It falls to my lot once again to ask Deputies to agree that for the adequate protection of the quiet, decent people of the country, there should be vested in the Executive powers of arrest and detention on something short of legal proof of guilt. I think that all our experience goes to show that there are times when general principles, very sound, very healthy, and apparently fundamental, must yield to special cases, and it is on the ground of special cases and of a special set of circumstances that I ask the Dáil to waive that very sound and very fundamental general principle that persons ought not be arrested and ought not to be detained without full proof of guilt being put forward to the satisfaction of a court. We are all familiar, I dare say, with the oath taken by jurors, and with that portion of it which runs that the juror shall without fear, favour, affection or ill-will, proceed to do his duty as between the prisoner and the State. Unfortunately there are areas in the country where it is not humanly possible for jurors to do their duty without fear, and jurors are not supermen, demigods, invariably cast in the heroic mould. They are subject to fear, very much like other men, and the fact has been borne in on us, time and again, that in certain areas jurors are subject to so much intimidation and to so many terrorist influences that they do not and have not done their strict duty as between the accused and the State. There have been cases where jurors have acquitted prisoners in the teeth of very full and very substantial evidence of guilt. Now, theoretically, and taking the higher plane of civic duty, one may condemn that, but humanly, one can understand it, having regard to conditions which still prevail in certain areas of the country. That is one factor upon which I base the case for these extraordinary powers for the Executive.
But there is another factor, and that is the difficulty, or perhaps I should say, speaking for certain areas, the utter impossibility, of finding people of sufficient moral courage and sufficient physical courage, because physical courage is unfortunately necessary also, to come forward and give evidence against a person accused of a particular crime. There, again, taking the higher plane, one may condemn; but there again, on the human plane, one can understand. That is the second factor upon which I base this claim for special powers. Every Deputy—certainly every Deputy from the country —will know what I mean when I draw a distinction between legal proof and common knowledge. I think I know the country and country conditions, and every Deputy from the country will agree with me that there can be in a rural area a series of outrages, and every person who has come to the use of reason in that area knows the perpetrators of these outrages, and yet it would be utterly impossible to secure definite evidence which would stand fire in a court as to the guilt of those persons. It is that kind of situation that we have to deal with, and it is because of that kind of situation that I say that certain general principles, sound, no doubt, healthy, no doubt, in normal times fundamental, must be waived in favour of this special case which I contend exists.
The objection that will be urged mentally, if not verbally, against the Bill, is that it is not seasonable; that it is not seasonable to come before the Parliament of a nation with a Bill that might, in a flight of language, be called a Coercion Bill, just at this time. Unfortunately the criminal takes no Christmas holidays, and it so happens that the nights are longest and the days are shortest in and about the Christmas season, and that is my excuse for coming at this particular time with a Bill which enables the Executive which has the responsibility of giving protection to life and property in this country to deal with persons reasonably suspect of serious crimes.
It is not a Bill framed to deal with persons of any particular political section in the community. Crime has not been the monopoly of any particular political party, and I make a present of that to the man who pressed the button for anarchy, to the man who pressed the button for a crime wave unprecedented in this country, I make a present of that to the man who is now reading Einstein in Arbour Hill. People who live in cities, and people who live in the Capital, are near the seat of Government, and are near the headquarters of the police and military arms of the State. They have their well-lit streets and their patrols, but I ask Deputies to concentrate on the lot of the person who lives in an out of the way rural district, where conditions are less difficult for the prospective criminal.
In moving a similar Bill some months ago, I stressed the fact that Deputies, Senators and Ministers, and other important persons like that, had guards in their houses when the situation seemed to require it, but the plain, decent people of the country have no guard unless the law, and the sanctions of the law, are adequate for their protection. I contend that a situation still exists in this country, in parts of this country at any rate, which makes it necessary to vest in the Executive the power of arresting and detaining known blackguards against whom there is not definite evidence in connection with a specific offence. That is the thesis I put forward, and that is the ground on which we take our stand in presenting this Bill for the approval of the Oireachtas.
