That is why I am willing to collaborate with the Attorney-General in getting some agreement as to the social and Christian amenities that ought to be preserved at public meetings. The Attorney-General spoke of the attendance at sheriffs' sales, and he spoke about his toleration. What we want to see in this country is the naked law. Let us see what it is. We can only see the naked law when it is put into operation in an impartial way. Let us have it put into operation anyway, even if it is put into operation in a partial way, because if the law is put into operation in a partial way, we will, at any rate, see what the law is, and this country is not going to stand the partial application of the law. When he has his grievances as an Attorney-General and refers to the attendance of crowds at sheriffs' sales, we would like him to turn aside and consider the legality of the position and what the remedy is for that crowding around these sales.
I wish particularly to deal with some of the questions which I raised in moving that this Estimate be referred back and arising out of what has been said by the Attorney-General and Deputy Keyes with regard to Limerick. Deputy Keyes resents the repetition from time to time of statements of what has occurred in a disorderly way in his City of Limerick. He says that the things that happened there are going to be magnified and that the fair name of the city is going to suffer. There is nothing going to help Deputy Keyes or any other Deputy interested in the fair name or in decent conditions in the City of Limerick but facing the truth. He considers that the police of Limerick have been absolutely impartial for many years. I do not question their impartiality, but I do question the intelligence and the success of the methods they employ to carry out their duties.
I happened to be in Limerick on the night of the dance at the Lyric Hall. I was not speaking at the meeting Deputy Cosgrave addressed when his meeting, and he and his party proceeding from the hotel to the platform at the O'Connell Monument, were so viciously attacked last year. The dance was taking place at a late hour —11 o'clock at night—because some parts of the hall were being occupied previously. I arrived about three hours before the dance was due to begin—at five minutes or ten minutes past eight and at that time, small groups of people had begun to loiter in the neighbourhood of the Lyric Hall and within 50 yards of it. The very fact that small groups had begun to loiter there drew greater crowds and by 9.30 or 10 o'clock there were appreciable crowds there. They were divided around certain particular corners. There were three corners within 50 yards of the hall. There was another corner within 100 yards and at the end of Glentworth Street and a few streets running parallel into O'Connell Street. All these had their crowds of people around them, but the main cause of the collection of people at these centres from 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock was the fact that people were allowed to loiter in the earlier part of the night and to gather in crowds there and the people who gathered in groups there were the people who were intent on creating a disturbance.
Deputy Keyes speaks of the neighbourhood of the Lyric Hall being one of the thoroughfares of the city. The Lyric Hall is 150 or 200 yards up a street running at right angles to O'Connell Street and in no sense is it a promenade and in no sense do the ordinary citizens use it as a thoroughfare. Any collection of people loitering in groups around there were definitely there unnecessarily and an attitude by the police of not allowing people to loiter at these places in the early part of the night would not only have prevented the congregation of people around the hall, but would have prevented the attraction of people who gathered at the other end of the street, so that there is no question of asking people to sweep anyone off the streets of Limerick, as is the interpretation put by Deputy Keyes on some of the remarks made by myself and Deputy Bennett.
What is wrong in the City of Limerick is that the whole approach to these things is unscientific and unsound on the part of the police authorities, because long before the dance was due to commence and due entirely to the fact that people were allowed to loiter in groups, the singing and shouting started and so far as can be said here, the Party cries and the songs that were raised there were the Party cries and the songs of the Minister's Party. Deputy Keyes thinks it is a reflection on the police for Deputy Bennett to say that it was only after the police were themselves attacked that they intervened. So far as I recollect from the reports of the matter which appeared in the Press, they intervened, I think the time was given about five minutes past 12 o'clock when a member of the Gárda had been struck by a bottle. Then there was a baton charge. I stated here in an intervention that the baton charge or the striking of anybody in Limerick would have been absolutely unnecessary if the proper tactical action had been taken by the police in the beginning. There was a very great miscalculation as to what was likely to arise in Limerick and there ought to be no reason for it. The same mistake seems to be made by the police every time in Limerick.
I said that I was present at the meeting held by Deputy Cosgrave last year. I arrived about an hour before the meeting began and already at that time, outside the hotel where Deputy Cosgrave was, there was a large hostile crowd allowed to congregate on the far side of the street. It was necessary, when Deputy Cosgrave and his party were leaving the hotel to go to the platform in O'Connell Street, to move that crowd and immediately broken bottles and many other missiles were thrown. The Minister has already had occasion to hear of the physical injury that was done to members of the band and the party escorting Deputy Cosgrave to the platform. If it were necessary to move the crowd out of that position to enable Deputy Cosgrave and his party to leave the hotel and to go to the platform, the crowd ought never have been allowed to get into that position and there was no reason at all why the people should not have been prevented from loitering in a position like that if the Gárdaí had taken up the attitude that loitering in a particular place and the collection of crowds in a particular place is likely to lead to disorder.
