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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 12 Oct 1927

Vol. 21 No. 2

NOMINATION OF MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL.

I have to announce that I have advised His Excellency the Governor-General of my nomination as President of the Executive Council, and I have received my appointment accordingly.

I now beg to move the following motion:—

Go n-aontuighidh an Dáil le hainmniúchán na dTeachtaí seo leanas mar Airí, chun bheith ina mbaill den Ard-Chomhairle, agus i gceannas na Ranna atá ainmnithe anso síos:—

Earnán de Blaghd, Leas-Uachtarán, i gceannas na Roinne Airgid agus na Roinne Puist agus Telegráfa.

Deasmhumhain Mac Gearailt, i gceannas na Roinne Cosanta.

Seán O Súilleabháin, i gceannas na Roinne Oideachais.

Pádraig Mac Giollagáin, i gceannas na Roinne Tionnscail agus Tráchtála, agus na Roinne Gnóthaí Coigriche.

Pádraig O hOgáin (Gallimh) i gceannas na Roinne Tailte agus Talmhaíochta.

Fionán O Loingsigh, i gceannas na Roinne Iascaigh.

Risteárd Ua Maolchatha, i gceannas na Roinne Rialtais Aitiúla agus Sláinte Puiblí.

Séumas Mac Gearailt-O Cionnaoith, i gceannas na Roinne Dlí agus Cirt.

That the Dáil assents to the nomination of the following Deputies as Ministers, to be members of the Executive Council, and in charge of the Departments named hereunder:—

Deputy Ernest Blythe, Vice-President, in charge of the Department of Finance and the Department of Posts and Telegraphs.

Deputy Desmond Fitzgerald, in charge of the Department of Defence.

Deputy J.M. O'Sullivan, in charge of the Department of Education.

Deputy Patrick McGilligan, in charge of the Department of Industry and Commerce, and the Department of External Affairs.

Deputy Patrick Hogan (Galway), in charge of the Department of Lands and Agriculture.

Deputy Finian Lynch, in charge of the Department of Fisheries.

Deputy Richard Mulcahy, in charge of the Department of Local Government and Public Health.

Deputy James Fitzgerald-Kenney, in charge of the Department of Justice.

I propose to set up an Executive Council consisting of eight members together with myself. The only changes proposed are that Deputy Blythe will take the Department of Posts and Telegraphs in addition to the Department of Finance; Deputy McGilligan will take the Department of External Affairs with the Department of Industry and Commerce, and Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney will become Minister for Justice. It is my intention that Deputy Blythe should be given the assistance of a Parliamentary Secretary for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, and that Deputy McGilligan should have a Parliamentary Secretary to assist him with the Department of Industry and Commerce. There are, in addition, to be three other Parliamentary Secretaries, one connected with the Department of Finance for the Board of Works and the Stationery Office; one connected with the Department of Fisheries, to which is attached the Department of Lands, and one for the Office of the President of the Executive Council.

I take it the names before us must be spoken to as a whole and that we cannot object to them individually or, at least, we will not be allowed to vote against individual nominations. I want to raise again the objections which I raised in June last against the nomination of Deputy McGilligan for the Department of Industry and Commerce. Dealing with a matter such as this it is hardly possible to avoid being personal, and I shall try to be personal without being offensive in any way. I certainly believe, from my experience and from the experience which this Party has had of that Minister's administration during the past few years, that there is no Deputy in this House belonging to any Party more unfitted to be the head of that particular Department. I have very little doubt that Deputy McGilligan would be fitted to act as the head of any of the other Departments set out in the President's motion, but I do contend that he has never shown he has the least grasp of the position in the country from the point of view of a Minister for Industry and Commerce. He has never shown that, and he has never attempted to deal with the economic position in the country; he certainly has never attempted to deal with the unemployment question. Attempts have been made to deal with it in a piece-meal fashion, but there have not been any schemes started for which it could be claimed that they were likely to give what we might term permanent employment. I do not want to stress that particular aspect so much as this, that the Minister apparently does not understand the situation. The Minister has never approached the question of unemployment from the humane point of view.

It was Deputy McGilligan, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, who made the statement in this House, in reply to me, that it was not the function of his Department or the Government to find work for the unemployed. On that statement alone I say he is not the proper person to be appointed to this position. It is suggested that Deputy McGilligan should have charge not only of the Department of Industry and Commerce but of the Department of External Affairs. Does the President believe that the Minister has worked the Department of Industry and Commerce so satisfactorily and has so much time at his disposal that he is able to undertake the work of the Department of External Affairs? I do not believe he has. I believe the Minister has been compelled to give so much of his time to the Shannon Scheme for the last couple of years that other aspects of his administration have been neglected and ignored. I think the House will agree that a Department like Industry and Commerce—to my mind, the most important Department in the State — should be under the control of one man, and it should be, so to speak, a full-time job.

So far as I know, the Minister has never even attempted to get for the House or the country the actual numbers of unemployed. We are told by the Minister that there are fifteen, twenty or twenty-five thousand registered as unemployed, but those of us who know anything at all about labour conditions in this country realise quite well that those figures are not accurate and do not represent much more than a quarter of the actual number of unemployed. I wonder is the Minister, or are Deputies of the House, aware that there are 90,000 people at present taking advantage under the National Health Insurance Scheme of the Pro longation Act? In other words, 90,000 people are being kept in insurance although they have no stamps to their credit. I suggest that figure is much nearer the true number of unemployed than the figures given by the Minister.

We have been told in the House by the Minister, and we have been told outside on platforms, that eighty or ninety new industries have been started within the last few years. We are asked to believe that because of that the numbers of unemployed have been reduced. The Department apparently has been able to ascertain the numbers of new industries started but they certainly have not given to the country the numbers of industries that have been wiped out during the last three or four years. I submit that more people have lost employment as a result of industries being forced to close down than have found employment as a result of the industries which have been started. The one scheme — I want to give the Government and not so much the Minister's Department all credit for it — that has given at least employment of a temporary nature to those who were mostly in need of employment was the Road Scheme, for which £2,000,000 were raised last year. I want to remind the House that most of the money advanced for that scheme is nearly expended, and most of these men who were employed for the last five or six months will be unemployed during the coming winter.

We require in this position a man who has some real regard for the people who are and who will be during the coming winter faced with starvation. We want as the head of this Department a man who understands the position of the poor, a man who will look at things from the human point of view, a man who will realise that it is the duty of his Department and of this Government and the Dáil to see that any citizen in the State who cannot find work shall, with those dependent on him, have at least sufficient food and clothing to keep them alive until work is found. That is the demand we make. That is the demand Deputy McGilligan has refused to agree to or even to consider. I say this House will be doing a great wrong to a large number of the citizens of this country if they put back into this position a Deputy who has stated and reiterated that it is not the duty of the Department or the Government with which he is connected to find work for many who are on the verge of starvation. If I have no other way of registering a protest, I shall certainly vote against the President's motion. The objections of the Labour Party, the poor and the unemployed are so great that we have no other option left us. I hope the House will say here and now that if there are men prepared to work and anxious to get work, but who cannot get work, there must be a Minister who will see they are not left hungry.

Ba mhaith liom fios a fhail cad 'na thaobh ná fuilimid ábalta guth a thabhairt ar gach Aireacht no Aire? Cad 'na thaobh ná fuil ach aon tairsgint amháin os ár gcóir?

Cuirtear ceist orm cad 'na thaobh ná fuil romhainn ach aon tairsgint amhain agus ná fuil cead ag na teachtaí guthanna do thabhairt ar gach Aire—'na nduine is 'na nduine. Tá an Ard-Chomhairle á hainmniú anso agus isé an nós atá againn ná an Ard-Chomhairle do chur in aon dream amháin os cóir na Dála. Aon dream amháin daoine isea iad maidir le húdarás agus gníomhuíonn siad in eineacht.

The question has been raised as to why it is necessary that this motion should be voted on as it stands, and why Deputies should not have an opportunity of voting on each Minister individually. What is being here nominated is the Executive Council as one body which has collective responsibility and which is in itself a unit. It has been the practice that when a motion of this kind is made it is voted upon in this way. The whole Council is proposed by the President as a group of people with whom he proposes to share collective responsibility. The motion is, therefore, to be voted upon as one.

Tá brón orm nách féidir liom aontú leat. Ba mhaith liom fios d'fháil cathain a bhí sé sin socruithe?

I understand the ruling you have given, but I would like to know on what occasion a decision was taken on that question? Looking at the Constitution as it stands, it seems that the abvious intention was to give the House an opportunity of exercising the right of veto over any individual that might be chosen by the President as a member of the Executive Council. I am sorry to say that those of us who are on those benches here must object to that ruling.

The Constitution itself provides for it. The Constitution as passed at first provided for an Executive Council of not more than seven members, which almost perforce meant that there would be external Ministers, each of whom would be personally and individually responsible to the Dáil. The procedure then was that the Executive Council was put as a body and the External Ministers were put singly. The present position, under the Constitution as amended, is that the number of Executive Ministers may be as great as twelve and the same reasoning as before applies. I regret the Deputy does not agree with the ruling, but, of course, it is clear that when a ruling is given there is no alternative but to take that ruling.

Have we any redress in cases of that kind? Our interpretation of the Constitution and the obvious intentions of it are not the same as given by the Chair.

It is not a question of the Constitution but of parliamentary practice, which is to put this motion in the way in which it has been put. If the Chair rules upon that I am afraid there is no redress. I do not know of any scheme to provide for redress.

I think it is a matter of very great importance and concerns the rights of the Deputies. It is clearly not fair that we should be given a block of members and asked to take the whole lot or to leave them. I think the obvious intention of the Article of the Constitution was that when an Executive was being chosen each individual member should go up for ratification so as to be assented to by the Dáil.

Will the Deputy refer me to the Article of the Constitution?

Airtiogal 53. "Ceapfar Uachtarán na hArd-Chomhairle ar ainnmiú Dháil Eireann."

This is the practice which has been followed, and all I can say is that it seems to me, considering the nature of the Executive Council, to be the correct practice. The President has been nominated and he has chosen a body of persons who will share with him the responsibility. He puts before the Dáil the group of people who are the people with whom he is prepared to work. The procedure that has been followed is a sensible procedure. The motion before the Chair is a collective motion including those people named by the President. Therefore, that list must be voted on in that way.

Má chuireann tú mar sin é.

Ní féidir liom é a chur ar aon chuma eile.

Dá mbeadh duine eile sa chathaoir bhfeidir nách é sin an chuma ina gcuirfí é. We intend objecting on every occasion that this comes up and to take what action we can to change the procedure. We do not agree that parliamentary practice can override the Constitution.

Arising out of this question, you said that the Constitution had been interpreted in accordance with this ruling. I understood that it had been the custom in the Dáil so far as possible to follow the precedent that had been created in the Dáil of the Republic. I know that that was the custom in the Provisional Parliament. On the 9th of September, 1922, the President of the Executive Council and the Ceann Comhairle were elected as they were here yesterday, but the individual Ministers of the Executive Council were nominated separately and submitted as individuals for ratification. I suggest that that is the precedent that ought to govern your interpretation of Article 53 of the Constitution.

I am not interpreting the Article of the Constitution. I am simply stating what the precedent is here and what has been followed since the Constitution came into effect. I want to comment on one remark that has been made. It has been stated that if somebody else were in the Chair this is not the kind of motion that would be before us. I suggest to Deputy de Valera that that is a kind of truism—when you have a particular individual in the Chair he rules according to his lights and according to his capacity, and it is always true to say that if a different person had been in the Chair a different ruling might have been given. There would be unanimity on that point. This is not a question of the Constitution, but a question of how we propose to do our own business. This is the way we did it heretofore, and, personally, I do not see any reason for altering it. If a Standing Order is made it can be altered. If the House wanas to alter it, it can. The House is complete master of its own business and its own method of procedure. The method of procedure now being followed is the method that has been followed since the Constitution came into force.

An féidir na Buan-Orduithe d'athrú anois?

Ní féidir. The Standing Orders cannot be altered without notice. But again, just as it was true to say that if somebody else were in the Chair he might rule something else, it is just as true to say that when you find something you do not like you have to wait until the next occasion to change the Standing Orders. The Standing Orders can be changed; there is no question about that.

There are just a few matters that I would like to have cleared up before this motion is put. I am surprised at the hesitancy exhibited on both sides of the House to grapple with the real facts of this question. It is rather surprising that we are asked, for instance, to vote on this motion which is setting up the Executive Council for the State without any attempt being made to tell us what the policy of this Executive Council and this Government is going to be. And they may be matters that concern the whole State. It was a rather extraordinary thing we had yesterday. We had simply a proposition for the nomination of the President, and neither from the President nor from the proposer did we get any indication of what the policy was to be, nor of any change in the policy. There are a few matters that come to my mind that I would like some enlightenment on.

There is, for instance, the question of protection which agitates the minds of many people. Have we any indication from the Ministry, or shall we have any indication before we are asked to vote on this motion, as to their policy on that matter? I believe that there was a statement of policy issued by Cumann na nGaedheal before the election in which they stated that they were frankly a protectionist party. Do we take it that this Ministry, which is now before us for election, and the party to which it belongs are still frankly a protectionist party? If that is the case, will they tell us that they have converted such an apparently strong free trader as Deputy Cooper, according to the speeches which he made upon the various matters arising out of the Finance Bills? Above all, will they tell us—that is, if we are to regard this morning's newspapers as correct —that they have succeeded in converting Deputy Heffernan? I would like to hear something from the Ministerial Benches with regard to that matter—whether they are frankly, as we are to take it, a protectionist party and whether they can speak for all their party when they make statements of that kind.

As Deputy Morrissey has so pointedly mentioned, we have had no statement on these matters and it looked as if we were not to have a reply to the arguments of Deputy Morrissey and that if I had not intervened we would have no statement. Are we to have no statement as to the Government's policy with regard to unemployment, the biggest of all the problems that face the country? Are we to have no statement with regard to their agricultural policy and as to what they propose to do for agriculture in its present state of depression? Above all things, are we going to have no statement before we cast our vote on this motion as to their policy with regard to the Public Safety Act?

Would it change your policy or your vote?

Mr. O'CONNELL

It might, very conceivably. I am always open to conviction and argument. A colleague reminds me that I am more in danger of conviction than I was before the Public Safety Act was passed. Seriously, I think it is up to the President, or some of his Ministers, and it is due to this House, to say whether the President stands by the statement which he made in Cork, namely, that if they were returned to power they would put the Public Safety Act into full operation. I re-echo the statement made by Deputy Lemass yesterday when he said that, if that is to be the case, we are not faced with a period of peace, progress, and reconciliation. We are asked to appoint to the Ministry of Justice a Deputy whose Parliamentary experience is small. Perhaps we would get from him, if we cannot draw it from the President, a statement as to what his intentions are, if this House appoints him to that Ministry, and whether it is his intention to put the Public Safety Act into full operation, and to create, as a High Court Judge stated, a new and artificial kind of offence, the artificial offence of being a suspect. These are matters richly deserving of statements from the Ministerial Benches. Do they wish to get into office in order to be able to say afterwards: "We gave no pledges. We are not bound by any pledges"? Perhaps their experience heretofore has taught them a lesson in that direction. They made pledges and ran away from them.

A DEPUTY

What were they?

Mr. O'CONNELL

The litany would be too long to recite. The Ceann Comhairle agrees with me. Apart from these matters there are other things arising out of the motion that deserve comment. It is proposed to put the Department of Posts and Telegraphs under the Ministry of Finance and to amalgamate the Department of External Affairs with the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. I think that if there are any two Ministries that ought to be whole-time jobs they are the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. Still, these are the two selected to which other Ministries are to be tacked on. It is only an intricate way apparently of having only eight Ministers, but really having ten Ministries. If you have five Parliamentary Secretaries I do not see where the apparent saving comes in. Opportunity should have been taken of this occasion to put into operation the policy that was once announced to this House with regard to the whole problem of transport.

