Speaking immediately after the admirable statement by the Minister for Labour, I am very happy to reciprocate the Minister's good wishes for a happy Christmas. The Minister modestly expressed the fear that he might, perhaps, have bored the House. He need feel no such apprehension. Everyone who listened to the Minister's statement must have, I think, appreciated that it was a model of what a Minister's statement should be. As far as he could, he took the House into his confidence. He dealt with the problems facing his Department and he treated the House with a consideration which will, I believe, be reflected by other speakers here.
I shall not enter into the substance of what he said. Deputy O'Donovan, who will speak latter, is better qualified than I am to do that. I wish I could speak in the same vein, particularly at this season, of the Taoiseach's statement in opening this debate. One would have hoped that he would have favoured the House with a survey of the substance of the serious problems which confronted the country during the past year and would have given some idea of the spirit in which he, as Taoiseach, and his Government were collectively approaching these problems. Had he done that he would, I think, have found a ready response in the House.
I do not wish to prejudge this matter—it is possible that, in his reply, the Taoiseach will give us a more substantive survey—but I do not think such an approach an altogether satisfactory way of proceeding. It would have been helpful to the House if, in the Taoiseach's initial statement, these matters were more fully covered in what one might describe as a more philosophical and generalised way. Instead of that, we had from the Taoiseach a statement which could quite as well have been produced by an automated public address system hitched to a computer. The statement was almost entirely statistical, a rather bald statement, and it was not helpful to the House generally in considering the state of the nation, which is something we should do at this time.
Listening to the Taoiseach, many of us felt, I think, that this was not the statement of a Taoiseach who was giving leadership in the sense in which the President, Mr. de Valera, gave leadership in the past. Whatever opinions there may have been about him, he certainly gave leadership in times of crisis. As opposed to that, the Taoiseach's statement was, perhaps, the statement of a chairman, perhaps, of the rapporteur of a committee, rather than that of someone who is going to give a lead to the country. This corroborated the misgivings many of us have felt about the conduct of the Government during the past year. It was evident to us, and it is right that we should stress this, that there were and are resources of very considerable ability, goodwill and strength available to the present Government, whatever we may think about them generally. It was also apparent that certain Ministers are largely out of control; they do what they like in their own Departments. The conduct of some of them reminded me of a statement made by a Minister of the Interior in a faraway country when he was challenged about some arbitary act he had performed; his reply was: "You have no right to say that. This is a democracy and, as Minister of the Interior, I do what I like". From the utterances and performances of some Ministers—by no means all—I feel their approach to the problems of their Departments and of the country is very similar indeed; they act like feudal barons controlling their own fief, showing respect for no one, even their own Taoiseach. I shall give some reasons for that belief on my part later when I approach what will be the main subject of my contribution, the handling by the Taoiseach and the Government of the important crisis in Northern Ireland which the country, as a whole, traversed this year. That crisis —to which I shall return—clearly demonstrated that some branches of the Government were out of any central control, and most dangerously so.
But there were other examples, in a Government in which the Taoiseach, and it is to his credit, attempts to set a tone of dignity and good manners. We have had a demonstration by one member of the Government of a truculent, overbearing approach, of insults delivered here to citizens of this country who have no means of reply. This Minister responsible for law enforcement, in a letter, the authenticity of which he acknowledged, advised a constituent how the law might be bypassed and advised that same constituent to destroy that letter. In a strange contradiction, he then said that he stood over every line of the letter he had advised the constituent to destroy. When some of us tried to put down questions about that matter —to ask whether the Taoiseach regarded that conduct as compatible with the standards of propriety to be expected from a member of the Government—we were told that since the question contained argument—I presume implicit argument—it could not be asked.
That is why I am obliged to comment on it here and I do so because I think—I do not want to go into detail on this range of matters here; the country is familiar with a number of such cases—that is a case where in a Government under strong democratic leadership and control as Mr. de Valera's Governments were, such a Minister would, at the very least, have been severely admonished and had he persevered in conduct of the character in which he has indulged he would have ceased to be a member of such a Government. If that has not happened we have a right on this Estimate to note the fact as an example of a lack of central direction, of a growing autonomy, an almost anarchic autonomy of certain Ministries, of a certain galloping free enterprise in the conduct of Government. I do not wish to brood on that aspect now. This is not an Estimate, as we have been properly told from the Chair, on which we should go into details on the conduct of Government. We shall have a chance of considering these on other Estimates.
