Local Government Bill, 1933—Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be read a Second Time."

Minister for Local Government and Public Health (Mr. S.T. O'Kelly)

The primary object of this Bill is to put an end to the discrimination which the enactment of Section 71 of the Local Government Act, 1925, enabled the Government and certain local authorities to enforce, in recent years, for the purpose of preventing persons holding Republican political opinions securing employment to which they were justly entitled. It also empowers local authorities to employ persons, who, though fully qualified and properly elected to posts in the gift of certain local authorities, were denied such employment because of an objection to subscribe to the declaration prescribed by the Local Government Act of 1925. It will enable local authorities to pay to officers in their service remuneration and increments of salary, sanction to the payment of which was denied by my Department since 1925 because of the failure of certain officers to subscribe to the declaration or test referred to.

This House, and the public, are already aware that the Government disapprove of political tests and have undertaken to remove them. In order to fulfil the Government's undertaking to abolish all political tests, it remains for them to end the test imposed upon officers of local authorities. As far as I am aware, the only statutory example of penalisation of local officers for political reasons is that provided in Section 71 of the Local Government Act, 1925, which relates to the declaration required to be taken by such officers on appointment or on obtaining an increase of remuneration. We are of opinion that the enforcement of a political test, declaration or oath, will not procure from civil servants or officers of local authorities more loyal or more efficient service. There are obvious and effective measures for dealing with officers who do not perform conscientiously the duties assigned to them. It is not my intention or desire to provoke a discussion of constitutional issues on this Bill and I will, therefore, not enter into the implications of the undertaking we propose to abolish. I may say, however, that there are good citizens of this country who cannot conscientiously subscribe to that declaration and we refuse to exclude all such citizens from employment in the public service.

We simply want to make the official life of this State non-sectional and to remove the political tests that were designed to perpetuate the divisions and bitterness of the past. This entails the restoration of their rights to all persons identified with the Republican movement in this country since 1921, and the giving to them of opportunities to regain the status of which they were deprived because of their political opinions in the past, so as to restore as far as can be done those impartial, non-sectional principles of national Government for which we have striven. I have said "as far as can be done": I am well aware of the sacrifices made, the years of unemployment and discouragement, waste, in one sense, of many a man's best years—for which no Act of Parliament can give any adequate compensation. But so far as this Government can go, with the co-operation which we expect to receive from the local authorities, towards redressing the wrongs and restoring the rights of victimised persons—we will go. That is what this Bill is designed to do in so far as employees of local authorities are concerned.

The repeal of Section 71 is effected by Section 2 of the Bill. The repeal will take effect as on and from the 9th March, 1932, with appropriate provisions for the voidance of the operation of the section where the time has begun to run from the 9th February, 1932. Section 3 of the Bill relates to increases of salary or emolument which would have become payable to an officer but for the operation of Section 71, and it proposes to give validity to any resolution of the local body awarding such increases of salary which became void by reason of the failure of the officer concerned to subscribe to the declaration. There are consequential provisions to effect the payment of the total amount of additional salary and emoluments to such officers; provisions to cover cases where officers have been transferred from the service of one local authority to another local authority and the revision of pensions or gratuities, at present payable on the bases of the lower scale of salary.

Section 4 of the Bill relates to the appointment by a local authority of persons formerly removed from or refused office under a local authority. It is proposed to empower local bodies, with the sanction of the Minister, to regard persons so removed or refused office in the past for political reasons as being qualified for appointment to such office or an analogous office under the same or any other local authority whenever a vacancy therein occurs in the future. For the purpose of considering qualifications for a vacancy, any officer formerly employed in Northern Ireland shall be regarded as qualified in connection with analogous vacancies occurring in Saorstát Eireann. It is proposed to empower the local authority to place any person thus re-appointed on the salary scale which, in the opinion of the Minister, he would have reached if he had not suffered any removal from office or had not been refused appointment to an office in the past.

Section 5 relates to the periods of pensionable service to be taken into account by a local authority for the purpose of computing the superannuation which will be payable to any officer of a local body whose tenure of service had been interrupted for political reasons and who subsequently was re-employed or reinstated in pursuance of the provisions of this Bill in the local service. For the purpose of calculating the amount of any pension to which such officer may be entitled under the Local Government law it is proposed that his pensionable service may be reckoned as including the period of broken service where such period begins between the 1st January, 1922, and the 9th March, 1932. Consequential provisions are made in connection with the liability for superannuation where an officer was employed by more than one local authority. The expression "local authority" is defined as including any local authority in Northern Ireland up to the 30th April, 1923.

