Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 25 Apr 1985

Vol. 357 No. 9

Adjournment Debate. - New York Police Band Visit.

Mr. Kelly

I want to endeavour to put this proposal into a slightly larger perspective, if you will allow me to do so, Sir, while remaining within the terms of the question I propose to raise. This latest story is simply one dimension or aspect of the whole question of participation by Irish-Americans in domestic Irish affairs. At every level there are reasons to express, depending on the nature of the interference, misgivings muted or, as in this case as would be more appropriate, angry misgivings about the justification for those interventions.

It seems to me that this country is alone among the mother countries of the old world in being regarded, by the people who describe themselves as exiles — although it seems to me they are very willing exiles — or the grandchildren or the great grandchildren of those exiles, as what I might describe as a political duty-free area. They feel perfectly entitled to tell us, with very little or no knowledge or acquaintance, or on the slimmest of acquaintance, how to run our affairs. They take up high profile positions which are as often as not deeply unwelcome — and for serious national reasons, not merely domestic political reasons — deeply unwelcome to the democratically elected Government here.

Interference in the affairs of an unfree country, where that interference takes the form of standing up for the human rights of people who are being oppressed, murdered, butchered — as I am sorry to say appears to be the case in some of the nearer neighbours of these same Irish-Americans, people on their own doorstep — is perhaps justifiable, and indeed may be laudable, because those unfortunate oppressed people have no one else to speak for them. But there is no section on this island, north or south of the Border, which is without a voice that can be heard, and I mean an Irish voice. We do not require the addition to the chorus which our democratically elected Government or the SDLP raise continuously to the world in defence of the rights of individual Irish people or of their tradition.

That interference is something which I might put into this kind of perspective, by comparing what we see with what would happen if we were to not merely hold opinions about things that happen in America, but were to go, amidst a blaze of publicity, to America and make those opinions known.

I will venture upon the House two opinions of mine about internal conditions in the United States, if you will allow me to. First it is a scandal that medical costs and hospital expenses in the United States should be so high that, when an Irish child has to be sent to America for an operation, the whole country has to be laid under contribution in order to pay for it. It is not only a scandal but an inhuman outrage that a man can be sentenced to death for a murder — sometimes perhaps not even for a murder — in 1978 or 1979, spend five years on death row during part of which time the death penalty has not existed at all, and then be dragged into a gas chamber or to an electric chair. That is an inhuman outrage, Sir. I am alluding to it in passing.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Chair is of the opinion that the Deputy should revert to the matter of the band.

Mr. Kelly

I may be saying something wrong-headed, something rash and I quite admit that my experience of America is limited to a 14 day stay there, most of it on official business and that I am far from being an expert on American affairs. But suppose I were to whip up an organisation here, or promote a series of occasions on which people who think like me about medical costs in America or about the application of the death penalty in that grossly inhuman way——

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Kelly, I am ruling that it is not in order to criticise the laws or practices of another friendly country and I would ask you not to do so.

Mr. M. Brennan

Hear, hear.

Mr. Kelly

Very well, Sir, that shows how sensitive these matters can be. Even you, Sir, who are not ten feet away from me, feel that I am stepping outside the line in speaking like this. Put yourself in the position of the Chairman of the American House of Representatives if he were to hear me on his doorstep utter those opinions. What would he say? Would he not say: let that whippersnapper go off for himself back to Ireland and look after his own affairs over there where he has plenty of problems on his own doorstep? Would he not take that line? He certainly would, Sir.

Let me say that I believe that Irish-American interventions there are almost always well intentioned; in a vague, muddled, soft-witted way they are well intentioned. I would put into that category the intervention of four American bishops who came over here last year, spent four days in the North of Ireland and then, if you do not mind, held a press conference, in which they uttered views about what was the only possible solution for the Northern problem — views into which I need not go in detail now; views from which I do not necessarily entirely dissent — but most certainly I would not hold a press conference after four days in America to air my views about how they might settle, let us say, the problems of their inner cities, their crime problems, their drug problems, the problems of their criminal law or of their health service. I do not want to offend these reverend gentlemen, but I dare say that not one of them would pass an examination paper of our intermediate standard on Irish history in the morning.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Kelly, just a moment. The four reverend gentlemen to whom you refer, were received in this House as guests of myself, representing this Parliament, and entertained. In the Chair's opinion it is unbecoming that you should now, in the same Parliament, launch an attack on them or speak about them in a derogatory manner. Again, I would ask the Deputy not to pursue that line.

Mr. Kelly

I am sorry again to encounter your extremely sensitive susceptibilities in this matter, which do you great honour, Sir, if I may say so with respect, and only prove even further the point I am endeavouring to make, namely how wise one is to stick to something one thoroughly knows.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should stick to the band.

Mr. Kelly

I doubt very much if the courtesy which you extended to these four prelates included an encouragement to them to hold a highly televisable press conference after four days in the North of Ireland containing their solution to the Irish problem. Had it done so, Sir, I am afraid I would have had to censure you for encouraging them on this line.

