This is not a question as to whether a policeman has been found out or not in some small court case, or whether allegations against the Guards of treating prisoners in different ways have been proved or not. This was a matter that came before the House on a special piece of legislation which upset the whole law of evidence in order to allow a particular case to be brought. In the course of that case, one which excited a great deal of attention, these statements were made. Is it true that these reports were made by the police to their superiors because a month afterwards the radio in this country was brought into operation asking for information as to the missing man?
There is one other matter which came before the courts that excited a great deal of attention. It pertains to the Vote that we have here for nearly £9,000,000. At the recent criminal sessions in Dublin, a citizen of Kilkenny appeared in the dock charged in connection with certain meat contract scandals—meat contracts that were with the Army. He was found not guilty. The judge, addressing the jury, in language very rarely used by judges in this country in addressing juries in the criminal courts, said:
"You and I are in the centre of a thieves' kitchen, and it is hard to put a finger on anything clean or untainted."
He said that:
"The jury must feel strongly that such scandalous abuses of Army contracts as the court had been investigating should be put down with a strong hand."
At the same time, the accused had justice done to him. He went on to say that certain things must be found against the accused before a verdict of guilty could be brought in. Then he said:
"Features of that unsavoury story included the suicide of a quartermaster-sergeant responsible for the food at Kilkenny and the absence in England of the quartermaster, and the production as two major witnesses of a pair of scamps who destroyed their records to cover their tracks. One of them had pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the matter and was now serving a sentence, while the other was unconvicted and uncharged, and gave evidence on the understanding, so he avowed, that he would not be charged if he did so. Those two men were, beyond question, conspirators in the frauds alleged, but the State submitted that they were entitled to credence because their evidence showed they had come to court to tell the truth.
"They looked with hope to the documents certified by honest officers, but how far did they really examine what they had signed? It was not only in the Army that men, would sign a printed document on the dotted line, taking the contents as granted."
He talked about a missing witness—a captain—and said he must have been kept out of the witness-box because he must have admitted that he signed as a matter of routine without any real check at all. Finally, addressing the jury on the matter of an accomplice, he used these words:—
"You have two fine specimens of the accomplice—two perfect museum pieces, as a collector would put it— in this case. It would be a danger to treat either men as reliable witnesses...."
After that charge, a Kilkenny citizen who was charged with being involved in these contracts was acquitted.
There is a vast sum of money being thrown around this country for the Army. We have parted with our Parliamentary control of that money, we have handed it over on the plea of vital national necessity, we have abandoned all control over it, and there is no way open of getting after these moneys and seeing that they are expended properly. When there is a vast amount of money thrown around, without any control, the natural outcome is a crop of scandals of this kind. Writing about that, a certain newspaper said that that was only one of the cases and that the scandal affected not merely contracts in regard to meat but in regard to bread, butter, tea and petrol. As far as I can find out, the only cases that have been tried in any court were three cases before district justices and this one before the Criminal Court. The State finds itself in the position of being unable to produce a reliable witness. Anybody they could produce was so tainted and so destroyed with the scandal itself that the evidence could not be believed.
I suggest to the Minister for Finance that, apart from the fear a person must have that the ordinary result of the lack of control will be this sort of maladministration, if the Minister never had any case but one, he has there a case that would drive him in the most serious way to apply most rigid control to these vast sums of money we are asking from the taxpayers for national purposes. There were articles written about this matter, in which newspaper editors have been brought to observe that, when men leave posts in which they get some sort of livelihood, and join up to defend the State, they are entitled to get whatever rations the taxpayers provide for them. If the taxpayer is taxed heavily in order to provide the Army with a certain amount of foodstuffs, it should not turn out later on that the money he is paying is not going where he thinks it should go, and for the purpose for which he has given it, but is going to racketeers of the type disclosed in that case.
I suggest to the Minister that, if we are parting with control in this House, we should have two guarantees from him. We should have a guarantee that the reason for parting with that control is something which he himself would regard as a vital necessity; and secondly, that, in the absence of such control as the House can exercise, he would establish something in the nature of better control himself, through his Department. He should see that these moneys go for the purposes for which they were obtained, and that those from whom they were obtained would know that they were doing what was intended.
