When moving the motion, I expressed the hope that we might do what was done in previous years and debate together all the Estimates for which I am responsible.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 32—Office of the Minister for Justice—Resumed.
Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That a sum, not exceeding £31,597, be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1945, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Justice.
—(Minister for Justice.)
It would be better if the Minister took his own Department and the Gárda Síochána together and took the courts as a separate group. They are hardly connected. However, if the Minister has prepared the one speech to deal with all items, I will raise no objection, if it is more convenient for him.
Mr. Boland
It is more convenient for me but, at the same time, in this matter I am in the hands of the House. It was generally conceded to do it in this way, but if there is any objection to it now, that must be considered.
It is only a matter of convenience.
Has not the practice been to take them all together?
Mr. Boland
They have been taken together for the past five years, since I became Minister.
What Votes are they?
Mr. Boland
Votes 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 and 38. If any particular point should arise on any of the Estimates, it could be raised when that Estimate is being put. I propose to read out the Financial Resolution dealing with each Estimate. If any Deputy wishes to raise any particular point on that Estimate, the practice has been to raise it when the Resolution is proposed.
Each Estimate will be put separately and any question on it can be raised then.
I do not quite follow that.
The debate will be a general one, but the Votes will be put separately. If any Deputy desires to raise a particular point, he can put the question when the Vote is put and seek a reply from the Minister.
In other words, raise the question twice?
Mr. Boland
Yes.
Do the Votes only go as far as No. 38?
Mr. Boland
Up to No. 40—Charitable Donations and Bequests. I have already moved the Financial Resolution for the Office of the Minister for Justice—Vote 32—on which the general debate takes place. Votes 32 to 40, taken together, show an increase of about £88,000. The two big figures are an increase of £75,500 for the Gárda Síochána and £6,500 for Prisons. In the case of the Gárda Síochána, the main heads are: Increased Emergency Bonus, £46,500; Increase in the amount of pay of Gárda, by reason of increments and filling of vacancies, £19,000; Allowances under sub-head B, £9,000; Increase in provision for L.S.F. (subheads O, P and Q), £15,000; making a total of £89,500.
The main decreases in the Vote are a reduction of £12,500 in the estimated cost of Gárda transport, £5,000 in subsistence and £3,600 in incidental expenses. These three apparent reductions are really due to the fact that the corresponding items were abnormally large last year for special reasons.
In the Prisons Vote, the increase of £6,500 is distributed over various heads, such as the emergency bonus, the higher cost of travelling in connection with the escort and conveyance of prisoners and the increased cost of fuel, none of them very striking in itself. The number of prisoners is estimated as likely to be a little lower than last year —an average of 745, as compared with 755 estimated for last year. The number in custody at present is about 725.
During the discussion, about two months ago, on a Supplementary Estimate for the Gárda Síochána, the point was made by a Deputy—I think it was Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney— that the sum included in that Estimate under the heading of Emergency Bonus, viz., £10,000, seemed very small in comparison to the number of men concerned. The sum of £10,000 represented, as I explained at the time, the additional sum required to cover a small part of the year. The estimated cost of the Gárda bonus for the financial year now being provided for is £186,300, as appears on page 145 of the Estimates, representing, roughly, 10/- a week for each of 7,000 individuals. Everybody in the force benefits, except the very few whose pay exceeds £500 per annum.
On the same discussion, the question of housing accommodation was mentioned—the difficulty which married Gárdaí experience in getting suitable accommodation. This is, of course, part of the general problem of housing shortage. I am afraid that any real improvement cannot be expected under present conditions but, as Deputies are aware, plans are being made for the time when it will be possible to start building again on a large scale, and the housing requirements of the Gárda Síochána have been brought to the notice of the Department of Industry and Commerce. In view of the suggestions which have been made on this Estimate in previous years, I may mention that the cost of that provision will be almost entirely met by the rent allowance already being paid to the Gárdaí, so it will not mean a very big increase, if any, in the amount of money spent on the Gárda Síochána.
On the Supplementary Estimate for the Department, Deputy Dockrell, I think, said that he wished to raise the question of the health of the Gárdaí. I have received a very full report from the Commissioner, and I can find nothing in it to suggest that the health of the Gárdaí is not as good as that of any police force anywhere that we can find particulars about. I do not know why the Deputy should suggest that their health was bad. I can find no justification for that suggestion at all. The health of the Gárdaí seems to be quite good.
As regards recruitment, Deputies can see from the Estimate that it is the intention to maintain the Force at a strength of 7,320. Provision is made for the recruitment of 160 Guards during the present year. The Civil Service examination has already been held, but the result of it will not be available for some time. The total strength of the Force on the 29th February, 1944, was 7,221 officers and men, or 99 below the strength shown in the Estimate. The recruitment of the 160 Guards will bring the strength of the Force up to that shown in the Estimate and will keep it at that level during the year.
With regard to crime, of course that is a thing that is occupying everybody's attention at the present time. The crime returns for 1943 are very high compared with the prewar years. I am glad to say, however, that there has not been any increase as compared with last year. There has not been any decrease and at the same time there has not been any increase.
Can the Minister tell us if there has been an increase in the number of Communists?
Mr. Boland
I do not know what that has to do with it. I have not heard anything about the number of Communists. What is the Deputy trying to get after? I think he had better ask somebody else that question.
The Minister knows better than anybody else.
Mr. Boland
I know a good deal about it all right. The number of indictable offences more than doubled between 1939 and 1942. The number in 1939 was 8,202 and in 1942 it was 17,213. The number of indictable offences in 1943 was 17,447. In the Dublin Metropolitan area there was a slight decrease in indictable offences for the first time since 1933. I am glad to say that the decrease continued during the first quarter of this year. The number of indictable crimes reported to the police in the Dublin Metropolitan area in the first quarter of this year was 2,150 as compared with 2,603 in the first quarter of last year. Larcenies, housebreakings and burglaries accounted for 92 per cent. of all the indictable crimes in last year. Larcenies alone accounted for 73 per cent. The goods sought by thieves were mainly those which are in short supply such as tea, sugar, cigarettes, bicycles, clothing and fuel. The scarcity of these classes of goods was the chief cause of the increase in crime. It should be borne in mind that no matter how efficient and numerous the police force may be, they cannot be everywhere.
The public should take all possible care of their property. I think there is a feeling that the police alone can prevent the commission of such crimes. It should be realised that in times such as the present everyone should do his utmost to take some care of his own property. There have been many larcenies of bicycles, hats and other goods. In the case of overcoats, the number that is being stolen from hotels is still on the increase. People will have to be more careful about their property. They cannot expect the police to be everywhere. I think that extra care is now being taken of bicycles, because the number stolen in 1943 shows a big decrease as compared with 1942. The number of stolen bicycles reported to the police in 1943 was 2,288, as compared with 3,362 in 1942—a drop of about 33 per cent. I think that must be due to the greater precautions people are taking by putting their bicycles in parking places.
With regard to juvenile crime, the number of juveniles under 18 years of age charged with indictable offences in the past five years were as follows: 1939, 1,605; 1940, 1,803; 1941, 2,562; 1942, 3,350; 1943, 3,345. The number has more than doubled since 1939, but again there is no increase shown on last year. Let us hope that juvenile crime will decrease.
Is the Minister in a position to give the percentage of those under 14 years of age who were charged?
Mr. Boland
I have not the figure with me, but I will get it. The increase was gradual when we compare the figures for 1939 with 1940, but the figure for 1941 shows a big jump up. The highest figure was in 1942, when it was 3,350. The figure dropped to 3,345 last year. I would like to pay a tribute to the help that the Guards got, particularly in Dublin, from the members of the L.S.F. They rendered great help in the recovery of stolen bicycles. They also helped in other ways. The work they do is not very spectacular but it is solid work, and I would like to take this opportunity of paying tribute to it.
I met recently a very representative deputation from the Dublin Corporation on the question of the destruction and larceny of municipal property by unruly elements. All that I can say on that is that I am examining the position to see what can be done in the way of getting a greater number of police for the city. The fact is that, as far as the police force is concerned, it has more or less kept pace with the increase in population. The present strength is 1,575 as compared with 1,176 30 years ago. To-day there are less men available for beat duty, the reason being that the duties of the police to-day are more varied than they were thirty years ago. For that reason I think there will have to be an increase in the city force. It is admitted that there are not enough Guards available for beat duty. I hope to be able to do something to meet the wishes of the members of the corporation on that matter.
As regards crimes against the State, I am glad to say that last year was not as bad as other years. The last six months were quite. I do not want to say much on that because whenever we speak about a decrease unfortunately there seems to be a tendency to break out again. The past year, however, was very peaceful. On three occasions during the year police officers were fired on and wounded. Therefore we cannot say that we are out of the wood. However, I think I can say that the position is much easier, and let us hope that it will continue. I do not want to make any prophecies about that. There are at present 78 persons in custody under sentence, and 210 interned under the Emergency Powers (No. 20) Order. A year ago the corresponding figures were: 99 sentenced and 554 interned.
I come now to the courts. In the group of Court Estimates—Nos. 35, 36 and 37—I may, perhaps, refer to a few points. I am asked occasionally as to the progress of the revision of the Court Rules. Under the Courts of Justice Act, 1936, this duty is imposed on the Rules Committee of each court, upon which the Department is not represented at all; they consist entirely of judges, justices, barristers and solicitors with, in each case, one court officer as secretary. The delay in bringing the work to a conclusion is due almost entirely to the difficulty of getting the committees to devote enough time to it, and the last few years have been particularly unfortunate in this respect, because the increase of criminal work in the courts has given the judges and justices who are chairmen or members of the committees very little spare time for out-of-court duties. A sum of £600 was provided in our Estimates for the year 1943-44 towards fees for draftsmen to assist the committees in this work— that is, under sub-head A (4) of Vote 32—but none of it was spent and the entire sum is being re-voted this year.
There are two points on the Circuit Court Vote to which I should, perhaps, refer. The first is at sub-head E, which deals with under-sheriffs. Up to the present year the salaries of under-sheriffs have been paid by the Department of Finance out of the Law Charges Vote, a practice dating from the time when a separate office of under sheriff existed in every county. The stage has now been reached when only six under-sherifs remain—those in the City of Dublin, the County of Dublin, the county, not the city, of Cork, and the counties of Tipperary, Wicklow and Mayo. Everywhere else the office of under-sheriff has been amalgamated with the office of county registrar. It has, therefore, been thought proper and convenient to transfer the salaries of the few remaining under-sheriffs to the same Vote as that out of which the salaries of county registrars are paid. I may, perhaps, mention here that, as I stated in a reply to a recent question, it is proposed to introduce very shortly legislation under which a separate officer for the execution of the under-sheriff's duties may be retained in places, notably the City and County of Dublin, in which the duties of the county registrar are already so heavy that it would be unreasonable to add to them.
The other point as regards the Circuit Court Vote, to which, I think, I should refer, is under sub-head F, where, as Deputies will observe, a sum of £4,242 has been inserted for losses. This sum represents the total of certain losses incurred during the past few years by reason of the dishonesty, in one case, of a clerk in a Circuit Court office, and, in three others, of court messengers. In the first case, which was the most serious, a sum of about £3,000, held in trust for minors and others, was embezzled. In the three other cases the embezzlements were committed by court messengers, who collected money under Land Commission warrants and put it in their own pockets. One of the offenders, a court messenger, made his escape from the country; the others were dismissed and prosecuted.
The only other Vote is that dealing with the Land Registry. The position there has been most unsatisfactory. Deputies were complaining about delays, and the reason is that it was not anticipated that there would be very much work during the period of the emergency on account of the almost total cessation of Land Commission work. As it happened, there was a great number of sales of farms, and the work did not decrease. There was such a call on the staffs that we could not get much done in the matter of securing extra staff. I hope that soon there will be a big improvement in connection with the Land Registry. We really could not avoid the delays. The volume of work with which we had to contend was not anticipated, for the reason I have mentioned.
I must confess I was rather surprised and a little disappointed at the air of complacency with which the Minister dealt with the question of crime in this country. The Minister seemed to brush aside as a matter of small importance the crime which is being committed. It seems to me that the situation is very far from satisfactory. Every day we read of crimes, housebreaking, and other crimes of that nature. We also hear from time to time what is very much worse: we hear of crimes of violence, robbery with violence in the streets of the city. That is an entirely new crime. It is only within the last couple of years we have heard of that very grave and horrible crime being committed in the City of Dublin.
I, and any responsible persons to whom I have talked, regard the situation as extremely serious. At the present moment there are two criminal courts sitting in Dublin. The Circuit Court is unable to deal with the number of cases of crime which come before it, and, in consequence, an extra judge has had to be appointed to deal solely with criminal work. That is a matter to which the Minister did not advert. I hope, when he is replying to the debate, that the Minister, without ratting off merely a few statistics as quickly as he can read, will give us a more detailed account of the attitude of his Department to the present crime wave, and indicate the methods which the Guards propose to take or are taking to check it.
I am not so much concerned with petty larcenies; I am not so much concerned with the stealing of bicycles, however unpleasant that may be—it has decreased, because the owners of bicycles are now taking reasonable precautions to safeguard their machines—but I am very much concerned with crimes of violence. It certainly seems to me, from reading local papers and from such other information as I can get, that violence is increasing all over the country. It would seem that the number of rows which take place after meetings in dance halls is very much on the increase. I wonder if dance halls are being supervised by the Guards in the way in which they ought to be supervised. If one takes up any local paper one can see the number of persons who are being prosecuted for rows which take place in dance halls and outside dance halls, and one reads where sometimes very serious injuries indeed are inflicted on the parties.
The Minister dealt with political crime. I am very glad to hear from him that political crime is on the downgrade—it is very satisfactory to hear that. I think that is due to a very considerable extent to the policy of internment. The Minister, of course, knows my views on internment; that it is a temporary expedient, not a final remedy, and that when persons come out from internment they are seldom if ever converted; they are rendered rather more desperate than they were before they were interned. But, of course, I understand and agree with the Minister's policy that in an emergency such as we are passing through internment is an absolute necessity. I was glad to hear the Minister put forward that view likewise, that we cannot regard the danger of political crime as being past; we must be carefully on the watch. That, I understand, is the view which the Minister put forward.
Mr. Boland
Exactly.
I was glad to hear the Minister put forward the view that we cannot regard the possibility of there being a recrudesence of political crime as being entirely past, and I am glad to hear that the Minister and the Guards are watching, keeping their eyes open, and taking such steps as they can take to see there is no recrudescence of it. Ordinary crime seemed to me, to some extent at any rate, to be attributed by the Minister to the fact that there were not sufficient Guards in Dublin. I wonder if the time will ever come when the Dublin police, who are paid by the State for doing police work, will be kept at police work and at police work only. It is no part of a Guard's duty to do point duty, yet a very great number of the Dublin police are being kept on point duty.
I have never been able to see why that should be. Historically there is justification for it. At one time the citizens of Dublin paid to a large extent, if not entirely, the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and of course since the Corporation paid the Dublin Metropolitan Police the Corporation could put them to any service they liked, and they put them on point duty. When the forces were amalgamated the same system was carried on. But the situation now appears to be that there is an insufficient number of Guards for ordinary patrol duty and police work in the City of Dublin, and that there are other Guards being kept on point duty, which is not police work. The work of the police is to preserve the peace. They are primarily police officers. Their primary duty is to prevent crime and to detect crime and not to direct traffic.
Mr. Boland
Is there any country that the Deputy knows of where the police do not do point duty? They have always done it; they did it in the Deputy's time as Minister.
I am not the slightest bit interested in this running away to other countries for examples. Will the Minister tell me any country in the world where there is a national police force that does point duty?
Mr. Boland
I can.
Tell me one.
Mr. Boland
Take Germany, or any country on the continent. The police do point duty there.
Is there a national police force in Germany?
Mr. Boland
They do point duty anyway.
Or are they municipally paid?
Mr. Boland
They are policemen anyway, and that is the main point.
They are not a national police force being paid by the whole nation to do point duty in one particular city. My view is that, until there are sufficient Guards to do patrol duty in the city, not they, but some other body should be put on to control traffic. As to the increase in pay which the Guards are receiving I gather from the Minister that each person in receipt of under £500 per year gets 10/- a week. That is a flat rate of increase.
Mr. Boland
That is right.
I wonder if that is sufficient. Guards are not a very vocal body and their officers, especially, are not a vocal body and no Guard or police officer has spoken to me upon the subject. I am speaking entirely from what I think myself. I am putting forward nobody's view except my own; no view which has been conveyed to me. But it does seem to me that 10/- a week is not sufficient increase. If there is one body that must be kept free from debt it is the Guards. If a Guard gets into debt, he is not able to discharge his duties as a Guard efficiently. That is fully recognised in the police force, and if a Guard or police officer is found to be too heavily in debt his services are dispensed with. When one comes to consider the very great increase which has taken place in the cost of living, the enormous increase, one might say, in certain articles such as clothing, it does seem to me that 10/- a week will make a very small addition to the Guard's pay to enable him to meet his extra expenditure. Guards are not, on the whole, a body who were in a position to put by money or to live below their pay. Since the increase of 10/- a week is nothing in comparison with the cost of living and they have no margin on which to draw, and since there is no real way in which they could cut down their cost of living and economise, it does seem to me that it will be necessary for a great number of them to get into debt and, therefore, become inefficient policemen. If you are in debt to your grocer, you are very much in your grocer's power. I suggest to the Minister that, in the interests of the preservation of the law and the proper performance of police duties, he should, of his own volition, approach the Minister for Finance and see if a larger increase than that could be given. I am not talking now merely of the rank and file of the Guards. I think the officers of the Guards must be suffering very much more than even the rank and file because a great number of them have commitments that they must honour and will have no means of meeting. It is much more important that an officer should be out of debt than that a Guard should be out of debt.
I pass from the general question of the administration of the Department and of the Guards and come to the courts. There is the question of the Rules of Court, and I gather from the Minister that none of the moneys which were voted by this House to the draftsman who is to draw up the draft rules for the High Court and for the Circuit Court has been so far expended. Is not that correct?
Mr. Boland
That is correct.
Is it being revoted this year?
Mr. Boland
Yes.
Has any work been done? Is the Minister in a position to state when a draft set of Rules can be brought before the Rules-making Committee?
Mr. Boland
If the Deputy will allow me, I think in his time the position was different. If he remembers, we had this point before. When he was Minister, he was responsible for the rules. Under the 1936 Act it is the Rules Committee that is responsible and the Minister is not even represented on that Committee. As I pointed out in my speech, I understand the judges are so busy that they have not been able to give time in the past year to the making of these rules. They are all legal men on that committee.
I should like to press that a little further. This House voted a sum of money to have the High Court Rules drafted. We are entitled to know if there has been a draft of High Court Rules made and if that has been presented to the Rules Committee. We are entitled to know that because, until a draft has been made and until a draft has been presented to the Rules Committee, it is most unfair to say that the Rules Committee are neglecting their work or that they have not time to do their work—and that is what the Minister has been saying.
Mr. Boland
I do not like to interrupt the Deputy but I do not want a misapprehension to arise. The position is that it is not the duty of the Minister for Justice to present any draft. It is a matter entirely for the Rules Committee, under the 1936 Act, and if the Deputy reads that Act he will see that that is the position. I cannot do anything about it.
