The Taoiseach has made a brave effort this evening to put a face on the Haulbowline affair but, of course, it is obvious to anybody, after listening to the speech of the Minister for Defence last night, that the Taoiseach was set an impossible job to-day. The Taoiseach has said that there has been co-operation by all Parties in this House and outside this House in the one objective of trying to ward off the menace to this country's independence and to safeguard it from any danger which may threaten it, and that, in an endeavour to achieve that task, there has been very generous co-operation by all Parties. Let us say frankly that measures have been passed through this House in the past 12 months which, in other circumstances, would have been subjected to very critical examination and which would have produced here the bitterest possible opposition on the part of the Fine Gael Party, the Labour Party and, probably, the Independent Group.
However, realising the menace which was facing this country and desiring to present a united front to all possible invaders, every Party in the House for the time being put aside its keenest political differences and co-operated very generously with the Government in an endeavour to ensure that a spirit of co-operation and cordiality would be the characteristics of our defence policy during the crisis. For that, nobody wants thanks. Those who co-operated certainly do not want thanks, but they want their point of view to be understood and appreciated, and it is not decent, much less thankful, for the Government, offered co-operation of that kind in very generous measure, to come along and try to put over on the House and on the other Parties in the House the disreputable intrigue that was resorted to at Haulbowline.
I do not wish to discuss this matter in its details; I am concerned only with the decencies of Parliament and the decencies of public life, which transcend all other considerations. Whether 100 or 200 people get work or do not get work is a small thing relatively, compared to the inspiring of confidence in Parliament and to imbuing in the people a recognition of the fact that Parliament will never descend, and a Government Party will never descend, to procedure such as has been adopted at Haulbowline. Even an attempt to justify the details of the case does not stand one minute's examination. It was said that it was the desire of the Minister and of the Department of Defence to get certain people to do this important work. Let us see for a moment what the work was. It was merely the erecting of accommodation. There was no military equipment on the site where the work was being done. It might be alleged that there were certain boats in the vicinity, but surely to heavens our defence policy is such that we can protect such craft as we have from the possible attacks of a carpenter with a hammer or a saw, or of a labourer with a shovel. There was no military equipment whatever on this site and no danger of any military equipment being stolen from it. Let that be clear.
Even assuming that there were articles of value, from a military point of view, surely it was possible, as Deputy Morrissey has pointed out, to arrange that such persons as were to be employed on the job would be of a kind in whom trust could be placed. What in the name of heavens have we a Gárda Síochána force for? Did they see or hear anything? Did they know anybody? At one time we were told that they were the eyes and ears of the State and the guardians of its security. What was the difficulty, if it was desired to get key men with national records, in still retaining the labour exchange method of recruitment, but requiring the applicants to present, with their unemployment cards, a certificate from the Guards that the men recruited were perfectly safe from a national point of view and not calculated to damage or pilfer military property? Surely that was an easy way, and it does not require a very fertile imagination to resort to a device of that kind in the first instance.
The work at Haulbowline is the same as that being done at much more important military centres in the country. If the Department of Defence have any special work to do at the Curragh Camp, they can recruit the staff through the local labour exchange, though the Curragh Camp, as everybody knows, is a well-equipped military arsenal. But when it comes to putting up accommodation only on a site where there is no military equipment at Haulbowline, we find an entirely different procedure. I do not think it can be justified and nothing that the Taoiseach has said—brave and all though his effort was—has convinced me that he does not in his heart know that the procedure was one he could not defend for a moment. I shudder to think what we would have heard from the Taoiseach if he were on these benches. The normal method of recruitment is through the labour exchange. That is a perfectly fair method, and nothing has been said in the course of this debate to show that the circumstances at Haulbowline justified any departure from the well-tried and universally accepted method of recruiting people for public works.
When you throw that procedure overboard and put into the hands of a Deputy of the Government Party the right to offer employment or to refuse employment to persons on public works at Haulbowline, you are guilty, in my opinion, of a highly improper procedure, and when it is sought to give that procedure the imprimatur of a Government Department it seems to me that the Government have drifted very sadly from a correct appreciation of the part which it ought to play in a matter of this kind. It would be bad enough if the Minister were the person who was placing these people in employment. At least there would be some merit in the Minister being responsible, inasmuch as we could make him responsible to this House for his actions, but when an individual Deputy, with no responsibility to the House, is selected for the recruiting of staff for public works of this kind, it surely is a very grave departure from the rectitude which one is entitled to expect in Governmental matters and in public works schemes of this kind.
I have not one word of complaint to say against the Deputy in question. In my opinion, he was unwise to take on such a disreputable task. The question at issue is not how he used his power. The question at issue is that the Minister betrayed his real trust and functions in giving over to that Deputy the right to say who was and who was not going to get employment on public works. Now, if the Fianna Fáil Party want to place in employment in Cobh or anywhere else their unemployed supporters, they are quite welcome to do it, but they should not put them into employment on money raised out of the pockets of people who do not agree with the Fianna Fáil Party. If the Government Party want to start works for the purpose of providing for their unemployed people, these moneys should come out of the Party funds, and not out of the Department of Defence Estimate. This Estimate is not a Fianna Fáil Party Estimate. It is a national Estimate, and the money that is being raised under this Estimate is coming out of the pockets of Fianna Fáil people, if you like, but also out of the pockets of people who support the Fine Gael Party, the Labour Party, and every other Party throughout the country. To attempt, therefore, to depart from the normal procedure of recruiting staff for a public works scheme of this kind, and to hand over the employment of staff on work of that kind to a Deputy of the Government Party is an entirely discreditable procedure. The Taoiseach said: "Is it alleged that there was corruption?" That is not the point at issue. We should, in ordering matters of this kind, make sure that it could never be said that it was open to corruption, and this thing is definitely open to corruption, and open to the exercise of all kinds of political nepotism, and well the Taoiseach knows it.
I do not want to go into the details of the case. I think the Taoiseach would have been well advised this evening, and so would his colleague the Minister for Defence have been well advised to recognise that in the hurry of trying to get staff for this work, if, in fact, there was any real hurry—in any case let that be the varnish—"that certain steps were taken which on more mature consideration we realise ought not to have been taken, that a mistake was made, and that as complaint has been made about the procedure adopted we do not intend to repeat the practice, and so far as we can do it we will adjust whatever wrong has been done." If the Taoiseach had done that this evening, I think public opinion would have much more confidence in the Government, and in parliamentary institutions, generally. The Taoiseach this evening got up merely to make a whitewashing speech: trying to whitewash the Minister for Defence who took the decision in this case, whereas the whole circumstances clearly demanded a recognition on the part of the Government that a mistake had been made, and a frank declaration that such a procedure would not be resorted to again.
I put it even now to the Government that the decencies of public administration demand that there should be an acknowledgement of the fact that a mistake was made. We ought to have, before this debate concludes, a definite assurance on behalf of the Government that this procedure will not be repeated in any other instance, and that, so far as it is possible to do so now, an effort will be made to remedy the very legitimate grievances which Deputy Hurley has undoubtedly shown to exist because of the unusual and disreputable method adopted of employing staff at Haulbowline. I hope that even yet the Government will give us that assurance and get away from this very sordid incident, which, as Deputy O'Higgins has rightly said, has done more than anything else in recent months to disturb the magnificent unity which has been demonstrated in this House and outside the House during the past 12 months.