It is proposed that where any local authority in the Saorstát employs a person formerly in the service of a local authority in Northern Ireland who was removed therefrom for political reasons, the Minister for Finance may pay from State funds a contribution towards the pension of such person in respect of his period of office in Northern Ireland and his period of broken service.

Cases have come under our notice where a person continued for some short time to act in an office where his legal tenure of service had been voided by the operation of Section 71 of the Act of 1925. Such persons were not paid for this period of de facto service and Section 6 of the Bill proposes to legalise any such payments since made or to be made by the local authority. Section 7 relates to the period 1st July, 1922, to 30th April, 1923, during which certain officers and servants of some local authorities were absent from their duties by reason of being imprisoned or interned for political reasons. It is proposed to enable the local authorities concerned to pay to such persons the whole or part of any remuneration which would have been normally payable to them in respect of such period. I recommend the Bill to the consideration of the House.

Mr. Comyn

I hope the Seanad will heartily agree with the provisions of this enlightened measure. These political oaths are an invention of comparatively recent times. They did not exist in the ancient times in the history of this country or even in the history of Great Britain. They were the result of the religious wars. More than eighty years ago, a Commission was set up, with a view to inquiring into the numerous classes of oaths that were then in existence and, in their recommendation, they said that the political oath was the invention of unscrupulous men for the purpose of binding or humiliating honest men. They were designed for the purpose of keeping all office in the hands of one particular party. At the time that most of them were introduced it was the Whig Party, and they were continued in England by the Tory Party who, when they came into power, wanted offices for their followers. In the process of time these political tests and oaths became so numerous that there was no office in the State which had not its own peculiar oath. Policemen had to take an oath. All Churchwardens had to take an oath. Looking through the book containing the various forms of oaths, I find that they numbered, at one time, I think, 700 or 800 different forms. This Commission was set up, as I say, about the year 1850, and it recommended that they should all be swept aside because they served no useful purpose and because they were never effectual to prevent a man otherwise disloyal to the State from acting in a disloyal manner.

I was surprised, when a certain measure dealing with oaths came before this House to find that most of the gentlemen opposite found it in their conscience to support the retention of the particular oath in question. I am sure that nobody could conscientiously support the retention of this particular oath which is an oath of office designed for a political purpose, which the experience of centuries has found to be most mischievous and, of course, which is contrary to the spirit of our own time. I do not wish to enter into any controversial matter, but I hope the Seanad will do credit to itself by allowing this measure to pass without any comment or controversy whatever.

Mr. MacLoughlin

I understand that the principal object of this enlightened Bill is to remove the declaration of allegiance which some evil disposed persons of "most vindictive character" inserted in the Local Government Act of 1925. I may, perhaps, be excused for recalling the circumstances under which this declaration of allegiance to the State —not an oath—was inserted in that Act. The country had just emerged from the confusion and turmoil of civil war. The war-wagers, who are now the Government, had refused to accept the status of the Free State. They looked upon this Oireachtas as an usurping body without any legal or moral authority to legislate. President de Valera, who then regarded himself as the hereditary President of a de facto Republic, and head of a rival government to the Government validly elected by the majority of the people of the Saorstát, had declared “that the foundations of the so-called Free State were built on sand, and that the foolish people who were building on that foundation would never cease to live in fear and trembling.”

The present Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Free State— His Majesty's distinguished Minister for Local Government; I don't know what position he held in the Republican Government of that time— declared, with an arrogance befitting a Hindenburg, that he did not consider himself "demobilised" and, referring to the damage done in the civil war, prophesied cheerfully that they would do twice as much damage the next time. All through the country the supporters of Mr. de Valera and Mr. O'Kelly, including many public officials, were gaily boasting that the Free State would never function, and that it would collapse in a few months. These officials made no secret that they were quite willing to hasten that much desired end. It was under these extraordinary and perilous circumstances that this reasonable declaration of allegiance—and not an oath, as Senator Comyn says—to the State— not to any political party—was inserted in the Local Government Bill of 1925.

