I gave notice, Sir, that I wished to raise the following matter on the Adjournment:
The refusal of the Minister for Defence to set up a commission on the lines of the Conroy Commission to inquire into pay, promotion and disciplinary conditions of Army personnel.
I did not particularly want to bring the Minister back on the Adjournment, but this is an extremely serious matter and it has gone to the point where it is an extremely urgent matter. I wanted, as Fine Gael spokesman on Defence, to draw attention to this in the best possible way that I could and to take advantage of any opportunity I have to do it.
We, on this side of the House, advocated the setting up of a commission on a previous occasion. I have been supported on this by the leader of the party, Deputy Liam Cosgrave. No commission has been set up. I am not setting out to blame the present Minister for Defence. He cannot be held responsible for what his predecessors have failed to do since 1964. I say 1964 deliberately because it was in 1964 that the chief of staff first requested a comprehensive review of the whole situation.
To make a case for a commission it is necessary to go into a little bit of history. The chief of staff made this request and he let the matter go on for a period of two years. Nothing happened. He repeated the same request in 1966. On each of these occasions I believe he made his case well but nothing happened even after the 1966 repeat request. In 1968 he again made a very strong submission to the Minister of the day for the setting up of a commission. What he had in mind was a commission on the lines of the Conroy Commission which inquired into the situation in the Garda Síochána. He got no commission. Instead, he got what the Minister describes as a working party in 1969. This working party was supposed to report back to the Minister before last Christmas. They failed to report before last Christmas and they have failed to report since. I think the chief of staff had considerable difficulty in getting the people under his command to understand why nothing was appearing to be done and why this review body set up by the Minister was not producing anything.
I spoke on this matter in another place last night and it is reported in this evening's newspapers. It is no secret that this group has now broken up and it has broken up mainly because it was wrongly constituted, because it was not a commission proper. It was composed of one Army colonel, one member of the Secretariat of the Department of Defence and one member from the Department of Finance. One can easily see that such a body was doomed to failure because it was loaded against the military arm of the Army. We all know that in the Department of Defence there are two sides—there is the Civil Service side and there is the military side. The Civil Service, as we all know, are mainly interested in saving money. On the other hand, the military side are keenly conscious of the great responsibility they carry at all times when the chips are really down. They are the last line of defence and when the country is really up against it we look to the Army to come in and save the situation for us.
We do not want this type of working party because this is only an excuse for a commission. We want a real commission that will make a searching inquiry not only into pay, not only into promotion, not only into disciplinary matters—we want a searching inquiry into all the sources of discontent that are so evident today, an inquiry into the reasons why resignations are on the increase, an inquiry into the reasons why we have failed over the years, in spite of all our recruiting efforts, to bring the Army up to its full strength. Why has the Army not been more attractive to people? These are the sorts of things a commission must inquire into. I do not believe that an increase in pay will reverse the present deteriorated condition of the Army. I feel this will require far deeper searching. There is a discontent and a dissatisfaction there which should be obvious to everybody and I do not think that will be settled by just giving the eleventh round or the twelfth round. The Army has fallen behind people similarly qualified in civilian life. These are some of the reasons why the morale never was as low as it is at present. I am making the statement and I believe I am right in saying that colonels are travelling from the most distant parts of the country to report in Dublin to the chief of staff on the deterioration in the morale of the Army and to complain that unless something is done as a matter of urgency we will be in serious trouble.
We require, as never before, a strong Army, an Army that is confident in its ability to maintain peace and security in this State in the special circumstances of the difficulties in the north, the threats that are within and without. I feel that all these matters call for the searching scrutiny of a commission and that no other body can do it. The Minister now has this responsibility left to him. Not only would this commission look into the present-day needs of the Army but they would look forward into the position in which we will be in perhaps two years' time when both sides of the Border will be in the EEC. That is what we all expect; that is what we are all hoping. It will not at all surprise me at that point if the British decide to phase themselves out of the North of Ireland. That is the point at which we will need the strongest Army that we ever had in this country to maintain peace during this transition period. We all say in this House that the reunification of this country is inevitable and I agree with that. But we will never secure the reunification of the country on peaceful terms until we strengthen the Army here and this is the price the people will have to pay for it. Ministers in other Departments of State insist on insurance policies being taken out for one thing or another. You cannot take a car on to the road unless you have an insurance policy in case you may injure, maim or kill another road user. The only insurance policy we have against future mass disorder, against bloodshed and loss of life is a strong army. We need one. We need an army twice the size of the Army we have at the moment, twice as well equipped, an army with morale and with confidence in its ability to maintain peace in the kinds of circumstances I have described.
There is a serious responsibility now on the Minister's shoulders to set up this commission to make this investigation in order to restore confidence in the Army and in those who serve in it. All of us are proud of those who serve in our Army and, because we are proud of them, we should insist that they are properly looked after. The Civil Service has its own arbitration machinery for looking after its needs. The Garda Síochána have a representative body that can make their claims. But even they were given a commission and we know how near we were to serious trouble in the Garda Síochána because this commission was not producing the goods; even when it did produce them there were storm clouds gathering because the recommendations of the commission were not being implemented.
We have arrived at a similar position now in regard to the Army and we are doing nothing about it. I am appealing to the Minister—a new Minister and a young Minister—to take a serious look at the situation, to send for the chief of staff and listen to what he has to say. Do not listen to the civil servants all the time.
There are two angles to this. There is a serious situation and I appeal to the Minister seriously to look into it. I have brought him back here tonight to hear what he has to say and what he intends to do. The country wants to know what the Minister's intentions are in this situation. It has gone on for far too long. The present situation is the result of a lack of interest, of an obvious political apathy in relation to the country's defence and in relation to the Army. Nobody cares but, mark you, people are beginning to care because of recent disturbances and because of future expectations. There is now much more concern about and much more interest in the Army. I believe the people are prepared to pay the insurance premium necessary in order to increase the Estimate for Defence for the purpose of providing the money needed to bring the Army to that pitch at which it should be.