On a different level, there is, I know, a group of American politicians who do know something about the Irish problem, who do understand a great deal about it, who have been — and we are very much indebted to them, at least for their good intentions — active in trying to seek ways to reach an Irish solution. I shall not name them individually now; I mention them only in passing. With respect and genuine gratitude to them for their well meaning efforts, and even making 100 per cent allowance for their sincerity, and discounting 100 per cent any suspicion that these could be related to their own electoral prospects at home, I doubt whether those efforts are entirely positive in their results.

I would remind people everywhere in the world that we have to live with one million people who have repeatedly said through their elected leaders, that they would eat grass sooner than be run into this State against their will; that there might be many things that could be done once we acknowledge their rights, but that they would fight other than be absorbed against their will. What is the effect on the minds of those people when they see very prominent American politicians purporting to settle the future of Northern Ireland and of Ireland over their heads? That is what worries me. I know that the American politicians of whom I speak mean well, and have a strong feeling for Ireland because of the parentage; but I wonder to what extent their efforts are counter-productive.

We accept the visits of these politicians and Bishops with a range of attitudes varying from the Chair's hospitality to my muted dismay; but we put up with them and do not try to use the law to prevent them from coming. I would not encourage using means of that kind; but there is a limit beyond which something has to be recognised as intolerable. I know very little about the proposed visit of this New York Police Band; but if it is the case, as I suspect, that this proposed commemoration, although ostensibly in remembrance of hunger-strikers who voluntarily gave their lives for a cause, is in fact related to a murder as beastly as any other murder, which took place in that vicinity five years ago, then this act moves instantly into the sphere of what is intolerable. It is one thing to come over here and give woollen-headed, sap-witted advice and hold press conferences; but to come here and participate in a celebration of murder is quite different.

While respecting and understanding the attachment which we have to civil liberty, freedom of association, freedom of assembly and to freedom of speech, I would remind the House that these are liberties of the citizen; they are not necessarily liberties of aliens. All these Irish Americans are aliens and they choose to remain alien. The Minister's Department is not inundated by applications for naturalistion from these people. They choose to remain aliens and there is no difference between them and other non-nationals who come and go, who do not have to live here with the consequences of their words and deeds, and who carry as little responsibility for what they do as they have knowledge of the conditions in which the rest of us have to live. When their participation in life here takes the form of attendance at a celebration of murder it is intolerable.

If I could be persuaded that this was merely a commemoration of a hunger strike I would not feel quite so strongly about it, because I must admit to having mixed emotions about that episode. When a young man deliberately throws away his own life in pursuit of an ideal, he has bought, with the dearest possible coin, the right to have the cause he supports dispassionately examined. To treat people on hunger strike in the manner in which they were treated by the British in 1981 and 1982 is insane. While I acted as Minister for Foreign Affairs, it was Senator Dooge and I who had the job of going to the British to urge that point on them. We were ignored and the result is that Mrs. Thatcher now has a colleague in the House of Commons, a member of Sinn Féin, which is a front for the Provisional IRA. That is the consequence of her behaviour. If I could be persuaded that this commemoration was related only to the hunger-strikers I would not feel the same way; but if there is a suggestion that it is related to the beastly murder of three innocent people, it is intolerable.

The most prominent among the victims never did any harm to this country. I did not even know he had a holiday home here until he was murdered; but I know that he had very little to do with Irish affairs, and most certainly never did us any harm. When this commemoration appears to be related to a murder of that kind the question of whether it is tolerable instantly arises. When we find that a police unit is participating in this commemoration, the people who are supposed to be the fraternal colleagues, the professional brothers of the Garda Síochána with whom they associate in many social and sporting activities at other times of the year, the thing develops a monstrous aspect which demands that we look at this as a different kind of incursion into Irish affairs from the episcopal or political ones.

I would ask the Minister and the Government to consider whether it would be advisable to make exclusion orders against members of this band, to show that there are such things that we regard as being so deeply unseemly as to exceed the tolerance of ordinary Irish people. It may not surface here, but I speak for a very large number of Irish people on all sides, in saying this. I am not urging as a matter of policy that these gentlemen should be excluded, because I accept that such a move might be counter-productive and that in one sense it is even likely to be counter-productive, because it would represent a hurdle which we would be more or less inviting the IRA to jump, thus thumbing their noses publicly at us and giving them what the press call a propaganda coup. I would not make little of that consideration; and perhaps if I had the file and advice on the matter I might, if I were in charge of it, come to the conclusion that to issue an exclusion order to keep out these deeply unwelcome aliens would be a mistake. But it is an option open to the Government, as much in the case of an Irish-American as in the case of a man from Borneo, which they should in this instance consider. They should weigh in the balance the effect which the presence of a police unit at a murder celebration here, in a festive period, will occasion throughout the world. I do not know the extent to which discipline prevails in the New York police but it is possible that a formal Government exclusion order is something which even the emerald section of that force might think twice about before putting itself on the wrong side of it.