A suggestion was made in a Bill debated in this House a few years ago and introduced by the Labour Party, namely, the Transport and Communications Bill, in which it was proposed to take the whole problem of transport and put it into one Ministry. At present we have, at least, three Ministries dealing with that problem. The Ministry of Industry and Commerce deals with railways, the Local Government Department with roads, and the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs—or rather as it is now to be, the Ministry of Finance — with the question of postal communications. Everybody knows that transport in this country is in a regular muddle. It is getting even more complicated day by day and no attempt is being made to tackle it in a serious way. I believe that this opportunity should be availed of to co-ordinate the whole transport services and to put them in charge of one Department or Ministry. There is another aspect of this case that may be mentioned. When the Constitution was enacted it was the intention at that time to have certain Ministries under the charge of Ministers who would not be members of the Executive Council. The proposal here is that all Ministers will be members of the Executive Council and will be collectively responsible for general policy as well as for the policy of their various Departments.

It is held by some members on the Government benches that this idea of extern Ministers has been tried and found wanting. We hold the experiment has never got a fair chance, because although we had ostensibly extern Ministers they were never such in the sense that was intended by the Constitution. They were all the time under the control of the Executive Council, and for all practical purposes were members of the Government, and were spoken of as members of the Government. Now, we have a party proposing to take control of all Ministries, although that party consists of only two-fifths of the members of this House. I think there is now more than ever a good case for having some of the Ministries put in charge of people who would in the sense intended by the Constitution be directly responsible to this House and not to the Executive Council, and I might go further, and say not even to the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. The Dáil should have the opportunity of electing Ministers who would be extern in the sense intended by the Constitution, and be directly responsible to this House for the management of their Departments.

For my part, as regards this motion before the House I would make as a test whether I should vote against it or not a statement as to what the Government proposes to do with the Public Safety Act. I have no doubt whatever in the matter that while that Act is on the statute book it is a danger to the State. I would put it to the Ministers that they might look at it from this point of view, that the Ministers do not know when they are going out of office, and for their sake I would be glad to have that Act removed from the statute book before they go out of office, for it will be a terrible temptation to their successors. It has been said that no law-abiding citizen need fear it. Innocent law-abiding Deputies on my right say "hear, hear." We all know the provisions of the Act. One of my colleagues has remarked that the Deputies who have said "hear, hear" have not perhaps studied the Act as well as they might. I do not wish to put before a Superintendent of the Civic Guards the temptation which is held out to him in certain sections of that Act. I think there is in those sections a temptation that ought not to be put in the way of a superintendent. I do not wish to put it stronger than that. I do not mean to make any suggestions as to what Civic Guards might do in certain circumstances, but it is not right that these temptations should be put in their way, giving them the power of arresting people and depriving them of their liberty on the mere suspicion of what a particular individual is about to do. I hope the rather strange and unaccountable silence we have experienced both yesterday and to-day will be broken by somebody on the front bench who is in a position to tell us, before we are asked to vote and trust to what may come afterwards, what the policy of the Ministry is on these very important questions which are ripe for solution.

May I intervene for a moment? I did not anticipate such a splendid exhibition of political modesty as we have had. I would have intervened to answer what Deputy Morrissey had said, but it was my impression that the debate had not concluded. It is, unfortunately, my responsibility. The Ministers whom I have nominated will not answer for the Departments concerned. I propose to answer at the conclusion of the discussion.

Mr. O'CONNELL

I would not have got up but I saw the Ceann Comhairle rising to put the question.

I oppose the nominations that have been made by the President, with particular reference to the Department of Justice. We are aware of the numerous Acts that have been passed through the Department of Justice, and we are particularly aware of the most recent Act, which shows a partial administration of justice, or a party administration of justice, by the Ministry of Justice, or should I say injustice? I refer to the Public Safety Act. That Act out-Herods any partial or coercionary measure that has been introduced into this House at any time in the period when we had partial and coercionary administration. Under that Act powers have been vested in the group, as it has been called by you, sir, that has been nominated by the President to declare what shall or shall not be an unlawful association. It does not rest with this House, which has no veto and no power to restrain or curb them. Of course, it will be said the Act is only directed against assassins, and so on, but I find in that group one who has openly proclaimed that on this side of the House is the party of assassination, and no attempt has been made to explain that statement. The Public Safety Act followed on that statement which was made by a member of the group now proposed for ratification by this House before the Public Safety Act became law, and indeed, after it. No matter how the Act is veiled, no matter how a smoke screen has been tried to be flung around it, it is quite clear and obvious to anybody that it is an attempt to try and secure for the Party on the opposite benches control of Government, and to wipe out of the country anything that may be national that may stand in the way. That is the objective quite clearly, and no amount of talk about assassins, and whom it was directed against, and that kind of thing, can veil the intention that was operating in the minds of the Executive Council when they drafted that Act.

Mention was made a few weeks ago by the President of an independent judiciary. I assume the President thinks he has appointed an independent judiciary. If he has, it seems strange that he cannot trust them to decide who are assassins and who are not. It seems strange that he is afraid he cannot rely on the judges he appointed to decide cases which may be called criminal or otherwise under this Act. It seems strange that he must vest in this group, now put before the House for ratification, powers to define and decide what is an unlawful association. It does not rest with this House to decide it. It does not even rest with this House to question it, and then having got that far with the dictatorship, he proceeds to hand over to the Minister for Justice complete and absolute power to expel from this country anybody he may choose. He goes farther under Sections 15 and 16 of the Act, and hands over power to Civic Guard superintendents to arrest and detain anybody on suspicion without any trial. He cannot trust the independent judiciary. They could not trust them. Perhaps they might feel if they were an independent judiciary that after all it is not because you are a political opponent that you are a criminal. They could not be trusted with that power.

I suppose it will be said that the Civic Guards are absolutely independent, absolutely impartial. We had it stated here yesterday what Civic Guard superintendents have done in Kerry. I can give plenty of other examples to any of the group opposite who want to inquire—I am sure they do not—as to acts by Civic Guard superintendents, by Civic Guards and by C.I.D. men, who, during the election, assumed the name of "stewards," and so on, who have shown themselves partial and who are people that nobody except a partial Administration would ever think of giving the powers proposed to be given under the Public Safety Act. In Castleisland and Knocknagoshel, Co. Kerry, you had a superintendent that thought it was his duty to commandeer the cars of the Fianna Fáil people in the campaign when they were going to a meeting, and that thought it his duty under the alleged impartial Administration opposite to seize the personation and other papers that were being distributed to conform with the formalities required of people doing personation work during the election. He thought it his duty also when remonstrated with to arrest people who had been forwarding the campaign in Co. Kerry on behalf of Fianna Fáil. He is one of the gentlemen to whom it is proposed to hand over the administration of certain sections of the Public Safety Act. Only a year ago — I believe it was mentioned in this House—you had one of the most brutal and atrocious crimes that could have disgraced any country committed down in Waterford, where Civic Guards took out prisoners, stripped them naked and beat them. These people will be incapacitated for their lifetime. They have suffered permanent injuries as a result of the beating. During the election I saw those "stewards" in my own constituency, or at least I have reports about them in my own constituency, going out and tearing down posters and beating the Fianna Fáil workers. I suppose they thought it their duty to do that, being the servants of the so-called impartial Administration on the other side.

I suppose it will be said by the President, as was said recently, that he is out to have no truce with crime: But the President knows that the group he is now putting up here for ratification by the Dáil have trucked with crime. I have all the facts before me and the House shall get the facts. He knows that a certain Lieutenant Larkin, of the Free State Army, who was charged and convicted of the murder of an old man, and sentenced by one of his independent judiciary to eight years, was released after eighteen months. The public, of course, did not know that. He knows that there was a Lieutenant Green, of the Free State Army, who was convicted of the murder of a prisoner, who after being sentenced to death had his sentence commuted to fifteen years' penal servitude. Of course, he was let out after two years. No truck and truce with crime! Private Lean, of the Free State Army, was convicted of the murder of a civilian in Kerry. His death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life and he was let out after two years. No truce with crime, of course! Private Gordon, of the Free State Army, was convicted of murder, sentenced to death, his sentence commuted to penal servitude for fifteen years, and he was let out after two years. Lieutenant McQuaid, of the Free State Army, similarly convicted and let out after two years. Lieutenant McNally, of the Free State Army, sentenced to seven years and let out after two years. Sergeant-Major Kiernan, of the Free State Army, for attempted murder was sentenced to ten years. A petition, I believe, is under consideration and he has been promised his release. Captain P.K. Hardy, of the Free State Army, convicted of armed robbery at Portobello Post Office, and sentenced to seven years; released after eighteen months. Mr. Oldham, keeping a disorderly house and engaging in white slave traffic, released after two months, although sentenced to two years. No truce with crime! These are facts. It is well that the House should know them and know the sincerity behind statements like "No truce with crime." Does it mean that of you wore green yesterday and committed an offence last night, you would be released in the morning for the wearing of the green?

On the other side, you have Republican prisoners that at a time when embittered feelings prevailed, when civil strife or civil war was going on in the country, were charged with political offences and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Everybody knows how those sentences were calculated. It is only necessary to give one example. A Mr. Keogh was sentenced to ten years; he said, "Up the Republic," and the Judge said, "Twenty years." No attempt has been made to review those sentences; no effort has been made to investigate them in the calmer atmosphere that should obtain, and which did not obtain at the time those sentences were imposed. Already we see the fruits of the Public Safety Act. Deputy Lemass yesterday referred to the case of Sean MacBride. No offence has been proved against him and no offence dare be proved against him, except the offence of trying to serve Ireland according to his lights, as his father tried to serve Ireland before him. There is no evidence that can be adduced, but he must be kept in prison on the information of a Mr. Ennis, who, I believe, is a Superintendent of the Civic Guards. You have the case of a man prominent in the Irish-Ireland movement—Edward O'Reilly, of Rossmore, Co. Tipperary—who was arrested in February last and returned for trial to the Central Criminal Court. A Habeas Corpus application was made to the court here and an undertaking was given, on behalf of the Attorney-General, I assume, that he would be tried very quickly. Three criminal courts have passed by and he has not been tried yet. Of course, he is a Republican — it does not matter how long he is kept in.

These are some of the facts showing the maladministration, the outrageous administration, I should say, by the Department of Justice. There are other aspects of it that I would also like to deal with. There is, amongst others, the system that has been established in the Department of Justice of dealing with appeals. It has been stated, I believe, in this House that the system of appeal on stenographers' notes was devised for the purpose and with the objective of securing speedy and inexpensive termination of proceedings in the courts. On the contrary, the result of it has been, and it has been proved to the Department of Justice for at least two years, that it only results in wholesale delay, and they have had to appoint Commissioners, and so on, to deal with the surplus of work that has accumulated. We hear it said that delays destroy the credit of the country. But in the Department of Justice delays do not matter, although they may affect the credit of the country.

The expenses that used to obtain, previously, where there was an appeal from the County Court, now the Circuit Court, amounted to something like £19. To-day to appeal on what was called an inexpensive procedure and which formerly cost £19, costs something like £80 or £90. Of course, because it is said by Deputies on the benches opposite that it is inexpensive, we are supposed to believe it, but the people who have to pay find that the statement is not so accurate. In addition, to try and secure, perhaps, that the judiciary would not be independent, a system has been followed of appointing temporary judges. Practice has shown and proved that temporary judges do not make for an independent judiciary, and do not make for independent or impartial administration of the law. That, I think, has been quite clearly proved and demonstrated to-day in the country.

It might be asked what alternative have you, because I find there is a great inclination on the part of those opposite, instead of meeting criticism, to ask what is your alternative. The alternative is that the number of Judges of the High Court could be much less if there had been more Circuit Judges, and if, instead of having those appeals on stenographers' notes, some of the Circuit Judges could be transferred from time to time from one country to another to deal with appeals and have a viva voce examination.

Another matter that has been neglected is the fact that a number of resigned R.I.C. men have not been given the pension or compensation that they were promised. There are a number of these cases in the country, and I think the only case that can be made against giving them their pensions or compensation is that there is a suspicion that they have certain political opinions. There was a case three or four months ago where a resigned R.I.C. man in Mayo had his house broken into at four o'clock in the morning by some of those "stewards" or C.I.D. men, and told that he would get his compensation if he would give information regularly as to the activities of Republicans in that district. These are facts. If there is any desire to get the names, the names can be given. Similarly, throughout the country there are numbers of men of the R.I.C. who resigned during the Black-and-Tan war and gave their services to the country, and because of the suspicion amongst this alleged impartial administration that they have some Irish-Ireland outlook or Republican outlook or some outlook to secure ultimately the complete and absolute independence of the country, they are refused the pension and compensation that they were promised, and which it was undertaken that they would receive at the time they resigned and afterwards.

These are some of the facts with regard to the Department of Justice. They must bring home to any of us the seriousness of the step that is being taken in appointing here to day the Minister for Justice. I would like to know, as Deputy O'Connell would like to know, what is the policy of the Minister for Justice? But, apparently, we are not to get any information as to the policy of any of the Ministers whose names are now before the House for ratification until they are practically appointed. We are not to receive any information as to whether they are to pursue this policy of coercion, and we are not to hear, apparently, except in a vague way, from the President whether it is now his policy to put the Public Safety Act into full and effective operation. Does he think that as a result of the statement that he was going to put it into full operation, he has received from the electorate a mandate to do that? Does he think that this kind of thing which has obtained for the last two or three years of releasing people convicted of murder, and because they were members of the Free State Army, and without this House being informed or knowing about it, is to continue, and that one section of this community can commit crimes, can go out and murder fellow-citizens, not in time of war and of strife and trouble, and that they can after a few months in prison have them condoned? Does he think he can go out to the people and fool them, saying: "No truce with crime," when there has been private and secret condonement of crime? These facts I put before the House in urging it not to accept the nominations made by the President.

Deputy Ruttledge has spoken very sincerely and in a very moving manner. It is not his fault if there was found in his speech some echo of what the Dáil heard in the past. I got an echo of the speech of Deputy Davin referring to the former R.I.C. men. If the Deputy will look up the debates of four years ago he will find what I said about appeals taken on shorthand notes very much like what he said to-day. On his main argument I cannot answer him. I do not think that any Minister can answer him, and I do not think that anybody in the Dáil can answer him, because he is speaking of the dead. His main charge was of the exercise of the power of clemency and mercy in the past two years, but the man who exercised that power now lies in Glasnevin. I do not know the cases. I never heard of them until Deputy Ruttledge mentioned them, but I did know Kevin O'Higgins and I do not believe that he would have made a misuse of the prerogative of mercy for political reasons or for Party reasons or for any reasons but those which seemed proper to himself and his colleagues. The whole subject is one we might well debate at greater length and get more of the facts, but I do not believe and I do not think other Deputies, not only those of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party but of every Party, will believe that Kevin O'Higgins distorted the prerogative of mercy to the advantage of his own Party.

Leaving Deputy Ruttledge, I turn to Deputy O'Connell and I would suggest that what Deputy O'Connell is asking for is fundamentally unreasonable. Deputy O'Connell suggests that Ministers — not even Ministers but Ministers designate—should stand up one after another like cheap Jacks at a fair and tell us what they have got to offer us. Would that be in conformity with the dignity and the order of the Dáil? We would have the Minister for Industry and Commerce extolling his special brand of unemployment panacea while the Minister for Lands and Agriculture would get up and say: "Don't worry about unemployment, I am going to settle everyone on the land." This is the one occasion on which Ministers are compulsorily silent and when the back benchers have their chance and I think that is all for the best. There will be other abundant opportunities of challenging Ministers, but now the back bencher uninstructed but with no power of enunciating a policy has a chance of saying a few words.