Might I ask the Minister who appointed the draftsman who is to draft the High Court Rules?
Mr. Boland
Whoever appointed him does not matter. The fact is that he is the draftsman of the committee, not the Minister's draftsman. He is appointed to act for the committee, to draft rules for the committee.
Has the Minister power to change them?
Mr. Boland
That does not matter. I tell the Deputy it is a matter for that committee, which is composed entirely of judges and barristers and legal people, and that I am not represented on it at all, under the Act of 1936, with which he does not seem to be familiar.
We are in the very nice position then that we vote money; we appoint a person to draft rules; nothing is done, according to the Minister; and we have got no remedy. Has the Minister made any inquiries from the Rules Committee as to the cause of delays and will the Minister convey to the House, when concluding, any answer he got in reference to the matter? After all, the Minister is Minister for Justice. It is the Minister's duty to see that the courts function properly. If I am not mistaken, the Rules Committee were appointed by him. Is that not so?
Mr. Boland
That is not so.
Were not the Rules Committee appointed by the Minister?
Mr. Boland
They were not.
Were they not? I understood they were.
Mr. Boland
They were not. I explained that before and when I am concluding I shall explain it again. There has been a change, under the 1936 Act.
At any rate, according to the Minister—and it is a very pleasant admission for the Minister to make—our courts are not functioning satisfactorily because they have not got up-to-date Rules of Court, either in the High Court or in the Circuit Court, and the Minister says that the House is entirely powerless in the matter. That being the case, the sooner the Minister repents of his legislation and takes power to bring before the House matters of importance like rules-making, the better.
There is a great number of matters with which the Rules-making Committee have nothing to do, in which the law in this country is years and years behind the times. Law which was perfectly satisfactory 100 years ago, or 80 years ago, or even 50 years ago, is not satisfactory at the present moment. Again and again in this House I have pointed out to the Minister that the Arbitration Act in this country, which is something over 80 years old, is entirely unsatisfactory and inadequate. That is no matter for the Rules-making Committee. That is a matter for the Minister. That is a matter of law reform. In England, as far back as the year 1888, they amended the law relating to arbitration, which was at that time exactly the same in England as it is in this country now. Indeed, if the Minister simply adopted the expedient of taking the English Act of 1888 and having it enacted, word for word, in this House, it would be a tremendous improvement on the present position.
Let me give the House an example. Suppose somebody has a claim against an insurance company. It has to go to arbitration. It is usually a motor case. Both parties appoint an arbitrator and the arbitrator appoints an umpire. The fees of the arbitrator and the umpire, of course, are not paid by the State. The arbitrators— and if they do not agree, the umpire —make an award and that award they hold up until such time as the fees which are due to them for arbitrating are paid. So, therefore, the person— and it is practically in all cases the plaintiff—has to take out the award. He has to pay the fees of the umpire and the fees of the arbitrators, even though he is successful in his case. Moreover, arbitrators have no power to award costs. Take the ordinary case: some one has a lorry and there is a question as to whether the insurance company are liable for some accident that happened to the lorry. The lorry owner may succeed, but if he succeeds, he succeeds at the cost of paying his own expenses, and he always has to pay the cost of the umpire and the two arbitrators, and he has to take out the award. The defendant need never take out the award; it must always be the plaintiff. To my mind, and I think most laymen in the House will agree with me, that is a throughly unsatisfactory condition of affairs. We have been hammering at the Minister for years to bring in some legislation amending and improving the position——
The Deputy, from his experience in the House, must be aware that he is not entitled to advocate changing the law.
I am perfectly aware that I am not entitled to advocate a change in the law, but I am entitled to say that the Minister is not discharging his functions when he does not amend the law in general, and I took one specific example to show that. There are many other examples which I could bring forward —many ways in which the common law has been amended outside this country, and in which, seemingly, we never will have anything done here. As far as the ordinary law of contract is concerned, and as far as the ordinary law of tort is concerned, we are never going to have any legislation. That is the Minister's attitude, and that is a throughly unsatisfactory attitude.
I do not see why the Department cannot wake up and carry out some of the very obvious improvements which ought to be carried out in the existing law. I would go further, very much further; I should like to see a law revision committee set up. I should like to see a competent body going right through the whole code of our law to see how far it requires amendment. Anybody who practises in the courts, and a great number of litigants, must know that our law is getting completely behind the times, and that the Department of Justice is quite determined that it will not take a single step towards amending it and bringing it up to date. That is a very unsatisfactory state of affairs.
With regard to the delays in the land registry, the Minister now says that he intends to take some steps to improve matters, but he did not tell us what the steps are. Has he increased the staff? If he has, to what extent? I understand that the staff was depleted. Has it been brought up to its old strength? Is there the same number there or does he propose that there will be the same number there as there was five or six years ago? I wish that the Minister would be a little more specific in regard to this matter.
When reading through the Estimate, I found an item of which the Minister should be and I am sure will be only too glad to give some explanation. The salary paid to the Film Censor is to be £900 in the current year, as compared with £600 for last year. I was wondering whether the Minister would be good enough to tell the House in his reply whether the 50 per cent. increase in the salary of the Film Censor is due to an increased volume of work or responsibility, or is due to the increase in the cost of living?
To the cost of living.
I am waiting for the Minister to say that. Is that so?
Mr. Boland
I do not know if I am expected to reply to each point as it is raised?
If it is due to the increased volume of work or additional responsibility placed on the Film Censor for this year as compared with last year, I feel bound to say that I am not a good judge in that matter and that I am prepared to accept the judgment of the Minister and his advisers, but, if this salary increase is due to the increase in the cost of living, I should like the Minister and his colleagues to explain their action in increasing the salary of the Film Censor by 50 per cent. while at the same time repudiating the agreement which they made with all the other civil servants of the State in regard to what those civil servants should get to meet the increase in the cost of living. It is either the one thing or the other, and I should like the Minister to say what was the reason which induced him to give this 50 per cent. increase in the salary of the occupant of that office. I am raising that matter for another reason, because on a previous occasion here in this House, with others, I raised the question of the salary paid at that particular period to the Film Censor, but apparently he was not able to "pull the leg" of the Minister or the high officials of the Department of Finance. He was not able to induce the powers that be to raise his salary, and the powers that be are, in matters of this kind, the Cabinet on the one hand for policy reasons, and the Department of Finance on the other. If you are well in with the high officials of the Department of Finance it is easy to persuade them to do things of that kind.
Mr. Boland
If the Deputy wishes, I will deal with that matter now, because I might overlook it at the end.
I should be interested to know the real reason. I do not want to delay the discussion in connection with this Estimate. The Minister has always got fairly generous treatment from all sections in this House in disposing of the Estimates for which he is responsible. I want to say this about him, that I think he is recognised by members on every side of the House as being very frank and straightforward in dealing with any questions that are raised. I am now raising a matter which I regret to have to raise. It is a serious matter, and I am raising it because I want very positive and personal assurances from the Minister in regard to complaints that have come to me.
I want to know if he will explain the procedure which is adopted by him as Minister for Justice in issuing warrants for the censoring of internal correspondence, and whether there has been during the past year any increase in the number of warrants so issued as compared with previous years. I want to know from him in connection with that matter whether he can state that the persons who are authorised by his signature to open internal correspondence, are sworn to secrecy, or if any cases have come under his notice, during the last year in particular, where servants of the State acting under the powers given by his warrant have made use—I am reliably informed that it has happened in some cases— of the contents of such correspondence for political purposes? That is a very serious statement to make, but I believe I am justified in making it. I have in my possession a signed statement from a very responsible citizen of this State which would go to show that such a thing has happened.
I was glad to hear from the Minister and from his predecessor in office that political crime in this country has been reduced to a minimum, and that there is no great reason why the Minister or anybody else should be in any way alarmed as to the present state of the country. If the statement presented by the Minister here this evening can be accepted as a complete picture of the position in regard to political crime here it undoubtedly presents a very peaceful state of affairs. He qualified it, of course, by saying subsequently that one never knows when something exciting may happen.
I should like to be assured by the Minister that he is not following, or is not condoning the old British tradition under which, when things were peaceful, some politically-minded police agents came forward to write up a funny story and create a lot of excitement. I have in my possession a statement made by a colleague of the Minister only a few months ago in a public speech in which he talked about thousands of citizens of the State who were involved in a certain organisation and engaged in subversive activities. Can the Minister for Justice, who has all the information at his disposal in his Department, confirm that statement? How is it, if it is true, that he did not refer to it in his opening statement, or why did he gloss over it by painting the picture as peaceful and beautiful? We all remember reading a few weeks ago about the fact that our Minister in Washington was obliged to go to the headquarters of the Government there to persuade the powers that be that there was no truth in the statement that 3,000 Japanese had landed in this country. I wonder was the Minister's colleague, when speaking in his constituency, thinking along the same lines as those who sent the story to Washington about three thousand Japanese landing on our coasts?
I want to tell the Minister that I have reliable information that the contents of letters opened under his warrant in some cases have been circulated and used by politically-minded police agents for purely political purposes, in my opinion. I am assured by some people associated with my own Party, people acting in a strictly constitutional manner from the political point of view, that correspondence exchanged between themselves and other members of the Labour Party, has been opened and the contents used for political purposes. I have reason to believe, I am sorry to say, that an article which appeared in a weekly paper not long ago, and which got widespread circulation in this country, was the product of a police agent. Is that not a serious state of affairs?
Mr. Boland
I do not know what the Deputy is talking about.
The Minister must be very innocent. Is it a fact that the Minister authorises by warrant under the powers conferred on him the opening of internal correspondence for the purposes of censorship? Assuming that that is true, I want to know what is the procedure adopted for that purpose? Are reports made to him for that purpose by police agents, police superintendents, secret service agents, or by whom? Could it be possible that a political agent, apart from a State servant, could persuade the Minister to issue a warrant for the opening of internal correspondence? The Minister must know what I want, and I hope that he will recognise the seriousness of what I am saying. When the Minister sat on this side of the House he was painted in anything but glowing colours. I remember people suggesting that the Minister when he was in opposition was a "Bolshie" and a Communist. I suppose everybody who goes to Russia at some time during his life must be branded for ever more as a Communist. A colleague of mine sitting on these benches has been branded by certain newspapers, including the special correspondent of the Irish Press, as a Communist, but that allegation is untrue. In some cases this kind of thing is manufactured just as I believe impossible stories were manufactured by the Minister when he sat in this House in opposition. Politically-minded police agents and secret service agents regard it as part of their job to do this kind of dirty work, and I want an assurance from the Minister—I will accept it if he gives it—that he is not a party to giving authority to such persons to open internal correspondence and use the contents of that correspondence for political purposes.
I referred to a statement made by a colleague of the Minister in a public speech in a public place. I can produce a person who is, I think, fairly well known to the Minister, who listened to this speech from his colleague, in which this particular Minister said that it was his privilege to read the contents of certain communications going from such-and-such an organisation to the headquarters of the Labour Party. Can that be true? If it is true, there is no doubt that letters opened by the Censor are handed over to colleagues of the Minister. If it is untrue and the Minister says so, I shall accept his assurance, but in that case the Minister should tell his colleague to go back to his constituency and publicly apologise to the people to whom he made that lying statement. I do not want to prolong the discussion but, bluntly, I want an assurance from the Minister that whenever he issues a warrant to servants of the State to open internal correspondence—and I do not dispute his right to act in that way—the people who will open that correspondence under his warrant will be people sworn to secrecy and that they will be people who will not use the contents of that correspondence afterwards for political and Party purposes.
Mr. A. Byrne
I merely want to ask if anything has yet been done to provide compensation for citizens who have suffered injury at the hands of certain people for whom the Minister is responsible. I refer in particular to the case of Joseph Gains. This man returned home from England and on the night of his homecoming he was in a fish and chip shop in High Street, Dublin. A revolver was accidentally discharged and caused him very severe injury which resulted in his losing wages to the extent of £137. An order was made by one of the justices that even if this man's wounds improved, and he was fit to return to his work in England, he must remain in this country to give evidence. As a result the man was detained for some months in Dublin without any employment. At the end of that time, the individual who injured him with the revolver, the property of the Government, lost his employment. The man who was shot in the restaurant was told he could take action against this individual. In other words, having suffered injury, he was told to take action against a man of straw. That one case is outstanding and I think it warrants some action by the Minister to ensure that any citizen injured in this way will not suffer any loss as a result. I also avail of this opportunity to ask the Minister if it is possible for him, as Minister for Justice, to get justice done for the country as well as for individuals. Is it possible for him to take steps to stop the lying and vicious slanders that are being perpetrated on this country— by newspapers outside the country— periodicals and daily papers—and by the cinema in an adjoining part of our country?
That is a question for the Department of External Affairs.
Mr. A. Byrne
I should be glad if the Minister would say whether he has any agents who could take steps to put an end to this lying, which is doing so much harm to our country. The External Affairs Vote has, I think, been passed and the matter is of serious importance because of the number of our people who are earning their living in other countries and who are suffering as a result of this lying and vicious propaganda, the latest being from Sir Hugh O'Neill, M.P., of Northern Ireland——
That is not a matter for the Minister for Justice.
Mr. A. Byrne
I had thought that the Minister, with the secret service moneys and the agents he has at his disposal, would try to refute these slanders.
It is not a matter for the Minister.
Mr. A. Byrne
Then, I shall not continue on that line. I just make the point and hope something will be done.
It is no function of the Minister to do anything about it.
Mr. A. Byrne
I shall not press the matter further but, when the word "justice" cropped up, I thought that I would help the Minister in his good work. The Minister made reference to receiving a deputation from the Dublin Corporation with reference to the policing of the city. I cannot agree with Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney that it is not the duty of the Gardai to do point duty. I think that it is their duty, that they are doing it very well, and that they have saved many lives by their handling of the situation. But I think that men should not be taken off their ordinary duty to do point duty. I think that the Minister should increase the number of Gárdaí in the city. I do not refer to the plain clothes guards who watch political crime. I refer to the uniformed guard, who won respect from everybody, who could patrol our principal streets and, perhaps, use a bicycle to patrol outside districts and help the Guards on duty there. I am not hopeful that the Minister will find a remedy for the complaints made by different parties. Having regard to our population, I do not think that there has been any great increase in crime in this country. We have a very large number of unemployed and the best remedy would be to find employment for them. I ask the Minister to see that Guards who are injured are adequately compensated and that, if they lose their lives, their dependents be adequately compensated.
I have to bring forward again a few of my customary chestnuts. My colleague Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney has referred to the Land Registry, and I am glad the Minister proposes to improve the situation there. I trust that there will be no undue delay in dealing with the matter. I suppose that there are 40 or 50 emergency regulations in force for every Act of Parliament, and it is very difficult even for the Departments concerned to know when an offence is committed under these regulations. I hold no brief for persons who are convicted under these regulations. I am not in the least annoyed as to what expense they are put to, but, where the cases are dismissed and people have been put to considerable cost in defending themselves, I think that the Department of Justice should bear the cost. If I brought a case against another citizen and failed to prove it, so that the case was dismissed, I should have to bear the cost. That is as it should be. I do not think that the State should be placed in a favoured position in that respect. The cost in these cases which are dismissed should be borne by the State.
The conditions under which the Gárdaí are housed in a great many cases are very bad. The barracks require repairs in many cases, but the barracks are not as bad as some of the houses in which the married Gárdaí have to live in the country. I think that some arrangement should be made by which the State would provide a number of houses in each district where Guards are stationed so that when, for disciplinary or other reasons, Gárdaí have to be changed, no undue hardship will arise owing to lack of suitable housing. I am perfectly satisfied that the Commissioner and the officers in charge of discipline would occasionally desire to transfer Gárdaí for their own good and, perhaps, the good of the district but, owing to the fact that no housing accommodation is available, they cannot do so. All sorts of wire-pulling are indulged in to stop transfers because no house, or only a very bad house, is available. The State should have a few houses suitable for married Gárdaí in every police district.
Mr. Boland
Before the Deputy came in, I had said that we intended to do that.
I am glad to hear that. I hope it will not be put on the long finger.
Mr. Boland
It cannot be done now but we shall do it as soon as possible.
I wish to thank the Minister for his memorandum on the question of the Public Record Office, which I had raised. That cleared up the matter to my entire satisfaction and I thank the Minister for his courtesy. As regards Mountjoy Prison, having been an inmate of that establishment for some time, I feel that it is a place where there should be a permanent chaplain. There is only a part-time chaplain at the moment. There is a senior chaplain and an assistant, and I wish to stress the fact, in connection with this matter, that the honorarium or salary attached to the post of chaplain is, in my opinion, totally inadequate. I think that the honorarium or salary of the senior chaplain is £170 per year, and I do not think that, with that amount of salary, he could give all the time that would be necessary to attend to the spiritual welfare of the prisoners; particularly when you consider that the visiting medical officer—Grade I— has £300 a year, and does not have to visit the prison as often as the chaplain has to visit it.
I am not arguing that the medical officer has too much, having regard to the duties he has to perform from the point of view of the physical welfare of the prisoners, but I do say that the chaplain has even more important duties to perform, and that there should be adequate compensation. The spiritual welfare of the prisoners is just as important, and in fact more important, than their temporal or physical welfare. My point is that the permanent chaplain should be there six days out of the seven so that in that way the spiritual welfare of the inmates would be looked after. The ministrations of the chaplain, probably, would tend to get these prisoners out of the rut of crime in which they are, and in any case it is comforting to have the chaplain available at all times. The chaplains are most courteous and attentive; they do their duty conscientiously, but I hold that they are not getting the recognition to which they are entitled. I put it to the Minister that nobody would "grouse" for a moment if a reasonable honorarium or salary were to be paid to chaplains in these cases.
Now I want to refer to two "chestnuts." I do not know whether the Minister mentioned them or not in his opening statement. One is the matter of Charitable Donations and Bequests, which is still in the old rut in which it has been for so many years. I want to stress this point. The greatest fool in the world can give his money away, or make a will bequeathing his money to any Tom, Dick or Harry. He can leave his money to anyone he likes. If he is a crank, he can do what he likes with his money, but if he bequeathes £100 for Masess, or anything like that, and does not live for three months afterwards, the bequest is held to be invalid.
Is the Deputy advocating a change in the law?
No, Sir. I am not seeking to change the law, but I am suggesting that some commission or committee should be set up to inquire into these matters.
It cannot be done without changing the law. Is the Deputy seeking for legislation?
No, Sir; I realise that what I have been saying is somewhat out of order, but I was glad to get my "shot" in.
I suggest that the Deputy should not display satisfaction at having got his "shot" in.
Yes, Sir, I understand that, and I quite realise that I was not quite within the bounds of order. However, I mentioned two "chestnuts." I do not want to encroach on the Standing Orders of the House, but I wish to ask the Minister to consider these points. I am sure that if a permanent chaplain were appointed to Mountjoy and other prisons in the State it would mean that more attention could be paid to the spiritual welfare of the prisoners, and it would also mean that somebody else could be appointed as an assistant chaplain.