May I read the monstrous section— this relic of the Penal Laws—which has stirred the patriotic ire of the august and gallant Minister and stuck in the gizzards of the Party ever since?:

"Where after the passing of this Act a local authority passes a resolution either appointing a person to be an officer of that local authority or increasing the salary or emoluments of an officer of that local authority such resolution shall have no effect until such person or officer shall within one month after the date of such resolution have made and subscribed a declaration as follows:—

I do solemnly and sincerely declare that I will bear allegiance to the Irish Free State and its Constitution as by law established and that in the event of such appointment being confirmed by the Minister for Local Government and Public Health I will to the best of my judgment and ability duly and faithfully perform the duties of the said office and will observe and obey such orders and directions in relation to such duties as shall lawfully be given to me."

The Seanad will note that the section did not apply to officials already holding office unless they sought an increase of salary. It applied principally to new appointees and the pathetic picture which the doleful Vice-President drew in the Dáil of high principled idealistic Republicans being driven from their snug jobs to starve in the noisome slums of America and Australia is simply—if I might borrow a word from the Minister's polite vocabulary —hogwash. Personally I should be sorry to make anyone suffer for his principles. But I always suspect a man who talks too much about his principles. High sounding talk about "principle" very often amounts to nothing more than a hypocritical excuse for doing the wrong thing or omitting to do the right thing.

I know that no man of genuine principle—no honest Republican— would seek service under a State that he did not recognise and was plotting to subvert. It was only the mean, self-seeking, late-coming, safety-first extremists who would stoop to that. For their misfortunes I shed no tears. At any rate almost nine years have passed since that Act was enacted, and I venture to say that not nine persons lost their jobs because of it. On the contrary, owing to the system set up by the Cosgrave Government by which appointments were made scrupulously on merit by an independent Committee —people who were bitterly opposed to that Government were able to get some of the best positions in the country—without any violence to their patriotic susceptibilities beyond subscribing to that declaration which, as I have said, is not a political test at all. It does not require allegiance to any party but to the State—and allegiance to the State is merely allegiance to the majority will. It is the same allegiance which a Government owes to the people who give them their Governmental authority.

Is it too much to expect from public officials that they will faithfully perform the duties for which they are paid, and give allegiance to the State that pays them? Is it evidence of bitterness on the part of any Government that it requires public servants to give allegiance, not to itself as a Government, but to the majority of the people? Is it evidence of bitterness against the Cosgrave Government that it threw open for competition all public appointments, making no discrimination between enemies and friends, but insisting only that this declaration of fealty to the State should be made equally by all appointees?

Naturally a declaration of allegiance to the State and Constitution which they tried vainly to smash and then coveted, is distasteful to the present Government. Hence we have this Bill to provide back pay for the breakers of bridges without the necessity to lacerate their consciences by pledging allegiance to the people who paid for the bridges. And while we are not to have allegiance to the State, the Minister for Finance has emphatically declared that "loyalty and devotion are to be exacted from every public officer." Loyalty and devotion to whom or to what? Is it to the erratic Minister for Finance? If it is, then the loyalties of public servants will change with every moon. Is the Minister for Finance going to emulate the example of Louis XIV and to lay down the doctrine of the royal egoist —L'état, cest moi? If that is his intention he will probably discover that there are other egoists in the Government who will claim a share of this allegiance including the arch-egoist of the century.

There are signs that the policy of other members of the Government is to exact, at least, a Party allegiance. So far as they can manage it, they are making a corner in all the jobs and appointments that are going for their own followers. Even in relief works it is the secretaries of the Fianna Fáil clubs who determine who is to get work and who is not, while scores of Fianna Fáil supporters have been pitchforked into jobs without any other qualification than their political affiliations. It is plain that Tammany Hall methods are being introduced into Irish public life, and that public appointments are made, dependent, not upon the competence and loyalty to the State of the individual, but upon his political sympathies.

The treatment of General O'Duffy is an example. No officer of this State performed his duties more faithfully or more efficiently. The proof of this is that no charge could be made against him. He was removed from office for the sole reason that he had been 10 years Commissioner under a Cosgrave Government—and these are the people who talk about abolishing political tests! Is that a political test or is it not? Those who talk of "political tests" are applying political tests every day in the week. All over the country efforts are being made to deprive public servants of their jobs, because they are suspected of not being sufficiently enamoured of the economic war which is bringing us so much glory.

Fianna Fáil Clubs have set up a sort of O.G.P.U., sending in reports against public servants—that they are members of the A.C.A.—merely because they have been seen talking to neighbours who were on the side of reason at the last election. This is the manner in which this Puritan Government is banishing injustice from public life. What a splendid hypocrisy then it is to declare that the object of the Bill is to clear the path to unity, harmony and good feeling among all citizens of the State!

