to the same degree of support and loyalty which he gave to his predecessor, Deputy Jack Lynch.
I have one final thing to say to many people on those benches. Leaders of political parties are elected in committees. They are elected by members of that political party. Taoiseachs are elected in this House. There are very many of you who know that the words I have spoken here over the last few minutes are true. Indeed, some of you know them in greater detail——
Would the Deputy not oblige the Chair?
——than I do. I make this appeal—and I do not speak as Leader of the Labour Party; I do not even speak as a member of the Labour Party; I speak as an Irish man to fellow Irish men and women: in the name of Ireland, in the name of Irish society, in the name of the Irish nation——
Sit down.
——think very hard indeed before walking through those lobbies today——
(Interruptions.)
——and voting for Charles J. Haughey as Taoiseach, a man whom you know more than I is totally unfit for that position.
Come off it.
If an emigrant who had been in Australia or in New Zealand for 20 years came back to Dublin this morning for the first time, having been cut off from all news in the interim, and were to read the Irish papers of this morning and of the last few days naturally the external facts of the situation we are facing this morning would be clear to him. But I believe those papers would have failed entirely to get across to him the depth of the dismay, the consternation and the fear which the development of last Friday has generated in hundreds of thousands of Irish people.
Deputies
Hear, hear.
This is not the right place, if ever there is a right place, to make a comment on the press in general. But one of the Dublin newspapers this morning wrote an editorial in which the Opposition in this House were counselled to treat this morning's motion with reserve, to play it down, to keep it cool. The reason we were to do that was essentially that the neighbours were looking at us, because the foreign press, particularly the British press—which never loses an opportunity to blacken us—would be paying careful attention to what was going on here and because the rest of the world would be doing the same. The editorial concluded with the words:
It will be well for deputies to bear this in mind.
The reference, Deputy, please.
It is this morning's Irish Times. It would be well for The Irish Times to bear in mind that this is Dáil Éireann not the Reichstag——
Deputies
Hear, hear.
——and that the duty which lies on an Opposition here is to speak its mind, although I believe there is not a single man or woman on the Opposition benches who has any personal pleasure in making a personal attack.
But I think that the impression that this is somehow an occasion like any other occasion when power shifts is a totally wrong one. I can scarcely believe that it is an opinion genuinely held by the person who wrote that editorial, or by his colleagues who have not conveyed the degree of consternation which last Friday's event has produced.
This, Sir, is a unique occasion. There have been six Taoiseachs in this country. One or two of them were people who were intensely contentious in their own right. Awful hatreds built up around them. As Deputy FitzGerald said, families were divided on account of their beliefs and their actions. They were all political animals, all six of them. What looks like being our seventh Taoiseach is also a political animal, but he is a creature of a different species. Every Member of this House, whichever side he is on, knows that that is so. He knows that any attempt to play down the significance of what is going through today is something not worthy of a free people, or of their organs of opinion.
The reason I regard the Fianna Fáil Party's new leader as unfit for the office to which he pretends, and indeed unfit for any office on the Government front bench, has very little to do with the events of 1969 and 1970. Probably I am in a minority on my own side in saying this, but let me say it just the same. 1969 was a year very different from 1979. In August of that year the Catholics in Belfast seemed to be in genuine danger of being massacred. The IRA had not yet appeared, and were not to appear for well over a year thereafter. It is not venial in anybody to put a gun into the hands of somebody whom he cannot control, and it is less venial than in anybody else's case if that act is associated with a Government. While it is inexcusable, at the same time some degree of understanding might be found for it. I do not condone it, but I recognise that if my party had been in Government in 1969 we would have been subjected to exactly the same pressures as the Fianna Fáil Government and their Members of 1969. I recognise that, but I hope that we would have not yielded to them. Remembering the very strong feelings in my party at the time when the Northern police were shooting people and when the IRA had not yet reappeared, I cannot be absolutely certain that we might not have become entangled, although I believe that it is unlikely. That is why I do not specially hold against this candidate anything that happened in those years.
What I have against this candidate is more impalpable, less easy to put into words. I have against him the degree of ambition which he so shamelessly displays. In fact, the degree of shamelessness with which his ambition is pursued says something about his temperament which ought to make the rest of us take fright. We are all ambitious—none of us would be here if we were not. Every member of the smallest or most obscure council or board of town commissioners has a grain of ambition of the same kind. But it has run to seed in this candidate; it has run wild, and the reaction which it causes in me is one of fear.
This ambition is pursued by methods which are perhaps not unique to Deputy Haughey but which I find repellent—remorseless self-publicity, which arranges that even events or speeches which do not in any way concern him are accompanied by his photograph, the employment of press agents, and the employment and the retaining of people whose only purpose is to build him up. They are employed to build up what? Not a philosophy, or, if so, I have never heard of it; not a policy, because we do not know what that is either; but an image. Did Deputy de Valera, the founder of his party, ever worry about his image? Did he know the word or use it? What would he have felt about his successor but three, whose election is due to his image? What would Deputy Seán Lemass have said or thought about it? Did he ever worry about his image, or did he retain men who went round sowing stories, photographs and slanted lines to the press in order to put himself in a position where he could do—what? We do not know. We have the awful sight around this House of the flattering of his junior colleagues, the back-slapping, the arm around the shoulder and presumably the sedulous propagation of their constituency interests. Every Coalition Minister when in office had to deal with his colleagues. Some of them dealt with them in such a way that they were thought generous, and some of them caused only grumbles among their colleagues. But I have never, in my party nor in the Labour Party, seen this awful currying of favour, the kind of thing which a schoolboy would recognise as contemptible but which somehow is supposed to be acceptable among grown men and women.
In that nature, so carefully covered by a veneer of polish, there is something else; and it can be seen when the veneer scratches, when occasionally the facade slips. When it slips something very ugly comes to view. Small things in their way can tell one more about somebody or a situation than larger things. I remember the sight of Deputy Haughey's face when from this bench he called the then Deputy Cooney a fascist. That is his belief. Although I mentioned that several times in the House in Deputy Haughey's hearing, I never heard a withdrawal or an apology from him. Evidently that is his belief, or what he wishes people to think is his belief.
Deputy Haughey chose the day after the defeat of his party the day after his leader's disappointment—in which in the present conjuncture I take no special pleasure, as it is a matter of unimaginable triviality compared to what we are now facing—to issue a script in which he described, among other things, the Irish Parliamentary Party as having "degraded parliamentary life so that nobody of sensitivity or idealism could have anything to do with it". We are not going to rake up the Irish Parliamentary Party. Some of them left their bones in France in the mistaken idea that they were fighting for small countries; and others worked their hearts out and died poor; and I do not recall that any of them found time, on the side, to become millionaires during the course of their public lives.
These are small things. Anybody can be betrayed into saying more than he means, into an ugly expression or into an insult which he might immediately regret. But everybody in the House has seen that side of the Deputy who is now being proposed to us.
I find that side repellant. Just like the leader of my party, I have never experienced insult or injury, apart from the ordinary give and take of the House, from this Deputy. But I could not let this matter go, any more than anyone on this side, without expressing a conviction that he is absolutely unfit, to the inner core of his being, to hold the office to which he aspires and for which he has, with an inhuman relentlessness, worked for the last 20 years.
As Deputy Cluskey said, he has allowed, by a system not so much of saying things, but of nods and winks and silent absences, an aura to grow up around him which gives light-witted people, soft-witted people who never heard a shot fired in anger and would be scared if they did, the notion that he is a republican.
There was a time when every Member of the House could have called himself a republican without worrying about the consequences. That phrase has been appropriated and misappropriated. But the one person who, above all, should have protested about that is a person who aspires to national leadership. Was there ever a word of protest along those lines? Did we ever hear reservations from this Deputy about the sick philosophy which has overtaken a section of this people? It was allowed to be supposed that Deputy Haughey had strong feelings about the North. What were they? After the shock of 7 May 1970, when Deputy Lynch had to request his resignation when Deputy Haughey then disobeyed the Constitution by refusing to give his resignation and when the former leader of his party, President de Valera, had to invoke a never before invoked section of the Constitution and fire him, the sensation among most people was surprise—not about Deputy Blaney, because he had been making hawk-like noises at the previous year's Ard Fheis and before that, but at Deputy Haughey, whose associations were as Deputy Cluskey described them. No one thought that Deputy Haughey had the least interest in the North. Suddenly a grandmother was dug up from County Derry and that was supposed to be a sufficient reason for his interest in the North.
Deputy Kelly will not go into the personal relations of any Deputy. It is enough to deal with the Deputy now before us, and he should not bring in his parents, his grandmother or other people.
Deputies
Hear, hear.
Deputy Haughey brought them in, not us.
I do not wish to say anything hurtful or anything else about anybody except the person who is under discussion, but reasons were sought to explain this sudden passion for the North. They were not to be found certainly in his public record. During the sixties Deputy Haughey was promoted by the previous Taoiseach, Deputy Lemass. Deputy Lemass presided over this country from 1959 until he retired in 1966; and it is fair to say that in that entire period one would have difficulty in filling ten columns of the Dáil Reports with anything about the North, good or bad, except pig smuggling or egg smuggling. There was not the least bit of interest taken in the North by Deputy Lemass, at least on that level. There was no speechifying, no interest in the Catholic minority.
What Deputy Lemass did—and he did two very important and constructive things, and I would like to know to what extent they represent anything Deputy Haughey would agree with—was that he travelled without any protocol or precedent to Belfast, and by that act recognised something which had never been formally recognised here before, and met the then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland who was the only man who might have had a chance to stop the disasters and horrors we have seen since; and he set up an all-party committee on the Constitution, which he joined in 1966 after he retired.
That committee recommended the deletion from the Constitution of Article 3 and its replacement by a more pacific formula. That committee contained, apart from Deputy Lemass, several members of this Government—I will not go into individual names. I want to know whether Deputy Lemass's contributions to Irish reconciliation represent the sort of republicanism the present candidate supports, which I and every man on this side of the House would respect, or whether it is something else which cannot be given a name. If we are to judge by anything public in the record of the candidate being here proposed, it is a nameless miasma, not a philosophy, not anything honest people can work for and believe in.
What has happened here has another dimension. It "has been known", in the way these things get known, "for a long time",—in the journalists' phrase—that Deputy Haughey profoundly disagreed with the programme of the Government on which they were elected. If so, why did he not take the course Deputy Paddy Smith took when he disagreed with the Government with whom he worked? Deputy Smith's disagreement was about something far less radical than a manifesto. He left Deputy Lemass's Government because he thought they were being too soft on the unions. Let him be right or wrong about that, that is water under the bridge. If there was this profound disagreement, why did it not surface earlier in the shape of a resignation? Why did this Deputy not behave as a man would and say "I regard this as wrong from start to finish. I am not going to go through the charade of accepting and holding office in a Government elected and holding office under this programme"? Even that amount of principle was not to be found in him. Now that things have changed we can widespread acceptance of the many expect to find the manifesto torn up. It will not be of any relevance any longer. The people who believed in it, and I know there are people who believed in it and perhaps still believe in it, will be automatically discredited and put out of countenance merely because it was "known" Deputy Haughey profoundly disagreed with something but never carried his disagreement to the point that a man of character would bring it to.
There is a certain disenchantment in the Government party—I suppose there would be in any party who ran into difficulties, even difficulties for which they might be entirely to blame—and a sensation of looking round for something new, to get something else started. I think I detect from the far side, among those who support this candidate today, a sensation such as might have been felt in Italy in 1921 or in Germany in 1932: "we want someone who will make the trains run on time." I have no doubt they have got such a man. I give him the same credit Deputy FitzGerald and Deputy Cluskey did in that regard. I believe he has a capacity along those lines; but what worries me is the price that will be paid for it on other fronts.
Before I finish I would like to say something about that price in terms of the situation of the colleagues who will have to exercise their vote here today. It is easily said and they may not worry too much what I say either way, but I genuinely feel for some of them in their situation. I do not want to say anything hurtful because I can imagine the reasons of solidarity and long-ingrained habit and the anxiety not to destroy the moral community of which they are members, which will lead them to do something for which they are sick at heart. I understand that and I do not want to belittle them in any way for making the choice they feel forced to make. I do not know exactly to whom I am speaking but I know they are there.
I want to ask them this: is this the party they worked for? Is this the party to which they have given the best years of their lives, because none of them is young any longer? Is this the party for which they trudged around on wet evenings, stood at cold chapel gates, collected money for, bore all kinds of drudgery and insults and disruption of their private lives? Is this the result of what they worked for? Perhaps it is too much to ask these Deputies to change their minds on account of words spoken here today but I want them to ask themselves those questions. I would also like them to ask themselves if this is not a juncture at which we might put an end to the civil war.
Surely the Deputy is not going to bring the civil war into this?
No, I am not.
(Interruptions.)
We are dealing with one item of business only.
There is a strain in the Irish temperament, and I suppose in the genetic mix of the Irish people, which guarantees there will always be a proportion who are irreconcilable and unwilling to abide by the rules. In a sense I suppose there will never be an end to some kind of civil dissension here. There will always be a turbulent and impossible section of the people. I do not flatter myself that we will ever seriously and finally do what John Costello once thought we could do—take the gun out of Irish politics for good.
I wanted to say to Deputies who are distressed at what is happening here today that on this side of the House—in saying this I do not compromise one iota of the principle which we have tried to stand for—there is a feeling among us of a kind I never saw in my party before, a feeling of compassion and an anxiety to see if something good can come out of this, an anxiety which stretches out hands to pass over things and to say sorry for the things we regret.
Since this is the last time I will be standing across from Deputy Lynch I want to say I am sorry for all the bitter things I uttered about him in the past.
One Deputy at a time, please.
I mean that for several other people as well. I want to ask them, not over-night or on any particular date, if they can look at this situation objectively and ask themselves whether we could at last take out of politics the awful carping, the infantile sneering and trying to pretend you are responsible for the sun coming up in the morning and your opponents to blame for it going down in the evening, that awful infantilism which has dogged Irish politics since the beginning as a pure consequence of the division between these two parties. If there are enough of these people here, and if there is the will, I would like to ask them to re-establish in this House and in this country unity of purpose which the civil war shattered, but which corresponds to a whole range of sensation and beliefs which is alive in the heart of everyone on this side of the House, and I believe is equally alive in the hearts of many on the other side.
I wish to make a few brief comments. The first is to recall to the House the fact that the proposer of the nomination of Deputy Haughey at the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party meeting apparently was Deputy Ray MacSharry. My understanding is that the proposer of Deputy Haughey is the man who goes down in Irish history—it is important that this be recorded today again—as the man who, in Sligo Corporation said——
Deputy Desmond will not discuss——
It is of importance.
——what another Deputy or Minister said, did or did not do. There is only one item of business before the House.
There is only one item before the House and it is important to examine the credentials of those who, within Dáil Éireann, when a Member——
The Chair will not allow the credentials of any other Deputy to be examined at this time.
