In the discussion on this motion on Wednesday last, the speech by the Minister for Justice made it clear that there are three classes of prisoners under consideration. In the first class, there are prisoners who have not been released under what is called the amnesty of 1924. I have knowledge of only one such case—there may be others—and that is the case of the man McPeake. No argument has been put forward for the continued detention of McPeake. The statement was made by the Minister for Justice that he was detained because he was a deserter. We could prove that hundreds of others who had been in prison as deserters from the Army were released. It is, I think, more than obvious that the amnesty was introduced not so much to enable the Government to release the prisoners which it held from the Republican side in the civil war, as to to enable it to avoid having to put into prison a very considerable number of the National Army. But the amnesty was introduced, and as the Government takes credit for it on every conceivable occasion, we think it should apply its terms consistently when a case is brought to its notice of one who is undoubtedly covered by it and who is still in jail. That case should be given special consideration and an immediate release ordered.
There is in the second category the class of prisoners who escaped from Mountjoy Prison in 1925, and we submit that there can be no question in anyone's mind that these men are not criminals in the ordinary sense. Their imprisonment is an indication of a certain political situation in this country, and we suggest that the welfare of the country, its stability, its order and progress depend very largely on our being able to remove such causes of bitterness as exist, and one of the gravest causes of bitterness and strife that exists is the continued detention of these men and the savage and vindictive sentences which have been imposed upon such of them as have recently been re-arrested. The Minister read us a long list of prisoners and the crimes, as he described them, for which they were sentenced. He asked us if we maintained that these men were political prisoners and should be released as such. As I pointed out to the Minister, we have not asked that these prisoners should be released. We asked that "A Select Committee, to be nominated by the Committee of Selection, be set up forthwith to review the cases of all prisoners who claim that their cases arise out of the civil war or apart from strictly legal considerations have a political aspect."