One of the things that has helped to break down confidence in the Government in its handling of public finance at the present time is the well-known fact—known possibly to everybody except those in the Government itself— that profiteering is rampant throughout the country. People are finding themselves hard put to eke out their resources in the way of wages, so as to cover what they used to get and what they require. What they do get is just not as constant, as stable or as secure as it used to be. Even the money wages they get have very definitely diminished in value, owing to the fact that there has been no real attempt at controlling prices. Secondly, those people known as operators in the black market and open profiteers have been allowed freely to range through the whole wide field of commodities.
So far did that scandal go that a very eminent Doctor of the Church was led to write an article about the matter in an ecclesiastical magazine during the course of the year. In it he committed himself, after examination, to the statement that business profits were, in some cases, excessive and, in fact, scandalously excessive here in Ireland at the moment, and he made the point that it was the duty of good Catholics to expose profiteering, to condemn it, and to see that every effort was made to put an end to it. He backed up his own view by quotations and he said that, if this type of conduct were permitted, there was an obvious end to the country in which it was permitted.
He said that the matter should be tackled "not only for justice' sake but also for the sake of the peace and tranquillity of the society in which we live". Conduct allowed in this way, he said, would "exasperate the hearts of the people and prepare the way for the overthrow and ruin of the social order". He gave facts and details. One of them was with regard to a company which had increased its ordinary capital of £30,000 by watering operations to £100,000. They had been declaring dividends of 12½ per cent. and a bonus had been paid on top of that, and they got to a point where they were still declaring dividends of 12 per cent. on the capital, which then stood at £100,000, but which really was only £30,000. I drew attention to that, and the Minister for Supplies told me that he could identify the particular business spoken of and said the total assets far exceeded the total issued capital, and that a number of investigations had been carried out by his Department and showed that the prices of the commodities they produced had been maintained at reasonable levels.
In regard to a company which, between 1935 and 1941—in six years—by watering operations had increased its capital from £30,000 to £100,000, and while doing so had paid dividends that ranged ordinarily in the region of 12 to 15 per cent., the Minister's view, after all that was over, was that these profits were reasonable and that the prices that brought in those profits were also reasonable. That closed the matter so far as I was concerned, as I came to the conclusion that, if that was the standard which the Minister for Supplies accepted with regard to that type of thing, there was no good in putting Parliamentary questions to him. I believe that that was the most glaring and blatant example that could be given, and so it appeared to the reverend gentleman who wrote the article.
However, we find a little bit of change recently. The Taoiseach, at a meeting in Cavan in February this year, said—it is not a very definite statement, but one of the usual evasions; at any rate, it seems to have a little reality in it—
"Those who are profiteering at the expense of the community are doing something that is base, and it is the duty of the community to expose them."
I wonder would An Taoiseach think that people who felt that they were doing their duty in exposing profiteering had got much satisfaction or would get much satisfaction if they read the reply given by the Minister for Supplies previously on the very glaring examples that were given here in the House.
In any event, there was the onset of reality. Those who were profiteering at the expense of the community were doing something that was base. A couple of days later in that month, An Taoiseach was the guest of the industrialists of this country, the Federation of Irish Manufacturers, at their annual meeting, at the Gresham Hotel, and he spoke twice to them of the danger of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. He told them that if they exploited the people who were bound to buy from them, there would be reaction that would destroy both them and their business. He warned them that they had a full meed of protection and said—it was the first time I heard him saying it—there were grave dangers connected with protection. He described protection as a necessary evil and thought the thing had now got to the point that some body like the old Tariff Commission should be re-established in order to report upon what had happened under the protectionist system that industrialists in this country had enjoyed. There is a late recognition of the fact that not merely is profiteering possible but that it had been made easy by the system that Fianna Fáil regarded as one of their triumphs. We get the length that An Taoiseach now joins Dr. Lucey in saying that profiteering is base and that it is the duty of the community to expose those people who are profiteering.