With regard to the question of the Civic Guards, generally, I think that the Minister and the Commissioner are to be congratulated on how well the Gárdaí have done their work; but I think it would be well to remember that the members of the Gárda Síochána are now being called upon to undertake all sorts of duties which, in normal times, would not be the function of members of a police force. In the rural districts of the country, Gárda Síochána barracks are few, and if any sudden call should be made upon them for duty, it would mean the imposition of a great strain. I think, therefore, that the Minister should give every assistance, so far as is possible, to these people. I know of certain cases where, were it not for the help of the local L.S.F. during the last three or four years, the Guards would have found it almost impossible to carry out their duties. However, in view of the difficult circumstances with which the Gárdaí have had to contend within the last three or four years, I wish to congratulate them on the wonderful way in which they have carried out their duties.
I do not wish to detain the House, but there are a few points, arising out of the Minister's opening statement, to which I should like to refer. The Minister mentioned the increase in crime, and, so far as I could gather from his statement, he attributed the increase in crime very largely to the shortage of certain commodities which were formerly in plentiful supply. He attributed the increase in crimes such as larceny and theft to shortage of certain commodities, but surely he does not ask us to believe that the shortage of certain commodities is the only cause of the great increase in crime. It is obvious, certainly, that the increase in certain types of crime, such as petty larceny, can be attributed to the shortage of commodities that were formerly in plentiful supply, but you have only to take up the morning or evening papers any day to realise what a great increase there has been in a large variety of crimes, which cannot be attributed to the shortage of commodities. I think it will be admitted that there has been an appalling increase in crime. I quite appreciate that the war has a demoralising effect on public morale, not alone in the countries directly involved in the war, but in countries such as our own. War conditions, undoubtedly, are not good for any country. They have a bad effect on the general morale of the countries involved, as well as on the countries that are not directly involved in the war. It is quite easy, therefore, to attribute the rise in crime to war conditions, but it is an entirely different matter to try to prevent these crimes. I quite appreciate that when the causes, resulting from the war, disappear, the effects will also disappear to a large extent, but I think that the Minister and his Department are rather too complacent in this matter, and that they are not taking the proper steps to deal with the ever-increasing crime of all varieties in this country.
I do not wish to detain the House very long, but I wish to point out that in reading the papers recently one gets the impression that when a particular type of crime takes place for the first time, it is immediately followed by an outbreak of crimes of a similar kind. For instance, if you take up the newspapers for the last week or so, you will find that there has been an outbreak of certain types of crime resulting in deaths—whether suicide or otherwise. I am sure that the Minister appreciates that by far the larger volume of work in the courts at the present time is concerned with criminal cases. It has grown to such an extent that criminal cases now take up as much time in one term as they formerly took in 12 months, and extra judges have had to be put on to deal with them. For that reason, I think it would be well if the Government would set up a commission of inquiry to deal with this matter. I believe that the Minister and the officers of his Department, as well as the members of the Government generally, should be alarmed at the growth of crime of all kinds in the last few years, but it would appear to me that we have become complacent about crime and dishonesty in general. No matter what paper one opens one finds that the salient features, apart from the war, are crimes of one kind or another—either black marketing or, as Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney said, rows of particular kinds—and while the Minister mentioned that political crime is on the decrease, and it is certainly a compensation that, after so many years, that form of crime has declined, if its place is to be taken by ordinary crime, our second lot is not much better than our first.
There is an evil which is fairly prevalent around fairly large towns and cities to which I want to draw the Minister's attention. It arises out of the efforts of poor people to get firewood. These poor people are experiencing very great difficulties and a certain amount of latitude must be granted to them as their lot is extremely hard, but in many cases they cause farmers and land owners considerable loss of time and crops in the repairing of fences as a result of their activities in cutting and taking away wood. Certain cases have been taken to the courts, and the usual result is a small fine, but while it is difficult for district justices to impose heavier penalties, the Minister should give a direction in the matter. I know he would be loth, and so would I, to give any direction to a district justice as to what penalty should be imposed in these cases, but farmers, in County Dublin, at any rate, have experienced a good deal of trouble as a result of people coming in and not alone cutting the tops of fences—the owners would not object to high branches being taken—but generally breaking the fences down, with the result that farmers and their men have to spend their time in repairing fences when they should be doing other work.
With regard to delays in the Land Registry, a point which was mentioned by Deputy MacEoin, I wonder is the Minister satisfied that the additional staff appointed are sufficiently qualified? I have had a hint—I do not know how true it is—that a certain individual recently employed there is not sufficiently qualified for the position. I should like the Minister to appreciate that the work of this section is fairly specialised, and that, while a person may be qualified, unless he has previous experience of a fairly extensive kind, he will contribute to the delays. Deputy MacEoin also mentioned housing for Guards, and I was glad to hear the Minister's assurance on the matter but, pending the provision of houses in certain districts, it would be advisable to move Guards only to areas where houses are available. Married Guards living in unsuitable quarters or married Guards who are moved to areas where no proper housing accommodation is available are undergoing very grave hardship, and I think the Minister should give a direction that only unmarried Guards should be moved to places where no suitable accommodation is available. I know two instances in villages which are not remote. In one case there is a sergeant, and in the other a Guard, and it is not uncommon that Guards in many villages and towns are unable to secure proper accommodation.
I should like to draw the Minister's attention to a matter which has been the subject of a good deal of discussion recently, that is, the treatment of juvenile delinquency. I am afraid that the manner in which the State approaches this question does not redound to our credit, so far as our social code is concerned. The present arrangement is for a child to be taken into the courts —in some cases, into the senior court— to be subjected to the environment of that court, and then transported to an institution, whether reformatory or otherwise. Thereafter, the duty of the State seems to end. In other words, the objective would appear to be punitive rather than corrective, and that is particularly noticeable in the City of Dublin.
The absolute necessity for an increase in the number of probation officers in the city has been stressed on scores of occasions, but so far the figure still remains at six—four for juveniles and two for adults. As I understand the position, there is still only one court—in the Castle—which might be strictly termed a children's court. This is an entirely retrograde position. It does not mark a forward social policy in any way, and I should be surprised to hear that the Minister would stand over it or is not in a position to indicate that he is taking steps, by commission or otherwise, to improve that situation.
I had personal experience of the position some short time ago when I had occasion to go into the courts. An incident which occurred there made a lasting impression on me. I noticed a little girl charged apparently with some minor offence. Her case was taken in one of the senior courts and that child was surrounded by all the trappings of the court. We know what they are—police, witnesses, defendants and an atmosphere which certainly is not conducive to a better future so far as a child is concerned. I was particularly pleased by the way the district justice, District Justice McCarthy, handled the case. He took that child up with him, spoke quietly to her and apparently advised her as to what she might do in the future. He conducted the whole case with the obvious idea that nobody in the court should know what that little girl was charged with. I formed the opinion that if cases of that kind could be handled by men of the type of District Justice McCarthy, the Minister would be on right lines. He is obviously a man well fitted in every respect to deal with children's cases, and I suggest that, in addition to the court in the Castle which deals with the cases of children under 12 years of age, courts of that character should be provided, when necessity arises, and children in no circumstances allowed into the senior district court.
The children are invariably sent to an institution, and I suggest that the Minister might usefully consider inducing the relatives of these children to take over the custody of the children for whatever period the justice may decide rather than that the children should be sent to an institution. In this connection, I am asking for an increase in the number of these probation officers. The value in these circumstances would be that the child would still have home surroundings, and any possible chance of correction there would develop with that type of treatment rather than with institutional treatment. I am prepared to say that there are some excellent institutions which are doing good work, but they are no substitute whatever for the atmosphere of the home. The money which is given for the upkeep of a child in these homes might usefully be given to relatives. These children very often get into trouble because the parents are absent, or may be dead, or their surroundings may be of such a character as not to induce discipline. All these considerations should be taken into account when children are being dealt with by district justices. There should be an examination of a wide character, mentally, physically and psychologically to ensure that such children are properly handled. Above all, suitable homes might be found rather than having children sent into the atmosphere of a reformatory or other institution. I direct the Minister's attention to the fact that recently a transfer took place of an institution from Glencree to Daingean, and a request was made by the Dublin Corporation that a committee should be allowed to visit Daingean. I understand that the matter is under consideration by the Minister.
Mr. Boland
By the Department of Education.
Does it not come within the purview of the Department of Justice?
Mr. Boland
No.
I understood that it was under your jurisdiction. It would be desirable, in view of the fact that the inmates of the institution are to the extent of 75 per cent. from Dublin, that a committee might have the opportunity of visiting Daingean and also those interested in their welfare. To return to conditions in the prisons, referred to by Deputy MacEoin, I am glad to say that my remarks will be addressed to the Minister, as, I understand, he knows something about Mountjoy. From the knowledge at my disposal I have no hesitation in saying that institutions like Mountjoy are nothing short of perfect training schools for an adult prison population. They could not be otherwise. You have individuals sent there from 18 to 21 years of age, either on remand or serving sentences in a place where there are no arrangements whatever for segregation. That cannot be denied. In the ordinary circumstances of the prison they are mixing with hardened criminals and when they come out they have learned all the tricks of the trade. I understand that social workers who know these conditions are crying aloud for the abolition of that section of Mountjoy. Apparently there is no corrective section within that institution for juveniles. As there is practically no education, such young people when released can do little more than read and write. No attempt is made to have technical training. I say that that condition of affairs is a scandal and must not be allowed to continue. An effort should be made to arrange for the transfer of these young people to a suitable institution. The same applies to other classes of young persons. I suggest that as an alternative the Minister might very well consider setting up a home for juveniles or taking over the Hibernian School in the Phoenix Park, and making a new approach to the problem. Such a place might be presided over by a governor, if he is to be styled such, with a vocation for that particular work, but certainly not trained on ordinary prison methods. Those who are sent there should receive that meed of education to which they are entitled as well as useful technical training, more particularly for the land. When they leave our social code might go a little further by providing a hostel at which they could stay until employment was found for them. The Minister will agree that it is nothing short of reprehensible that these juveniles are locked in their cells for 18 out of the 24 hours on some weekdays.
I want to make an appeal to the Minister regarding the position of prison warders. I understand that with the exception of Christmas Day and Good Friday the staff are allowed none of the other bank holidays given in commercial and industrial life. If warders do three hours' duty on a holiday they get three hours off in lieu. Such an arrangement would not obtain in any other employment. I join with other Deputies in the tribute paid to the Gárda as a whole. In this respect the Minister can congratulate himself on presiding over such an excellent force, which is the equal if not the best that could be found in any country. That is the general public opinion. There is the added feature that we have witnessed in our own time something that we thought could not happen, and that is that our institutions and the law have gained the confidence of the people. That is remarkable in view of our historical background. As far as the Gárda are concerned I asked the Minister recently if he would consider the allowances paid in respect of children of deceased Gárda. The regulations stipulate that only three members of a family can be granted allowances. I know of a case in the city where the widow of a Guard was left with nine children and the allowance for them amounted only to £30. If it were not for certain extraneous resources of a benevolent character which were available to that woman she and her family would be destitute. The Minister will probably say that the circumstances that obtain here as far as allowances are concerned are precisely those that obtain in Great Britain and the Six Counties. That is perfectly true, but he is also aware that recently a Parliamentary Committee presided over by Lord Snell recommended an increase in the allowances for children and of pensions to widows, and that they should apply to all children.
I direct the Minister's attention to the fact that within the next ten or 15 years the majority of the present Gárda will be compulsorily retired at the age of 57, and that under the present arrangement they are only entitled to two-thirds of their retiring pay, excluding allowances. Obviously, a large proportion of them have had no opportunity of making provision for the future, and as they will be unfitted for other employment they may find themselves in distressed circumstances. Also, they will have been retired in local surroundings where they have not had their roots. Obviously, under ordinary conditions when a person retires in his own town it is helpful in some way. The Guards will be deprived of that advantage.
In that respect, I suggest to the Minister that the time has arrived now to make preparation in anticipation of what will happen in the next ten or 15 years. An early decision would allay the anxiety which obviously obtains amongst Gardaí because of what they think may happen at that particular time. The question could be met by adopting a very useful precedent, that is, by the introduction under the Gárda code of a retiring allowance of one year's gratuity, as is applicable in the case of the Army and Civil Service. The Gárdaí are as much entitled to that consideration, I suggest, as are the other services.
On one occasion recently, when the Minister was replying to a question about life-saving, he said he would consider the question of an institution which would give recognition to those who were conspicuous where life-saving is concerned. I would press on the Minister the necessity of an early decision on that particular subject. The present state of affairs is exceedingly unsatisfactory. In my present position, I have had ample experience of how inadequate the arrangements are—at present, in fact, there are none. If somebody is in trouble along the Liffey and a brave man dives in, it frequently happens that he is an unfortunate poor man who has just only the suit of clothes on him. They get wet and destroyed; he is taken to hospital and is lauded in the public Press, but there is no fund whatsoever from which compensation can be paid to him. I suggest that a matter of that kind is serious enough for anybody interested to seek to provide the solution which it demands.
I regret that, owing to having been at another meeting, I was not present for the Minister's opening statement. I must say that I have found him the most accommodating Minister of the present Government. I do not think that any member of this House has had to approach him as often as I had during the past 12 months in connection with certain matters that, unfortunately, affected constituents of mine. There is one matter which I wish to refer to and regarding which I asked Deputy Cogan to take a note—the question of the internees. On some occasions during the past six months I had to approach the Minister in connection with people from my constituency who were interned at the Curragh. We often had rows about that but, nevertheless, in many cases I am pleased to say that the Minister yielded. I had the pleasure of coming back afterwards to tell him how well those people were getting on, and he was quite happy about it. I understand, from notes taken here, that there are 210 untried prisoners interned still at the Curragh. I would make an appeal to him to try, as soon as possible, gradually to give freedom to the internees. I believe they are not as bad as they are painted. Those who have been let out in my constituency have turned out to be good citizens, living the ordinary life of the people and working hard. Since that has been the case, I appeal to the Minister to release as soon as possible the other untried prisoners.
There is another matter to which I wish to refer and in doing so I hope I will not be misrepresented. I believe that, as far as the Gárdaí are concerned, there is not the amount of supervision now that there should be at all-night dances in regard to drinking by young boys and girls. I just wonder, A Chinn Comhairle, if I am entitled in this debate to refer to that matter?
The Deputy is quite in order.
I am afraid there is not enough supervision and I would ask the Minister to try to provide more supervision in that direction. It is not a matter, I know, for the rural areas— it does not apply to us—but in certain places where I have been of late I have found that things happen at these all-night dances amongst the very young that are not of the best. It would be well if there were much more strict supervision in some way or another, through the Gárdaí or through the Acts in relation to dance licences, that would prevent abuses taking place. It only leads from bad to worse—and that is enough to say about it.
There is another point—and I just wonder if I am in order in this.
The Deputy should not give notice.
In the rural areas, the Gárdaí act unfairly in many cases. There is the case of the man in the rural areas who does not see the town from one Sunday to another. He tries to get a drink and, of course, he is hunted like a hare before the hounds by the Guards, for fear he would get that drink. I think the supervision in that direction in the rural areas should be relaxed to some extent. The Guards are a fine body of men and everybody praises them but, in my opinion, there are some amongst them—a very small percentage—and remember I do not want to sink the ship for that small percentage—who have certain political ideas at the back of their heads and work on that basis. Of course, it is such a small percentage that it is not worth referring to.
These are the only points I wish to bring before the Minister—that regarding the prisoners, that regarding drinking at late dances by youth, and that regarding the position in the rural areas of the one drink after Mass on a Sunday.
It is hard luck on the Deputy that he missed the last Licensing Bill.
I think there were plenty of Deputies here to defend the Bill then.
Níl ach cúpla rud agam le rá an bobhta so. I would like to refer to the position of the L.S.F., which is doing a very great national work at present by its night patrols. The amount of equipment given is insufficient for that work. That has become very noticeable in the past two months, where the Government has asked for very strict and long patrols, which the L.S.F. have given.
I speak with a fairly intimate knowledge of this subject. I know areas in which you have patrols going out at midnight and they have only capes in the section. These patrols go distances of three and five miles. Those composing them are often poor men, and all that they have between them is, as I say, two capes. The great-coats promised a long time ago have not yet arrived. In certain districts capes were promised 12 months ago. Some were supplied, but the balance have not yet come to hand. I know the difficulties as regards supplies, but if the Minister could do something to speed up the issue of these things he would be rendering a service to the organisation. The old blouse uniform is, in my opinion, a very poor protection, especially in winter weather. The sooner a new uniform is got the better. If preferential treatment is being given to Dublin and other cities, that should not be. There should be an equitable distribution of uniforms. I think I am right in saying that all uniforms are tried out on the Dublin people, and that those found unsuitable are dumped down the country. The result is that you have one fellow with a blouse, another fellow with a trousers and some other fellow with a cap that will not fit him. So far as I know no section in my area has a complete outfit. You find this: one fellow with a tunic, another with a tunic and trousers, another with a cap and tunic and another with a cap and trousers. In our area we try out the uniforms on the parent section. Although the men were measured for uniforms, I do not think the measurement counted very much when the uniforms were being made.
In certain counties the national flag and the coat of arms are put up for the sittings of the district justice and the Circuit Court judge. In other counties that is not done. I think that the practice of putting up both should be made universal. If we have our independence I do not see why it should not be done. If the national flag and the coat of arms are put up for the administration of justice in the County Meath why not in the County Westmeath? The court sitting there, so far as any outward evidence goes, might as well be an international gathering in Geneva or Liberia. I advocate that, in all places when the courts are sitting, the national flag and the coat of arms be put up.
There is one point I want to bring to the Minister's notice. It is an old chestnut with me. I have mentioned it on two or three previous occasions. I mention it again because I do not think the position is quite understood by the Minister. It is the position of country jurors who are summoned for the hearing of criminal cases in the Circuit Court, particularly as it relates to the County Wexford. On the last occasion I raised this matter by way of Parliamentary Question, but, as Deputies know, it is difficult to explain a question like this by way of supplementaries. Briefly, the position is that the geographical formation of the County Wexford is such that the capital town is situate in one corner of it, while jurors are summoned, from all over the county to serve on juries there. According to the amount of business to be disposed of, the number of jurors summoned may be 50, 60 or 70. On the last occasion, the Minister rightly said that he had reduced the number of jurors from 12 to seven, and had made a recommendation that only jurors in the immediate locality of the town in which the court is sitting should be summoned. That does not quite meet the difficulty. It happens that cases which commence at 11 or 11.30 or 12 o'clock noon go on until 9 o'clock at night. In my experience I have known cases to go on up to 11 o'clock at night, and some were not even finished at that hour. When that happens, the jurors have to remain overnight. Before the emergency it was possible for a number of jurors coming from the same locality to hire a motor car to take them to court and to get home the same night, no matter at what hour the court rose. They cannot do that now. We have had the experience of jurors being left stranded in the town of Wexford for the night, with no accommodation, financial or otherwise, being made for them. In anything that I say on this I do not for one moment want to suggest that the system under which prisoners are tried by their fellow citizens, and under which the view of the jury decides whether they are guilty or not, should be done away with. Neither would I desire to see Wexford jurors ousted from the position which they now occupy in the social order.
My suggestion is that provision should be made for country jurors summoned to the town of Wexford similar to that made for Dublin jurors who are called to serve on murder trials and are sometimes locked up for several days. I am not suggesting that the country jurors should be locked up, but that accommodation on a similar basis to that provided in Dublin should be made for them. It is really a reflection on the organisation of State business to see jurors walking about the streets of Wexford at a late hour at night without any way whatever of getting to their homes. When they were leaving their homes in the morning they had no knowledge that they were going to be stranded in Wexford for the night.