I refer——
Deputy Desmond will have to obey the Chair.
As far as I am concerned I would never accept a nomination in my party from a member of my party who utters the words, "We may not be able to bomb the million Protestants into a united Ireland but we can bomb them out".
Hear, hear.
These are the words——
These are the aspects——
The Chair has already told Deputy Desmond that he cannot proceed on those lines. There is one item before the House and one item only. It concerns the nomination of a Member of the House for Taoiseach.
What I am saying concerns the nomination of a Member of this House. If any Deputy in my or any other party were to utter those words and subsequently nominate me as Taoiseach designate I would crawl on all fours out of this House.
Hear, hear.
That nomination was made, apparently. I have no personal animosity whatever towards Deputy Haughey. I have served in this House with him for the past ten years. I have never had the slightest acrimony with him. We have served on joint committees and I was chairman of one of those committees at which Deputy Haughey made fine contributions. It is not an issue whether or not he was a good Minister for Agriculture or had a row with the farmers in the sixties. It is not really an issue whether or not he was an effective Minister for Finance in the sixties or whether he has been a mediocre or otherwise or successful Minister for Health and Social Welfare. The fundamental issue is one of trust, basic political trust in the capacity of a man, a Taoiseach designate, a Deputy, which must be reposed in him by all of us in the country and not just Fianna Fáil. It is the trust which must be reposed in any individual to discharge the onerous functions of Taoiseach.
I wish to say to Deputy Haughey as one who was in this House during the arms trial crisis in 1970 and who contributed in that debate, as one who was appointed by the late President to the Council of State, as a member of Dublin County Council and as Chief Whip of this party, that I cannot in conscience endorse the candidature of Deputy Haughey as Taoiseach designate. I wish we would not have this debate. According to The Irish Times we should not be having it at all. The situation is quite simple. We have observed the situation over ten years, right from the bringing of Deputy Haughey before the courts. The statement made by the outgoing Taoiseach was that he did not have political trust in Deputy Haughey. He used the word “trust” which is a sacred political criterion of assessment of a person's capacity to lead. Without trust in somebody there is nothing. It does not matter whether one is a millionaire or a brilliant politician, if one cannot trust somebody everything is irrelevant in the context of political activity and contributions whether on Northern Ireland, economic and social development or Green or White Papers. They are irrelevant. They are only paper. It is human character and capacity that is the issue at this stage.
On December 8 in The Irish Times Seán Cronin reporting from Washington said:
Charles Haughey called Neil Blaney yesterday to tell him the news. Mr. Blaney was very elated, he was up early in the offices of the Irish National Caucus behind Capitol Hill, waiting for word from Dublin.
Admittedly the Irish Independent said that Deputy Blaney called Deputy Haughey at lunch time. We are not quite sure which. We do know that down that corridor, in the medical room of this House, there was a long involved discussion between Deputies Haughey and Blaney and it was not about what was running in the 2.30 at the Curragh. One knows what is going on. One does not have to be an absolute fool. “Heads will roll”, said Deputy Eileen Lemass in the Irish Independent:
At least four and possibly five or six holders of big Cabinet posts are going to be axed altogether from ministerial life, according to Mrs. Eileen Lemass, sister-in-law of the Taoiseach-elect, writes Jim Farrelly.
Is this Ireland's entry into the eighties of collective Cabinet responsibility? I do not know.
I said my contribution would be brief because I would be ill if I had to endure this for much longer. There was a classic remark of Deputy Noel Davern that the 13-year war is over. On Saturday, 8 December he added that he was delighted. It was the end of a 13-year war and it had to come to an end some time. That brings me to my endorsement of what the Leader of my party and Deputy FitzGerald said in relation to An Taoiseach. I want to be associated with those remarks and I do not accept—I say this with profound regret—that An Taoiseach's going was of his own making. The white smoke was sent up while he was in America and the petitions were circulated as we well know. The lines were drawn and unfortunately the Taoiseach received some bad advice from some campaign managers who thought they had 50 votes in the bag. Even the most casual observer in the House, including myself, was able to say at any one time that Deputy Haughey had about 46-48. We did not have to put any money on it. The knives were out and the opportunity was there. Unfortunately some Ministers twisted in their beds one night and decided they would vote otherwise than they should have in the context of supporting their Taoiseach. It is a sad scenario and a regrettable situation. The country will have to live with it for the next two years or less. It will not be a pleasant time. Deputy Haughey is, by repute, a vindictive man. I do not relish what I am saying here because frankly I would be afraid of what might be kept in store whether at constituency level or any other level. I would not like to be a member of the Garda Síochána or of the Special Branch——
That does not arise.
I would not, because it has been said by the said Minister on other occasions that he would deal with those men when he had the opportunity of so doing. I would not like to be in the security forces of the State. Therefore, I make the point that it all boils down to us giving an endorsement of trust to Deputy Haughey. I am not saying this just as Opposition Whip because my father was a founder member of that party. My father resigned in 1939——
Deputy Desmond's father does not come into this debate.
I have as much concern for the future of democratic political structures in this State as anybody else and I am certain that he would turn in his grave at the prospect of what we find facing us today in this election. When I saw on television on last Friday afternoon in the Member's Bar the retread scruff of a political party, you might say, in terms of real republicanism standing behind Deputy Haughey——
That charge should not be made against anybody. The Deputy should not make that type of charge and he knows that. If he wishes to refer to people outside the House he should refer to them properly. I would not allow any Deputy to refer to anybody as "scruff".
We have had those red elements——
Deputy O'Connor should not enter into the debate at all at this stage.
It is necessary to bring the message across.
I deeply regret that I should have to make a contribution of this nature in that tone and with that content. I regret it as an Irishman. I am aware that the world press will look on us in this situation but I am not prepared to stand by and have the position that, without comment, the security apparatus of the State would be put exclusively into the hands of a former Minister whose trust and capacity in that regard was called so much into question and which apparently in the past eight or nine years has remained utterly in question right through that period. It will go down in history that Deputy Jack Lynch moderated the extreme republicanism and outbreaks of nationalistic rhetoric within his party and introduced an element of calm assessment of a situation in Northern Ireland. If he passionately believes in anything I think it was that he tried to take the gun out of that situation. It was very evident that it was the most important contribution that the outgoing Taoiseach made in his administration all through the seventies. It was a personal passion and belief that was easy to detect in this House. I admired him for it and every Member admired the efforts of Deputy Lynch to contain his party, prevent them from going off the rails and indulging in mad escapades of one kind or another in relation to Northern Ireland.
He was vilified for it in his party. I even heard Deputies on his own side saying: "That is what he got for going to the Mountbatten funeral; we got him," for going to Westminster with his wife and paying elementary tribute following a murder in this country.
I feel so strongly about the situation that I believe there is an obligation on us here to place clearly before the Irish people our repugnance of what we face, or fear of what we face. Perhaps there will be an opportunity for Deputy Haughey to clarify what precisely he means in regard to his policy on Northern Ireland. The Taoiseach will have that opportunity. If he mends his ways, if he clarifies that situation, I would be quite prepared to eat my words in this House and would willingly do it with no sense of shame because I think he owes it to us to give this clarification.
But I am fearful of the consequences when I read the kind of nonsense in the The Irish Press editorial on 10 December when the statement was made that “A new Ireland has dawned, in which a new Taoiseach has many problems to solve”. The same editorial writer goes on to say that Rev. Ian Paisley knows very well, despite his trumpetings, that he himself can do no fighting in the last analysis if the British go, without the support of the UDA and the UVF and that support is far from certain. He then goes on with ráiméis about “A post-British-withdrawal Ireland is a sane respectable vision ...” That is the vision of 2,000 dead over the past nine years and 20,000 injured in a period when apparently, Deputy Haughey was able to remain silent on that political situation. In the privacy of the Taoiseach's room when he got back on to the Front Bench he gave the Taoiseach a private assurance that he would endorse the Taoiseach's policy and from then on he remained silent. The days of silence in relation to Northern Ireland for Deputy Haughey are over. He will now have to state his position clearly and unequivocally, not with vague references to British withdrawal and 1975 policy. These are irrelevant in the nitty-gritty of what the situation demands in real leadership. If Deputy Haughey wants to go on mouthing that we must have British withdrawal and that there must be interim solutions between the British withdrawal and the final withdrawal, he will be laughed out of the country in the next general election.
The situation is more complex, more difficult and more demanding of rational solutions. That would not be a solution because Deputy Haughey is an intelligent man and an acute person, highly competent and for him to advance that kind of retrospective, republican rhetoric which has no meaning in the context of the alleged 1975 policy of his party is no answer. He should credit us with something more in our capacity to assess such a situation. Therefore, my party will vote against Deputy Haughey's nomination.
I did not wish to have to make this contribution but I make it because I find his nomination repugnant, dangerous and undesirable. Personally, I would have preferred Deputy Colley if I were a member of Fianna Fáil. He was defeated by Deputy Haughey. But perhaps from an Opposition point of view Deputy Colley would be far easier to beat in a general election—I do not have the slightest doubt of that. But that was not the issue: the issue is: which man has greater personal integrity as an individual? That is the real issue. Who could you really trust when the chips are down and a national security situation is ready to boil over? As far as I am concerned no matter how insensitive the man may be, no matter how much he may be lacking in charisma I would put my money on Deputy Colley. It was because he was not prepared to go wheeler-dealing through the country in the past few years presenting toothbrushes and taking the British-made mark off them before presenting them that Deputy Colley, in the last analysis, did not succeed. I respect Deputy O'Malley for standing up and quoting Deputy Colley because Deputy O'Malley is a straight person.
There is only one item of business before the House. We are not debating Deputy Colley or Deputy O'Malley or any other Deputy.
I will conclude by saying that in 1977 the people did not vote for Deputy Haughey as Taoiseach; they voted for the return of Deputy Jack Lynch as Taoiseach. They knew that in due course there would be a contest but, in 1977, the overwhelming majority of the people never thought that they would finish up in the situation where Deputy Haughey would be Taoiseach. I would hazard a guess that if that prospect had been before him in 1977, notwithstanding the many mistakes made by us in Coalition, we would probably have got the endorsement of the people instead of Fianna Fáil.
I have no doubt that in the next general election the country will not respond to the past. There is an obligation on us in Dáil Éireann to spell out the past and the consequences no matter how many wounds are opened here because we have a young generation of voters who are 25 years of age and who were 15 years of age at the time when a man's real character and trust were put in the dock and, as far as I am concerned, were found wanting in the context of a Cabinet involvement at that time. It was not just Deputy Haughey who was found wanting because the master mind, Deputy Blaney, was found more wanting than he and he used Deputy Haughey; Deputy Haughey fell for it and wanted to do a favour but the favour became unstuck and Deputy Gibbons got involved and the two of them finished up, in the classic, celebrated statement of an assessment of a judge of the courts, describing their capacity of trust, one for the other.
Because the youth of Ireland were only 15 or 16 years of age at that time and they have never until now had to face the reality that this man is going to lead them, there is an obligation on us in this debate. I hope that when we finish tonight it will be the end, in many respects, of that debate but today we have a fundamental democratic responsibility to put all this on the record. After today I will never again, either in public speeches or in Dáil contributions, come back on that event. I thought it would have been over; I hoped it was gone and I would have hoped to give more respect for the political institutions of the State to my children. I am profoundly ashamed that, in the presence of Deputy Haughey's family, friends and comrades, I should have to say these things. It is no joy to me or the people but it has to be said and it must be put on the record because we would be utterly failing in our responsibility as Dáil Deputies if we did not do so. Therefore I am ashamed of the disastrous example we are going to give the youth of Ireland today and of the disastrous example which Fianna Fáil gave when they, in the words printed in The Irish Press, voted to save their seats. It is about time Fianna Fáil voted to save the country because the country is more important than any one of our seats. My mother used to say to me “show me your company and I will tell you what you are”. That has been enough for me in the past ten years.
As has been said, this is no ordinary debate. It ought not to be about party politics. It ought to be taken out of that realm altogether because the decision taken by this House here today will affect every man, woman and child in this country. I would like to be able to say of the immediate future that today's decision will be crowned with success but I am afraid that, for many reasons I look forward to the future more in hope than in confidence.
The duty which we are performing in this House today is a duty we owe to the people, that is, scrutinising the suitability of the man now proposed to hold the office of Taoiseach. We have a responsibility and a duty to go into detail on what we think are the qualities and the characteristics of a person who would make a success of that office. We have a duty to the electorate who have been denied the opportunity to speak for themselves because, as has been said here on more than one occasion, the fact is now that one-third of this House is backing the leader of the country. That is one of the inadequacies of our democratic system but it is a reality and it ought to be spelled out because, in the short-term, depending on what happens and on the reaction of the people, they may demand that they be given an opportunity to voice their opinion. That opportunity should not be denied them. We will, later on today in this House, go through the formal procedure demanded by tradition and by the constitution and, indeed, by the democratic system, of voting for our next Taoiseach.
In going through that procedure we will, no doubt, witness a facade of unity, a facade of stability. But we all know, and many thousands of people outside the House know, that it is only a facade because of what has gone on in the precincts of this House in the last couple of months. As a result of the goings and the comings in that period, dozens of Deputies opposite who have sat there this morning will find it very difficult to walk into the lobby to vote for the man now nominated to become Taoiseach. Indeed one cannot but admire the degree of commitment which brings about the kind of situation when a Deputy can ignore the promptings of conscience, throw discretion to the winds and walk in behind somebody in whom he has no confidence or trust and, for reasons best known to himself, for whom he has not voted.
However, if one looks at the motivation that brings about that kind of commitment one cannot look with the same kind of admiration on the person endowed with it. That motivation is based on possibly many traits in our human make-up, traits which many of us call on in times of major emotional upheaval but which people of integrity do not call on in times of political expediency. What has been said and quoted in the House today that the man proposed, Deputy Haughey, would be the best suited to ensure the winning of marginal seats, is the kind of motivation which I said is not to be admired.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. O'Kennedy, a man for whom I have great admiration in his offices as Minister and of the Presidency of the European Council, disappointed me greatly when, asked last Sunday why at the last minute he had made public his decision to vote for Mr. Haughey, on at least three occasions he said he had felt that Mr. Haughey was the best man for Fianna Fáil.
He should be referred to as Deputy Haughey.
He did not say one iota about the fact that Deputy Haughey would not be Taoiseach of Fianna Fáil but Taoiseach of the country, representing all of this country. That is the kind of motivation which in other circumstances might be admirable but not in this one. As I have said, we in the House who have been close to these things in the past few months have witnessed what has been going on in the corridors of this House. Because of the time and effort spent by senior members of the Government in the very legitimate political pursuit of canvassing, we have had a virtual political vacuum in the country. As a result, we had a certain degree of uncertainty. One would have thought that that uncertainty, which reached national proportions, would have been eliminated by last Friday. Instead, that uncertainty has been replaced by some form of fear, an intangible one, a fear of the unknown brought about by long years of silence by the man who ought to have spoken to clear the decks and tell the people where he stood on issues of national and indeed international importance. That man has not spoken and hence we have had a deepening of the uncertainty which has pervaded the country in the past number of months. Hence we have had a deepening of the sense of fear about the future instead of a diminution of that sense of uncertainty.
