I move:
That Dáil Éireann having regard to the manner in which Mr. J. Gibbons, now Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, misled the Dáil on 8th May, 1970, when he was Minister for Defence, is of opinion that his conduct was unworthy of a member of the Government and of a member of Dáil Éireann.
In moving this motion I should like to make it clear at the outset that I have no personal feeling whatever concerning the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries. In fact, the character of the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries is not the issue in this motion. It might be said that the duty of moving this motion is a responsibility I must discharge and which I shall do. The issue is whether the Minister, when he was Minister for Defence, on 8th May, 1970, accurately informed the Dáil and the country about certain events. The issue is whether his statement to the Dáil on that day stated accurately and fully the facts as he knew them or whether subsequent statements made by him in what is known as the Arms Trial in October, 1970, differed from the statements he made in the Dáil.
It is well-established practice and recognised procedure that a Minister in answering to the House and, through the House, to the country is obliged to state the facts and is not entitled to alter the form in which the facts are presented because of personal or political embarrassment. Therefore, this motion must be considered apart from the personality or character of the Minister concerned—the former Minister for Defence and present Minister for Agriculture—or, for that matter, the personalities of Ministers or Deputies involved in certain events of 18 months ago.
It is too facile to suggest that these events should be forgotten now. Of course, it would be pleasant for some —maybe for all of us—to do so if one were to ignore the fact that statements made at the time in the Dáil and subsequent statements, to which I will refer, conflict about certain events which had then happened.
Very briefly I shall recall to the Dáil certain statements contained in the Official Report dated 8th/9th May, 1970, Volume 246. At column 838, Deputy Gibbons, then Minister for Defence, intervened and said he wished to refer to certain statements that had been made and to clarify some points. He stated:
I have been informed that Mr. Patrick Kennedy, MP, in the course of a Radio Éireann interview, suggested that any participation by Captain James Kelly in an attempt to smuggle arms could only have been made with my knowledge and consent. I wish emphatically to deny any such knowledge or consent. I was aware, through the Director of Intelligence, that attempts to smuggle arms were a constant danger and these attempts were kept under surveillance at all times. I wish to say I discharged my duty to the full extent of my knowledge of the situation.
Later, at column 841, the Minister stated:
There was some reference to the training of civilians in Donegal. I want to point out the position of the Defence Forces in this regard. The Defence Forces train only members of their own ranks, whether they be FCA or Army or Naval personnel. That is the extent of their training. This story first got currency in the Protestant Telegraph. It is time that stories of this kind ceased.
I have nothing further to say on this matter. There were certain matters which I wanted to clarify for the House at this stage and I have done so.
In the course of the Arms Trial, in October, 1970, the Minister was asked a number of questions. I do not wish to delay the House in reading all of that evidence. Mr. McCarthy, one of the counsel, in the course of cross-examination quoted an extract from the Official Report of 8th May, 1970, and he said:
Deputy Ryan had also mentioned training which had been given in at least one camp to civilians. Mr. McCarthy said that Mr. Gibbons had interrupted Deputy Ryan to say "That is not true".
Mr. Gibbons: No.
Mr. McCarthy: They were not civilians?—They were fully attested members of the FCA.
Mr. McCarthy: You intervened expressly because of allegations of your own implication?—Yes.
Mr. McCarthy: And in the course of that did you say that there was some reference to the training of civilians in Donegal?—I wanted to point out that the Defence Forces trained only members of their own ranks.
Was that telling the whole truth, Mr. Gibbons?—This was a declaration that the people who were trained in Dunree were members of the FCA and were duly attested as such.
Do you think it was perhaps not telling the whole truth, that civilians from Derry, citizens of another State, were enrolled in the second line of the Defence Forces, the FCA, for the express purpose of training themselves to go back to Derry to defend themselves?—A great many of the members of our Defence Forces come, in fact, from the Six Counties.
Do any members of the FCA come from the Six Counties?—I was given to understand that people living in the Six Counties do.
Can you turn up an instance of it? —When I spoke to Colonel Hefferon about this at the time, his view was army recruits—and we were recruiting at that time—were not unduly quizzed as to where their origins were.
Mr. Gibbons said that in the case of the permanent Defence Force, it was quite a normal thing for Six County people to join the Army.
Does not that mean that this was a device to enable the Army to train them for the defence of the Bogside? —I admit that this was a device to enable Derrymen to join the FCA and to obtain training.
Do you think then that your reply to Deputy Ryan was not something of a half-truth?—I am suggesting that what Deputy Ryan said was inaccurate.
Would you accept that in this instance you had told the truth but only half the truth?—This was a Dáil debate.
It is your answer, Mr. Gibbons, that one is not bound to tell the truth in a Dáil debate?—This is a Dáil debate in which Deputy Ryan and his colleagues are seeking to demolish the Government and the Government party.
Did you ever tell Dáil Éireann that you had no concrete examples of attempts to import arms?—I don't think so.
