On a point of order, there are two very different matters included in this Estimate. One is the Commission on Place Names. The other deals with a matter which has been the subject of very considerable discussion in the House already. I therefore submit to you, Sir, that it would be desirable to have a separate discussion on each of the matters on this Estimate. I think it would be more satisfactory to have a discussion on the tribunal on the amendment down in my name and, when that has been disposed of, a discussion could be taken on the subject of the Commission on Place Names.
In Committee on Finance. - Vote 15-Commissions and Special Inquiries.
The amendment given notice of by Deputy Mulcahy deals with a definite and specific matter, and I think the procedure might be as follows: The Minister makes a statement on the Vote, after which Deputy Mulcahy moves his amendment, which amendment can then be discussed and disposed of by vote. The House can then proceed to deal with the other matters arising on the Vote. I think that would be satisfactory.
In the discussion on my amendment there may be others who wish to traverse the whole question of the proposal under the heading of inquiries.
The House will have to dispose of the definite point whether it is justifiable or right to grant a sum of £2,011 towards paying certain expenses of this tribunal.
I am looking for information. There may then arise the more general question as to whether any of the expenses of the tribunal should be paid at all.
You cannot have it two ways. If we dispose of the question as to whether certain money should be paid or not firstly, you cannot have a double discussion. If you start a discussion then on whether any money should be paid at all, inevitably the matter already decided would arise again.
I understood, Sir, you were ruling that the first discussion would be confined to the subject matter of my amendment. I do not wish my amendment to be restricted in discussion, but I think the type of discussion which is required on the proposal for the tribunal would be very much disturbed by a discussion on the Commission on Place Names, and the kind of discussion which would take place on the Commission on Place Names would be rather different if it were discussed separately.
That is precisely what I want. We cannot have three discussions. We cannot have, firstly, the amendment; secondly, the other moneys to be paid in costs, and, thirdly, place names. Dispose first of the moneys that it is proposed to grant for the tribunal. Apart from that, I was rather disturbed to hear the Deputy mention a discussion on the tribunal. The tribunal was set up by this House. It was a judicial body. Its decisions are not open to revision here, nor to criticism. The only point is whether or not certain expenses—I believe the tribunal granted none—should or should not be paid out of the Exchequer. That is the point. The tribunal was set up and adjudged on certain matters. We are not a revision court.
I should like to assure the Chair that I did not mean to disturb the Chair. I was only syncopating my remarks.
Very good. The first decision will be on whether or not these moneys should be paid. The Deputy's amendment is concentrating on one portion of that money. I shall put the question on that.
Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted, and 20 Deputies being present:—
An tAire Airgeadais (P. Mac Aodhagáin)
Tairgim:—
Go ndeonfar suim bhreise nach mó ná £4,750 chun íoctha an Mhuirir thiocfas chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31ú Márta, 1947, chun Tuarastal agus Costas Coimisiún, Coistí agus Fiosrúchán Speisialta.
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £4,560 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31st March, 1947, for the Salaries and Expenses of Commissions, Committees and Special Inquiries.
This Supplementary Estimate is required to provide for the expenses of the two bodies mentioned on the face of the Estimate, mainly, the Commission on Place Names and the tribunal of inquiry which was appointed pursuant to the resolution adopted by both Houses of the Oireachtas on the 5th June, 1946. The amounts concerned are £1,072 and £4,388, respectively, making a total of £5,460. Allowing for savings, the net additional amount required is £4,560.
The Commission on Place Names consists of a salaried director and 15 unpaid members, one of whom is chairman. Their task is to institute a comprehensive investigation into the original Irish forms of place names and to authenticate and record them for publication and official use. This will involve an examination of all the published work on Irish place names down to and including townland areas as well as investigations and researches in unpublished manuscripts and elsewhere. I should explain, perhaps, that this matter had been under consideration by the Government for some time before the war but action was suspended at the beginning of the emergency. It is obviously desirable that the work should not be further deferred. The Government are much interested in the work and they are very grateful to the eminent gentlemen who consented to act on the commission. The success of their efforts will be no small contribution to the Gaelicisation of our people and should prove of considerable importance in awakening a fuller appreciation throughout the country of the historical background of the nation. As somebody has said, our place names record not only historical events but the whole social life of our ancestors.
As regards the other body for which provision is made in the Estimate, no question about costs appears to have been raised when the motion for a tribunal came before the Dáil in June last but, in the Seanad, the fact that the Act under which the tribunal was being appointed made no provision for payment of costs did not pass without comment. The matter was, however, raised here by Parliamentary Question on the 23rd July, in reply to which I indicated that I proposed to have Dr. MacCarvill's and Dr. Ward's costs examined in the manner in which a bill of costs is examined in civil proceedings when some of the issues are decided in favour of one party and some in favour of the other, and to ask the Dáil to meet such portion of Dr. MacCarvill's costs as related to the hearing of the charges accepted by the tribunal and such portion of Dr. Ward's costs as related to the charges rejected. For the sake of brevity and convenience, I have used the word "complainant" in the Estimate to denote Dr. MacCarvill and, to whatever extent he is concerned, Mr. John MacCarvill also, and the word "respondent" to denote Dr. Ward.
Following the statement I made in the Dáil on the 23rd July, I invited the solicitors for the parties to furnish me with bills of costs if they wished to make a claim on the basis I had indicated. Bills of costs were duly submitted to me in response to that invitation and I asked the senior Taxing Master in the Four Courts to be good enough to examine the bills and to let me have a report showing the amounts appropriate to be paid on a solicitor and client basis in the light of what I had said in the Dáil. The solicitors for the parties attended before the Taxing Master, who heard them informally in explanation of their respective bills and examined all relevant documents and vouchers for outlay.
The Master has duly reported to me the amounts specified in the Estimate now before the House as reasonable and proper allowances in relief of the parties on the basis indicated. It will, of course, be appreciated that any payment which the Dáil may approve will be made on a purely ex gratia basis and not in discharge of any legal obligation. Apart from these ex gratia payments the Estimate contains provision for various other outlay incurred in connection with the tribunal, including the legal representation of the Attorney-General, expenses of witnesses, scrivenery charges, etc.
Since the Supplementary Estimate was presented, notification of a claim for costs has been received from a Dublin solicitor on behalf of a Liverpool firm which was legally represented at the inquiry. The claim will be examined in due course and if any payment falls to be made it will be met out of casual savings elsewhere on the Vote.
I beg to move the amendment standing in my name:—
That the Estimate be reduced by £2,011 13s. 0d. in respect of subhead F (2)—
—the amount proposed to be paid in respect of the expenses of what the Minister calls the "respondent".
I know that to a very large extent a certain sense of shame has been lost in the country as a result of the general type of Government administration that we have been used to for some years past, but I think that we sink to the lowest level that we have sunk yet when the House is asked to consider the demand that is made here in this Estimate. I do not know whether it is a greater piece of shameless insolence on the part of the respondent to present a bill to the Irish people for this amount—an account larger than that which has been considered by the Taxing Master —or for the Government, in the light of all that has happened, to ask an Irish Parliament to pass it and take this money from the taxpayers of the country.
Deputy McCarthy, speaking on the 14th February last, on another motion, said:—
"I know, of course, that if a division is challenged on the motion that under the Party system of government I will have to go into the Lobby against my own convictions. As a Deputy I often feel like one pulling against the current. It is so overwhelming that one has to go back and take another approach to his objective."
The Government may have their own reasons for screwing their courage up to presenting this to the House but I suggest that every Deputy sitting behind the Government front benches is in the position that he has to answer to himself and his conscience as well as to the taxpayers when he takes a decision upon whether the taxpayers shall be asked to pay £2,011 13s. 0d. to meet the expenses of the Parliamentary Secretary who was respondent in this inquiry.
There are a number of matters that might be opened on this Vote but I think that it is of importance that we would concentrate on this one thing. A tribunal was recommended here by the Government to both Houses of the Oireachtas as the proper type of body to investigate certain charges contained in a letter received by the Government by the complainant in this inquiry and the Taoiseach repeatedly, in his remarks to the House, at various stages of the discussion that took place in connection with the matter, emphasised that this tribunal was to be a fact-finding tribunal and we are simply concerned with the facts that have been found. In the report made by the tribunal certain facts have been brought out that have already been discussed here. When the report was presented to the House the Taoiseach endeavoured to avoid a discussion on it.
Subsequently a discussion took place, but that discussion took place before we could be told by the Government of the action they proposed to take in respect of the respondent as a result of the report of the tribunal or what action was going to be taken by any of the statutory or Departmental bodies that appeared to be involved in the facts disclosed by the report. Further, in so far as the respondent is concerned, the report discloses in paragraphs 17, 18, 19 and 20 that in the carrying on of the business of the Monaghan Curing Company considerable sums were withheld from the ordinary account books of the company and that they were pocketed by the directors and that they were not disclosed by the company for tax purposes. It was disclosed in paragraph 17 that £4,729 11s. 4d. was withheld from the company's accounts and was withheld from the review of the tax collectors and that of that amount £2,962 was the amount withheld by the respondent for himself both out of the accounts and from the purview of the tax collectors. Again, paragraph 20 showed that there were items deliberately omitted from the returns which the company from time to time was bound to make to the Pigs and Bacon Commission. In paragraph 22 it was disclosed that certain well-planned arrangements were made so that deliveries of bacon that were not being accounted for in the proper way could be delivered at times when the supervisors, whether of the Department of Agriculture or of the Pigs and Bacon Commission, were not on the alert.
Now the facts as disclosed were that large sums of money were being taken out of the business as profits at a time when there was very strict application of the control of profits on the one hand and control of wages on the other, due to emergency conditions, so that we have had the fact found that the respondent was taking excessive profits and taking excessive moneys when people were prevented from extracting profits out of their industry over a particular period: that an attempt was being made to defraud the revenue by withholding facts from the Revenue Commissioners: that an attempt was being made to avoid carrying out the regulations and the requirements of the Pigs and Bacon Commission in controlling the killing of pigs and the manufacture of bacon, and that the same attempt was being made to avoid carrying out the requirements and the laws of the Department of Agriculture in so far as they affected pigs and bacon and their quota-ing and their distribution at that particular time. The further fact was found by the tribunal that in purporting to give evidence in regard to these matters before the tribunal the respondent was guilty of perjury. In paragraph No. 23 the tribunal declares that it does not accept the evidence of the respondent to the effect that certain transactions that they were carrying out would be limited only to inferior or to damaged bacon, and in paragraph 24 the tribunal again bring out the fact that the respondent was guilty of perjury in purporting to give evidence in regard to the disposal of moneys regarding their cash sales.
In paragraphs 25 to 42 it is disclosed that, in the case of the position of the dispensary medical officer for Monaghan, a position that was subject to the administrative control of the respondent as Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government, from the period March, 1932, to July, 1935, a period during which he had to be absent from his work because of his position in the Department of Local Government, a young doctor was appointed temporary medical officer in his place. He was appointed the report says—
"upon the same terms as to salary and otherwise as those upon which the latter held the position."
That is to say, the Monaghan Board of Health and Public Assistance appointed a young doctor as temporary medical officer for the Monaghan district in place of the respondent and appointed him on the same terms as to salary and otherwise as the respondent previously held.
The report discloses that there was a separate arrangement between the respondent and the temporary medical officer by which all the cheques that were paid over to the temporary medical officer by the Monaghan Board of Health and Public Assistance were signed and passed over to the respondent, and that there was also a separate agreement between the temporary medical officer and the respondent, a type of agreement that this young doctor so reacted against that in July, 1935, he broke it. The respondent then went back and took up the position there and then, either by his own doing in the Department of Local Government, or with the approval and connivance of the Minister for Local Government, a change was made in the situation, so that, instead of the local body appointing a temporary medical officer to take his place, the local body continued paying the salary for the position direct to the respondent, but allowed the respondent to appoint a second young doctor in his place. Either on the Parliamentary Secretary's own authority, or by the authority of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health at that time, a change was brought about which obviated any possibility of rebellion on the part of the occupant of the position. He could either take the situation as it was or leave it, but he could not go into rebellion in the way in which the previous temporary medical officer had gone in July, 1935.
The report of the tribunal indicates that there was nothing contrary to law in what was done but, in so far as we here have any sense of decency and order, everything that happened there outrages our sense of decency and our sense of the way in which the work of the Department ought to be carried out. It outrages our sense of decency that a person occupying a Parliamentary office and controlling other positions in the country should be making a personal profit out of some position that is controlled by him in the country, although the work of that officer was being carried out by another. Impliedly, the report indicates what was brought out very clearly and definitely in evidence; that is, that some sales of diseased bacon were made to the Army, a proceeding that outrages the laws and the regulations of the Department of Public Health, of which the respondent was an officer. I am sure it outrages the whole policy and outlook of the Department of Agriculture, and it certainly must outrage the attitude that the Department of Defence and the Minister for Defence ought to have towards the strength and the care and the general condition of the Army.
All these things were brought out as facts. When dealing with the fact that the Government accepted the resignation of the respondent from the position of Parliamentary Secretary, the Taoiseach said, as part of a reply to Deputy Norton, on the 16th July, 1946 (Parliamentary Debates, column 850):—
"... the findings of the tribunal made it inevitable that he should no longer remain a Parliamentary Secretary. The public interest demands that the highest standard of conduct be maintained by those who occupy positions of trust and responsibility in Governmental administration. The punishment for any failure to maintain this standard is necessarily severe."
The Government accepted the resignation of the respondent from his position and the Taoiseach declared that the findings of the tribunal made it inevitable that he should no longer remain a Parliamentary Secretary, but yet, in spite of the fact that the tribunal, set up on the urging of the Government by a motion passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas to inquire into matters that were supposed to reflect upon the probity of an officer of Parliament, has reported in such a way that the Taoiseach can say that the findings of the tribunal made it inevitable that he should no longer remain a Parliamentary Secretary, the Government are now asking that we should agree that the taxpayers should be asked to pay £2,011 13s. 0d. for the payment of the legal expenses of the person who was so arraigned and found guilty. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, when this matter was discussed on July 11th, 1946, said (Parliamentary Debates, column 648):—
"I have stated that there follow from the publication of this report certain consequences. One of these consequences was intimated to the House by the Taoiseach when he read the letter from Dr. Ward."
—that is, the resignation—
"One further consequence is the proceedings in the ordinary courts, which will be instituted by the statutory bodies who have obligations in this regard."
I had indicated, when speaking earlier, that the Revenue Commissioners had a statutory responsibility to take action in respect of paragraphs 17, 18, 19; that the Pigs and Bacon Commission had a statutory responsibility to take action against the respondent in respect of paragraphs 20, 22; the Department of Agriculture in respect of paragraphs 22, 23; the Department of Supplies, probably, in respect of paragraph 22; the Department of Local Government and Public Health in respect of the diseased meat; the general circumstances and the dealings on the part of the Department with the Monaghan Board of Health in respect of the dispensary medical officership at Monaghan; that the Army should take action with regard to paragraph 23, and that action from the Attorney-General seemed to lie in paragraphs 23 and 24. We have seen or heard nothing of action by any of these statutory bodies or Departments, with the exception of one instance, and in that instance the Pigs and Bacon Commission, apparently, took some action against the Monaghan Curing Company, Limited. The proceedings were reported in the Press of December 11th, 1946; that is practically six months after the tribunal had reported. We find this report in the Irish Independent:—
"After prolonged legal argument, District Justice Lavery at Monaghan yesterday dismissed two summonses brought by the Pigs and Bacon Commission against the Monaghan Curing Co., Ltd., alleging failure to keep records of bacon sales and failing to produce them to an official of the commission.
Counsel for the company admitted that certain transactions had been omitted from the records, but contended that omission from records did not constitute failure to keep records."
During the course of the proceedings in the District Court, the justice asked:—
"Do you say that as long as they keep a record, no matter how bogus, that they could not be prosecuted for failure to keep a record?"