Then, I think, particularly in a place like Limerick, considering the experience the police there have had of the situation and the tendency of the crowd, there ought to be a definite plan by the police that in certain circumstances crowds should not be allowed to loiter in the neighbourhood of hotels or public platforms or dance halls under certain conditions. If the Attorney-General feels that he has difficulties with regard to the carrying out of sheriffs' sales in this matter, it is time that he took into consideration, at the same time, some of the things that have been happening for so long and about which nothing in a sensible way, from the point of view of tactics, has been done by the police. If we take the statements of the Attorney-General and the Minister at their face value— that they really desire to see ordered conditions at public meetings and freedom of public speech—what we have to conclude is that the police are completely wrong in their understanding of the psychology of the crowds in different areas, or that for one reason or another they do not want to do things right. I do not want to say that there is any partiality on the part of the police in Limerick, but certainly things are done wrong. There would be no necessity for the police to baton people after 12 o'clock on a Sunday morning in Limerick if they had been doing their duty in an intelligent way between 8 and 9 o'clock on the previous Saturday night.
The suggestion is that some of our own people are responsible for it. On the following day I passed through O'Connell Street, Limerick, when Deputy Keyes and some of his colleagues were holding an antiFascist meeting. They were holding a meeting to protest, in perhaps a different tone, but in the same spirit as Deputy Ben Maguire spoke here this morning, that the United Ireland Party are responsible for disorders in the country and must be put down. They were preaching there to the people of Limerick in strong language, of the terrible disasters and the terrible losses that would occur to decent trade unionists in this country if the United Ireland Party were allowed to develop upon the lines along which it was developing. Was there a question asked at their meeting? The meeting was as quiet and orderly as if it were a meeting of the Salvation Army and, indeed, until one came close to it one would have thought it was a Salvation Army meeting. Therefore, the people who are being attacked in this particular way by the people who raise Fianna Fáil cries are the people who, for their part, allowed the fiercest of their opponents and the most slanderous of their criticisers to come out the following day on the streets of Limerick and address a meeting under such conditions as would lead one to believe that it was a meeting of the Salvation Army. The Attorney-General, the Minister for Justice and the police have certain views apparently on this matter and they can act sometimes in a right and proper way. I read in this morning's paper that pickets or groups of people were not allowed to assemble outside a meeting of, I think, the Irish Postal Workers' Union, which union was holding a meeting to discuss their own particular matters in the City yesterday. If the principles of the Minister and the Attorney-General can be put into practice in connection with a meeting of a trade union like that— and in my opinion, properly put into action—I do not see why they should have any difficulty in getting their principles put into practice in other directions.
In dealing with the matters which I raised when I asked that this motion be referred back for consideration the Minister certainly made a very extraordinary speech. He made such a speech that I am driven to conclude that he has no interest in the statements which are made here, and that he has no interest in the condition of affairs which exists either for people who are not in the Gárda Síochána, or for people who are responsible for carrying on the work of the Gárda Síochána. He says that I have endeavoured to be original and to exaggerate certain things. He said that I had been deliberately exaggerating certain incidents for political purposes rather than for anything else. He takes me to task in connection with the Cork incident which I spoke about. He said:—
"The Deputy need not worry himself that any incident like that is a matter that has been neglected. All that matter is the subject of inquiry."
The Minister was speaking on the 9th May. The matter I had raised was the case of a man named Murray in Cork whose house was, in January, 1933, made the subject of an armed raid by people who tried to murder him. He was then put under police protection. He had two uniformed members of the Guards, and one member of the special lately recruited branch, as a guard around his house. Under those circumstances in the same month of January his house was entered by armed persons who fired shots, and wounded a man inside, a friend of Murray's. The event I complain about is that on 7th April the type of police protection he was getting was such that one of the police on duty on that night proposed to go up and shoot him.
The Minister implies that it is an impertinence on our part to discuss those things, and that the matter is the subject of an inquiry. I want to assure the Minister that I am not in the least bit concerned about any political propaganda which may be made as a result of speaking about this matter. I am concerned that persons who live under the conditions under which young Murray lives in relation to his political opponents, and who because of those conditions are considered by the Gárda Síochána authorities to require police protection, should be given that protection in a way that will be sympathetic, effective, unostentatious and as little burdensome as possible to the people themselves and to their families. What I ask the Minister is what he is going to do when the Gárda authorities in the City of Cork, knowing as they must know all the circumstances of this particular case, select a personnel of such a kind for the protection of that man that even after an attempt has been made on his life when under police protection he is able to, as it were, wake up in his bedroom one night to realise that one of the men who were on guard over him wanted to come upstairs and shoot him; that he was actually trying to come upstairs with a revolver in his hand and was being prevented by another member of the Guards. Surely there is no conception on the part of the Gárda authorities in Cork as to the duty that lies on them to make things as easy as possible for persons who live under the conditions of aggression and antagonism which young Murray lives under. We have had no word from the Minister as to what he thinks about the existence of such a state of affairs, or what he is going to do about it. We have had nothing but the suggestion that it is an impertinence on our part to refer to it here, and that he is looking after the matter.
I move to report progress.
