I am delighted to welcome the Minister and I do not propose to look so distinguished a gift horse in the mouth. Nonetheless, I am curious as to what role he is fulfilling in this instance. I understand that the Government Information Services are answerable to the Taoiseach's office. In his reply, perhaps the Minister will deal with that point.
As Senators will be aware, there was a saturation advertising campaign in the weeks, particularly in the last week, leading up to the referendum on the Single European Act. I do not think it is an exaggeration to describe it as a saturation advertising campaign. I did not take note of the actual column inches involved but they were certainly lavish. No expense was spared, it could be said, even though our poor country is in a sad situation. Nonetheless, one estimate suggests that the newspaper advertising campaign, as well as the issuing of pretty glitzy leaflets, cost in the region of £350,000. I have no idea whether that figure is true or false, perhaps it is a minimum, but I think everyone will agree it was an expensive campaign. However, fundamentally that is not really the point I am making here.
I am questioning the propriety, if not indeed the legality, of a Government information service pushing a purely party political case. This was a purely party political case. The fact that other parties joined themselves, as it were, with the Government in pushing the Single European Act does not take from the partisan nature of the case being made. It was a party political case; and the arguments used, as in, for example, The Irish Times of Monday, 25 May, in a one-third page advertisment published by the Government Information Services, comprising ten points, were extremely tendentious indeed — in short, propaganda and, arguably misinformation. The GIS might have been more properly called the GMIS in this case. Public funds were misused to present this case and I submit that the service transgressed its proper role and that this is a most serious matter. It took place with the tacit approval of the other parties. In fact, this was one of its more sinister aspects, that we had a tacit collusion of the other parties in this propaganda campaign and there was no substantial protest from the media. Why should there be? The national broadcasting service had already been intimidated and the consequence of that intimidation was to be seen quite perceptibly in the altered balance of coverage in the days that followed the meeting in Merrion Street of the RTE executives and the “irresponsible Ministers”— I am being informed by the Cathaoirleach, because she ruled that I could not raise this question on the Adjournment because there was no Minister responsible. I can only conclude that the two Ministers who met the RTE executives were irresponsible Ministers. That having been so, the Government in effect having intimidated the national broadcasting service, we were then left with the printed media to protect our liberites. But, human nature being what is is, why should the printed media squeal when they were being so lavishly funded? I am sorry to say this. I am a great admirer of the Irish press — with a small “p”— but it would have been too much to expect that they would have bitten the hand that fed them — altogether a most dangerous situation.
I submit that the Government had no mandate to misappropriate public funds in this way, no mandate whatsoever. The Single European Act was not an issue in the general election. I think commonsense and justice would both require us to assent to the idea that, once the Supreme Court made the decision which necessitated a referendum, then, in the interim, as it were, between the Supreme Court's decision and the people's verdict, on the subject matter of this referendum the Government's duty was to stand back from this decision of the people and to give fair play to the yes and no sides. The Government had no reason or no right to pre-empt the outcome or to presume that the outcome would be 70 to 30 or 90 to ten or whatever the case might be. The people are supreme where a referendum is in question and while a referendum is being decided. The Government violated that supremacy by taking a partisan stance.
I cannot pretend that the comparative research I have done in this matter is exhaustive but I have been doing some work on it and I have come up with some very interesting comparative cases. In the United States of America it seems to be a very clearly established principle, tested through various court cases, that where a state or a municipality is involved in sponsoring a change in the state and municipal law, in that case the courts have decided on more than one occasion that, while the governing authority, state or municipality, as the case may be, have every right to present information on the matter which is at issue in the referendum, they have no right whatsoever to be advocates of a partisan stance on that issue.
Here, of course, the Americans have a proper concern for the First Amendment, which not only guarantees freedom of expression to the individual, and therefore negatively protects him against the suffocating influence of state opinion, but the First Amendment is also very properly afraid that if you give these powers to governments, where you have a whole colluding, if you like, alignment of parties, there is a very real danger that that government may well, at a future stage perhaps, use these powers to perpetuate itself in office. I could quote for the Minister cases from the North Eastern Law Reports of the United States where, quite clearly, to take a random example, the law laid down that in one case, Anderson v. the City of Boston, a municipality has no authority to appropriate funds for the purpose of taking action to influence the result of a referendum proposed to be submitted to the people at a State election. There are quite interesting parallels here. The court lays down that the outcome cannot be pre-empted, especially with the expenditure of public funds.
To move nearer home, in 1975 the United Kingdom Government, as the House will be aware, had a referendum which really was about the question of approving or reapproving the terms which had been negotiated. If I may I will quote from a compendium of English legal cases called Public Law 1975. Here again a Government information unit was set up, but the Government had decided that enough was known about the matter and enough was being said about the matter by other agencies in the whole forum of public opinion that it was not proper for the Government itself to enter the arena and to take a partisan stance. Moreover — and this was something which did not happen in our referendum — the Government took care that every household should receive at public expense a single document explaining each of the opposing views on the referendum.
It seems to me that we have here in these two western democracies a proper concern for the propriety of a government maintaining their distance where the people have to make a decision. Alas, when we return home, we have not observed that distance ourselves. But — and I come to another context, our own historical context — what makes this issue very grave again is that this is the first time, as far as I can establish, that the Government Information Services have misbehaved in such a way. In 1972, in the great debate on our entry into the EC, while there were advertisements from An Bord Bainne and the Pigs and Bacon Commission which, by the way, caused adverse comment among the anti-entry people, there certainly was no use of the Government Information Services. Neither was there in 1979, on the amendment which dealt with university representation and with adoption, except that, because there was a postal strike at the time, a certain minimum amount of information was presented. Finally, the Government Information Services were not used either in the case of the pro-life referendum or in the case of the divorce referendum.
Therefore, this is an unenviable first. We are seeing a dangerous new departure. Newspaper space is being bought with taxpayers' money, including taxpayers opposed to the amendment, with the result, if not the intent, of drowning out the voice of dissidents with their own money. That is the cynical gist of the matter. The main Opposition parties have connived at this exercise. The whole thing is a salutary lesson in the fragility of truth and justice in a democracy and how frighteningly quickly they can become casualties of Government propaganda.
This is no mere academic debate. If something like this occurs again, I hope fervently that the courts will have an opportunity to pronounce on its propriety and to pronounce moreover on whether those responsible should be liable to surcharge for the misuse of public funds. Go raibh maith agat.
