I would like to raise now a matter that I raised yesterday. It was a personal explanation. The President was not here when I raised it, and did not get an opportunity of making his position clear with regard to the question. In reply to a Deputy on this side who asked a question, he stated the number of people employed and paid in the service of the State, and he included my name in the list. I understand that his reason for including my name was that I was a member of the Post Office Commission, and as such got such incidental expenses as are usually paid to members of Commissions. I just want to make the position clear, as it is reported, without any explanation or comment, in some of the papers to-day that I am one of the members of Dáil Eireann who are employed in the paid service of the State. I want to make that explanation.
ESTIMATES. - EMPLOYES OF STATE.
I think it is due to Deputy O'Connell that a statement should be made. Questions are sometimes put down by Deputies rather hastily, I think. I do not want to pass any remark on that. Two questions were put to me yesterday, and it would be open to any person, if I had not included Deputy O'Connell's name in the list, to tell me in a month or less that I did not give a full and complete answer. Now, I inform Deputy O'Connell that, as far as the inclusion of his name in the list I gave was concerned, it was in the same way as I would employ a pencil. That is a peculiar interpretation of the term. In so far actually as being a paid servant of the State, Deputy O'Connell is not so; but if the question had not been open to some extent to some misinterpretation it might have been very easily answered. In the circumstances I think it was my duty to mention it in the one way I did. I did not actually say he was in the employment of the State, but nothing in it reflects on Deputy O'Connell's character in any way I know, and I think he is doing exceptional work on the Postal Commission, and rendered exceptional service during the recent strike in effecting a settlement. I do not intend certainly to cast any reflection on the Deputy. Whatever fees are paid in connection with the Postal Commission are not fees paid in the way that one would look upon a person as in the employment of the State. I think it was as well the matter was stated in the way in which it was as no person can say afterwards that any name was kept back in a matter of that kind.
I think it is important that there should be no misunderstanding in the public mind with regard to members of the Dáil placed on Commissions. As far as I know, there are no payments for acting on Commissions. There may be allowances for those who actually suffer loss and have to pay expenses, to recoup them for such, but it is necessary for the clarification of our position that the public should understand that there are no payments for services on these Commissions. The Railway Commission is mentioned here; also the Constitution Committee. I cannot speak about that. No members of the Dáil were on it, as far as I know As regards the Railway Commission, I do not know that any expenses were paid to any person except such as might be called out-of-pocket expenses. I think this item of £100 was for actual expenditure paid to the servants of the Commission for actual out-of-pocket expenses. No fees were paid to members of the Commission, to my knowledge.
Before you put that motion I would like to ask the Postmaster-General if he can hold out any hope that before the 1st December the Postal Commission will have finished its work, and that this Dáil will be in possession of its findings.
It would be impossible to say at the moment if the Commission will terminate before 1st December. The material through which it will find it necessary to wade is of a very intricate and of a very highly technical character, so that it would be injudicious, and I think also unfair, not only to the service but to the public, to rush it. I can assure the Deputy no time is being lost in pushing forward the Commission.
Motion made and question put: "That the Dáil in Committee, having considered the Estimates for Temporary Commissions in 1922-23, and having passed a Vote on Account of £2,500 for the period to the 6th December, 1922, recommend that the full Estimate of £5,000 for the financial year 1922-23 be adopted in due course by the Oireachtas."
Agreed.