Counsel for the Monaghan Curing Company answered: "Yes". He had indicated previously that his defence was going to be very short, and he proceeded to say that the simple defence was, that as long as a record was kept it did not matter how bogus it was. What was the result of the one effort we know of by any statutory body with any responsibility in this matter taking any action? What was the result of that? We find it reported in the tail end of a report that appeared in the Cork Examiner on the same date. Mr. McGonigal asked for 50 guineas costs against the commission in each case, and Justice Lavery said he would only allow £25 in each case. One case was taken by a statutory body arising out of the report of that tribunal, and it was so conducted that the plea made in court by the respondent company was that as long as they kept a record it did not matter a damn how bogus it was. Although that was the case made, in order to repay them for the insult of being brought into court, the respondent company was given £25 costs in each case.
I do not think we should canvass the decision here.
I am speaking of facts.
Facts.
We are being asked to pay £2,011 13s. 0d. for the expenses of a person who was found to have committed actions which made it inevitable that he should no longer, in the words of the Taoiseach, be Parliamentary Secretary. We are shown the nature of these facts in the report, and the Government now tells us that we have to pay out this money, or to take this money out of the taxpayer's pocket, for the expenses of the respondent in the matter. The tribunal also told us that they and the statutory body working under them will have to do their duty, and the only piece of duty attempted has been attempted by the Pigs and Bacon Commission. But the Pigs and Bacon Commission have so done their work that instead of being found guilty, and fined by a court, the Pigs and Bacon Commission have to pay up to the company £50 for daring to bring them into court.
We are told from the proceedings in the District Court that Government business and the business of statutory bodies is so arranged, and the law is so drafted that it does not matter, so long as the Monaghan Curing Company keep an account, what they put into it. There is through the whole of these proceedings a systematic pilfering of the public purse. By the public purse I mean the people who pay for their bacon, who pay for the things they want, the things they eat and the things they buy. The report of the tribunal has shown that pilfering went on, that the taxpayers' pockets were pilfered, that more money had to be taken out of their pockets to make up for the withheld taxation payments that the respondent and the company to which he was attached should have paid. £225 was paid to the legal representatives of this company working for them in the District Court and that came out of the people's pockets. Now we are asked to take £2,011 more.
The whole business kind of stinks. We could get over, to some extent, the additional shock, that a person who has been found guilty of the things that this tribunal found the respondent guilty of, would have the neck to present a bill for £2,000 or more to the Government, but I am not able to get over the shock that brings the Minister for Finance, with his Party, apparently, behind him, again rubbing down their consciences by saying it is just the Party system that is responsible, and asking Parliament to pay the expenses of a person, who has been brought to answer for these things before a Parliamentary Tribunal.
I take the attitude that this is simply robbing the public purse and that there must be some queer affinity between both the members of the Government and the members of the Government Party with the respondent which enables them to come into the House and brazenly and openly ask that the taxpayers should pay this additional amount in connection with proceedings which, luckily, it was possible to have brought, no matter how they were brought, before a public tribunal in order to have the facts exposed. To pay this amount is simply to acquiesce in the public robbery which has gone on before.
Before we proceed with the debate, could the Minister give any justification for the payment of this amount on a solicitor and client basis as distinct from a party and party basis?
I made my opening speech; I will make a concluding speech.
What are the full costs?
We were not told.
What the Dáil is concerned with is what is on the face of the Estimate.
We want to know what proportion of the full cost is being met. Is it not important to know whether all the costs or the greater part are being met?
What the Taxing Master reported to me.
Are we meeting the full amount of the costs chargeable against Dr. Ward?
No.
What was the amount charged?
That is another day's work.
Can we not inquire what proportion of the costs incurred by Dr. Ward are being met by the public? I suggest it is a proper question. Are we financing him altogether, as to seven-eighths or only as to one-quarter?
What the Taxing Master reported.
Could we have the Taxing Master's report and the Bill?
The Dáil is dealing only with the Supplementary Estimate before it.
We are being asked to pay towards costs incurred by somebody. Surely it is a relevant matter to know how much is being put on the respondent, as he is called here, and how much on the State—in what proportion the costs were divided?
Has there been a taxation of these costs?
I have already informed the House on that point, as the Deputy would have heard, if he had been here when I made my opening statement.
As I understand it, the Minister said there was a report. That is not the question I am asking. Did anybody attend before the Taxing Master to oppose this bill or the items in it?
The Taxing Master did the job in his usual way.
That is not the usual way.
Did anybody attend to oppose the bill item by item in the same way as an ordinary bill being taxed by the Taxing Master would be opposed? That can be easily answered.
I should like to make it clear, for the benefit of those who were not here to hear the Minister's statement, that the only thing we were told was that the solicitors for the complainant and the respondent were invited to present their bills to the Taxing Master, that the Taxing Master made a report on these and that they were invited to present the bill on the basis of solicitor and client.
May we take it, therefore, as a necessary conclusion from that, that nobody did attend to oppose the bill on behalf of the Minister for Finance?
Is it usual that somebody should?
Always.
It is always done.
Surely the Minister will tell us that?
Apparently there is something more scandalous which has to be hidden.
You never know what you might find.
Little worse than this could you find.
I listened with care to the Minister's statement and I must say that it is an extraordinary procedure that the Estimate presented to the House contains the phrase: "Payments towards costs of complainant and respondent." The Minister said that, having received bills from the solicitors for both parties, he presented these bills of cost to the senior Taxing Master and that subsequently the Taxing Master had duly reported that they were reasonable costs on a solicitor and client basis. I think that at this stage the House is entitled to know from the Minister who made the decision and why it was decided that the basis on which the costs were to be taxed was a solicitor and client basis. As the Minister's legal advisers are aware, that is the highest form of costs payable. It is not the usual form of costs payable to a successful litigant, and it would be interesting to hear from the Minister the reasons why the costs were taxed on that basis and presented, as I gather from the Minister's statement, to the Taxing Master in an informal manner. The House is entitled, when voting money for any purpose, to know the basis on which the money is to be voted and that, if we have not an opportunity at the conclusion of the debate of making the matter clear, it will be made quite clear that the bill of costs and the basis on which these costs are drawn up will be either available to the House or to the Comptroller and Auditor-General and subject to examination by the Committee of Public Accounts. So much for the method adopted.
I am opposed to the payment of the costs of both the complainant and respondent in this matter. It may be that many people thought that the matters investigated by the tribunal appointed last year had concluded, and I am sure it will come as a surprise to some to find that not merely are we now faced with additional trouble but that the taxpayers are faced with a bill to meet a proportion of the costs on an indefinable basis of the complainant and respondent. I am opposed to payment in both cases on the ground that it is undesirable in a matter of this kind that public money should be devoted to paying the expenses of the parties involved. While it may be said that the complainant, until a certain stage in the proceedings, had no opportunity of ventilating the information he subsequently got, it certainly was available to the complainant's brother, portion of whose costs are being defrayed in the bill of £1,557, and it was his duty to make that information available, to bring it to the notice of the proper authorities, the Government or the individual State Departments, so that the matter might be fully investigated.
On the other hand, while the tribunal found—and I unreservedly accept everything the tribunal found—that Dr. Ward committed no breach of the Statutory Rules or Regulations or of the Orders governing the appointment and fulfilling of that appointment in so far as he acted as dispensary medical officer for the dispensary district of Monaghan, Deputies must, and, I hope, will, agree that while that is strictly accurate according to law, the course of conduct shown in evidence and to which the tribunal has referred, under which Dr. Ward had an arrangement with various substitutes at particular times whereby he paid these substitutes only portion of the salary payable to him as dispensary medical doctor for the Monaghan dispensary district, is not one which should commend itself to members of the House or one which members of the House should support.
It is one thing to say that a matter is being done according to regulations or according to strict statutory provisions, but it is an entirely different matter when a member of this House, who occupied the position of Parliamentary Secretary, had, during the period in which he was engaged in these official duties as a Parliamentary Secretary, an arrangement with substitutes whereby these substitutes were paid only portion of the full salary which should be paid to the occupant of the position of dispensary medical officer to the Monaghan district. I think that such a procedure, such a practice, or such a system is one which Deputies should not support.
It may be argued that, in matters of this kind, there has been no strict practice or no scheme or system adopted by the Dáil whereby a Deputy or Parliamentary Secretary would be guided. However that may be, I think all of us do not find the codes under which we adopt act or the practices which we adopt laid down strictly by statutes. We have at times to set up a code for ourselves or a rule of conduct to guide us in many affairs. I think it is not unreasonable to expect that only the highest code of conduct, the most upright and most honourable practices should be adopted by a Parliamentary Secretary in his dealings with the substitute when the Parliamentary Secretary was fulfilling his Parliamentary duties. Not merely should that have been the case in the ordinary way, but much more should it have been the case in this particular instance, because the person concerned was Parliamentary Secretary in the Department of Public Health and, if he himself had not direct responsibility for the sanctioning of a deputy in the dispensary at Monaghan, he was second to the Minister and he had the responsibility in that Department. The fact that the Parliamentary Secretary was dealing with matters pertaining to public health and that, under these matters, could come the sanctioning of the appointment of a substitute for a dispensary makes it all the more reason why Deputies should condemn and find objectionable the practice which obtained.
Now that the matter has been ventilated, we have a motion on the Order Paper to set up a special inquiry. It should not have been necessary for this House at this stage in its career to lay down or even consider laying down what the proper practice and procedure should be if Deputies had adopted the ordinary normal and decent code of conduct which might be expected of them. I think it is highly undesirable that public money should be devoted to paying the costs of either the complainant or the respondent. The tribunal, in paragraph 24, stated it did not accept the evidence of the said witnesses—the witnesses were Dr. Ward and Mr. Corr—that it was intended that the moneys resulting from such sales should be regarded as the property of the company and should be brought into account at a later date, and also found as a fact that the intention of the parties was that each such transaction should be concluded by the cash distribution of the proceeds arising therefrom. That amounts to the fact that the tribunal did not believe the evidence of the respondent on oath. Similarly, at the end of the report, the tribunal finds that certain charges made by the complainant were made recklessly and without any foundation in fact.
In view of these findings and of the fact that the matter from the beginning was discreditable, that the transactions carried on by the Monaghan Curing Company were discreditable and improper, and that the procedure adopted by Dr. Ward in the payment of his substitutes was one which should not find support in this House, I think it is undesirable and wrong and that the payment of these moneys cannot be supported. If the members of this House are to set up a proper and high code and standard of public and private conduct which the people of the country are entitled to expect from them, then the procedure adopted and the evidence which comes to light as a result of this tribunal will seriously prejudice the people's view of the conduct. Having secured a report from a tribunal of this kind in the terms in which it has been described by the members of the tribunal, I think the public will oppose and I think all Deputies who think on this matter must oppose any suggestion that the costs of either or both parties before this tribunal should be paid.
When the House is presented with an Estimate of this character, I think it is legitimate to ask whether the Government is gone crazy or whether those responsible for its introduction are living in the clouds. Never in my long experience in this House have I seen anything so outrageous as the audacity which the Government have displayed in bringing an Estimate of this kind before the House. Here we have a situation in which a Parliamentary Secretary—I am not concerned with the name or the personality of Dr. Ward, because my views would be the same if it were a Dr. Murphy in the same circumstances— engaged with other people in the killing of pigs and the curing of bacon and, from the report of the tribunal which investigated the activities of the Monaghan Curing Company, we can see quite clearly that not only were these gentlemen engaged in the killing of pigs and the curing of bacon, but they were engaged at the same time in the very pleasant task of feathering their own nests. They did so to an extent that shocked the public conscience in this country in a way in which it has not been shocked for a long number of years. In fact, the dignity and the reputation of this House were very seriously shaken by what has come to be known as the Dr. Ward affair. One would imagine, and certainly one would be entitled to imagine if the feeling of the public in this matter were consulted, that the Government would regard that escapade— and it was a very discreditable escapade—as something which should be marked by public opprobrium, by Governmental and legislative condemnation. But, instead, the public, who have been salted by these gentlemen engaged in the killing of pigs and the curing of bacon, are not only to have the privilege of paying for the tribunal, but they also have the privilege of paying the costs of the complainant and the respondent. As if that was not a sufficiently big blister on their back, they have to face up to the responsibility of paying the respondent a pension of £333 per annum, I think it is, for the rest of his life.
I do not know what kind of conception they have of public or private rectitude, but I put this to Fianna Fáil Deputies who dare to intervene in this discussion. Do they know of any country in the world where a Parliamentary Secretary, who managed to get a loan of a substantial sum of money from a public corporation financed by public money, and engaged for a long number of years in the killing of pigs and the curing of bacon, could manipulate an arrangement in such a way as a Parliamentary Secretary that he could find, on very advantageous terms to himself, a substitute in his capacity as dispensary medical officer, could even be found guilty by a tribunal on two counts—before the public he was found guilty on all counts—and then, having reached that stage, could get a pension of £333 a year for life? Then the public get the privilege of paying £2,000 for his expenses before the tribunal. Is there any country in the world where that could happen, except this country? Does anybody know of any Government in the world that would have the brazen audacity to bring in a proposal to pay £2,000 compensation to a Parliamentary Secretary who, to put it at least, has been sent down, on the top of giving him a pension of £333 a year? I do not know of any. Maybe the Minister for Finance knows about such a Government. Maybe some of the back-bench members of the Fianna Fáil Party know about it but I do not know of any well-governed country in the world where a Government would get away with such a brazen piece of roguery as this is. It is nothing else.
I am not at all interested in the personality of Dr. Ward. That is immaterial in a matter of this kind. But Dr. Ward was a Parliamentary Secretary. This House should have some regard for its honour and reputation. If it passes this Estimate it has no regard for either. It is a case of, "Get in first; get away with the loot as quickly as you can and with as much as you can. Nothing else matters so long as you have got a Parliamentary majority to machine this compensation through the House."
It is so long since I read the report of the tribunal that I forget the detailed figures involved, but from recollection I think the tribunal established that Dr. Ward and his bacon-curing friends managed to get away with about £12,000 profit in illicit and unreturned sales. Therefore they have managed to get away with all the profits made out of such illicit sales, a pension of £333 a year, £2,000 compensation, and apparently the Parliamentary Secretary is now so pouty that he will not even attend the Dáil, notwithstanding the fact that he gets an allowance of £480 a year for the expenses involved in attending the Dáil. I put it to the members of the Fianna Fáil Party—the Front Bench is so corrugated in these matters that it is no use appealing to the Front Bench—but I put it to the ordinary members of the Fianna Fáil Party, if they were not in office but were in Opposition, would not they rant up and down the country against this outrageous performance? Suppose this was a Fine Gael, a Clann na Talmhan or a Labour Parliamentary Secretary, would not the Fianna Fáil Deputies rant up and down the country about the outrageous performance of paying £2,000 compensation for a Parliamentary Secretary whose conduct was so disgraceful that he was compelled to resign by sheer force of circumstances? Yet I suppose the boys this evening will all trek into the Division Lobby in favour of paying another £2,000—it is not £2,000 but another £2,000—to a Parliamentary Secretary. I know, of course, they do not want to do it. If the Minister took off the Whips on this vote—and I challenge him to do it—he knows perfectly well he could not get a majority for this Estimate. It seems to me an extraordinary thing that at a time when an allegedly democratic Government is telling us it cannot increase old age pensions by 1d. per week, that it cannot increase the pensions of unfortunate widows who are living on noncontributory widows' and orphans' pensions of 2/-, 3/- or 4/- a week, in 1947, it can come in to an Irish Parliament, within the first 25 years of its existence, and ask it to vote £2,000 compensation to a Parliamentary Secretary who has had to retire in disgrace, in addition to giving him £333 a year pension on top of the thousands of pounds which were made out of the illicit sale of bacon.
I do not know what sort of conscience the Minister for Finance has in this matter. I know in other matters where money is involved he has a pretty difficult, concrete kind of conscience but he has managed to equip himself with a very elastic conscience in taking responsibility for asking the House to vote an Estimate of this kind. This is the most outrageous Estimate that has ever been introduced in the Dáil. It is not only a blister on the people's back, but shows a cynical disregard for the people's suffering at a time when they are finding it more difficult than ever to live, when they cannot buy fuel and are trying to live on pittances. At such a time, the Government reaches the loftiness envisaged by this Estimate and asks the House to vote £2,000 to a Parliamentary Secretary who in any well-conducted and well-governed country would not be at liberty to-day.