The ability of Deputy Haughey is not in question. On many fronts Deputy Haughey has shown himself to be a man of capacity for hard work. He has been well known for his ability to initiate certain things. He has been responsible for innovative ideas. But his greatest ability seems to lie in the fact that he can see a political opportunity and grasp it. That would be all right in the best political sense, but the degree of motivation with which he tackled the long road back to where he finds himself today is something which to the average person is frightening.
As Deputy Kelly said, all of us here have certain ambitions, and indeed anybody worth his salt must carry within him ambitions to reach certain goals and objectives. But the opportunist trait, if overplayed, in trying to reach that goal negatives that good characteristic which is ambition. To my mind, Deputy Haughey has done just that. In the last few years he has carefully built up a public image in a very professional way. He has done so very deliberately with, no doubt, a very definite goal in mind. He has surrounded himself with a veneer of many characteristics but I do not think any human being in the country has the characteristics with which Deputy Haughey has surrounded himself in a slick public relations exercise. When one peels or chips off that veneer then are laid bare qualities which include all-pervading ambition to reach where he is today. There is nothing wrong with ambition. We all know that moderate ambition is a fine thing. I regard Deputy Haughey's approach to this as excessive ambition and anything in excess is in itself not a good thing. Excesses lead to abuse and at this level of politics the charge of the taint of abuse should not be levelled at anybody, or if it is that person should be declared unfit to hold the office Deputy Haughey now proposes to hold. If we chip further under that veneer a philosophy comes forward which again is based on ambition, that is, a capacity to accumulate wealth, a trait which is a very fine thing in many ways and which is looked up to by many people in this country. I have nothing against anybody who succeeds in doing that. Down the years, Deputy Haughey's predecessors were men who have been looked up to for different reasons by different people. Young people in particular have in the past looked at political leaders in this country as people whom they could regard as an example. The problem that I see with Deputy Haughey is that there is a danger that they might look at Deputy Haughey in the same way and try to model themselves on him. For example, in the accumulation of wealth many of them will fail and in their failure they will become frustrated and doubts will enter into their minds. The end result of that is that the political consequences of such frustration may be very damaging to this country.
Deputy Haughey has through his silent years surrounded himself with an aura of mystery. An amazing fact—this must be unique in the election of a Taoiseach—is that many thousands of people in this country just do not know where Deputy Haughey stands on many issues. All they know about him is what he has himself published carefully through a very deliberate public relations exercise over the past couple of years in his build-up to this day. His utterance after his election last Friday on the peaceful unity of this country was something which I welcomed but over which must be a large question mark. Until Deputy Haughey, as leader, proves that he means what he says, that doubt will remain in my mind and in the minds of many other people.
Cuireadh ceist ar an Teachta Haughey an Aoine seo caite maidir le toghcháin Udarás na Gaeltachta. On méid a dúirt sé agus ó bheith ag breathnú air, ceapaim nach raibh fhios aige go raibh a leithéid ar siúl, agus tá sé ar siúl amárach, dar ndóigh. Cuireann sé sin ceist eile im'aigne. Cá seasann an tUasal Ó hEochaidh maidir le teanga na Gaeilge? Ba é sin ceann de na bunchlocha ar a raibh páirtí Fhianna Fáil bunaithe ó thús: aontacht na tíre agus dul chun cinn na Gaeilge. Sin ceist maidir leis an nGaeilge go mba mhaith le muintir na Gaeltachta freagra a fháil air, agus sar i bhfad.
Finally, in this country there is a problems that face us and people in many ways are generous and understand the problems of politicians. In normal circumstances that generosity would be forthcoming to any new Taoiseach or to any new Government. However, because of the ambiguity which people see in the man now proposed, because of the uncertainty due to his long period of silence, that degree of generosity from the public at large might not be forthcoming as readily in this case. Were it there I do not think that I would be here now asking that the nomination of Deputy Haughey be rejected.
I intend to oppose the nomination of Deputy Haughey as Taoiseach and I will give a few reasons for doing so. Naturally, I regret having to do this because it is a great honour to be elected. One would like to think that the next step logically for him would be to be appointed Taoiseach but for reasons which I shall try to explain that is not my wish.
First, I join with Deputy Kelly in repudiating the suggestion in one newspaper this morning that we should not discuss freely and frankly the question of this nomination. The suggestion that we as Deputies do not have a sense of responsibility equal to that of whoever penned that editorial is, to put it at its mildest, presumptuous and, in some ways, particularly insolent. I agree with Deputy Kelly when he points out that we have not yet reached the point of being members of a conformist Reichstag which must do what it is told by anybody. We are responsible only to our constituents.
In the light of the uniqueness of this strange event the idea that we should not discuss freely this historic happening and discuss it within our own knowledge in an effort to put it into perspective is particularly absurd. The man who has been proposed by Deputy Lynch for this office has been voted into power within his own party but with one or two exceptions, without the support of any of his colleagues. The majority of these men who have known Deputy Haughey during all of his political life have taken the extraordinary decision not to support the majority of backbenchers who voted for him. Anybody who overlooks this reality without dwelling on its implications for all of us and for the country is either totally ignorant of the dynamics of power in politics, in the working of parliamentary democracy, or else has some ulterior motive in furthering the career of the individual concerned. The fact is that all of these people who might collectively be regarded as the flower of Fianna Fáil, intellectually and politically, those people who down through the years, rightly or wrongly, have reached the top in that party, who have held power time and again and who, above everything else, have held the highest offices within the State, have decided that they cannot trust Deputy Haughey with the office for which he has been nominated. This situation is of such extraordinary significance as to deserve the most thorough examination.
It is not as if in the Cabinet there were two outstanding Ministers whose records of achievement were such as to render it very difficult to choose between them. The alternative to whom the members of the Cabinet gave their support—the Minister for Finance—is a person for whom all of us have a personal regard but for whom obviously we could have very little political respect in regard to his achievements. Undoubtedly, his financial policies are in tatters, The state of the nation gives eloquent evidence of that. He has held office on a number of occasions but there is nothing in his record to suggest that he is the kind of person who should be proposed and voted for as Leader of the party and, subsequently, as Taoiseach by these men who know both Deputy Colley and Deputy Haughey very well. Consequently, we must look for some reason other than merit alone for that decision on their part and we must look for that reason in the personality of Deputy Haughey and also in his record.
What was it that frightened virtually all of Fianna Fáil, including the outgoing Taoiseach, from a decision to recommend Deputy Haughey as Leader of the party, and subsequently, as Taoiseach? We know that they were voted down by the peripheral members of the party. As both Deputy FitzGerald and Deputy Cluskey have suggested, there are factors which helped to determine that decision. As most of us know, in politics the simplistic answer is very rarely the answer. Broadly, the debate was about a misconception held in this House and held to a great extent throughout the country among people who wield power, those people who helped put our leaders into power. I refer to those engaged in radio, television and the newspaper world as well as rank-and-file politicians and the ordinary people and the misconception to which I refer relates to the republican idea. Obviously, it is one of the realities of politics that once again the division of our country has led to Deputy Lynch's dilemma and to his resignation, but that is another matter.
To me the people who have put back Deputy Haughey are not republicans; they are crypto-provos. They are crypto-provos in this House, in our newspapers and magazines and on radio and television. They are as far from being republicans as is Deputy Haughey. I can prove that with Deputy Haughey on the three tests of a republican. They are: the test in the belief in a secular society, the belief in a pluralist society and the belief in a radical approach to politics. Of all those people who supported Deputy Haughey I do not know of one of them who would claim to believe in those three tenets of serious republicanism, and that is true about Deputy Haughey also. I can prove that on his record in office. It is about time we stopped calling these people republicans.
Hear, hear.
They should get the names they deserve: sectarian nationalists, crypto-provos. They should get those names in papers and magazines, on radio and television programmes.
Hear, hear.
Deputy Haughey's proposed accession to power is as much the act, decision, manoeuvring, subterfuge and activities of these people outside the House in the position where they wield power as it is the decision of the crypto-provos who stood behind him the other day with great smiles on their faces having brought down their former Taoiseach, Deputy Lynch.
In the Family Planning Bill debates I went to some trouble to demonstrate that this was a measure that should have been used to show that here in the Republic we believe in pluralism, in a secular society and in radical liberal policies. But, instead of that, what we got from Deputy Haughey, to use his own words, was "an Irish solution to an Irish problem". I said then that there were one million Irish Protestants in the North and I asked if it solved the problem for them. Deputy Haughey smiled at me because he was talking to the back benches.
When Deputy Boland and I thought we had saved the family planning clinics, the following day Deputy Haughey brought in an amendment to ensure that we could not do that. I remember Deputy Vivion de Valera leant down to him, clapped him on the shoulder and said "That is the amendment I want". Deputy de Valera not only individually but also through his newspapers——
The Deputy should not bring in that kind of thing. We deal with Members of the House without bringing in their outside pursuits or businesses.
There was one dreadful remark made by the Deputy this morning and, if he were here, I would say this in his presence. When Deputy Kelly asked whether it was not time to bring an end to the Civil War or some phrase of that kind it was Deputy de Valera, to my horror, who said "Your invitation is refused". That is the mentality of the kind of support this man has in the House.
Sixty years later.
I can confirm that I heard that remark.
(Cavan-Monaghan): The Chair need not hear everything that is said——
The Chair did not hear the remark and it is not a shame on him. I hear most things that are said in the House.
I was sitting on the front bench and I heard the remark.
The Deputy is not going to make any charges against the Chair.
(Cavan-Monaghan): It is not necessary for the Chair to hear everything that is said.
It would be very difficult. Deputy Browne on the motion before the House.
This is the kind of person we have before us proposed for nomination to the most powerful and important post in the land. Deputy Desmond was right to say that his record of competence is probably not in question now. However, on his record in the Department of Justice, there was a situation then that was as near to mutiny among the Garda Síochána as anything I remember. I am not sure they did not go on strike; certainly they threatened to do so. When the Deputy was Minister for Agriculture we had the biggest march of farmers in Dublin and I heard Deputy Blaney on the radio at one time say that it took him two years to clear up the mess created there. Deputy Cluskey was quite right this morning when he spoke of the total cynicism of his behaviour with regard to health, the total cynicism of that completely farcical Family Planning Bill. That was an opportunity that a serious republican would have seized to have shown that we are independent here and that, while we have our Catholic, Protestant, Presbyterian and freethinking views, in this House we legislate for a secular united Ireland. Instead of that the Minister brought in a shamelessly sectarian Bill because he was attempting to buy votes.
At the time I tried to show that the proposals should have been based on the needs of half the population, the women. Instead of that, as a measure of his cynicism and his hypocrisy, he subordinated what he knew to be the best interests of women and children in order to buy votes. There are very few serious political analysts in journalism here but one of them, Bruce Arnold, accused this man of a lack of integrity. Members of this House may accuse each other of being frivolous, lazy, irrelevant, incompetent or many other things, but the only thing the Chair will decline to allow us to do is to question the integrity or the honesty of one another. That charge was made and it was never repudiated as I suspect it could be by a politician who cared about these things or who could do it safely in the courts. This is the man who is now being proposed as Taoiseach.
When things go wrong please do not blame us—the politicians. In spite of the obvious succession of failures of this man, the eulogies written by the journalists have helped to put him there. A recent interesting development is to talk about the media; it saves them talking about the journalists. Somebody wields that pen; somebody puts the words on paper. It used to be Ciano in Mussolini's Italy or Streicher in Hitler's Germany. It was the journalists who helped to make these dictators. The journalists have a great responsibility and it is my belief that they have betrayed that responsibility on this occasion in respect of this man. Most of them failed to tell us of the total failure of this man in their continuous eulogies of him on the run-up to this day. The mind-forming process, which is their privilege, helps to put us where we are and to put us out. They helped to put out the man who has gone.
I am afraid of Deputy Haughey. Curiously enough he is one of the two politicians that I have been afraid of all my life. I am afraid of his potential with real power. I have to use the word. The Chair may tell be to withdraw it and I will do so if he says so. I believe that Deputy Haughey has used his position unscrupulously in order to achieve his ambitions as a politician. I believe that he has betrayed all these people and the wonderful ministries that he has held. He has failed to achieve the objectives; he has failed to discharge his functions, not because of incompetence—we all agree on his administrative qualities—but because of his cynical decision to withhold the use of power, particularly, as Deputy Cluskey said, in Social Welfare. Oddly enough, I do not believe that he can be trusted in any of the ordinary things. Most of all, even the crypto-provos will not get their pound of flesh. This is the man who introduced the internment of republicans. Does anybody think that he will not do it again if it suits him? As far as they are concerned, they can be afraid of him for that reason but I have other reasons. He has done everything to get power and I think he will do anything to hold power. Does anybody think that there are any limits to what he will do? Why should they think there are any limits to what this man will do? Is this tomorrow's Salazar? Remember, world capitalism is facing irresolvable problems. Deputy Haughey has never told us how he is going to solve our desperately serious economic problems. We know what he did before when he was in trouble. At least we know that Deputy Lynch thought he did something outside the democratic practice which he should not have done. If we give him power now he will use that power. He controls the Special Branch, the prisons and the internment camps. What is to stop him using them? Deputy Lynch fired Deputies Haughey, Blaney and a couple of others. Once Deputy Haughey becomes Taoiseach he cannot be fired. This is the kind of power the crypto-provos and the journalists have given him with their snide innuendoes, their subterfuge.
He made no secret of the fact that the trade unions are first on his list. My awful nightmare is that this man is a dreadful cross between Richard Milhous Nixon and Dr. Salazar. Many years ago when I first came in here I remember clearly that, after the vote, when the Government were defeated, the Ceann Comhairle said, "We will go away for an hour and then come back. At the end of that hour the Government will move to the right and the Opposition will move to the left". I found that very impressive because that is the way the power moves from one side to the other. When this man is in real trouble and he has all that power and he finds himself faced with defeat in this House, I wonder whether he will obey the word of the Chair.
(Cavan-Monaghan): We are engaged in a very important democratic exercise, that of electing in a democratic way a new Taoiseach, a man who will preside over Cabinet meetings and wield an extraordinary power for the remainder of this Dáil. I am sure strangers will admire the manner in which that duty is being discharged by the Opposition. The democratic process works here if Opposition parties, or Opposition Members, take their responsibility seriously.
The media also play an important part in the running of our democratic system. They act as watchdogs on Parliament as a whole. On occasions it happens that the media and the Opposition do not agree. The media feel obliged on occasions to tell Parliament, the Government or the Opposition how they should carry out their functions. This morning one section of the press expressed the view, in good faith, that this should be a low-key debate, that it should not be controversial, that we should forget the past in so far as the only nomination before the House is concerned.