Deputy O'Connell was deeply concerned as to the policy of the Government upon Protection and he said that judging by my speeches I was a free trader. I do not know when Deputy O'Connell had time to read my speeches. It was my impression that Deputy O'Connell spent the last month shut up in his wigwam, reading the volumes of Deputy Johnson's speeches, in order to qualify himself for his present position. If the Deputy had studied my speeches he would have found that I never described myself as a Free Trader. I have on more than one occasion indicated tariffs which have not been imposed and which might be imposed with advantage to the country. I am in favour of a tariff on matches and I always was. I said that in Rathmines two years ago. I am in favour of a tariff on Scotch whisky and I said that in Rathmines too. I judge any tariff by one test — will it do more good in the way of giving employment than it will cause inconvenience in raising the cost of living? That is the Government policy and that is why they set up the Tariff Commission. I think some of our industrial tariffs have too wide an application at present. I hope inside the Dáil to have some of them reviewed and possibly reconsidered, but I certainly have not been a doctrinaire Free Trader and I do not remember that Deputy Heffernan was either. There was only one real Free Trader in the Dáil that I remember and that was Deputy Hewat. Deputy Heffernan has objected to certain tariffs. So have I.

The second question Deputy O'Connell put to us was in regard to unemployment. What is the Government's remedy for unemployment? So far as I gather the Government's remedy for unemployment is the creation of security and the development of industry. There is no other panacea. Deputies on the Fianna Fáil and the Labour benches have propounded the theory that every man, whatever his capacity, has a right to claim employment from the State. Have they worked out how much that is going to cost? Have they worked out the directions in which that employment is going to be provided? I have read some of Deputy Corish's election speeches, and the two directions in which he indicated that employment could be provided were roads and housing. As Deputy O'Connell said, a great deal has been spent on roads. You cannot go on working on roads indefinitely, even if the motor bus traffic were multiplied to ten times its present extent. What else then have we? Housing? But the bulk of housing work is done by skilled labour, and you cannot get the unemployed quay labourer a job by putting him to build houses. It is a very complicated problem. It is a problem that has to be considered not in the heat of debate or on platforms, but on business lines, and before we could accept this panacea, that the State has to find work for everybody, we have a right to some definition from those who advocate it as to the direction in which work will be found and the cost it will entail to the general taxpayer. You will gain no advantage in giving employment by setting up State employment if at the same time you put 30, 40 or 50 employers out of business owing to taxation.

Deputy O'Connell made one more indictment. He asked what is the advantage of having eight Ministers instead of ten Ministers if you add to your Parliamentary Secretaries. Well, for every Minister you reduce and put a Parliamentary Secretary in his place, you save £700 a year, and you bring the salary down to the level desired by Deputies on the opposite benches— £1,000 a year.

It is £1,200.

Well, we save £500 in each case, and that is worth saving. Four years ago, as Deputy O'Connell remembers, there were 11 Ministers, some of them extern Ministers. Whoever regrets the passing of the extern Minister, I do not. Deputy O'Connell now says that all Ministers are under the control of the Government. They were, always, because the policy of the Ministry was controlled by the Minister for Finance, and if they did not get the money they could not do what they wanted. I will not say that they were a farce, but they could not pursue any independent policy without the sanction of the Minister for Finance. Every Deputy who sat in the Dáil knows that. I do not believe that either inside the Dáil or outside it — except from Deputy O'Connell, whose tender heart bleeds for any injustice — there is any note of mourning for their departure. The main item in Deputy Ruttledge's and Deputy O'Connell's indictment, was the Public Safety Act. I know that Act can be abused. It is not an ordinary Act. It is an emergency Act, a temporary Act.

Mr. O'CONNELL

For five years.

It would have been seven years but for the Farmers' Party and myself, and Deputy O'Connell knows that. We got it reduced. It is an emergency Act, but I admit that it is an Act that can be abused.

A DEPUTY

It is being abused.

Well, let Deputies raise it then. The Dáil is here and the Order Paper is here. Questions can be put down. Motions can be put down. Any Deputy may ventilate any abuses of the Act. What is the best guarantee against abuses? Surely it is that we will have, as Minister for Justice, a man with a long tradition of the ordinary civil law behind him. The Deputy who is nominated for the Ministry is a trained lawyer, a man who understands the law of evidence and who has behind him the whole tradition of the ordinary law and courts.

And who advocated the Act.

Yes, to meet a necessity. He advocated it to meet a necessity just as I did and I am not ashamed or afraid of it. Deputy McEntee knows that it was not very much on the platforms in the last election.

I am speaking of the County Dublin. Deputy MacEntee is one of the representatives of the constituency that I represent and I thought it fair to make that point. Wherever I spoke on it, I spoke without interruption. I do say that our best safeguard against abuse of the Public Safety Act is the fact that the Minister for Justice is a member of the Bar, a trained lawyer who advocated the Act to meet an emergency. I say that he is not going to cast aside all his traditions and all his knowledge of the law to act merely as a partisan. I do not believe that for a moment. As for the other Ministers, they all have held office and their works are known. I came into the Dáil four years ago very much in the same atmosphere of mistrust and very much in the same atmosphere of suspicion that Deputies opposite to me have. I found in my four years that it was very hard to get Ministers to give way about anything. but that when they did give way they kept their word. That is the record of those Deputies who have now been nominated as Ministers. They may have been right or they may have been wrong. The whole Dáil cannot be expected to believe that they were right in everything but I can say that whenever they gave their word to the Dáil they kept it, and that is their best justification for office.

I hope the President will not persuade himself that he is relieved of responsibility to answer the very definite questions put to him because of the alleged replies that have been given by Deputy Major Cooper. Deputy Cooper's name is not included in the list of nominations of those who will be held responsible for Executive policy, and therefore his reply may be taken as not being the reply of the Ministry that will administer the laws of the country for the next four or five years. Like Deputies O'Connell and Ruttledge, I would like the President to give a very definite answer to the question as to whether or not the Ministry he now proposes to carry on the administration is going to give effect to the promise which he himself made when he spoke in Cork, namely, that if he got the authority of the people of this country he would put the Public Safety Act into full operation. The President, when he was asking for the authority of the people on that occasion, asked them to give his party the necessary majority in this House to enable him to put that Act into operation. He has not got that majority in his own party now, and if he proposes to put this Act into operation he can only do so with the assistance of the members of the Farmers' Party and of those who are termed Independent members in this House, but who do not belong to, and who did not subscribe in their election campaign to the policy of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party and of the President. Deputy Cooper says that the Public Safety Act was not made an issue in the County Dublin. The President, of course, after the result of the County Dublin by-election was announced a month or two months ago thought that the people of Ireland would think and act as the people of the County Dublin had done. That is where he made a big mistake which he found out as a result of the Dissolution. I know of no time when, on any national question, the electors of the County Dublin thought and acted like the people of the rest of Ireland. In the constituency which I represent the real issue in the election was whether or not the people would agree that the President should have a majority in that area to put the Public Safety Act into operation. What was the result? That 24,067 electors said "No," while 19,585 said "Yes." Some of those who said "Yes" and voted for Cumann na nGaedheal in that area did not themselves believe that the Public Safety Act was or could be justified.

I think we got an extra seat there.

That was the verdict given by the people in the constituency of Leix and Offaly on the issue before them with regard to the Public Safety Act. Like Deputy O'Connell I would be prepared to reconsider my attitude in regard to the motion moved by the President if he would make a definite declaration here and now stating that he did not propose to proceed to put that measure into operation. Serious as our objections are to some of the nominations that have been put before the House and to the past policy of some of the Ministers we would, I think, be inclined to reconsider our attitude at any rate if we got that assurance. There can be no progress in this country unless and until we have political stability and you cannot have that while the Public Safety Act is being put into operation, and put into operation for the purpose of wiping out your political opponents. We have had cases cited here in the House for the first time which should make some members of the past Dáil think as to how the administration is being carried on and as to how one side is being favoured as against another.

I want to raise another question of policy and it was for this that I rose to speak. I take it that the President. having been elected by a majority of the House yesterday, will be in a position to answer on these points before a division is taken on the motion. I want to register my protest in the House against the past policy and the policy so far as I know it up to the present of the Government in favouring political tests, in putting political tests to those who look for work in the Government service or who are employed as a direct result of grants given by the State. Take the case of the grants given as a result of the £2,000,000 voted in connection with the Trunk Roads Scheme. In 1926 the Minister for Industry and Commerce issued a circular through the local labour exchanges where he laid it down as a condition for getting employment that those getting work on the roads should have had service in the National Army. Mark you, that this sum of two million pounds spent on road construction in the country was not subscribed by the friends or dependents only of those who served in the National Army. It was not subscribed by the people who support Cumann na nGaedheal Party. It was money found or provided by the taxpayers in general of this country, and therefore I can see no reason or justification for putting a political test of this kind into operation, or at any rate why it should be continued any longer. If Deputy Mulcahy is appointed Minister for Local Government and Public Health he will, perhaps, continue the past policy of that Department in enforcing this particular regulation. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Deputy de Valera succeeds the present Ministry. Would he not for the very same reason be justified in restricting employment on the roads to those who supported his policy, those who actively supported his policy in 1922-23? Or perhaps some members who sit on the centre benches of this House and who fought in the European War or in the Boer War and who some day may come into office might say, when they were in authority, that it was only British ex-Servicemen who fought in the European War who should get a preference, or perhaps some silly fool might come along and say that it was only the dependants of those who fought at the Battle of Clontarf should get a preference. The only test that should be applied for employment under the Government in this country is suitability and, if you like, dependency.

During the past few days I have had a case brought to my notice where a very large number of men had been employed on road construction work in my own constituency. In May last when these men were being taken on an agreement was made whereby 50 per cent. of those employed might be taken from those who had service in the National Army and who had a number of people dependent on them — in other words those who had wives and families or other dependants. The remaining 50 per cent. were to be drawn, if available, from married men with dependants, civilians who had not served in the National Army, or single men who had service in the National Army. What happened a few days ago? Every one of these men was thrown out of work, and inside of a couple of days they were replaced by men, single and married, who had served in the National Army. The position is that married men, civilians who had not service in the National Army but who have wives and families dependent on them, were thrown aside and preference given to single men without dependents simply because they had service in the National Army. I want to know from the President if he proposes to continue that policy in connection with road grants, the money for which as we all know is provided by the general body of the taxpayers? We hear a great deal about a policy of forgive and forget. Let me hope that at any rate a scene such as we had yesterday evening, between Deputy O'Kelly on the one hand and the President on the other, will not be repeated during the lifetime of the present Dáil. Let us get away from the past; let us get away from the past differences of the two great parties that face one another as opponents in the House to-day. If we do not get away from them there is no hope for the future of the country. But if we are to do so the people who are now asking for the nomination of those Deputies as members of the Executive Council must contribute in some way and must, as one of the means, remove the political test that has been put to people when they seek employment in the Government service or employment subsidised from State grants. I protest against and object to the continuance of that policy, and unless the President comes forward with a clear assurance that it will be discontinued I for one will register my vote against the motion as a protest against such a policy.

I rise to answer a point made by Deputy Ruttledge in reference to the dismissed and resigned R.I.C. He said that in a great many cases that he knew of these men were deprived of their pension because of their Irish-Ireland outlook and their Republican tendencies. I happened to be Chairman of the Committee that sat to hear the cases put up by these men. There were close on 1,600 such cases, and every one of these men claimed that he had resigned from patriotic motives. Under our Terms of Reference it was incumbent on us to get proof of their patriotic motives. The committee sat for nine months and gave thoughtful consideration to these cases. In some instances, we gave time to men who had made poor cases and who did not bring forward evidence, so that they could improve their cases. What we required was something like this: If an R.I.C. man, before resigning, displayed Sinn Fein tendencies and sympathies with the fight for freedom, we asked him to get proof of that, and to get two references from the town in which he was serving. Then it naturally followed if a man resigned from patriotic motives and to strike a blow for Ireland that when he went back to his native town or village he would keep up his activities, and we required also to be supplied with two references from a man's native town, or wherever he took up his abode after resigning. In every case where that evidence was forthcoming and where we had substantial proof that he was active and had helped in the cause that was dear to all our hearts, we granted a pension. I am surprised at Deputy Ruttledge's statement that members of the R.I.C. were deprived of their pensions because of their Irish-Ireland outlook and because of their Republican tendencies.

It is true.

Perhaps they may have thrown in their lot afterwards, and may have become brave when the danger was gone — may have adopted a Document No. 2 policy. But we gave every case thoughtful consideration, and each case was considered on its merits. I will ask the House not to believe that the claims of dismissed R.I.C. men were turned down because of their Irish-Ireland outlook or their Republican tendencies.

A Chinn Chomhairle, is deacair labhairt fán tairisgint atá os cóir na Dála anois, toise gan fhios a bheith againn i gceart cé an caingin no scéim rialuithe atá ag an rialtas. Dubhairt an t-Uachtarán, agus airí nách é, gur áthas leo sinne bheith istigh anso, agus go mba mhaith leo síocháin, suaimhneas agus buanrialúchán bheith sa tír. Ní fheadar an bhfuilid dáríribh no an mian leo beart a dhéanamh do réir a mbriathar. An ndéanfar na postanna a thabhairt thar n-ais do sna hoidí scoile a briseadh trí bliana ó shoin mar gheall ar an mbaint a bhí acu le cúrsaí polaitíochta nár thaithn le Cumann na nGaedheal? Tá tuairim is dáréag acu san tír seo fós; b'éigean do sheisear acu dul thar sáile. Tá a lán múinteoirí Gaedhilge, agus múinteoirí ceárdúla a bhí ag obair fá choistí ceárd-oidis agus do briseadh iad toisc nách nglacfaidís le mionn no móid phoilitieach. Nách mithid deire a chur le géirleanúint den tsaghas san, más maith leis an rialtas tabhairt fé shíocháin do bhunú agus do bhuanú i gceart. Do réir mar thuigim-se cúrsaí staire leis na céadta bliain anuas, tá cóilint ar siúl idir an bpobal agus an lucht ceannais, is cuma rithe no tíoranáigh no uachtaráin iad. Séard a tháinig as an gcóilint sin ná go bhfuair an gnáth-dhuine cosaint do féin tré pháirliméid, tré bhreithimh agus eile i gcoinne fóirnirt agus éagcóra agus anchomhachta na dtíoránach.

An t-Acht úd ar a dtugtar Acht chun Cosanta na Puiblíochta, 1927, is amhlaidh a chuireann sé siar go réim na dtíoránach sinn, cuireann sé ar neamh-ní gach a ndeárnadh leis na céadta blian chun an pobal a chosaint. Tugann sé lán-chomhacht ar bheatha agus bás na ndaoine d'Ard-Chomhairle an Rialtais gan spleáchas don Dáil seo. Tugann sé an iomad comhachta don Arm agus don Ghárda Síochána. Agus is eagal liom nách mbeidh Cothrom na Féinne le fáil ón dá dhream san i gcomhnuí. Mhothuíos sa togha mór atá thart, agus ó am go ham le cúig bliana anuas, gur cheap cuid den Arm agus Gárdaí Síochána áirithe gur searbhóntuithe do Chumann na nGaedheal iad. Cé an fáth nách mothuíonn siad uile gur searbhóntuithe don náisiún iad? Toisc gurbh é an polasaí a bhí ag an dream polaitíochta a bhí i gceannas úsáid do dhéanamh de chomhacht rialtais chun dream polaitíochta eile do chur fá chois. Má leantar den ghéirleanúint sin, is fuar bheith ag súil le suaimhneas no síocháin. Ba mhaith liom fhios a bheith agam an mian leis an Rialtas nua-scéim phinsiúin a cheapa — agus a chur i bhfeidhm — do mhúinteoirí na meadhon-scol. Rud eile dhe, ba mhaith liom a fhiafraí de Roinn an Oideachais cathain a cuirfear molta Choimisiún na Gaeltachta i bhfeidhm. Tá na Gaedhilgeoirí ag imeacht go tiugh in aghaidh an lae, agus muna ndintear galar an imirce do leigheas go luath, ní bheidh sa tír i gceann deich mblian ó iniu ach dríodar Clann na nGaedheal. Agus beidh deire leis an teanga náisiúnta.