The Minister has now returned to the House. I want to repeat what I have said: that I know he tried to meet the situation by reducing the number of jurors to seven, and by suggesting that jurors should only be drawn from the immediate locality. That, however, does not get over the difficulty. If the selection of jurors is confined to the immediate locality of Wexford town you will not be able to get the required panel by reason of the fact that Wexford town is situate in a corner of the county. Wexford is a terminus for transport.
Unless some accommodation is provided for country jurors, I am afraid the present system will break down. I raised this point over a year ago with the Minister. It was my view at the time, seeing what was happening, that a grave injustice was being done to citizens in carrying out most important functions. Strange to say, however, on the last occasion that I was present in Wexford court two jurors came up to me and said: "Why on earth do you not raise this matter of our position in the Dáil?" Actually, I had already raised it on two different occasions. The position there may be different from that in other parts of the country, although I am inclined to think it may be the same in most parts. During the period of the emergency the Minister's Department should make some provision for jurors who are obliged to remain overnight in the town of Wexford. I do not know what provision is made for State witnesses, but I presume they are looked after. I know the prisoner is looked after, but the man who has to perform his functions as a juror seems to be entirely neglected. I want the Minister clearly to understand, when I speak on behalf of those of my constituents who are jurors, that it is not their desire or intention to shirk their responsibilities in any way. The men I have seen going to court are decent, respectable citizens, anxious to do their duty. There is always a good attendance. They feel, however, they have a genuine grievance in that they are overlooked with regard to accommodation. That matter can easily be remedied by provision being made for ten or 15 people in the County Wexford hotels.
I referred to a certain matter last year, but I was entirely misunderstood on that occasion by the Minister. This matter deals with the censorship of publications. I know we have a very estimable body of people who, without any reward, sit and decide what books are fit for perusal by their fellow-citizens, such people as the Minister and myself. I appreciate the work they are doing. It is very good of them to act on the Censorship Board. I do not know the names of the persons on that board, though I have a general knowledge of their qualifications; but I have no doubt they are very estimable individuals. I feel that the choice of members of that board is too much confined to the professorial type of mind, and a board composed of such people approach a matter rather from the point of being the schoolmaster and the rest of the population the children. I do not think that is quite right.
We are being laughed at by outsiders in regard to this matter. Sometimes a book that should not get through, gets through, and on other occasions books that should get through do not get through. If the Minister would enlarge the type of occupation of these people, if he would enlarge the general panel from which he selects the members of the board, if he would bring in business men and people of that type, it might be better. The idea underlying the Censorship Board is that the members of it should form a sort of jury, taken from all classes of the people, and they should decide what books are suitable for us. I do not wish to be taken as suggesting anything against the present members of the board; I recognise their estimable qualities, but at the same time I think the Minister should have a wider scope for selection. If he did enlarge the panel it might be all the better for the country.
There is another matter to which, although it does not concern my constituency, I should like to refer. I assume it is desirable to mention anything that might be helpful in warding off the growth of crime, particularly juvenile crime. I want to draw attention to a matter that has come under my notice. It arises out of the arrival and departure of trains coming from and going to Wexford. This is a thing which, I think, contributes very much to juvenile crime. As Deputies are aware, there is only one train to and from my constituency each day. In the morning the street leading to Westland Row is packed with growing boys who actually snatch—I have seen them doing it—handbags from women passengers who are on their way from the bus or tram to the station. On the arrival of the Wexford train, on several occasions the very same thing happened. When you are coming out of the station it is very hard to get through the crowd of boys who gather there and who snatch luggage from the passengers in order, presumably, to earn a few pence.
I do not think that that should be allowed to happen. We have heard great praise of the Guards, and I am willing to join in that praise, because I know they are an excellent body of men. Nevertheless, I am aware that on at least five occasions people coming out of the station had to push their way through those boys and there was not a Guard on duty to keep them in order. So far as the boys who are doing that are concerned, that is, to my mind, the beginning of crime for them. They are not actually guilty of a crime at the moment, but they are going in that direction. These boys have reached an impressionable age, anything from 12 to 15 or 16 years. Something should be done about that. If it is happening at Westland Row, I am sure it is happening at other stations in Dublin. That is one of the things that starts these boys on a career which ends up in crime.
I think it was the Lord Mayor of Dublin who mentioned about prisoners in Mountjoy and other prisons associating with new arrivals at those institutions. That is a matter that I have thought about from time to time. I have seen men being sentenced to imprisonment for different kinds of crime, and I must confess that it never occurred to me to find out what happens them subsequently, or to make inquiries as to who are their associates in prison. I think it would be desirable to divide the types of crime for which men are sentenced to imprisonment under at least four heads: sex crimes, crimes of violence, crimes of fraud and embezzlement, and crimes which arise out of breaches of rules, regulations and orders, motor accidents and so forth. If those people are not kept apart in prison, I think it is rather bad, and there should be some way of separating them when they get to the prison.
As regards Vote 39, which is concerned with the Public Record Office, a year or two ago there was abolished in Dublin Castle an office which did not seem to be anybody's child, the Office of the Ulster King at Arms. In so far as there are any functions involved, or any duties to be performed, I should like to know if that comes under the Public Record Office. Does that come under the Minister's Department? If not, under what Department does it come?
For a number of years I have been asking various Ministers for Justice to consider the question of providing suitable housing for the Gárda in our towns and cities. I am glad to hear that the Minister has now decided, when opportunity offers, to provide such accommodation. As has been pointed out by other Deputies, the Gárda in a great many cases have suffered great hardship by reason of the fact that they have been changed from one place to another and when they arrive at their destination there is no suitable housing accommodation. They are separated from their wives and families for a considerable time because of that. I do not know on what terms the Minister proposes to build these houses. I submitted a scheme to his predecessor indicating how the houses could be built, and pointing out that it would cost the State a lesser sum than the amount now given to the Gárda by way of rent allowance. Perhaps it would be more economic in the long run for the Minister to adopt the system which he is now considering in relation to the provision of houses for the Gárda.
Apart from the question of proper housing, there is also the important question of providing suitable stations for the Gárda. In portions of my constituency some fine stations have certainly been built, but in other parts of my constituency there are very bad stations, and it is very desirable that more suitable accommodation should be provided.
One particular station I have in mind is that in New Ross town. I have questioned the Minister on three or four occasions on the matter of providing better station facilities for the Gárda in New Ross and I have never been able to get any indication from him as to when the new station will be built. The conditions under which the Gárda at New Ross are living at present are an absolute disgrace. Nobody could have any respect for a force which is housed in such a place as the Gárda are in New Ross, and if the Minister expects to get the respect due to the police force he will have to see to it that proper accommodation is provided for them. This matter of the provision of new accommodation for the Gárda in New Ross has been under consideration for a considerable time and the Minister does not seem to have made any headway. I should like to know from him if any progress has yet been made in the matter. I understand from people in New Ross that sites are available if the Minister would endeavour to secure them.
Some Deputies have mentioned the question of the pay of the Gárda. I want to complain, as I did and as this Party have done repeatedly, about the amount paid to recruits to the Gárda within the last couple of years. I understand that the amount given to recruits at present is £2 per week. Surely any Government ought to be ashamed to expect men to live upon a wage of £2 per week in a city like Dublin. It is absolutely impossible for a man to live on £2 a week. I understand that they got a small bonus lately but, even with that bonus, to my mind the amount is not sufficient to enable them to live as men in their position should like and I hope the Minister in the near future will have something done so that these men will get a better wage. The integrity, impartiality and, consequently, the efficiency of a police force hinge on the independence of its personnel, so that in the police force, more than in any other force, it is essential that the pay and conditions of all ranks should be such as to enable its members to maintain a reasonable standard of living. As compared with the police forces in Northern Ireland and Great Britain, the scale of pay here is hopelessly inadequate. I suggest that the Gárda salary scale fixed by the Department of Finance in 1924 should be again brought into operation as a basis and that the question of salary should be the subject of an inquiry by a special commission. There is no doubt that the Guards have been treated shamefully in so far as their wages are concerned. They have been subjected to two or three cuts, not alone in their wages, but in emoluments which they had. Knowing the Minister to be a reasonable man, I would ask him to have this whole question reconsidered.
There is another matter in regard to which the Guards have a definite grievance. There is a practice prevailing at present compelling members of the force in country divisions to pay for the cleaning of public offices; that is, that a Gárda station, say, in Cork or Waterford or Wexford, must pay on an average of 30/- per annum for the cleaning of the local superintendent's office. Surely, that ought to be a State charge. Surely, the Gárda in a particular area ought not to be called upon to pay the person who cleans the office of the chief superintendent or the superintendent. I was surprised to hear that recently, and I would ask the Minister to make an allowance to each station for that purpose rather than having the Gárda themselves pay for it to be done.
Some Deputies have referred to the question of the internees. I would ask the Minister to reconsider the whole position in so far as internees are concerned. I know very well that the Minister has been very approachable on this matter, and that in response to the appeals of almost every Deputy he has released a certain number of these internees. I think the Minister will be the first to admit that, when any of us have approached him asking that internees should be released, he has found that any promises that were made on behalf of these internees were made in all good faith, and that since these people have been released they have turned out to be good citizens. Some of these young fellows may have been misguided according to the Minister's point of view, and they have done certain things which they should not have done. But, in view of the statement of the Minister that the country is free or almost free from what he described as political crime, I think the time has arrived for a good number, if not all of these internees, to be released and thereby create a good atmosphere in the country. Many of those who have been released have gone back into civilian employment. They have proved themselves to be good citizens and a credit to the State, and I do not think the Minister would be very far wrong if he were to have the whole question examined with a view to having a number of them released.
This country has every right to be proud of its police force as a body. They have earned the confidence and respect of the people. That being so, it is only right that they should be paid a reasonable wage. As Deputy Corish has pointed out, recruits to the Civic Guards to-day receive a wage of £2 a week, plus, I think, 10/- bonus, an extra 3/- having been given to them lately. I am of the opinion that that is not sufficient. The police force in this State should be given a reasonable wage, so that they would be in a position to carry out their responsibilities properly. We know that in other countries, particularly America, the police forces have sunk to a very low level, due to a certain extent, perhaps, to the fact that in the early stages of development in these countries the State failed to give them proper remuneration. I am not making any suggestion of that kind with regard to our police force here— far from it—but we should make sure that there is no reason why they should fall to the level to which forces in other countries have fallen. They are a body of men of whom we can feel proud, and they try to fulfil their duties to the best of their ability.
The dance halls in my part of the country, particularly in the countryside, are places that in many instances are not fit for that particular type of recreation. They are generally overcrowded, and, owing to the lack of tightening-up in regard to licensed houses on Sunday afternoons and evenings, many boys go into these places in an intoxicated state. Rows are caused, and sometimes very serious disturbances take place that are no credit to this country. I think there should be some restriction as to the number to be admitted to those dance halls, and that a very severe fine should be imposed upon the proprietor if he breaks the regulations. In my opinion, excessive drinking is one of the greatest set-backs to the youth of this country, not only within this State but outside it. Having lived outside this country, I can say that the only time I had to hang my head with shame was when I saw my fellow countrymen drunk. I think the licensing laws are not strict enough for the tightening-up of Sunday afternoon drinking, and preventing youths from going into "pubs". It is a common thing to see them at the age of 12 or 14 at the bar counter with their fathers and mothers drinking. Is it any wonder that they continue that practice when they reach 16 or 17 or 18 years, because when they see their fathers and mothers doing it, they think it is wise and good? Drinking is getting a very strong grip on our youth, and, worse still, on the womanhood of the country. As I said, it is our greatest setback, because there are very few Irishmen who can behave themselves properly when they have taken a lot of drink.
I would appeal to the Minister to consider the matter of policemen's incomes. Another point that I should like to raise is in connection with their uniforms. I understand that after they have worn their trousers for a year they give them up, and they have to give 15/- along with the trousers. Generally, those trousers are not exactly ready for scrapping; they are sold as second-hand goods to some shops. I do not say that the Minister is responsible, but if such a thing is happening I would ask him to inquire into it.
I wish to draw the Minister's attention to a threat made some time ago by a district justice that in future young offenders would be punished by birching. Judicial whipping is not the way to help child offenders to become good citizens and, in my opinion, the sooner it is abolished the better. The Minister will recollect that he has already intervened in one case where four young boys were sentenced to six strokes each. The district justice who imposed the sentence made it clear that he was doing so because there was no place to send the boys and no probation officers to look after them. That is a very serious statement, and one to which, I am sure, the Minister is giving due consideration. The Minister rightly squashed that sentence, and I think he deserved to be thanked and congratulated for doing so. I hope he will see to it that there will be no resort to the use of the birch in our juvenile courts in future. Instead of being a cure, it is the best way to make a young boy look on society as his natural enemy. It would not be so bad if he were birched by his mother or father at home, but it is a different matter when it is done by strangers. The flogging of a boy of ten or 12 by unfortunate police officers is almost certain to lead to criminality. The experience of other countries has been that the boy who is birched comes back into the field of crime again, and is far worse than before he was punished in this way. That punishment is imposed under an Act passed by a foreign Power, and the sooner that survival of Victorian inhumanity is abolished the better. If we purport to be a Christian, Catholic State, we should try to adopt Christian, humane methods. Before the war, there was no country in Europe, with the exception of Great Britain and ourselves, which resorted to flogging in an attempt to prevent juvenile crime.
And Germany.
I doubt if it existed in Germany. I am open to correction, but I do not think it did. The whole question of juvenile delinquency should be examined by the Department of Justice, particularly now when there is so much talk about the kind of world we are to have after the war. It should be recognised that the main causes of juvenile delinquency are the social conditions in which many of those children are brought up. It is due in many cases to the poverty and misery of their homes, particularly in cities like Dublin and Cork, and in the towns generally. The children receive very little care or instruction. It is pitiful to see children scratching and tearing doors to bits with their penknives. I have been in London, Glasgow, Cardiff, Liverpool, Birmingham, Belfast, and many other cities and towns, and I have not come across anything so bad as you see in the back streets of the City of Dublin. The teachers could do a lot in teaching the children how to behave properly. When I was going to a national school the teacher used to spend the greater part of the day telling us how we should behave, and what we should and should not do. When I left home that instruction played a greater part in helping me to overcome many obstacles than all the other education put together. The teachers could play a very great part, and so could the ecclesiastical authorities. District justices should be appointed not so much for their knowledge of the law as of the conditions which surround the children in their homes. The Lord Mayor, Deputy O'Sullivan, praised District Justice McCarthy for the reasonable way in which he handled a certain case, and for taking into consideration the child's environment. I think that sort of consideration is very much needed in the district courts.
The increase in crime is a thing about which we should feel very disturbed. It is hard lines that to-day even in a small town say, of 150 inhabitants, one cannot leave a bicycle two minutes unattended. Only a few days ago I heard of the case of a young man in the town of Ballyhaunis who left his bicycle for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile the tyres were taken off, the tubes removed and the tyres put back again on the wheels. When I heard the story told, the fact that this young fellow was deprived of the two tubes of his bicycle was laughed at as a sort of joke. People who laugh at conduct of that kind do not seem to realise the seriousness of it. Again we have the matter of children attending cinemas. I remember shortly before Christmas when I was going to Westland Row about 9.30 in the morning to get the train for the West, I saw hundreds, in fact I might say a couple of thousand, of children flocking out on the streets to attend a cinema performance. On a rough estimate, I would venture to say that about 40 per cent. of them were without shoes and were raggedly clad, but they were lining up for some picture-house to open.
At 9.30 in the morning?
It would be between 9.30 and 10 o'clock. I was going to catch the 10 o'clock train at Westland Row.
Taking time by the forelock.
I assumed that it was to the pictures they were going. I think that pictures have a serious effect on the minds of young children, and very careful consideration should be given to the type of pictures which children are allowed to see. I think that pictures for children even up to the age of 16 should be very carefully selected.
I should like to stress again that the position of the rank and file of the police force, especially recruits who start off with a salary of £2 a week plus 10/- bonus, should be taken into consideration. After all, the Chief Commissioner has a salary of £1,300 a year. I admit that he holds a responsible position but there is a very big difference between £2 a week and £1,300 a year. We should consider the men who have to do the hard work, who have to stand out on point duty and walk the streets in all sorts of weather. I should like the Minister also to take into consideration the question of overcrowding in dance halls and the granting of licences to dance halls in remote areas, miles away from a Civic Guard station. Now that it is so difficult to provide transport, I think these dance halls should not be given licences. Halls which are granted licences should have proper sanitary equipment and proper lighting. They should also be lighted on the outside so that people coming out can see where they are going and whom they are likely to hit up against. If one comes out in darkness and gets a blow of a stone, one does not know who the culprit is. Sufficient lighting on the exterior would prevent conduct of that kind.
A Deputy
We were all young once.
I am not so old yet, thank God. I am not past dancing and I dance myself when I go to these halls. I am not opposed to pictures, dances or drink, but I am opposed to excessive indulgence in any of these things, particularly when it is to the detriment of our youth.
I listened to-day to Deputy Corish making a very moderate and prudently-worded appeal to the Minister for Justice for the release of internees. Knowing Deputy Corish, I sympathise with the humane motive which moved him but I think we ought to have reached the stage in the history of this country that if a public man deems it expedient to ask for leniency in connection with people who have got themselves interned, it should be accompanied by a clear statement that, sooner or later, citizens of the country must make up their minds that they are not entitled to take up arms for the purpose of intimidating their neighbours. So long as there are people, no matter how sincere, no matter how loud their protestations of patriotism may be, who claim the right to impose their will upon their neighbours by force of arms, then there will be and there should be internments. I do not care whether these people come from the left or the right, if any man in this country sets himself up as claimant to the right to intimidate his neighbour by force of arms, I would jail him if I could and I would intern him if I could, not only for the protection of his neighbours, not only for the protection of liberty and decency in this community but for his own protection, because if such persons are allowed abroad without let of hindrance, instead of finding themselves in an internment camp, they will find themselves on the scaffold.
I remember the Taoiseach here, when an appeal was being made to release some hunger-strikers who subsequently came off hunger strike, recalling a case in which, moved by compassion, he had consented to the release of a hunger striker who refused to abandon his claim to enforce his will on his neighbours by force of arms, and the only result of his clemency in that case was that unhappy man was executed within 12 months for murder. I remember the Taoiseach saying that that incident confirmed him in his resolution never again to allow compassion to unseat his judgment in a matter of that kind. It was a relief to me to hear the Taoiseach finally committing himself in that matter——
Did he?
