Let me answer that. I have not the slightest intention of rendering information to the Minister about the identity of the persons concerned. So far as I am concerned, any agent of the Government or the police is welcome to investigate any activity on my part in my public or private life, in so far as it is the right of the Government to intervene in my private life. Any police agent and any representative of the Government or the forces of the State are welcome to go into my office at any time, on any occasion, to see any papers that they choose to see in their capacity as protectors of the public peace. I have no objection whatever to the Government using their secret service money to inform the Attorney-General's Department and the police force of any activities proceeding inside any organisation of which I am a member and I consider they have a perfect right to request me to inform them of any illegal activity good, bad or indifferent, promptly and immediately, that may be going on in any organisation to which I belong.
I have no grudge, as a politician, against the Minister's Government for paying secret service agents in my political organisation or any other political organisation, but as a public man I say it is a waste of money. The Government ought not to be paying spies where there is no crime to detect. It is the duty of the police to make up their minds approximately correctly before they distribute secret service money as to whether it is going to be properly expended or not. If the police have information that there is illegal activity going on in any office with which I am associated, I have no complaint whatever to make in regard to any steps the police may think it expedient to take in order to track down any illegality that they believe to exist. It is only right, in view of what the Minister has said, to mention that on one occasion I with, I think, the full approval of my colleagues on the National Executive of the United Ireland movement, went to the Attorney-General and said to him:
"If there is any illegal activity going on in any branch of our organisation all you have to do is to acquaint me or any of my colleagues and it will be promptly stopped."