I rise to oppose the motion standing in the name of the President, particularly so far as it relates to the Department of Local Government. During the short time Deputy Mulcahy was attached to the office he had an opportunity of dissociating himself from the policy of his predecessors. As he has not done so I must assume that he is going to continue to accept as his gospel the gospel of his predecessors. Anyone who seriously understands local government must have come to the conclusion that, as that Department has been administered for the last five years, its policy was definitely one of destruction of local government rather than one of encouragement. There appears to be a controlling idea in the Department that it has within it the brains and intelligence of the whole country, not alone the brains and the intelligence, but, in some cases, at any rate, by insinuation, that it has the honesty of public life altogether to itself. The President was for many years a member of the Dublin Corporation. I understand a very influential member and one who had a little more responsibility than any other individual member of that Corporation as to the policy it pursued before its dissolution. I am suggesting that the people of Dublin, and, say, the borough of Cork are quite as competent to elect honest representatives for local administration as they are to elect representatives for the Dáil.

There appears to be a policy of aggression towards local representation. That policy is pursued against the wishes of the representatives of the public bodies. I will refer to a matter that was mentioned by a Deputy on the Labour Benches, the question of a condition in connection with the grants that have been sent to the different local bodies with regard to wages to be paid for a week's work. To my mind that should always be decided by the two sections concerned, the employer and the employed. I would say that it would be good policy, and the only policy for a Government Department, to consider how best to bring these two sections together and to work to find a standard for a fair wage between employer and employed. I think it is wrong fundamentally and a bad policy for a Government Department in the case of a grant to make a condition reducing wages far below the level of the minimum wage in districts where such grants apply.

I would also like to refer to another matter that was mentioned by the same Deputy, the matter of the test oath. There are people throughout Ireland at the present moment losing their employment because they will not subject themselves to a conscience and to a political test. I do not think there is a Deputy here who can seriously say that any individual, no matter what his employment, should give other than his physical effort for his salary, and he should not be asked to submit his conscience. As the matter has been suggested by the Deputy on my right, I would like to know how long this state of affairs is to exist. Again, we have had the question of centralisation of supplies for public bodies in Ireland. At the present time public bodies are forced, against their express wish, to get their supplies from a central department in Dublin. I understand that quite recently the Local Government Department insisted on conditions over the signature of the Deputy who is now proposed for the confidence of the House, that even where the goods could be bought cheaper locally, and bought as well, local bodies be compelled to buy from Dublin. As one who had a little personal experience of contracts at one time I went into the figures from the economic point of view as to whether it was best to tender for the whole or part, and I found —and I am prepared to give the figures — that tendering for the whole gave an advantage to the contractor of about 5½ per cent. on a contract when it was at 20.

It is not, I think, too long ago to be forgotten that representatives of this Government actually went across and influenced an English firm to tender for contracts right throughout Ireland. This English firm took them for, I think, a period of six or twelve months, and to-day if the Government went to them on their bended knees they would not get them to take that contract again, on account of the delivery charges and expenses, altogether outside the inconvenience to the public bodies, which had to wait three or four weeks for the delivery of goods that would be delivered, if bought in Ireland, within a week or two. I would suggest to the Local Government Department that they should have a little confidence in the honesty of the Irish people and of Irish contractors, and I think if they did that they would get better and more honest service than from cross-Channel institutions, because the people in Ireland, apart from looking for the mere profit on a contract, would have some pride in serving their own institutions. Again, I would suggest that the Local Government Department apparently does not realise its full responsibility as far as local government is concerned. If it is not actually the most important, Local Government is certainly one of the important Departments of Government in any country.

I suggest that through that Department you could probably relieve one of the greatest distresses in Ireland at the present moment, and that is unemployment. I would suggest that the Government should before now have made some arrangement that public bodies would get long term loans. We are all aware in this House public bodies are almost confined to a period of five to fifteen years. There is no Deputy who has any experience in public life but can understand that there is hardly a borough or a county council area in Ireland at the present moment could carry the burden of short term loans. With a few constructive suggestions like these I would ask the President if he would undertake in the near future to give the people, particularly the boroughs, an opportunity of re-electing their own representatives, and if he does not intend to do that, I will ask him to state a definite reason why. We are not accepting some of the reasons that have been given, for instance, the reason of incompetency. There was not incompetency established at the inquiries held both in Dublin and in Cork, and I think the same applies to the other bodies that have been dissolved throughout the country. Whether the measure was ever necessary or not, I am not going to debate now, but I certainly think that I am entitled to state that there is no reason for its continuance beyond to-day.

In view of the practice that seems to have grown up, and also of your ruling to-day, I hope I will not be considered disrespectful if I say that, as far as I am concerned, I do not intend to take any part in what I consider to be nothing short of a farce. The Constitution provides, according to Article 53, that Ministers who are to hold office as members of the Executive Council shall be appointed on the nomination of the President with the assent of the Dáil, and we have before us a list of the names proposed by the President which you have decided must be voted for or against en bloc. That being so, we are asked here to take the responsibility for the election of these gentlemen to the various posts, while at the same time we are not given an opportunity of rejecting one or more of them if we do not desire to reject them all. Personally, I never agreed with the proposal in the Constitution. I think that when a person is called upon, either by election or otherwise, to form a Government, the responsibility for the formation of that Government should rest with him and with him alone, and I do not think it is fair to saddle upon us here the responsibility of electing Ministers for various posts, and at the same time not give us an opportunity of rejecting anyone of the various nominations if we do desire to reject them without rejecting all. The President was elected yesterday. The Government that will be installed after to-day will be his Government. I think that he should bear the responsibility for the nomination to the various offices within that Government. I think not only is it fair to the Dáil that that should be so, but even to the President himself.

References have been made and comments have been offered upon the various policies of the late Governments in their various departments. With a great many of those criticisms I am in entire agreement, but, with respect, I do not think that this is the opportunity to raise those questions.

I think opportunities will arise when the new Government has been set up and then we will have the means of hearing from the Ministers yet to be appointed whether they will carry on as their predecessors, or they themselves, as the case may be, have done, or whether they intend to make a new departure in the various aspects of their departments. When in other countries a Deputy or a member of an assembly is called upon whether by the head of the State as is the case in Great Britain, or by the elected assembly of that State, to form a Government, I say that the responsibility for the formation and continuance in office of that Government rests upon his shoulders and upon his shoulders alone, and therefore as far as I am concerned the President having been elected to carry on the Government yesterday, I am merely going to see what Government he is going to set up, and I reserve to myself the right to criticise the actions of that Government and the various departments that may be set up under it in the future.

As far as the amalgamations of some of the heads of these Ministries are concerned they come somewhat in the nature of a surprise. The Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs is now to be under the same head as the Ministry of Finance. I doubt very much if that is a wise procedure. The Ministry of Finance probably is the most important Ministry in the country. I do not know whether the present or future occupant of that post will be able to devote his attention to the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. I suggested on previous occasions the amalgamation of other Ministries but I never suggested the amalgamation of any Ministry with the Ministry of Finance, and I think that in that respect it would have been better to have united or amalgamated, as I suggested before, the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture with, say, the Ministry of Fisheries. However that may be, the responsibility I say again is not ours and I will not accept responsibility. The responsibility rests on the shoulders of the man who has been chosen to be the President of the Executive Council. It is for him to say who is going to have that office in the Executive Council and it is for us, if we so desire, in the future, to criticise the actions of himself and his Ministers.

I agree with the last speaker. In my opinion we have to avail ourselves of whatever opportunities are afforded us to state to the country the reasons why we are here. The President made a very brief statement and on the previous occasion when he was nominating his Ministers he failed also to outline his policy. In the past when the Party on the opposite benches had a considerable majority they were probably in a position to refuse to state their policy but contented themselves with appointing their Ministers to carry out their policy, allowing us to criticise it afterwards. Even if it is contrary to the practice of this House, I as a Deputy certainly feel that we should have some statement, if not from the Ministers-designate at least from the President himself as to what he proposes to do in the case of many immediate problems which the people are clamouring to have attended to.

As a matter of fact, one of the members of his own Party in to-day's Press has called attention to the desperate condition of the farming community throughout the country. I refer to Deputy Vaughan of North Cork. He said that if assistance were not forthcoming for the farmer and unemployment relieved, the conditions during the winter months would be very miserable. He did not believe that the majority of the farmers would be in a position to pay their annuities or rates. I am sorry the Deputy who is designated for the position of Minister for Agriculture is not here; he might be able to answer this question which the Deputy for North Cork has put to him through the Press. In every part of the country in which I have been, and I have been through every county in the Saorstát during the past few years, the farmers have been clamouring for assistance. They have been complaining that the sheriffs and bailiffs have been driving them out of their homes, that the banks have been forcing them into bankruptcy, that they are unable to make ends meet. The result of all this is that the members of a very important section of the community are faced with worse conditions than we have ever experienced in this country since the eighties. The agricultural labouring population that depends upon them for a living are faced with destitution and you have the whole thing back again on the local rates, back on home assistance and back on the taxpayers.

Deputy Hogan, when he was Minister for Lands and Agriculture, introduced a Bill for the establishment of an Agricultural Credit Corporation. I do not know whether we will be afforded an opportunity of going into the regulations which are to be set up to govern the administration of this Corporation. What I do know is that it is proposed that the Corporation, which is to have a loaning capacity of £7,500,000, is to be empowered to advance money to any person for the purpose of paying off a loan which was originally made to him before the passing of the Act wholly or mainly for the purpose of purchasing land for agricultural purposes or for any purpose connected therewith or indirectly with agriculture. In other words, according to the Act under which this Corporation is being set up, the powers will be so wide that almost any old debt contracted by cattle dealers, co-operative creameries or by the banks will be taken over by the Corporation irrespective of their present valuation. The total amount of money due to the banks on account of land purchased during the inflation period is said to amount to about fifteen million pounds. Even if all the money it is proposed to make available under this Corporation were to be expended in that way it would not cover half the debts which the banks are trying to recover.

Deputy Hogan has stated that there is a guarantee against the misuse of the Corporation by the banks to the prejudice of the farmers who borrowed money during that period. He says that the directorate will be largely in the hands of the Minister for Agriculture. According to the Act itself, once the Corporation is established this Dáil will have no power to interfere with its administration, and although it specifically states that the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Finance are responsible for providing regulations for the administration of the Corporation, there has been no sign up to the present of those regulations. I want to know when is it proposed to place the regulations on the Table, and when will we be given an opportunity of finding out what the policy of the Minister is in regard to the taking over of these debts. The Act specifies that certain regulations shall be made. Those regulations are to be completely in the hands of the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Agriculture. As a matter of fact, they are in a position, I think, under the Act to refuse to place the regulations before this Assembly or give the Dáil any power to go into this matter on a subsequent occasion. I think this is a very important question, and now is the time to raise it so that we will not be in the position of sanctioning Ministers whose policy we do not know, especially when it is concerned with the spending of very large sums of money.

I could go through all the other departments and point out matters about which it is essential the country should have information. There is, for instance, the question of the collection of land annuities and whether this country is to bear the expense of collecting these annuities, collecting these debts, for the benefit of foreigners and certain vested interests. There is the question then of the Gaeltacht. A Commission was appointed some time ago to go into that whole question, and it made certain recommendations. Personally, I feel that the Commission did not cover all the ground, and it did not deal in a thorough manner with the problem of keeping our Irish-speaking population at home. The little industries that we have in Donegal, Mayo, Galway and Kerry, and our fishing industries are in a parlous condition. If we look up the Estimates we find very large sums of money are spent on the upkeep of officials, but if we go down to the western seaboard and ask the Irish-speaking people there what benefit are they getting in the way of support for the fishing industry, the knitting industry, or any other industry in order to keep the Irish-speaking people in their own country, we find that next to nothing has been done. Now that we are in a position to join hands at least on that question, and do what we can to preserve our Irish-speaking population in their own country, the President ought to outline to us what he proposes to do, and do it without delay.

There is the question of the division of land but, because of the fact that there has been a change in the administration of that Department, I do not propose to deal with it at length. I want to say that in the very same way as prejudice has been shown in the administration of justice, prejudice has also been shown in the division of land. It is not alone that people of a certain political tinge have got preference when ranches and estates were divided throughout the country but also, while hundreds of uneconomic holders were allowed to perish in poverty in poorer districts, proprietors of large ranches were given large compensation and were brought to County Meath, and, in addition to the extraordinary price of £3 an acre for the lands that were bought from them in the West of Ireland, they were given large ranches and residences in Counties Meath and Dublin. The sooner that state of affairs is put an end to the better, and the sooner we have some indication that the policy of the old Sinn Féin movement of putting your young population, who are now fleeing out of the country, to work, the better, because they are the cultivators, and though they may be defective in training and education, they are the backbone of our nation, and we want to have them placed as soon as possible on the fertile lands within and adjoining the Irish-speaking districts.

The President also stated in June last that the policy of his Ministers was the same as his own. Some Ministers have proclaimed their advocacy of a strong policy of protection, some have stated that they stood for selective protection, so that we do not know where they stand. There is a deep feeling amongst the farming community in the tillage areas of the Saorstát that steps ought to be taken as soon as possible to cut out the importation of foodstuffs which could be grown, produced, and sold as cheaply and in as good quality in this country as the imported articles. I refer particularly to the importation of bacon and flour. There is a general demand amongst the farming community that steps should be taken to do away with the importation of these articles, and in that way not alone to assure the Irish farmers of a definite and perhaps guaranteed price for their produce, but also to endeavour in that way to bring about employment which could be given, not by the expenditure of large sums of money drawn from the taxpayers, but by proclaiming the fact that we are not going to import commodities, whether they be farming or manufacturing commodities, which we can produce in our own country. We want a definite statement as to the President's policy in regard to that matter.

We will, of course, be told that that question, like the whole question of economy in administration, is in the hands of committees. The trouble with these committees is that they are composed of civil servants. So far as this Party is concerned, if we want inquiries — and we will, I hope, within the next few days be pressing for inquiries in other matters — we intend to assert the principle that the most rigid control of expenditure and experimentation in tariffs ought not to be exercised through bodies of officials but through committees of this House. It is for the reason that I cannot see that definite opportunities will be given us to consider these questions that I mention these points. Finally, I want to support what Deputy French has said about the wage rates paid on public works. At present in the constituency that I represent a contract has been given for the construction of a bridge at Knockloe at a cost of £7,000. The employer who has been given the contract has been in the habit of paying £2 a week to his labourers, but, by virtue of the instructions of the Government Department concerned, the wage which this employer is entitled to pay only amounts to 28/- a week. If we can afford to maintain the present expensive administration and to sit down here and discuss the setting up of departments and all the rest, we ought to have some statement and come to a decision whereby the policy of expecting labourers to keep their wives and families on a wage of 28/- a week is going to be ended.