What is the basis for all this expenditure? Quite clearly, if there had not been a row between the Parliamentary Secretary and his manager things would have gone on in the same merry way as they had gone on when they were making £12,000 out of the illicit sale of bacon. Things had been going on quite well between them. Now and again there was a ripple on the water because the manager was not doing things in the way the Parliamentary Secretary wanted things done but, on the whole, apart from these occasional ripples, all the boys teamed in pretty well together, they divided the swag at the end of the year and they all got away with a pretty good sum of money. So long as all that roguery was taking place and so long as they managed to agree tolerably well, everything was all right. Then there was a row in the camp, a row among the gentlemen who were dealing in illicit bacon.
The manager was suspended and the manager's brother complained that his brother had lost his job—part of which was engaging in the sale of illicit bacon. A tribunal was set up and, as a result of the tribunal's inquiry, the Parliamentary Secretary was sent down. Now we get this bill for the expenses of the tribunal. Does not everybody here who is in his sane senses know that if the rogues had not fallen out there would not have been a word about this business, there would not have been any need for the tribunal and there would not have been any necessity for the country to blister itself with the expenses of this tribunal and the expenses of the complainant and the respondent? But even if rogues fall out and engage in illicit sales of bacon, that is no reason why the people ought to pay their expenses, as they are being asked to do on this occasion. We have the situation that rogues may fall out in private industry but if rogues happen to be engaged in legislative activities, the Dáil gets the privilege of paying their expenses in any litigation that is involved, in addition to the privilege of paying a pension of over £300 a year for life.
I do not know on what ground this Estimate can be justified. It seems to me to be the craziest thought that ever afflicted this Government that a sum of £2,000 compensation should be paid to a Parliamentary Secretary, plus a pension for life. I frankly confess that it is difficult to find words to describe such an outrageous proposal. I do not know what case the members of the Government Party will make for this Estimate but if the views of the ordinary members of the Government Party to whom one talks about this business were allowed to prevail in a division, I am certain that the Government could not get a majority for the Estimate. If the Minister will take off the Whips, he will realise that there is no approval for the Estimate. So far as the public are concerned they regard it as an outrageous performance and it seems to me that the Government itself has approached this whole matter in a spirit of complete indifference to the dignity of this House, a complete indifference to its own responsibility in the matter by trying to pull through this House a Vote to pay the expenses of a complainant and respondent in a case which would not have come before the public gaze at all were it not for the fact that these people, apparently having prospered pretty well as a result of their illegal transactions, subsequently fell out. Because they did the public has to pay not merely for their illegal transactions but for the expenses of the litigation involved, and the Minister ought to take his Estimate back; he ought not to enrage public opinion, as he is doing, by the introduction of an Estimate of this kind. In my opinion it is a most shameful performance and one which I think the Government will regret, not merely in its approach to the whole problem but because of the public reaction against this detestable procedure.
Not merely the very fact that this Estimate has been introduced, particularly in so far as the costs of Dr. Ward are concerned but also the contemptuous manner in which the Minister has thrown this Estimate at the House and at the taxpayers deserves the strongest condemnation of this House and of the people. The Minister, in his opening address, gave no justification whatever for the payment of Dr. Ward's costs. He made no effort whatever to make any case for this unusual Estimate and this unusual procedure. I would have thought that the House was entitled to the fullest information in connection with this matter and the House, in a matter of this kind, is representative only of those people who have to pay this bill. When we asked a few moments ago for the bill, for information in connection with the bill, the Minister's contemptuous observation was that he had dealt with that in his opening speech. I took occasion since then to find out if the Minister had in fact made any justification whatever for this Estimate or had made any case for Dr. Ward's costs or given any grounds why the taxpayers should have had to foot this bill and I am informed by my leader, General Mulcahy, that no such justification of the case was made.
The manner in which this Estimate has been introduced, therefore, is contemptuous of this Dáil and contemptuous of the taxpayer and deserves the greatest possible censure. People are entitled to know why they are being asked to pay this bill, why it should be paid and why a departure should be effected from what is the normal procedure in reference to the payment of costs of Government officials. If an unfortunate Civic Guard is sued for something which he is supposed to have done in excess of his duty, though in the course of his duty, what is the attitude of the Department of Finance towards his costs? The general rule is that the unfortunate Civic Guard has to pay the bill for the action himself, and if at the end of it all the Minister for Finance is satisfied he will pay him something towards his costs. There is no rule that public officials are entitled to be indemnified against costs which they necessarily have to expend in connection with defending themselves in actions as private individuals in reference to their official actions. But here in this case, where there has been a scandal which shook this country and which not merely shook the country but almost took away the basis of popular support of popular institutions in this country, the people are asked to pay, without any explanation, without any case whatever being made in justification, but contemptuous observations on the part of the Minister for Finance, on relevant questions in the course of the debate, to members of this House.
The attitude that we take is that we are agreeable to the payment of the expenses of the tribunal, the expenses of the Attorney-General, the small general expenses of the officials and of Dr. MacCarvill. Unlike the Minister, we are prepared to give our reasons for that. We do not contemptuously demand payment from the people, as the Minister for Finance does or tries to do here, when he has no case to make. We will give our reasons for the attitude we are adopting.
The first reaction that I personally had when I saw this Estimate was that it should be completely opposed; that there were no possible grounds on which the taxpayer should be asked to foot this big bill in order to indemnify either the Government or their officials or the persons involved from costs incurred in connection with clearing a Government member from a grave public scandal and getting rid from public life of a person who has been declared unfit and found unable to occupy the position that he has held for some years.
It seemed to me, however, that there was a case to be made for the payment of official expenses, the Attorney-General's expenses and, lastly, the expenses of Dr. MacCarvill. I arrived at the conclusion, myself personally, that Dr. MacCarvill's expenses might be paid on principle after some serious consideration. In agreeing to the payment of the Attorney-General's fees, which are very small in comparison to the total amount of this Estimate, amounting as they do to some £94 10s. 0d., I want to make this comment: that it is a small amount and I wish it were larger. I would have thought that it was the duty of the Attorney-General, as the Chief Law Officer of the Government, to conduct the proceedings on that inquiry and there ought to have been more expenses for him and less for Dr. Ward, and less for Dr. MacCarvill—that it was the duty of the Attorney-General, as a representative of the public, to probe and press and bring before the members of that tribunal every possible piece of evidence. His counsel has stated that they were there to give every possible help. What help they gave is not for me to say, but I do say that in my view the duty of the Attorney-General was to be there as the prosecutor, and not leave it to Dr. MacCarvill's prosecutor, without access to the files, to put before the tribunal all the facts in connection with this matter.
So far as Dr. MacCarvill's costs are concerned I agree to a very large extent to what Deputy Norton has said. I expressed my views on the findings of the tribunal when their report was being considered in this House and I expressed them, I think, in no uncertain way: that this matter arose because Dr. MacCarvill's brother, Johnny, was dismissed from his job. Further, the principle on which I base my support of payment of Dr. MacCarvill's costs is this: that we know that there is in Government circles considerable corruption and jobbery. This is the only case that has been found out. We want to make it clear that any private individual of this State, any citizen, who gets himself into the position that he has got information which will expose that jobbery or corruption will not be exposed to Government vindictiveness and have to pay the costs of an inquiry of this kind. A citizen who, for whatever reasons, private or personal, brings a matter to the attention of the Government in such a way as to force it to expose a scandal does a public duty. In doing that public duty he ought to be indemnified, not merely against some of his costs, but against the entire of his costs. If a citizen does his duty bona fide and the result is that a corrupt Minister or a person who occupies a Ministerial position is got rid of, he has done a very great service to the people and to the State and he ought to be paid all his costs. For that reason, and for that principle alone, I subscribe to the payment of Dr. MacCarvill's costs.
But on what grounds can it be justified that the State or the taxpayer should pay the costs of Dr. Ward? The Minister has given none, and I can see none. Not merely has there been no justification for the payment of his costs, but the Minister has given no justification for the method that he has adopted of giving to Dr. Ward solicitor and client costs. The ordinary litigant who goes into court and successfully defeats an opponent is given what are known as party and party costs, which are taxed by the Taxing Master on well recognised principles but which do not, in frequent cases, indemnify the successful litigant against all the costs he has incurred in the successful suit. A litigant may employ a leading counsel, or two or three, and the Taxing Master may take the view that one was enough and he taxes the costs accordingly. If a citizen wishes to employ expensive or additional counsel, that is a matter for his own pocket.
Why, in this case, should there have been adopted the practice of giving solicitor and client costs? We would have expected that in opening the Estimate the Minister would have justified giving any costs to anybody, either to Dr. MacCarvill or Dr. Ward. He has not done that but, if he did, he ought to have given cogent, conclusive reasons why this unusual method of giving an unsuccessful litigant, a man who has been found guilty of a grave public scandal, solicitor and client costs, costs that are only given to a successful litigant. We have the spectacle of an unsuccessful litigant, who has to leave a public position by reason of the findings of the tribunal, getting solicitor and client costs. That is not good enough. There is no justification for any costs. There is no reason why solicitor and client costs should be given to an unsuccessful litigant.
The position has to be brought one stage further. The taxation of the costs is unopposed. The Minister, in answer to a question put to him earlier in the afternoon, would not even say that there was nobody opposing this bill of costs. When a bill of costs between two private litigants comes to be taxed the Taxing Master, an independent party, has before him a bill of costs drawn up by an expert costdrawer and presented on behalf of the successful party. Each and every item of that bill of costs is scrutinised by the Taxing Master. Any item that is deserving of opposition is opposed on behalf of the person who has to pay the costs. That procedure was not adopted in this case. Apparently we are to infer from the lack of information, the refusal of the Minister to give information, that a bill of costs was prepared, but by whom we do not know. The Minister will not tell us by whom it was prepared; he will not show us the bill or give us the amount of that bill. It was prepared by an unknown person on behalf of an unsuccessful litigant. That bill was sent to the Taxing Master and, without anybody opposing it, it is presented to the public for payment. There is no reason given for the costs, no case made for solicitor and client costs; there is no opposition to the bill of costs and no statement by the Minister indicating the nature of the original bill which we are now asked to pay.
Have I in any way overstated the case, and do I overstate it now when I say that the Minister has been contemptuous of the House and the taxpayer? A Civic Guard may be brought into court because in some case he uses more force than is necessary. He has to pay in order to defend himself. The Minister for Finance says: "Go ahead and we will see what happens." Frequently they refuse to pay the expenses of the local officers concerned. The man who has been dismissed, or who has resigned in circumstances equivalent to dismissal from his position as Parliamentary Secretary, although he successfully defended himself at local government inquiries, has had to pay his own bill.
Did anybody pay Dr. MacSweeney's costs in the Cork Street Inquiry? Who paid the costs of various officials who have had to appear in expensive local government inquiries within the last few years? Not one of these men, who were officials under the control of Dr. Ward, had their costs paid for them. But a man who has been found guilty of conduct amounting to a grave public scandal—his costs are to be paid on the solicitor and client basis and the bill of costs is unopposed. The scandal of Dr. Ward's dismissal is resurrected and underlined and emphasised by the action of the Minister in bringing in this bill of costs.
In the course of the Minister's observations introducing this Estimate, something was said which appears to suggest that, in the discussion of this matter, some of the Fine Gael leaders in the Seanad declared themselves in favour of the Estimate. I wish it to appear in the records of this House that there is no foundation for any such suggestion; that there is no truth or basis for such suggestion. No discussion whatever, on the Report of the Ward Tribunal, took place in the Seanad. The only discussion in the Seanad was on the 5th June, 1946, on the motion to set up a tribunal. That discussion is reported in Volume 31, No. 22. The only two speakers from the Fine Gael benches were Senators Sweetman and Hayes. Senator Sweetman was the first to inquire about the question of costs. He inquired from the Taoiseach if the members of the tribunal would have the power to state, or even to recommend, whether or not an unsuccessful party engaged before the tribunal should pay the costs.
The Taoiseach indicated, after an intervention in the debate, that the tribunal would not have any power to pay the costs or to direct any party who came before the tribunal to pay the costs of any other party. There is the declaration of the Taoiseach. He did not say that the Government was going to pay any costs or would get the taxpayer to pay anybody's costs. What he said appears in column 1950:—
"I think the present position under the Act is that the State bears the expenses of the tribunal, as such, but that individuals who are represented before the tribunal bear the cost of that representation."
There is the official view of the Taoiseach in introducing this motion in the Seanad, that anybody who came before that tribunal, howsoever they came to appear there, ought to bear his own costs. There was no suggestion that the Government would force the taxpayer, through a vote of this House, to pay anybody's costs. There is no suggestion even that it might have been a proper thing to do, that the Government would ask—although possibly the tribunal had no power under the statutory constitution to direct—anybody to pay the costs.
The Government could have asked this tribunal, which has sifted the evidence and made a report, to make a recommendation and to say what their view would be on the question of costs. Such a recommendation would carry weight, coming from the three high judicial personages who formed that tribunal. That was not done. If such a recommendation had been made, I feel quite confident that there would be no recommendation for the payment of anybody's costs on a solicitor and client basis. Such recommendation, if it had been made, at least, would have given some reasons, and the House would have the advantage of knowing the views of these judicial personages, who heard the evidence, sifted it and made a report, as to liability to bear costs, or whether the taxpayer should help any of the parties in the dispute before the tribunal to bear the expense of their appearance at it.
In fact, Senator Sweetman intervened and suggested that if the tribunal was satisfied that any party, by appearing before it could be of assistance, that party should have his costs. That was the Senator's suggestion. It was a matter for the Government and not for the tribunal. In column 1953, Senator Sweetman said:
"I would suggest that it should be left to the tribunal to decide whether the submission of the person concerned had been of assistance or had not and, if the tribunal decided that the submission was of assistance, I think the man concerned should not be out of pocket in regard to it."
In columns 1962-63 Senator Hayes said:
"The tribunal has no power to award costs compulsorily, as the High Court has. The tribunal has power to make a report to the Minister and to state it thinks that particular costs should be paid. If the tribunal were making that report, I am perfectly certain that the Taoiseach or anyone else would at once agree to pay those costs and the Dáil would feel bound to agree to a Supplementary Estimate for that purpose. The tribunal, however, only makes that as a recommendation and has no legal power to assess costs."
This tribunal did not make any recommendation with regard to costs and the Minister for Finance, in his contemptuous utterances, has made no case for these costs. In these circumstances, without going over ground already travelled in discussion on the report, without again emphasising the great public scandal that has been caused by the operations of the gentleman who has disappeared from the Government, we suggest that no case whatever has been made by the Minister, in his contemptuous attitude, for the payment of costs, and this House ought emphatically repudiate it.
I had not intended to take part in the debate, but the references of my friends, Deputy Mulcahy and Deputy Norton, when they stated that no back bencher of Fianna Fáil would, induce me to do so. Their suggestion was that no member of the Fianna Fáil Party would support the payment of these sums. I rise as one member, as a back bencher, to do so.
That was not the suggestion.
I meant a lay member.
The Deputy also said that the Whips were on.
I support this payment and I do so because it is right and proper. I am sure Deputies will accept that assurance from me. The position as I see it is that this House asked that a commission be set up to inquire into a certain complaint. The commission was set up and a report was furnished, and it is now a question whether this House should pay the expenses of the party involved. I think it would be an intolerable situation if a complaint could be made against any high official, and when an investigation was ordered, that the official would be left to pay enormous expenses. My friend, Deputy Costello, has described the respondent as an unsuccessful litigant. I do not think it is correct to describe either party to this lamentable proceeding as an unsuccessful litigant.
He has been very successful now.
There was no clearcut decision in favour of one or the other.
There was.