I have before me the confidential monthly report presented by the Commissioner of the Civic Guard. I do not intend to quote at any length, or in detail, from that report, but in the covering letter forwarding it there is this statement: "The conditions prevailing in the Counties Leitrim, Kerry, Cork East Riding, Cork West Riding, Tipperary, Galway, and certain parts of Kilkenny are unsatisfactory. In Clare, Leix and Monaghan the conditions are still unsatisfactory, but in a lesser degree. There has been a marked improvement in Donegal, Dublin, Kildare. Wicklow, Meath, Westmeath and Wexford." If throughout this country a state of conditions prevailed similar to the conditions which prevail in Meath, Kildare, perhaps even in Carlow and in Louth, and so on, we would not feel justified in asking the Dáil for a continuance of the special powers vested in the Executive which expire on the 1st February next. But that is not the situation. You have still a very patchy situation in the country, and certain very dangerous and very explosive material literally and figuratively lying around in certain of the counties, perhaps six or seven, and unfortunately these would be six or seven of the largest counties in the State.
We feel that we cannot give to the citizens the protection and security to which, as taxpayers, they are entitled, and to which as citizens they are entitled, unless Deputies agree with us in facing the realities of the situation, and in taking the view that there must be the power of detention on something short of that very full and very complete proof which would satisfy a Court.
This Bill deals only with internment. With regard to other portions of the Public Safety Bill, these will be covered in other Bills. I propose to introduce a permanent Firearms Bill in the coming session, and a Criminal Law Amendment Bill, but the Bill which I am asking Deputies to give favourable consideration to now confines itself to this question of arrest and detention without trial. It will be noted, in Section 2 of the Bill, that the grounds of detention are not identical with those in the previous Bill, the Public Safety Act, but are confined to this: Reasonable suspicion of being, or of having been, engaged or concerned in the commission of any of the offences mentioned in the Schedule to the Act. The Schedule sets out 15 specific offences, and the arrest and detention of any person must take place with advertence to, and with mention of, some one or more of these offences. Section 3 of the Bill deals with persons at present in military custody.
Deputies are aware that the policy of the Government is one of release as quickly as the consideration of public safety admits. Releases were held up and delayed for a period of a month by reason of the hunger strike and since that hunger strike they have proceeded at a rather rapid rate. No one wants to keep young men locked up, living parasitically on their countrymen, costing in or about £1 per man per week, if one could feel that these men, now at any rate, recognised and accepted the principle of order which lays it down that the policy to be pursued by the country, the line of action to be pursued by the community, must be that policy or that line which commends itself to the collective judgment of their fellow citizens. That is what is asked, and not any abandonment of a particular political creed or doctrine or principle, but a recognition that the country's policy must be decided by the mass wisdom, or unwisdom, of the people of the country.
Deputies know that people who profess to be unable to bring their proud souls under to the settlement or compromise at which we have arrived with the British were able in the past to bring their proud souls under to British occupation, to British administration of this country, and to bring not only their proud souls but their proud bodies under the bed when the British were "rampaging" through the country. That is aggravating. But there is recognition of the fact that there is a tendency in most men to run amok when they think that the sun is shining for the law breaker. When the spectacle was presented of a country without the ordinary executive forces which a normal established State can command, and of the Government of the country being vested in nine young men in the City Hall without a police force, without a system of justice, without an army, any more than that loose-slung territorial force with which we contended against the British, they thought that such an opportunity had come, and they were assisted in that thought by the message which told them that the country was theirs for the taking. And so we have had anarchy, crime, lawlessness, people out to pass their Private Bills with their strong hand and the little gun in it; people out to trample roughshod over the rights of their fellow-citizens. That situation gradually, and slowly no doubt, but as quickly as the circumstances permitted, was grappled with and choked under in the only way in which revolt and anarchy can be grappled with or choked under in any country.
Now has come a period of pause, a period of reflection, a period in which men may take stock again of the situation and decide what line they are going to pursue in the future. We will not be behind in facilitating people to take the line of decency, the line of ordinary normal constitutional action. We will not be behind in affording to these people an opportunity of preaching their policy as any other party in the State preaches its policy. But they will get the opportunity and the consideration that any other party in this State will get, neither more nor less. We will not have two Governments in this country, and we will not have two armies in this country. If people have a creed to preach, a message to expound, they can go before their fellow-citizens and preach and expound it. But let the appeal be to the mind, to reason, rather than to physical fear. They cannot have it both ways. They cannot have the platform and the bomb. Lately a gentleman named Ruttledge, acting in the unavoidable absence of the gentleman who is reading Einstein in Arbour Hill, writes:—
"The Free State Executive are engaged in attempting to raise a loan in portions of this country. This loan is of the utmost importance to them because of the use they intend to make of its success. The Government has already issued a proclamation refusing to accept any responsibility for this or any other liability contracted by such a body. In view of the attempts being made to stampede the small investors, particularly, to participate in this loan, all members of Sinn Fein should endeavour to save such people from sinking their savings in such an unauthorised flotation and thereby incurring subsequent loss."