My colleagues have touched and will touch further on a number of aspects coming under the Taoiseach's Estimate. I propose to say something about three of them—the European Economic Community, the housing crisis and the crisis affecting Northern Ireland and our relations with what has happened there. It is into that last subject I propose to go most deeply since it is one to which I have been giving particular attention on behalf of our Party during the year.
In regard to the EEC I should like to support the request by the leader and other members of our Party for a debate on this subject, a debate which I am sure the Minister for External Affairs will be inclined to accord in the same spirit as the Minister for Labour has given us an admirable and instructive survey of the work of his Department. The Minister for External Affairs should also take us into his confidence as far as he can about what is happening in this area because I think the public are somewhat confused about it. The Minister has gone on television and spoken to the public in general about this. None of us wants to discourage that development; it is good that Ministers should go on television as much as possible and take the public at large also into their confidence. That is very welcome but what would not be welcome would be if this method of procedure should become a substitute for taking the House into the confidence of Ministers and telling us here what is happening. I hope we shall have an opportunity of considering this matter in detail with the appropriate information. There seem to be some contradictions or possible contradictions here. The Taoiseach told us not long ago in response to questions from these benches that the Government have no intention of entering NATO or, he added—and it was an important addition, perhaps, not sufficiently noticed at the time— any other kind of military alliance. Yet, the Minister for External Affairs in his television broadcast seemed to imply that there would be military commitments here. We should like to know the outline of what is involved and have an opportunity of discussing it.
Another aspect of that which I should like to hear about and discuss is the whole style and approach within which we hope to operate inside EEC, if we are admitted, because anyone with experience of international organisations or groupings, such as OEEC in the old days, knows that within the membership of such organisations there is room for different kinds of emphasis and different styles of approach. For example, in European groupings generally the approach and emphasis of the Scandinavian countries have been slightly distinct from those of other countries and even a small country within such a grouping has an opportunity to make its character, its geographical position, its tradition and its national outlook generally felt. There has been a fear in some quarters that our Government are approaching this matter in too much of a passive spirit of "we must accept anything in order to get in and we shall do anything we are told when we are in". That may be a distortion of the position. I hope it is, but this is the kind of thing we hope to hear about and debate fully when the Dáil resumes.
When the leader and other members of the Labour Party tried to raise the matter of housing, when we tabled a motion to declare a national housing emergency and were provided with a limited amount of time for discussion, it was very much pooh-poohed. It was treated as a kind of stunt and we had the alarming and deplorable spectacle of a concerted attempt being made to howl down the leader of the Labour Party when he was using the limited time at his disposal to say what we felt was important on this question. That was extremely regrettable and I hope it will never recur. I speak as a Deputy from a part of Dublin where there is a large number of housing estates and also large numbers of extremely badly-housed people.
To speak of a housing crisis in Dublin is by no means a stunt; it is a reference to a fact which every Dublin Deputy knows just as every Dublin Deputy knows that to speak of 15 or 20 unlicensed moneylenders in Dublin city is to be farcically out of touch with reality. The problems are much greater than that. The time every Deputy in Dublin must give to his constituency is taken up to a very large extent, perhaps, as much as 90 per cent, by the pressures of the very real housing crisis which exists and which affects both those with no homes and those who are homeless in that they are extremely and dangerously badly-housed. There is danger to their physical health and psychological welfare. That is one phase of the problem and another is that tenants of corporation houses feel in very large numbers that the present system of differential rents operates inequitably. That feeling is particularly strong—universal—among those on the so-called B scale but it prevails among other tenants also. Here, again, I shall not enter into details on that but I should like to express the hope that the Government will hold an inquiry, with adequate sociological participation, into, in particular, the present operation of this differential rents system. The differential can in itself be defended in principle but I think its present operation comports grave inequalities. That is something which most Dublin Deputies are well aware of and I hope the problem will at least be investigated.
What is most alarming about this housing situation is the extreme complacency of—I will not say the Government because I have already said that there are reasons to believe that units of the Government are functioning with a peculiar autonomy which one, perhaps, would not have expected from what is supposed to be the Government of a single party—but of the responsible Minister in this matter who responded to questions on this subject, first of all, extremely perfunctorily with monosyllabic answers which were often meaningless. The Minister for Local Government showed an extraordinary inability to put his hands on statistics which were asked for except statistics relating to the Tallaght area about which he is singularly well informed. His whole approach to this was summed up in a complacent statement which he made to the House that things had never been so good in housing.
