I would like to say a few words on the point raised by Deputy Corish, because I have some special, intimate knowledge of the state of affairs that existed in the Local Government sphere in the year 1920. The position of rate collectors throughout the country, after the break with the British Local Government Board, was an extremely difficult one, and one that I had considerable sympathy with, although, in the position I occupied at the time, I could not give rein to that sympathy. Here were men who had entered into bonds, men who had gone to their friends and neighbours and asked them to stand as their securities, and because a political movement arose in the country advocating a certain course, with which they might or might not be personally in agreement, they were invited by their local authorities to act in a manner contrary to the bonds into which they had entered, and contrary to the law as it stood, without any real confidence that that law and the authority behind it would ultimately be upset and overwhelmed. Now, naturally we brought considerable pressure, amounting almost to compulsion, on these people. Naturally we fulminated against them, against their treachery and disloyalty, and against their unpatriotic conduct, and so on. But all the time anyone with a real grasp of the situation knew that from the human point of view these men were in a serious predicament. Some of them may not have been thinking entirely of themselves. They were probably thinking a good deal of those who had been so good to them as to become their sureties. And while a man might be willing to incur considerable loss himself, he is less willing to involve in loss people who had befriended him.
That was the situation, and that was the position of the rate collectors, and most of the rate collectors through the country gave trouble. Most of them hung back in dismay at this extra-legal course which they were expected to take. Some of them were dismissed, until we found that it was bad business to dismiss them. We found the following week in the local papers a notice from the Local Government Board warning the people against paying to the new rate collectors, and pointing out to them that they might find themselves in the position of having to pay again to a duly and legally appointed rate collector. A good many anomalies cropped up in the course of that struggle and a good many points of friction arose. But it does not become us, who, after all, won that struggle, to try and go back now and in any way victimise or in any way lean against the people with whom we had differences. And now at any rate, if not then when the strife was on, we should realise that these men were placed in a very difficult position indeed, and we should realise that not all the country was Sinn Fein, not all the country approved of the course that we were taking, and that the rate collector as much as anyone else was entitled to his individual views. There was the further fact of his bond, the consideration which he ought to have for his sureties. That is his side of the thing, and I am putting it because the other side has been put so strongly by Deputy Corish. I am putting it also because I cannot be expected to have any considerable amount of sympathy with these people who are causing the President and myself, in the position we held then, the utmost embarrassment.
I take it that Deputy Corish is speaking from a brief, from the point of view of his own particular Local Authority, which is in danger of being mulcted to compensate people who, as he would put it, and the members of his Local Authority would put it, let them down in the past. That would be a matter which I suggest Deputy Corish should take up with the Minister for Local Government. But I stand for this that either by the Local Authority or the Central Authority those men should be compensated, and there should be no victimisation now, and no leaning against these men now. They were simply the victims of circumstances. They had their own views at the time. But we won that struggle, and we should not be ungenerous now, and advocate or give any countenance to a policy of vac victis.
