It is difficult to reply to Deputy de Valera because there is not the time available. It seems to me that what the Deputy did was he put down on paper a dozen or two dozen headings and he uttered a few inaccuracies in regard to each and then he passed on. Of course that is fairly easy. One can utter an inaccuracy in a minute, or less than that, and it might take perhaps a good many minutes to deal with it. Deputy de Valera began on the question of salaries in the public service, and he quoted for us salaries paid in Belgium. I do not know what are the conditions prevailing in the public service in Belgium. There is a great deal more required than a mere statement that a person holding a certain office has a certain salary before one can draw any deductions from it. One has to know whether there are other emoluments, whether the work is full-time, whether it is performed by men who hold other offices or draw pensions. There are all sorts of things that have to be known. To suggest that in this country you should get your heads of departments at salaries of £457 a year is utterly ridiculous. That is no help, and it could not be done.
Deputy de Valera talked about brains going away on the emigrant ship. Perhaps there are as good brains going out this year, this month, or this week as are to be found in the country. If these brains had an education and training, perhaps they would not have to go out to gain experience and a knowledge of affairs. We have to pay for brains that have been educated, for brains that have been trained, for brains that have stored up experience, and we have to pay on some sort of a commercial basis. We do not pay a full commercial salary, nor any thing like it. Men at the head of departments receive far less pay than men of equal responsibilities, equal ability and training, and handling propositions of equal magnitude have in commercial life. That is proper, of course, because they have security and advantages that men in commercial life have not. Mind you, these are the successful civil servants; these are the men who have come to the top by reason of their special attainments and special capacity. Successful professional men around them, men who perhaps were in college with them, earn a great deal more money and they do not necessarily pay the full income tax on it.
It is more difficult for a Minister than a member of the Opposition to talk about the condition of affairs in other countries, but there are other countries which have very low scales of salary in their public service; and whose best citizens acknowledge that it would be very much better and more economical if they could increase the scale of salary. There are countries where all the civil servants are grossly underpaid, where they are inefficient, where they are frequently corrupt, where scandals continually arise. While we must try to have our service as economical as possible, it would be no advantage to the country if we failed to attract honest, competent men and a certain proportion of tip-top brains. You do not require to have tip-top brains right through the service, but there must be a certain proportion of tip-top brains there, and the rewards must be such that men of the best capacity will enter and remain in the Civil Service and will not be tempted to do anything except their plain and full duty.
With regard to the Ministers we have to have regard primarily for our own conditions. We may look at what is done in other countries, but you cannot say that what is done in some other country is necessarily just the thing that should be done here. I do not know enough to talk about the position of the President of the United States, but I have heard it said with regard to the members of the American Cabinet that ordinarily the official salary of one of those people would not pay the rent of the flat in which he lives. It would be wrong in this country to have the position where you would ordinarily have either only men of wealth in the Ministry or men who were simply on the lookout for a political job and could not hold any other. We have had already in more than one case refusals by men to hold office as Minister. You cannot possibly have a salary where you would have no such refusal, but we have had refusals from men who could not, having regard to their families and other interests, make the sacrifices that would be involved by becoming Ministers and bear the loss of opportunities and business connections and all that would be involved by accepting the office of Minister. I am perfectly satisfied that a reduction of the salaries of Ministers would have the effect that the range of choice would be narrowed beyond what the country could afford. At a time of revolution or immediately after a revolution you get men to go into administration irrespective of sacrifices or of the effect on their own worldly prospects. You cannot expect that in normal times, and you cannot get it. You cannot have the rich men in this country because there was, broadly speaking, a political dividing line between those who were rich and those who were not. Whatever may happen in a generation or two, it is impossible to rely on the rich in this country, as has been done in other countries. If you rely on the people who are willing to take anything, then it is going to be bad for the country. I have dealt with the subject of the reduction of salaries many times in the Dáil. I do not want to go over it again. We have consistently reduced the salaries of the judiciary and others as compared with the standards that were prevailing previously.
