We are very respectable in Cork, I assure you. The City Manager goes on:—
"Was this a country of savages or barbarians? He had written to the Civic Guards, to the clergymen of all denominations, and to the managers of all schools in an endeavour to get some type of civic spirit instilled into the people. Within one week all the windows in a new building in Hill Street were smashed."
At that meeting, a Fianna Fáil member of the Dublin Corporation, who is also a member of this House, said— and I quote from the Press report:—
"They required someone, if necessary, to put discipline into the lawless type who are going around damaging the city's property in the manner described."
That has only local application in Dublin, but I submit that it has general application all over the Free State, most of which I attribute to the doctrine preached for so many years by the Fianna Fáil Party, before they became a Government. Now they are finding it very difficult to govern because of the doctrines which they preached at the cross-roads throughout the country. I want to say that I have a considerable amount of sympathy with the Gárda Síochána in matters of this kind. I quite understand the difficulty of the Minister and I appreciate the difficulty of the various county superintendents all over the country. They cannot—it would be a human impossibility—provide a Guard at every corner of the Street.
To advert once more to the downward trend of the morale of the people, even in cases in which people who have transgressed can be identified it is most difficult, if not impossible, to get those people to come forward to identify at an identification parade the persons who have transgressed the law. What is the reason? Those people are afraid of the bully with the gun in his hand. That is happening to-day and the Minister has not only the machinery of the common law, which he can exercise at any time, but he has the machinery of Constitution (Amendment No. 17) Act which the Minister himself, and all those associated with him now in the present Government, so hysterically condemned, and which the Labour Party so hysterically condemned, and which the Fianna Fáil Party cum the Labour Party have taken to their bosoms. This Constitution Amendment Act, otherwise known as the Public Safety Act, as I have just said, was roundly condemned and caused almost hysterical outbreaks by members of the Labour Party at the various cross-roads when they were seeking Fianna Fáil votes.
Deputies will remember that little line, "When we were rightly struggling to be free." When we were rightly struggling to be free, I often felt very much insulted and aggrieved when I heard it said that the Irish people were not fit to govern themselves. I resented it as a libel on the Irish character, but I am beginning to examine my conscience. We enjoyed, for a considerable period, a large measure of freedom under the Cosgrave regimé in this country which, I believe—and this is a very challenging statement to make; I make it in all seriousness and with a full sense of responsibility—we did not deserve. I do not care what capital is made out of that, but I am tempted to say it when I read of recent shocking happenings and occurrences in this country; when I read of the murder of young O'Reilly whose murderers have not yet been brought to book; the case of young More O'Ferrall, and again, the burning of Deputy Murphy's house in East Cork last week. Do those occurrences show any kind of reasonable indication that we are fit to govern ourselves?
I feel, however, that notwithstanding these facts, and they are facts, there are still a sufficient number of people in this country who will have the moral courage to stand up to that kind of conduct and I will ask the Minister for Justice, or the Attorney-General, who is now acting for him, if he is even at this late hour prepared to take his courage in his hands and govern—g-o-v-e-r-n. It takes men to govern. Government is a most unpopular thing in this country and will be for a considerable period.
Adverting to what the City Manager of Dublin said the other day in relation to the barbarians who have destroyed a good deal of public property, I feel that the figures disclosed by the reports from the Gárda Síochána and from the Minister's own Department, go to show that while this wonderful missionary country has been sending missioners to China, to the Far East and to the Near East, I suggest that they have a more useful field of activity at home. That, again, perhaps is a very challenging statement and will possibly cause a good deal of annoyance to some people, but it is true. I feel that the situation at the moment in the country is very grave indeed. We have the glorification of the gun and the fact that a number of our young people have become trained in the use of arms, and because of inflammatory statements and speeches by members of the present Government for a long number of years, these young people are enjoying not liberty, but licence, and the Attorney-General must know that there is a very great difference indeed between the meanings of the two words "liberty" and "licence." Numbers of those young people, young irresponsibles, having imbibed their political faith from leading members of the Government, are now operating in the country with guns in their hands and defying the Minister and his Department. I believe that in the House as it is at present constituted the Minister will get every support—and not alone from members of the House will he get it, but from every law-abiding citizen—if he invokes the aid of the legal machinery he has at his disposal in order to bring about peaceful conditions, to bring about such an era of peace as operated before their advent into power.
I want to refer to some matters that are within the knowledge of the Minister for Justice and the Attorney-General. As the cases are sub judice I do not want to say much more than that it is to be hoped that when men are found with arms in their possession, lethal weapons, in the act of committing a robbery or terrifying peaceful citizens, in the act of intimidating the ordinary John Citizen of this country, they will be punished adequately. When I say that I do not mean to reflect in any way whatsoever on judgments given in the courts; but I do feel that in order to strengthen the hands of the Minister for Justice the sentences should be the maximum allowed by the Acts in the different cases, rather than the minimum. Also, there should be no more opening of the jail gates. We have had a very sad experience of that. I am wondering what gratitude has been manifested by those people who were let out of prison on the advent of this Government to power. I do not gamble, but I would venture to bet that most of those people are to be found to-day in opposition to the Government. They are the people who translated the action of the Government on that occasion as a sign of weakness. Hence it is that you have armed men drilling, armed men who have not the authority of the State to carry their arms. That is a matter which the Minister should take immediate notice of, if the country is to be worth living in, or unless you want to turn the country into a second Mexico. I have heard it said by some followers of Fianna Fáil: “Why not have a second Mexico?” If we are told definitely that they desire a second Mexico we will know at any rate where we are, and every man will get a gun. But the ordinary law-abiding citizen wants to be allowed to go about his own business without any interference of that sort.
I think the Minister has, through the agency of the Minister for Defence, a very powerful army, relatively speaking. When I saw it marching past on Easter Sunday—I was not on the platform—I thought it was the outbreak of a European war. Surely, with all the anti-aircraft guns, all the field telephone arrangements, the engineering corps, the cavalry corps and the artillery corps, you have sufficient forces at your disposal to bring about a state of peace in this country, unless you are going to translate the bringing about of the peace in this way, that we are going to fight for peace like hell until we get it.
In conclusion, let me mention that anything I have said is in the direction of being helpful to the Minister. I know there is a big volume of opinion behind what I have said. It is suggested that the Minister has exercised the powers he possesses very leniently in respect of a certain type of person in this country. I do not want to attribute any motives to the Minister or to his Department, but it is a singular coincidence that most of those persons happen to be persons who were in armed opposition to the previous Government. Many of those people have got away with light sentences. The Minister must know, as an experienced lawyer, that you can stretch leniency too far. It is a dangerous thing to talk in this country about the administration of law and order when it means bringing to book the ruffian or the blackguard with a gun in his hand. There are too many in the country of the type who carry guns, who level a gun at an unoffending citizen when they know that unoffending citizen is not armed. That type of bully must be put down in this country if we are to have any peace or happiness in it. The country will not be peaceful unless the Minister deals determinedly with such a situation.
I regard the Minister's Department as the most important Department of State. Ordinarily, I would regard the corresponding Department in other countries as of very great importance, but I regard it in this country as really the most important, much more important than the Department of Justice is in any other country that I know of except, perhaps, in some of the Latin countries in South America. Surely we, who have proclaimed from the housetops that we are the descendants of a great race, we who have proclaimed our nationhood so proudly all down the centuries, have a right to expect from an Irish Government and from an Irish Department of Justice that protection and peace for which the taxpayers of the country are paying so dearly.