We want also to know how soon the policy of excluding men from public works because of their political opinions is going to be discontinued. Up to the present if you are not an ex-member of the National Army you are refused employment. Not alone are there hundreds of Irish-Irelanders all over the country in need of employment, but there are hundreds of ex-British soldiers coming to me and asking me to get them work. I therefore wish to utter a protest against the policy which ordains that we here must be called upon to vote on these serious matters and to vote for the expenditure of money the amount of which we do not know. We do not know what economies are proposed in the administration, and now that we have for the first time a complete Dáil I think it is the President's duty to the country to state what his policy is in regard to all these matters.

A Chinn Chomhairle, chualamair le déanaí a lán cainnte ar shíocháin agus ar cháirdeachas. Tá díosbóireacht againn anso le dhá lá anois—díosbóireacht ar thairsgint amháin inéagus díosbóireacht ar thairsgint eile iniu. Do labhair na Teachtaí atá ar an dtaobh eile den Tigh ach ní ar son síochána ná cáirdeachais do labhradar.

Tá áthas orm — agus táim cinnte go bhfuil áthas ar gach duine in Eirinn —go bhfuil an Tigh seo lán anois. Is maith an rud é agus is maith an obair ar son na hEireann é — pé duine atá ciontach leis. Ní hionann é a bheith ag labhairt anso agus a bheith ag labhairt ar ardán taobh amuich. Is féidir le duine atá ag labhairt taobh amuich a rá go mba chóir so agus siúd do dhéanamh Is furus a leithéid sin a rá os cóir na ndaoine ach an rud atá oiriúnach ag cruinniú puiblí níl sé oiriúnach anso. Tá ar na Teachtaí an chúis a phlé i gceart.

For two days — to-day on this motion and yesterday on a similar proposition —we have heard various opinions, especially the opinions of members of that Party which has only lately availed of Dáil Eireann as a channel of expression of opinion. Questions of friendship and the removal of old animosities have been stressed, but every possible opportunity was availed of to revive these old animosities and bitterness.

All the gods of Irish-Ireland, of nationality, were called on and were adored and claimed by one Party in this House — Tone, Davis, Emmet and Patrick Pearse, and I suppose Michael Collins, had he died before the Treaty, would also have been claimed. Appeals like that to gods do not lead towards alleviating and lessening the difficulties that exist. One Deputy yesterday mentioned anguish of mind. References to empty benches on one side or another will not relieve anguish of mind. I refer to this only to say that no Party in this House has got any special right to claim the virtue of purity in public life more than any other person or Party. It is for another jury, the people of Ireland, to give their opinion as to these particular virtues. Reference has been made to economic progress, political stability and the removal of political tests. It has been alleged that it is not fair to the finer conscience of some people in this country that they should sign a simple declaration saying that while in the public service they do not propose to interfere with the Constitution or the Government as set up under the Constitution. I do not think that any conscience should be hurt by being asked to sign such a declaration.

I wish particularly to refer to a statement made by Deputy Davin. He suggested that economic progress was impossible without political stability. Following that, he said that a political test was being put to persons employed on the roads, the test being this: that a certain proportion of the vacancies was reserved for persons who had served in the National Army. Nobody in this House, no matter how far to the right or to the left he is, will disagree with me when I say that were it not for the National Army no one, whether President Cosgrave or Deputy de Valera, would be seated here to-night. It is usual in all countries when a war is over to forget the soldier. I hope this country will not forget him. The suggestion was made by innuendo that he was a political soldier, but he was not. He was a soldier who fought under the orders of a regularly elected Government. He must not be forgotten, and I hope he will not be forgotten even by the members who fill the Opposition benches at present. We heard a good deal of discussion on peace, progress and reconciliation. We heard a good deal on the absence of an economic policy, but I was rather surprised that no member of the Opposition asked the President whether it was part of his policy to remove the objectionable oath. This is not a joke but a very serious matter. In the election a decision was come to, I should not say entirely but very largely, on the economic question, and the civil war was fought on quite a different matter, but the people of Ireland and the Dáil should realise that virtue cannot be attained overnight, and that we cannot step from the direct destruction of a Constitution and through a suggested economic policy win the confidence of the people of Ireland.

I desire to refer to some aspects of the administration of local government and to express the hope that the President will be able to give us some satisfactory assurance that the grievances I intend to raise, and that have been raised already by other Deputies, will be remedied. I refer particularly to the conditions of employment on the roads and the wages paid in connection with road grants, and more especially to the manner in which the administration of the Local Government Department has manifested itself recently in one direction. A considerable portion of road work has been carried out as a result of the allocation of grants. That work is carried out in many counties by contract. Big firms having large plants contract with the local bodies for the execution of this work. In County Cork a considerable amount of that work is being performed by such firms. The local authority in Cork, when arranging the terms of contract with the contractors, included in the agreement a clause setting out that the rate of wages prevailing in the county for road work should be paid for work in connection with the contracts. The agreement was sent to the Local Government Department and ratified by it but it appears that the officials of the Department did not carefully read the agreement. When the matter was reconsidered an order was issued cancelling the arrangement made by the local authority with the contractor and definitely ordering the local authority to pay, not the current rate of wages, 35/- per week, in the county, but 29/- per week. What justification can be advanced for this penal clause? The arrangement suggested by the local authority would not involve any extra expenditure by the ratepayers. We had a definite assurance that the contractors were willing to pay the rate of wages prevailing in the county, and as a matter of fact some of them did pay, in defiance of the order to the local authority, the current rate of wages.

This tendency has manifested itself time and again in the Local Government Department of fixing a certain rate of wage to be paid by local authorities, thus giving a headline to local authorities to reduce wages and worsen wherever possible the conditions of employment. I suggest that there is no other explanation of the action of the Local Government Department than that they believe it is good business to keep people working for low wages, and, even when there is no financial consideration involved imposing any burden on the ratepayers, that they definitely take upon themselves the right to dictate a lower rate of wages to the local authorities in the hope that this headline will be copied generally. Unfortunately it has been copied to a great extent, and that adds to the many grievances the people have. I ask the President whether he can give us any assurance that immediate steps will be taken to remedy the breakdown that has occurred. Time and time again we on these benches have condemned the policy of the Local Government Department in connection with the amalgamation of workhouses. We have had a vindication of our arguments on that matter during the last couple of weeks. The Commission set up to inquire into poor law administration has, in my opinion, pronounced specifically against that experiment. The system of workhouse amalgamation was introduced by a number of enthusiastic young men four or five years ago when there was very little opportunity of considering a question of this kind. It has failed. If the Ministry take the trouble to consult the local authorities they will be able to discover the many defects in the system.

Deputy Cooper, in replying to one of the speeches from the Labour benches, suggested that our whole case was that more roads should be made in this country and more houses built. We never suggested any such thing. We suggest that road making and the building of houses would provide useful employment, but that there are many other avenues for the provision of employment that can be explored.

Will the Deputy enlarge on them?

Mr. MURPHY

I suggest that the Department of Lands and Agriculture has the opportunity of providing reproductive work that has been so frequently spoken of. Schemes upon schemes for reafforestation have been filed with the Forestry Branch of that Department and we have not seen any attempt to put them into operation. Although we had a statement from a responsible member of the Government Party months ago that it was the intention of the Government to introduce a Bill immediately to provide for schemes of this kind, we have not heard any suggestion since that it is the intention of the Government to do anything in the matter. Those in control of the Forestry Department seem to be entirely inactive, although there is an opportunity for a big forward policy being put into operation. A good deal was expected from the Arterial Drainage Act of 1925. It has been very useful in the carrying out of long-delayed and necessary work, but I think the Minister for Education, who introduced that Act, will agree that there is much in it that is unwieldy and cumbersome. There ought to be a more direct method of promoting drainage schemes than the roundabout process at present in force. The numerous local inquiries and valuations and the long-drawn-out negotiations that take place between the Department and the local authorities make for very considerable delay that, in my opinion, could be very easily obviated. I suggest that Deputy Cooper and others might find an opportunity of exercising their ability in getting rid of the cumbersome procedure that surrounds that very useful Act. I need scarcely say that by the improvement of the fishing industry much employment could be provided. I am afraid that although this particular aspect of the unemployment problem has been stressed here repeatedly very little progress has been made in the matter. In view of the changed conditions here, perhaps it may be hoped that a definite attempt will be made to come to grips with this problem, and that it will not be dealt with in the lighthearted and airy fashion in which it has been dealt with up to the present, but that it will be regarded as the biggest menace we have to face.

Deputy O'Sullivan resented the statement of Deputy Davin in connection with the conditions for employment on the roads. I do not object, and I think Deputy Davin does not object, to a percentage of ex-National Army men or any other ex-army men being employed on the roads, but it is not true to state that it is confined to a certain percentage. If ex-National Army men are available they can claim every single job on the roads in a particular district, and I have personal knowledge of districts where they have claimed them. I think it is only fair and just that any man who wants employment, who is willing to work and to give a fair return for his wages, should be employed. I think that it is a decided hardship that single men should be employed, no matter what army they served in, in preference to married men with large families who, in many instances, are supported by the rates. I feel that the President, if he looked into the matter, would realise that that is a hardship that ought to be removed immediately. In the administration of the Local Government Department in the future an opportunity will be provided for giving us a more forward policy in connection with the matters I have mentioned. I feel that it is due to this House, and particularly to the Labour Party, who have time and again stressed the matters raised this evening, that we should have some satisfactory assurance of what the policy of this Department will be in this connection in the future.

We of the Government Party have been indicted to-night mainly upon two points. We have been indicted, in the first instance, for having no policy, and we have been indicted for failing to state our policy. On the opposite benches I see Deputies who represent the north side of Dublin, as well as I do, and I fear they must never have attended a Cumann na nGaedheal meeting if they failed to gather what the policy of the Government is. The policy of the Government is no mystery. It is as well known to the Labour Party and to the Fianna Fáil Party as it is to our own Party. The policy of the Government — and I as a back bencher have the courage to put it forward—is this: The President has stated very plainly and clearly that the Government Party stand, in the first instance, for the maintenance of the Treaty unchanged, except by constitutional means. In the second place, they stand for a balanced Budget. In the third place, they stand for one army, subject to the Oireachtas. Finally, they stand for the building up of the country through a system of selective protection.

And giving the landlords the right to increase rents.

Mr. BYRNE

As I happen to be very interested in that particular matter, my views are on record on the landlord question. Deputy O'Connell yesterday in his speech, when speaking of an alliance with our opponents on the opposite benches, laid down two very definite propositions. In the first instance he stated that no alliance existed and that if an alliance was to mature in future it could only mature subject to these two propositions. It is very strange and very peculiar that these two propositions were two of the main planks in the policy of the Government. They were (1) an army subject to the Oireachtas — I am quoting his own words—and (2) the Treaty only to be changed by a majority of this House; yet Deputy O'Connell went into the division lobby against the Government notwithstanding that he stood up as a supporter of the Government policy.

He will vote against them again to-day.

Mr. BYRNE

I had expected from the Labour benches something in the nature of logical conduct, that when opinions were expressed they should be logically followed up in a political way and logically carried out in the division lobby. Here we have the Government policy plainly stated, and we have the policy of the Government Party as adumbrated by the leader of the Labour Party, and yet, as I have said, that Party went into the division lobby against the Government.

Mr. O'CONNELL

Is that their only policy?

Mr. BYRNE

I do not claim to take responsibility for the policy of the Labour Party, but I am stating that the policy of the Government is well known to every Party on the benches opposite.

A DEPUTY

Indeed it is.

Mr. BYRNE

I am glad to hear it is. Why then should it be said that we have no policy? In discussing political matters let us at least be honest. If we are honest and have certain facts in our possession, let us not pretend, as political propaganda to go forth through the country, that we are not in possession of these facts. I feel sure that Deputy de Valera, the leader of the Fianna Fáil Party, must feel very comfortable that he is not in the position of President Cosgrave. The President has been asked to elaborate the policy as to the Gaeltacht; to expound and explain the Agricultural Credit Bill; to develop the framing of the policy of local government; to give a definition of the future policy which would actuate the Minister for Justice; to deal with the problem of unemployment; to deal with the question of protection, and, finally, to deal with the question of the fisheries. We know that the President is the ablest man in the House, but, even so, I fear he will fail to deal with all these particular problems in the brief space of twenty minutes or half an hour.

I turn now for a moment to the final indictment against the policy of the Government. What is that? It is with regard to the problem of unemployment. I come from a working-class district and claim to have some knowledge of the unemployment question as well as Deputies on the Labour benches. If we are to deal with the question of unemployment, let us deal with it in a spirit of honesty. There is no cause without an effect. What is the cause mainly to-day to which unemployment is due? We heard sympathetic references from the Fianna Fáil benches for dealing with this particular problem. We heard nothing about the five years that we have just gone through when thirty-five millions of the money of the country was wasted through the foolish, mad and insane policy of the Party on the benches opposite. We suggest, and challenge contradiction, that if they had accepted the verdict of the majority of the people of this country five years ago, as they have accepted it in the last few months, the problem of unemployment would be a very small and minor proposition compared with the conditions that we have to deal with to-day. We suggest that if this thirty-five millions were in active circulation in the country we would not have the stagnation in agriculture, the stagnation in business, and the consequent unemployment with which we are to-day confronted.

May I remind Deputies on the Labour benches that we are not alone in the problem of unemployment. Within the past year, when the International Report on Unemployment was published, the Free State, bad as it is, was one of the four countries which succeeded in reducing the number of their unemployed.

By exporting them to America.

Mr. BYRNE

We would also suggest that the problem of emigration would have been much less if we had the thirty-five millions in circulation which was wasted through the efforts of the Party opposite. Let us not endeavour to make political capital out of the misery of the unemployed. I suggest that members on the benches opposite are endeavouring by various means and subterfuges to make political capital out of the question of unemployment. I say that is a base and unworthy way to conduct the affairs of this nation.

May I say, in a word, why, in our opinion, the names which the President has put before the House for the different offices should be accepted. It has been put up to the President himself that he should allow the government of this country to pass over to the members of the Party opposite. In taking up the government under the conditions with which we are now faced our Party is actuated by one main reason, and that is to maintain the political stability about which we heard so much; to maintain within this country the capital that it has at present got; to prevent the outflow of capital from this country which, if the government of this country passed into the hands of the Opposition, would undoubtedly follow. These are sane reasons and reasons of common sense why the Deputies whose names the President put before the House should be appointed to the various offices named.

One hears a lot about municipal reform. It may not be amiss to say that in a brief time we have succeeded in reducing the rates of the city from 22/- to 15/6. We have succeeded in restoring order in this country despite the efforts of those on the benches opposite and we have re-established credit despite their opposition and, while we have President Cosgrave to lead us, that credit will be developed and maintained. While endeavouring to deal with the most difficult economic condition and endeavouring to deal with the threat and menace of civil war we have also dealt successfully with housing and with giving help to the farmers. We have spent £5,300,000 upon the roads, and we have dealt, as far as humanly possible, with all the difficulties with which we were faced. These are the reasons why I suggest that the names that the President has put before the House to-night should be carried when we go into the division lobby.

