The Deputy's intention is to deal with the figures in front of him and to ascertain, so far as he can, what services the community is getting from the Minister and his Department for the vast sum of money which is so casually asked for. Every head of a Department, introducing his Vote to Parliament and asking Parliament to salt the taxpayers for the cost of his Department, gives some brief survey of work done, of things accomplished, of plans and proposals for the future. This Minister, the headline for all the others, the man who should be most concerned about the moneys abstracted from the taxpayer, comes in here, and, in a brief sentence, asks for an increased sum, a sum never asked for before by anybody sitting in his position as head of that Department. If we do not get an explanation at the opening, let us have some explanation at the finish. Let us be told why this Department, with a country no greater in territory, with a country substantially smaller in population than it was ten years ago, requires £10,000 or £15,000 more from the taxpayer.
What is the justification for the increase every single year not only in money but in numbers? Is it because, on top, we are reaching a higher scale of incompetence which is reflected by requiring more assistants of one kind or another underneath, but inside, that Department, or is it that the increased ability, energy and watchfulness of the present holder of that high and responsible office is making more work for the people in that Department? Somewhere there must be an explanation and sometime this Dáil is going to stick its toes in the ground and refuse to give more money merely because more money is asked for, without any reason given, and sometimes even the troops behind the Minister will wake up to their responsibility to the taxpayers and will ask the questions I am asking.
Why should it cost more every year for the last ten or 15 years to run this Department? Why should that one Department, which has within itself no social services, cost more? Why should there be a greater number of assistants to wait on Minister Aiken than on Minister Ó Ceallaigh, Minister MacEntee or Minister Blythe? Why should the same amount of work require more people and cost more money? As the cost of that Department goes up, if we are to judge by the Book of Estimates, the vigilance of that Department goes down. The men in charge of the brake are getting more slack on the job and the brakes are becoming inefficient, until we have reached a point at which the brakes on expenditure are completely gone.
With regard to the Minister's administration of his Department, I want some information on a matter which appeared in the public Press within the last five or six days. I want to know the legality of the action taken by the Minister, and, further, whether the Minister's action is not in absolute conflict with and a defiance of the Constitution. I have no inside information. I have not been in touch with the person concerned or the organisation concerned, and I have been approached neither by the person concerned nor by the organisation concerned. We read in the daily Press that the Minister for Finance, as Minister for Finance, has sent an ultimatum to a high officer of the British Legion, apparently instructing him to vacate that office, or, presumably, to vacate his position in the Civil Service. According to the papers again, that civil servant has held that high office in the British Legion for a great number of years—I think 20 or 25 years was mentioned. If there was anything illegal, anything improper or anything irregular in the dual position he filled, that irregularity or illegality was there in a time of Minister Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh and Minister Seán MacEntee, and was never questioned or challenged.
Every Parliament has to be far more vigilant with regard to the democratic rights and constitutional freedom of small minorities than it has to be with regard to the democratic rights of big minorities or large majorities. This organisation is an organisation of men who went through terrible times together, an organisation for comradeship, an organisation run along the benevolent lines of all trying to help the one and each trying to help the other. The only offence the members of that organisation ever committed was that they fought with that valour and distinction which carried on the grand name of Irish soldiers down through generations and centuries for courage and bravery and valour. But they fought in a uniform which was not ours—we had no uniform of our own at that time—and they fought at the express wish of the majority of the elected representatives of this country at the time, of men who could claim, to a much greater extent, a mandate to express the voice of the people than any 49 per cent. or 50 per cent. of the electorate as represented by the present Government can claim at present. That was their offence in the eyes of the Minister. Now, when they are aged and small in numbers and with immense gaps in their ranks, now is the time for the bully to wield his stick; now is the time for the blackthorn of the thug to be used against a small and aged minority that deserves nothing but respect, support and understanding from the people of this country. The Constitution, under which we live and function, and the Constitution, under which they live and function, guarantees, amongst other pious phrases, the right of free association. What is the use in guaranteeing the right of free association to any person or people if they are simultaneously told: "If you exercise that right you will lose your livelihood"? This Parliament is not voting £1,700 a year plus cars, plus drivers, plus, plus, plus 100 other items to any particular individual to give him a position of power from which he can emit his political spite against any minority or group of people in this country. It is misusing the office and it is abusing the powers of the office. If those men, or the servants of this State, have not the right to join any association of old comrades, organised on political lines, in order to commemorate and review their experiences in the past and revive the old comradeship and friendship, then that clause in the Constitution is a sham and a humbug.
If that clause in the Constitution means anything at all it means that people, when they exercise those constitutional rights, must be protected from victimisation, from threats of loss of employment and must, above all, be protected from a Minister with the mentality and the outlook of the bigoted warped mind of the ornament that at present decorates the top of the great Department of Finance of this country.