I remember clearly the period between 1969 and 1970 when a number of Government Ministers were subjected to honest criticism by the Opposition for one reason or another. At that time the press and political commentators did not look kindly on the type of criticism that was being offered or the type of matter that was being unearthed. Those commentators made their views public in their writing and built up the Ministers we were criticising. I clearly remember May 1970 when politics and the institutions of State here were reduced to a shambles. In that month the Ministers who were under criticism from 1969 to 1970 by the Opposition, the Ministers who were defended and admired by the media disappeared from the Government overnight. Nobody is infallible, the Opposition or the media, but we must discharge our duties here in the way we consider best.
As far as I am concerned, I consider that the most efficient way for me to discharge my parliamentary and constitutional function is to intervene in this debate to give my views on the suitability or otherwise of Deputy Charles J. Haughey for the position of Taoiseach for which he has been nominated. I have no doubt that Deputy Haughey is not suitable and I believe that a great number of Members of the House and Irish people share my views. In my opinion, he possesses characteristics which disqualify him for the exalted position for which he has been nominated. I am speaking of the characteristics of Deputy Haughey being, at best, a highly controversial and highly divisive individual and, being, at worst, a dangerous man. There can be no doubt that for practically all Deputy Haughey's political career he has been very controversial and in the last ten years at best he has been controversial on all major national issues. He has been highly controversial on the most important national issue, that of national unity and how it should be brought about. I do not think that assertion can be denied. At best there is a huge question mark and great controversy hanging over his stance on national unity, the North of Ireland and the manner and means by which that should be brought about.
Deputy Haughey has also the capacity to be highly divisive. In the last few days the Fianna Fáil Party have been split, practically down the middle, and I am satisfied that it was Deputy Haughey's intervention and anxiety to reach power that caused that. Deputy Dr. Browne made an excellent point when he stated that normally one might expect massive support within the party for Deputy Haughey having regard to the Opposition, but yet the party is split 50-50. If we accept what we hear we find that the entire Cabinet practically were against Deputy Haughey. I do not wish to go into names and details. I do not want to spell out the various reasons that various people supported Deputy Haughey. But I will put this on record: I believe that a variety of Deputies supported Deputy Haughey for a variety of reasons and that while some of them supported him for the highest of reasons, many supported him for ones less worthy. So much for his divisiveness.
I believe that, in certain circumstances, Deputy Haughey has the capacity for being politically and nationally a dangerous man. We can throw our minds back to the Four Courts when he was acquitted by a jury. Outside the Four Courts he screeched to the mob—and I can describe it in no other way—for the removal of the man who was then Taoiseach and whom he has now succeeded in removing. The attack on and the battle to remove Deputy Jack Lynch began on the steps of the Four Courts at the end of the arms trial with the acquittal of Deputy Haughey.
When Deputies come to assess a man, they can do so only to the best of their ability. If there is any doubt about his ability he should not be given the power which Deputy Haughey seeks. Watching him on television that night outside the Four Courts I immediately said, "There is a man who is dangerous. There is a man who should not control the seat of power".
We have at present a sick economy. About that there is no doubt. Even if I had the capacity to do so, it is not necessary for me to go into it in depth, or indeed——
It would not be relevant.
(Cavan-Monaghan):——or, even if I were in order in going into it in depth, it is not necessary for me to do so because it is accepted by all economists, by all politicians and by the country at large that we have a sick economy. In the atmosphere of the present condition of our economy what sort of a man, what sort of a Taoiseach do we want to elect today? Various things can be blamed for the condition of our economy but one of the things that must take a big share of the blame is the fact that we have had, for the last 12 months at least, a distracted and divided Cabinet, a Cabinet which, instead of paying attention to the various ills besetting our country, were engaging their attentions on other matters. I believe that Deputy Charles J. Haughey must take a lot of the blame for that divided Cabinet, for that distracted Cabinet, because each man there was looking over his shoulder at the other, and the Taoiseach, Deputy Jack Lynch, was looking behind him at all of them. That is the way this country was run for the last 12 months. That is the way the economy was nursed. That is the way the economy was attended to.
What sort of a Taoiseach do we want to run this country and to get our economy back into a healthy condition? In my opinion we want a Taoiseach who, as head of the governing party, who are Fianna Fáil at present, will unite that governing party, get them in behind the Government so that they will not be sniping at the Government, so that they will let the Government get on with their business. We want a man who will unite the Cabinet, who will get behind him a Cabinet who will not be divided or distracted in their work. I am satisfied that the member of the present Government least qualified to do those two things is the man whose name is today before Dáil Éireann for election to the position of Taoiseach. In view of the present state of our economy there is needed a sense of national security; the people, businessmen, indeed the workforce of the country need to feel a sense of security and of confidence. I believe that Deputy Haughey is not qualified nor has he the characteristics to do either of those things. Therefore, I believe he is the wrong man to put in this position at present.
Reference has been made to Deputy Haughey's former ministries. He was Minister for Justice. I think I am right in saying that, as Minister for Justice, he introduced the Succession Act, a Bill, which as introduced, showed a complete lack of knowledge of rural Ireland, of family life in rural Ireland. Had it been enacted as introduced it would have meant war within families because under that Bill as introduced each member of a family was entitled to share equally in the parents' estate without any right to the parents to choose one against the other, without any right to the parents to make sure that the family farm or business would be preserved. That Bill was debated in this House to Second Stage, with such Members as the then Deputy Seán Flanagan, rising up in arms against it. A by-election was fought in Galway on that Succession Act amongst other things. After that by-election there was a change of Ministers, when Deputy Haughey was succeeded by Deputy B. Lenihan, when the section of that Succession Act about which I am speaking was scrapped and a sensible measure put through this House. So much for that.
We know that in agriculture Deputy Haughey created chaos. He went to war with the farmers. He refused to talk to the farmers. He walked over them on his way into his office. I think—and he will correct me if I am wrong—he sent them to jail. That is the type of man who has been nominated for Taoiseach in this mixed community. His performance in the Departments of Health and Social Welfare has been dealt with in many ways. His performance in social welfare has been one of neglect. Social welfare payments are now delayed and most Deputies are occupied practically full time endeavouring to get humble people their rights from the Department of Social Welfare. His performance in the Department of Health has been smart and slick. The Deputy is certainly smart and slick. But he has not done anything of substance in relation to health. He has administered aspirins and kept the headaches at bay. I do not know who will succeed him in that Department, but whoever does will certainly have some headaches to deal with.
Impartial observers will have to admire the manner in which this debate has been conducted from the Opposition benches; otherwise it has been an extraordinary debate. I am in the Oireachtas since 1961. I sat here this morning throughout the debate and I have never heard a more devastating attack on the suitability of any man for a position he sought. Those attacks have come from the Leader of this party, the Leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Kelly, Deputy Barry Desmond, who put some very telling material on the record of the House, and Deputy Browne. What do we find? We find that Deputy Haughey was proposed by a very brief speech by the outgoing Taoiseach, which only lasted about a minute, and he was formally seconded by the Chief Whip of the Fianna Fáil Party. Then we had the well documented attack about the suitability of the man proposed put on the record of the House by speaker after speaker. We have not heard a word of defence from the Government benches. No speaker has been offered in this debate from the Government benches to advance the cause of Deputy Haughey or to deny the accusations which have been made from this side of the House. Surely one heavyweight who served in office with Deputy Haughey for a number of years could be found to speak in this debate and deny the charges of unsuitability which have been made by this side of the House?
I am convinced the country is not being treated properly by the Government. The change of leadership in the Government party during the term of the Dáil is a serious matter at any time. It requires a lot of consideration by the House. When the only nominee is a man who is divisive, controversial and potentially dangerous, it is a serious matter. The Irish people on 16 June 1977 gave the Government the biggest majority ever on a manifesto—I am not going into it in any way which is not entirely relevant to the debate—which begins with the words:
The vision of this manifesto is an Ireland in which a successful strategy for national re-organisation offers real security for all. It has been carefully put together and costed for implementation in Government by a new team under Jack Lynch as Taoiseach.
They secured 84 seats on that manifesto. How many seats would Fianna Fáil have got in the last election if they had added to the introduction to the manifesto I have read out: "Under Jack Lynch as Taoiseach for two-and-a-half years and Deputy Charles J. Haughey for the remainder of the term of office." I suggest they would not be sitting on that side of the House now. I do not believe that anybody in the House has jurisdiction to vote Yes to the motion which we are now debating. It is only the Irish people in a general election who have the right to say yes to that composition. I regret that Deputy Jack Lynch, instead of handing in his resignation as Taoiseach to the President, did not go to him to dissolve Dáil Éireann and let the electorate decide whether or not they wanted Deputy Charles J. Haughey as Taoiseach and if they wanted to place in his hands, having regard to his record and to the characteristics which he obviously possesses, the office of Taoiseach during this Dáil. If Deputy Haughey won the general election he would then come back to the Dáil as Taoiseach and he would speak with authority. If the Fianna Fáil Party, at the behest of the different types of people in the party, for a variety of reasons, vote yes to this motion then I believe they will be double crossing the Irish people and will be reneging on the very introduction to the manifesto. I believe, if constitutional machinery makes it possible, there should be a general election at this time.
I begin by paying a personal tribute to the retiring Taoiseach, Deputy Jack Lynch. He was elected in 1966, served the country fairly and honestly and has commanded the respect of all three parties in this House. He has taken very hard decisions in his time, but my party were satisfied that he was a leader whom we could fight on political grounds, rather than on any other grounds. He was a very successful Taoiseach, electorally, in bringing Fianna Fáil to power in 1977 with 84 seats—an unheard of number in the history of the State. I wish himself and his good wife, Mrs. Maureen Lynch, a long and happy retirement and that he will continue to enjoy the respect and admiration of all the citizens of this State.
I am fairly young to politics, having been in the House for only ten years. I do not aspire to having anyone related to me in the GPO in 1916 but, from a family point of view, I have a deep respect for parliamentary politics and for the supremacy of parliament. I have read, as have most politicians, the modern history of Ireland and have tremendous admiration for the former Taoiseachs of this country. They were all sincere and true to their own ideals. Some I did not agree with, others I did and admired to a high level.
I have no wish to indulge, nor have I ever indulged since coming into this House, in the historical politics of Ireland and the civil war politics. I have steered clear of them on all occasions when I have tried to make my contribution to this House on the basis of Ireland of today and of the future. My experience as a member of the Public Accounts Committee brought me into the inner councils of parliament. It was that experience which has led me to speak here today on the nomination of Deputy Charles Haughey as Taoiseach. I disagree profoundly with the choice of nominee of the Fianna Fáil Party. About our Taoiseachs there must not be a hint of suspicion. Regarding the nomination of a member of Government, on 6 May 1970—and I quote very briefly from Volume 246 of the Official Report of Dáil Éireann, the Taoiseach said, in relation to Deputy Haughey and Deputy Blaney:
...I decided to approach the two Ministers again and to repeat my request that they tender to me their resignation as members of the Government. I did so on the basis that I was convinced
—and that is a word which this House should note—
that not even the slightest suspicion should attach to any member of the Government in a matter of this nature.
As history knows, both Ministers refused to resign and were subsequently dismissed. We have before us here, in the words of the retiring Taoiseach, that the man before the House for the position of Taoiseach is a man about whom there is a slightest hint of suspicion. We are well aware that Deputy Haughey has an intense dislike, even hatred, of the Taoiseach who is about to resign and an unbridled ambition which is about to be fulfilled. On his acquittal at the arms trial in October——
The Deputy may not discuss court decisions, either pending or past.
——Deputy Haughey is reported to have said, in The Irish Times on 24 October 1970, speaking in general, but we all know to whom he was referring:
I think that those who are responsible for this debacle have no alternative but to take the honourable course that is open to them.
He was obviously referring to the general call, from among his followers, for the resignation of the then Taoiseach, Deputy Jack Lynch. Deputy Haughey was, of course, dismissed from the Cabinet, primarily on the grounds of the allegations in relation to arms importation, or attempted importation. In a statement the then Taoiseach, Deputy Jack Lynch, gave another important reason, which must be distinguished from the question of arms importation, being quoted in The Irish Times of 6 May 1970, as saying in relation to the grounds of dismissal of Deputies Haughey and Blaney:
.. I am satisfied that they do not subscribe fully to Government policy in relation to the present situation in the Six Counties as stated by me... .
It is fair to say that the different stances in relation to Northern Ireland policy still remain. This was highlighted recently in a speech made by the present Taoiseach designate to a branch on the anniversary of Pádraig Pearse. The then Taoiseach received from the people of Ireland in 1977 a tremendous mandate to be Taoiseach of a strong Government. I doubt very much—and put it to the people opposite to me in this House—that that same mandate would have been forthcoming if Deputy Haughey had been leader of that party in 1977 and I doubt very much if that would be the position if there were a general election now, or in the near future.
I was a member of the Public Accounts Committee in the matter of what has become known as the Committee of Inquiry into £100,000, which was the committee established by the order of the Dáil on 1 December 1970. All the members are, doubtless, aware that the order asked the committee to inquire into the expenditure of £100,000 voted for the relief of distress in Northern Ireland.
It was a very difficult time for many politicians. The position in Northern Ireland was very delicate and the position in Southern Ireland was very emotional, especially in view of the fact that we felt that the minority population in Northern Ireland was open to attack. Nonetheless, this House voted to spend £100,000 on the relief of distress in Northern Ireland. There were allegations at the time that the money was misspent and in order to clarify the position properly——
The Deputy may not discuss in detail the Committee of Public Accounts in question. The findings are relevant but we are not going to traverse the Public Accounts sitting.
On the Fianna Fáil side the members of that committee were Deputy Sylvester Barrett, Deputy Ben Briscoe, Deputy Hugh Gibbons, Deputy Tom Nolan and most important and significant of all. Deputy MacSharry who proposed Deputy Haughey for his present position in the Party. On the Fine Gael side the members of that committee were Deputy Richard Burke, Deputy Garret FitzGerald, and myself. Deputy Paddy Hogan was in the chair, and Deputy Justin Keating and Deputy James Tully served on behalf of the Labour Party on that committee. The conclusion of the deliberations of that committee are worth noting. I quote from the Interim and Final Reports of the Committee of Public Accounts of the Dáil on 1 December 1970, part 10, Summary of Conclusions re Expenditure it was agreed that:
£29,166 12s 0d was spent on relief of distress, £34,850 was possibly spent in Belfast, but on undetermined purposes, £250 was spent on purposes possibly related to the relief of distress, and £41,499 13s 9d was not spent on the relief of distress.
That was the conclusion of the Committee of Public Accounts. Another conclusion which I must relate to the House is in paragraph 79 of that report under the heading of Failure of Colonel Hefferon and Ministers to take Action.