We know that the Minister for Finance had some views upon that matter himself. On the occasion of the last Budget he arrived here with a statement that the Revenue Commissioners had been able to examine certain accounts and had come to the conclusion from an examination of the accounts that certain firms had very definitely abused the superior position in which they found themselves and had made money at the expense of the community out of the exigencies of the war situation. He proposed to tax them in the last Budget. The particular tax he was bringing in was so inefficiently applied that he did recognise after a bit that he was going to hit the type of struggling and developing business which it would be really his duty to foster. Thereupon, instead of making some discrimination or attempting to make some discrimination between the profiteering type of firm and the developing type of firm, he came here one day and announced that he was throwing away £600,000. That was the value he put upon the tax that he would get—it was not the whole amount—out of the moneys that these firms had made by profiteering at the expense of the public and by making use of the war situation to demand bigger prices than they were entitled to. That £600,000 still remains with those gentlemen. We know that, of course, the bacon curers are still allowed to hold on to that several hundred thousand pounds which a commission established by this House found that they had pilfered. We know that Ranks are not merely holding on to but are adding to the amount of money they made out of the community under the auspices of one of the Minister's colleagues.
I asked the Minister on a couple of occasions why he would not pass special legislation to deal with those people who, by commissions established, had been found guilty of practices that would have landed an ordinary citizen in the dock, and he talked of the difficulty of having tax legislation aimed at individuals. It seems to be a peculiar circumstance that we can have legislation passed in this country for the benefit of individuals. We can give subventions and credits and tariffs which are clearly aimed for the benefit of particular firms. But when it comes to the other side, trying to recover from those people something that they have unlawfully obtained, then we are told there is difficulty about fashioning legislation to that end. However, there the matter lies. Profiteering is now apparently regarded as something that is known, as something that is, from An Taoiseach's words, proved. The Taoiseach is afraid it will have a bad reaction upon industry, and he asks those people to observe what they are doing, and not to continue in that type of conduct that he described as killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, that is, the unfortunate consumer in the country.
As a pattern for the future, and as the only pattern the Government have given us for the future, in contrast to what happens in regard to those profiteers who were to be taxed to the extent of £600,000 last year, and Ranks and the bacon curers, and the unnamed profiteers that An Taoiseach points to but does not define, we have Order No. 83, which has now lasted for some little time without amendment, but in connection with which certain amendments were promised. Those amendments may limit the harsh effect of that Order upon certain of the lower grades of the community, but Order No. 83 has lasted for some time and that Order shows the policy that was actuating the Government and its attitude, on the one hand, towards those who have had the community thrown at their mercy, thrown to them to deal with as they like, through tariffs, protections, subsidies and all sorts of things, and towards the unfortunate employees on the other.
The question of supplies has been so much debated in this House that one wonders if it is worth while going any further into the matter. I think even his colleagues have begun to realise that the Minister for Supplies is not regarded throughout the country as a man who has acted up to his responsibilities or achieved the job he was given to do. Day after day, week after week, certainly, we get presented to us some woeful statements by that Minister with regard to the future. He apparently considers that his duty is done when he presents himself to the people as a prophet of evil and never, apparently, thinks it is any part of his duty to come before the people and tell them how he lessened the blow that was falling on them, what he did to try to provide supplies or to try to eke out whatever little supplies of different things came into the country.
I just want again to point out the sharp contrast between that Department and any other. If there is one thing on which the Government was apt to pride itself in relation to foresight it was in respect of supplies. We were told by the present Minister for Supplies, before he acted in that position, in September, 1938, a year before the war broke out, that he and his officials had diverted their attention from their ordinary duties to devising plans to meet the possible emergency of a European war, including rationing of petrol, provision of necessary supplies and the control and distribution of these supplies. These were the wide terms of reference he apparently was given. He had to think of rationing. He certainly had to think of control and certainly had to think of distribution and, apparently, he was also to think of getting in supplies. That was September, 1938. He told us that he hoped the fruit of the work which he and his officials had been doing for the past month or two would never see the light of day but that the plans—and there were plans, remember—would lie in the pigeon-holes of the Department and accumulate dust with the years. That was a full year before war broke out and the Government, no doubt, prided themselves on that achievement and presented themselves to the people here, a full year before the war came, as having sufficient foresight to realise that war at least was possible. They had done this great thing—they had set apart the Minister for Industry and Commerce to deal with supplies, to think of rationing and to think of the getting in of supplies and the control and distribution of whatever was in the country. That was apparently done at that time. Plans were made and the plans were going to be pigeon-holed and there was the pious hope of the Minister that they would never be used.