Certain findings were in favour of the respondent. I do not think that will be denied. Certain findings were also in favour of the complainants. In that state of affairs I think it is only right and proper that a portion of the costs, as near as they can be estimated, on parts of the issue on which they were successful should be paid to each party. Deputy Costello said that he thought the Attorney-General should have been the prosecutor at the tribunal. I think that was a matter for the learned judges. If they agreed with his view they would have asked for the Attorney-General.
The whole procedure was in their hands. Apparently they were satisfied with what happened. It is a pity the tribunal did not make a recommendation for costs. It would have saved this lamentable debate in the House. I am sure my friend Deputy Norton was rather appalled at the costs, but when you have proceedings like these in the High Court and eminent counsel, senior and junior, their fees must be paid. I would be the last to say that the fees paid were excessive. If you want to get advice you must pay for it. Looking at the report I find that each party was represented by two senior counsel and one junior counsel. There was nothing extravagant in that.
Why should the public pay?
That is the ordinary representation, in any case in the High Court. The Minister informed us that he referred the bill to the Taxing Master. Deputy Costello complained that there was no solicitor there to oppose the bill before the Taxing Master. Again I say that was a matter for the Taxing Master. If he thought there should be a solicitor to oppose he would ask for one. That is common practice. If the Taxing Master thinks a bill should be opposed he would require some solicitor to be appointed to come before him and to go into the items in detail. That is a matter within his discretion. When the Taxing Master gave a report as I take it he did, I think that is the common practice.
As to whether there should be party and party costs or solicitor and client costs, I do not think it matters very much, because, from my knowledge, the difference between the two is very little. The costs of the three learned counsel and one solicitor on each side would be the ordinary normal items, and I do not think there would be anything in the costs of these transactions which would be what are called solicitor and client costs to any great extent. Party and party costs are not awarded unless one party to the litigation is paying the other party's costs, and if costs are awarded out of any fund, they are awarded on what is called a solicitor and client basis.
I will not bother the House further with these details, with which only lawyers are familiar, but, in supporting the payment of these sums out of taxation, I believe I am doing what the learned judges would have done if the question had been referred to them.
Why was it not?
I do not know anything about that.
Because they would not have recommended it.
I believe they would have made an award of costs on the basis set out in the Estimate and, because the House ordered the inquiry, it is only just and reasonable that some part of the costs of the parties to the inquiry should be paid.
There is one item I welcome in this presentation to the House by way of an Estimate in respect of this tribunal, that is, the small sum which is set out in it as an allowance to the registrar, of £30. Speaking as one who was present during the proceedings in this court, I want to pay a tribute to that individual. We are accustomed in the courts to having very efficient activity on the part of court officers, but that particular registrar gained the admiration of everybody by the way in which he indicated he had gone through all the relevant documents, by the speed with which he was able to produce any one document when it was called for and by his general handling of the very heavy side which documents represented in that case. In so far as the small payment being given to him as an extra allowance for acting as registrar is concerned, my only regret is that it is not bigger.
So far as the payment of this bill is concerned, I want to oppose it thoroughly. I can see a difference being made between an allowance by way of part payment of costs in connection with the complainant and those in connection with the respondent, but it is the matter of the respondent which will touch the public most. During the course of the inquiry, a great deal of time was taken up in talking about the tainted bacon which came from the Monaghan Curing Company. It was alleged on one occasion that it had been found possible to get bacon that was so tainted that it was glistening with slime sent off for consumption by members of the Defence Forces. The whole attitude of the Government and their supporters, not excluding the last speaker, can, I think, be put in that phrase—the whole thing is tainted, it is glistening, it is a slimy performance.
Will people remember what happened in this matter? The Taoiseach came here one day at 3 o'clock and, after Questions, read for us letters he had received from the brothers MacCarvill. What he had done before that was that, round about 12 o'clock on the day on which he was going to make an announcement, he called some of the Party Leaders together and told them that he intended to make some pronouncement, but he did not show the letters, so that those who came in here were faced with a proposal to set up this tribunal but had no real opportunity of making up their minds on the issues involved. The result of that was seen in the discussion, in which members belonging to the same Party had different views, and even the Division on the proposals to set up the tribunal showed some Fine Gael members voting for and some voting against, and I think the same applied to the other Parties.
Then we waited. I go back to what the Taoiseach said in connection with the necessity for this tribunal. His great desire was speed, to get this thing finished and done with. There was work of great public importance on which the Parliamentary Secretary was engaged and it was necessary to get that work pushed through, and it was therefore necessary not to wait for the law's delays, or until libel actions had been fought out, and not to wait for criminal proceedings against the Parliamentary Secretary or for whatever proceedings the Revenue Commissioners or the Department of Supplies might bring against him. "Let us roll it all into this tribunal as a preliminary and see what they say." In the Seanad, the Taoiseach carried his proposal with the definite statement, amounting to a guarantee, that individuals who were to be represented before that tribunal would bear the costs of their representation. The State was going to bear the expenses of setting up the tribunal and all the incidentals connected with it, but the parties were to bear their own costs. On that, the tribunal was set up both by this House and the Seanad.
Then we had the famous 10th of July episode, when, rising in his place here about 10 minutes before the end of the day's sitting, the Taoiseach attempted by what Deputy O'Higgins described next day as a quick contemptible, unworthy and petty manoeuvre, to get his statement made and into the newspapers before there was any discussion. It was only because all Parties resolutely stood out against it—other than Fianna Fáil— that we were enabled to get a discussion next day which ranged over the whole report. To-day, we get still the same tainted performance. The Minister comes in with an Estimate. I have also consulted my colleagues as to what statement was made and what arguments were used with regard to it. Deputy O'Connor has put forward better arguments—poor and all as they are——
Thank you.
I am going to deal with them, but, poor and all as they are, they are better than anything the Minister said in an attempt to get this matter passed through. Deputy O'Connor tells us that he approves of these sums being paid. I presume he is as much in the dark as we are on this side as to what fraction of the costs are being paid, or has he been let into that secret? The House does not know whether the £2,000 odd represents the full costs which Dr. Ward had to bear in this matter. We are simply asked to pay the £2,000. The best argument Deputy O'Connor has put up is that it is wrong to treat these two people as if one was a successful litigant and the other unsuccessful. He says that they both won on certain issues. Deputy O'Connor knows well the practice in, say, the criminal courts of charging a man on two or three charges. A man is brought up for larceny and added to that charge is a charge of receiving. He finds himself acquitted of the larceny charge but found guilty of receiving. Nobody thinks that he is a successful litigant because he has got away from the more serious charge of larceny.
The fact of the matter is that the Taoiseach brought this whole business before the House on the basis that it was a matter reflecting on the conduct of the Parliamentary Secretary as such, and what is the result of the inquiry? The Parliamentary Secretary, as such, disappears. Was he a successful litigant by any standard Deputy O'Connor knows of? He was found completely and entirely guilty of the main charge put forward in this correspondence. So far as this House is concerned, in connection with his duties as Parliamentary Secretary, he was found guilty by this House and by public opinion in relation to his manoeuvring with the doctors who were under his control. He used his position of public confidence and trust to get himself private gain. If it is said he is a successful litigant, I will separate the words. He was successful in his tactics, but will anybody tell me that he was a successful litigant in so far as his conduct was paraded through the tribunal to the public? I have said that, when the Taoiseach was bringing the matter before the House, he, time and time again, emphasised that the matters which were being made the subject of inquiry by this tribunal were matters of which he took cognisance because of Dr. Ward's position. In the debate on 5th June, 1946, at column 1336, he said:
"I am interested as head of the Government in the aspect of that matter which casts any reflection upon Dr. Ward or upon his conduct as Parliamentary Secretary."
At column 1337, he repeats:
"I am anxious about anything which would reflect on him as being a person not proper to hold such a position."
Later, at column 1346, he said:—
"We cannot leave out the fact that Dr. Ward is not an ordinary citizen; he is a Parliamentary Secretary."
At column 1348 he said:—
"We cannot have it every way. In this particular case, it is Dr. Ward as Parliamentary Secretary who is impugned. I would not have got the letter and the Government would not have got the letter except it related to a Parliamentary Secretary who was appointed by the members of the Government on my nomination."
In the same column he repeats once more that a letter such as that is impugning Dr. Ward as a Parliamentary Secretary. He was asked was he trying to take away this man from the protection of the courts simply because he was a Parliamentary Secretary and he said, no, but that the whole gist of the matter was that the man attacked was in such a position. Then he said that the terms of reference were to investigate and report upon the allegations contained in the letter, and stated later, in answer to a question, that the tribunal was to investigate the allegations contained in the letter. Was not the gist of all that that Dr. Ward was being attacked as a Parliamentary Secretary, that it was his conduct as such that was being impugned? That is what I want inquired into.
What are the findings on this matter? Deputy O'Connor made an attempt, which I suppose other people will try to make, at segregating these charges. I say that he is found guilty of all the charges relating to the Monaghan Curing Company. I say that as Parliamentary Secretary he was found guilty of discreditable and dishonourable conduct in the way in which he handled his position as Parliamentary Secretary in regard to the men serving under him and that he used his position to get private benefit out of that public position.
Then remember what has been said already by Deputy Mulcahy. There was a charge, not made because it could not naturally be made ahead, but which eventually occurred in the course of the hearing. Does Deputy O'Connor agree with the phrase in which the tribunal in fact found the Parliamentary Secretary and Mr. Corr to be people whose word was not to be believed on their oaths? This was that what they gave on oath as evidence material to the proceedings had all the ingredients of perjury. That is not a charge which was formulated by Dr. MacCarvill and his brother, because they did not know how these two men would behave. The finding of the tribunal is that clearly they did not believe them, and they were both sworn.
When you turn to the schedule to the report, amongst the list of documents there is a list of sums of money on page 8 which shows the proceeds of the cash sales stated by Mr. Joseph Corr to be held in a deed box in the Munster and Leinster Bank in Monaghan. That is the case that Mr. Corr and Dr. Ward made—that they had taken these sums from time to time but that they only related, first of all, to their private supplies of bacon, then that they related only to bacon which was likely to be tainted and, afterwards, that they related to bacon which was tainted, but which could be got rid of, even though it had to be forced down the unsuspecting throats of the Army. The case was made that these moneys would be paid back again into the company, that they would pay tax on them sometime. But that was not going to save them from the main finding of the tribunal against them. They said that one day they would bring the money back and it would be introduced into the company's account and then they would pay tax on it.
Mr. Joseph Corr went into the witness-box as an adherent of Dr. Ward in the case and told a story which by itself damned the whole case made on behalf of the Parliamentary Secretary. This man, who had these little sums in a deposit-box in Monaghan and who had looked at them so often that the pieces of paper on which he had put down the sums had got so tattered and torn and obliterated that there was no good in producing them because the court would not understand them, made out from these almost defaced bits of paper a list and then produced the list in court. A more blatant piece of perjury was never brought before a court. He was the associate and, I think, the main witness on whom Dr. Ward was relying.
Does anybody still persist in saying that these are two litigants, that one got a verdict on certain points and that the other got a verdict on other points? If that is to be stated, let us hear it stated clearly and let us have the points detailed, because I assert definitely that the whole basis of the tribunal's finding on the legal matters involved was dead against Dr. Ward and, so far as the legal matters on which the court could pronounce when brought forward before them were concerned, it was conduct dishonouring and discrediting the Parliamentary Secretary and those who appointed him.
I asked questions afterwards arising out of these findings, because to my mind it is unfair that the whole of the odium should settle upon Dr. Ward. I wanted to know what supervision there was by way of medical or veterinary inspection of the Monaghan Curing Company. I wanted to know what effort was made to see that diseased and bad bacon did not get to the Army. I tried to find out what supervision there was over the company whose fraudulent record was already before the Government on cases taken in the court. I tried to find out whether the Government were aware of the fact that Dr. Ward purported to resume medical practice at a certain time. Again I got a series of the most amazing evasions that, I suppose, has ever been given in a pretended reply to a Parliamentary question. I was told by the Minister for Local Government that there were no records to show that Dr. Ward had resumed his practice. The Minister told me he did not know whether his predecessor as Minister for Local Government had been advised of it by Dr. Ward. That was a man whom he was meeting every day at Government meetings, and he could not get from him the information as to whether or not Dr. Ward had verbally told his predecessor that he was resuming practice.
The case had been made that Dr. Ward had taken up practice and an attempt was made in a limited way to find out how far documentary evidence bore that out, but the court found itself up against a stone wall. A young officer from one of the Departments, when asked about his knowledge of the documents, said that he had only seen them the day before. When I queried that matter, I was told—an amazing bit of luck for Dr. Ward—that the records, such as they were, had been destroyed in 1942 because of the demand for waste paper. The man who was Minister for Local Government could not ask Dr. Ward whether he was resuming practice and the documentary evidence was destroyed.
Then we are told there was no secrecy. That is what the tribunal reported about this relationship as between Dr. Ward and his medical colleagues. When we tried to find out was there any publicity, there is no record produced to this House to show that, documentarily or orally, anything was said by Dr. Ward as to what he was doing with these two doctors. Remember that Dr. Ward had been Parliamentary Secretary since, I think, 1932 and enjoyed a salary of £1,200. He had also a free motor car and he had the benefit of getting all the petrol he required to take his family from Howth into school and take himself on whatever visits he wanted to pay to his business in Monaghan; so that he was enabled, with Government acquiescence in the use of this car, to do the double job of being Parliamentary Secretary in charge of public health and, at the same time, to defeat the interests of the public health by his escapades with tainted bacon in Monaghan. He got petrol to do that and he got a free motor car. In addition to that, the tribunal finds that his share of the undisclosed amounts came to almost £4,000. It is £4,000 on which he did not pay income tax, so far as we know, and he has not yet been asked to pay income tax, so far as we know, on these amounts. He had, say, £1,200 a year, a free car, he was allowed to set himself up in what was a closed business, and he goes into the closed business, he, a medical man, with no previous experience of curing bacon and his associates are these men—Mr. MacCarvill, whom he parades before the tribunal as a drunken fellow, lying on his bed in the hotel, not attending to the business, and Mr. Joseph Corr who was, as he described, only a sleeping partner in the business. Some way or another that concern, without any experience behind it, either in the management or directorship, made the sums of money that the tribunal found and he got, not merely the benefit that was shown on the accounts, but the extra undisclosed benefits to himself. As Deputy Norton points out—and it is a matter that must be borne in mind —for doing all that, and being found guilty on some heads at least by the tribunal and, as I say, being found guilty on the main heads, he is being pensioned until he dies, at the rate of almost £1 per day.
One would imagine that a man who had £1,200 per year for doing a part-time job as Parliamentary Secretary, and having such leisure that he could run a successful bacon-curing business in which he had to get his experience and make his repute, and make profits, and who was provided with a car at the public expense and then given a pension for the rest of his life, could at least bear the expense of defending himself although, as I put it, defending himself unsuccessfully against the serious charges made against him by the MacCarvill brothers.
But that is not good enough. Even although this man involved other Departments—because the slime of the tainted bacon is not yet off those who had to safeguard the Army or those who, through veterinary and other inspection, have the responsibility of looking after the public health of the County Monaghan—notwithstanding all that, we are now asking the public to bear the expense of another couple of thousand pounds on his behalf and we do not know whether that was all he was asked to pay, whether or not we are remunerating him entirely for any expenditure, whether we think so well of this man that we are going to see he is not out one penny-piece in his pocket. As Deputy Mulcahy has pointed out, when one Department does move against him, his amazing defence before the court is, "I did not fail to keep books. I did keep books. You can call them bogus books if you like and they can be as bogus as anybody can imagine, but I did keep books within the meaning of the Act and I have committed no offence." As I say, the brazen defence that is put up on behalf of a man who once occupied a position of honour and trust in this country is, that if he keeps bogus books, he is still inside the Act.