I understood his words to represent a final commitment in that matter and I felt it was a good thing for the country and a good thing for the young people who might hereafter be subjected to bad guidance and evil persuasion. I long for the day when not only the Leader of the Opposition and the Taoiseach but the leaders of every other Party in this country will combine to say that if men claim the right to impose their will upon their neighbours by force of arms, these men will be apprehended and detained until they finally abandon such a claim and acknowledge that living in freedom in a democratic community imposes upon each individual citizen duties as well as giving him rights. If men claim the right of freedom, if men claim to have their own rights protected, then they must respect their neighbours' rights. If they claim the right to interfere with their neighbours' rights, sooner or later the rights of all men will be infringed in this community and we shall find ourselves with the tyranny of the Right or the Left saddled upon us all. Nobody in this House, I believe, likes to see his fellow-citizens interned but I want to make this clear—that if there is any citizen of this State who claims the right to take up arms for the purpose of intimidating or coercing his neighbour, I want to see him interned and kept in internment for his own good and that of his neighbours until he clearly repudiates all such claims. I trust that every responsible Deputy in this House will go on record as holding the same view.
There are a few matters of detail to which I want to refer before turning to my old friend, the Borstal, and the general question of juvenile delinquency. The first matter of detail to which I want to refer is the censorship of books. That is a highly contentious question into the full merits of which I do not propose to go at the moment, but a popular impression has been created both at home and abroad that the censorship of books here involves the absolute prohibition of any book which appears on the Censor's list. That is not strictly true.
It is true to say that if a book is prohibited it cannot be sold or made available for general circulation, but I understand that if any responsible citizen desires to have a book and read it for a legitimate purpose, which may be artistic or technical or professional, no serious difficulty is made in giving him permission to get the book, provided the Minister is satisfied that he does not want it for pornographic purposes. That is a very important matter, and it is very desirable that it should be made clear not only to our own people but to our friends and neighbours abroad. It is a very proper provision, and I think it greatly mitigates many of the evils which are inevitably associated with any system of general censorship.
The next point which I want to raise with the Minister is this: Are the claims of members of the Local Security Force who get injured in the course of their duty being disposed of with that dispatch which one might reasonably expect? In the case I have in mind I feel bound to confess that I do not know whether the young man concerned was a member of the L.D.F. or the L.S.F. I think that he was a member of the L.S.F. He was a national teacher, and he was injured about nine months ago. His case has been under consideration, and so far nothing has happened. It is possible that the boy to whom I refer was in the L.D.F., but in case he was in the L.S.F., I direct the Minister's attention to the case, so that appropriate expedition may be used in disposing of such cases.
My next point has to do with a mere detail and affects the establishment of a Gárda station at Carracastle, County Mayo. It is gratifying to me to find that in many areas where we have not Gárda stations the bulk of the citizens combine to ask for them. That suggests a very desirable relationship between the Gárdaí and the people. Carracastle is on the border of Mayo and Roscommon, and close to where I live. It is almost on the border of Ballaghadereen and Charlestown Gárda divisions, and it is in the Charlestown Gárda division. That is one of the largest divisions in the whole of Connacht, extending in some directions for, I think, 14 miles. In the submission of people resident in that area, the Gádaí stationed in Charlestown, with the best will in the world, find it physically impossible to patrol adequately the vast rural area which it is their duty to supervise. Carracastle is a village with a dance hall and some publichouses, and I am assured that disedifying conduct has taken place there not infrequently, that some considerable alarm has been occasioned to peaceable residents by the riotous conduct of people resorting to the village and that it is urgently necessary that a Gárda station should be located there. In the old days there was a R.I.C. station there. I doubt if there has been a Gárda station there since 1924 or 1925. Responsible persons assure me that it is an urgent necessity, and I bring their representations to the attention of the Minister now.
This House will some day grow tired of hearing me talk about the Borstal and the remand home for juvenile delinquents, but I beg to inform this House that I shall go on talking about Borstal and the treatment of juvenile delinquency until that which is necessary is done. Everybody admits that the Borstal in this country is a scandal. Years of agitation by me shifted the Borstal out of Clonmel prison, where it was for a considerable time, but the farthest I have succeeded in getting them, so far, is to Cork prison. That is not a very material improvement but it is an improvement, as Deputies who are familiar with the interior of Clonmel jail will realise. I want to submit to the House that the whole approach to the Borstal problem in this country is all wrong. The Departmental view, as evidenced by its deeds, is that the distinction between Borstal and prison is very largely a matter of age, that you have all young fellows in the Borstal and all old fellows in the prison. I think that it is an infamous thing to describe a quasi-prison of that kind as a Borstal because the whole conception of Borstal was founded on the theory that if you got an adolescent criminal it was possible to redeem him by going to work seriously with redemption as your end, rather than punishment. In Great Britain, and even in Northern Ireland, that theory has been worked out with a remarkable degree of success. I am sorry to say that the records of the boys released from our Borstal reflect little credit on the treatment we give them. You can, of course, over-sentimentalise this problem. Our Borstal is so bad that no responsible justice or judge would send a boy to it if he could conceivably do anything else with him. If you commit a boy to the Borstal he has to be committed for a minimum term of three years. Therefore, many judges and justices resort to the Probation Act, or to any expedient to avoid sending a boy to Borstal. The result is that the material we get in our Borstal is as bad as bad can be. We get the residue of the adolescents brought before the criminal courts in respect of whom the judges or justices think nothing can really be done by way of immediate reform. That should not be the position. The Borstal, instead of being a place for the flotsam and jetsam of the criminal courts, should be a place where young people who have gone very seriously wrong would be given the treatment and training requisite to make them right again. In England and in Northern Ireland, Borstal schools are run very much like good boarding-schools, and the aim is to introduce as little of the prison atmosphere as it is possible to do.
Fellows frequently escape from the Borstal institutes, and the headmasters of these institutes consider it to be a substantial tribute to their administration that they do escape and that they can bring them back again. The fact that they can escape is evidence of how little like prison these schools are, and what is gratifying is that the results of the reformed Borstal institutes in England and Northern Ireland are almost uniformly good. I do not mean to suggest that the vast majority of the people who go out from these schools are uniformly good. I think that if 60 per cent. of them should turn out to be all right, that would be a good result, and I doubt if there are 10 per cent. of our boys who have been in similar institutions who never get into trouble again.
Having regard to the small urban population in this country as compared with the large urban population in countries such as Great Britain and Northern Ireland, I believe that all we would require to deal with what one might describe as adolescent crime, if we wish to handle these people properly, would be two Borstal institutes for boys, and one such institution for girls. I do not think that there is any such institution in this country to take care of girls. Do members of this House realise that if a young girl is taken off the streets of this city and brought before the court, the district justice has no option except to release her from custody or send her to jail. He knows if he releases her from custody it means that she is going to be a street-walker, but there is no other course open to him except to put her in jail or release her on her undertaking that she will go into some institution for a certain period. She can give the undertaking that she will go into an institution, but there is nothing to prevent her from coming out again. There are no means of keeping her there. All that the district justice can do is to ask her to give an undertaking to go into an institution and to remain there for a certain period, but if she wishes to leave it, she can do so. The only alternative for the justice is to send her to jail. Therefore I think that a great many girls, who might be rescued from the most horrible degradation, are thrust into it because those who are responsible for their custody and care have no means of seeing that they will not revert to the bad conditions in which they have been living. In that connection, one of the things that the district justice can do is to impose a fine and give a stern rebuke to the girl concerned, but it is common knowledge that a brothel-keeper can come along and pay the fine for her, so that she may revert to the bad conditions in which she lived. All that makes it infinitely more difficult for putting the girl under an obligation to be of good behaviour or endeavouring to get her to avail of the assistance of such societies as the Legion of Mary.
Now, nobody, I suppose, would advocate the setting up of a Borstal institute for girls, with the intention of cramming these girls into such an institute. In the vast majority of cases it would be much better to persuade the girl to go back to her parents, if they were good parents, or, if she had no parents or did not have a proper home to go to, to get the probation officer to get in touch with the Legion of Mary or some such society, with a view to getting the girl comfortably settled; but there is a third class of persons who will not avail of the services of such societies as the Legion of Mary, and who are determined to go back into the hands of their seducers. The only alternative, in that case, is to put the girl in some place where these people cannot get after her; some place where the girl could be given an education and proper training; and the only institution of that kind that I know of is the Borstal institute. There is no use in putting the girl into jail, because that will only mean that she will be consorting with criminals, and her second position will be worse than the first. I think, therefore, that it is essential to have a Borstal institute for girls—only as a last resort, however, where she cannot be restored to her parents or provided for by some charitable institution.
I want to see two Borstals in this country for boys. Now, you can over-sentimentalise this problem. Some people seem to find it hard to believe that a boy of 17 or 19 years of age could be a criminal. I do not think that anybody should suffer under that delusion. Some of the toughest "guys" in this city are boys of 17, 18, or 19 years of age. The district justices are extremely reluctant to put these youths in jail, or to commit them to a Borstal institution, or take them out of their family environment, and unless they are convinced that the contacts which have misled the youth are of such a character that they must be broken in order to redeem the boy at all, it is highly unlikely that any term of detention will be imposed. If, however, the district justice is of opinion that the boy's character is of such a corrupt nature that he will have to be separated from his surroundings, then I hold that there ought to be some place to which to send that boy rather than sending him to jail. For that reason, I suggest that we should establish in this country two Borstal institutes, and that they should be run on the lines of boarding schools, on the same standard as the average national school. I do not want to say that these boys should be placed in luxurious surroundings, nor do I want to make higher education a reward for crime. What I do want is that these boys should be sent to training establishments, which, of course, a thoroughly bad youth will heartily dislike, but which will give to the fellow who wants to improve himself a second chance for a start in life.
In this connection, I want to protest most emphatically against the use of Cork Gaol as a Borstal institute. I admit that Cork Gaol is better than Clonmel. I admit also that the Minister meant well, and that as a result of his efforts conditions now are less bad than they were. I admit that it has made it possible to have a Borstal committee set up, but I am sure that the Minister will agree that it is very far from even a tolerable state of affairs, not to speak of an ideal state of affairs, to have these boys incarcerated in Cork Gaol. I am not sure whether I am wise or not in attacking the Minister in connection with this matter, because I know that he is very much interested in it and has honestly tried to do his best, but I think it is well to direct his attention to the matter again. I know that he has done a good deal, within the limits of his ability and his powers, to improve things. He made certain reforms in Cork, but the fact is that he will not be able to do things right until he is able to acquire premises that will be quite different from a jail, and have some such institution as the Borstal institutes in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, where boys will be reformed rather than punished.
I want to say a word now about the remand home for children. The two Ministers now sitting on the Front Bench, the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Education, have managed to play the game of the thimble and the pea between them in regard to the remand home for juvenile delinquents. When you attack the Minister for Education, he says it is the job of the Minister for Justice, and when you attack the Minister for Justice, he says it is the job of the Minister for Education. This is the first time I ever got the two Ministers together and when I warn them that I propose to go for them, the Minister for Education flees from the House. The pea has vanished and the thimble is left.
When I first began this campaign about the abomination of desolation in Summerhill, there was an old Georgian house in Summerhill—which is still there—with barred windows, and, when I first visited it, there were 15 children there, the eldest of whom was a boy who was on remand for an indecent assault on a female child and the youngest a child of 2½ years on its way to an industrial school. They occupied their waking hours by twiddling their thumbs sitting on benches around a large room. The place was clean and was superintended by a very respectable man and his wife who, within the limit of their capacity, were doing the best they could. When I presented that case to Dáil Eireann, I was assured that it was all false, that there was not a word of truth in it; but I am happy to say that, despite these protestations, considerable reforms were made, in that some kind of attempt was made to segregate the children, not, I believe, however, until the district justices in the City of Dublin refused to send children there, on the ground that it was utterly inadequate and grossly improper.
I have consistently advocated the establishment of a proper remand home to which juvenile delinquents—and when I speak of juvenile delinquents, I refer to children under 16 years who have been arrested and brought before the court for some breach of the law— could be brought when a district justice deems it necessary to remand them, where they would be properly looked after by a competent matron, where the state of their health would be investigated, and where their psychological condition and background would be properly explored. I do not know how far Deputies have read the literature of juvenile delinquency, but here again one has to try to steer an even course between over-sentimentalising the problem and being tough about it.
It is an astonishing thing that you can find in a city like Dublin, or any other city, a kid of 15 years of age who is an accomplished little criminal, and that, seek how you may for some psychological or physical explanation of his criminal tendency, you find yourself brought up against the dead wall of the fact that he is just a bad boy who knows well the nature of what he is doing, but who is just a tough little guy, with whom there is no way of dealing but by severe repression and restraint. But for that exceptional case, there will appear before the District Court dozens of children whose delinquency may be due to deafness, to shortsightedness, to some physical defect which has brought upon them in their earlier years the contempt and ridicule of their young playmates, and which has created in them a kind of reaction against their fellow men which is expressed by consistent rebellion against reasonable rules and regulations, and ultimately against the law itself.
You may find, and not infrequently, that a child's delinquency is due to some hysterical condition in its parents. You may find that it has drunken parents, that its mother is a hysteric, or that its father is living in some way or other an irregular life, all of which factors may react most violently on the conduct of the small child. The insidious thing is that when that child is called to account before the court for its eccentric conduct, it is quite unable to connect its own uncontrollable impulses to do what is wrong with the family defect which is really responsible for the conduct which has got it into trouble. That in this 20th century we should still proceed on the assumption that the child who breaks the law is a criminal and must be dealt with accordingly, is grotesque.
Again, I would find it easier to launch a full broadside attack on the Minister if I could in conscience do so, but I cannot. Here again I believe the Minister has done some valuable work in improving conditions. One of the most valuable things he did was to appoint a special district justice for dealing with juvenile cases. The second thing he did, at my earnest request, I believe, though he will probably deny it, was to move the juvenile court away from the environs of the ordinary court and to put it up in the Castle, where no other criminal work of any kind is done. Thirdly, he improved substantially the surroundings in which juvenile delinquents are dealt with by the district justice.
For all these reforms, high credit is due to the Minister for Justice, but there still remains a very urgent and essential reform, that is, that little children who have for various reasons to be dealt with by a district justice should be dealt with—mark it well, not sentimentally—sympathetically and intelligently. That cannot be done unless and until the district justice has available to him adequate reports from trained persons who have had an opportunity of studying a child apart from the immediate surroundings of the court before which it has been brought.
I make no apology for emphasising this aspect of the case, and for urging on the Dáil that it has a very special duty to take a special interest in it. These children are the children of the poor. The children of the well-to-do are never found in the Children's Court. If the Minister's child stole apples, or if my child stole apples, he might get a hiding at home, but he would not get into the hands of the Guards. If he played continually in the street, a Guard would bring him in to the Minister and say: "I found your child again playing on the street. It is very dangerous, sir, and you ought to take care that it does not happen again." If it were my child, it is highly likely that the Guard would bring him in and say: "Your child was playing on the street again. It is dangerous and it ought to stop." For the vast majority of the peccadilloes which ultimately bring children before the District Court, the punishment in the well-to-do household is the rebuke or chastisement administered by the father or mother.
More than 90 per cent. of the children who find their way into the Children's Court are the children of the poor. That is partially due to the fact that the very difficult conditions under which the poor live in our cities make it extremely hard for them to keep the children in off the streets and under the restraint which it may be necessary to impose upon children living in an urban community. There are a variety of other reasons which one might outline as to why, in effect, it is the children of the poor who find their way into the Children's Court. I want to emphasise that when children of the poor are brought before the Children's Court they are brought before a court which recognises its duties to them and, in the vast majority of cases, recognises the defencelessness of the families from which they come and the difficulties that these families have in asserting their rights. I remember a case—Deputy McGilligan will confirm what I say—in which two children were brought before a court and for some petty offence they were sent for three months' detention in an industrial school. On the occasion in question I think the district justice announced that the reason for sending them to an industrial school was that if there was not a sufficient number of children sent to these schools they would be closed.
There were about seven children in that school.
Fortunately there was an appeal in that case to the Circuit Court judge, and as a result the children were released. I have often attended Children's Courts, and I felt that parents were in a state bordering on desperation, and it never crossed their minds that if the children were sent to these institutions they had the right of every other citizen to appeal to a higher court. For the reason that these children have parents who are poor, and are more or less defenceless, it is our duty to be constantly vigilant to protect them. I go so far as to say that if society for its own protection asserts the right to take a child away from its parents, then it must not only do what is enough for the child, but must provide the best possible treatment known to science to secure its reform. It is almost invariably better for a child to be brought up within a family than in an institution, however good. The comparison between an ill-run institution and a child reared in a family is too difficult to consider. If the State in the public interest decides to take a child from the bosom of a family, then it must provide the best that the State can devise as a substitute for that family care and love which society has required that child to surrender. I could talk on that topic at length, but there is no use in labouring the subject. The fact that I am departing from it now is not to be taken as meaning that I attach less importance to it.
Reference has been made to the fact that the trouble now is that there is no room in these industrial schools for these children. I suggest to the Minister that half the children in industrial schools should not be there at all. I am as sure as I am speaking here, that if we could get respectable women or respectable families to take foundling children and to rear them the results would be much better than those of the best run institutions. I know it. I see it amongst my neighbours. If a respectable woman takes a foundling child she becomes accustomed to it. In five years' time that child will be referred to by the family name, and in 15 years, when it has grown up and is looking for a job, it has become a member of the community and has a house to return to. It has some standing, and in fact has become a normal being. Take the position of a child brought up in the best industrial school. It comes out, gets a job and loses it. Where do such children go? They are face to face at once with the grimmest of all experiences—that of having no place to call home. Why do we send children to these schools? Is it because there are not foster parents to take them? There are hundreds of respectable widows and childless families in poor circumstances who would be willing and anxious to take these children. Why are they not sent to them? For the astounding reason that a local authority will allow a foster-mother a few shillings per week for maintaining a child, while if the same child is put into an institution it will be allowed three or four times as much per week.
If the Minister could induce the Minister for Finance to permit a grant being made in respect of each child put out to fosterage by a local authority, which would make up the difference between what a local authority allows and the grant payable to an orphanage or industrial school, if that money were given to the foster mother—mark well that such foster parents must be carefully chosen, and plenty are to be found—60 per cent. or 70 per cent. of the foundling children at present in industrial schools could be got into decent families and would grow up normal members of the community. In their after life they would always have homes to go to. Deputies who live in the city do not come as closely into touch with the life of the people as Deputies who live in the country, where rich and poor are neighbourly and know all about each other. We live side by side with our neighbours and we see that grim distinction that there is between young people who are out of a job, who have homes to go to and boys and girls from industrial schools out of a job who have nowhere to turn except to a convent or an industrial school where they were reared. The Minister for Justice could do a great act of charity in the highest sense of that word if he could ensure that adequate remuneration would be paid to suitable foster parents and, at the same time, he would be providing accommodation in the industrial schools for the type of children which no other institutions are capable of handling satisfactorily.
What steps has the Minister taken to expedite the business of the Land Registry? I am told that it is largely a question of staff and that if a staff was put there work could be expeditiously dealt with. I understand from an answer that the Minister gave to Deputy Hughes that he had actually taken such steps. I heard recently from a solicitor that he had to wait several months to have some work dealt with. Possibly the Minister's remedial steps are not yet under way, and that it may be possible to say now that the arrears have been got at, and that we need apprehend no more serious delays.
The last matter I want to refer to concerns cinemas. I do not agree with what Deputy Cafferky said. The Deputy is a very daring young man, if he will excuse my saying so. He has not yet learned the capacity of twisting the most innocent words. If I wanted to twist what Deputy Cafferky said, I would say that my impression of his remarks was that some of the people in his constituency were a drunken and riotous people. I am sure that Deputy O Cléirigh will say that before the debate is over. I imagine that the Deputy has gone down to get a cup of tea to lubricate his throat for that purpose. If Deputy Cafferky imagines that he will emerge scatheless from such an encounter he is a very foolish man. I do not agree with a great deal that the Deputy said. I think he overstated his case considerably.