Of course the reality has since come upon us, and we know what truth there was, or what reality there was, in the boast of the Minister at that time. We have been able to test it here through a number of things, petrol, tea, sugar, flour, and, quite recently, bread. We have been able to see what plans the Minister had, and how far he displayed any foresight whatever. When the war came with full impact upon this country, we were able to judge how far even he had done the ordinary housekeeper's job of eking out whatever little there was of certain things in this country of which it was clear that sooner or later there would be a very definite shortage.
The Minister has answered our questions in various ways from time to time, but one specific statement of his was to the effect that in the first eight months of the war his Department had been responsible for getting in very definite extra supplies of certain goods, and he mentioned the goods. Wheat and coal are amongst them, and tea and sugar also. There were two other commodities named. From time to time I have asked him to publish those statistics. If that boast of his is true and accurate, the statistics will uphold him. If that boast of his is an empty and idle one, the statistics will belie him. I have asked from time to time to get the statistics published, and each time we were told that it would not be in the national interests to have the figures revealed. I think that that answer convicts him, because of course if we had got in any extra supplies there could be no danger to the country from the publication of that evidence. It would show that we were in a better position than possibly people believed, and would be better able to hold out against an attempt at a blockade of the country or any attack upon us. The Minister will not tell us the figures. The national security demands that they should be kept secret, and the Minister simply repeats in a parrot-like way that those statistics, if and when published, will prove his point. I have seen the statistics. I know that they do not prove his point. At the most, they will show that there was brought into the country about a month or six weeks' extra-supply of the six commodities he mentioned.
That agent of the Government who is in charge of fuel at the moment, the Parliamentary Secretary, did give certain figures here the other night, and they are worth looking at. He told us, when he was speaking of turf, that ordinarily this country imported about 2,500,000 tons of coal, and that we had imported so much more in 1938, 1939 and 1940 that the situation last year was very easy as a result of it. People here are not so sure that the situation was as easy as the Parliamentary Secretary made out, but his figures certainly indicate that there should have been a better position. His figures are given in column 2092 of the Official Debates of 4th March. They are not always quoted in the same way, but I think this particular paragraph is one that he will stand over as bearing out what he intended to say:
"The import for the two years, 1939 and 1940, the two first emergency years, averages 2,880,000 tons, giving in those two first emergency years a gross excess over the average normal consumption of some 760,000 tons. The import in 1941 was 1,640,000 tons, but, if you add that to the excess obtained in the two previous years,"
you get the required 2,500,000 tons. That particular set of figures of his is either borne out or very nearly borne out by the actual figures. I find, from the figures that have been given to me in regard to coal, that the import for the year 1941 was not 1,640,000 tons but about 200,000 tons less. But that is all coal. What I should imagine the Parliamentary Secretary was speaking of was not all coal but household coal, and then the picture is an entirely different one. I take the same years that he took for his basic comparison. The average of the three years shows what were the normal imports of household coal into this country. For those years, 1935 to 1938, the average was 1,600,000 tons, and we got in in 1939 and 1940 an average of 1,700,000 tons, 100,000 tons extra. Our import of domestic coal or household coal fell to less than 500,000 tons in the year 1941. If you add the quantity that we had over and above the normal imports in the two earlier years you get 600,000 tons of household coal imported or else held in 1941, and that is against an annual import of 1,600,000 tons. We were just 1,000,000 tons of household coal short last year, and, if we equate that by thinking of supplies of turf to substitute for it, it meant that last year we required 2,000,000 tons of turf. Of course, we did not get that.