Finally, I want to come to this matter of costs. When two people have litigation and the decision goes either in part against one or in whole against one there is resort to an official of the court called the Taxing Master. It is not the Taxing Master's duty, as Deputy O'Connor would have Deputies here believe, to send for solicitors and to ask them to contest bills of costs. The Taxing Master would not often be met with the situation in which opposing solicitors would not appear before him, one standing for the bill and the other opposing it and trying to get the Taxing Master to cut it down. Deputy O'Connor made a facile suggestion here that it was for the Taxing Master to ask. The Attorney-General was a party to this action. The Attorney-General instructs people through the Chief State Solicitor. The Chief State Solicitor very often goes into the Taxing Master's office to object to bills of costs. Was he there on this occasion? If he was not, what supervision was there over this bill of costs? Was the Attorney-General told early that the bill was going to be on a solicitor and client basis and was he left under the impression, as he would have been if no statement were made to him, that it would be drawn on the usual basis of party and party basis? Can the Minister tell this House, when he is replying, does he know of any case in which a successful litigant was given costs on a solicitor and client basis? I do not know of any. That is a solicitor's matter and I do not pretend to be very well informed about it. The Minister ought to have some information, and will he tell us why this bill was allowed to go through on that basis?
Finally, when we are dealing with these people, I do make a difference between the complainant in this case and the man whom that complainant got found guilty and got punished by the only punishment the Government could really put upon him in respect of his relations to this House, namely, sacking him. They allowed him to resign but it is virtually sacking except that they have saved him his pension. In any event, he did incur guilt and he was responsible under the tribunal's report for such guilt that he had to be punished and he is punished to a particular extent. The Minister, again, has not given us any example in the history of the Dáil since it was established of where anybody who was put into a position of that sort by any activity of the State got his costs in whole or in part given to him, nor has he answered the minor point as to whether anybody in such circumstances got his costs on the higher scale.
May I draw the Minister's attention to one case he may remember? In the first flush of the suspicion that attended the entry of that Party to this House, they got a case run under the Official Secrets Act against two officials of the State, a member of the Army and a member of the detective force of this country. The case barely lasted a day.
The judge scorned the case and withdrew it from the jury and, having done so, he suggested that the State might pay the costs of those men whom, as he held, the State had without any adequate reason brought before the court and made suffer to some extent in their pockets. Not a penny-piece was paid to those people and the judge did make a recommendation in that case. Here is a case in which there is no recommendation and I would suggest to Deputy O'Connor that he knows well that, if the court had been asked and had been asked to state their reasons, that is a document that, if they replied to it, should be before the House and we should know what was recommended and we should know whether what they are doing is on the basis of a recommendation. As I say, the matter from beginning to end was tainted.
This approach to the end of it, because it is not the end yet, is just as deeply tainted with corruption as the bacon that formed the subject matter of the inquiry and the Government does not appear at any point to have thought fit to take up an attitude worthy of the position they hold as the chief representatives politically in the State. They are simply now hiding a colleague and the people have the view that they have hid him well enough and paid him well enough for his misdeeds and that in the small matter of £2,000, which he could well afford after all he got from the State, they might at least have made him stand that.
The most amazing thing about this Estimate, as has been clearly pointed out by men with long legal experience, is the fact that there is no precedent for it in this country. We are asked to vote a sum of £2,011 towards the legal expenses of a man who has done more to pull down the prestige of this House than has ever been done or that I hope will be done. We have no hesitation in repudiating this demand, for many reasons.
The Taoiseach at a meeting of Party leaders previous to the reading out of the letter from Dr. MacCarvill last May, gave us no indication whatsoever of what was the subject matter of these letters or what were the charges contained in them. All we knew was that they contained charges against Dr. Ward of a serious nature and they were left at that. He did not indicate to the House who was to bear the expense of either Dr. MacCarvill on the one side or Dr. Ward on the other. There is not much to be said about the matter that has not been said already, but certainly it seems a very strange act to come in here and to ask for £2,011 towards the expense of a colleague of the Minister. I think looking back over the whole question that a different line of action ought to have been taken at the very outset by the Taoiseach and the Government.
That scarcely arises as this House agreed to the tribunal and it was then a decision of the Dáil.
Very good, Sir. Instead of asking for this Vote I think that different action should now be taken. It is strange that we should defray the costs of a man against whom there were findings by the tribunal—a very searching tribunal, one that I have no doubt has gone carefully into the case from the first to the last and was very slow to issue a finding until they were perfectly sure of their facts. I am no legal man, and, therefore, cannot ably discuss the evidence and all that, but at the moment we have two members of this House committed to prison on what I hold is no charge whatever. If we moved in this House that any expenses in connection with these two Deputies—Deputies Cafferky and Commons—were to be defrayed, I wonder what kind of a response it would meet from the Fianna Fáil benches: I wonder if we asked that the State should pay their expenses what would be the response. I think the action of the Government is quite clear, that when it is a colleague or friend of their own one line of action is to be taken but when members of the Opposition or when members of this Party advocate that the existing law be put into operation by a Department——
The Deputy cannot discuss that case. The court has decided on it.
With due respect to you, Sir, I am just drawing a parallel. Two members of my Party were brought up before a court. The Government are shamelessly taking a certain line for sheltering their own colleagues while deliberately trying to crush the Opposition. The only crime those Deputies committed was to ask the Land Commission to put into operation laws that they themselves had passed and to direct attention to the criminal negligence of the Land Commission. I cannot help contrasting the two cases. We are asked to pay £2,000 to meet Dr. Ward's expenses, and we certainly will not support that. There are other expenses in connection with the tribunal for which we voted at the time and which we will stand by, and if the Minister chooses to draw a line between the sum of £2,011 13s. 0d. and the remainder of the Vote we will vote for it, but we will definitely vote against the £2,000. The conduct of which Dr. Ward was found guilty in connection with the Monaghan Curing Company has done a great deal in contributing towards practical famine that we have here to-day. So long as you, Sir, say that the decision of the House cannot be gone back on, I will not say anything further in the matter. I spoke on this matter on the 11th of July last. The Minister for Industry and Commerce followed and referred to my speech as a mean speech.
On that occasion I could not reply, as I had spoken already, but the point I wish to make is that it was not a mean speech. At that time I asked a certain question of the Minister for Agriculture, and the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who was the Minister for Supplies during the time under which Dr. Ward's mismanagement and worse occurred in the Monaghan Bacon Curing Company, stated that I endeavoured to convey the suggestion that the Pigs and Bacon Commission had connived at the irregularities of the Monaghan Curing Company. I did not suggest any such thing. What I suggested at the time was that without a shadow of doubt the Pigs and Bacon Commission must have made a return to the Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Dr. Ryan at the time, of what they must have been very well aware in the Monaghan Curing Company. I asked the Minister and he did not reply. I knew that the officials of the Department of Supplies had other bacon curing companies absolutely harassed and, I may say, they were very efficient as inspectors. I asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce if they had reported to him. What I definitely was insinuating, if there were any insinuations in my speech, was that it could not be possible that Dr. Ryan and Mr. Lemass, the two Ministers concerned, were unaware that all this work in Monaghan was going on. That is what I said, and if there is anything mean contained in it I reiterate it now.
Mr. Burke
That is a most charitable implication, Deputy.
It is straight fact.
Mr. Burke
It is not a fact.
I suppose Deputy Burke will agree that the Estimate is a very charitable one.
Deputy Burke will probably open his remarks by congratulating the Minister for introducing the Vote as he would even if the Minister were to propose blasting Dublin or all Ireland out of existence. That is my experience of Deputy Burke since he came into the House. What I do say is this, Sir, that it is a remarkable thing that on many occasions, and this is only one other example, the Government can find money for strange purposes. If any member of the Opposition—it does not matter what Party—were to introduce a motion for expenditure of money for some good purpose which would benefit vast numbers of our people, as we have done here, it would be turned down and met with jeers and laughter from the Government Benches.
This particular case has been an exceedingly dirty one from beginning to end and it looks vis-a-vis this particular Estimate as if the end is going to be even dirtier than the beginning. The Minister for Finance smiles. Let us examine exactly what we are doing.
A colleague, a friend, a political associate of the Minister for Finance, is appointed Parliamentary Secretary. He is then selected from all the Parliamentary Secretaries to get a special position of precedence; a special emergency Order is passed for him and him alone, to give him the executive power of a Minister. At the same time he is an industrialist, a bacon curer in a rather big way. This man is engaged in what is presumed to be whole-time Parliamentary work, occupying a whole-time administrative position. It is well known to the Government that he is a big industrialist outside and his particular industry, bacon curing, touches on four different Government Departments. As subsequent events prove clearly beyond yea or nay, and as accepted by the Government beyond yea or nay, that business was run on crooked lines over a considerable number of years and no one of his Ministerial colleagues, whose Departments are responsible for seeing that such an industry is run on proper lines, on legal lines, on straight lines, takes any action.
And that at a time when little people have been put through the mangle, broken and made bankrupt in their businesses because of very tiny infringements of emergency regulations drafted and supervised by the Ministerial colleagues of Dr. Ward. Some of them have gone before the courts and, knowing that their livelihood, their business, depended on clearing their good name as honest traders, respecting regulations, emergency and otherwise, they have cleared themselves of every charge made and they came out of court with their honour cleared; but they came out as broken bankrupts.
Never was there any suggestion made by the Minister for Finance or by any member of the Government that, where people are charged by the State for crooked methods in business, for defrauding the public, for selling tainted goods for human consumption, the taxpayer should compensate them for their crimes. If the Minister has such regard for his political colleagues, the Fianna Fáil organisation has ample funds. Why does he not ask his political organisation to compensate the political officer, his colleague, who has been found out? Why does he not ask members of his Party to put their hands in their pockets in order to compensate Dr. Ward for the misfortune of having been found out?
Apparently, it was easier for the Minister to come to the Dáil, with a machined and dumb majority behind him, and say: "We will make the taxpayer pay; we will make the taxpayer compensate, on the highest scale known to lawyers, our unfortunate colleague who was foolish enough to be found out." We have heard and read of honour among thieves and, when I saw this amazing Estimate that is presented to Parliament, an Estimate that has horrified the consciences of everybody in the country, I tried to get a possible explanation, and the only possible explanation was to be found in that old legendary statement of honour amongst thieves, that each one of the groups concerned—and all are, to a greater or lesser degree, responsible for the irregularities, the illegalities and the injustices that were brought before that tribunal—felt that he was, to an extent, responsible in so far as his Departmental machinery was paralysed in dealing with a political colleague, though it could apply in an energetic and ruthless way with others. They all felt, like the colleagues of a thief who has the misfortune to go to prison: "The best we can do for the man who has fallen, the colleague, is to compensate him as generously as we can."
But let it be said about thieves that they compensate the colleague out of their own pockets. It may be out of loot, but it is loot that has become their own property, and the colleague, this particular ex-Minister, is to be compensated out of the pockets of the poorest people in this land. I think it is a disgrace to this Assembly and to the name of Ireland to let it be known, inside or outside our shores, that we have Ministers of the character and calibre that stand over this discreditable, objectionable, nauseating type of public finance; that, merely because they have a majority, a majority that is dumb and disciplined, they will do what is definitely an unjust and a crooked thing with the public funds.
We heard one attempt from the Minister's benches, one feeble attempt, to justify this particular Estimate. The Minister himself, with all the knowledge got together by the State Departments, and with all the brazenness that we know goes to his makeup, was not able, and did not attempt, to make even a feeble, stupid effort to defend this Estimate. He introduced it and left it at that.
But we had a feeble attempt from a back bencher to defend this particular Estimate. That Deputy told us that he thought it was quite right that any high official who is dragged before a court should have his expenses paid. I wonder is the Minister grateful to him for that contribution to this debate? I wonder does the Minister accept that as a fair standard of public conduct? When he made that remark, I thought of all the unfortunate victims, many of them colleagues of mine, of Dr. Ward's administration, men who had been dragged before sworn inquiries, men who had cleared their names, not in spots, but men who came out of those inquiries with their names as clean and as pure as the snow falling outside, but men who came out of those tribunals broken and bankrupt, and the same ex-Minister we are called on to compensate here was the individual who, very often from political bias, dragged those men through expensive tribunals.
Let us see how this arose, and why the taxpayer is to be mulcted. Up in this bacon factory there was a row and one man came to his brother with books and documents. He made it perfectly clear that the factory was run on crooked lines, that the State was being defrauded, that the public was being defrauded, that the factory was being carried on in a rather illegal way, which no other factory in Ireland could get away with. In spite of the fact that all the other Ministries were not dealing with this factory as they dealt with every other factory, he determined to bring it under the notice of the Taoiseach and members of the Government, and in the document he mentioned the names of two Opposition Deputies, to make it quite clear that if the Government did not act on the information in that letter, the information would be brought before Dáil Eireann. That report was made to the Taoiseach and to members of the Government.
The Taoiseach was responsible for the conduct of each of his Ministers, and various Government Departments had a ready way of ascertaining whether the bulk of the charges contained in that letter were in fact true or not. In fact, Dr. Ward, as Parliamentary Secretary, if complaints were made against a doctor with regard to the conditions of a locum tenens or the rate paid to the locum tenens, or when that doctor came on duty, or came off duty, time and again had such questions before him, and with great expedition the machinery of the Department of Local Government would clarify all these points in a short time. Complaints were made time and again with regard to illegal sales by various factories and by various traders, and the Department of Supplies had machinery to investigate everything that came into stock, everything that went out of stock, where what went out went, and the amount in each case.
There was a clear responsibility on the Taoiseach to have the charges contained in that letter investigated promptly and thoroughly. In investigating through that particular machinery, every Department became involved, and he would find out not only irregularities in the Monaghan factory. But the blind eye was put to the telescope by a number of Ministers in dealing with the factory owner who was a Ministerial colleague. That inquiry should not have ended with Dr. Ward alone being in the dock. That inquiry should not have ended with Dr. Ward alone being found unfit to be in a Parliamentary office. Every one of us knows the law of service. If I have a person operating under me, where I am responsible for supervision, for conduct, for control, if the person operating under me carries on in an irregular, improper or illegal way, not for one but for two, three, four or five years, who will be put in the dock? Who will be dealt with officially by any Government Department? It is for me to deal with the matter, as a Government Department will deal with it or they will say I am unfit to control and unfit for the post I hold.
The Taoiseach cannot come out of this particular matter as the lily-white maid. The Taoiseach washed his hands like Pontius Pilate when the responsibility was placed upon him. The responsibility was placed upon him to deal with that particular officer. He washed his hands of the responsibility and threw it to the Dáil, and suggested that they should throw it to a judicial tribunal. When his officer, whose irregularities have stood for a considerable number of years, is involved in costs, he comes along and asks the taxpayer to pay the costs. He gives the officer the opportunity of resigning. He does not even remove him from his post. He sees that he gets his full pension. He sees that he gets back his public position under a Government Department, and then brings in a bill to the taxpayer to ensure that he is adequately and generously compensated.
As others have pointed out, he is compensated on the highest and most extravagant scale known to the courts of law in this country, and not only that, but this compensation on the highest possible scale is one for which a precedent cannot be unearthed.
If an unfortunate postman with 30 or 35 years' service, in a moment of aberration, goes astray, and cashes for his own use as much as a shilling postal order, what is his fate? Does the benevolent Minister say as was said in this instance: "Ah, you have been a good servant, you have gone astray. Although you have gone astray only once, we will not dismiss you. We will give you an opportunity to resign, and after we have given you that opportunity, we will give you a full pension; the highest possible pension within our gift. But that is not enough; after that we will go to Dáil Eireann with our majority and ensure that you will be at no loss whatever by this transaction." He does not. There is the law for the ordinary person, and is there anybody opposite who is prepared to make a case for compensating Dr. Ward on the highest and most extravagant scale known to legal men in this country?
What evidence is put before the Dáil that Dr. Ward ever incurred costs in fact to the tune of £2,000 odd? Would any Deputy in managing his own domestic affairs pay a bill when he was not satisfied that he ever got the goods? Would he ever be so extravagant in his domestic affairs as to push money on another individual without being satisfied that he had got either goods or service? Remember that we are supposed to have the same sense of responsibility and honour when dealing with the money of others as when we are dealing with our own money, but in this case no information is given and no questions are asked. All that is ascertained is that in order to compensate him the highest known scale is the scale selected.