So far as the fellow who had the tyres whipped off his bicycle is concerned, he ought to have been awake by this time to the fact that the Civic Guards cannot go round with their noses laid on the tail of every pedal cycle in the country. If people leave their property out in the middle of the street, under the eyes and noses of those who might attempt to steal it, they are looking for trouble. Citizens have duties as well as rights and ought to take steps to avoid placing grave temptation in the path of our weaker brethren.
I heard Deputy Cafferky refer to the cinemas. Oddly enough, all that was brought home to me by the recent film, "The Song of Bernadette". We have all been told the story of Lourdes many a time; many of us have visited Lourdes. I have read many versions of the story and have visited Lourdes and seen all that was to be seen there, and I have discussed it with a great many people who were interested. I then started off to see "The Song of Bernadette". I regard myself as a pretty sophisticated person and yet, as I sat there, I saw re-enacted the whole marvel of the miracle of the spring, and I came wandering out of the Metropole cinema, I confess, more deeply impressed by the vividness of all I beheld there than I had been when I was in Lourdes. It suddenly brought home to me, with immense force, the power of the cinema. I had heard the story a thousand times, I had seen the spring, I had touched the water, but to have the actual incidents reproduced there before me—the consternation and amazement of those who came to deride Our Lady and were themselves confounded, the triumphant joy of those who thought that infamy was about to prevail and saw Our Lady's fame and reputation vindicated in the presence of unbelievers—created an immense impression on my mind.
If I am right in my belief in my own sophistication, what must be the effect of the very much less edifying scenes, not only on unsophisticated minds but on young unsophisticated minds? It is a good while, unfortunately, since I was in a position to describe my mind as "sophisticated, but young": it is now sophisticated but, I am sorry to say, in middle age. Take the unsophisticated mind which is also young, and imagine the immense impact on it of what is portrayed before it; and then think of some of the junk we see in the cinema. Think of the ladies who gallop off with their neighbours' husbands, amidst universal sympathy. Think of the abundant rejoicing when the legitimate husband falls off a cliff and the two adulterers are wrapt in the perpetual bonds of matrimony.
Does that affect juveniles?
I think it does. Pause here for a moment. The very extravagance of some of the absurdities portrayed before us on the screen may disarm those who may be constrained to say, with Deputy McGilligan: "Does this affect juveniles? Do they get the hang of it at all, or is it all phantasmagoria?" If it happened once, it may be only phantasmagoria and may make no permanent impression on the mind; but the truth is that, whereas the Film Censor in Éire and the Hays Office operating within the industry itself do keep control on any attempt by the individual producer to capitalise pornography, I do not think it could be denied that the background of the great bulk of the cinema output in the world at the present time is the assumption that God does not exist at all, and that the affairs of men are lived and disposed of on a purely material plane, that any question of supernatural sanctions, of a life hereafter, or the question of supernatural law impinging on morality is nonsense.
These facts being true, I think it is time that we did something about it. I do not believe that you can make hard old chaws like the Minister or myself or Deputy McGilligan good by legislation: we have to save our own souls and nobody else can save them for us. But I think we are entitled to protect children from the occasions of corruption. When you come to do that, you have to be practical. I do not think it is practical to prohibit children under 14 years of age from going to the cinema at all, nor do I think that would serve the purpose. You have to raise the age considerably, to 16 or some age of that kind. Then, instead of imposing a general prohibition, which some extremists would recommend, what we ought to try to do is to provide cinemas to which young persons under that age may resort as often as they please and to exclude from those cinemas any film which is not in its general tenor either instructional or edifying.
I admit that the Minister will groan at the thought of having thrust upon him the obligation of determining what is well calculated to edify the young. However, we cannot wash our hands and say that, because the thing is immensely difficult, the young may be corrupted. I can well realise that some of my more cynical friends will say: "You are getting very pious in your old age." I do not know that that is true. I am very fond of pictures myself and go frequently—and not only to the pious ones. Even the impious ones are amusing at times. But the more I have gone, the more I have seen the technique and the more I have seen my young neighbours attending cinemas— since the cinema became common in country towns—the more deeply impressed have I been with the immense influence they have.
It is very remarkable that, if you were to mention any great classic which has been shown on the screen in this country, 90 per cent. of the people would say to you: "Is that the book taken from such-and-such a film?" It would not even cross their minds that the film was taken from the book. Take a classic like Jane Eyre or an opera like Madame Butterfly or a wide variety of such things: the bulk of the people believe that the film is the original and the book is the offshoot. Take historic events: teach a child history in school until your throat is dry; then bring him to see one film which contradicts 90 per cent. of what he has learned in the book. Ask him, in 12 months' time, his version of the historic incident and I think over 70 per cent. will give the version seen in the film; and no attempt to correct it by reading or precept will succeed. If that view is correct, and I am convinced it is, surely we ought not allow the whole outlook of our young people to be controlled by the purveyors of cinema films in America, Great Britain and countries on the Continent, without any effort on our part to sort the wheat from the chaff.
I do not believe that we are ever likely to build a cinema industry in this country. I believe that is all cod, like the beet, the peat and the wheat. I am concerned not for propaganda but to get something done. I am making a case to the Minister for Justice because I believe he is a practical kind of man, a level-headed kind of man. I believe it is conceivable that he might attempt to do something. I suggest to him that what we ought to do is to provide, first, in our cities, with a view to extending them hereafter to our rural areas, children's cinemas and when, and only when adequate provision is being made of them, to exclude children under the age of 16 from general cinemas. Being more wary than Deputy Cafferky, and lest I should hereafter be misrepresented, I want to say that in these juvenile cinemas I would like to see good, rough cowboy pictures. I would like to see all sorts of pictures, but I would not like to see the Dead End Kids, or the average kind of crime picture which, though it pretends to reprobate crime, in fact constitutes the criminal as the only romantic figure in the whole performance.
I think that is going to be a pretty difficult thing—to choose what films are really corrupting in their influence and what are not. It would be better to err a little on the side of liberalism than to provide children with nothing but tedious, educational films which would make the name of children's cinemas stink in their nostrils. In saying that I realise that I leave myself open to the charge that I had admitted to the children's cinemas some pictures which, on second thoughts, had better be excluded. It is better, I think, to err on that side than to provide a namby-pamby show that the children would not want to go to. Sooner or later something along the lines that I am here adumbrating is going to be done. What I am urging is that it should be done before some appalling scandal forces us to do it. We should do it calmly and rationally and not in a state of panic. Let us do it gradually and as our resources permit. We should do it in a commonsense way. It is because I believe that this last quality is urgently necessary in getting it done right, that I bring it before a very commonsenseible Minister who would never be described by his best friend as an idealistic angel, and, on the other hand, might legitimately be described by his worst enemy as a level-headed man and an astute politician to boot.
I think that both Deputy Cafferky and Deputy Dillon may have over-exaggerated the effect of films on the young mind. I quite agree with one of the last things Deputy Dillon said, that films of the type of the "Dead End Kids" are dangerous and objectionable. I think, however, that in general too much is made of the effect that films have on youngsters. Thirty or 40 years ago every type of juvenile crime was being blamed on Buffalo Bills and Sexton Blakes and books of that kind. Deputy Dillon pointed out that in the average crime picture virtue is shown to prevail and the criminal as the most romantic figure in the performance. At another period the adventures of Robin Hood and Dick Turpin were given as the cause for a lot of juvenile delinquency. I think that the effect that the cinemas have on the young mind has been entirely exaggerated. As regards 90 per cent. of the pictures shown, it has to be remembered that we have a fairly strict censorship. Take the type of picture that deals with gangsterdom in the United States. There the gentleman who commits the crime always gets the works—to use their own expression. That has a salutary effect on the youthful mind. The United States producers have done some magnificent technical work of that kind.
The "Crime does not pay" series.
Mr. Larkin
It is the worst type of propaganda that ever was put over.
Is it not a fact that when we speak about juvenile crime and kindred topics we utilise the cinema, literature and a hundred other things to blame them for what really are our own shortcomings? To my mind 90 per cent. of any juvenile crime that exists in this country may be attributed to two main causes, and only two. One is that when you hear people talking about young children running about the streets at night, the fact is that their home conditions are not sufficiently attractive to keep them at home. They may be a family of seven or eight people living in a room, with the result that the children are allowed to run about the streets. The real major cause of much juvenile crime may be attributed to the social conditions under which so many unfortunate children are brought up. The cinemas may have to carry a certain proportion of the blame for juvenile crime, but I think a very large proportion of it might more justly be attributed to the social conditions under which so many children are being brought up.
The second main cause for juvenile crime is, I think, due to this, that there is a grave lack of parental control in this country. People associated with the administration of justice and the education of children know perfectly well that we have here amongst parents a type of mentality which resents their children being reprimanded for anything at all. Everybody knows that in the schools of the country if a teacher only says a cross word to the child of a certain family the heads of that family will hop into the office of the local solicitor and issue a summons for assault against the teacher. The same thing applies in the case of the Guards if they attempt to correct children. Deputy Dillon referred to the fact that the children of the rich will be brought home to their parents. There is no question of rich or poor. We all know there are a number of parents who would be highly insulted if a Guard went to order their children off the street. That type of person has a more harmful effect on the youthful mind than any cinema or picture.
Deputy Cafferky talked about the dance halls, and Deputy Donnellan complained about the extra drinking at dances. If there is anything wrong with the administration of the Public Dance Halls Act it is not the fault of the Civic Guards. They cannot watch every dance hall at every crossroads. Is not the entire fault due to the fathers and mothers who allow their children of 13, 14 and 15 years of age to attend those dances? People of experience know that people who try to run decent dance halls are compelled, under their licence, to allow young people of 16, 17 and 18 years of age into dances. How long do you think they would be able to keep their dance halls open if three of a family arrived, one 20 years old the second 18 years, and the third 17 years, and the others say to the one aged 17: "You will have to stay out; you are under age"? That would not be taken too well at all.
I submit that where children get into bad company, or meet bad associates through attending dance halls at a very tender age, a great proportion of the blame must rest on the parents. The tendency in this country is to blame the cinemas and the Civic Guards and our system of education and, in fact, everybody, but we never feel inclined to blame ourselves. I am perfectly satisfied that the two real dangers that must be dealt with if we are to improve the position of these unfortunate children who are likely to develop into criminals and cannot escape because of their environment is, first, to educate the parents to a sense of their responsibility and show them why it is not the duty of the Civic Guards or the State to teach their children manners and how to behave; and, secondly, to deal with the social conditions that have given rise to the present position.
My experience of the courts leads me at times to feel very sad about this matter. As Deputy Dillon said, when you see children brought to the juvenile courts, in 99 cases out of 100 they are the children of poor parents. The real difficulty is to determine what can be done about them. You will find people living in slum hovels in the country districts just as well as in the cities and towns. It is the environment in which the children have to live that has an important bearing on their lives. There may be persons associating with the family and those persons may have criminal tendencies; they may be guilty of petty larceny or offences of that kind.
The great difficulty we have to contend with, apart from major crimes, is that petty larceny is very much on the increase. There is a sort of glorified gangster idea that it is a smart thing to get away with a couple of bicycle tyres. That leads me to the three sections that should be made bear the blame. Deputy Dillon pointed out that the Civic Guards could not watch everybody's bicycle, and I quite agree. Neither can a man watch his own bicycle all the time, and some person may feel determined to get the tyres by hook or by crook. One of the great difficulties—and this is very obvious to anybody who has a knowledge of the operation of the law—is that there is a terrific lack of public morality, a complete lack of civic responsibility, when it comes to a question of giving evidence. If a person is seen taking the tyres off a bicycle outside a dance hall—and there may be 18 or 20 other young fellows around—how many of them would be prepared to volunteer evidence to the Civic Guards? Even if the Guards knew persons who actually witnessed the incident, there would be the greatest difficulty in getting them to give evidence. How often do we come across a public-spirited person reporting a crime off his or her own bat? Is it not a fact that nine times out of ten it is impossible to get sufficient evidence to secure a conviction?
They would be called informers.
That is exactly the position. The fact that a person is afraid he or she might be called an informer means that that person is taking advantage of that excuse in his or her own mind, and they are treating the State and regarding the administration of justice in this country as if they were dealing with the people who controlled the country for over 700 years. If we are to have a proper administration of the law, we must realise that everything does not rest on the Government, or on the Civic Guards. The entire foundation of justice must rest on the people alone, and if the people are not prepared to assist in the administration of justice they cannot throw the blame on the State, or on the officials of the State and charge them with failing in their duty.
When we are dealing with matters relating to juvenile delinquency, there is a tendency to pick out somebody or other upon whom we can throw the blame. Actually, the blame can be placed on our own refusal to give evidence or information which would assist the Guards. The refusal to give such evidence or information is not confined to the poorer sections of the community, or to the type of child suggested by Deputy Dillon. There is a disinclination at the back of every Irishman's and Irishwoman's mind to assist the police if they can avoid doing so. The fact is that they do not want to go to the trouble of giving such assistance. The mere idea of being brought to the District Court to give a perfectly true story would be enough to make them keep their mouths shut. That is a regretable lack of morality— of civic responsibility.
Everyone is crying out about the crime wave that is sweeping this country. They hold up their hands in horror and point out that there are so many hundreds of cases of larcenies. They know that crime is on the increase, but they are afraid to make an effort to put a stop to it. If there is an increase in crime—and unfortunately we have to admit that—the blame must rest on the shoulders of the community, because the forces of the State by themselves cannot watch every man, woman and child, and they ought not to be expected to do so. If there was more public morality and a greater public spirit in the country, and a desire to assist in the administration of justice, we would not have so many complaints.
It is generally assumed in this country that a man is innocent of the offence with which he is charged until he is proved guilty. That is all very well in theory and, in fairness to judges and juries, that is usually the practice so far as the administration of the law is concerned. There are very few countries, except England and this country, that have not abolished the one thing that convinces everybody who is present in court, whether as a juryman or as an onlooker, that the accused person is guilty, and that is, the infamous institution known as the dock. In most civilised countries the person who is accused of an offence is not put standing in a dock. From the point of view of giving the prisoner a fair trial, I submit that the dock is an entirely objectionable thing. Take Green Street, for example. The prisoner is put into a dock which is about the height of the Lobby here. He listens to the evidence in the case and listens to the charges that are made against him. He cannot immediately get into contact with his solicitor or counsel if he wishes to make a reference to something said in evidence. As a matter of fact, his solicitor or counsel has to climb up steps to talk to him. It would look better if that practice were discontinued, and it ought to be as long as we accept the theory that a person is innocent until proved guilty.
I suggest that the system in operation in other countries should be put into operation here, and that is, that the accused person should be allowed to sit down beside his legal adviser. I do not see what objection could be raised to that procedure. I often feel that one of the hardest things an innocent person has to bear is the memory that he had to stand in a dock like an animal in a cage for everyone to see. A person's innocence may be proved up to the hilt and he leaves the court with an eulogy from the judge, yet he will always remember the spectacle he presented in the dock with everyone's eyes on him. I see no reason why that system could not be changed. I may say that nine out of ten district justices already do it. When taking depositions they do not insist on the accused man being put into the dock. They allow him to sit beside his legal adviser so that he may talk to him just the same as a client in a civil action.
I suggest to the Minister that we are living in modern times and those old trappings of the law should be altered. We should have a more modern conception of justice and a better recognition of the status of a person who has not been convicted. It does not require legislation to make the alteration. There is absolutely no legal reason why a person should be put into the dock. There is nothing in the statute law that I can find which compels it to be done. It is merely a relic of the old days. Nominally you were innocent until found guilty, but that was not always so. In some countries you are considered guilty until you are proved innocent, but even in those countries they do not put you into the dock. We should do away with that unnecessary trapping of the criminal law in this country.
There is a growing habit among certain district justices to hear cases in camera. I quite realise that there are times when cases must be heard in camera. It is provided in law that there is a certain type of case that must be heard in camera. There is one type of case, however, which I must mention. Whether a person is rich or poor, and no matter what the offence is, if that person is brought before the District Court for the taking of depositions and if the offence is an indictable one, and the justice says: “I will hear this case in camera,” I suggest that the offence with which that person is charged should be announced to the public, should be announced publicly to the Press. There are two reasons for that. One is that the suggestion might very easily be made, if a case is heard entirely in camera and the charge is not even made public, that some influence or pull was used to keep it out of the Press. The second objectionable feature is that a Dublin man working in Donegal might be arrested for some crime, minor or major. He would go into the District Court and the case might be heard entirely in camera and the charge not even published. So far as his people are concerned, they would not know what had happened to him or where he had gone. I think that where a district justice decides to hear a case in camera it ought to be made clear to the Press who the accused is, what the charge is, and that the justice did order it to be heard in camera. I will not carry it any further than that, but I think it is necessary that that should be done.
There is one matter which the last School Attendance Act gave an opportunity of dealing with to a certain extent, and that is the question of vagrancy. There is no doubt that the ordinary vagrants, who are not even tinkers who work for a living in some way, are increasing by thousands yearly. They are a menace to the countryside. So far as I can see, there is no attempt made to deal with them. Every country Deputy knows that there are certain parts of the country where, after a big horse fair or some annual event, the countryside is absolutely flooded with these caravans and that the people in the farmers' houses and cottages are terrified of their lives of these people. They dare not refuse these big, hulking brutes of men anything they ask for. One reason why there is no means of dealing with them is that, if one of these gentlemen is arrested, the Guards have nowhere to put him. He is summoned for the next District Court, possibly a month after, and he has gone out of the jurisdiction by that time and stays out of it long enough, if he is sentenced to a month in jail, to allow the warrant to run out. In the old petty sessions court days, when you had local magistrates available, there was a different system. If these gentlemen and their lady friends arrived and created havoc in a small town, as they often do, and they were arrested, they could be brought to the police barracks and a local magistrate could sit in court there and sentence them, if he saw fit, and they were dumped off to jail that evening. Nobody resents the type of vagrant we are getting on the roads now more than the ancient families of tinkers who are good tinsmiths and tradesmen. I think they would drop dead with fright if you suggested that these newcomers were tinkers. The fact is that the people in certain country districts are terrified of their lives of them. It is amazing to me that while unfortunate people in cities and towns are short of the necessaries of life these people are apparently able to carry on. They have money. If they happen to arrive after daylight, they pack out the local picture houses. They try to get into the local dance halls. This is a growing evil which will have to be dealt with.
There was a slight attempt made to deal with these people in the last School Attendance Act by putting in a section that imposed a duty on vagrants to send their children to school, but it is practically impossible to enforce that because the Civic Guards cannot follow them all over the country and they are lost track of. So far as the South is concerned, this is becoming a terrible problem. Time and again people have come to my office and asked me could I get in touch with the local superintendent and get him to authorise the local sergeant to send out four or five Guards to shift them out of a particular place. Gates to corn fields are opened and horses and donkeys are turned into them. Fowl are not safe from them. The ordinary people in the remote rural areas are entitled to protection, and the sooner this matter is dealt with the better, because it is on the increase and will keep on the increase until it is dealt with effectively.