That statement by the Minister for Local Government should be brought to the attention of everyone in Dublin because there are a great number of people in this city who have a very different impression indeed. I hope the Taoiseach in his reply to this debate will not leave out the question of housing altogether as he has done before but will say something about it, show some sign of a realisation that a real crisis exists, a crisis which may erupt in this city. A Dublin Deputy has a right to give warning of that and should give warning that if attention is not given to this in time, if it is treated with this kind of complacency, it may erupt—I will not say into a social crisis; it is already a social crisis —but into that kind of open social crisis which does necessarily attract the attention of government. The Government will then, if that happens, complain about lawlessness and speak about the necessity for strong methods but if that does happen it will be the result of the Government's negligence and complacency as expressed in the extraordinary answering here of the Minister for Local Government on this subject.
The third subject on which I want to speak and on which I should like to develop my thoughts a little is that of the crisis in Northern Ireland and in this country generally which came to a head in the month of August but which still continues and which is likely to affect us again. I want to devote considerable attention to this because I feel that the underlying gravity of the present situation here in relation to this is not sufficiently understood. We have given a lot of thought, and rightly, to the situation in the north itself and, of course, we have debated that. I will not go back to the position before our debates here in October. It would not be proper that I should. But, I do want to look at what has happened since and I want to look in particular at how our Government have treated this matter because I think that with the simmering violence in the north and with the tendencies to a responsive violence on this side of the Border we are facing dangers which, if they are incoherently dealt with, may lead to disaster—I should like to weigh my words here; I do not want to enter into anything in the form of self-fulfilling prophecy as some have done on this subject—but there are serious dangers—we must all hope they will be avoided—which could even lead to the possibility of civil war in this island. That is a reason for looking very attentively at the question of whether this issue is being coherently, competently, responsibly handled by our Government in such a way that we can have full confidence that everything that can be done to avert that danger will be done.
Let us see, then, if that is so. Perhaps, no Government in our history were offered so good an opportunity of uniting the Dáil and the electorate on a great national issue as this Government were offered in the crisis of this summer and autumn. Both Opposition parties scrupulously refrained from embarrassing the Government during the crisis. Both, indeed, supported what they believed to be the essentials of Government policy, at least, the key element of renouncing the use of force as expressed in the Tralee speech which we welcomed and would still welcome to the extent to which it could still reasonably be held to be Government policy—an extent which is I fear very small. The Government had a great opportunity, not certainly of uniting the country in present circumstances— no Government however wise or well led could have that opportunity now— but an opportunity—and this is important too—of uniting the Dáil and the electorate on the basis of a reasonable approach not only to the immediate problems but to the problems that underlie the territorial division of this island. The importance of that does not seem yet to have been sufficiently grasped.
The Government could have begun to lay the foundations for better relations between the major communities of this island, the great religious groups, those better relations without which there is no conceivable hope for eventual unity, once force is ruled out, if force is really ruled out. This Government could have tried, with full support from the Opposition parties in this House—support which would have been generously forthcoming—to quench the fires of sectarian hate and fear which still smoulder so dangerously within that area, with the sparks drifting across the Border. They could have set their faces effectively against adventurism and the mischievous, lightminded bombast that has so long bedevilled this problem. They could have tried to reach the majority in the north with the message that no one of any importance in this part of the country has any intention of trying to coerce them or to trick them into joining with us. The Government could have availed themselves of every opportunity through television and otherwise to reach that population with a message understandable to it and directed to it. Such opportunities have presented themselves. I am sorry to say they were not taken. The Taoiseach could have spoken on Ulster television and did not do it. I do not know why he did not do it. Perhaps, he will tell us some time. The Government could have reinforced that message by, for example, renouncing in clear terms, as they were urged to do, the use of anti-partition propaganda directed to third parties, a form of propaganda which can have no meaning in relation to unification unless the will of the majority in the north is in some way to be circumvented. If it is not to be circumvented, why is one talking to those people out there? What is one asking them to do? Since the will of the majority in the north cannot in the last analysis be circumvented without some form of coercion, whether applied from Dublin, London or elsewhere, and since coercion seemed— seemed—to be ruled out by the Tralee speech, it should have been possible and would have been useful to rule out also anti-partition propaganda directed to third parties. That has not been done. The propaganda has been tuned down in accordance with an orchestration which corresponds to the needs of Twenty-Six County politics and, perhaps, the internal necessities of the Fianna Fáil Party but does not correspond to the needs of the problem itself which require not just a temporary tuning down and tuning up of this kind of propaganda but its complete elimination in a frank and honest manner. More than this, the Government could have ensured that all their utterances on this still explosive subject were responsible, coherent, consistent and visibly animated by the purpose of improving the relations between the major communities—not exacerbating them.