Deputy Byrne enumerated a litany of the benefits President Cosgrave's last administration conferred on the farmers and on the people of this country. The composition of this House to-day, and the fact that the common people of Ireland gave a majority to the anti-Government forces in the last election, are proof, and sufficient proof, as to how the people appreciated the fatherly administration of President Cosgrave. I am not going to ask, and we do not ask, the President to do anything more than to tell us that the abuses which were pointed out in his administration shall be reformed and cured. We saw how justice in this country has become debased until it became the prostitute of a political Party. We saw how a politician who preached public morality gave mercy to the keeper of a brothel, the mercy he denied to the men who served with him when he and they stood for the Republic of Ireland. I do not wish to enter into that aspect of the situation. When I rose I wished to say that it seemed to me from a study of the Constitution under which we sit in this House, that the principle which it was desired to embody in it was that, so far as practicable, the Executive Council should be under the complete control of this Dáil and that for that reason Article 53, which compels the President to secure the formal assent of this Legislature, was embodied in the Constitution. At any rate, I do believe in giving members an opportunity to criticise the gentlemen who are elected to the Ministry. I agree that if under the doctrine of collective responsibility these names are to be put before us, not individually, not separately, but collectively, there is a certain anomaly between the Constitution and the precedent.

We say there is no reason in law or in the Standing Orders why the precedent which was created in 1922, the precedent which had not previously held so far as the Dáil of the Republic was concerned, so far as the previous Legislature of this country was concerned, should necessarily bind this body in the future conduct of its decisions. We say further it would be much more helpful to the Dáil if those Ministers were put forward individually and we were enabled to criticise the individual conduct of their respective Departments. We are faced to-day with the position that the idea of Article 53 has been temporarily put aside. It seems now to be the prevailing opinion amongst the people on the opposite benches — I do not know why, except possibly that Deputy Duggan has found Deputy Heffernan more tractable and easier to deal with than he found those who preceded him in the Chairmanship of the Farmers' Party — that they have as a result of yesterday's division an automatic majority in this House. That is, I think, again contrary to the spirit of the Constitution.

We feel that if men came to this Assembly with open minds, desirous of doing their duty to their constituents and their country, that the abuses which have been recited here in the administration of the country would have convinced them it was the best thing for Ireland and the best thing for the people they represent to reverse, if necessary, the decision which they gave yesterday, and instead instal another Executive prepared to cure those abuses. According to the Constitution the Executive Council are collectively responsible. If that is so, then they are collectively responsible for a record of financial irresponsibility and administrative ineptitude that has never been paralleled in the history of representative government. A Deputy from County Dublin, Deputy O'Sullivan, stated that it had been said or conveyed in this Dáil that all the merits, all the patriotism and the virtue was on one side of this House. It has not only been said in this Dáil, it has been repeated in the country. The President of the Executive Council and all those who were associated with him made it their great plea during the last general election that they were the only men of financial integrity and administrative ability in this country fitted to carry on the Government. They professed to be the custodians of the country's credit and the country's good name, but they did not hesitate, in order to catch a few votes or to snatch a temporary political advantage, to debase the credit of this country and the good name on brother Irishmen. We were accused as perjurers, as dreamers, as idealists, as self-seekers even, and yet we come before you with reasoned criticism on economic grounds of the administration of President Cosgrave.

I notice that the gentleman who said yesterday that he did not understand the economic policy of Fianna Fáil has not listened to this debate lest perforce he might learn something which might change his attitude in this division. It has been the profession of the Government that they were the custodians of this nation's rights and this nation's interests. They took their stand for the last four or five years on the maintenance of the Treaty. How did they maintain it? Turn up the Standing Orders you have and look at the two amendments to the Treaty. Look, Article 12 has vanished from the Treaty, and ask yourselves for what? We believed that the Treaty was wrong, but we believed also that if the people have accepted the Treaty, it was up to the men responsible for that acceptance to secure that every ounce of interest, every ounce of advantage, that could be secured for the people of Ireland would be secured under that Treaty. Gone is Article 12. Gone are the Six Counties of Northern Ireland, and instead we have the country saddled with a tribute to England of something like 5¼ million pounds. For what reason? I notice that the Minister-designate for Finance has smiled. Well, 5¼ million pounds might seem a comparatively small sum to him. I remember as a matter of fact, I think when speaking in his own constituency in Monaghan — a constituency which he has had to fight hard to retain ever since — he said this secret financial agreement was a matter of comparative insignificance. An agreement that takes 5¼ millions of Irish money is a matter of comparative insignificance to the Minister-designate for Finance under President Cosgrave's administration, but is it a matter of comparative insignificance for the taxpayers of the country; is it a matter of comparative insignificance to the non-existent members of the Farmers' Party; is it a matter of comparative insignificance that the Government which rules over them and collects 5¼ millions of their money should hand it over every year to England?

We on those benches stand for the principles of Fintan Lalor:

"The land of Ireland for the people of Ireland,

Without rent or render, suit or service,

To any power under Heaven."

That is a doctrine and a principle that it should be the duty, above all others, of the Farmers' Party in this House to stand for. Was it not to make that principle a reality that they fought the land war? Yet we will find them supporting a gentleman this evening whose policy is to reverse that principle and violate it in every application so far as the Irish farmer is concerned. What justification does he claim to collect these annuities? I have not yet been able to ascertain from any public statement that has been made by those who speak for President Cosgrave's Party in this matter on what grounds these annuities were collected and paid over —no satisfactory statement, at any rate.

As I said before, if the Treaty was accepted by the people, then the people are entitled to get full value for that acceptance. Either those annuities were part of the public debt of Great Britain or they were not. If they were part of the public debt, this House was told by President Cosgrave, when asked to vote for the Treaty Amendment Act of 1925, that all liability under Article 5 had been extinguished. If, on the other hand, the annuities were not part of the public debt, then I say there is not a line, a clause or sentence in the Treaty that compels President Cosgrave to collect these annuities from the Irish people and hand them over to the English Exchequer. He must find authority for that act in one of two ways. He must find it in the Treaty, and if he proposes to find it under Article 5 of the Treaty, then that Article was extinguished. He told the House that when he asked it to adopt the Treaty Amendment Act.

We are asked to vote in the dark for President Cosgrave's Executive. When he spoke during the last election he enunciated some conditions upon which he was prepared to co-operate with other Parties in the State. One was that we should honour agreements, national and international. Now think of this secret financial agreement to which I have referred. It was signed, I understand, in March, 1926, but it was not published to the Irish people until the following November — six months later. We call it a secret financial agreement. It was kept secret, at any rate, for six months. When President Cosgrave asks you to give your assent to the Executive that he has put before you, I think you are entitled to ask yourselves, when he asks you to honour the agreements which he enters into in your name, how many more such secret agreements he has already signed. Is there a secret agreement, for instance, in relation to the question of the defence of these islands, and is it because there was some such agreement entered into at the Imperial Conference in November last that it is proposed to translate the Minister for External Affairs from that Department to the Department of Defence in order that he might put in operation this secret financial agreement? We heard the Minister for Finance, in introducing his last Budget, admit that it would be possible to reduce the army of the Free State and to reduce the expenditure upon it. Does he propose to do that now? Could he not have done it three months ago as easily as he could do it now, and could he not have done it twelve months ago? What foreign foe would the army be valuable against, or what domestic foe is going to rise up to fight against that Army? We definitely felt for the past five years that the way of argument and persuasion was the way for us to attain our ideals. When the cease fire order was issued in 1923, we made up our minds that henceforward the weapon of propaganda was going to be the one that was going to get the people to follow us, and we have loyally followed that out, notwithstanding the agent provocateur paid by Deputy Blythe out of the secret service fund. Our friends said that they had balanced the Budget. Well, if they had balanced the Budget, they should have made their outgoings commensurate with their incomings; but how is it that in five years they have incurred a public debt of something like £16,300,000? Is not that fact in itself sufficient to show that the Budget has not been balanced, that there has been a fictitious balance sheet prepared, a fraudulent balance sheet, intended to hoodwink the taxpayers of the country that the men who had control of the Treasury were careful, prudent and economic?

I say that their whole record is a record of administrative ineptitude. There has not been a single agreement of any commercial importance that they have entered into in connection with which this House has not been faced with supplementary estimate after supplementary estimate. There is the question, for instance, of the Sugar Beet Factory. That scheme, I think, was President Cosgrave's device in order to make life sweet for himself in his old constituency of Carlow, but I suppose it will be transferred to Cork after the next election. Under that scheme, as divulged to the Dáil, I understand that for the first year the subsidy was to be something like £125,000. In the statement of the financial accounts for the year 1926-27 we find that the sugar beet subsidy amounted to £198,000. Can anyone tell what it will be in the next year or the year after? I am not questioning the principle of subsidising industries in order to establish them here in Ireland, but I say that the subsidy ought to have been calculated on certain welldefined principles. I assume that the basis of it was this: that if such an amount of beet were manufactured into sugar, and that for such an amount of beet you had a certain output of sugar, then this subsidy was meant to cover the difference between the actual cost of production and the sale price to allow a reasonable profit for the undertaking. If the quantity of material dealt with had been increased, if the output of the factory had been increased, then the overhead charges per unit output would have decreased and the subsidy ought to be decreased also—at least the rate of the subsidy — instead of which we find that the subsidy for the first year, instead of being £125,000 as was originally estimated, was actually £198,000. There are dozens and dozens of these financial administrative matters that if I were to detail them would show that so far as public moneys are concerned the Department of Finance and the President and every single member of the Executive Council have been lax and imprudent.

I know of one case in my own constituency where a certain concern was advanced something like £50,000 under the Trade Facilities Act. Of that sum £30,000 went to clear a bank overdraft. The concern worked for something like two or three months — it might have been a little longer, but less than a year at any rate—and eventually shut down, and now I understand that, though the Department of Finance had a prior lien on the assets, that has been waived in favour of a bank overdraft of £8,000. But whether the transactions have been of magnitude or whether they have been practically infinitesimal, the attitude of the Ministry has been the same: as I said before, lax and imprudent. They cared not for the pence, or the pounds, or the millions of pounds; their only concern was that they should get enough out of the taxpayers to be generous to England and, on occasions, to be generous to their political friends at home. I submit, on the grounds I have recited —because they have not served the interests of Ireland well, because though they refused to amend the Treaty, or to seek amendment of it in order to meet the wishes of their own people in Ireland, while they assented to England amending that Treaty in England's interests, because they have signed behind the backs of the people a secret financial agreement for which there was no justification whatever, and because they have been lax in the control of public moneys — that you should not assent to the nomination of the Ministers proposed by the President.

I intervene, with your permission, sir, for a moment. For the second time this evening the statement has been made that a person convicted for keeping a disorderly house was sentenced to two years' imprisonment and was released after two months. That statement is untrue. Oldham was, I think, the name mentioned. The sentence was four months' imprisonment on 3rd December, 1925, and the prisoner was released, without any mitigation of the sentence, on the 14th March, 1926. I presume that under the circumstances the two Deputies who made that charge will have the grace to withdraw it.

Certainly, if the facts are as the President states, I withdraw it.

Well, I have the facts from the Department of Justice.

I join in withdrawing.

It was not my intention this evening to make my debut in this debate, but I do so after hearing the very interesting statement made by Deputy O'Sullivan to the effect that only for the National Army we would not be in this Assembly this evening. The Deputy also gave us to understand that the National Army was bound to a duly elected Government in the ordinary way as we understand it militarily. As far as I know, it is customary in every civilised country for the army to be bound to the elected Government of the country, and that each unit of such army signs what is known in military parlance as an attestation form. That attestation form contains, amongst other things, a declaration which binds the soldier to the army and to the elected Government of the country. Now, I happen to be aware that, prior to the attack on the Four Courts, every man who entered, say, Portobello or Beggars' Bush Barracks was asked to sign an attestation form, and that before signing he was given to understand that that portion of the Irish Republican Army was only lent to the Provisional Government for the purpose of policing the country until such time as a decision was come to as to what was going to happen after the election, and so on. That declaration contained the following — and every man who entered the barracks and put on a uniform, prior to the attack on the Four Courts, signed it: "I, A.B., do agree to serve in the regular forces of the Irish Republican Army for a period of"— two years in the case of men, and indefinitely in the case of officers—"and I hereby testify that the foregoing particulars are correct.""The foregoing particulars" were particulars as to the man's activities in the Irish Republican Army, and so on. Each man signed that declaration, that is, that he was joining the regular forces of the Irish Republican Army, and each man who went out to participate in the attack on the Four Courts had signed that declaration. Now, I think it requires some explanation as to how these people could be regarded as the regular forces of a Government like the Free State Government, when they were definitely bound under that declaration to serve in the regular forces of the Irish Republican Army.

I listened to another interesting statement from, I believe, Deputy Byrne, to the effect that £35,000,000 of the money of the people of the Twenty-six Counties went up in smoke, as it were, and he definitely blamed that on the policy of those who sit on these benches. I have a distinct recollection that during the time of the negotiations and the Pact Election we who were then on the Staff in Portobello Barracks did not get any supplies of arms or ammunition from the British Government, although we had got supplies up to that point. But on the night of the attack on the Four Courts those men who were inside Portobello and Beggars' Bush Barracks, in uniform and attested as regular forces of the Irish Republican Army, were led out to the Phoenix Park and that there they got supplies of arms and ammunition with which to attack the Four Courts. I have also a distinct recollection that a requisition form was sent in to the headquarters of the British military authorities asking for more supplies of arms and ammunition, and that requisition contained the following items—I do not want to take up much of your time, but I think it would not be any harm to enumerate them:— They were: 3,000,000 rounds of .303 ammunition, 5,000 Webley revolvers, 50,000 rounds of Webley ammunition, 2 field guns, 200 high explosive shells, 5 Lancia armoured cars, 2 singleturret Rolls-Royce armoured cars, 1,000 incendiary bombs, and 10,000 ordinary bombs. We leave out all the rest and deal only with the thousand incendiary bombs. I need not explain to some of the Deputies here who have had military experience what an incendiary bomb is, but some other Deputies may not know what it contains. It contains a combustible material which is used in the arts, for the purpose of welding steel, so great is the heat given forth from the combustion of that material. I need not point out to Deputies what effect these incendiary bombs would have if, for example, they were dropped into the Four Courts, into the Hammam Hotel or into the Gresham Hotel. I will not say that they were used in that way, but they were purchased from the British Government and our money was expended in their purchase. They may not have been used; they may have been kept for ornament, but it would be interesting to know what happened to them.

As a Deputy representing a constituency on the West Coast I am particularly interested in an industry that has not been looked after as it should have been during the past five years. I refer to the fishing industry, and I am anxious to know if the incoming Minister intends to change his policy, and whether this industry is going to be looked after. There is a large amount of unemployment on the sea coast, while the people are anxious to work if they can get it. To a large extent the fisheries around the whole coast of Ireland are undeveloped. If they were developed they would provide a large amount of employment. We are given to understand that during the past few years the administration of this Department has really cost a lot more than the amount spent on development. In the Estimates for the years 1927-28 about £34,000 is allotted for salaries, while only £27,000 is apportioned for development. If that continues, we feel that the fisheries are going to be neglected and that the poverty-stricken people will in the future, as in the past, have the only resource that was left to them, emigration. As far as inland fisheries are concerned we feel that the tax imposed on rod licences really amounts to State interference, as the amount of revenue that is secured must be insignificant. The tax imposes a hardship on a number of people who made their living by fishing. A tax of £2 is a hardship on them, as they are not able to pay it. In our view as a result such fishing is confined exclusively to those who have the means and are able to pay the licence. It is the poorer classes should be considered, as they made a living by fishing. I would urge that the tax should be removed. The revenue from it must be insignificant. I would also like to point out that the report of the Fisheries Conference which was set up by the late Government has not been acted upon. We are anxious to know the reason as we feel that there were valuable recommendations embodied in the report. These recommendations deserve consideration. They would be effective if they were carried out, and would give employment.