Deputy Corish referred to the fact that the Civic Guards in country areas have to pay for the cleaning, lighting and heating of the barracks. One of the great grievances the Guards have in regard to that matter is that while that applies to the rural districts, they tell me it does not apply to Dublin City. The Dublin Metropolitan Gárda are supplied with light and fuel and the domestic help necessary to keep the barracks and the other offices in order. The fact is that in the country, since the emergency, the allowance the Gárda get in a particular barracks, either for lighting or heating, would not go a quarter of the way to provide these things if it were not for the fact that most of the Gárdaí are energetic and can cut turf. If they had to depend on what they would buy with the allowance they would go very short. I see no reason why the country station should not be treated on the same basis as the Dublin Metropolitan station.
I should like to add my voice to the pleas already made to the Minister and his Department by the District Court clerks. I have seen cases recently where old men who have given their life at the job have to go out at the age of 70 on a miserable pension which would not keep them for a fortnight. In jobs like that, which are not really full-time, the person is prevented to a great extent from earning a livelihood in any other way. He cannot be in the retail trade or be a publican. There are a number of things he is not allowed to do. About the only thing he can do is to become an auctioneer. These people, even though their jobs are not actually full-time, have to be on the spot the whole time.
A good District Court clerk in a small country village is the guide, philosopher and friend of the people of the countryside. People come to him about small troublesome matters, trespass and little things like that, about which they would not approach the Civic Guards. The good District Court clerk does more to prevent litigation than any man in the place, because he is generally a local man, a neighbour. People come to him in a hot temper resenting something a neighbour did or said and he talks them over and probably the whole thing passes off. He is a very useful man in a district. These District Court clerks should be established and put on a definite basis at a reasonable salary and there should be some protection for them when the time comes for them to retire and enjoy the leisure to which they are entitled.
On the question of juveniles, I think the real offenders at present are not the younger children mentioned by Deputy Dillon. It is the gentleman of 16, 17 or 18 whom you see in Dublin and in the towns and country districts. I am referring to the type of gentlemen five or six of whom will walk abreast down a payement and, let the people be old or young, crippled or able, they will push them off. These are the type of people who, on leaving a country dance, will proceed to make the echoes ring in all the mountains and valleys so that nobody can sleep within two miles of them. They are the type that would run five miles at the sight of a Civic Guard or anybody who would deal with them. They are just the type that will make noise and create confusion and all the trouble they can when they cannot be stopped. I say bluntly that they are not even the children of poor people —very far from it. Possibly the most serious thing is that people who would probably resent being termed middle-class and who frequent the type of dance which has been referred to are probably the biggest offenders in that respect. It would be a good thing if, in the rural areas, one of the new mobile cars the Civic Guards are using in Dublin would go round to these places and, when the dances are over, see the conduct that is carried on, because everybody gets the blame except the people responsible.
The culprits are generally the people who come from a distance to the dances. The locality gets a bad name, the dance hall proprietor gets a bad name, and the Guards are accused of not doing their duty. I wish we had here some system like they have in the United States, so that, if those people are caught kicking up a row or breaking a window for the fun of it, they can be caught on the spot, given a ticket, as they say in the United States, fined on the spot £1 or something like that, and if they have not got it taken away and kept in for a night or two to cool their ardour. Those offences are due to lack of public spirit in this country. Those young individuals feel that they are what Deputy Dillon calls tough guys, and that it is a manly thing to go down a street at 2 o'clock in the morning kicking doors and waking everybody up. That type of person is not much good to anybody; if any trouble arises they will stay very far away from it. Those things happen regularly in certain places. Everybody knows who is responsible, but the Civic Guards cannot be there all the time, and nobody will report it because the culprits are neighbours' children. We blame the Church, we blame the Guards, we blame the State, we blame everybody but ourselves.
Deputy Donnellan referred to the fact that there was excessive drinking at some all-night dances, and that more supervision was required. If the parents were doing their duty by their children, and had any doubt of the way in which the local dance hall is conducted, it would be very easy for those parents occasionally to walk into that hall and see for themselves how it is conducted. If they are not satisfied they can keep their children away, or report the matter to the proper authorities. Deputy Donnellan should have been here last year when the Minister generously enough gave way on everything in the licensing Bill except on that pint after Mass on Sundays. I always hold that sooner or later the Minister will weaken the whole way. I would not even suggest advocating legislation to that effect, but as time goes on I think he will get more mellow.
Mr. Boland
I will not be here that long surely.
I would not mind keeping the Minister here a little while longer if I thought he would place the country people on the same status as the city people in that. I would not like to suggest taking away the city people's privileges, but I would like him to give us some little concession. Like the old story about the policeman who, when asked: "Is it allowed to cycle on the footpath?" said: "It is not, but you can," everybody knows it is entirely ridiculous to suggest that you cannot get a drink on a Sunday in the country districts. You are not supposed to get it, but you can. I will give the Guards this much credit—it is the proper way, to my mind, to administer justice— that they are not inclined to be too harsh. I have always found that the Guards, unless there is very serious abuse, are inclined to take things as easily as possible, and they are perfectly right. There are a lot of people in the country who would not touch a drink before 10.30, but the minute 10.30 comes they must go into the public house. It is just the same on Sundays, and the unfortunate publican, because they are customers, dare not refuse them. The one remedy for after-hours and Sunday drinking in this country is to instruct the district justices to deal with the charges in an entirely different manner. The position at the moment is that the publican is fined £2, with or without an endorsement, and the men found on the premises are fined 2/6. If it were done the other way round on a few occasions, the problem would very soon be solved. The position is that, after a football match on Sunday, 10 or 20 people come along to the publican in a rural area, and he dare not refuse them a drink. If he is caught, he is fined £2, and the customers are let off with a fine of 2/6. If they got the bigger end of the fine occasionally it would be a great help.
In general, since the present Minister became Minister for Justice, I find that in dealing with the Estimates or with his administration or indeed with his handling of much more serious matters he has been eminently satisfactory. The way he met us last year on the Licensing Bill was first class. As a matter of fact I think the Minister himself would probably say it was too good—that he softened more than he really intended to. I would say this, that the smaller evils to which I referred are the things out of which greater evils will come if they are not dealt with now. I think that every one of us—not alone as Deputies of the Dáil, and irrespective of whether we are fathers of families or not—in our own sphere of influence in our own districts, should take it on ourselves to try to inculcate into the people a sense of public morality. Take, for instance, the type of complaint so common in Dublin, the tearing up of shrubs, and other destruction in public parks; when people see those things happening they should report it. There is no use in the people in the country or anywhere else complaining that sabotage is going on if they act as accessories before or after the fact when they know the guilty persons and do not give them away.
As I listened to Deputy Linehan painting a doleful picture of the state of affairs in the South of Ireland I thought for a moment that I was back at a meeting of the Etats Généraux before the French Revolution, when some of the rural representatives complained about the sturdy vagabonds who were terrorising the countryside. A French historian has written a thesis showing that it was those sturdy vagabonds, lawless tinkers of the type to which he referred, who actually stormed the Bastille, and not the French patriots, so the Minister for Justice had better beware and set an extra guard upon Mountjoy if the picture of the countryside is as terrifying as Deputy Linehan has made it out to be. The Minister has painted a much more placid picture of the state of affairs in the country in so far as crime is concerned. Whether we ought to attribute the improvement, to which he gives a rather qualified assent, to the composition of the new Dáil or to some improvement in social and economic conditions due to the war—which has its reverse side, too, perhaps, in promoting a certain increase in juvenile delinquency—it would be hard to say. As far as serious crimes go, it would appear from the Minister's figures that things, if they are not worse, are not very much better. He told us that 92 per cent. of all the indictable crimes had been crimes against property. That figure was somewhat the same in previous years, and it shows, as Deputy Linehan and others have correctly insisted, that the cause of all delinquency—92 per cent. of it at least—is the unjust social system under which we live.
My father said that capitalism was the most foreign thing in Ireland and the evil derivative of this foreign thing is the penal system that we have taken over from the British, lock, stock and barrel. In the 20 years of Irish administration it is to be regretted that we have seen no major reform in regard to the penal system. We have seen no Minister for Justice with sufficient courage and imagination to try to break away from the traditions of British penalogy, to try to give us an Irish conception of the treatment of delinquents. No, the Minister for Justice continues the rôle that the British Minister for the Crown continued in the past in administering in this country what is facetiously called justice. There may have been minor improvements but we still seem to have the same order of things, the same conception of the Minister as the Minister for crime and punishment, and that these two things are related as antecedent to consequent, without ever dreaming that they admit of the more modern idea and the more modern thought that the consequent may in turn produce the antecedent.
You get this continuous circulation, as I think can be proved from the statistics of crime in this or any other country, that punishment inevitably leads to crime. Our conception, if we are to be humane in a democratic country, ought to be to consider the Minister as the Minister for crime-treatment, the proper treatment of crime, so as to get away from harsh, out-of-date, barbaric methods of treating our prisoners as people outside the pale, as those who do not belong to the human family, as Pariahs, people who have no claim on society, instead of being the weak brethren, the weak citizens who should really command the solicitude and the sympathy of every person who is fortunate enough under the social strain and stress to escape being where these prisoners now are, either in jail or in some other form enduring punishment.
I should, like any other Deputy with democratic and humane views, be delighted to be in this House when the Minister for Justice proposed the abolition of the British penal system— a cruel, vindictive and, to our conception, a really immoral system of dealing with crime. I think it is more from lack of thought than from anything else that the Minister still continues the old tradition that his Government inherited. I am talking now more especially of what is called ordinary crime. I propose later to deal with the political prisoners and, though very much has been said on juvenile delinquency, perhaps I could add a few words on the particular aspect of it to which Deputy Cafferky has already referred. But while we continue the old British system of the harshest possible conditions, the worst environment without any hope of resurrection for the prisoners, we find to our amazement that the British themselves have thrown over their own system, that they are becoming inculcated with modern ideas of prison reform and that they are getting a new conception as to how they should deal with prisoners.
I wish to draw the Minister's attention to an extract from an English paper giving the view of his opposite number in Great Britain upon this matter of prison reform. This is a quotation from Mr. Herbert Morrison, British Home Secretary, speaking at Birmingham on the 28th March. He is dealing with a farm camp run by a prison at Wakefield, in Yorkshire. Incidentally, as many of our farmers complained during the debate on agriculture of a scarcity of labour, perhaps this might to some extent give the Minister an idea of co-operating with the Department of Agriculture in doing something that would be nationally important and something that would be of great importance on the question of penal reform.
Speaking of this prison Mr. Morrison said: "This prison was an eye-opener to me—the only one I have ever visited out of which I came happier than when I went in." He described the camp and he said:—
"For some years, 100 prisoners have lived and worked there in wooden huts, deep in the country without so much as a string of wire around them. The staff numbers four. Only one man ever tried to escape. During this war hundreds of prisoners have been going out every day in parties of 20 or 30 under a single officer to work on neighbouring farms or in timber camps. We must not be thoughtlessly sloppy about crime, but we had better recognise that it is difficult to train men for freedom in conditions of captivity."
There is a world of wisdom in that last clause. If it is difficult to train men for freedom in conditions of captivity, it is even more difficult to teach children or to train children or juveniles generally for freedom in conditions of poverty which produce captivity for them. He deals with another aspect which, I should like the Minister to recognise, has a bearing on the prison system in this country. Mr. Morrison says:—
"There is always a proportion of the prison population which is mentally sub-normal and unfit for the ordinary régime. One of the first of the new prisons I should like to see, will be not so much a prison as a hospital or colony for mental observation and treatment."
He intended, he said, to set up an advisory committee or council for consultation on future plans. I would strongly urge the Minister to act likewise here, to set up a council or committee on prison reform, to try to get away from this old system which is a system, as the Minister knows, which was really part of the political subjugation of this country. There was no such thing as a non-political administration of law in this country. The simplest of crimes was tinged with the spirit of political bias, and that permeated the whole system of penal administration in this country. I do not think that any of us can really consider ourselves free until we tear down such places as Mountjoy and all the prisons left behind by the British, use the stones to build children's hospitals or for some other socially necessary purpose and forge our own system for dealing with our delinquents.
This may be very idealistic. It may bring a smile to the face of the Minister to think that there should be penal reform. But that is the spirit of the age. Things are working in that direction. I have given an instance of it in England. That is the start of a whole system of penal reform which will sweep not only England, in time, but this country as well. Why should we lag behind others? Why cannot we do something of our own initiative? Why cannot we have our own thought even upon such matters as this? We maintain the British prison system. Not only do we maintain the steel and stone that make up the physical part of these things but we retain that form of degradation that the British brought into this country. I want to instance just one item to show what I mean. It is significant and I am sure that, without any great trouble, the Minister could show his good will and show that he is a modern Minister for Justice by having this one matter remedied. It is simply the question of the prison garb worn, particularly, by female prisoners. I should like to know if the Minister has himself ever visited the female prison in Mountjoy, whether he ever observed the prisoners there and looked upon the attire which they are forced, under his administration, to wear. I question whether he could bear looking upon them without any sign of human sympathy in his heart for these poor creatures. This is a legislative assembly which, I am sure, has more Deputies in it with prison experience than any other legislative assembly in the world. Strange it is that the small things are, evidently, those which escape notice and do not seem to matter very much, because a line written by the Minister, a stroke of his pen, could change many of these things. Yet, the Minister or his advisers in the Department do not consider it worth while to devote sufficient of their time to taking away the human unhappiness, misery and degradation caused by some of these small things. If the Minister has never gone to the female prison in Mountjoy, he should go there and see the garb. I remember looking out from the landing in Mountjoy and seeing those prisoners. It was a degrading and bestial sight to see these females walk around the ring under the direction of smartly dressed wardresses while they were in a nondescript prison garb which dated from pre-Victorian times. It was more like the grey shroud of the dead than a costume of the living. They were a disgrace to any human person and to any man who conceived them.
My technical knowledge does not suffice to describe women's clothes, but every male knows that clothes form an enormous part of the personality of a woman. To degrade these poor offenders against the law—what they did does not really matter—by this garb is certainly no recommendation for our Irish ideals of justice or the brotherhood or sisterhood of man. You get that same idea running throughout all the prison system. The Minister is, perhaps, too busy, and his principal officials are too hardened of heart, perhaps, to think it worth while to change these little things in the regime, although they would mean so much to the regeneration of those people who come out of jail.
Deputy Dillon talked a great deal about the female delinquents and the lack of proper treatment for them. He did not know, certainly from the inside, as much as could be told him about the more shameful aspect of some of the cases he mentioned. He instanced cases where girls, taken up for street walking, were, owing to the inadequate system we have of treating them, compelled finally to resort back, or were brought back, to the arms of the brothel-keeper and were condemned for life to that form of living death known as prostitution. He did not know that a more sinister and more debasing thing goes on under this British penal system which we still observe. He did not know that the brothel-keepers, being mercenary gentlemen knowing their trade quite well, wait until these unfortunate girls have spent a short time in Mountjoy female prison, and until they have had medical treatment at the expense of the State which enables them to carry on their trade in a way much more beneficial to the brothel-keeper. After a short term there, they pay the remainder of their fine on a regular commercial basis of so much per day and have them released into their charge to continue their work. That is what actually happens. I have had it from some of the warders in Mountjoy and I am sure it still continues—a most sinister type of traffic in human flesh itself and what one would naturally expect from this foreign penal system we still support.
There are many other matters with which I should like to deal, but I do not wish this debate to be as prolonged as the debate on the Vote for the Office of the Minister for Agriculture, though I think it is more important than agriculture, because if we have not justice we have nothing at all. So much has been said on juvenile delinquency that I do not intend to traverse that ground again, but I do say that, while disagreeing with Deputy Dillon on many things, I certainly agree with the general tone of his demand for more adequate facilities for dealing with the juvenile delinquent. I am not altogether at one with him with regard to the question of Borstals. I should like to see more modern and up-to-date treatment of these juveniles, but it is so very hard, as shown by his experience, to get the slightest thing done, to get this tremendous machinery of State to move in the slightest way so as to give relief to suffering humanity, that I suppose we must be content to demand the minimum he has set forth as necessary steps to give us some control over the treatment and reform of these youthful criminals. I asked the Minister to let me have the figures for juveniles under 14. I got most of the figures myself, but perhaps the Minister might supply the last one. He gave us the figures for juveniles charged with offences from 1939 to 1943, and these figures ranged from 1,605 in the first year to 3,345 in the last year. Now, I was particularly interested to know what percentage of these juveniles would be under what might be called the tender age of 14 years. We have heard Deputy Dillon, Deputy Linehan and other Deputies, who have told us about youths from 16 up.
Mr. Boland
I can give the Deputy the figures now.
Can the Minister give the figures for 1943?
Mr. Boland
I have not got the figures for 1943 at the moment, but I can give the figures for the other years.
Well, it was last year that I wanted, because I have been able to get the figures for the other years myself.
Mr. Boland
The number under 14 years of age was 1,336 in 1940, and 1,382 in 1942; and between 16 and 18, the average number was 935. That is the average for 1942.
For what year?
For 1942. When I examined these figures I found that in 1939, the number of juvenile delinquents under 14 years of age comprised 37 per cent. of the total; that in 1940 they comprised 40 per cent. of the total, and that in 1941 they comprised 42 per cent. of the total. I cannot say, off-hand, what the figure would be for the last year.
Does the Deputy mean for the whole country?
Yes, for the whole country, I think.
Not 42 per cent. of the children of the whole country?
No, I am referring to juveniles charged with certain offences. The number in 1939, was 1,605, and of those, the number under 14 years of age was 579, which works out at 37 per cent. of the total. What I want to point out is that those children, under 14 years of age, cannot be described as bullies or gangsters—which terms have been applied to some of these juvenile delinquents. These children, certainly, are of school-going age, and I want to point out that there is a type of juvenile delinquency inside ordinary juvenile delinquency—a problem within a problem, so to speak—and that the number of juvenile delinquents under a certain age has increased probably more than the total has increased. The number has increased from 37 per cent. of the total in 1939 to 42 per cent. of the total in 1941. Perhaps the Minister, when he is replying, can tell us whether the figure has gone up or down with regard to the juveniles I have in mind.
That, however, is but an aside from the matter. There are certain other figures which appear to me to be very difficult to reconcile, and upon which the Minister might give us some information. It is very hard to understand what is the exact reason for some of these. For instance, in connection with the number of committals—the daily average in custody and the average costs—there appear to be surprising things going on in prisons, if these figures bear any relation to outside affairs. We understand, for example, that the cost of living has gone up by 65 per cent., and one would imagine, therefore, that the cost of living in regard to prisoners in custody would bear some relation to the cost-of-living figures of those outside prison.
We find that in 1939 the daily average in custody was 500, at an average cost of £140. That is the average annual cost. It would appear from the figures that in 1941 the average cost went down to £125, and that in 1942, the average cost of those in custody goes down to £126. Evidently, somebody must be economising, and I cannot find any good explanation of this. It can hardly be that the Minister has put our prison population, as a whole, upon short commons, or that they have suddenly awakened to the need of economy.
Is that just for the cost of food?
No, the whole average. It includes everything.
Mr. Boland
Yes, it includes everything.