It may be asked, and it would be reasonable to ask, what exactly could have been accomplished if the Government had behaved in that way, a way which would have been supported by this House overwhemingly as a whole. If the Government had acted in that way, would it have ended Partition? Would it have won over, say, Mr. Paisley or Mr. McKeague? Obviously it would not nor would any other policy now accomplish these things. We must not deceive ourselves as to what the bounds of possibility are in this matter. But the kind of approach I describe could have had, and I believe would have had, a calming effect. It could have rendered further violence less likely. It could have made the position of the Catholic minority in the north more secure, especially in Belfast, by reducing the fears which still centre now most acutely on that minority—the fears entertained, quite sincerely, by many Orangemen that the minority is simply a stalking-horse for the ambitions of the Dublin Government.
It is that belief which is in the minds of the tragically-deluded men who go out for the Ulster Volunteer Force and who resemble people who have gone out on similar missions from this side of the Border too. A responsible Government policy could also have helped the moderate elements in the northern majority, the people who would like the Hunt and Cameron reforms to be genuinely worked and who would wish at least for peace to return to their community—and there are a great many of them—and it would have made possible the resumption of a serious dialogue about common problems, a dialogue in which people from this part of the country, representatives of the northern minority and of moderate majority elements in that area could all take part with a view to making peaceful progress more likely and further outbreaks of murder, mayhem and arson less likely.
That is what the kind of policy I have outlined could reasonably be expected to have accomplished, sustained over an adequate period of time, which would not need to have been very prolonged in order to furnish some of the desired results although, of course, it does need to be sustained in a consistent, resolute spirit over a period of years and not departed from under the winds of opportunism or factional difference within a group.
Let us now consider how the Government have actually handled this issue. First of all, they have shown themselves completely indifferent to any national advantages that might be derived from a unified approach by all parties in the Dáil on this issue. The Taoiseach made this absolutely clear in his chilling and perfunctory reply to our debate on 23rd October last when I believe both Opposition parties had gone, with perhaps some generosity, a considerable way to meet him. "Our approach is the right approach," he said, flatly. He concluded: "As far as Fianna Fáil are concerned, we are, as I have said, the party of reunification and so long as the other parties come along with us in that course they are welcome to join us."
We have some small reason to be grateful for that statement. At least it is unambiguous. Fianna Fáil know it all in this matter. They need no advice from anyone else and, though reunification in their hands has made absolutely no progress, as the whole country knows, during the more than 30 years in which they have held office, their leader can still call them complacently "The party of reunification"—no other parties need apply. I believe that a genuine party of reunification would at this time, and for many years—whether we look forward or backwards—be preoccupied mainly with the relations between the major communities, the main religious groupings in this island. The form which history has given to these relations is the root cause of Partition, not the other way round. The Taoiseach would not accept that formulation. His "party of reunification", a party that has not, for many years, given any serious thought to the history of this problem and which I do not believe knows the history of this problem, is committed to the prima facie ridiculous proposition that Partition is the root cause of sectarian hatreds, fears and violence which racked that area for generations before Partition was ever thought of, as Deputy Blaney at least could tell the Taoiseach. Whatever about that, the Taoiseach, or any other rational man, even one who has only looked at the problem in its most recent manifestations and at a superficial level, would have to admit that tension between the major religious groups was the immediate cause at the very least of the most recent violence and that a “party of reunification” would have to give a very high and anxious priority to an effort to reduce such tensions.
The debate to which I refer, the debate entitled "The Situation in the Six Counties", which took place in this House on 22nd and 23rd October last—the only debate on this subject since the events of August and a long-postponed debate it was—provided within itself, by a strange irony, a sorry example of how the "party of reunification" and its leader handle this most delicate matter in actual practice—and, of course, it is practice that counts. It is not lip-service to the idea of tolerance, to the ending of sectarian violence, and so on: that is not what counts. What counts is practice— how this matter is handled in the terms of relations between human beings in this island now.