I ask the Minister or his colleagues: Was there any case ever before the courts of this country of a man being brought up on a number of charges, found guilty of a number of very serious charges and not guilty of others, and of a Minister then walking into Dáil Éireann, prompted by his conscience, and asking Dáil Éireann to refund to that man his costs in respect of the mathematical proportion of the charges of which he had cleared himself? What kind of divine right has Fianna Fáil Deputy, Dr. Ward, got that no other individual in this State appears to have? What kind of peculiar position does he occupy so that a unique exception, unprecedented, unexplained and undefended, has to be made in his case? I say candidly and honestly that this procedure and this Estimate is a gross, glaring and stinking scandal, and that the Administration which stands over it is unworthy to hold the lowest and meanest office in the meanest little State that ever existed, let alone to walk abroad as Ministers of this old historic nation. I say, further, that the Deputies who have so little public conscience that they are going to support the proposals contained in this document should never have been elected for an Irish Christian constituency.
Let them not try to salve their consciences by saying that the Party Whip is on. Let them not try to do, as Deputy McCarthy endeavoured to do in the case of the teachers —to say that, if he were free, his conscience would direct him to go one road, but that his Party made him go the other. I saw, arising out of that, a pronouncement by a very distinguished Jesuit who is regarded as a high authority on all Christian matters. He pointed out the Christian and Catholic teaching that when the conscience of a man in a public position directed him to go one way and authority directed him to go the other, he was bound as a Christian and a Catholic to go in the direction in which his conscience directed he should go.
Conscientiously, do Deputies opposite stand over this grotesque mockery of justice and democracy? Conscientiously, do they consider that it is right to mulct the taxpayer to compensate Dr. Ward for any expenses incurred when he was caught out, when he was found out? What was that tribunal established for? It was established in fact to ascertain whether Dr. Ward was or was not a fit and suitable person to remain as an officer of this Parliament. All the various details were comparatively unimportant. The net question was whether he was or was not guilty of charges and whether his conduct was such as to unfit him to be a Parliamentary officer. The result of the tribunal's hearing was that the Government and the head of the Government came to the conclusion that, in fact, his conduct was such that he was unfit to be an officer of this Parliament. On the one question that mattered, the judgment of Government and Parliament was that he was unfit.
Why should the taxpayer be called on to compensate on the highest scale known to man a person whose conduct had been such, a person who was referred to in the court as a person whose testimony on oath was unacceptable and could not be believed, an individual who for years, when drawing the high salary referred to by Deputy McGilligan and enjoying all the emoluments of office referred to by Deputy McGilligan, enjoying all the privileges of a Minister of State, was busily engaged in defrauding the revenue and defrauding the public, a man whose high Ministerial office was to protect the health of the country, to ensure the purity of the food of our people but who was engaged in trafficking with contaminated and tainted food to the one community within this country, other than prisoners in jail, who were not free to select their own food, the soldiers of the Irish Army?
When found guilty of all that, his political colleagues come in and ask the taxpayer to hand out a couple of thousand pounds to that individual on top of the pension, and that is defended on the ground that some of the charges were not proved. Might I suggest to the Minister that some of the transactions were not found to be criminal, that some of the matters were not found to be illegal, that the transactions which took place between himself and the young doctors up in Monaghan were found by the tribunal not to be either criminal or illegal—the bargain he made with the doctors he had kept —but I say clearly that they were professionally unjust and politically shady. They were professionally unjust in so far as he, in spite of the high office he held and in spite of the salary and emoluments he was drawing, was giving a rate to his locum in Monaghan that was disapproved of by the profession generally, a rate lower than was demanded and secured elsewhere. That is why I say they were professionally unjust.
I say that it was politically shady, because if any other man holding a public appointment was proceeding on leave, either short or long, but particularly on long leave, that individual would not be left to select his successor. His successor would be drawn from a panel and it would be ensured, as far as Departmental activity could ensure it, that it was the most highly qualified, competent and experienced person who would fill that position over that long period.
There was nothing criminal, nothing illegal, but there was a big lot doubtful, a big lot irregular, and there was a tremendous amount of injustice. As to the portions of the tribunal report which dealt with those professional injustices, which dealt with that politically shady type of activities, we have to remember that he was in the position of a man who could sanction the arrangement made by himself. For the portion of the tribunal's time that dealt with that particular phase of his activities, the taxpayers, Johnny and Molly and Maggie down the lanes outside, are to come forward to pay the taxes in order to pay Dr. Ward's costs on the highest scale known to legal men. Every Party in this Parliament but one was startled and horrified at the suggestion contained in this Estimate. Every Party except one regards it as a thoroughly corrupt piece of work. Every Party in this House— and there are many—except one, considers it highly unjust to the taxpayers, and that one Party is not free to speak, is not free to vote, according to its God-given conscience.
The only person who can withdraw this abomination and who can save the unfortunate Deputies in the Fianna Fáil Party from having to troop into the Lobby to support what they know to be an abominable bit of corruption, a shocking bit of shady Parliamentary practice, is the Minister in charge of this Estimate. Having heard the views expressed from every part of this House, having heard the kind of apologia put forward from his own benches by Deputy O'Connor, having heard that apologia blown into smithereens by the Deputy who followed him in this debate, surely the whole position should be reconsidered. We have injustice to Parliament, flagrant defiance of proper principles, a departure from all standards of rectitude and honour, a trampling underfoot of all decent standards that have been laboriously laid and steadfastly defended in this State away down 26 long years. We have to stand idly by while all these standards are abandoned and while a dirty bit of graft like this goes through to help a political colleague, and, I suppose, the Ministers opposite consider that the only crime he committed was the crime of being found out.
No doubt this debate has dragged on longer than usual, but it is no wonder that it has done so. There are just a few questions I should like to put to the Minister. I see here in this Estimate: costs of Attorney-General, so-and-so; costs of complainant, £1,557; costs of respondent, £2,011 13s. I see that both the complainant and the respondent were represented by three counsel and a solicitor. I should like to ask the Minister to explain to us the reason for the difference in the costs of these people. Secondly, it is usual when costs of this description are being taxed for the different people to be represented before the Taxing Master. I want to know if the Department of Finance was represented there. These are two questions to which I hope to get a reply.
Deputy O'Higgins referred to a statement the other day by a Deputy, that on many occasions he cannot do what his conscience tells him to do. That was a sad statement for that Deputy to make. In this case, I do not agree with any Deputy who has spoken, so far as these costs are concerned. I do not agree that the costs of either Dr. MacCarvill or Dr. Ward should be paid. Of course, I always appreciate a man who has the courage to come forward to give evidence when the State is involved, or where an official of the State does anything wrong. I appreciate the man who does that honestly. But in my opinion it was not through honesty or anything like it that Dr. MacCarvill came forward in this case.
Dr. MacCarvill is not a member of this House and he has no chance of defending himself.
I am giving reasons for the case I am making. If you rule against me, of course, I shall accept your ruling.
The Deputy should bear in mind that he is discussing a man who has no chance of replying.
Are we not giving the money? Are we not as much entitled to deal with Dr. MacCarvill as with Dr. Ward? The only difference is that Dr. Ward happens to be a member of the House, but he is ashamed to come into it.
And that the tribunal was set up to investigate Dr. Ward's activities.
If you rule against me, I shall accept your ruling.
I am not ruling the Deputy out, but I leave it to the good sense of the Deputy to say how far he should attack a man who is not here to defend himself.
I am showing why we should not pay these costs. We are asked to vote £3,568 for the costs of these gentlemen. It is my opinion that neither of them should get his costs, because if jealousy had not arisen between these two gentlemen the matter would not have been exposed. It was a good job that it was exposed, but jealousy between them was responsible for its being exposed. In the discussion on the findings of the tribunal, the Taoiseach, as reported in column 749 of the Official Reports, said:—
"Nothing would be more detrimental to public confidence than that we, because of this having occurred, should now lose our heads and rush blindly forward. Justice has to be done and justice must be done between the community on the one hand and the individuals concerned on the other."
As far as the community is concerned who were, according to the report of the tribunal in the case of Dr. Ward, actually robbed, where is the justice in asking the House to pay the costs of either of those parties? No matter what people may think, the tribunal proved that there was a swindle and in paragraph 33, the tribunal stated that they did not accept the evidence of Dr. Ward or of Mr. Corr. That is to say that those persons were perjurers, that the tribunal did not believe them. Could there be anything more humiliating? I hope that when the much talked of joint committee is set up to examine and report generally on the powers and privileges possessed by each House for the protection of itself and its members that men such as Dr. Ward will not be allowed to continue to be members of this House.
What is the position of Dr. Ward, in respect of whom this scandalous Estimate is moved? He is drawing from the taxpayers £480 per annum as their representative here, and he is not here. He is drawing a pension of over £300 in respect of the period during which he was Parliamentary Secretary. While he was Parliamentary Secretary he was drawing roughly £1,200 per annum and, as Deputy McGilligan has pointed out, he had a car at the expense of the State, to visit Monaghan, regulating his bacon factory. It was revealed at the inquiry that the doctor he had engaged to substitute for him as dispensary doctor for Monaghan had to give him half of all he earned. In face of all that scandal, the Government and the Fianna Fáil Party, ever loyal to the old crowd, say that this man must be paid over £2,000 expenses.
That brings me to a point made by Deputy Blowick, where again I differ very much from him. He referred to the fact that two Deputies for South Mayo, as duly elected as Dr. Ward was, had to go before a court and that if the State paid the expenses of Dr. Ward, they should also pay the expenses of those two Deputies. He said there was a similarity. There was no similarity in the crime at any rate. In both cases a breach of the law was alleged. In one case it was disgraceful, in the other case there was no violation of the law, but rather an attempt to compel certain Departments to carry out the law that they themselves had made.
We are not trying that case now, Deputy. The court found on the facts and we will leave it so.
I regret you were not trying it. Anyhow, I want to point out that if a precedent is established in the case of Dr. Ward and if his expenses are paid, the expenses of other Deputies brought before a court also should be paid. I do not blame the members of the Fianna Fáil Party. I know they will troop into this House when the bell goes. There are only five of them here at the moment.
There are seven.
There was only one with the Minister a while ago.
Where are the remaining 70?
They will troop in and they will go whatever way the Minister and the Party have decided to go. Deputy Fogarty should be the last Deputy to interrupt and if he develops the interruptions he will get something that will stop him very quickly. The joint committee that is to be set up will deal with a lot of things. I would appeal to the Minister not to force honest men, as some members of the Fianna Fáil Party are, to violate their conscience and their will. I appeal to the Minister to withdraw the motion because it stinks in the nostrils of animals not to mention human beings that the general ratepayers and taxpayers should be forced to pay the expenses of an individual whose actions were a disgrace to himself and to the House.
When the motion to set up a tribunal was moved in this House I opposed it and went into the Division Lobby against it because I felt at that time that the proposal was calculated to defeat the normal processes of the criminal law. Having listened to the debate, and looking back upon the events which have taken place, I feel that I and those who went into the Division Lobby against the motion were fully justified. The Taoiseach, both in the Seanad and in this House, expressed himself as having considerable difficulty in dealing with the allegations made against the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government and in reply to Senator McGee in the Seanad he expressed the view that the criminal procedure was the least satisfactory to his mind for disposing of the matter. He went on to say that the institution of criminal proceedings could not be contemplated as long as the Parliamentary Secretary held office. Surely there was a way out for the Parliamentary Secretary. Surely, if the Parliamentary Secretary had any sense of decency, in order to face the charges which had been preferred against him—whether they were well-founded or ill-founded, is immaterial—he should have resigned and placed himself at the disposal of the courts. I submit that that would have been the easier course and the more satisfactory course to have taken in this matter.
The Deputy realises that it having passed the Dáil, it was an action of the Dáil setting up that tribunal.
I opposed that motion.
That does not matter. If one man in the House opposes a motion it is still a decision of the House. If 50 oppose and 51 are for, it is still a decision of the House.
I want to relate that to the question of costs. I want to point out that, had the criminal procedure been invoked, as would have been the case for the ordinary citizen, then we would have no argument as to costs because, as every Deputy knows, when a person is charged before the courts with a criminal offence, whether he is the most innocent person in the land or not, he has to pay the costs of defending himself. I submit that the discrimination shown in this case towards a Parliamentary Secretary has created a most undesirable precedent, a most reprehensible precedent and one which creates the impression abroad amongst the public that there is one law for Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries and another for the ordinary citizen. It is an established principle of our law that all citizens, irrespective of class or creed, or social status, or political affiliation, are equal before the law. For these reasons, I think that the procedure has been deplorable and I feel further that, to a certain extent, the Executive has dispensed the Parliamentary Secretary from the law. Now Magna Charta was brought about in unusual circumstances as a result of abuses by the then executives and after centuries of struggle it was established that the Executive could not, in future, dispense itself or any citizen from the operation of the law but, mind you, looking back on the whole proceedings, I have a certain feeling that we have in essence dispensed Dr. Ward from the law. We have had this Estimate introduced by the Minister for Finance without one word of explanation from him as to what has happened in regard to the serious offences of which Dr. Ward was found guilty by the tribunal.
The tribunal found that Dr. Ward and his fellow-directors had deliberately evaded the payment of incometax. They found that they had undisclosed cash sales: that the proceeds of these sales were not lodged in the company's accounts—were not put through the company's books—that they were distributed to each of the individuals who were directors and pocketed, and that in respect of these transactions there was an evasion of tax. Surely, when an Estimate of this kind is introduced, we should have heard from the Minister what action has been taken by the Revenue Commissioners in relation to the offence of evading incometax. We all know that no proceedings have been taken in the courts, but we would like to know whether other penal action was taken by the Revenue Commissioners. I understand that it is the policy of the commissioners in most cases of evasion to punish the offender by more or less what might be called a penal assessment—that he is compelled to pay treble, perhaps, or more, of the amount of the tax involved. I would like to hear from the Minister whether or not the Revenue Commissioners have taken that particular line of action in relation to Dr. Ward and, if so, what sum of money he and his fellow-directors have been compelled to pay for the offences in question. Surely the House, before going into this matter of the payment of costs, should have that information.
I do not want to comment on the other offences, that is, the evidence relating to the omission to record certain returns, and the illicit sales of bacon. I understand that that matter is more or less sub judice and that the matter has been referred by way of case stated to the High Court. If that be so, I do not propose to dwell on that matter now. Presumably, the matter will be settled by the courts in due course. I feel that if the ordinary course had been taken in the first instance, it might have been better for all concerned, and I felt then, when the motion was introduced originally, and I do feel more strongly now, that an injustice has been done not only to Dr. MacCarvill but perhaps to Dr. Ward.
The matter of costs has been dealt with by various speakers at considerable length and I am not going to waste the time of the House in reiterating what has been already said but I would like to put this picture before the Deputies on the opposite benches: what manner of man in the case of Dr. Ward are we compensating to this extent? Let us first take his official position. He was a Parliamentary Secretary enjoying a salary of £1,200 a year, a free motor with free petrol and a free driver. The driver would probably cost the State £300 a year. He had, as dispensary doctor of the Monaghan dispensary, a salary of approximately £400 a year; that is, between salary and the various emoluments he had £350 plus £15 and other small matters which I make out to be roughly about £400 a year and, mind you, he enjoyed that salary, though he did take steps to pay a substitute from it, but over the years he made a profit on the payment of a substitute in the Monaghan dispensary. In addition, between the years 1938 and 1944 he had made legitimate profits out of the bacon business in Monaghan as a director of £8,916 13s. 4d. Now, I am casting no aspersions on that. These were legitimate profits which he earned as a director there. We have not the figures of the salary which he drew for the year 1945 and the nine months of 1944. I am quoting from the letter of Dr. MacCarvill's solicitor, which has been recorded in the Debates of the 5th June, 1946, cols. 1325 to 1327.