These are the figures for the average annual cost, and whether that includes the capital charges which might be involved, or not, it is hard to say. Now, on this question of juvenile delinquency there is one point that I wish to bring home particularly to the Minister, and that is in connection with the question of birching. I want to put on record the words, or the description, rather, by an eminent lawyer who sent me his views on this matter when the question of birching in Dundalk received, probably, greater prominence than is usual in a case of that sort. I do not know exactly how this form of punishment is delivered in this country. I do not know whether the Minister himself is aware of it. I do not know whether he ever witnessed such a punishment, and I am sure that, having heard this description of it, he will certainly be of the considered opinion, if he is at all humane, that this part of the British system of penal administration should go, along with many other types of punishment to which I have previously adverted. I am informed that the quotation I am about to give relates specifically to England, and it is to be assumed that the same system applies to this country, but if the contrary should be the case, I should be extremely glad to hear it, because I can hardly imagine any humane person in this country carrying out such a disgusting form of punishment upon a young boy. I am sure that even if the sentence were pronounced in this country, most of the Gárdaí would connive at its non-execution rather than debase themselves by witnessing it.
The quotation is as follows:—
"Birching, of course, is only applicable to boys. Here is a picture of a ‘judicial' birching:—
After the court has ordered the boy to be birched—the maximum number of strokes in England being six—he is taken away, usually to the police station. There he sometimes gets a medical examination, but this is not compulsory.
His lower clothing is removed, exposing his bare buttocks, and his shirt pulled up. It can be well imagined that by this time the child is quite terrified. Then he is bent over a table, his arms being held by two police officers and his feet by a third."
Three big hulking men!
"It is stated that this is necessary to prevent the boy from moving and so that the birch will fall only on his bare buttocks. A fourth policeman wields the birch while a police inspector looks on. Sometimes the doctors and the boy's parents are also spectators."
All these adults surround the poor victim of this judicial punishment.
"Another method of holding the boy down is used in some police forces. The boy, stripped as before, is held ‘pick-a-back' by one constable, while another constable draws the boy's legs round the sides of the first constable. The birch is then administered. The boy is then turned out into the street and left to make his way home as best he can. It is nobody's business to see what effect the punishment has had on him. It has been pointed out that the birching of boys is highly suggestive of the indecencies of sadistic sexual perversions."
This eminent man of the law sums up the case in regard to birching in the following way:—
"In many cases it does more harm than good, it is essentially nonconstructive, it is not an effective deterrent; 75 per cent. of the boys birched re-appear before the court within two years and one in four within a month after birching; experience shows that humane treatment of offenders produces better results than brutality or harsh methods; it has a brutalising effect; the delay between the offence and the birching is undesirable, but at the same time the child's right of appeal ought not to be prejudiced."
The only conclusion one can draw is that if we are to have a humane Irish system of penal administration, we certainly should, amongst other things, do away with the birch. That is one of the minor points I earnestly ask the Minister to consider as well as the abolition of prison garb, particularly for female offenders. It is a degrading and debasing form of vindictiveness against the prisoners and has a psychologically bad effect upon them. It is absolutely out-moded at the present time. The question of prison garb brings one naturally enough to the position of political prisoners. Deputy Corish dealt with the matter. The Minister gave us figures in relation to what he calls political crime. He did not define what is meant by political crime. I am sure it would be hard to do so. We have an idea what it means, as most of the members of this House on both sides were political criminals at one time or another. There is the particularly bad case of the intrusion of the British idea of prison administration in Maryboro. We have asked questions here and the Minister has answered them, giving his point of view. He has been adamant to all appeals to vary the mode of punishment there enacted. I think it is not too late now for the Minister to review the whole matter. Prison discipline is being enforced by a very rigorous form of punishment and has continued, I believe, since August, 1940. It is now 1944. Time marches on. Surely the Minister will consider that if he took the view of becoming progressive and modern, and of abolishing this regulation about the wearing of prison clothes for the whole prison population it would apply to Maryboro'. I do not think there is very much chance of anything being done immediately unless the Minister has taken into consideration all the representations made to him and is prepared to exercise a different form of administration in future. I understand now, in regard to some of these prisoners, that things are worse than they were. I have been informed, on what I believe to be the best authority, that one of these republican prisoners in Maryboro' has been transferred to Arbour Hill because of mental trouble. I know the Minister realises, as we all realise, what continual deprivation of association and keeping prisoners in their rooms for extremely long intervals means. I believe that they get 1½ hours' recreation in the morning and at night under very restricted conditions. As a result one of them is evidently—I am not quite certain——
Mr. Boland
He is not gone at all. I can reassure the Deputy's mind on that.
He has not been transferred?
Mr. Boland
He has been transferred. This man was transferred because he could not behave himself in Mountjoy. He assaulted a warder. When I thought he had sufficient of Portlaoighise I got him transferred back to Arbour Hill.
He has been transferred, and evidently, in the opinion of the Minister, that will conduce to curing whatever mental aberrations he may be suffering from. If that is so, if the Minister thinks that association is a good thing, then perhaps he would make it general and permit the association of the others who are also in the prison at present. That is very little to ask. It is the opinion of the doctors, I understand, that if this man is allowed association, whatever mental derangement has been caused to him may be cleared up. I have felt all along that prisoners of that type, no matter who they are, are bound to suffer from melancholia, are bound to have periods of depressive mania. Unless the prison authorities take very good care of them, as they naturally would, they are bound to have this problem on their hands, and I feel sure that the Minister does not want to have it on record that his administration has had the result of turning prisoners, political prisoners undoubtedly, into madmen. That would not be in accordance with the general opinion of the House of the Minister's ideas and views.
I might suggest, too, that as there is a certain amount of anxiety about the mental health of these prisoners, the Minister might permit some responsible Deputy, such as the Deputy for the county in which the prison is situated —Deputy Davin, for example—to visit this prison to see these men and to see how they are circumstanced. I have given the Minister what I consider the best solution of the difficulty, a solution which does not require any compromise on his part and does not require him to recede from his attitude of implacability. If he would make a general Order, on the ground of the degrading influence on prison guards generally, then it would apply to Maryboro' as well and the difficulty would be got over.
Deputy Corish has dealt with the question of the internees and has asked for consideration of their cases, perhaps in a way which was slightly unqualified. But we all appreciate that the figures given by the Minister which show that, last year at this time, there were 554 internees and that there are now 209, a decrease of 245, indicate that there has been proceeding gradually a liberation, on some terms or other, qualified or unqualified, of the vast number of those who might be termed political prisoners who were interned without trial. The position arises, when it comes to this point, that the Dáil, the State and the public generally should be aware of why there is continued detention of these people.
There may be good reasons. There may be reasons of national security. The Minister can always reply to representations made to him in regard to any internee that, on account of certain documents of which he was in possession, on account of the national position, on account of our neutrality, it would be unwise and inadvisable to release this or that person. That may be a perfectly legitimate objection on the part of the Minister, but I am sure that quite a number of Deputies have been disappointed in relation to representations made in respect of people who obviously could not be regarded as being in any way connected with the leadership of any subversive organisation which may or may not be in the country. There are certain types of internees who could not be so important as to be continuously detained over such a long period.
If the Minister has any facts to justify the detention of the remainder of these prisoners; if the country is as peaceful as he suggests, and if there has been such a decline in political crime in the past year as he suggests, surely the time has come for him to liquidate this business, not by a general release—we are not asking the Minister to go so far as that—but by ending this matter of indeterminate detention and bringing these 209 remaining prisoners before the proper tribunals of the country. I cannot see how the Minister can resist that request. It has, of course, been said that there will be intimidation of witnesses, that there will be the impossibility of gathering evidence and that there will be this lack of civic spirit to which Deputy Linehan has referred, but the Minister said that during the whole period which he reviewed, one civilian was fired on for giving evidence.
Mr. Boland
And wounded.
That is not such a desperate state of affairs, and the Minister should certainly realise by now that the State forces at his command must have an overawing effect when only one case of intimidation can be instanced by him in regard to political crime. In the heyday of the Republican movement, the Minister must realise that just one civilian being fired on, or intimidated, would have represented a very peaceful state of affairs and now that we have such peaceful conditions, according to the Minister—and there is no evidence of any recrudescence of this type of crime—would it not be the sensible thing to bring these 209 prisoners—the cases against many of them will, I am sure, be proven to be of a very flimsy character—before the proper tribunals? I think that in a great number of cases the Minister depends on the reports of the local Gárdaí or plain-clothes men, and he realises, I know, that many of these are actuated by past political bitterness against some of the internees. It is not anything of very great moment perhaps, but it cannot be avoided in view of the passions which were roused in this country.
The Minister, I am sure, however, could find some way of bringing the remainder of these internees before the ordinary tribunals and of liquidating the whole affair. Its dimensions are very small. There are only 209 prisoners involved and the overwhelming majority of the others have honourably kept their undertakings to take part in the ordinary civic life of the country. There is no doubt about that. To prove what I have said is correct, the Minister might give us the number of those released who have gone back on their word, or have gone back on the word of the Deputy who guaranteed their good conduct. I am sure he will admit that it is a very small fraction of the total. There are black sheep in every fold and there are bound to be black sheep even in this fold. I am sure the Minister will realise that, even amongst the internees themselves, there is not a very high regard for those who go back on their word to the Minister and, in fact, I think there is one case on record where they gave one who was reinterned a rather good hiding for breaking his parole. If that is the mentality of these men, surely they are quite worthy of being taken back into the ranks of ordinary society? Surely they are not as desperate as has been suggested? I know there is a certain tendency to have a vested interest in crime amongst all those who are concerned with the administration of justice. Deputy Dillon instanced the case of a justice who sent children of very tender years to industrial schools because, if he did not do so, the industrial schools would go out of action.
Mr. Larkin
They are doing it every day of the week.
It is the same thing in politics and in the political administration of justice. If we do not have political prisoners, there will be a large section of the Minister's staff without any functions, with nothing to do. I am sure the Minister himself would like to see that happy state of affairs, which would please him better, but he is up against a certain amount of conservatism of energy within his own Department. He should stand up against that and, as Minister for Justice, the paramount consideration for him should be that justice be administered in the country. He has not administered justice to this remaining 209 for a period of three or four years. I do not know what the average period of detention is, but those men have been detained for quite a long period. Perhaps the Minister would give the House some idea of the average length of detention of those prisoners?
Mr. Boland
Most of those who are in are there since 1940 and, as far as I can see, they are likely to remain there while the emergency lasts. If I have anything to do with it, the majority of those who are there will remain there.
Would the Minister not feel safer, if he has the interests of the State at heart, in having them brought to justice before the courts of the country? If they are these desperate fellows he says they are, can they not be punished and incarcerated in the more formidable prisons of the British type which bestrew the country?
Would the Minister have made the same remark this time last year?
Mr. Boland
Yes.
You would?
Mr. Boland
And did make it.
But you have released since then most of them.
Mr. Boland
I was referring to the majority of those who are there now. As far as I can see, the majority of those who are there now will have to stay there while the emergency lasts. There are about 300 gone out since last year.
I asked the Minister if he would have made the same remark a year ago and he said he would.
Mr. Boland
The Minister would say no such thing. I said last year that most of the men who were there then had the key in their own pockets.
Mr. Larkin
Did any of the 345 released break bond?
Mr. Boland
Several of them did— about 20.
A very small number, having regard to the number released.
Mr. Boland
A few men could do a lot of dangerous work.
It would not be 5 per cent. The Minister admits it would not be one in 20. I am not advocating a general jail delivery. I am quite prepared to admit that there may be some very dangerous elements among the remaining 209, but I cannot understand the attitude of the Minister in this undemocratic idea of an indeterminate sentence. The Minister says that these men will remain there for the remainder of the emergency.
Mr. Boland
As far as I can see, they will, if I am here.
That does not prevent them "having the key in their pocket".
Mr. Boland
I could not say that about these men. Certain of them I would not let out, but would keep them there, even after the emergency, while they are ready to kill people. I think we are bound to keep them there.
I cannot agree with the Minister at all in regard to this question in the way he puts it. I am arguing as an ordinary democrat and not as a vindictive politician. The Minister maintains that any men—I do not care what they are, whether they are Fascists or Republicans or anti-Republicans—in a democratic State may be dealt with in this way. I cannot see that the Minister has the right to exercise a power of indeterminate detention and say that as long as the emergency lasts these men can be kept there. Everyone knows that the last war ostensibly ended on the 11th November, 1918, but legally did not end until about 1923; yet "as long as the emergency lasts" these men will be detained.
Mr. Boland
As long as I have anything to do with it, unless they change, they certainly will.
The administration of justice has nothing to do with the Minister's personal opinions.
Mr. Boland
I have a personal responsibility in the matter.
Is it not your responsibility to bring those who have committed crimes to justice?
Mr. Boland
I do not wish the Deputy to think I am interrupting him now, but I would like to clear up that point. I do not think the Deputy can be so innocent as not to know that secret societies are working here and that evidence cannot be got against them. We know quite well what they are engaged at, but we cannot get evidence. In those circumstances, the Oireachtas gave power to the Government to intern those people, in the public interest. They are not brought to trial because we cannot get evidence, although we have the knowledge. It is in the full knowledge of that fact that the Oireachtas gave the Government power to intern these people.
Some of them have got sense after three or four years' detention.
Mr. Boland
Some of them have. If any of them change their outlook, and do not maintain they may kill anyone they wish to kill, I could do something about it; but as long as they maintain the attitude that they can put anyone they like to death and embroil this country in war, they must stay there.
There is good hope, then.
Mr. Boland
Let them change their attitude.
I am perfectly satisfied that the Minister, in his own mind, has a perfectly good and justifiable case. The difficulty I find is that he has not made that case quite clear to me, nor I am sure to many others. The Minister states that the detention of some of these men—not all of them— is to prevent our being involved in war. We have only the Minister's word for that.
Mr. Boland
We have more than that.
If we could have more than that, maybe it would satisfy us.
Mr. Boland
Surely the Deputy does not want it every time he speaks? He got it last July. Did I not read out the fact that these people actually declared war on England and carried it out in England? Does he not know that?
Did the Minister not let 345 of them out in the period?
Mr. Boland
Yes, but the people that remain are responsible. This is a long story: I will deal with the whole lot of it again.
Evidently the Minister is not aware of our point of view on this matter. I have said definitely that we do not ask for a general jail delivery. We do not ask to have these men set loose, in case there may be some truth or some justice in the Minister's ideas about them. We do not ask for a general release: on the contrary, I say, as a democrat, that it is of the nature of justice that men should not suffer indeterminate detention, no matter who they are or how bad they are, whether they are Ministers of the Crown or ordinary "five-eighths" in some subversive secret society.
It is all very well to talk about secret societies. They may exist, there may be members of them in this Assembly; for all we know, they may be in the Minister's own Department. There is a lot of "hooey" talked about the nature of these societies. The Minister has ample powers to deal with them; he knows quite well that he has the whole apparatus of the State to deal with them. Why should he continue this detention of internees in the way he does? That policy causes a great deal of disturbance and annoyance amongst many people in the country.
The Minister undoubtedly has been quite ready and courteous in dealing with anyone who approached him in regard to some of these internees. He has given every satisfaction and I am sure every Deputy who has approached him is satisfied with the way he has been treated. Every now and again, however, the Minister can say in regard to some specific case: "This man is a very dangerous man and we know the reason why he wants to get out, even on parole: he wants to shift a dump or to attend some particular staff meeting for the reorganisation of a subversive organisation." Deputies have been informed by the parents of these young boys who want to get out that the reason why they want to get out is that they have now got different views and want to go to work. Positions are waiting for them, and they want to take part in the ordinary economic activities of the country. That is the reason why we have on many occasions been raising this matter. That, however, is an entirely different thing from the general thesis which I wish to bring to the Minister's attention, and that is why he can stand over these indeterminate detentions.
The Deputy should not repeat himself.
I want to try to remove from the Minister's mind the prejudices which are held against some of those men. I am perfectly willing to concede that some of those men——
Mr. Boland
I hope the Deputy is not suggesting that I have a prejudice against anybody. I can assure him that that is not so.
With the permission of the Chair, I will have to repeat what I have said. The Minister has to rely upon the reports of local officers. He will admit that there are cases where there would be personal bias due to past political differences.
Mr. Boland
That might be possible.
I am not accusing the Minister at all—far from it. I want to try to get the Minister to overcome that in relation even to the remaining 209, to thin them down and leave him with the remainder of those who, he thinks, are responsible for attempting to involve us in war and bring them to whatever trial the interests, of justice demand. That is all we are asking. I think that as a democratic body we have the right to make that demand in a democratic assembly: that all those who are interned without trial should have the opportunity of defending themselves in the courts of the country, and particularly in the present period when the facts and figures given by the Minister prove that the country is in a peaceable condition. That is the position even though we have war raging all round us. The Minister should seize upon the happy conditions prevailing to liquidate this whole business, to strengthen the national morale and the united national effort against any possibility of this State being destroyed or disrupted from outside.
Mr. Larkin
I want to address myself to a remark that was made by an Independent Deputy who followed the same line of thought as that expressed by the Minister, at the same time explaining that he was not expressing his own personal opinion. The attitude of the Deputy was that there should never be an understanding between the different political elements in this country. He had made up his mind that any man who could say to himself that he had the right to use force should be restrained as long as he willed it. Is there anyone at the present moment who will deny that force has got to be used in every country under the sun, force that may be qualified in many directions? Yet, a Deputy will get up and say that people have to be restrained because they advocate force. I wonder what is the meaning and the application of language? Is there any man who at some time has not advocated the use of force? Because of their loyalty or disloyalty to certain factions, there are men who have come into power. They are going to express that power by saying to the other individual who has grown less weak in his power and force: "We are going to keep you under a system of tyranny and despotism that has not been equalled by anybody except the gentleman from Munich." I remember reading when I was a student that in 67 B.C. a gentleman named Caesar joined with another gentleman to overthrow the State. It was proved afterwards that Caesar was more guilty of intrigue and of the shedding of blood than was Catiline, the author of the famous conspiracy.
We have in this House men who have expressed views about their bitter enemies that are described in lurid passages available in published works to be had in any public library. I suggest that other men who do not hold the same point of view as those now in power may, even to-day, be correct in their viewpoint, but forces are against them. Surely, a man has the right to be judged by the elected representatives of his country. No individual, and no group of individuals, has the right to judge them possibly out of a guilty state of mind. I make no apology for those men. I have had occasion to talk to some of the released men and I suggest to the Minister that he should allow members of the House to go down and talk to those who are still being detained. The Minister should give to them the same opportunity that was given to those now in power when this country was held in subjection by an outside Power. Let communication be made with them and if they express themselves as being good, loyal sons of the State, then I say to the Minister that he would be justified in releasing them. I have spoken to some hundreds of the men released. The Minister knows himself that some who might be described as extreme men have acted loyally to the country. When they realised that they were being used by enemies of the country they changed their point of view. I know many of them and they are just as good patriots as any member of this House. I would like to know how many of them have broken their parole. If any man says that he is going to challenge the State, then let him take the penalty. I myself was in prison many times fighting for the de-classing of a class—for a class that was fighting for the right to live. I move to report progress.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again to-morrow.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m., until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 19th April, 1944.