There is reason in everything, but it is not reasonable to expect this Executive to countenance, or authorise, a rival Government within its territory or jurisdiction, and no such rival Government will be countenanced. We are aware that there are people playing the picturesque traditional role of "Ned of the Hill" around the country at present, living parasitically on their neighbours, on the plea that the military are after them. These people know well, and their friends probably know well, that they could and should return to their plough, or to whatever other normal occupation they pursued, and before they developed or degenerated into "Neds of the Hill."
We will not be forced into the position of granting anything in the nature of an amnesty for serious crime of which proof can be produced. We do not propose to amnesty bank robbers, arsoneers, murderers. But the ordinary poor "mug"—if Deputies will excuse the expression—who was stampeded into this thing, when crime was presented to him, wrapped around with the picturesque tricolour, when crime was presented in the wrappings of idealism, who was led astray in that way and who has not committed himself to the serious extent of murder, or arson, or bank robbery, or some heinous offence of that kind, but merely drifted around the country playing the ass for the last two years, can return to his home with a very reasonable security that no one is going after him if he decides to live in accordance with the law of this country in the future, and to respect the ordinary fundamental rights of his neighbour.
But we cannot simply cast our bread upon the waters by throwing open with a quixotic gesture the prison and camp gates, and saying to all these men who have been challenging not alone the fabric of the State, but the rights of their neighbours for the last two years: "Go in peace, your crimes are forgiven." We did cast a certain amount of bread, as I remarked some time ago, in the early months of last year. We were quixotic. We put lethal weapons into the hands of men who professed to be personally opposed to the settlement with Great Britain, in the hope and confidence that they were really of too fine a mould to turn those arms against their fellow-citizens, or use their power to prevent the majority will prevailing in the country. We were disappointed. We cannot now turn out from the gaols and camps dangerous, desperate men, who would proceed again to challenge the State which has not yet recovered from the onslaught of the last two years. We cannot, before we are quite sure that we have our foundations laid, and that those foundations are staid, and that our Executive forces and the machinery of our administration of the country will be able to deal with any situation that may arise, take that risk, and if we did take it, we would not be performing our duty to the people who have placed us in the positions that we now hold. Releases will proceed gradually, and judiciously. We do not desire to hold any of these men for one half hour longer than we think the public safety requires.
What is the public safety? I grant you that it is a vague term. I grant you that it is nebulous. Whatever it is, we are the body of men, commissioned by the people of the country, to decide where it lies; we of the Executive Council, in the first instance, and the Deputies in the Dáil in the second instance.
Coming before the Dáil with the knowledge at our disposal, with the reports that are in our offices, we say that in parts of the country, in certain rather large areas, conditions are still such that we cannot rely on the ordinary normal machinery by which an established State deals with crime.
We cannot be reasonably confident of procuring evidence in all cases, and, moreover, conditions are still such, in certain areas, that jurors are subject to intimidation, and subject to terrorist influences. What, after all, is our conception of a trial? Twelve citizens of the community, impartial, impersonal, with no influence of any kind affecting them, are to hear the facts, and, with the assistance of the presiding Judge, decide for or against the prisoner who stands charged by the State. That is the normal ideal position. Deputies know that jurors driving in ten or twelve miles to the city of Cork to try some man for armed robbery, arson, or some such offence, are not just in that position. Deputies know that these men, when the trial ends, when and if sentence is passed on the guilty man, have to turn round and drive back from Cork City to their homes, in perhaps isolated areas, where armed gangs still operate, and where the writ of the gunman runs. Now, this Bill is based on reality. It is based on a common-sense appreciation of the position in the country, in certain areas, of which Deputies must be aware. I put it to Deputies that their responsibilities to the people lie in facing the facts presented to them, and in passing this Bill, not with gusto, not with any particular zeal for passing a measure which admittedly offends against certain general principles which ought to obtain if we had a normal ideal situation in the country, but as a necessary measure for the discharge of their stewardship to the people to whom they are responsible. It is not a popular Bill, but it is a just Bill, an honest Bill, and some of us did not come into politics for popularity. I move that the Bill be read a second time.