It must be added that had Colonel Hefferon taken appropriate action when he learned from Captain Kelly about the proposed arms importation and his drawings from the account, much of the money might not have been misappropriated. Had the then Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, Deputy Neil T. Blaney, the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Charles J. Haughey, and the then Minister for Defence, Deputy James Gibbons, passed on to the Taoiseach their suspicion or knowledge of the proposed arms importation the misappropriation of part of the money which is now known to have been spent on arms might have been avoided.
That was the conclusion the committee of this House, composed equitably of all parties, came to. It is a damning report in retrospect and it is a highly significant report from the point of view of the motion now before the House. It is well known from the evidence of Chief Superintendent Fleming that Deputy Haughey had a meeting with one of the leading members of the IRA and promised him £50,000.
The Deputy must not discuss the proceedings of the committee. I made that clear.
I am entitled to refer to the matters——
The Chair will permit the Deputy to go as far as he went in relation to the findings of the committee. The Committee of Public Accounts' report is not before the House today.
I feel I am entitled to quote from evidence.
The Deputy has done that and the Chair has been lenient in permitting him to do so. The Deputy will now desist.
A senior member of the Garda force has stated the clear position in relation to Deputy Haughey's part in the attempted importation of arms and the possible establishment of the provisional IRA. That Chief Superintendent still served in a senior capacity as a member of the Garda force and was not dismissed. I am aware, and must say in fairness to Deputy Haughey, that he completely refuted in his evidence at that committee the evidence of Chief Superintendent Fleming. I accept from the Deputy's evidence at the committee that that was a very delicate period, a period of turbulence and intense emotion. It is not for me to make a judgment on that period. That was done adequately by the Taoiseach in his decision to dismiss Deputy Haughey and in the report of the Committee of Public Accounts.
There could be no doubt that the conclusion reached by that committee in inquiring into the £100,000 is a damning indictment of Deputy Charles J. Haughey and must raise the question of his credibility and of his integrity in relation to the security of this State. It is not a pleasure for me to say so. In politics I have always tried to remove my personal feelings from any debate. We are here discussing the important question of the security of the State and of its institutions which I try to serve. The action of the last Taoiseach in dismissing Deputy Haughey was apparently justified at least on the basis of the report of the Committee of Public Accounts at that time.
Deputy Haughey's unbridled action in getting rid of Deputy Lynch, his unbridled hatred of that man is something that will not go down well with people. It was obvious from recent events, recent speeches by Deputy de Valera, Deputy McEllistrim, and Deputy Bill Loughnane that there was a concerted effort on the part of Deputy Haughey to move Deputy Jack Lynch aside and out of the office of the Taoiseach. That has now succeeded, primarily because many Fianna Fáil backbenchers are afraid for their seats; they fear that their presence in this House is in jeopardy and they are prepared to gamble on Deputy Charles J. Haughey.
It is also evident from the vote last week that the establishment side of the Fianna Fáil Party were in favour of Deputy George Colley, a person seen not so much to be a dashing Minister but to be a down to earth, honest Minister, a Minister we could support as a person to be Taoiseach. That view did not prevail because there were members of the Fianna Fáil Party who wanted once again to wave the green flag, to play the green card, to come out with this hawkish republicanism which is not a part of my make up.
It is incumbent on Deputy Haughey at a very early date to state in this House whether he agrees with the concept of the majority community in Northern Ireland having a right to decide their own future. He has a clear responsibility and duty to this House to say that he accepts the concept that if the Protestant majority in the North wish to remain outside the Republic he will respect that decision. If he does not hold that view, he has a clear responsibility to say that that is not the position, that, taking Ireland as a whole, the majority have a right to decide the future of Northern Ireland. That must be a prime responsibility lying on the shoulders of Deputy Charles Haughey. He has a responsibility to declare, without ambiguity, his position in respect of the majority and the minority communities in Northern Ireland.
As my Leader said this morning, he kept his head well down and kept very silent about his support or otherwise for the IRA activities in the North. For nine years he refrained from condemning the IRA. For nine years he was pushing the image that they had his passive support. As was said this morning, it was only when he was safely in the seat as Taoiseach designate that he came out and condemned the IRA. That was an acceptable thing to do, but I have my doubts about his sincerity in that regard.
Having condemned the IRA he has another responsibility—to state clearly where he stands in relation to the Protestant community and their rights within Northern Ireland. I challenge him to do that if not this evening—I understand that under existing procedure he is precluded from speaking—then at a very early stage. If the spirit of reconciliation is not clearly spelled out in this House, the future of this country as a democracy may be in doubt. There is no doubt in my mind that it is the intention of the IRA not only to wreak havoc in Northern Ireland but to bring down the Dublin Government as well. The responsibility is clearly on the shoulders of the Taoiseach designate in this regard.
It is not easy for me to stand up and say what I did. I have tremendous respect for the institutions of this State and for democracy. I have great admiration for the unselfish way generation after generation served the ideals and aspirations of the Irish people. Many Taoisigh, Ministers and Members of this House have given up very good careers to serve their country.
There is, unfortunately, a hint of suspicion about the Taoiseach designate which may do this country a great deal of damage. That hint of suspicion, quite clearly established by the former Taoiseach, Deputy Jack Lynch and by the Committee of Public Accounts Special Inquiry, will linger. I have no wish to refer to Deputy Haughey's private life, but there is a hint of suspicion in relation to his motives as a politician in getting to the top, to the position of Taoiseach. His motive was an unbridled hatred of Deputy Jack Lynch. His motive was not as one to serve but as one to dominate and to own this country. That is wrong and it is very serious.
When debating legislation, and especially Estimates, we will have to be very careful. We will have to ensure that nothing is amiss, that there is nothing we need have suspicions about. I regret having to say that. I also regret that I have to stand here and oppose a man whose ability and reputation as a Minister is accepted. He has done well as a Minister, but in 1970, by the implications of his involvement with the IRA and with importation of arms, he broke the concept of collective responsibility. As a member of this House, I consider that concept of collective responsibility is very important. I cannot say that, when he is Taoiseach, that will not happen again.
My colleague, Deputy Kelly, said this morning he understood the tremendous emotional atmosphere that prevailed in 1969 and 1970 and understood the pressures on the Government at that time—the same pressures would be on any Government. I understand that fully. But there was then, and there remains now, a clear concept of collective responsibility. It is obvious from the report of the Committee of Public Accounts Special Inquiry that Deputy Haughey, if not others, breached the concept of collective responsibility. I do not have confidence that, if something similar happens again in relation to Northern Ireland, collective responsibility will not again be breached. That is a very serious matter. Therefore, I cannot vote for Deputy Haughey, I cannot have confidence in him and I am fearful for the future of my country.
There is an atmosphere about this debate which, although I am a relatively short time in this House, I suspect is probably unprecedented. It would be folly for Members on the opposite side or people outside this House to attribute such an atmosphere merely to the wiles of the Opposition. However much many of us find participating in a debate of this level distasteful, the fact is that it is a symptom of a wider unease. That is a reality, regardless of the issues tossed up in this particular Pandora's Box of a discussion, the Pandora's Box which this Government, if they get off the ground, are likely to become.
There is probably no one in the House who would not like, on the eve of what may be a new Government, with all their heart to try to contribute constructively towards a new reign and regime. Unfortunately, that desire to contribute and be constructive and to participate in that type of good wish has to be extremely qualified. The tasks which face this Government are major and there is no reason for confidence that the Deputy proposed for the job of Taoiseach is likely to be the man who will handle the job successfully.
I should like to express a personal word of gratitude to Deputy Haughey for his courtesies to me, and I am sure my colleagues, while Minister for Health and Social Welfare. I know that the standards that he applied to dealing with public representatives are widely appreciated. There will be two types of challenges facing him as Taoiseach. There will be the challenge normally facing any new leader and Taoiseach on the social and economic fronts. These are very real and should not be ignored or downplayed in the context of this discussion. For Deputy Haughey there will be challenges arising out of the fact that he is proposed to be the new Taoiseach and out of what he is likely to contribute and the degree to which he is perceived to be the man that he is. There is the challenge of the economic situation of a country living beyond its means; the challenge of motivating people once again into self-respect; of the creation of an atmosphere where people will not put material welfare above all else; which they were undoubtedly encouraged to do; of the inspiring, dedicated, patriotic—in the full sense of the word—leadership which is now necessary if the trend which was adopted in recent years is to be reversed. It is difficult to see how the philosophy expounded by the proposed Taoiseach and the example by which he has carried out his office is likely to be successful. It may be a different type of person, leader and example that is needed.
As regards the social challenge of the mal-distribution of the wealth and resources of the country, which lie close to the kernel of our problem, I do not believe Deputy Haughey is the man who will commit himself really and genuinely to the kind of reform essential in these areas. Despite the glitter, glamour, attraction and magic of some aspects of his political career thus far, we are not talking about a veneer or outward image but a basic, deep philosophical commitment to the ideal of a new Ireland in which all children have a place in the sun and where justice is obtainable and is not closed off from access of any individual—radical change. I see nothing radical about the policies which on the basis of past performance we are likely to see from the man whom the opposite side of the House want as Taoiseach.
Another major challenge is the task of uniting the country not merely in terms of the whole island and cultures but in terms of uniting the various divided sectors of the community who now openly vie against each other, where might is right and concern for the weaker people, the community without a voice, the relatively inarticulate and those not represented by strong lobbies who have to take the back place in the queue and whose turn will never be reached. That is the example I have witnessed since I came into the House and I have heard or seen nothing to believe that that will change under the leadership which it is now proposed to give us.
The unity of a country at peace with itself in the belief that each individual and family is getting justice and a fair return for its input, is not forgotten about because it has not got a loud voice in a strong lobby. That type of peace and unity is a dream perhaps but an aspiration to which any Government concerned with social justice has to commit itself. We have a long way to go before that is achieved. There are elements in the political performance thus far of the proposed Taoiseach which are likely to be seen to be provocative in that respect and which will hardly be the kind of binding force which we need—a healer rather than a divider. There is a time when men who are sharp in wit and wisdom, whose style is courageous and aggressive, are necessary. This is not the time. We need a different kind of person to bring us back from the extremes of avarice, greed and self-interest towards which we have been pushed in recent years by a preoccupation with the outer man as opposed to the inner man which is ultimately what political life and the purpose of human kind is all about.
The establishment of a just society in which I am pleased to say this party has a good record is vital. If there is justice, and by that I mean the belief in the heart and the soul of each individual that they are not being excluded or alienated from the wealth and resources and place in the sun which are rightly theirs, we can enjoy true peace which begins inside each individual and works outwards and is not super-imposed by the creation of structures from outside. Is there any reason to believe that the proposed Taoiseach will give us a different understanding and appreciation of how far we have to go before that just society is created? If there is, I do not see it. If there are people who are here longer than I am and have greater wisdom and better powers of recollection, they should speak up if what we are saying is wrong. Would the proposed Taoiseach rise to the challenge to which I have referred? He has much of the capacity to do so and would want to do so. However, the price might be too high. Regrettable as it might be to say, there is already the feeling that even in the act of achieving the status of would-be Taoiseach there might have been a price paid, not in monetary terms, but in terms of commitment and compromise which may be an antithesis to what he would like to achieve in relation to the objectives of the Government he would want to head.
It would be wrong for us to say that it is beyond the bounds of anybody to change elements of their approach or that it would be impossible for one, having recognised that such change is necessary, to bring about the changes which may be needed. Unfortunately the likely response would be that what we are saying is for the sake of intransigent opposition, perhaps even sour grapes. That is not the case. What is being articulated on this side of the House with varying degrees of intensity and direction is little more than lies in the heart of many Irish people with concern for national welfare and well-being. While allowing that change might come about and that any individual may have the capacity to respond to not just the prompting but direct and forthright expression of concern expressed here today, the facts are that to date in view of the reticence and lack of willingness to commit himself on issues, Deputy Haughey has not made clear that the kind of change which will be necessary—a basic change in attitudes, emphasis and commitment to the kernel of things as opposed to the veneer—will come about.
The major issue before the House is the suitability of Deputy Haughey for the job of Taoiseach and the likelihood of his successor otherwise. Already, there are some results of events to date. First, there can be no question but that the authority of Deputy Haughey, if he becomes Taoiseach, would be weak by being deprived of the strength which a leader has when he is chosen by an openly democratic system. Fianna Fáil may say that all that happened is that a leader was changed. It is not as simple as that. There is so much difference in the style, philosophy and thinking of the proposed Taoiseach and that of his former leader—and he had made this clear by a variety of gestures and other expressions some of a silent kind—there is so much difference in approach that we are not getting a continuation of the same Government, the same policy, the same philosophy or even the same manifesto on which this Government came into power. We are getting a radical change of a kind that should be dictated by a people. I believe that the appropriate thing, in view of the likely major change in direction, would have been to have a general election in order to give the new Taoiseach, whoever he might be, the authority, the status, the dignity and self respect which he could syphon from the operation of the democratic system at its best.
The Fianna Fáil manifesto in its opening lines which I presume is to date the policy of the Government—to what extent it has been carried out in the letter and the spirit is a matter for another day—refers to a Fianna Fáil Government under the leadership of Jack Lynch, not anybody else.
A second consequence of what has happened to date is that there are new divisions already opened on this island. Perhaps it is hard to blame somebody for divisions which occur apparently outside the scope of his doing. It gives us no pleasure to see a party acting as they have done in the last few days in the election of their leader. We are unhappy that people who want to express discontent—not just the healthy divided opinions of a democratic party in choosing a new leader but something deeper which only a fool could pretend does not exist—seem unable to do so. We are unhappy that that is the case. We believe there might yet be an opportunity for such people to find their voice. These divisions are there and God knows, as Deputy Kelly said, this island has been divided deeply enough for long enough already; it is a healer we need now. Despite the enormous potential in many directions which Deputy Haughey undoubtedly has, it would need a major change for him to become the kind of healer I think is necessary at this time.
Another result already evident is a new, strange, compelling unity and even fire in the Opposition. I am not sure why this should be. I take no pleasure in climbing a mountain of antipathy, of distaste for any individual. That is not why I joined this Assembly. If the aura and environment of which we are part today were to be the working environment of the House, Deputies on both sides of the House would find it a much less pleasant place in which to work. The primary and principal sin of any of us is not to make mistakes but not to learn from them. If the likely inevitability occurs and Deputy Haughey becomes Taoiseach I think he will get—believe it or not—as full support as is humanly possible and very strong support if he gives the kind of commitments which have been implicitly and explicitly demanded of him today. Young people are at an interesting turning point in their lives. Many of them are totally cynical about politicians and political structures. The Taoiseach who is likely to lead us for the next two and a half years has a major task. I am not sure if he can motivate young people, show them by unselfish example, by dedication and commitment, by putting the country before individual preoccupation with career or self-advancement, the kind of example they need at present, the kind of example which would lead them to say, "We have here, not just an efficient man but a truly good man". That is what they need.
