But I want to make this suggestion to the Minister that he, being a Dublin man himself, will recognise readily that for a young and active member of the Gárda to be taken away from the larger centres of population, and stationed in the more remote stations which are ordinarily in the Gaeltacht may be a very material penalty. In summer, it has its compensation, but, in winter, it must be almost unmitigated gloom for somebody who is not accustomed to the living conditions of the Gaeltacht areas. Is he satisfied that there are monetary inducements adequate to counter-balance the amenity disadvantages which are inflicted on those members of the Gárda Síochána required to do Irish-speaking duty in the Gaeltacht? I do not believe in coddling anybody, but when I want a job done I want to do it in such a way that it will succeed, and if the vast majority of the Gárda, who are sent to the Gaeltacht because they are Irish speaking, feel that it is an imposition upon them, and that, in fact, to be Irish speaking brings upon them material disadvantages, I am afraid we cannot expect the spirit in that section of the force that we want if the work is to be properly done.
We are all agreed that the Gárda Síochana barracks should be comfortable and healthy, no matter where they are situated. I want to make a suggestion that if we take from the Gárda the pleasant social surroundings of the suburbs of the city, or a large country town, and transfer him to the Gaeltacht, we should try to do something to make the Gárda barrack to which he is transferred a little more cheerful than it otherwise would be, and I want to do that, not because I want to weaken the proper and desirable discipline and rigour that ought to be found in the barrack of a uniformed force. Therefore, some of the suggestions I make will at first sound a little incongruous, but when we think back to the prime motive we have in mind the incongruity will disappear. I should like to see these places equipped, perhaps, with wireless, and I should like to see the Commissioner examining the question as to whether special library facilities might not be made available by the county library, acting in co-operation with the Carnegie Trust. I should like the Chief Commissioner to examine every device which would make the Gárda barrack in the Gaeltacht area a happier place for the Gárda to live in and, not only that, but to develop into a place where the young fellows of the district would be encouraged to congregate and spend the evening.
Now, I fully recognise that that second suggestion would be extremely difficult to reconcile with the proper discipline of a Gárda barrack, but I think we might try to develop the barrack into something a little more than a police station and to bring home to the minds of the people in the Gaeltacht, as I think we ought to do to the minds of the people all over the country, that the Gárda, in addition to being the vindicators of the law and defenders of order, are also the friends of the people, and that they are there to help and advise, and to give any assistance they can within reason. One of the great difficulties in every country area is to occupy the young people in the evenings. My experience of the Gárda Síochána is that they are respectable, clean-minded, decent young men, and if you could get the young fellows of the district—I say nothing of the girls at this juncture—who would otherwise be rambling the roads, or perhaps gathering in public-houses, gathering around the Gárda barrack, they would be assured of decent company and you could be satisfied that decent conduct would be enforced, not by superiors or people standing in loco parentis, but by the comrades they have themselves chosen.
If you want decent standards enforced amongst young people, you have to realise that you cannot be chasing round after them all the time, and telling them they cannot do this and they cannot do that. What you have to do is to get their own comrades and the people of their own age setting a standard of conduct and remonstrating with them if conduct of an undesirable kind is developing. In the Gárda Síochána, I think, we have that type of person, and I should like to gather the young people around them so that the good influence would permeate the ideas of these young people. In addition, it would have this great advantage, that where you have a body of young Gárda setting a high standard of conduct in a Gaeltacht parish, they would also set a strict standard, being members of an Irish-speaking division in that they would use the Irish language as their vernacular at all times. You would have that poisonous element, which is doing more to kill the language than anything else, the desire to speak English in order to appear grand in the Gaeltacht, effectively rebutted by that group of fellows, who stand highest in the public esteem of their neighbours, scorning to speak English and preferring to use Irish as their vernacular in the Gaeltacht and encouraging the young fellows associated with them to recognise that it was something somewhat contemptible, when you had the language and when all your friends and associates spoke it freely, deliberately to turn your back on it and speak an English patois, when you had at your command an Irish of Shakespearian purity, if one might use that term. I feel that valuable work for the language can be done, and, at the same time, substantial justice to the members of the Gárda can be done. Last, but not least, a useful social service can be provided in the rural areas which will do a great deal to solve the problem of profitably occupying the leisure hours of the young people in those parts of rural Ireland to which I refer.
Now, I want to say a word about the experts who have been produced by the police. I strongly urge on the Minister for Justice that this is not a matter about which we need get cross, and that if it has appeared that something has emerged in the course of the debate which would justify indignation, in so far as it has so seemed to the Minister, it has been a misunderstanding.