The real object of the Bill is to empower local bodies to reward with Free State gold those who tried to destroy their property—or as Senator Farren phrased it—"those who tried to scuttle the ship of State." This is a Fianna Fáil bone to the I.R.A. dog to keep it from inconvenient yapping. The Republic has now become a bit of dusty stage property and is relegated to the lumber room of Fianna Fáil from which it is produced occasionally to humour the virile and exacting patriotic demands of extremists like Senator Quirke.

I am supposed to be fanatically anti-Republican. The Minister, I am told, did me the honour of describing me to the Dáil as a narrow-minded, bigoted, bitter anti-Republican. In the eyes of consistent, big-minded statesmen like the Minister, I may appear narrow-minded, bigoted and bitter, but I want to say that I have never been consciously bitter against genuine or honest Republicans no matter how wildly impractical their doctrines. My bitterness and bigotry only extend to the pseudo-Republicans —to the opportunist Republican—to the Republicans who turn Imperialist in the dog days and send loyal messages to the King they affect to scorn in more frigid times—who drink his health with greedy enthusiasm and accept his messages on their ministerial knees. Having wallowed in greasy Imperialism for a summer, they turn round and accuse better Irishmen than they are of disregard of their patriotic obligations.

It is quite appropriate that the gentleman who proclaimed loudmouthed loyalty to King George at Ottawa should now be moving to remove from the Statute Book a declaration of loyalty to the people of this State by the officials who are paid to serve it.

If I moved on Committee Stage to substitute for the declaration in the Act the declaration which Mr. John T. O'Kelly so fervently subscribed in the presence of the élite of Imperialism at Ottawa, I suppose it would be acceptable to the Ministry. According to our present Government all the allegiance is to be to the King and there is to be no allegiance to the people—I, though I may be a bigoted anti-Republican—put the people before the King.

Accordingly I have considered it my duty to protest against this Bill which is an attempt to dethrone the people by a repentant Republican.

Mrs. Wyse Power

I could not do less than support this Bill for the reason that I was in the Seanad when the original Act was passed. I was then one of a very small minority who opposed its passing. I opposed it because I considered that it was unjust to people who took the opposite side to that which we took who were sitting here. Those people did things with which many of us, possibly, did not agree; but there was one thing with which we should never have agreed, and that to hound those people out of their employment. It meant either taking this Oath and believing in it, or it meant taking the Oath and not believing in it; and that was a very terrible thing to put up to those people whose only means of livelihood were the clerkships or the other positions which they held under the Government. They took the losing side undoubtedly, and I think that everybody must agree that they were just as honest in taking the losing side as we were in taking the winning side. I voted against the Act at that time although I had been asked to introduce it. I declined to do so at the time, and I think that the only thing I can do now is to support this Bill.

Minister for Local Government and Public Health (Mr. O'Kelly)

I do not think I need say very much. There does not seem to be anybody who, in my opinion, would carry any weight anywhere in Ireland to-day, who has a word to say in opposing the Bill. In view of the attitude of the House, I think I can very well disregard the statements made by Senator MacLoughlin. The Senator had his day, but that day is finished, thanks be to God. The Senator had his period, when he and those whom he served did everything they could to down the man who did not stand with them. I have instances of it here in this city, and I know of instances of it in almost every county in the Free State. There was no extreme to which they did not go to prevent honest men and efficient men from getting the employment which was their due in the Free State. That day, I hope, is finished. Certainly, it is finished so far as we are concerned. We intend, not alone to finish that, but to finish the very memory of it—Senator MacLoughlin and his type notwithstanding. I hope that that type of public representative will get little show here and little show in the political assemblies of the future. I am glad that there has been such little opposition to the Bill so far as the Seanad is concerned. I think it speaks well for the Bill and for the ideals of those who put it forward. I would ask, if it were possible, that the Committee Stage should be taken this day week.

Question put and declared carried.

Cathaoirleach

I suggest that we take the Committee Stage on the next day we meet, because, so far as I can see, the only business we are likely to have next week would be the Committee Stage of this Bill. I thought that the House might think it unnecessary to meet, as, apparently, we must meet, during Holy Week. I am advised that certain Bills will come to us that the Government will require to have passed before Easter. I suggest, therefore, that we meet on the Tuesday of Holy Week, and that we might get through our business on the Tuesday and Wednesday of that week.

Ordered: That the Committee Stage of the Local Government Bill, 1933, be taken on the next day the Seanad meets.

Seanad Éireann debate - Wednesday, 29 Mar 1933