Deputy Johnson's point is one with which I have the greatest possible sympathy, and one which I raised somewhat unavailingly in a different form with the President when I discussed with him the personnel which he suggested to me he was going to put on the Committee. I fully appreciate the point, but I was prepared, seduced by the promise to get a verbatim report of the thing down in black and white, to come and sit before any Inquiry or any Committee set up by the Executive Council. That was my position. I was prepared to go and see what evidence could be put before a committee composed as the President has suggested. I find myself unable at the present moment to comment on my attitude. If the President forces the matter, I find myself so anxious to get things in black and white, that I would go before a committee consisting of a representative of the Farmers and a representative of the Independent Party and any other nominees of the President of the Executive Council. That is a decision actuated more by a certain amount of desperation than by any judgment on my part. I do feel, in the circumstances, that I would be prepared to do as I have said. I am prepared to waive the point that evidence should be on oath. I am prepared to waive the point that witnesses should be compelled to come and give evidence, in order to see the nature of the evidence in black and white, and in order to give myself and the officers concerned in this inquiry an opportunity of putting down in black and white what we desire to put down. The position now is a very difficult one. We heard on yesterday week the voice of an Executive Minister shooting across the Dáil and saying, when challenged on a point of responsibility, "Take a vote on it." We thoroughly realised the implication of that particular cry. The implication of it was that if persons here had any touch of the rashness that the members of the Executive Council had when they swept away the heads of administration from the top of the Army— if there was anybody here as rash as, without any serious thought, to challenge the Executive Council here in the Dáil, and, say, take away the Executive Council, they could face the position of putting up another Executive Council.
I do feel that we are in a position now in which the Executive Council say that they cannot give the committee of a certain kind, and more particularly that they cannot extend the Terms of Reference. I heard the same voice crossing the Dáil with the same implications and saying, "Try a vote on it." Very extraordinary things have happened, and matters involving the confidence of the people and the confidence of the Dáil in the Executive Council have arisen and I would seriously ask the Executive Council to consider it, too, and to say whether, in the circumstances that have been created, that they cannot, both in the matter of extending the Terms of Reference of the inquiry, and in extending the nature of the Committee, meet the Dáil. In the particular circumstances of the present occasion I regret that they cannot be induced to meet the wishes of the Dáil as a whole in the matter of this Inquiry. Now I say very extraordinary things have happened. I do not want to touch on the fact that the administrative hands have been taken away from the head of the Army, the hands that have held the Army administration during the past two or more years, or perhaps more. I am satisfied that what I said of the Army was right, and that the Army will carry on. I do not want to have my tongue wagging about things that at present are purely Army matters. There has also happened this —three officers have been taken away— officers who had served the State during critical times, officers who occupied an extraordinary position, say, twelve or eighteen months ago, when the whole fabric of the State here was pretty well shaken. To-day they are looking for employment. As a matter of fact, they are looking urgently for employment. Their period of service was terminated without a day's notice on the 19th March, and at the end of March they received cheques paying them up to the 19th March, with deductions for income tax, that makes the matter of finding employment more urgent. I am only aware of the case with regard to one officer. His employment was terminated the 19th March, and two days ago he received a cheque paying him, to be accurate, £15 19s. 3d., and a notification that £87 15s. had been stopped for income tax. As I say, the matter of his employment is an urgent one. These officers go to the employment market, seeking employment, and their characters have been broadcasted to all prospective employers. They go with the broadcasted certificate from the Minister, in whom employers have confidence the Minister for Education. He has broadcasted the warning that so far as the prospective employers are concerned, there are as good fish in the sea as any of these three officers are likely to be. He put it that they were people who have a touch of chieftaincy about them, and that they have a certain tendency to find that they have certain proprietary rights in places where they ought not. The person whom prospective employers regard as being a person who soon will be called the Minister for Justice has had broadcasted to them that men with the experience and judgment of the Executive Ministers had come to the decision that these men had been too long in their position, that they were men who did not keep in the Army an impersonal discipline; that they were the water that had passed under the mill; that they were persons who had done all the useful work they were capable of doing, and that some of them suffered from incurable unpopularity. The Minister for External Affairs, who would take a high and wide view of things had to say of them that they had not realised his high hopes, that they had not turned out a model army, and that even ordinary members of An Dáil, with certain and well-earned reputations for commonsense and judgment, had allowed themselves to be drawn into giving them the character that to a certain extent they wanted to be a law unto themselves. They go on the employment market with characters like that, and with the knowledge that the Irregulars and the Irregular Organisation of the country look on them as members of the Army Council who Army Councilled the Irregular movement to what it is to-day, and with the knowledge that the new type of opposition that has raised itself up against the Government on important points of policy regards them as the Army Council that they asked to get rid of. These officers who have served the State as much as these officers have served it, are put in that position to-day by the Executive Council. The confidence of the country is, to some extent at any rate, undermined in the Executive Council because of actions like that, by refusing now to give an inquiry that will give any reason, apart altogether from satisfaction, to anybody as to why these three officers were removed from their positions in the Army. Opportunity has been taken here in the Dáil to criticise and to make charges, and to throw, I may say, into a certain political place these three officers, so that if they were shown to be very, very grievously wrong in the statements that have been made here, it could quite easily be argued by the ordinary person in the street and the ordinary person in the Dáil, that because these officers had become the subject of so much noise, so much talk, and so much suspicion, whether it was founded or not, there was good reason of public policy why they should not be returned to the Army or to the positions from which they were taken by the Executive Council. The attitude taken up with regard to this inquiry is an attitude that undermines the confidence of the country in the Executive Council, and we are put in the position that we cannot get satisfaction by an inquiry without having a voice coming across the Dáil from the Executive benches with its implications, "Try a vote on it." It is a very difficult position both for me and for the ordinary Deputies of the Dáil to find ourselves in. I question very much whether I would be justified in trying a vote, or whether a member of any Party in the Dáil would be justified in trying a vote with the Executive Council on that matter, because the Deputies are not in a happy position. It has been put by the members of the Executive Council that three of the officers who had been removed and myself are a kind of Fee-Fah-Fum Society, and that is all you know about it. It would not be reasonable and it would not be just to the country that either I or any Deputy here would take up the challenge that was thrown out by the Executive Council and take a vote on it. It is because of that, that even with the restricted Terms of Reference that the Executive Council offers, and even that persons in the Dáil feel that they could not conscientiously be associated with an inquiry, I for my part would be prepared to go into the inquiry that the President suggests, because I am satisfied that even out of that restricted and unsatisfactory inquiry a clearing of the air will come, and that the Deputies will know, at any rate they will be clear in their minds, as to whether in justice to themselves and in justice to the country they can or could take up the challenge which the Executive Council is apparently slipping again across the Dáil for the taking of a vote. I should like to bring this matter in some way to a definite conclusion one way or another, but I do not quite see how exactly it can be done. I realise the very difficult position that Deputy Johnson is in, and if the Executive Council do not see their way to move further in the matter, then I think that the next move might be with Deputy Johnson to reconsider whether he would put up or would allow a representative of the Labour Party to sit on this committee and deal with the matter as far as that committee is able to deal with it in the present circumstances.