My final reason for finding it not possible to vote for Deputy Haughey as Taoiseach is that I believe we have a better leader, a better would-be Taoiseach a man who has already given the kind of selfless dedication which is necessary and given it in a measure so great that it almost makes many of us ashamed of our own puny efforts. I hope that whatever happens this evening all of us will realise that our country and its future are greater than the interests of any one of us. Further, I hope that allowing for the parliamentary structures which surround us we can work more closely together and try to get away from the sterile, futile, barren arguments of the past and that we can work so as to create the kind of society and country of which we can be all proud to be part.
If Deputy Haughey can do this, if he can inspire such a revolution in public attitudes and perhaps even in his own attitude, there will be an enormous debt of gratitude due to him. I hope he can. Whatever the outcome this evening is, in the interests of the country many of us would want to wish the Taoiseach designate well but find ourselves unable at this stage to do so. I am sorry in my heart that this is the case.
When Deputy Haughey's election as Leader of the Fianna Fáil Party was announced last week, Deputy Cluskey, Leader of my party, made a statement in which he indicated without ambiguity that the normal courtesies of allowing any settling in period to a new Taoiseach or Taoiseach designate could not be observed in the case of Deputy Haughey and gave briefly at that point his reasons for making that statement as the political and social philosophies of the person who had been chosen as Leader of Fianna Fáil and as Taoiseach designate. He also made clear his intention to explain at more length in this House today, as he has done, his reasons for the stand he took. I might add that it was the only statement made on that occasion by the Leader of any major party in this House. For this, he has been chided—and, indeed, in its editorial this morning The Irish Times not only chides Deputy Cluskey but seems, by implication and by extension, to chide us all for spending any time at all on this matter. The quotation to which I refer is:
Not all Mr. Cluskey's followers gave him full marks for graciousness and he is likely to have followers inside and outside the House who would be happier if he spared them further embarrassment.
The only embarrassment that would be experienced on these benches today would be if we did not honour our commitment given last week to oppose this appointment for profound political reasons. I find it all the more surprising that such criticism should come from a newspaper which has not been slow to criticise in the past and which will, no doubt, not be slow to criticise in the future. Indeed, one of the objects of its criticism over the years has been the very person whom we are now asked to vote confidence in as Taoiseach.
The editorial in The Irish Times is hardly relevant for a long discussion.
If the Chair would bear with me I think he might revise his opinion on that. We are here discussing the suitability of Deputy Haughey as Taoiseach. It is entirely in order to quote here what successive editorials in that newspaper have said about him from time to time. In passing, the House might like to know that when Deputy de Valera was once asked during an election campaign what he thought of the editorial in The Irish Times of that morning he is reputed to have remarked that all editorials were written by small men sitting behind desks that were too big for them. But, no doubt, all political leaders will say things like that when the occasion suits them.
In relation to Deputy Haughey specifically, there are two key quotations that have a bearing on the decision that we are asked to take in this House and also—and this is by way of parenthesis—on the continuity or lack of continuity in the editorial attitudes concerned. On 6 May 1970, which was the day after the eruption of the affair that was known as the arms crisis, The Irish Times said:
One of the strangest aspects of the recurring crisis has indeed been the continued silence of Mr. Haughey. One can search the public prints in vain for any expression of his feelings.
On 24 October of the same year, after the conclusion of the arms trial, the editorial writer returned to his theme and said:
If Mr. Haughey had deep and committed views about the North—and many know that he had—he kept them to himself and, on the face of it, is not in a strong position to assail Mr. Lynch openly on that score.
We have not only the duty but the responsibility to ask what, if anything, has been said by Deputy Haughey since those words were penned on 24 October, more than nine years ago, not just to allay the editorial suspicions of The Irish Times but, indeed, to allay the deeper suspicions of Members of this House and of the wider public outside it.
It is frequently said that the Taoiseach or Taoiseach designate must have a substantial measure of support not only in the country at large but certainly within his own party. Other Deputies have gone through the arithmetic of the vote that took place in the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party and I do not propose to repeat what they have said. It is certainly true that the bird with the one wing never flew, much less, one would imagine, that ornithological curiosity, the bird with two wings of different shades of green. This is a matter ultimately for the Taoiseach designate himself to sort out, if he can, and for the country, I hope, to sort out if he cannot. But we are at liberty to speculate on how far that zoological curiosity which is now Fianna Fáil will proceed.
It is sometimes assumed that in making these speeches on this kind of occasion we are somehow guilty of bad manners. I have heard, and I am sure other Members of this House have heard, a kind of refrain in various areas saying that perhaps Charlie is good for the country—I hesitate to refer to Deputy Haughey in such colloquial terms; I know it is not normally in order but this is the framework in which this comment is usually made. Any judgment of this kind is based on a total misreading both of the person concerned and his policies and, indeed, of what is good for the country. Fianna Fáil needs Deputy Haughey's leadership like it needs a hole in the head, the country even more so. I am not talking here about any personal characteristics of the Taoiseach designate; I am sure he is kind to children and to small animals. Many national and international leaders have had such character traits before. It has not prevented them on occasion from making fundamentally disastrous political errors. I am opposed to the Taoiseach designate simply by virtue of the fact that I believe that he now represents, in its most full-blooded form, an approach to the welfare of the country and of its people that I find, at the very best, distasteful and, at the worst, deeply damaging and distressing.
Like many other people in this House and outside it, I watched on television the press conference given by the Taoiseach designate not long after his election. He said a couple of things that I have been mulling over ever since. The more I mull over them the more extraordinary they seem to be.
The first of these was the open implication in one of his statements that because he came of Northern stock and the Taoiseach, Deputy Lynch, came from Cork, he was in a better position to understand the North and the people of the North. Deputy Haughey was born and bred in Dublin, but that is beside the point. Many people will have heard that statement on that programme, and even people like myself who have disagreed with Deputy Lynch's approach on the North from time to time, have had a sickening feeling in the stomach at the curtness, glossed over by a smile, of that dismissal of almost a decade of tribulation and political effort by the former leader of Fianna Fáil on behalf of all the people of the country.
I was struck also by the carefully, jocose nature of the references by the Taoiseach-designate that he always did what the Party Whip had told him to do. That prompted me to think back on two things, on the very close connection in time between the occasion on which he called on those responsible for this debacle, as he called the arms trial, and the time when he himself, when some of his colleagues had aided it voluntarily and others had done so involuntarily, walked through the lobbies of this House to vote confidence in the man who had dismissed him.
I ask the House which of these two men did the honourable thing? As I said earlier, there has been some comment on the attitude or lack of attitude of the Taoiseach-designate on the whole question of Northern Ireland and of Irish unity. We search the records in vain for any direct statement of the Taoiseach-designate's attitude not just to the North but to the kind of Republic he would like to create in Ireland. We are all republicans after one fashion or another, but more and more it becomes clear that what is important is not whether we are republicans but which kind of republicans we are; and in relation to the Taoiseach-designate's attitude to the vision of the Republic—he has a reputation for having a vision of the Republic—all we can do is to grasp at the few straws that his implicit behaviour offers us for examination.
Deputy Noel Browne spoke eloquently of the vision of the Republic that is implicit in the Family Planning Act, and I do not propose to repeat any of his criticisms. The only other implicit action I can think of in the short term relating to the Taoiseach-designate's vision of the Republic is his action in authorising the expenditure of public money for the purchase at auction in London of an archaeological treasure which was being bid for by the Ulster Museum in Belfast and which should have gone to Belfast, the Tullymoon Hoard.
These are all straws in the wind and we are left to grasp at these straws because of his virtually unbroken silence in the last ten years. A famous Irish poet once agonised as to whether words of his had sent out certain men to be shot by the English. I would argue that silence can be ten times more voluble than words and that the worst kind of silences are those that come from the armchair republicans in our society, from the armchair generals who do not have to put even their political future much less their lives on the line but who are happy enough to let young and misguided people do so. It is fashionable to condemn the IRA and it is ironic, to put it mildly, that the Taoiseach-designate, who is above all a fashionable man, should have been so tardy in the adoption of this fashion. We cannot forget that the IRA do not exist in a vacuum; they exist in a social context, in a human context, a political and indeed an economic context. If we accept that, we must not only maintain that silence is dangerous but that condemnation is not enough and that this problem will not be solved ultimately except by the creation of the kind of society in this State and in all of Ireland that will make the IRA an irrelevance. As Deputy Cluskey said this morning, it is our belief on these benches that only a socialist society will offer us ultimately that hope.
We must beware of anybody who advances or allows to be advanced the cloak of republicanism as justification for his candidate for this and any other office, because it is now an open secret that there are deep differences among all people who call themselves republicans about the kind of society, the kind of republic, they would like to create. There are differences within the party that have elected Deputy Haughey; there are indeed differences within the party led by Deputy Garret FitzGerald. This party, at least, are united in relation to the kind of Republic we would like to see established here.
In so far as the differences within the governing party are concerned, it is plain that just as there are people on those beaches—Deputy Leyden, for instance, Deputy Lenihan on occasions—who describe themselves as latter day socialists, there are also people who make no bones about where their ideological chips are placed, and Deputy Haughey falls very readily and easily into the latter camp. He has put his ideological chips firmly down on the right of the ideological spectrum. If we want proof of this we do not have to look further than the budgets which he introduced as Minister for Finance in those heady years of expansion in the late sixties.
If we examine these budgets—for instance, those of 1967, 1968 or 1969, and even if by a small stretch of the imagination we include the 1970 budget, which he was to have introduced but did not—we will see an approach to financial and economic policy that is mysteriously even-handed. On the one hand, there was more money for social purposes and on the other hand there was more money for industrial development. But when we look at the small print we will discover how mysterious this even-handedness has been. For every £ that went in the direction of the under-privileged and socially deprived at least as much again went into the pockets of those who own and control the industrial sectors of our economy. In the 1967 budget £1.5 million extra was given to the Department of Social Welfare. In the very same budget was a 25 per cent increase in capital allowances to industry at a cost of £1 million alone. There was substantial earned income relief for surtax payers, and, last but not least, there was an extension of the tax holiday for mining profits by another decade.
When you consider the tens or hundreds of thousands of people over whom this £1.5 million in social welfare was to be distributed and the dozens or hundreds of people who were to be the direct beneficiaries of the handout on the other side, you can see plainly how the ideological game was being played. In 1969 the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Haughey, noted in his budget speech that 1968 was the best year in our economic history. How did he celebrate the best year in our economic history? By increasing the amount allocated to social welfare by only half the amount by which it had been increased in the previous budget. This has been typical of his social and economic vision during the period he has held office under this Government.
I have some difficulty in referring to the budget of 1970 for the simple reason that I did not know whether it would have been the same had Deputy Haughey delivered it as it was when Deputy Lynch delivered it. Given that the accident which occurred to Deputy Haughey occurred literally within hours of the time that he was supposed to speak, I think that I am within my rights in assuming that this budget speech too bears the hallmark of his responsibility. I will draw attention to two sentences in that budget speech. The first was a statement that in relation to the social sector and the industrial sector a balance of equity had now to some extent been restored. Again, the budget speech on that occasion went on to say that extreme poverty was, fortunately, no longer a general problem in this country.
It is almost ten years since those words were contained in a budget statement as drafted for delivery by the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Haughey. Can I or any of us in this House look into our hearts today almost a decade later and repeat that statement with any degree of confidence? Although it would help, we do not need the evidence of the National Committee on Pilot Schemes to Combat Poverty to tell us. All we have to do is to walk through the streets of our principal city and down any of our boreens in the country to know that it is not true. The schemes which were adumbrated by Deputy Haughey as Minister for Finance were continued by him in Opposition. He spoke on occasion on all sorts of things but in finance particularly the thrust of his contribution was most plain. We—that is the last Coalition—were destroying incentive. The way to restore incentive was by cuts in personal taxation. We are all in favour of a fair and just taxation system but it is difficult, to put it mildly, to accept that there is a total lack of altruism in statements such as these made by the present Taoiseach designate, then Deputy Haughey, Opposition spokesman for Health and Social Welfare. In Volume 299 of the Official Report he is even on record as wringing his hands in despair for the future of the bloodstock industry. At column 929 of that volume he said, and I quote:
...the effect of the introduction of the wealth tax has been to completely sabotage that great industry...
It certainly did not sabotage Deputy Haughey's end of it.
Deputy Horgan should not go into the personal business of any man when we are dealing with this. He has scope enough on the motion before the House without getting into the business of any individual Deputy or Member of the House.
I am not proposing to push this. I am simply making an obvious statement of fact. Since his period in Opposition ended Deputy Haughey has been in charge of the Departments of Health and Social Welfare. His contribution or lack of contribution in the Department of Health has been itemised not just in these benches but also in the columns of The Irish Times, which I was chastising only a moment ago. It is in relation particularly to his stewardship of Social Welfare that we must put the major question-mark against his suitability for the office for which he is now proposed.
When in Opposition Deputy Haughey is on record as saying that apart from a few isolated cases he did not really believe that there was much in the way of social welfare fraud, for example. Suddenly, 18 months or so after assuming office as Minister for Social Welfare, we find him being charged by his colleague, Deputy Colley, and accepting the charge, of slashing £2 million of assumed fraud from the budget of his Department. The facts as supplied to me by the Minister's Department are that fraud on that basis simply does not exist. Some time ago at Question Time I asked the Minister for the percentage of fraudulent claims in relation to any of the benefits administered by his Department and to state the amount paid out in relation to fraudulent claims as a percentage of the total amount paid out in relation to any one of these claims.
I take my hat off to these statisticians in the Department who in some cases had to go to three decimal places to find any meaningful relationship between social welfare frauds and the total amount paid out as benefit. The relevant figures were: disability benefit, .09 per cent; maternity allowance, .007 per cent; retirement pension, .002 per cent and so on. What is interesting is that when one calculates the total amount claimed fraudulently from the Department, the sum is no more than one-tenth of what is supposed to be saved in the current year as a result of attacking fraud. We on these benches have our own suspicions as to how that saving was to be made. These suspicions are bolstered and fuelled by the queues of would be social welfare beneficiaries who come to our offices at weekends seeking our help so that they might claim their entitlements. These queues are long but they are not as long as those queues that have been experienced for so long outside the offices of the Department of Social Welfare.
In both health and social welfare there has been a certain image projected but the people who are entitled to the various benefits are well aware of the difference between the image and the reality. As the Irish proverb goes, Ní breathaíonn na briathra na bráithre or, fair words will not butter parsnips. The Taoiseach designate has buttered very few parsnips since he went into office as Minister for Health and Social Welfare, apart from the gigantic specimen he has harvested recently.
In each of these Departments since 1977 the expenditure on health and social welfare has decreased as a percentage of our GNP. This means that the poor and those entitled to income support and to health care have been receiving a smaller slice of the national cake than they had been receiving when the Minister assumed office. The percentage of GNP alone that has been spent on social welfare has declined since 1977 by about 10 per cent. In addition, the number of people who are entitled to free medical treatment has declined also. The fact that these indices are not more widely known cannot be put entirely at the door of the assiduous handling by the Taoiseach designate of the media. Perhaps, we in the Opposition are to blame to some extent for that situation. However, it is a situation that cannot be ignored and it has a real and valid relationship to the Minister's suitability for the office of Taoiseach. If he has done this in the greenwood, one might ask what would he not do in the dry. Overall, the most fundamental point is that the process of election which has taken place in Fianna Fáil and which we are asked either to reject or to endorse today is not simply a point relating to shades of nationalism. More importantly, it relates to shades of economic policy.