In case I have overstepped any verbal limit in what I have been saying I want to say——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has a minute.

Mr. Kelly

——that Irish Americans, in spite of everything I have said, are doubly welcome visitors here, perhaps more than other Americans would be. They are welcome as visitors and friends. They are welcome as cousins and I say that unaffectedly and sincerely. They are genuinely and heartily welcome, doubly welcome with their Irish blood, as visitors and friends; but they are not welcome as the stage props of the IRA. It is the Government's business, although they may decide that tactical considerations rule out an exclusion, to consider carefully how to make that attitude, which I believe is shared by 99 per cent of the people here, clear and unmistakable.

Minister for Foreign Affairs (Mr. P. Barry)

This debate on the Adjournment is taking place because there have been reports in newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic in the last few days that the Emerald Pipe and Drum Band of the New York Police Force who were here last year intend to come here again and participate in a parade just as they did on 1 September 1984. It was said at the time that they had been invited to and did come to attend the Rose of Tralee Festival which took place the previous week and that subsequent to their coming to Ireland, and without prior invitation, they had agreed to attend the parade that was taking place in Donegal, as Deputy Police Chief Murphy of the New York Police said, without being fully aware of the implications involved.

That may have been so when they accepted the verbal invitation to attend the parade in Donegal but when they marched in the parade they were in no doubt of the implications of them marching. It had been conveyed to them in very strong terms by the Taoiseach, by gardaí at senior level and by officers of my Department. The person in charge of the band denied that he had been asked by the Garda not to take part in the parade. I do not know where that information came from. He said they had no idea that the Garda had objected. They apologised to the Garda and added that they did not think they had done anything wrong. That is not correct. They were informed of the views of the Garda. They were also aware that the Lord Mayor of Dublin at the time had refused to meet them when he heard of their intention to participate in the parade. They can have been in no doubt of the views of the Irish Government in regard to the participation by the 25 members of that band in the parade. They were in no doubt about the views of the Irish people, for whom we speak, about their participation in the parade.

If they were in any doubt, the American Ambassador to Ireland, Mr. Robert F. Kane, wrote to Commissioner Benjamin Ward of the New York Police after the parade had taken place and said in the course of the letter.

The Police Department's Emerald Bands participation at this rally was an affront to the Irish Government and people. As you know the United States Government consistently and on a broad bipartisan basis have condemned violence and those who support violence to resolve the problems of Northern Ireland.

...the acts of these police officers directly reflect on the record of the NYPD. The record of the NYPD is a proud and honourable one but sadly I must tell you that in my opinion the participation of Emerald Band members at this rally unfortunately reflected no credit on the Emerald Band, New York and or its Police Department.

By some stretch of the imagination it may be that some members of the organising committee of the Emerald Society Pipe and Drum Band attached to the Police Department may allege that they were unaware of the implications of what took place at the end of August last year. However, if the reports in newspapers in the last few days that they intend to repeat their performance this year are true they can be in no doubt as a result of what was conveyed to them last year, and what I am deliberately conveying to them in the House, of the attitude of the Government, the Irish people represented by the House, of the nationalists in Northern Ireland and of the two leading politicians in their country, the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, and Speaker "Tip" O'Neill. Those gentlemen visited Ireland in the last 12 months and repeated their commitment to support all efforts that were peaceful and non-violent to achieve a solution to the problem of Northern Ireland. The members of the Emerald Band can be in no doubt about our views as a result of the letter from the Ambassador from their country accredited to Ireland.

We gladly acknowledge and welcome the support of the Irish-American community for our efforts to find a peaceful solution. We particularly welcome and appreciate what has been done by the Friends of Ireland in Washington. We welcome the statements made by successive Presidents of the United States who have taken a real interest in finding a solution to the problem in Northern Ireland but we do not welcome support, whether it is by the Emerald Society Pipe and Drum Band or NORAID, for groups here who wish to achieve those ends by violent means. We have made that clear on a number of occasions.

I hope the organisers of the band will remember that the people they will be supporting if they march in Donegal this year represent an organisation that has in this State killed 11 members of our security forces, one of them within a month of the participation by this band in the parade last year. The members of the band are police officers whose commitment to upholding the law is above that of any other citizens and I should like to remind those people that in the last month in my own town the organisation I referred to murdered a man in cold blood because, they said, he had been an informer. The New York Police Department Emerald Pipe and Drum Band by their presence at this parade are giving their support to such people. I want to say to them that if the reports in newspapers in New York and here are correct the Government, Members of the House, the Irish people and the nationalists in Northern Ireland do not accept that a solution to the problem in Northern Ireland can be found through violent means. Their support by their participation in this parade for organisations who believe that violence is the way to get a solution is not welcomed by the Government, the House or Irish people of nationalist tradition North and South. If the reports are correct I ask them to indicate immediately to the organisers of the parade that for the reasons I have outlined they will not march in or participate in that parade this year. I appeal to them to do that now.

The Dáil adjourned at 5.30 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 30 April 1985.