In moving the adjournment of the House I desire to draw attention to certain aspects of the Boundary question which are exciting a good deal of public interest at present. At the outset, I may say that I do not attach any importance whatever to the forecasts that have appeared within the past week in certain English newspapers, although these reports have caused considerable uneasiness and alarm throughout the Free State, especially in those areas which it is claimed are going to be annexed to what is called Northern Ireland. These forecasts are such an outrage on justice that one must dismiss them at once as preposterous unless a complete violation of the Treaty is contemplated, and this I refuse to believe. While I have not succumbed to the panic which seems to have seized several people in many parts of the country, still I confess I am somewhat disquieted by the fact that has emerged from an answer given by our respected President to a question put to him yesterday by the leader of the Labour Party in another place. According to that answer, although the report of the Boundary Commission is shortly to be published, no attempt whatever has been made beforehand to carry out the terms of Clause 12 of the Treaty, which provides for the ascertainment of the wishes of the inhabitants before any area can be transferred. This clause is the corner stone of the Treaty, and was inserted specifically to ensure the application of the principles of self-determination and non-coercion to that section of the majority of the Irish people residing in the Six Counties.
May I take this opportunity to contradict the statement that I saw lately in the Press, that the Treaty was the cause of partition. The Treaty is not responsible for partition. Partition was an accomplished fact six months before the Treaty was signed and the Belfast Parliament was opened by King George six months before the Treaty was signed. The Treaty was an alleviation of partition and not the creation of it, and in Clause 12 was provided the machinery for alleviation. This has been made clear by the speeches of the Irish signatories to the Treaty. In a speech delivered on the 3rd February, 1922, by the late Michael Collins, he said in reference to Clause 12:
"Now there is nothing ambiguous about that clause. The decision of the boundary line is a question for the inhabitants of the areas concerned to decide.
"At no time was there any question of being misled by Mr. Lloyd George. I never went on any opinion of his on the subject. It was a matter for the inhabitants of the areas involved and for them only. The maps presented by the Irish Delegation to the British Delegation are clear and unquestionable.
"The maps are marked on five different bases:—
(a) Counties.
(b) Constituencies.
(c) County Council areas.
(d) Poor Law areas.
(e) Parishes according to religion.
"Our aim was clear. Majorities must rule, and in any map marked on that principle under the above headings we secure immense anti-partition areas. If we go by counties, anti-partition has a clear majority in two of the six. Under the other headings the anti-partitionists gain very large areas in Down, Derry, Armagh, and, remember, that in the remaining area, Antrim and Belfast, there are large minorities of our people.
"These are facts, and we can only come to agreements on recognition of facts. It is useless to think or say otherwise."
Two days previously Mr. Arthur Griffith had expressed himself in similar terms in reply to a deputation from Newry, South and East Down, and South Armagh. He said:
"He and Mr. Collins and their fellow delegates had urged the claims of these districts for weeks during the negotiations in London, and the result was that the Free State should extend over Ireland, that ‘Ulster' should have the option of voting herself out within a month, but that if she did so a Boundary Commission should be set up to decide if such districts would come into the Free State. That was the position to-day also."
You can see, therefore, the importance attached to this clause by Collins and Griffith, and also that the paramount object of it was to give effect to the wishes of the inhabitants by placing them under the Government they desire. How is this being done? Rumour assigns to the procedure of Mr. Justice Feetham enlightenment on the subject——