Those statistics should be open to the public. I am told, when I ask for them on certain occasions, that it is not in the national interests that they should be published, and then the Parliamentary Secretary thinks he can make a case out of them. He quotes them. Of course he quotes figures that are misleading. On the occasion when the matter was discussed here we were not so much interested in supplies of coal as in supplies of domestic coal. Apparently, it was not then any longer a national danger to let us have the figures. The figures can only be thoroughly understood in the public mind when they get those figures properly analysed. I suggest to the Minister for Supplies that, if he wants to give some demonstration to the people of what he did, he could take that single matter of coal and tell the people what his Department did, or, if he likes, let him publish the figures for the six commodities he boasted about, letting the public have a demonstration of the value of his Department to them.
There is one matter which has been discussed recently—at least, part of it was discussed, and appeared in this morning's paper—and which has often caused me some wonderment. There was a tribunal set up to discuss the question of transport, and that tribunal reported to the Government in August, 1939. One of the statements contained in that report is that the Great Southern Railways Company found their financial position so bad that they had abandoned their ordinary practice of carrying three weeks' supply of coal, and were carrying only one week's supply. That statement was in the hands of the Government before the war broke out. They found themselves with a document before them stating that the Great Southern Railways Company had only money enough to carry a week's supply of coal. I want to know what did the Government do about that matter? Did they bring in the board of the Great Southern Railways and tell them that they were running dangerously low? Did they advise them that further supplies should be bought? Seeing that the report was framed in the terms that the Great Southern Railways' finances did not permit them to carry more than a week's supply, did the Government suggest to them that they should get credits and use those credits for getting greater stocks of coal? Did the Government, if they found that the Great Southern Railways Company had any difficulty in raising credits, offer to supply credits?
The serious point about the whole situation at the moment is that the company is almost devoid of coal supplies. But some few days before the war broke out, and in any event at a time when coal was much more easily purchased than it is now, the Government had a declaration from a tribunal set up by themselves indicating the precarious position of the Great Southern Railways Company in respect of coal. As far as anybody is aware, there was no help offered by the Government, no aid given by the Government, to the Great Southern Railways Company, although they must have realised that transport would sooner or later become a very vital matter. The main railway company circulating in the Twenty-Six Counties was running short of coal, it was revealed, and there was an urgent necessity for somebody to do something about it.
In 1938 we had a Minister who was pretending to be looking after supplies. That Minister got that warning with regard to the shortage of coal for the Great Southern Railways. I think people are entitled to know what steps, if any, did the Government, or the Great Southern Railways Board, by way of approach to the Government, take to try to ease that difficult situation. When they are told that one of the difficulties of getting turf into the City of Dublin is transport, the transport being mainly a question for the Great Southern Railways, they ought to be reminded that the situation was clearly shown to the Government in 1939.
If there ever was an emergency which called for a Minister who would be prepared to have assistance given to such a concern, there was the occasion, and the Minister for Supplies could ingratiate himself with the public by going to the radio and telling the people what he did in that emergency; how he helped the Great Southern Railways over their difficulties; what credits he gave or promised them; what aid the banks or other financial houses gave, and in what other way he helped the company over the amazing difficulties revealed in that document.
I do not believe the Minister will accept an invitation to go to the radio to promulgate what he did in that matter, because he has not a reputable story to tell. I suggest he might do another thing. Supplies of different things are running short and the Federation of Irish Manufacturers have indicated their efforts to make contact with the Minister for Supplies about the time the war broke out, and more vigorously in the early part of 1940. They did achieve a meeting, but I do not know if the Minister attended that meeting. They expressed their anxiety to co-operate with the Ministry, to supply the Ministry with information. They even sent to the Ministry a return arising out of certain circular letters they issued in which they asked their correspondents to inform them with regard to supplies. The results of their inquiries were sent to the Minister for Supplies. If they got one meeting, that was the beginning and end of it.