In that debate, a Fine Gael Deputy from a Border constituency who happens to be a Protestant produced evidence which he held up in this House from the Fine Gael benches over there to show that the local Fianna Fáil organisation in Monaghan exploited sectarian animosity against him as a Protestant in order to defeat him electorally in very much the same way—though of course on a much smaller scale, necessarily—as the Unionist Party has historically exploited this kind of feeling and this kind of fear among Protestants for the benefit of its particular kind of conservatism. That episode in itself might not be important. It might mean no more than that a few local party hacks had misbehaved themselves as perhaps some people do in every group at various times perhaps in the belief that when the party leadership was using— as it was then—a Red scare in the elections, pretending that people they knew not to be Communists were Communists it might be permissible for them, for this little organisation in Monaghan, to use a little Orange scare, pretending that a Fine Gael Deputy who happened to be a Protestant must be a sympathiser with the B Specials, as he was not, and as of course they knew him not to be.
If it had been just a local effort of that type it would be a mistake to take it too seriously I quite agree, but what was significant in relation to this matter, a small thing in appearance but a very significant thing in reality, was the Taoiseach's reaction or lack of reaction. He failed altogether in his reply to that debate to react to Deputy Fox's revelations which appeared to many of us as disquieting. He made no reference to them at all in his speech closing the debate on the "Situation in the Six Counties", which was the official title of that debate, a speech in which he found time to recite a little rhyme about a pussycat and generally to handle the closing in a rather leisurely way. He did not find time to refer to this matter.
The leader of a party of reunification, a party who were in earnest, a party who were truly concerned about the strained relations between the religious groups, the strained relations which as we all know are at the heart of this matter, at least now, would have shown himself, especially in the context of a debate like this, most sensitive and vigilant in relation to the kind of disclosure which was made by Deputy Fox. Such a leader would have realised the implications of the transaction referred to by the Deputy and the way in which they would be interpreted by many north of the Border.
Realising that, he would at the very least have given some indication—it would not have cost him very much— that he would look into the matter and that, if the facts were as represented, he would ensure that nothing like that would ever happen again. That, I think, is the minimum acceptable response from a leader concerned with the importance of this problem to a matter of this kind. But no. The leader of this party of reunification did not think the matter worth referring to at all.
I infer from that—and I infer it with sincere regret—that the Taoiseach and his party are not really interested in the tensions between the major religious groupings or in the need for reducing them. I do not see what else I can infer. I infer from that in turn— and I think this inference is inescapable if we accept the first one—that the leader of the party of reunification is not really interested in reunification. Possibly some members of his party and even of his Cabinet are of the same opinion, though reaching that conclusion by a very different road from mine.
The Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, for example, is one. I happened to be in Belfast at the time he made his now celebrated Letterkenny speech to the effect that the use of force could not be ruled out in certain circumstances. As it happened the people I was speaking to in Belfast belonged mainly to the minority. I was addressing a gathering organised by the Christian Brothers Past Pupils Union. I did not find anyone in that gathering at that time who seemed to welcome the Minister's offer to rescue them. I did find, in fact, that some of them felt statements of that kind only made the very difficult position of the minority more difficult by making the Unionist hardliners feel that their own siege-mentality was justified.
Of course members of the minority, certainly in Belfast, were acutely conscious of the fact that any attempt to rescue them could only put them in far greater and more instant jeopardy than they are already. They therefore were very conscious—conscious in their persons and conscious in relation to the security of their families and their own lives—of the profound irresponsibility as they saw it, and as I see it, of that statement, This was borne out on the following day when the Belfast Newsletter led off its editorial by announcing that the statement by the Minister proved the necessity for the Ulster Defence Regiment which some have referred to as the continuation of the B Specials under another name though, of course, it does differ in some important respects from the old organisation.
It was certainly in that spirit that the speech was received by the majority in the north, not just the Paisleyites who are not really the majority but by almost all sections of Protestant and Unionist opinion, including the most moderate sections of that spectrum. Quite certainly and quite obviously the Minister does not care about that. Does the Taoiseach care about it? Does he care that another member of his party, Senator McGlinchey, who I believe is quite closely associated with the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, advocated in another branch of this Oireachtas the use of foul means or fair, as he did in the Seanad on 4th December? Does he care that the Minister for Local Government once, as Senator McGlinchey implied he did also——
