Deputy Wilson has been given permission to make a personal explanation on a matter raised by the Minister for Education on Friday last.
Personal Explanation by Member.
I quote from the Official Report of Thursday, 24 May 1984. I said:
and there is sectarian advice from outside the Civil Service being brought into the Department of Education.
and later:
I will back it up if I am given the opportunity.
First of all, I want to quote from the Official Report some points of my philosophy in this matter when I was Minister for Education:
As far as my philosophy is concerned, there are citizens of this country and there are children citizens, all of whom are treated equally and I deprecate and condemn the introduction of sectarianism, because there will be no "factory of grievances" in this part of the country.
That was at column 1605 of Volume 318. Later, at column 1609 I said:
Again I must say that I deprecate strongly that the Fine Gael Party are making a party-political matter out of religious issues.
This philosophy I outlined in detail to a meeting of Comh-Comhairle Corcaigh at a meeting in Cork which was attended and addressed by such varied and representative public figures as the late Val Jago, the Reverend Michael Hurley, SJ and Mr. Gerald Goldberg. They approved it and commended me for it. The Leader of the Opposition, now Taoiseach, came into this House and, on an occasion when convention does not allow a reply——
Deputy——
——alleged sectarianism on my part.
The Deputy will conclude. The Chair wishes to say something. I should just like to tell the Deputy that his explanation must be a personal explanation and it must regard the matter raised by the Minister for Education on the last day. It cannot bring in other people.
I am offering——
On a point of order, many of us listened with some astonishment on the last occasion to what purported to be a personal explanation by the Minister for Education. The Minister on that occasion ranged far away from anything in the nature of a personal explanation and went into the matters with which Deputy Wilson is purporting to deal now.
Deputies
Hear, hear.
The Minister for Education spoke on the last day for about two minutes.
She went into all these matters.
The Leader of the Opposition, now Taoiseach, came into this House and, on an occasion when convention does not allow a reply, alleged sectarianism on my part as the main theme of his contribution on my re-appointment as Minister for Education. This is at columns 1634 to 1637, Volume 317. This was a most damaging and utterly false accusation.
May I——
It was at the time drowned in the sea of scurrility——
Deputy, please.
Is the Deputy in order in quoting from the record, but changing the direct into the indirect?
The Deputy will please quote.
Is it in order to ask the Deputy to quote?
The Deputy is now raising——
(Interruptions.)
Please, the Chair should be allowed to speak. The Deputy is now giving an explanation——
He is defending himself.
——about something said by the Minister for Education last week, not something which the Taoiseach said years ago.
On a point of order——
It was at the time drowned in the sea of scurrility that was the burden of that speech.
Deputy, I am sorry——
It is one which the Taoiseach repeated last weekend.
I am sorry, Deputy. Deputy Wilson, please.
I reject it, and reject, as beneath contempt the person——
Deputy Wilson is being very disorderly.
——that stoops so low as to make it.
Deputy Wilson is being quite disorderly. There is a long series of decisions about personal explanations. One is that they cannot be provocative, that they cannot attack others.
Deputies
Hear, hear.
Why did that not apply last week?
It did apply last week.
The Minister for Education ranged far and wide in her explanation and actually brought me into it.
There are rules, Deputy.
The handlers can make something out of it afterwards and the handlers will, but I am entitled to reply to what was said.
The Deputy must confine himself to a personal explanation which is short, which is confined to the matter at issue, which is not provocative and which does not attack other people.
A Cheann Comhairle, as a point of order, you gave what was proper in a personal statement. Could I ask whether it is proper in a personal statement to make statements which are incorrect rather than relevant in the House?
The Minister for Education did that.
I would ask Deputy Wilson to quote where in my speech the word "sectarianism" or any similar word is used. I accused the Deputy of one thing only — insensitivity — and God knows he has shown that in this House often enough.
I understand that the then Leader of the Opposition, now Taoiseach, got this line of attack——
The Deputy should give the quotation.