Surely the Minister, if he believes he is carrying out his responsibility in a way that will command public confidence, should let the people know, at least in a few details, what he has done. I suggest he should do this: Let him take any single thing he has done, get a night on the radio, and let people know about that single commodity. Let him take one area of work in reference to which he can say that the amount of money expended on the Department has been well spent and that he has saved this country from an impact worse than what has actually come upon it.
I will come back again to Vote 63. We were told last year, when we added Vote 63 and the other Votes which pertain to the Army together, that the Army was costing the country 9? million pounds. The main Vote has now gone up by £628,000. Unless the others have decreased by some amount equal to that, we may take it that the Army is costing £10,000,000—that is the amount to be supplied this year. The amount in the main Vote is £9,000,000 and then there is a bread subsidy costing over £1,000,000. That represents the subsidy for bread and the general provision for the Army. There was always some provision for the Army in any Estimates that this House has had to face, some provision ranging somewhere between £1,500,000 and £2,000,000. There is a difference of about £8,000,000 between any ordinary peace year in this country prior to 1931 and the present time. The whole Book of Estimates shows a far greater increase than £8,000,000. Will the Minister for Finance tell us what he has done to get down the amount represented in the Estimates?
So far as I could understand from what I read of the speech of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, his attitude of mind apparently is that if this country were invaded to-morrow, if it were bombed and devastated, he would still bring in a group of Estimates equal to what is now before us. So far as I can gather, there is no possible way of saving money. I do not know whether the Minister for Finance holds that view, but, if he does not, he ought to explain the position to the people. Let us take any Book of Estimates, say for 1928 or 1929, and calculate the difference between that period and this, selecting particularly the difference between the two amounts for the Army, putting the bread subsidy of £1,000,000 on one side. Can the Minister explain where the £9,000,000 or the £11,000,000 is going? I can quite see the Minister's attitude towards those increasing demands on the public year after year. Does this thought not enter into the Minister's mind: that, at a time when necessity drives us to raise and expend something like £10,000,000 on the Army, there is a corresponding necessity on the Minister to see that, through some of the other Votes, economies of some type will be found? We cannot keep pretending that we are now having the same type of development in this country as in peace time.
There is another matter in this Army Vote to which I adverted last year. The details of the Army Vote have been hidden from us, but we know that somewhere or other a division has to be made between the amount spent on the human material for the Army and the amount spent on supplies for the Army. The calculations made in 1914 and the calculations made nowadays with regard to war conditions are somewhat different. In 1914 the situation was that as many men as possible were packed into the front line and only the old people were left behind in the munition factories to prepare supplies. That particular theory was abandoned and in the later period of the last war there were three men in the background for every man in the field. The modern calculation is that it is essential to have six men in the background working in factories or elsewhere in order adequately to supply the individual who takes his place in the field.
We are not equipping an Army; we have not the resources to work on anything approaching the lines of the modern army of a big Power, but the amount of money spent on supplies in proportion to the amount spent on fighting personnel must be more or less the same. So far as I can make out from the Vote, by far the greater proportion of the 9? million pounds for last year and £10,000,000 for this year is spent on personnel; it is spent by way of pay for officers and men, for clothing, for rations and for a variety of services that simply keep them alive and fighting fit; but there is a very big amount of money still required to equip them.
Of course, everybody knows that there are no factories here of the type that is required to fit these fighting forces of ours. I do not know what the division of the Vote is, but I suggest that unless there is some reasonable proportion observed between the amount to be spent on supplies, i.e., munitions, and the amount spent on the personnel of the Forces them selves, it will mean that the amount we are asked to vote here will be mainly wasted.
The feeling that that money will be mainly wasted must occur to the mind of any person who sees all that has happened with regard to subordinate units of the Defence Forces. All that the public are allowed to know with regard to subordinate units, such as the L.D.F., is, apparently, that there is much perturbation of mind about the colour and shape of the cap they are to wear and the colour of the uniform they will be in, and in this very month of March, 1942, we have seen a grand scheme of re-forming the L.D.F. Now, I have the feeling that all that time, energy, and mental trouble that has been given to talking about the colour and shape of the caps and uniforms, and the groupings of the people of the L.D.F., might have been spent far better in getting them properly equipped and armed and making them something more than a suicide squad.