As a constructive policy I would suggest that a re-valuation of boats and gear would be of great benefit to those along the coast who are interested in the fisheries. The present valuation on the boats and gear was put on when prices were high and markets a little difficult. The markets are poor now and values are generally reduced. I would suggest that a re-valuation is necessary in order to give those concerned a chance of developing the industry. After all, the loans that were given were given at a high rate of interest. We hold that is against the development of the industry and should be reconsidered. We would also suggest that cheaper transit should be supplied to the fisheries along the coast. We would also recommend the provision of new loans, extending over a long period for the further purchase of boats and gear. Another suggestion is that navigation schools should be set up along the coast and particularly in towns where there are technical schools. We understand that that would be a cheap method of establishing fishery schools. I think three schools were suggested by the Department, to start within the past year but that number would not be sufficient. Local training could be secured in a number of places along the coast and boats might be made available for the practical training of the students.

We think that poaching along the coast is not dealt with as it should be. When poachers are captured they are not punished but actually let off. These poachers destroy the spawning beds that are supposed to be lying in the shallow beds around the coast. The fishery districts around the coast are the principal Irish-speaking districts of the Twenty-six Counties and all who are concerned for the preservation and spread of the Irish language must be anxious that employment will be secured for the people in those districts. If that was done perhaps the greatest step would be taken for the development of the Irish language. I hope the recommendations that I have made will receive the serious consideration of the Minister for Fisheries.

My memory is not as good as it once was. I have been wondering for a moment what we are discussing. Three and a half hours ago I was under the impression that we were discussing a motion by the President that we should approve of his nomination of the Executive Council consisting of seven members. Now I fancy we are wrong. I am wondering whether we are discussing the fishery estimates or the force of an incendiary bomb. There is one thing certain that we have not been discussing for the last hour the question with which we started at three o'clock this afternoon. I would like to bring you back for a moment or two because I have a good deal of sympathy with the Opposition as regards their initial objection to this motion. And the same objection was made three months ago, namely, that under the practice—to put it at no higher level—of this Dáil, the President nominates the entire body in one motion. We then rather objected to it, because there was present amongst a good many members of the Labour Party and amongst some members, at all events, of the Party to which I have the honour to belong, and some members of another Party which was then in existence, a solid objection to one single member of the intended Cabinet. The difficulty with us then was how were we to show our objection by our votes. We could not vote for six without also voting for the seventh. Were we to punish the six for the sins of the seventh? Then the difficulty arose that on the other hand we were to vote for the six and exculpate the seventh. I myself, perhaps, on reflection, wrongly voted against all seven. I think perhaps it might have been wiser for me if on that occasion I had borrowed my friend Deputy Redmond's patent and said I would not vote at all. However that may be, I am happy to say that no such difficulty arises to-night. The black spot has been wiped out. I do think that the President in his benevolence might, having regard to the events that have happened, say that after all there was some excuse for those who voted against the whole bloc. I cannot understand the attack that has been made on the Ministry of Justice. I am one of the members of this House who from time to time have criticised that Ministry as much as any other Deputy in the House. I have never criticised it without good and sufficient reason. I have criticised the Ministery of Justice. But to-night the proposition before us is that a gentleman of the highest standing at the Irish Bar should be placed in charge of that office. It is proposed to place in charge of that office a gentleman against whom no Deputy in this House can say a word. What more can we ask? There must be some reason in these things. Would anybody in this House suggest a Deputy who is actuated by higher or nobler motives and is better qualified to fill the position than Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney? I know of nobody and I think we all here should show our gratitude to the President for having made so wise and sagacious a selection.

There is one other point that I want to make—I want to make one thing clear. I heard some talk this evening about the Public Safety Act. I was one of the few members of this House, in addition to the Labour Party, who voted against such sections of that Act as I thought were objectionable, and, as a result of the opposition which the Bill received, it became law in a very different shape from what it was when it was introduced. But who passed the Public Safety Act? It was not the Government who passed it. It was the forty-three Deputies of this House who refused to come in to oppose it, and refused because of a mere empty formula. Why should they turn round to-night and say that the Bill which they passed is their grievance? Whose grievance is it? It is my grievance and the grievance of the members of the Labour Party and the grievance of the people who stood up here against it and got no help from the Deputies who tell us to-night that the only reason they would not come in was because of a mere empty formula preventing them.

I think we should discuss this motion calmly and reasonably. I do think this debate should have been conducted without any reference from the front Opposition benches to the Public Safety Act. I only add that as regards Ministers who have been opposed, Ministers against whom individual attacks have been made, that I would like some proposal from the Opposition benches as to where better could be got. I have some short experience of this House, and I think the President has succeeded in getting the pick of the House. I know he has behind him the will of this House, as he has got the will of the people, in the appointments he is proposing to make.

We have had a long debate, and Deputies will be glad if I say at once that it is not my intention to add another speech. I think, on the whole, it has been a useful debate. Though certain charges have been made and some of them withdrawn, the general tone and tenor of the debate suggest, I think, hope for the future. and suggest that those who have newly arrived amongst us are ready, as I am certain they are, to co-operate with us rather than fight against us at any rate in a very large portion of the work of the administration in this country.

I only rise to ask the President when he is replying, as his policy has been questioned over many Departments, to give us, if he can, some further particulars—he will remember that I asked for them when the Dáil met on the last occasion—of his plans for the Gaeltacht. At that time, I think, the President hoped to be able to issue a White Paper giving us the particulars. No doubt the pre-occupation caused by the General Election and the various troubles since then, possibly prevented him and prevented him from being able to do what he himself, no doubt, wished. But if he is able to give us any further particulars I believe it would give the greatest satisfaction to the Deputies.

The debate, if I might say so, without intending any offence, has been conducted much as a debate on the Estimates would have been conducted. I think it would be unreasonable to expect an elaborate statement from me in reply to the various questions which have been raised and the points that have been discussed or to the very large number of criticisms. I think the House will not consider that I am treating it with any disrespect when I say that in a debate such as this lines of policy are the main considerations, and not the matters of detail which have been most discussed here to-night. I will take now, for example, one particular service that was discussed by two or three Deputies in relation to the employment of ex-National Army soldiers on the roads. I will give the House figures which will enable it to get a correct picture of what is actually happening, and consequently I will explode, almost entirely, the case that has been made against us here this evening. The total number of persons employed on the roads paid by the local authorities or paid by the National Road Scheme, or employed under the Road Fund Grant, amounts to 18,930. Of these, the ex-National Army men total 1,861. If we make a further sub-division and extract from that number the number of ex-National Army men who are employed by the local authorities, you can take from 1,861 the figures 374, bringing the figure of ex-National Army men to something under 1,500 out of very nearly 19,000 persons employed.

took the chair.

I want the President to give us the exact number employed under the £2,000,000 Road Grant Construction Scheme.

I am not in a position to give that particular information. I can get it later on.

The Deputy can put down a question dealing with that matter.

I find that I am now in a position to give the Deputy the information. The number, excluding ex-National Army men, is 6,131, and the number of ex-National Army men is 1,010.

Are those the numbers under the two million grant scheme?

Yes. I put it to Deputies that, bearing in mind what we have heard this evening, one would really assume that the figures would have been the other way—that there would have been 1,010 men employed who were not ex-National Army men and 6,131 persons who were ex-National Army men. I am sure there was no desire on the part of any Deputies to give misleading information to the House.

Will the President deal with the real point which I put— whether he is prepared to continue the policy of giving preference to single men who gave their services in the Army, to the exclusion of married men with dependants?

It is the principle of the thing—that is the point.

As the Ceann Comhairle has pointed out, that is a matter which ought to be raised by way of question and answer. I am not accepting the Deputy's statement that that is the policy at the moment.

No. There may be, perhaps, one case in all Ireland, a case which I discussed with the Minister for Local Government within the last 24 hours—Waterford Borough. If the circumstances are as they were told to me and as I explained to the Minister, I know that matter will receive very early consideration.

I am very glad to hear that statement.

I can assure Deputies that the desire generally is to be fair in those matters.

In Connemara the same rule holds as in Waterford. The President says the conditions hold only in Waterford. They also hold in Connemara.

I would like to point out—the Deputy has reminded me of it—that I gathered from the speakers opposite to us that there was a discrimination against their friends and supporters in the country. Now, whether Deputies believe it or not, in my pilgrimages throughout the country the very same complaint was made to me in respect of our supporters. Exactly the same complaint was made, and, if I may say so, Connemara was actually the place cited to me as the most glaring example of injustice to our followers.

Too true.

That, I think, is a voice from Connemara. I propose to leave that matter for the moment. I do not desire to keep the House an unusual length of time. I do not expect that anything I would say, though I had the force of a Demosthenes, would change any votes that will be cast here this evening.

You might.

I think that is like an invitation, and perhaps it is worth trying. I will get on to the thorny subject at once—the Public Safety Act. Notwithstanding all the statements I have made in connection with this Act in all parts of the country and here in the House, I will again say that this Act was not designed and was never intended to be used against a political party, against trade unions, against any lawful organisation. It was designed simply to meet with assassination and with conspiracies which would bring down the Government of this State by violent methods. No other thought was in the minds of the Executive Council when framing the Act; no other intention was in their minds, and no other action will be taken by the Executive Council except to deal with assassination or conspiracy to achieve by violent means the purposes of the conspirators. An unlawful association is one which has that for its purpose. So far as I know, no Deputy in this House stands for or approves of assassination. Why then should I try to mislead people? I have not done it from the moment we introduced the Act. It was designed for no other purpose than to deal with that, and Deputies who have spoken about this Act here this evening realise as clearly as we do that so long as there are attempts by violent means to achieve political purposes, so long will the economic situation here be affected. Notwithstanding what provisions there are in this Act, notwithstanding what powers there are given to an Executive Council in the administration of this Act, nobody need be told by me or by anybody else what power there is here in this House to deal with an Executive abusing an Act such as this.

The President made a statement in Cork which has caused a great deal of uneasiness in the country. He stated that if returned, he was going to put the Public Safety Act into full operation. We want to know whether the President is standing by that. I hope he is not.

You are going to put it into full operation?

Every clause and section of it?

Yes—full operation in so far as its provisions enable us to deal with assassination, to deal with conspiracies which have violent means as their object.

In the opinion of the Ministers.

What assassination was Mr. Tuohy arrested for in Kerry?

I hope the Deputy will at least realise that those are matters of detail. As regards Mr. Tuohy, I do not know anything about him at all. If he has been improperly arrested, that is a matter that can be raised here, and there is power in the hands of any Deputy to raise such a question. In other words, if there is abuse, the abuse can be remedied here. It can be exposed, the Minister can be brought to book and the whole thing can be discussed. If Deputies, however, in any part of the House think that an administration under any number of Deputies is going to be perfect from top to bottom then I think they will have to commence learning something about administration again. If Deputy Morrissey concluded from what. I stated in Cork that I intended to put Part 3 into operation I may say that I had no such intention and I did not wish to convey any such impression.

That is what the people thought—full operation.

That is something more than full operation. I think that the Minister for Finance, as well as myself, explained at great length here and in the Seanad that one conviction by a jury was worth more than a dozen convictions under such a court as would be set up under this Act, and we said plainly to the people that jury trials had not broken down. They had not broken down, and I certainly would abuse my authority if I were to introduce a proclamation in connection with this when there is no case for it. I do not know whether Deputy Ruttledge had this particular Act in mind when he spoke about an independent judiciary. He rather glided over it, but I would like to tell the Deputy, as he was not present at the discussions which took place when the Bill was before the Dáil and Seanad, that the judges appointed by us were in a very different position to those appointed by the British Government when they were in control here.

The judges appointed by us were independent. They were not appointed by us to try an issue as to the guilt or innocence of a person. That was a matter for a jury, and that was the reason why we did not set up a court here having a High Court or Supreme Court Judge on it to try an issue as to whether a person was guilty or innocent, that being for a jury. The Deputy may have notions himself regarding what he would have if he were in my position. The judges he would appoint would be so impeccable that they could administer an Act like that and maintain the confidence of the public afterwards when the time had expired for such administration. I do not subscribe to that doctrine. I do not agree that the method of the British Government was a good one. There should be no association between judges and the Executive Council. There has been none with us, and the judges retain their independence and, I hope, always will.

The Deputy went on to give a large number of cases of persons who had been convicted in the courts and who were released. I recollect one of these cases coming before the Executive Council. There may have been others, but I have a distinct recollection of one. It was a case in which two men were involved. One was an officer and the other was a private. They were charged, I believe, with wilful murder. The officer was convicted and executed. The private was convicted and sentenced to death, but we commuted the sentence to one of penal servitude for, either, ten or twenty years. The facts of the case were these. The officer commanded the private to shoot a man down the country. The private's explanation of it was that he fired at the man with a view to proving to the officer that he had done what he told him, that the officer came along and, seeing that the man was not dead, fired at him himself and killed him. He threatened to shoot the soldier if he did not carry out his orders. The night before the execution the officer left a document in which he exculpated the soldier and stated that he ordered him to do it, and, I believe, he added—I am speaking from recollection—that if he had not done it he would have shot him. That information was brought before the Executive Council by the late Minister after the man had served two years' imprisonment, and the Executive Council in their discretion —and I accept the fullest responsibility for it—ordered Private Leen to be released.

I examined the other case mentioned by the Deputy, and he has gracefully withdrawn his charge in connection with that. I would like to add in respect of other cases that it is easy now in 1927, close up to 1928, to rehearse a long list of cases where men who were charged with very serious crimes had the sentences remitted by the Executive Council or the Minister for Justice. Let us examine the circumstances, Civil war waged here in 1922. It went on to 1923 and it did not stop. Crime and violence did not cease when, as somebody said on the opposite benches this evening, there was a grandiloquent expression of "Cease fire." You do not stop civil strife and disturbance by a single sentence. It went on, and somewhere about 1924 a large number of cases came before the courts and many other cases were pending. The circumstances connected with the civil disturbances having changed very considerably, the Executive Council in its wisdom considered whether or not it would be advisable to issue an amnesty in respect of these cases. I would like to say, for the information of the very scrutinising Deputies on the other side, that it was a strange thing that most of these cases in which we could get information and convictions were cases of persons who had served in the National Army. We found it practically impossible to get information concerning persons who committed much more heinous crimes who were not in the National Army and bore arms against that Army.

A DEPUTY

No proof.

No proof that could be produced in court, but proof "Yes." The Deputy, I am sure, does not claim that there was no crime whatever committed by any person engaged in arms against the National Army.

On a point of order, apart from what may be termed political activities, I am certain that ordinary crimes against the criminal law were punished where Republicans were concerned.

That is a remarkable and intelligent contribution to this discussion. May I tell the Deputy that in respect of the father of a member of the Executive Council a person whom we had as prisoner was found guilty by a court, and, claiming a certain legal technicality, he escaped. He was acquitted, and so it was with a number of others. In its wisdom the Executive Council released 13,000 persons who were interned, a large number of whom had been tried and found guilty of various offences and whose cases were reconsidered by two judges. They were all released, and now having shown clemency, remarkable clemency, on one side we are attacked with mal-administration, with having exercised an amnesty in respect of all cases—and the cases mentioned by Deputy Ruttledge are cases which in the ordinary way were included in that amnesty. I recollect having looked at one of these cases. It was the case of a man who had not raised the question of amnesty in his own regard, and he served, I think, two years' imprisonment when he might have escaped serving. He applied to the Executive Council to have his case remitted and it was remitted.

In respect of that time—I think it was in October, 1924—the amnesty was not confined to one side, and it is an unfair charge to make against the Executive Council that the amnesty was only on one side. I would like to tell Deputy Ruttledge that the Courts of Justice Act was brought into the Dáil following a report made by a Committee set up to consider what changes ought to be effected in the judiciary. I believe there was only one lay person —I may be wrong as it was a couple of years ago—a business man, on the Committee, and the rest of the members who composed that Committee were judges, ex-judges, barristers and solicitors. We acted on their report. I understand that no complaint has come into the Ministry of Justice as regards litigants in connection with the Courts of Justice Act. Complaints have come in in respect of legal men, but not, as I have said, from litigants, and I presume they are a very important item.