Deputy Cluskey stated clearly that he was not simply attacking the person of Deputy Haughey but that it was unmistakable that a majority of Fianna Fáil support now not only this man's republican views, whatever they are or are supposed to be, but his economic policies. If one is a capitalist and is faced with the choice of choosing between the somewhat benign, perhaps a little watery, capitalism of Deputy Colley and the red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism as exemplified by Deputy Haughey, one is compelled remorselessly in the direction of the latter. In his contribution Deputy FitzGerald said he had hoped that the result of the vote here would release us from the shackles of the civil war and from the shadows which that civil war cast over this House and over Irish politics generally. As I see it, the action of Fianna Fáil in electing Deputy Haughey as their Leader and in having his name put before us here either for endorsement or rejection, has paradoxically done more to remove the shackles of the civil war from this House and from Irish politics than anything else could have done. This will not be easy in the short term. It will be difficult at any stage but the task we have in opposing not only this appointment but the appointment of the Government subsequently and the policies which are to emerge from that Government will be to turn Irish politics on its axis. That is what I believe we will be able to do eventually.
This debate is one of the most important that I have participated in during my ten years in the House. We have a constitutional duty to discharge in deciding whether the man whose name has been put before us today is suitable to hold the most powerful office in the land. In essence, the debate is about personal suitability and there is no point in saying that we should not bring personalities into it. We are being asked today to confer on one man a position of immense power, a power which can be exercised secretly. Many of the most important decisions of a Taoiseach do not emerge publicly until long after they have been taken and implemented, if indeed they ever emerge at all in a manner that can be attributable to that person. The decisions and the standards of the new Taoiseach will influence not only those Ministers over whom he will preside and over whom he will have the immense power of being in a position to sack them, but over the entire public service which constitutes almost half of our total economy and activity. His decisions and his standards will influence that immensely important aspect of the lives of all of us.
I would point out to those people who are claiming that Deputy Haughey is now leader of the Irish people that he is not Taoiseach and will not be Taoiseach until this Dáil has voted to make him Taoiseach. Anything that happens behind the closed doors of any party room cannot pre-empt the open, public and conclusive decision of this House. The Dáil is being asked to give Deputy Haughey the power to act as trustee for the Irish people, to make decisions on their behalf on matters that could affect not only economic prosperity but life and death. The test of trustworthiness and conscientiousness for the holder of such a post, for the person who exercises such powers, is immeasurably higher than the test of trustworthiness and conscientiousness for a holder of any lesser post. That it is right at this stage before the decision is made to question the trustworthiness and conscientiousness of anyone put forward for that office should be so obvious that it should not require to be stated in this House but some people outside the House apparently have questioned the need for this debate and the need for these questions to be answered. I believe it necessary to have this debate.
Does Deputy Haughey meet the requirements of a holder of the office of Taoiseach? Unfortunately, there is only one place to which one can look for evidence and that is to his past record. No other evidence is available. No one knows for sure what he will do in the future. No one knows his inner thoughts. The only source of knowledge as to his suitability for the office is his past record.
This is not dragging up the past. It is looking in the only place where one can look for evidence of the present and future wisdom of appointing this man as Taoiseach. To say that Deputy Haughey's past record is irrelevant is as wrong as it would be to say that the past record of Teddy Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, John Connolly or Richard Nixon would be irrelevant to their candidacy to hold the Presidency of the United States of America. Would the electorate and Congress of the United States say that the past should be forgotten and that sleeping dogs should be let lie? I do not believe they would. I do not believe that Members of Dáil Éireann have any less of a duty to scrutinise our leaders and their suitability than do the congress and legislatures of other states.
I believe there is one area where it can be proved on the basis of the public record that in the exercise of his power as Minister for Finance Deputy Haughey acted without the qualities, and with clear evidence of lack of the qualities, of judgment, conscientiousness and trust required not only of the holder of the office of Minister for Finance but most certainly of the holder of the office of Taoiseach. In order to demonstrate this assertion I intend to refer to the public record. Those who read the report of this debate can judge what I have to say and the assertions I am making not on my word but on the sources I am quoting.
On 16 August 1969 the Government decided "That a sum of money, the amount and channel of disbursement of which would be determined by the Minister for Finance should be made available from the Exchequer to provide aid for the victims of the current unrest in the Six Counties". Let us note the words "The amount and channel of disbursement of which would be determined by the Minister for Finance". The Minister for Finance on that occasion was Deputy Haughey.
What happened to the money? I am quoting from page 49 of the report dealing with the conclusions of the Committee of Public Accounts. It stated that £105,766 5s 9d was spent. Of this money which was voted for the relief of distress £29,166 12s was actually spent on the relief of distress, £34,850 was possibly spent in Belfast and of the money voted into the charge of Deputy Haughey as Minister for Finance to provide aid for the victims of unrest in the Six Counties £41,499 13s 9d, in the words of the Committee of Public Accounts, was not spent on the relief of distress.
Where did that £41,000 go? The Committee found that of this money of which Deputy Haughey was in charge a sum of £500 went to Captain Kelly, £35,149 13s 9d was paid into the account of George Dixon and two sums, £4,500 and £1,350, were paid into the account of Ann O'Brien, the first sum for use in relation to a publication known as The Voice of the North and the rest was not for any specific purpose.
Who was George Dixon?
That is the question. Page 37 of the report of the Committee of Public Accounts stated "It has not been possible to identify George Dixon". Captain Kelly stated in evidence that he knew who George Dixon was but he refused to identify him. The inquiries of the Committee of Public Accounts were not able to discover who was George Dixon but I presume if anybody knows his identity it is the man who had charge of the payment of the money into his account and that man is Deputy Charles Haughey whom it is proposed that we elect as Taoiseach. Page 45 of the report of the Committee stated that "Captain Kelly in his evidence stated that moneys drawn from the George Dixon account were used mainly in connection with the purchase of arms".
In conclusion that is the Minister who was responsible for £105,000, of which two-thirds was never accounted for properly and of which there is at least a very strong suspicion that a substantial part of it was paid for the purchase of arms, a man who was less than careful in the exercise of his responsibilities. It is worth reminding the House that the person who accepts the seal of office as Minister accepts a very high responsibility. He accepts not only responsibility for his own personal activities but also responsibility to this House for the acts of his subordinates. In terms of ministerial responsibility, Deputy Charles Haughey as Minister for Finance was responsible to this House for the expenditure of the £100,000 that was given into his care as a trustee of the people.
If one were a Minister and were given £100,000 to spend on the relief of distress in Northern Ireland in relation to a matter which was politically sensitive, would one allow the money to be paid into the account of a man who has never been identified? If the money were paid into the account of such a man, would one not inquire who he was and what he was doing with it? If one did not inquire who he was and what he was doing with the money, would one not feel that one was not doing one's duty? I wonder why Deputy Haughey did not inquire. If he did inquire, I wonder what he found out. He never told us if he did inquire or what he found out and I hope that he will do so in the near future.
It is very hard to ask this House to give the responsibility for the expenditure of £3,000 million, which is the amount of money spent by the Government each year, to a man who failed to look after the expenditure of £100,000. Anyone who feels that what Deputy Haughey did was understandable; that he at all times behaved in good faith; that the facts will never come to light and that he should be given the benefit of the doubt, might do well to refer to the words of the man who proposed him as Taoiseach. I am quoting from The Irish Times of 26 October 1970. When he was in New York, Deputy Lynch, who is still Taoiseach, was reported as follows:
The Ministers had been sacked because he... could not fully rely on them.
One of the Ministers referred to is now being proposed as Taoiseach. Deputy Lynch is further reported as follows:
While he was not questioning the judicial acquittal, there had been an attempt to import arms illegally. There was a legal method of importing arms, as was well known. His former colleagues had not kept him informed, and there was therefore lack of mutual trust and confidence.
We have Deputy Lynch's word that Deputy Haughey, into whose charge the £100,000 was given, did not keep his Taoiseach informed of what was being done with the money. If Deputy Haughey did not keep Deputy Lynch informed of what he was doing with the money, what standards will he set for the Ministers he proposes to appoint within the next few hours. Will they feel bound to keep him informed in the manner in which he kept his Taoiseach informed?
On the basis of the documentary evidence which I have quoted there is sufficient evidence not to accept Deputy Haughey as Taoiseach. There are 147 other Members in this House, any one of whom could be put forward for office. Few, if any, Members of this House have a record which could be documented in the same way. There are few people against whom documented evidence of carelessness can be found. As we have the choice of other men, I believe that we should not accept Deputy Haughey. These issues have been raised by me because I believe that this is the time and place to raise them. It will be too late to raise these matters when Deputy Haughey becomes Taoiseach. I would not raise them at that stage unless some further developments make them relevant again. The time to raise such matters is now. We would not be doing our duty if we failed to raise these matters.
If the questions which I have raised are not answered to the people's satisfaction, we would be morally wrong to allow a man over whom such a question-mark hangs to become Taoiseach. In this debate or in the one that follows, Deputy Haughey can either clear the doubts once and for all by answering the questions raised or he can admit openly and humbly that he acted carelessly and in a manner unfitting a Minister and will never do so again. When he has done this the past will be past. Until such an admission is made, the past will always be with Deputy Haughey because he will be the trustee of the Irish people. It is not sufficient that a man should act as a trustee unless questions of this nature, so germane to the central functions of the office, have been conclusively answered.
I will be brief. We have had a reasonably lengthy debate and I hope that the debate on the members of the Cabinet later will permit us to take up perhaps the most serious aspect of today's proceedings, namely, the policies needed to restore confidence in the country. The most serious critique of this administration will not be provided by anything said here today—the result of what we are being asked to decide is a foregone conclusion—but will be provided in the months ahead. It will be provided by the actions and the calibre of the men and women in the new Cabinet and, above all, it will be provided by the policies to be pursued by that administation.
We will discuss that on the next item, when we reach it. There is but one item before the House now.
That is true, but consequences follow from the decision reached on that item. My basic reason for opposing the appointment of the new Leader of Fianna Fáil as Taoiseach is that nothing in his past career suggests that he has anything radically different to offer from the economic policies which have been pursued by the administration presided over by the outgoing Taoiseach. There is nothing in Deputy Haughey's past career to suggest that in economics he differs radically from the policies pursued by the last administration. Suggestions have been made that the Taoiseach designate disagrees with the outgoing Minister for Economic Planning and Development. There has been much talk of disagreement between the Taoiseach designate and the Minister for Economic Planning and Development but one does not know whether this is based on differing approaches to our economic policies or whether it is simply part of the rivalry of the recent succession race within the Government party.
It is said of the new Leader of Fianna Fáil by his defenders that he has been less than happy with the economic policies pursued since 1977. One does not know and no certain answer can be given to statements made on his behalf. The new Leader of Fianna Fáil was as happy as any other member of the outgoing Cabinet in 1977 to take office on the strength of the market-researched policies calculatedly chosen to make the maximum appeal to the significant sectors of the electorate that brought that administration to office. Whether his defenders say he was in disagreement or not, he was happy to take the benefit at that time of those policies. The same criticism that can be levelled at the outgoing administration, the primary criticism that they squandered golden economic opportunities in the summer of 1977, can be levelled at the Taoiseach designate because he was a member of that administration. The Fianna Fáil administration in 1977 inherited an economy returned to growth. In a profound misread of the economic situation that administration turned on public spending, forgetting that the economic indicators were already set fair, that foreign goods by way of increased imports would be the more likely sequel to their policies of that summer. The Taoiseach designate participated in those policies without demur.
The result of those policies was not that new jobs would be provided at home but that foreign factories would benefit from the increased public spending. The major economic error of the new Government of 1977 was that they got the recovery rhythm of our economy wrong and resulted in increased public spending rather than keeping costs down so that our manufacturing base could expand. They forgot that the only new jobs that could be sustained were those securely based on a competitive manufacturing industry selling goods at keen rates at home and abroad. As part of the manifesto philosophy that brought them to office they juggled with the taxation code, lightening the burden of the most prosperous category and heightening the sense of grievance of the PAYE majority to an unprecedented degree. In 1977 they spent with a fanatical abandon——
The Deputy is now getting into an economic debate and the motion before the House is not concerned with that.
I am making my case based on the policies pursued by the outgoing administration and that is why we cannot vote confidence in the Taoiseach designate.
The Chair must be listening to a different Deputy if that is so. The Deputy is on an economic debate.
I am basing my case on economic policies pursued to date and coming events will test those serious matters. Now, with world recession spreading all about us, the outgoing administration, or any new one, cannot support by way of public spending our construction industry at a time when it needs support. When a respectable case can be made for sustaining economic activity at home, we are deprived of that policy option by the election-inspired profligacy of the manifesto. We await a budget in less than eight weeks having been told by the outgoing Minister for Finance—whether his policies will be supported or not by the new administration—that the PAYE majority cannot expect any relief. The only alternative is increased public borrowing if increased indirect taxation is not to be the result. If that happens it will have further adverse consequences on the cost of living and, therefore, on wage expectation.
That is the immediate prospect and the foreseeable result of activities of the new administration. Limited options are available to them. Inflation is in double figures with the portents even more threatening for 1980. Unemployment is alarmingly high——
These matters would be more relevant to the debate on the next item, whenever it takes place.
The reason we are not voting confidence in the Taoiseach designate is that he was a member of the outgoing administration that pursued the policies I have outlined. We are awaiting the publication of a White Paper on the economy and, presumably, that will record the failure to achieve the published targets suggested for employment this year. We have a situation where industrial relations were never worse. Buses did not run today and, as far as I know, nobody has sought, on behalf of the Government, to get the parties involved in that dispute to meet.
The Deputy must obey the Chair. If he is not going to speak to the motion before the House he should cease.
The Deputy should show some sincerity in what he says.
People outside are laughing at the Members on the other side of the House.
Deputy O'Leary should not mislead the House.
Deputy O'Leary must keep to the motion. The Chair is trying to keep the debate relevant.
Has Deputy Gene Fitzgerald not become very vocal in the last few moments?
He did a Houdini.
The same inertia which gripped the official response in other disputes has been evident in this one. As far as I know, there has not been any official response even though there is a threat to the entire public transport system.
The Deputy should not continue on those lines: it is not relevant to the motion.
The new Leader of Fianna Fáil at a press conference on Friday indicated his concern about the state of industrial relations, as well he might. Today, we have no buses running.
There are a lot of buses running on the Government side; a lot of gravy trains.
The running of buses is not relevant to the debate.