In speaking of the Army at all, I know that one is open to the criticism —which will be directed against one, whether that criticism is reasonable, fair, or false—that an attack is being made on the Army. I am not making any attack on the Army, and it is not my intention to do so, but I am attacking those people whose duty it is to provide for and to equip the Army, and I am anxious to know whether the money that is now being voted is in some way being properly divided between the amount to be spent on supplies and the amount spent merely on taking other people out of occupations and putting them into Army life. Until we get the details—and, of course, we are not going to get them— or even so much of the details as would enable us to see how this sum of about £10,000,000 is divided between the two big items of warlike supplies on the one hand and everything else on the other hand, it is not possible, of course, properly to criticise the amount of money that is being spent on the Army. All we do know is that this huge amount of £10,000,000 is being voted, and the public have no details to enable them to form a view as to whether this money is being properly spent or not. Neither is the Dáil being given proper details on which to level criticism, and until we get such details, as to how much of this amount is going for warlike supplies, and so on, then I think we may take it that the rest of the money, most probably, is going to be wasted.
Again, I find a comment from a speech of the Minister for Supplies made in a recent debate in this House, where the Minister complains that in this country, as opposed to England, the Government is not getting the proper support of the people, and he asked Deputies of this House to note the attitude of the English public. He said:—
"I ask Deputies to note the attitude of English public men and English newspapers whenever the Government of that country appeals specifically to them to take some course of action that is necessary in the public interest. The newspapers, for a time at any rate, endeavour to conform to the Government's plans, and uniformly report a willingness on the part of everybody to co-operate in those plans."
He then goes on to say that in that way they succeed in getting into the minds of the people in England an attitude of acceptance and a willingness to co-operate, and he contrasts that with what happened here. Now, the answer to that has been repeatedly given to the Minister, and he cannot be a very close observer of what is happening in England if he thinks that that statement of his is a true statement of the facts. One knows, at least, that in England they have not yet abandoned Parliamentary control. One has seen recently—twice since Christmas—how public opinion in England, engineered through the House of Commons, has made one of the most popular leaders that that country ever had, change his Ministry twice. Over there they have what is called a National Government, and yet public opinion forced the person whom the whole community believes in to change his Ministry twice, and over there also, even though they are at war, details of important Estimates are given to a most amazing extent and criticism is allowed to range freely over the details that are given. The effect of that is that they have been able to throw out of office people who are regarded either as laggard, unwilling to act in a crisis, or incompetent, and they have secured changes, and the changes they have secured have satisfied, to some extent at least, public opinion over there. Nobody believes, however, that that situation will remain for any length of time. All the time they are judging these things and judging men by their acts, getting rid of the people without whom, they think, the interests of their country would be better served, and replacing them with better people.
Now, contrast that with the situation here. In the beginning of the war it was agreed here that the Party system of Government should be continued, and we all agreed to that. Then there was a junction on a limited area of function. That junction was agreed to, and since then the Dáil meets only rarely, but since that junction was effected there has been more and more effort on the part of Ministers to burk discussion in the House, and they will not even answer questions. If Ministers will not answer questions that are properly addressed to them, they can only be judged in one way; either by achievement or by the lack of achievement, and I suggest that if there is a lack of confidence in the present Ministry—and in my opinion there is an overwhelming lack of confidence in them—they themselves are responsible for it. It is futile and paltry to ask that the same sort of support should be given to a Government here, that was acting along Party lines and is still acting along Party lines, that is given to a Government on the other side, when we have the kind of thing that we see here. It is futile to ask that support should be given to a Government here which has shown itself incapable of dealing with crises as they occur, and to compare that with the support given to a Government on the other side which has changed from time to time and which, as time has gone on, has proved more fit to deal with the emergencies with which it has to deal. I was glad, in one sense, that the Minister for Supplies complained of that because he must have realised that, on the whole, public support here is not behind the Government, and the more Ministers realise that, the greater is the chance that they will mend their hand and try to give the country some return for the vast amount of money that they are asking us to vote at the moment.