The Deputy asked about the office of Governor-General, and whether the Governor-General was a medium of communication with the British Government. The Governor-General is not a medium of communication with the British Government. He is the selection of the Executive Council here. He acts on their advice entirely. He has no communication with the British Government. The Deputy talks about parts of the Constitution being imposed from without and causing a great deal of expense which the country could not afford. I presume he was indicating that if there were no provisions in the Treaty governing the matter, we would either have no person in the position of Governor-General, or that if we had some person in that or some analogous position the cost would be very much less. I beg leave to doubt that. I think it would be found necessary, and I think it is in the best interests of the State, that there should be somebody in that position to discharge the social functions that are discharged. I think if the financial situation were easier it would be money well spent. It would be money well spent by the State to spend more than is being spent in that direction.
I would like to say that our position here is entirely different from the position of a country like New Zealand. Leaving aside altogether the outlook of the people, it is very different from other countries. I think certainly that there are certain things that people will look for, and that they ought to be encouraged to look for, at home rather than look for in an adjacent country. It is a very big and difficult problem. I am satisfied that if there was a definite separate Republic here, you would find that on the titular head of the State, whatever he might be called, there would probably be very much greater expenditure than there is in this particular direction at the present time.
The Deputy talked about surrender on the financial questions. It seems to me that he is still in the position of not having troubled to read the terms of the ultimate financial settlement, or he is still in the position of not having taken any trouble to understand it and know what it is about. With reference to the Boundary, the Deputy lately made a speech for which some people were rather inclined to laugh at him, but which I may say I thought was an indication that he was getting a more sane outlook with regard to the whole matter than he had previously. I suppose this Vote is not a Vote for Deputy de Valera, but for the Executive Council, and I suppose I cannot go into his part of the making of the present position. I will only say that if he had behaved differently matters might have come about very differently.
With regard to the Nationalists of the North, I want to say that perhaps there were things that we might have done and did not do. Perhaps there were. We had our hands full with many matters. If we take the specific case of Dr. Mrs. O'Doherty that the Deputy referred to, well, looking at it now, I do not think there was anything in that that we could have done or that there was anything that we ought to have done in the matter. The Deputy talked about the Gaeltacht and he indicated that during the civil war we had been pretty thorough. I do not think we were very thorough at all during the civil war period. In any case, the thing that the Government had to do then was a comparatively simple thing. There have been many civil wars; the whole matter of waging civil war and its methods and principles are well-known, and they are easy things from one point of view.
The question of the Gaeltacht is really—and I take it the Deputy himself would recognise it if it were being discussed in detail—a very much more difficult thing. I agree with him entirely when he says that if Irish is not kept alive in the Gaeltacht it cannot be saved as a living speech. I agree with him that the tide has not been turned in the Gaeltacht. For my part, I am always thinking with anxiety of the problem. But in spite of the working of the Gaelic League and all that, very little preparation had been made before the change of Government for the work that is now in hands. If the whole teaching body, for instance, if the whole body of the national teachers had been able to impart instruction through Irish, if they had been fully qualified, we would have had what would be a comparatively simple problem. But they were not. If one looks for anything, for the doing of anything in Irish, for the writing of books, for the translation of books, for the giving of higher instruction through the medium of Irish, and all that, the number of fully qualified people is very small. All sorts of works are being held up and delayed because there are not the people who have had the training to do them. The speaker from the Gaeltacht had no chance of getting on. He may have had brains but he had not the opportunity of getting the education and the training. So in all aspects of language work, the shortage of fully-qualified people is a thing that is very keenly felt.
So far as the expenditure of money is concerned, there is no doubt that the expenditure of money can be of value, but the matter, in my opinion, could not be solved merely by the expenditure of money. In fact one could expend a good deal of money in the Gaeltacht and produce only this result, that Irish would go out more quickly. The Deputy, I am sure, has been in districts and really got down to the feeling that is there, that that would be possible. I believe that one of the things that will help to affect opinion in the Gaeltacht will be evidence of a genuine change of heart on the part of the people in the rest of the country. We must recognise that what has happened is that the major part and the wealthier parts of the country have thrown away the Irish language during the last two or three generations, and the people of the Gaeltacht in wanting to change to English from Irish, as we find in many districts, were simply following the rest of the country. I believe that a lot of work that has been done in the rest of the country, although it does not help the Gaeltacht directly, is absolutely vital before a healthier attitude can be produced in the Gaeltacht.