Mr. McCarthy then quoted from the Dáil Reports an excerpt in which Mr. Gibbons had said: "I wish to emphatically deny any such knowledge of attempts to import arms. I was aware from the Director of Intelligence that attempts to smuggle arms were a constant danger..."
I would direct the attention of the House to a letter the Minister sent on 2nd April, 1971, to the Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts. The House is aware that this committee were investigating the disappearance of certain funds. The letter stated:
On April 30th, 1970, I sent for Captain James Kelly who had submitted his resignation from the Army. I met him in my office in Leinster House. It then seemed clear to me that he had been an active agent in an attempt to import arms into this country.
Among other questions I asked him from what source the money for this operation came. He replied that it came from the fund for the relief of distress in Northern Ireland. This was the first intimation that I had received as to the source of the money. Up to that time I had no knowledge whatever as to the means of dispensation of this fund or to whom payments were made. I knew nothing whatever about it nor have any documents relating to it.
(Signed) James Gibbons.
Later a point was put to Deputy Gibbons in relation to the following quotation from the Taoiseach:
I do not think the House would expect nor could I give any more information about the disposal of Secret Service funds. However, I want to add that I made specific inquiries as to whether any money could have been devoted or could have been paid out of Exchequer funds or out of any public funds in respect of a consignment of arms of the size we have been dealing with and I am assured there was not nor could there have been.
This was on 14th May and the chairman put this to Deputy Gibbons:
Yet in the document you say——
Mr. Gibbons: I had been told by Captain Kelly.
I think that from the extracts I have read it is shown clearly there was a fundamental difference between the remarks which the Minister made in the course of his intervention in the debate on 8th May and his subsequent reply to cross-examination to certain questions put to him by counsel in the arms trial and subsequently confirmed in a letter from James Gibbons, T.D., Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, Government Buildings, dated 2nd April, 1971, and addressed to the Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts in which reference was made to the events I have read out in relation to 30th April.
This motion goes specifically to the issue of confidence in the discharge of his functions and responsibilities as a member of the Government, and the House will be aware that under the terms of Article 28, 4.2 of the Constitution:
The Government shall meet and act as a collective authority, and shall be collectively responsible for the Departments of State administered by the members of the Government.
This responsibility which the Minister discharged, according to the Taoiseach's own statement to the House, concerned two specific matters. One was the question of an attempt to import arms and the expenditure of money which subsequently the Minister stated had come from the fund for the relief of distress in Northern Ireland and the issue of training members of the FCA from Derry. I think it is abundantly clear from the facts I have disclosed in these two specific extracts that this goes not merely to the manner in which the Minister failed to inform the Dáil of the full facts of the situation but to the manner in which the Government collectively, and the Taoiseach as head of the Government, for a long period stood over the failure to inform the Dáil of the full facts.
I think the House will appreciate and the country must by now recognise that it is not sufficient to say this was a Dáil debate and that this failure to disclose was because Deputies on the Opposition side were endeavouring to bring down the Government. No one can have confidence in a Government or the individual members of a Government who behave in the way in which the members of this Government handled this whole question. This particular event and the other events which now have been the subject of discussion during a period of 18 months may seem of little account to Members when the question of whether a Government are supported by a majority or whether they cease to retain that majority is at issue. It has been argued that because of the manner in which this was presented to the House there was no obligation to tell the full facts. It has been long established and recognised as fundamental to a democracy that those elected to particular positions must in the discharge of the responsibilities imposed on them disclose all the information to the House and to the country. In this case, in his capacity as Minister, Deputy Gibbons failed to disclose the full facts. Subsequently, all these facts came to light either in the course of cross-examination or in the letter which the Minister sent to the Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts.
I want to make it absolutely clear that in so far as this motion is concerned the personality of the Minister or of any of the other Ministers or of Deputies who were formerly colleagues does not enter into it. The question is whether the duties imposed by this House in electing certain individuals to Ministerial office were discharged, whether those Minister acted bona fide in telling the House the full facts or whether they sought to mislead the House by not disclosing all the information that was then available.
It has been suggested that this motion is one of confidence and that the risk inherent in an election might bring or would bring dangers to this country. It is well to recall that elections in this country were held in far more difficult circumstances and that the will of the people prevailed. It is better to have an election than to have a continuation of the present undisguised uncertainly in which, in order not to have political or personal embarrassment, anything that can be got away with is accepted as the appropriate standard.
They are not the standards that we believe to be in the national interest. They are not the standards that we believe, irrespective of political parties, the majority of the people expect from their elected representatives. Those who think otherwise are free to vote against this motion. We put down this motion because we are convinced that until we can get elected representatives to speak and to act in the same way it is impossible to have either trust or confidence in the Government or any member of the Government. On that basis, this motion is put to the House in the knowledge that those who wish to support it do so in the certain knowledge that it is a motion of no confidence in the manner in which the Minister himself has discharged his responsibilities, but more than that a motion of no confidence in the whole chaotic handling of national security in the last 18 months by the present Government.
