I feel compelled to make one final protest against the enactment of this shameful confiscatory measure. In its shameful contempt for all principles of justice and its disregard of common decency, to say nothing of Parliamentary integrity, I think it has no parallel in any Parliament of modern times. In a crude and vicious manner it legalises the robbery of 17,000 railway men of their principal rights under the Railways Act of 1924. It enables the new company to dismiss at will as many of the employees of the old constituent companies as it pleases without any cause whatsoever, and then snap its finger at them as far as claims for compensation are concerned. We have the tragic farce of having retained in the Principal Act a certain basis of compensation whilst there is set up a new and insuperable barrier between the men who would get that compensation and the compensators. It is just like telling a man whom you have bound securely by hand and foot that if he is able to jump over a 20-foot wall there are lots of nice things for him on the other side.
Never in all my experience have I known a case in which there were more grossly misleading statements made in support of a Bill than have been made by the promoters of this Bill in order to get it passed. Those of us knowing the actual facts have absolutely stood aghast at the misstatements that have been made. Misstatements have been made in order to get the Bill through, in order to ensure its passing through this House. Senators who rarely grace the Chamber with their presence have been rounded up and mobilised and have found their speech. When some of those who spoke for the Bill were engaged in the congenial task of felon-setting, the railway men whom it is now proposed to rob were risking their lives and employment in order to make this House a possibility. In return for that service they ask for no reward. They ask simply the rights of citizens; they ask for elementary justice at the hands of the Oireachtas that they fought in order to establish.
I am sorry that Senator Bagwell should signalise his severance with the railway service by helping to give his little push in favour of this atrocious measure. There was a clerk once who was dismissed—he was expelled—by the Great Northern Company because he was suspected of favouring the national cause. The day came when that clerk was a General in the Free State Army, and when the general manager who dismissed him was a member of the Irish Free State Seanad, and fell into the hands of his enemies, the clerk secured the release and safety of the man who dismissed him by threatening to shoot a number of his prisoners if he was not released within a certain time. He showed his magnanimity in that notable case. Senator Bagwell shows his magnanimity by helping to rob 17,000 of the colleagues of that man of every right to which they were entitled under the Railways Act which was passed through this House in 1924. There were in this House five or six railway directors and two general managers. They never thought of the necessity of the amendments that have been introduced until the Minister thought fit to bring forward this Bill at the bidding of the railway companies. So far as the Minister, whom the Government selected for this dirty work is concerned, I can only extend to him the charity of my silence.