I am concerned about the policies likely to be pursued by the new Leader of Fianna Fáil and I have indicated some of the shortcomings of the administration of which he was a member —the fact that our national transport system is today threatened with a close down, the fact that last Friday he indicated that this would be one of his priority concerns. I am making the very valid point, in relation to that likely policy of his to be pursued, that well he might express concern—it is a prime issue—but that I can have little confidence that the solution lies in the direction indicated by the Taoiseach designate as desirable, namely, that we should adopt legislative changes and that a solution would lie on that road. I would earnestly counsel him that I can have no confidence that proposed action along those lines would be successful. I have long maintained in relation to that subject mentioned by the new Leader of the Government party—industrial relations, and how they may be mended—that their worsening state cannot be attributable to reasons confined to the four walls of industry. I believe that a major element fuelling the discontent in industry and in the public service, and which has flowed over into strikes, has been the sharply felt sense of injustice on the part of the majority of PAYE wage and salary earners at what they feel to be their over-taxed state.
I must ask the Deputy to discontinue, please. If the Deputy is not going to speak to the motion before the House, the Deputy must not continue.
(Interruptions.)
The Chair has no responsibility for Members going asleep or staying awake. All the Chair is responsible for is seeing that Deputies speak relevantly to the motion before the House. Deputy O'Leary is making a speech on the economy and on industrial relations, which are not relevant to this motion.
If I am not to be confined to such extraordinary matters as the colour of the Taoiseach designate's eyes, or what quality shoes he wears, presumably I must talk about the likely policies he will pursue.
No. On the next debate, yes.
This is surely germane to the question of voting for him here today. That is the point I am making. I am not, I would submit——
Deputy O'Leary, please. Nobody understands the position better than Deputy O'Leary.
At any rate, the nominee for Taoiseach, as a member of the outgoing administration, has contributed to the budgetary policy of that Cabinet, to the budgetary policy that has led to what can be described today, without exaggeration, as a revolt of taxpayers, leading to unprecedented public demonstrations this year and to more in prospect in coming weeks.
Tributes have been paid to the Taoiseach designate's competence in administration. Certainly, he has vast experience of management in several Government Departments. But a competence in administration, valuable though that quality may be, is not the quality chiefly to be sought in the Taoiseach leading the country at this difficult time. What the country needs now is not a Taoiseach chosen from the ranks of this outgoing administration whose policies have so singularly failed. What the country needs now is a Taoiseach with a fresh mandate direct from the people, rather than the 82 Deputies opposite.
Hear, hear. Let democracy have a say for once.
It is an exaggeration, however, to say that the mandate comes even from the 82 Deputies opposite. Beyond a suggestion of personal difference with the Minister for Economic Planning and Development, to my knowledge the Taoiseach designate has not been in any marked disagreement with the economic policies which have failed so singularly.
The Taoiseach designate had last contact with the management of economic policy in this State in the late sixties when growth was the order of the day, the era of cheap energy and unlimited energy sources. Now the whole world is in recession. Energy will never be cheap again. I would submit that his expertise in the economic area belonged to a different era and different qualities are required in the next decade. To confront successfully the complex of economic problems facing us as a country, to confront them with any hope of success, something more than a change in the leadership of Fianna Fáil is needed. Settling the parliamentary problems of Fianna Fáil is an easier task than fulfilling the awesome responsibility of steering our economy in a crisis-filled world, in a world of recession. There is no evidence to suggest that the Taoiseach designate appreciates either the magnitude of that task, or that he accepts that a change of economic policies of a radical kind is required.
On 5 July 1977 the Dáil met and Deputy Vivion de Valera proposed that Deputy Jack Lynch be made Taoiseach, and he said:
Molaim duit, a Cheann Comhairle, Seán Ó Loinsigh agus molaim go n-ainmneoidh an Dáil é le dul ós comhair an Uachtaráin le bheith againn mar Thaoiseach agus ceann an Rialtais óir tá sé ceapaithe cheana féin mar Thaoiseach ag muintir na hÉireann.
Deputy Mrs. Ahern, seconding that motion, said:
In seconding this motion that Jack Lynch be our Taoiseach I am only endorsing, as Deputy de Valera said, the verdict of the Irish people, the verdict of the risen people.
What we are doing here today is not the verdict of the Irish people. The Irish people elected Fianna Fáil with 84 seats to this Dáil, with Deputy Jack Lynch as Leader of that party. I do not think anybody inside—certainly I do not believe anybody on those benches—or outside this House believes that if Deputy Jack Lynch had said, in May 1977, that after two and a half years he would be handing over the leadership of Fianna Fáil and the leadership of the Government of this country to Deputy Haughey, this affair would have ended last Friday because it would have been concerned only with the leadership of the Fianna Fáil Party and the leadership of the Opposition. I believe that this is not the verdict of the Irish people. I do not believe that the Irish people, and I challenge Deputy Haughey—and in an hour's time he will be Taoiseach—to seek the verdict of the Irish people in this regard. I do not believe that the Irish people would endorse him as Taoiseach of this country.
I am the final speaker today on behalf of my party. All the reasons have been set out, starting with Deputy FitzGerald, the Leader of Fine Gael, followed by other speakers on behalf of our party, as to why we find it unacceptable for the retiring Taoiseach, as he did this morning, to recommend coldly, in one sentence, the only words spoken on that side of the House today, to Dáil Eireann the name of Deputy Charles J. Haughey as Taoiseach, or words to that effect. Those were the only words spoken on that side of the House today. There are many reasons that we do not find it acceptable that Deputy Haughey be Taoiseach. I am convinced my opinion is shared not just by this side of the House but by the people in general.
The events of May 1970 have been referred to a number of times today. At that time we know that Deputy Haughey with Deputy Blaney, was sacked from that Government, that they were subsequently charged before the courts and acquitted. After that acquittal, in an emotional address to the people gathered outside the courthouse—as Deputy FitzGerald said this morning—the present candidate for Taoiseach addressed people as fellow patriots and said that those who had been responsible for bringing him before the courts of the land had only one honourable course open to them. The then Taoiseach, the Taoiseach who is retiring today and who was in America at the time, was asked about this.
His reply was: "There has been a decision of the court, one of acquittal on a charge of conspiracy but nevertheless there was an attempt to import arms and all the people who were charged were concerned in that attempt." Now, nine years later, we are asked in this House in relation to this same man, who, according to the Leader of the Government at that time, was concerned in this attempt to import arms, to vote confidence in him as Taoiseach of the country. It cannot be done by me. I believe there are others across the floor from me who do not wish to do it either but party loyalty is a very strong thing in this country. There is scant history of people breaking ranks.
I understand that loyalty and I understand the feeling of people who think that they can prevent more harm being done by staying in and diluting the mix. That is not for us. This agitation against Deputy Jack Lynch has been going on for some time. We have the word in the last few days of one of the outgoing Ministers, the Minister for the Gaeltacht, when he said in an interview on the radio: "It is true that we have fringe elements who were constantly inclined to knife at our former Leader." I do not believe that anybody is in any doubt who was directing those fringe elements who were constantly trying to knife at our former Leader, which Deputy D. Gallagher referred to.
I do not believe that most of the people in the House, commentators outside it or the general public have any doubt that for ten years now there has been constant sniping, conspiracy and a helping hand to anybody, inside or outside the Fianna Fáil Party, who would help to bring down the outgoing Taoiseach. A lot of this, understandably, found a response in some Deputies who were under threat—because there were so many Fianna Fáil Deputies over there—about their seats. It is understandable that some of them would not fully tease out the implications of what they were doing and would join in because they hoped it would have the bonus of saving their seats.
The comment of some Fianna Fáil Deputies coming out of the party meeting last Friday was: "We voted to save our seats." This is their idealism and patriotism. Is this what the history of Ireland was about? The party of idealism, republicanism and patriotism said: "We voted to save our seats." Many of the Deputies on the other side must be very proud of themselves. They were led in this revolt by the Sancho Panza Deputy Michael O'Kennedy, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who three times in a broadcast on Sunday repeated that he had voted for the man he thought had the best chance of leading the party into the next general election.
Sorry, Deputy Barry, the vote of the Fianna Fáil party meeting has nothing to do with the motion before the House.
(Interruptions.)
We have a motion before the House and I ask the Deputy to deal with it.
If they backed Jack as they were asked to do instead of stabbing him we would not be here today.
There is only one Chair in the House at the moment. Deputy Barry on the motion before the House.
Deputy Michael O'Kennedy, the present Minister for Foreign Affairs, three times said that he voted for the man he thought was best for the party and who would bring them through the next general election. One of the papers this morning said that we must remember when we are voting here today that the eyes of the world are on us, that the man we elect will have to go out and represent the country. I did not hear the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who should be more conscious of the image of the country than most Deputies in the House, make any reference last Sunday to the image of Ireland abroad and the necessity for electing a man who would be able to represent this country abroad. Surely the criterion which should be applied is that the man who is elected here today is capable of representing the country abroad, of leading the House and the people of Ireland. This is not the case according to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who said his only qualities need be that he should be capable of leading Fianna Fáil into the next general election.
Has politics in Ireland descended to that? Is that what 1798 and Davis, so often quoted by Deputies in this House, is all about, leading Fianna Fáil into the next general election? This is a sorry day for Dáil Éireann. It puts the nail in the coffin of the Fianna Fáil Party.
(Interruptions.)
The one whom I kiss on the cheek, that is he.
I was disappointed seeing all day today men for whom I had a lot of respect, slithering along the seats opposite currying favour with the Taoiseach-designate. I was disappointed in many of the people for whom I had a lot of respect up to this. This was the sordid pay-off. In 1977 this party did not contest the election of Deputy Jack Lynch as Taoiseach because we accepted that it was the verdict of the Irish people, that Fianna Fáil, given 84 seats, would form the Government under the leadership of Deputy Jack Lynch. I do not accept the nomination of Deputy Charles Haughey as Taoiseach. That is the reason we are voting against the proposition of Deputy Jack Lynch, when he said he recommended to Dáil Éireann that Deputy Charles Haughey be made Taoiseach. We are concerned only with the Taoiseach designate now. When he comes back from the Phoenix Park and announces his Government, I can assure him, and whoever are nominated to that Government, that they will have two-and-a-half years of a very difficult passage through this House from the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party.
I conclude, as I started, by saying that this is not the verdict of the Irish people voting in a General Election in 1977. It has happened twice before that there was a change of Taoiseach in the middle of a Dáil run—it happened with Deputy Seán Lemass in 1959 and with the present Taoiseach, Deputy Jack Lynch, in 1966. On each occasion it could be accepted that there was continuity there, and that he had been voted for in the previous election; that is not so in this case. As has been said, this would be the seventh Taoiseach, the seventh Head of Government of this country, and the present nominee for this post is not of the same calibre, or in the same tradition nor does he command the same respect from the members of his own party as all the other Taoiseachs. The continuity of which I spoke would have been there with other members of the outgoing administration, whom I shall not name, but is not there now. For that reason, we oppose the nomination of Deputy Charles Haughey as Taoiseach.
Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá 82; Ní, 62.
Tá
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Ahern, Bertie.Ahern, Kit.Allen, Lorcan.Andrews, David.Andrews, Niall.Aylward, Liam.Barrett, Sylvester.Brady, Gerard.Brady, Vincent.Briscoe, Ben.Browne, Seán.Burke, Raphael P.Callanan, John.Calleary, Seán.Cogan, Barry.Colley, George.Collins, Gerard.Conaghan, Hugh.Connolly, Gerard.Cowen, Bernard.Crinion, Brendan.Cronin, Jerry.Daly, Brendan.Davern, Noel.de Valera, Síle.de Valera, Vivion.Doherty, Seán.Fahey, Jackie.Farrell, Joe.Faulkner, Pádraig.Filgate, Eddie.Fitzgerald, Gene.Fitzpatrick, Tom. (Dublin South-Central)Fitzsimons, James N.Flynn, Pádraig.Fox, Christopher J.French, Seán. Smith, Michael.Tunney, Jim.Walsh, Joe.Walsh, Seán. |
Gallagher, Dennis.Gallagher, James.Geoghegan-Quinn, Máire.Gibbons, Jim.Haughey, Charles J.Herbert, Michael.Hussey, Thomas.Keegan, Seán.Kenneally, William.Killeen, Tim.Killilea, Mark.Lalor, Patrick J.Lawlor, Liam.Lemass, Eileen.Lenihan, Brian.Leonard, Jimmy.Leonard, Tom.Leyden, Terry.Loughnane, William.Lynch, Jack.McCreevy, Charlie.McEllistrim, Thomas.MacSharry, Ray.Meaney, Tom.Molloy, Robert.Moore, Seán.Morley, P.J.Murphy, Ciarán P.Nolan, Tom.Noonan, Michael.O'Connor, Timothy C.O'Donoghue, Martin.O'Hanlon, Rory.O'Kennedy, Michael.O'Leary, John.O'Malley, Desmond.Power, Paddy.Reynolds, Albert. Wilson, John P.Woods, Michael J.Wyse, Pearse. |
Níl
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Barry, Myra.Barry, Peter.Barry, Richard.Begley, Michael.Belton, Luke.Bermingham, Joseph.Boland, John.Browne, Noel.Bruton, John.Burke, John.Burke, Liam.Byrne, Hugh.Clinton, Mark.Cluskey, Frank.Collins, Edward.Conlan, John F.Corish, Brendan.Cosgrave, Liam.Cosgrave, Michael J.Creed, Donal.Crotty, Kieran.D'Arcy, Michael J.Deasy, Martin A.Desmond, Barry.Desmond, Eileen.Donegan, Patrick S.Donnellan, John F.Enright, Thomas W.FitzGerald, Garret.Fitzpatrick, Tom. (Cavan-Monaghan)Flanagan, Oliver J. |
Griffin, Brendan.Harte, Patrick D.Hegarty, Paddy.Horgan, John.Kavanagh, Liam.Keating, Michael.Kelly, John.Kenny, Enda.L'Estrange, Gerry.Lipper, Mick.McMahon, Larry.Mannion, John M.Mitchell, Jim.Murphy, Michael P.O'Brien, Fergus.O'Brien, William.O'Connell, John.O'Donnell, Tom.O'Keeffe, Jim.O'Leary, Michael.O'Toole, Paddy.Pattison, Séamus.Quinn, Ruairí.Ryan, John J.Ryan, Richie.Spring, Dan.Taylor, Frank.Timmins, Godfrey.Treacy, Seán.Tully, James.White, James. |
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Woods and Briscoe; Níl, Deputies L'Estrange and B. Desmond.
Question declared carried.
Is mian liom fíorbhuíochas a chur in iúl don Dáil, as ucht mé a ainmniú mar Thaoiseach.
I am deeply conscious of the great honour just conferred upon me and I extend my most, sincere gratitude to Dáil Éireann. I am now required to go to Aras an Uachtaráin to inform the President of my nomination. I propose that the Dáil should now adjourn and resume at 7 p.m. In addition it is proposed, by agreement, that the House will sit tonight until 10 p.m.
Business suspended at 5.10 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.