You have a position where he has drawn, over these years, a total of approximately £12,000. That is definitely accounted for, but we are not accounting for the nine months of 1944 and the whole of 1945. When you consider that in some of these years he drew as high a salary as £2,000—it varied from £900 to upwards of £2,000 —it is safe to assume that he drew another £2,000 in these two years. So that, out of the Monaghan bacon business, he had collected the nice profit of between £14,000 and £15,000. I am not questioning that in the least. In addition, as a result of the undisclosed cash sales, it was found by the tribunal that he had drawn a profit of £2,964 3s. 8d., making a total of practically £17,000. Apart from all that, the company obtained a loan in 1938 of £10,000 and within three years, so successful were they in their business, they were able to clear off that loan.
At the present time Dr. Ward is drawing a pension of £366; he is drawing a Deputy's allowance of £480, and presumably he is enjoying the same salary and emoluments as heretofore, and they work out at about £400. Under the new Public Health Act he has good prospects of having that sum considerably increased. That is the gentleman whose finances are such that we are asked to contribute to his costs. It is not the case of a person in poor circumstances. It is the case of a gentleman who has done very well out of the State and out of the Monaghan bacon factory.
Take the other side of the picture, the charges that were made. Before I go into detail with them, I want to make one matter clear. The tribunal investigated on a very narrow basis. The investigation was restricted to the specific allegations contained in the letter of Dr. MacCarvill and the report of Dr. MacCarvill's solicitor to Dr. MacCarvill. These were the matters which the tribunal were asked to investigate. They were not at liberty to go outside these matters. It was suggested in previous debates, by the Taoiseach and others, that the terms of reference were open. The terms of reference were narrowly restricted to the specific allegations, and we have to bear that in mind.
As regards the specific allegations, they may be divided into two classes. You had the affairs of the Monaghan Bacon Company on the one hand, and on the other hand you had certain misdemeanours or offences, call them what you will, which were a matter of public concern. As far as the affairs of the Monaghan Bacon Company were concerned, the differences of the directors and the administration of the company do not concern us; it is not the business of the House to investigate them or to worry about them in any way. It is not the business of the community either; the only people concerned are the three directors. Were it not for certain differences which arose between Dr. Ward and Johnnie MacCarvill, we would never have heard of this matter. When Johnnie MacCarvill found himself in difficulties with Dr. Ward, his co-director, he went to his brother and explained the whole position and his brother, realising that Johnnie himself had been a party to certain illegalities in the running of the Monaghan factory, took a certain line. Though his own brother was involved up to the hilt in these illegal transactions, in the evasion of tax, in the illicit sale of bacon, in the failure to make proper returns—despite the fact that he realised that his brother would have to face these charges, he put him in the dock in order to have the truth established.
It is only fair to him that that aspect should be brought to the notice of the House, particularly when certain Deputies allege that Dr. MacCarvill should not get any share of the costs. I hold no brief for Dr. MacCarvill. I do not know the man personally. I am not saying that he acted perhaps from the purest of motives in raising these matters. It is quite clear he was actuated largely by his interest in his brother's position in Monaghan, though he did say to the Taoiseach in his correspondence that he was also interested in the good name of the country, and particularly of the County Monaghan.
Whatever his motives may have been, he placed his brother virtually in the same position as he placed Dr. Ward and he was taking considerable risks in taking the course he did take. Taking it by and large, we have to say that he played the rôle of a good citizen and, surely, it is not to be contended here that if there is to be any question of paying costs, a complainant in such difficult circumstances should be denied his costs.
It is a horse of a different colour when we come to Dr. Ward, because in the matters which affect the public, in the really serious charges which were made by Johnnie MacCarvill and by Dr. MacCarvill, Dr. Ward was definitely found guilty; not only that, but his evidence on oath was discredited, was not accepted by the tribunal, and when a witness on oath, in a matter which is material to the issues before the tribunal, is discredited, when his evidence is not accepted—indeed, when it is positively rejected—that can only mean one thing to me, perjury, and there is a course for the Attorney—General to take in a matter of this kind.
I should like to know from the Minister what action does the Attorney-General propose to take in regard to the findings of the tribunal in paragraphs 23 and 24. In paragraph 23 the tribunal does not accept the evidence of Dr. Ward and Mr. Corr, that it was intended that such sales should be limited to inferior or damaged bacon which could not be marketed through the ordinary channels, or to bacon which was in danger of becoming tainted, or that such sales were, in fact, so limited. In other words, the tribunal have definitely found that their evidence is tantamount to perjury. Where an ordinary citizen before a court or tribunal is found to have given false evidence in a matter material to the issues, I respectfully submit, particularly as the Attorney-General was a party to the proceedings, that there is a case here for deciding whether or not proceedings for perjury should be taken.
It is important to dwell on that finding. The tribunal have found, in fact, that the illicit sales were not restricted to tainted bacon, that they were not limited in any way, and the inference is that they were satisfied that there was wholesale black-marketing of bacon by the Monaghan bacon factory.
Again, in paragraph 24, the tribunal does not accept the evidence of Dr. Ward or Mr. Corr, that it was intended that the moneys resulting from such sales should be regarded as the property of the company and should be brought into account at a later date. The tribunal found, as a fact, that the intention of the parties was that each such transaction should be concluded by the cash distribution of the proceeds arising therefrom. Deputy McGilligan already has, in considerable detail, gone into the matter relating to the evidence of Mr. Corr and the deed box in which this money was alleged to have been placed in the bank. I am not going to pursue that further than to reiterate that these two witnesses have been found most unreliable, so unreliable that their entire evidence in relation to these matters has been rejected by the tribunal.
Yet on these two very serious charges—the only charges in which the public and this House are or should be concerned—the evidence is entirely rejected and we are asked to pay Dr. Ward's bill of costs. I submit, with all due respect, that that is entirely without precedent. It is so extraordinary and so irregular that I cannot find words to give vent to my feelings in the matter.
We have had an extraordinary volte-face by Dr. Ward from the beginning. In the first letter that Dr. Ward wrote to the Taoiseach on May 4th, 1946, he is concerned mainly and almost solely with one aspect of the allegations, those relating to Monaghan bacon factory. So concerned is he about these allegations that he informs the Taoiseach that he must have recourse to the courts of justice, and that he intends to bring a libel action. He is not concerned about Monaghan dispensary; he does not even mention it. On the same day, presumably after the telephone has been busy, or after he has been sent for, he writes a second letter to the Taoiseach, and he is then solely concerned about Monaghan dispensary system and asks for a judicial inquiry.
We never got out in debate on this matter any explanation of that extraordinary change of front by Dr. Ward. In the morning he wants justice through the ordinary courts of the land, in the afternoon he wants a judicial tribunal. I think it is but fair to the House that we should know what brought about that extraordinary change. Why did Dr. Ward abandon confidence in the courts? Why did he place his trust in this tribunal? Were any inducements held out to him in the interval? Were any promises made? Was the question of costs put to him? These are matters on which I think the House should have been taken into confidence, because it seems to be an extraordinary thing that a man, charged with these allegations, and having, presumably, considered the seriousness of them, should take such two opposite decisions on the same day. We have had no explanation up to now. I submit, before the House is committed to this expenditure, that some explanation should be given.
As regards Monaghan dispensary, I fail to see why Dr. Ward was so worried, if he were worried at all. Again, Dr. Ward took ample precautions, well in advance, to dispense himself from the law.
In 1932 when Dr. Ward came into office an Order was made by which he was seconded, in effect, to the Department of Local Government and Public Health while at the same time he was permitted to carry out the functions of his office as dispensary medical officer in Monaghan through a deputy. No such arrangement was ever heard of before, or could have been attempted but for the fact that Dr. Ward himself was individually and personally concerned, and presumably was instrumental in making the Order. You had created the position that Dr. Ward was, in essence and in fact, dispensary medical officer of Monaghan, earning his pension as dispensary medical officer there, while at the same time, he was a whole-time officer in the Custom House drawing a salary from his position as Parliamentary Secretary and again earning a second pension as a Parliamentary Secretary.
That was the extraordinary precedent that was set up, that a man could hold two jobs by working one, that he could earn a pension in two jobs while only performing the functions of one. In 1934, the position was further confirmed for him by a local government regulation relating to dispensary medical officers. There you had an extraordinary provision brought in by which, under Article 17, I think, of Regulation No. 38 of 1934, the effect was that a dispensary officer must perform his duties in person, and could not perform them by deputy, save in accordance with that particular Order, or with the authority of the board of assistance, to which the consent of the Minister for Local Government had first to be obtained. That was introduced nicely and quietly to ensure that the Order of 1932 would not more or less conform. But that Order is an extraordinary Order, because if you read further down there is a provision by which a dispensary medical officer may not have more than one month's leave in a year.
Did not the tribunal find that there was nothing irregular in Dr. Ward's position there?
They could not find anything else. Steps had been taken in advance so that no fault could be found. They dispensed themselves from the law by making a law ad hoc for themselves.
I do not think it is within the province or the competency of the Deputy to find fault with the decision of the tribunal.
I am pointing out that Dr. Ward had, in his second letter, become very perturbed about the allegations in relation to the Monaghan dispensary. I want to show that he had nothing to fear because he had taken these extraordinary steps in advance, he being Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government, to cover all these points, and I think I am entitled to do that to show that there was an extraordinary change of front. I have already said that Dr. Ward was prepared to take the normal course, to go to the courts, on the morning of the 4th May, but, by the afternoon, he had changed his mind and asked for a tribunal and had become worried about the Monaghan dispensary.
How does the Deputy relate that to the matter of costs?
I am relating it in this way: that I hold that this is an abuse of authority by the Executive, that the Executive, through Dr. Ward and the Minister for Local Government, dispensed themselves from the law, and we have, as a result, set up a most extraordinary precedent, under which we ask the House to put up moneys to cover the costs of proceedings in which these gentlemen have involved themselves. I think I am entitled to make that point. However, I do not want to go much further into it, except to point out that, in 1934, they had covered themselves in that peculiar way.
The tribunal found nothing wrong with that arrangement.
Dr. Ward got an extraordinary leave of absence, an indefinite leave of absence, which was denied to the ordinary dispensary medical officer. No medical officer could get more than a month's leave of absence in any year for any special purpose and not more than three months in any three consecutive years. Yet we have the extraordinary position in which he, as dispensary medical officer, is absolved from all functions as dispensary medical officer and given indefinite leave of absence from 1932 until the date of the setting up of the tribunal. That was a most extraordinary proceeding and I question the legality of the whole business.
In 1943, we had the further provision made by which the manager of a local authority may give a limited leave of absence, as it says, to an officer including, of course, a dispensary medical officer, with the sanction of the Minister, and in Section 10 of that Order the extraordinary provision is made that a deputy may be appointed with the Minister's approval but that the salary is to be paid to the holder of the office. That is the point I want to make. The whole thing was covered by a series of quiet unobtrusive little articles put into these regulations, so that when Dr. Ward worries himself to death about the dispensary arrangement in Monaghan, it is quite apparant to me that he is simply trying to pull the wool over our eyes. There was nothing wrong with the arrangement he made because he had personally covered himself by law through these regulations and Orders, and his transactions with the various holders of the dispensary office in Monaghan were quite in order.
If we could all dispense ourselves from the law in that fashion, in advance, we could get away with murder. I submit that, in these circumstances, this House should be most reluctant to endorse in any way the payment of the costs, whether we look at it from the point of view of the findings of the tribunal, and particularly the finding in which the public are concerned, or from the point of view of the personal circumstances of Dr. Ward. There is no case, in reason or in charity, for the payment of these costs to Dr. Ward.
It seems to me hard to understand how this Estimate is linked up on the Order Paper with such a very innocent and innocuous item as the expenses of a commission for the gathering of information in regard to Irish place-names. It would appear to me that this Estimate is of sufficient importance to get a separate and independent place on the Order Paper and to have all the time of the House devoted to it, without its association with any other subject. The Minister, in introducing the Estimate, said that in regard to the particularly important part of it dealing with the costs of the parties described as the plaintiff and respondent, it was proposed to pay such portion of the costs as had been decided on, but we are entirely in the dark as to how the assessment was arrived at and how the findings of the tribunal for and against were balanced in such a way as to arrive at the figures presented to the House. It is very significant that we should have a statement that this demand is not being made on the House in pursuance of any legal obligation imposed on the Executive or on the Minister for Finance and it is well, therefore, to emphasise that this is a free gift offered by the Ministry and brought to the House with regard to the expenses of two parties involved in this inquiry. I think that would be a fair deduction to make, particularly because of one party involved in it.
I said on another occasion when this matter was under discussion that I considered this whole transaction as probably the most discreditable that ever came before the House and nothing has happened in the meantime to alter that view. A query was put earlier in the debate as to whether there was any precedent for this line of action in the records of the House. I would go further and ask whether, in the annals of any European Parliament, a similar demand has ever been made. On a former occasion, I quoted at least two outstanding cases in the British Parliament. In one of those cases certainly, the offence could only be described as a minor one, but the person involved suffered all the penalties and indignities of almost public expulsion from that Assembly.
Surely we should have very much more elaborate explanation from the Minister than the few perfunctory words with which he saw fit to submit this Estimate to the House. Properly, reference was made to the fact that the ex-Parliamentary Secretary was allowed to enter what is a closed industry, what has been a closed industry for a considerable time, except to a favoured few, and the then Minister for Agriculture cannot be completely absolved of very serious responsibility in regard to the whole matter.
But the consideration which we have to address ourselves to is whether any shred of justification has been advanced for the payment of this money. Mark that the total amount of this Estimate is about £4,000 and that roughly half that amount goes to the payment of Dr. Ward's expenses without any explanation whatever as to how that figure was arrived at or in what proportion the amount was divided. It is true that the tribunal found that there was nothing against the law in the transactions relating to the dispensary arrangements in Monaghan, but that is a very different thing from something which sounds highly improper, unprofessional and discreditable. Surely, while there was no offence known to the law disclosed in the farming out of a dispensary practice in Monaghan, there is an ugly flavour about the matter, and the result must be a particularly ugly impression in the minds of the ordinary people of the country.
The attitude of the Ministry right through from the beginning in this matter has been rather obscure. It does not seem clear even yet that Dr. Ward's resignation from the position of Parliamentary Secretary was asked for. It was ultimately tendered, but the circumstances under which it was tendered have never been cleared up. That fact, plus the other circumstances associated with the granting of a pension to Dr. Ward, does not seem to corroborate the statement of the Taoiseach in this House that the punishment for an offence of this kind must be necessarily severe. All the circumstances go to show that this alleged victim has in fact been triumphantly successful at the end of the whole business.
We are very familiar with the answer which is given when proposals are made in this House: " Where is the money to come from?" Money will be found for this purpose, but, as some Deputies stated earlier, it has not been found possible to find money for an increase in old age and widows' and orphans' pensions. It will be comforting to old age pensioners and widows and orphans to know that, not alone is there no provision for an increase in their pensions, but that they will have the privilege of paying a portion of the taxation which will be imposed if this Estimate passes. Not alone will these people have the privilege of paying for this transaction in the taxation that will fall upon them, but it will be equally comforting to those harassed people who are making a largely ineffective struggle against the cost of living to know that they will have the honour of sharing in this transaction by contributing a certain amount of money in connection with one further chapter in one of the most discreditable and shady transactions that ever blotted the records of this House and the public life of this country.
In regard to the position of the Revenue Commissioners in this matter, there has been great silence since the very beginning. The public expected to be informed as to what was the attitude of the Revenue Commissioners in regard to this matter. Their attitude in respect to some people in this country is very well known. The procedure for harassing unfortunate people who receive small parcels of goods, costing a few shillings, through the post is very well known. We know all the pains and penalties they are liable for as part of the procedure employed by the Revenue Commissioners in seeing that the law is strictly obeyed. But they are particularly silent in regard to this matter. The Minister should know that a large number of people are very anxious to hear what has happened in connection with this matter.
Might I refer to a statement made by the Taoiseach in this House on the 11th July, 1946, as reported in column 749 of the Official Reports? The Taoiseach said:—
"Probably the best way of dealing with it is by means of a motion in this House to set up a committee of inquiry into these matters and to examine into the problems that arise in order to do everything humanly possible to avoid temptations of any kind being put in the way of those who occupy public positions to utilise those positions in an improper manner."