One of the things that should be attempted, and it is being done—I do not know whether more can be done—in relation to the Gaeltacht and to keeping people from the Gaeltacht in the country is to have as many of them as possible brought into the new preparatory colleges and given careers as teachers. I think the first two years' examinations were not so framed as to give very many Gaeltacht pupils an entrance to the colleges, but a change has been made in respect of the present year, and I understand that it is giving very good results. Efforts have also been made by means of a special examination to give many of the boys and girls from the Gaeltacht entry to the Post Office service. More may be done along those lines, but I would just like to say that one does not find as much detailed thought being given to this matter as would be desirable. Sometimes suggestions are put forward which have no regard to the difficulties, and it is a comparatively rare thing to receive a series of suggestions from anybody who has obviously taken a good deal of trouble in regard to them.
It has to be remembered always in connection with the Irish language that all the work for the saving of the language must be done with the consent and support of people who themselves have no Irish and who are supporting the language policy for national reasons, because they recognise, as Deputy de Valera does, as people on these benches have said often, and as greater people have said, that it is an essential of nationality and that there can be no preservation of the Irish nation without it. The people who accept the principle of the language policy fully might give trouble, might resent it, if things were done inconsiderately, were done so as to cause unnecessary hardship to individuals who, through misfortune as much as anything else, have not a command of Irish. We cannot carry this thing through like a civil war. That is a point I want to make—that we must carry the whole country or the major part of the country with us in what we do. Consequently, things have to be done gradually. As far as possible things have to be well thought out when expense is incurred in any direction, and we have to make sure, as far as we can, that good results will be obtained from the expenditure, and also that there is not a cheaper way of doing the thing. It is easy to say, and I would be the first to admit, that very much remains to be done—that nobody can say that enough is being done. In any case, there has been steady progress. Each year or each quarter has seen some new step taken. I think that more consideration has been given to it and more thoroughness displayed even than in the prosecution of the civil war.
Deputy de Valera delivered a sermon on truth, speaking in a detached way. I do not want to initiate any sort of personal controversy. I will just say that it is entirely inaccurate to say that there has been any failure to maintain, so far as the Government is concerned, a decent standard of morality. I think there are few countries where there is a better standard of public morality, or where the Government can boast of cleaner hands in all respects than the present Government. As a matter of fact, a great deal of support has been lost to the Government because it would not descend to the policy of jobbery and favouritism that a lot of people expected. If we had been looking only for electoral advantages we could have got them by doing things that we did not think were in the best public interest. We did not get votes, or any kudos, from things like the rigid Civil Service Regulations Act or by Acts like the Local Officers and Employees Act, but we believe that in time to come we will get credit and kudos from them.
The Deputy referred to vindictiveness, and indicated that the Government had manifested a harsh spirit. I think we have not done so at any time. I believe that where we had to take action of a severe character the greatest possible moderation was shown.
With regard to the present time, I am certainly clear about this, that if people will insist on carrying on any sort of illegal armed organisation, they must be pursued. I have no belief in pursuing people for their opinions or for interfering with the opinions of people, or the propagation of political ideals of any sort; but when it comes to people conspiring to maintain an armed organisation, that is a thing that must be pursued in every possible way. At the present time the maintenance of an armed society or organisation can result in nothing but some sort of crime. It certainly leads to the danger of violence in the nature of assassinations or some such things. It is entirely indefensible. I have no sympathy, whether it is young girls or old men that pursue that sort of activity. I think it is the mere simple duty of the State to attempt to detect their activities and to prosecute them whenever it can find them. I think no indication of harshness can be based upon that.
With regard to the Compensation Acts, these Acts were passed when the civil war had hardly come to an end. It was necessary to bring it to an end, and to prevent any attempt at further outbreak, that people who gave support to the forces that were against the State should suffer something for their support. I think that was a necessary part of public policy. It was not a question of vindictiveness, and many people who held the strongest views against the Government actually got their claims paid. I do not want to go into the question at all of enforcing our will on the people. What we were concerned with was to restore order and to see that the votes of the people should decide national policy. We believe that one man or one woman is as good as another; that no one is entitled to go into the motives of the voters; and that national policy must be decided by the ordinary votes of the plain people. Whatever actions we took were directed, not towards enforcing our will on the people, but towards seeing that the will of the people was enforced.