I thought the President knew that litigants had to do their business through legal men.

Several Deputies addressed themselves to the question of fisheries. I think Deputy Law mentioned the Fisheries Conference. I understand, speaking generally, that the recommendations of the Conference have been accepted by the Department of Fisheries. The detailed working out of the recommendations is a matter for close discussion between the Departments of Fisheries and Finance. Deputy French drew attention to central purchasing, and another Deputy suggested that some other item he had mentioned was one of the strong planks in the old Sinn Féin platform. As a matter of fact, central purchasing was also one of the planks in the Sinn Féin platform. It is not compulsory to buy from the central purchasing department if purchases can be made cheaper locally. Central purchasing is unpopular locally. It has saved the local authorities considerable sums of money, and it has been instrumental in having some industries started. As far as long-term loans are concerned, I presume it is understood that in order to be able to lend money for a long term one must have the money to lend, and that is the only drawback to facilitating local authorities in the matter of long-term loans. I hope that as a result of the events of the last two or three months, and I suppose with there being greater confidence in the Parliament now, it may be possible to borrow money at a reasonable price, but I certainly would like to see the National Loan standing a little higher. Deputy Redmond said it was not fair to saddle the Dáil with the responsibility of selecting the whole of the Government. There is the other question, to which one might take exception, and I presume exception is occasionally taken, to any Executive or to one particular member of it. There is usually a member who is not as popular as others. I gather from Deputy Wolfe's speech that that was in his mind. I am not expressing any desire the unpopular member should leave. It always happens in any Executive that there are some who are not as agreeable to the House as others, but I urge the other consideration that there is a very great responsibility on the person selected to form a Government, and that a little latitude might be allowed in these matters in the public interest.

With regard to loans for fisheries, I understand there is a scheme in the Department of Fisheries dealing with that matter, and the Department of Fisheries is in consultation with the Department of Finance with a view to discounting the high prices which operated during the war years. I do not mean to convey to Deputy Kilroy that it will meet with universal satisfaction. Deputy MacEntee has some fears about a secret agreement regarding defence. I would like to re-assure him. There was no secret financial agreement, as he mentioned. The Deputy probably has not had time to read up the records of the House during the last four or five years. If he had that opportunity he would find that there was an agreement in connection with the services of the Land Commission. Something like five years ago an agreement was signed that the question of debts in connection with Land Commission annuities was a matter which fell for settlement. One of two things might happen—whether the British Government would retain the Land Commission here and collect the land annuities due to them, or whether the Provisional Government, or the Government of the Irish Free State, would take over responsibility for the collection of Land Commission annuities. My recollection is that the first agreement was entered into. In March, 1922, or March, 1923, an Act was passed by the Dáil giving permission for the collection and payment of Land Commission annuities. It passed through the Dáil with that information for all the Deputies in connection with it. Deputy Gavan Duffy was a member of the House at the time, and I hesitate to think that a Deputy of his intelligence would have allowed an item of £3,000,000 to pass through and not be able to see it.

Is there any Article in the Treaty which provides for a supplementary agreement and which would give the English Government authority to set up a Land Commission in Ireland to collect annuities as rents from Irish land?

There is nothing to prevent them. It is purely a banking transaction. The Deputy is a child in these matters and he will learn as he goes on.

Some of the older men have been in their second childhood in these matters.

A sum of about 130 millions was lent to complete land purchase. The Deputy asked is it or is it not part of the Public Debt? He would get that information if he looked at the publications in respect to the Public Debt. He will find that it is not in the Public Debt. He will find that it is a separate item, and that it is really equivalent to a banking transaction. For the Deputy's peace of mind I may say that it costs £4,000,000 to pay the interest and sinking fund in connection with land purchase, and the contribution that we make is about £850,000 short of that.

Why not wipe out annuities altogether?

I will ask the Deputy if that is the way he does his business—when he has a large number of debts due to him he goes and collects all his clients together and says: "How many barrels to you?""One hundred.""Write down fifty." In respect to other things, local loans, etc., the British Government really facilitated local authorities during the last twenty, thirty or forty years by advancing money for local purposes at a very cheap rate. Deputy O'Kelly will inform the Deputy with regard to that if he has any doubt about it. That money was due. They were in effect bankers. They had to meet the liabilities in respect of that. Whoever they borrowed the money from they paid it to them, and they could have sold their rights in respect of that to a bank if they so desired. When the Deputy has time to look up that financial agreement he will find that the Minister for Finance struck a rather favourable bargain for this country, notwithstanding the Deputy's prejudices in the matter, or the poor advice he may have got from other sources.

He has refused to defend it before the Seanad.

I expect that when the Deputy knows Senator Colonel Moore as long as I do he will not waste any time on him. Tariff policy was mentioned. The Government's policy in respect to tariffs is unchanged from the date on which I made that announcement at the Cumann na nGaedheal Convention which has attracted such remarkable, in fact, such wide observation in the country. I expect to have some reports from the Tariff Commission within the next fortnight and I will bring them before the House. Deputy MacEntee is interested in finance. He stated that we did not balance our Budget during the last five years because there is a National Debt now of £16,390,000. That is where experience in administration comes in. It so happens that certain items are regarded as capital expenditure. The Shannon scheme for example—the Deputy will admit that—certain Army expenditure. If the Deputy wants any information on that he can consult the Chancelleries in Europe and he will find that not one of them paid the expenses of the Great War out of revenue. They borrowed money in respect of it. So in respect of the Army charge over and above what we estimated as normal—it is a fairly high estimate: £2,000,000 per annum. Anything over and above that, in respect of the disturbed period, we put down as capital expenditure. We also put down compensation as capital expenditure, which amounted to something like £10,000,000. We put down anything which was not in the nature of normal recurrent expenditure that was ordinarily met from year to year, and a very close analysis of the Estimates was made by the Minister for Finance and disclosed to the House every year in his Budget statement. If the Deputy desires any information as to what we would consider assets in respect of that £16,390,000 he can of course inquire by putting a question to the Minister for Finance, or any other matter of that sort. I am not speaking in any jocose manner. We have got for the future either to act here candidly and fairly with one another or to try to score, to lead nowhere and to do very poor work. I suggest that at least we ought to try to be candid, and when a Minister or a Deputy makes a statement to accept that statement, believing that the statement must be true, that it is accepted in all honour. If the Deputy considers that is good policy we are prepared to meet him on that. I think it would be in the interests of the country that it should be so, but I think that mentioning a figure of £16,390,000 as being so much wasted money that we piled up year after year is a mistake. I have mentioned the Shannon scheme, compensation, the extra Army expenditure and so on. These are items that cannot be excluded from consideration and ought not to be.

How much do they amount to?

The Deputy surely will understand that it is unfair to ask a question of that sort and expect it to be answered at once. I can tell him if he wishes. In the first year the Army expenditure was 7½ millions; the second year, 10 millions odd, and in the third year it was, I think, 3 millions. That is twenty millions. If the Deputy takes off 6 millions from that he will find that there are fourteen millions left. In addition to that we have spent approximately 10 millions in compensation— giving a rough figure—and a couple of million pounds on the Shannon scheme. It is scarcely a fair statement to come from a responsible Deputy that we have neglected balancing our Budget for five years because we owe 16 million pounds. In addition to that there is the restoration of buildings in Dublin, such as the Customs House, the Four Courts and the Post Office. These are certainly not ordinary items that should be included and met out of revenue each year.

I agree that even a Free State Government cannot burn down the Hammam Hotel every year and that it is not normal recurrent expenditure, but would the President disclose to the House exactly how much has been paid by way of reconstruction of destroyed property during the last four or five years. There have been various statements. One Deputy said £35,000,000. We are asked to accept statements given in this House in good faith. Another Deputy said £20,000,000 and another Deputy said £14,000,000.

The Deputy can get the exact amount by putting down a question to the Minister for Finance. When a Deputy said £35,000,000 he included consequential loss. I never included consequential loss, though it is perfectly fair. Business men would include it. I have had many of these claims for compensation. In quite a number of instances consequential losses may be very much greater than the other losses. A man's house might have been burned and his wife put out on the roadside and might contract pneumonia or tuberculosis and be a perpetual blister on him, and he gets no compensation in respect to that. It is the same way in connection with a business if it stops, if goods are destroyed and cannot be sold, or something of that sort. The exact figures which I estimate in respect of civil disturbance is about £22,000,000. Of that, £15,000,000 was, I think, excess Army cost and £7,000,000 for compensation— I am speaking from recollection and cannot stand absolutely over these figures.

It is proposed to introduce legislation to allow county councils to do direct drainage schemes costing £1,000 and under. It is hoped that that will eliminate delay. I think I have now covered all the points. If there are any others and Deputies will remind me I shall answer them.

Perhaps the President will deal with the most important point raised in the debate, namely, unemployment, and perhaps he will tell us whether there is any new policy in respect to that.

So far as unemployment is concerned, I have seen no case in any country in the world where unemployment has been solved or relieved to any considerable extent by the Government. The Government policy during the last four or five years has been one towards keeping employment going and helping towards giving employment and giving what employment they could themselves. Our endeavour was to so arrange any development in connection with employment schemes or employment generally that there would not be a subsequent economic reaction. The Shannon scheme has given considerable employment. The sugar-beet scheme and various industries established in connection with our tariff policy have given employment. The reconstruction which has gone on and the housing assisted through the State have given employment. Drainage and forestries that have been planted and so on have given employment. The restoration of 2,700 bridges and the road scheme, and I put it now to the House whether the country can bear any more taxation in respect to what people so lightly call great big schemes for relieving unemployment.

Business men tell us that taxation is oppressive. We have endeavoured to reduce it, and it has been reduced very considerably. It was hoped that as a result of the reduction in taxation there would be a fillip to business. The Deputy need not be so unbelieving in respect to that. The events of the last three or four months have not been reassuring to business men. The assassination of a Minister is a terrible set-back.

And the unemployed are suffering.

And a lot now depends upon the conduct of this Dáil during the next few years as to whether business people can see that there is security for them here. Four months ago, when they came to me and said, "We noticed that there was a large number of persons outside the Dáil." I said "Yes." They said, "That does not look well for business." Now there is not that complaint, and it depends upon the action of every member of this Assembly as to how the business people can be attracted towards getting results that are really here. We have the largest brewery furnishing excellent results to the persons who invested their money in it and to the persons who are in its employment. The manager of Ford's in Cork told me he was quite satisfied he could meet in competition the works in Detroit. In various other factories I have gone into the report is one favourable to the industrial conditions here. The outgoing Government had under consideration the matter of dealing with the needs of the moment. It had not gone beyond the initial stages. I hope in the next week or fortnight a recommendation will be made to the House in that connection. I put it to Deputies that we are now going to look to the public for money. We have, as I have said, notwithstanding objections from the other side, balanced our Budget in the last few years. This year it was tight, tighter than before, and we must keep our eye on that particular item of our national economy in connection with the flotation of the loan.

Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 76; Níl, 70.

Tá.

  • William P. Aird.
  • Ernest Henry Alton.
  • James Walter Beckett.
  • George Cecil Bennett.
  • Ernest Blythe.
  • Séamus A. Bourke.
  • Michael Brennan.
  • Seán Brodrick.
  • Alfred Byrne.
  • John Joseph Byrne.
  • Edmund Carey.
  • John James Cole.
  • Mrs. Margt. Collins-O'Driscoll.
  • James Dwyer.
  • Barry M. Egan.
  • Osmond Thos. Grattan Esmonde.
  • Desmond Fitzgerald.
  • James Fitzgerald-Kenney.
  • John Good.
  • Alexander Haslett.
  • John J. Hassett.
  • Michael R. Heffernan.
  • Michael Joseph Hennessy.
  • Thomas Hennessy.
  • John Hennigan.
  • Mark Henry.
  • Patrick Hogan (Galway).
  • Richard Holohan.
  • Michael Jordan.
  • Patrick Michael Kelly.
  • Myles Keogh.
  • Hugh Alexander Law.
  • Patrick Leonard.
  • Finian Lynch.
  • Arthur Patrick Mathews.
  • Martin McDonogh.
  • Michael Og McFadden.
  • Patrick McGilligan.
  • Martin Conlan.
  • Michael P. Connolly.
  • Bryan Ricco Cooper.
  • William T. Cosgrave.
  • Sir James Craig.
  • James Crowley.
  • John Daly.
  • Michael Davis.
  • Peter De Loughrey.
  • Eugene Doherty.
  • James N. Dolan.
  • Peadar Seán Doyle.
  • Edmund John Duggan.
  • Joseph W. Mongan.
  • Richard Mulcahy.
  • James E. Murphy.
  • James Sproule Myles.
  • Martin Michael Nally.
  • John Thomas Nolan.
  • Richard O'Connell.
  • Bartholomew O'Connor.
  • Timothy Joseph O'Donovan.
  • Daniel O'Leary.
  • Dermot Gun O'Mahony.
  • John J. O'Reilly
  • Gearoid O'Sullivan.
  • John Marcus O'Sullivan.
  • Patrick Reynolds.
  • Martin Roddy.
  • Patrick W. Shaw.
  • Timothy Sheehy (West Cork).
  • William Edward Thrift.
  • Michael Tierney.
  • Daniel Vaughan.
  • John White.
  • Vincent Joseph White.
  • George Wolfe.
  • Jasper Travers Wolfe.

Níl.

  • Frank Aiken.
  • Denis Allen.
  • Richard Anthony.
  • Neil Blaney.
  • Gerald Boland.
  • Patrick Boland.
  • Daniel Bourke.
  • Seán Brady.
  • Robert Briscoe.
  • Henry Broderick.
  • Daniel Buckley.
  • Frank Carney.
  • Frank Carty.
  • Archie J. Cassidy.
  • Patrick Clancy.
  • Michael Clery.
  • James Colbert.
  • Hugh Colohan.
  • Eamon Cooney.
  • Dan Corkery.
  • Richard Corish.
  • Martin John Corry.
  • Fred. Hugh Crowley.
  • Tadhg Crowley.
  • William Davin.
  • Thomas Derrig.
  • Eamon de Valera.
  • Edward Doyle.
  • James Everett.
  • Frank Fahy.
  • Hugo Flinn.
  • Andrew Fogarty.
  • Seán French.
  • Patrick J. Gorry.
  • John Goulding.
  • Seán Hayes.
  • Patrick Hogan (Clare).
  • Samuel Holt.
  • Patrick Houlihan.
  • Stephen Jordan.
  • Michael Joseph Kennedy.
  • William R. Kent.
  • Frank Kerlin.
  • James Joseph Killane.
  • Mark Killelea.
  • Michael Kilroy.
  • Seán F. Lemass.
  • Patrick John Little.
  • Ben Maguire.
  • Thomas McEllistrim.
  • Seán MacEntee.
  • Séamus Moore.
  • Daniel Morrissey.
  • Thomas Mullins.
  • Timothy Joseph Murphy.
  • Thomas J. O'Connell.
  • Patrick Joseph O'Dowd.
  • Seán T. O'Kelly.
  • William O'Leary.
  • Matthew O'Reilly.
  • Thomas O'Reilly.
  • Thomas P. Powell.
  • Patrick J. Ruttledge.
  • James Ryan.
  • Martin Sexton.
  • Timothy Sheehy (Tipperary).
  • Patrick Smith.
  • John Tubridy.
  • Richard Walsh.
  • Francis C. Ward.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Duggan and P. S. Doyle; Níl: Deputies MacEntee and G. Boland.
Motion declared carried.
Barr
Roinn