If one is to judge by certain hints that have been dropped since, possibly one of the results of this committee that it is now proposed to set up to inquire into the privileges of members of this House may well be to limit very considerably the rights of members of the House. It will be a very strange commentary on the whole of the situation if out of this transaction should ultimately emerge some proposal which will be carried through this House that may have the effect of limiting the ordinary rights and privileges that members have exercised in a bona fide and proper way up to the present. That would be an extraordinary result to arise from a transaction of this kind. It will be almost as ironical as the circumstances which enabled an officer of this House to fulminate, as he did repeatedly for several weeks, on the dangers to public health arising out of contaminated foodstuffs of one kind or another while, at the same time, being engaged in a series of transactions calculated to discredit that point of view. I want to register my protest and the protest of every member of this Party against this transaction. I want to register a protest also against a position that enables a person like Dr. Ward, not alone to get his costs paid out of the public purse and out of the contributions of the poor, struggling and needy people in this country, but to get a substantial and handsome income by way of pension and other emoluments which he is able to enjoy at present. Before this debate concludes, I hope there will be some indication that there is in this House some general realisation of the decency and dignity that ought to be associated with public life in this country.
Mr. Burke rose.
The Minister to conclude.
What are the rights of members? Deputy Burke stood up to speak. Is he not entitled to be called on?
Mr. Burke
It is all right.
Deputy Burke has given way to the Minister and the Minister has been called on by the Chair to conclude.
As it has been snowing all day, a general agreement was come to outside this House that this debate should be brought to an early conclusion, so as to enable Deputies to get home. For that reason, Deputy Burke has kindly consened to allow me to conclude. There has been nothing said in this debate not anticipated by me and by the Government.
We all knew perfectly well that in introducing this Supplementary Estimate, in taking the steps that led to the necessity for its introduction, we were going to give plenty of opportunity for the casting of showers of stones by the white-robed Opposition. I do not propose to examine their credentials and their right to cast stones, but I want Deputies and the people outside, who are interested in getting for the running of the affairs of this country the greatest possible honesty, to examine in a clam and judicial fashion what they think the Government should have done in the matter of the costs of this particular tribunal.
The report of the tribunal has already been debated in this House. Before that, the necessity for setting up that tribunal was debated in this House. What remains for me here to-night in the conclusion of this debate is to reply to the points that are made against meeting any of the costs, as some Deputies in the Opposition have said, and against meeting one particular portion of the costs, to which the amendment refers, the costs incurred by Dr. Ward in his defence as respondent before that tribunal. One thing is perfectly clear, however. It has been brought home, I think, or will be brought home, to the people of the country the wisdom of the Government in setting up this tribunal and placing the whole matter in their hands, rather than leaving it to administrative action on the part of any of the Government Departments, or to the Attorney-General. One small action arising out of the affair of the Monaghan Curing Company was tried before a District Court.
I cannot say anything about the decision of the district justice, seeing that the decision has been appealed to a higher court, but it was criticised by members of the Opposition. It was alleged that it was the Government procured the decision of this district justice. If no action had been taken by the Government upon the receipt of this letter to place themselves, their administration, the administration of Dr. Ward and everything from an administrative point of view that impinged on these charges, in the hands of three such eminent judges as were asked to deal with it, it would have been said that the Government were covering up Dr. Ward, as was alleged here in the matter of the judgment of the district justice. I cannot say anything about that particular judgment. However, the opinion of the Attorney-General is quite clear in the matter, seeing that he has appealed it to a higher court.
What is the public interest in meeting these costs? It is, first of all, clearly in the public interest that, if a person has a charge to make against a Minister or a Parliamentary Secretary, he is not estopped from making a well-founded charge because of the cost that he might incur in so doing. That is the reason why I proposed to the Government that Dr. MacCarvill's costs should be met. He had made charges of an important character against a Parliamentary Secretary. The tribunal held that one of those charges was well founded. That resulted in the resignation of Dr. Ward. I felt that, in so far as Dr. MacCarvill had made that charge and proved it to the tribunal set up by this House, he was entitled to his costs. It was in the public interest that he should be paid those costs, not-withstanding the fact that Deputy Cosgrave and Deputy McGilligan objected to it here. Deputy Costello explicitly stated here that he himself, after thinking the matter over, came to the conclusion that it was only right and proper and just that Dr. MacCarvill's costs relating to the charge he proved should be met.
There is a second public interest to be safeguarded in this matter. The tribunal held in relation to a number of the charges that were preferred in Dr. MacCarvill's letter that the charges were not sustained. The charge adverted to by the tribunal in their report in paragraph 9, was adjudged in Dr. Ward's favour. So are the charges in paragraph 10, paragraph 11, paragraph 12, paragraph 14, and the charges in the whole section beginning in paragraph 25 and ending in paragraph 40.
What is that charge?
They say the tribunal finds "no basis for the allegation". The tribunal considers that the allegation against Dr. Ward in this connection was "entirely unjustified". The decision on the charge in paragraph 42 was also given in Dr. Ward's favour. The tribunal held that there was "no basis for the statements" relating to this matter and in their opinion these allegations were made "recklessly and without justification".
In reference to the charge in paragraph 43 the tribunal held that Dr. Ward "merely acted as a trustee with strict propriety" and that the charges in connection with this matter were made "recklessly and without any foundation in fact". I take full personal responsibility as well as official responsibility for proposing to the Government that the public interest would best be secured in this connection by meeting Dr. MacCarvill's expenses in as far as they were connected with the charges he proved and with meeting Dr. Ward's expenses in as far as they related to the charges that were not accepted by the tribunal. What the people want to know, I think, in this matter is that the Government are facing up to their responsibilities and that they are not going to be deterred from taking proper action in the public interest because of the dirt that can be thrown by members of the Opposition. That is what has been done.
How was I, as Minister for Finance, to find out what were the scales of charges, what were the costs proper to be paid to Dr. MacCarvill, in respect of the charges found to be true by the tribunal, and to Dr. Ward in respect of which the tribunal found him not guilty? Unfortunately, the Act of 1922 precluded me from asking the tribunal. These gentlemen, the judges, had very kindly consented to accept this onerous work in addition to their official duty. They had no right under the law as it stands to make any recommendation. We felt that if we approached them, they would point out the law in the matter to us and in any event, even supposing that they had had the power to award costs, what would they have done? They would have asked the officer of the court who deals with these matters to deal with it for them on their behalf. They would ask the Taxing Master to deal with this affair for them, and not being able to ask the tribunal to do that, I got my Department to get in touch with the Taxing Master of the High Court to ask him to assist the State in this regard—to devote portion of his time to going into the bills of cost that were presented by the lawyers on both sides of this case and advise what costs I should pay in each case, having regard to what I said here in the Dáil in answer to a question—I had better read the answer to that question. In answer to a Parliamentary Question on the 23rd July, 1946, I said:—
"The legal costs incurred by Dr. MacCarvill and Dr. Ward in connection with the hearing of the charges by the tribunal will be examined in the manner in which the Taxing Master of the High Court examines a bill of costs in civil proceedings when some of the issues are decided in favour of one party and some in favour of the other. After the examination has been completed I propose to ask the Dáil to meet such portion of Dr. MacCarvill's costs as relate to the hearing of the charges accepted by the tribunal and such portion of Dr. Ward's costs as relate to the charges rejected."
And I pointed out here in answer to some supplementary questions a few days ago when introducing this Supplementary Estimate that some of the Fine Gael Senators in the Seanad were concerned as to what was going to happen to the costs in this case when it was finally dealt with. A couple of them—the leaders of the Fine Gael Party in the Seanad— referred to these costs and referred to the fact that the tribunal had no legal power to award costs and that it was hardly fair that the State should take this case and put the respondent and the complainant before the tribunal and not be in a position to meet their costs. The Taoiseach could only say then in that connection that there was no provision in the law to put the question to the tribunal as to what costs should be met in the case. I have described how I went to the Taxing Master, who is the officer of the High Court, and asked him to judge for himself as if he had been asked by the tribunal to decide in the manner I indicated in the Dáil what costs were proper to be paid to the complainant and what to the respondent, and we are proposing to the Dáil to pay exactly what has been returned to us. There is one other bill which is in the offing in connection with this matter. I referred to it at the beginning of the debate. It is where a Dublin solicitor has asked us are we prepared to meet the cost of his client, who appeared in some portion of this case. That will be looked into to see whether or not his costs are proper to be met. Now the question has been raised as to what action the Government took generally upon this matter and the action State Departments took about it. The Revenue Commissioners are bound by their oath of office not to disclose even to the Minister for Finance the private affairs of any income-tax payer, but I know both personally and officially that the case of Dr. Ward, the matter of the income-tax aspect of the curing company case before the tribunal, was under the notice of the Revenue Commissioners and I am perfectly certain that they will carry out their duty in that matter without any urging by any Deputy in this House or by me.
It is their duty as Revenue Commissioners, according to their oath of office, to collect for the State every 1d. that the law authorises them to collect. I do not want to go into detail in connection with the various charges that have been made against the Government in this case. I ask the people of the country to believe that in bringing forward this Estimate and in facing the vilification of the Opposition, who are always ready to throw as much mud as they can, we were only doing our duty in the public interest. What we are trying to do in bringing forward this Estimate is to guarantee to any person in the country that, if he has a legitimate charge to make against the Government, he is protected in every way, even as to his legal costs if it results in a hearing of the kind we have had under discussion.
But the people have also got to protect the members of their Government against reckless charges. What Government in any country in the world could survive if people were encouraged to make reckless charges and to say, even though they are reckless charges: "We are going to pay your expenses and we will not meet any portion of the charges of the member of the Government who is found not guilty"? That is neither honesty nor horse sense. I believe the solution—in this Supplementary Estimate—for which I claim full personal credit, is the best solution of a very difficult problem.
The Minister mentioned that the Revenue Commissioners and, to some extent, the Pigs and Bacon Board, had taken cognisance of the facts that are reported in this tribunal's report. Has no Department of State taken any cognisance of them?
The Deputy has asked several Parliamentary Questions on that matter and he got answers, and I am not going to go any further into the matter to-night.
I must ask the Minister to realise that I have not yet started questioning him on these matters. I asked, in the course of the debate when the report was being discussed, certain questions, and I have not got any answers to them yet. The Minister stated that he was going to deal with questions raised about these Departments, but he referred to no Department of State. He referred to the Inland Revenue Commissioners and to the Pigs and Bacon Board. Has no Department of State taken cognisance of this report?
If the Deputy thinks any Department of State should take action, and if he puts down a Parliamentary question, he will find out if any such action has been taken and, if not, the reasons why.
Could the Minister explain the difference between the costs in both cases? There is a difference of, roughly, £500.
I asked the Taxing Master of the High Court to make his award on the basis of what I said in the Dáil. The difference in the amounts in these cases on the face of the Supplementary Estimate is his report.
Amendment put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 18; Níl, 35.
Tá
- Blowick, Joseph.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Coogan, Eamonn.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Dockrell, Henry M.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Keating, John.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, Timothy J.
- Norton, William.
- O'Driscoll, Patrick F.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Sullivan, Martin.
- Redmond, Bridget M.
- Reynolds, Mary.
Níl
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Brennan, Thomas.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Burke, Patrick (Co. Dublin).
- Butler, Bernard.
- Childers, Erskine H.
- Colbert, Michael.
- Colley, Harry.
- Crowley, Honor Mary.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- De Valera, Vivion.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Patrick J.
- Furlong, Walter.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Lynch, James B.
- McCann, John.
- McCarthy, Seán.
- McGrath, Patrick.
- Moylan, Seán.
- O'Connor, John S.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, James.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Walsh, Laurence.
Tellers:—Tá Deputies P.S. Doyle and Coogan; Níl: Deputies Kissane and Allen.
Amendment declared lost.
The next item on this Estimate is £1,071 for the setting up of a commission to examine the place names of Ireland. The Minister stated that the work of this commission would be of no small importance to those interested in the Gaelicisation of our people. He also stated that someone had said that these place names would record not only historical evidence but particulars of the whole social life of our ancestors. In view of a number of matters disclosed in relation to the Government's attitude to the continuity of the language and the mentality of our people enshrined in it, I can only characterise this proposal as window-dressing. I asked a question to-day, whether an inquiry would be set up into the death of a young man on the Blasket Islands. He lay there for a week very sick and died because there was no communication by 'phone, and there could be no communication with the mainland by boat.
What has that to do with place names?
It deals with the Gaelicisation of our people and the need for preserving historical evidence of our country's history, and not only that, but the whole social life of our ancestors.
How do they come into this Estimate?
The Minister asks us to subscribe to the Estimate on the ground that it fostered all these things. I regard it as absolutely futile window-dressing over the grave of Gaelic social life. I want Gaelic tradition and mentality carried on. I addressed a question to the Taoiseach but it was handed to the Minister for Industry and Commerce. Why it should be handed to that Minister I do not know. I have persistently pointed out the difficulties under which some of these people carry on native tradition as transmitters of the spoken language. I have repeatedly spoken about the Blasket Islands. Bathing places have been built on the mainland. Why does the Government not provide the necessary landing facilities for currachs?
The Deputy is getting far away from the Estimate.
I am dealing with the Gaeltacht.
Surely the whole question of the Gaeltacht cannot be dealt with on a Supplementary Estimate for place names.
No reason has been given for setting up a commission except in relation to Gaelicisation of the historical past. I do not want to discuss the details of matters I have mentioned.
I merely want to say that in the Blasket Islands it is possible for a thing like that to happen and the Government decline to hold any inquiry into it because they say they know all about it—the telephone was not working and there was a storm. Again I asked the Minister for Education with regard to a school in Baile Chiaragáin, in Donegal, where, on the basis of information gleaned from examining the paper returns in the Department of Education, he decided that from June 1945 the Irish language was no longer the language of the majority of homes in that area and not only deprived the teacher there of emoluments but deprives the children going to that school of any chance of getting secondary education by means of the scholarship system existing there.
That is scarcely relevant to this Supplementary Estimate.
There is some chance of carrying on whatever the Gaelicisation of our people means, of holding it and of extending the knowledge of our past and our ancestors' mode of thought and mode of life, if we preserve the Irish language in these districts, but the Minister for Education says it is fading off the hills and out of the glens of Donegal. What is being done about it?
I asked again to-day of every single Department of State a question in relation to the action taken by the Minister for Education in respect of three areas in Kerry, two areas in Mayo and two areas in Donegal during the past three years, in declaring that, in these areas, the Irish language was fading out of the homes and in removing the schools there out of the Irish speaking districts. I asked if any Department of State had been advised of what was happening there, to the knowledge of the Minister and in the opinion of the Minister, and not a single Department has heard a word about it.
For these reasons, the facts of which and the remedy for which can be gone into on some later occasion, and because neither the Minister for Education nor anybody else is doing anything about the situation, because the situation is just being left there, I say that the Government's proposal to set up a commission to inquire into and explain our Irish place names in order that we may carry on the Gaelicisation of our people and keep in better and closer historical touch with the social life of our ancestors is all fatuous, futile and dishonest window dressing, and I am opposed to it.
Question put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 36; Níl, 11.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Blowick, Joseph.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Brennan, Thomas.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Burke, Patrick (Co. Dublin).
- Butler, Bernard.
- Childers, Erskine H.
- Colbert, Michael.
- Colley, Harry.
- Crowley, Honor Mary.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- De Valera, Vivion.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Furlong, Walter.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- McCann, John.
- McCarthy, Seán.
- McGrath, Patrick.
- Moylan, Seán.
- O'Connor, John S.
- O'Driscoll, Patrick F.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, James.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Walsh, Laurence.
Níl
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Coogan, Eamonn.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Keating, John.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, Timothy J.
- Norton, William.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- Redmond, Bridget M.
- Reynolds, Mary.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Kissane and Allen; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Coogan.
Question declared carried.
Supplementary Estimate reported and agreed to.