——from the Fine Gael Education Policy Committee and an attempt was made by the then Fine Gael spokesman on Education to follow the same line, as we can see from the Official Report — columns 1608 to 1609, Volume 318 — where I referred to the Fine Gael Leader's attempt to start some kind of sectarian slant to education business in the House. The then Leader of the Opposition accused me of "insensitivity"— as he has just admitted——
Indeed. Now we are getting somewhere.
——in regard to the religious minority here, "of operating a closed door system to the minority here", and "virtually spitting in the faces"— I am repeating these statements, but the House may not believe it; this is what he said —"of the people in Northern Ireland" and giving them totally unnecessary reasons for saying they will have nothing to do with us and suggested that Fianna Fáil were seeking to create a "denominational state".
That is a little more than insensitivity.
These hyped-up unjust, reckless, malicious and false statements——
Deputies
Hear, hear.
——are a disgrace to the person who spoke them.
Deputy Wilson, please.
He claimed——
Please, Deputy Wilson.
A Cheann Comhairle, be fair to me. He claimed on Saturday last, in his arrogance——
Deputy Wilson is out of order. Deputy Wilson will resume his seat.
——that he was farseeing and correct. He is shortsighted and wrong. What are the facts?
Let him clear his name.
He has not.
Deputy Wilson used the word "malicious". That is unparliamentary and disorderly and I ask him to withdraw it.
I withdraw it.
(Interruptions.)
The statement from Fine Gael that Fianna Fáil were trying to create a "denominational State" must bring a smile to the Dalkey School Committee who were sat on by a Government of which the present Taoiseach was a member. And the present Minister for Education had the affrontery to turn up to unveil a plaque there on Monday. I received the group one month after I took office in August 1977 and agreed to sanction the establishment of the Dalkey school at that time. As quoted in The Irish Press dated 20 December 1979, 20 per cent of my meetings in the previous year had been with representatives of the minority.
Deputy Wilson, this has nothing to do with what happened on last Friday.
The Deputy is entitled to clear his name and the Chair should not deny him the opportunity of doing so.
This is no joke. Deputy Collins, please. I am bound by Standing Orders, of precedents.
He is entitled to clear his name.
As quoted in The Irish Times, dated 20 December 1979, 20 per cent of my meetings in the previous year had been with representatives of the minority. The heinousness of making untrue statements for party political purposes, without regard to the reaction to them, when repeated in Belfast newspapers was borne in on me with special force during our studies at the Forum and when repeated to me by Belfast friends. The advice of this Fine Gael Policy Committee, if still as sectarian minded as the Fine Gael leader showed in his speech, is one this country could do without and is the advice which on Thursday last I decried. I was denied an opportunity to expand them, although when Minister for Education I provided two successive Fridays for debate on the Education Estimates.
Deputy Hussey, Minister for Education, in an unbalanced and hysterical reaction, personalised everything. I am telling the Minister to check with, to name but a few, the Church of Ireland, the Methodists, the Presbyterians in Dalkey, Tubbercurry, County Sligo, Cootehill, Bailieborough, the Royal School, County Cavan, Drum, County Monaghan, Glengara Park, Kilkenny College, with Dean Griffin of the Cathedral Choir School and the Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork as to my care and concern for minorities. I am claiming no credit. They are free and equal citizens.
I make no party political point of it. A personality was mentioned by the Minister for Education in this connection. I never met this man. I had two contacts with his school, one to recommend the pupils from a certain family for acceptance in the school. I am glad to record that they were accepted. The other was when I gave instructions in my Department that pupils of the minority religion should be provided with transport to that school even if it meant modifying the regulations.
I am not sure of the motives of the Minister for Education in the matter. She knows that I have a substantial number of the minority religions, Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Methodist in my constituency. I am not convinced that her party political posturing will impress them. She also has in her constituency a substantial minority, particularly in the Greystones area. In the recent town commissioners election the Fine Gael vote dropped from 49 per cent to 28 per cent. As they say Verb. Sap.