I will quote points from speeches made in the other House. Let me refer to what the then Deputy Brennan, now Minister of State, said. The reference is Volume 359, column 2166. Deputy Brennan argued — and I presume it is in order to give an indirect account — that the Government should do the decent thing and respond to the appeal of Deputies Bertie Ahern and John Wilson to pay the compensation required to their own employees.
Deputy Brennan said the Minister could not introduce a Bill in the other House, as he was proposing to do, to weed out rogue directors and to weed out directors who ran away from their responsibilities while the Minister and his Government ran away from their responsibilities in that regard. Deputy Brennan made a strong, impassioned appeal to the Minister to listen to the Fianna Fáil point of view and to compensate the people involved who were employees of the State. Deputy Brennan claimed that these people had served us all proudly for many years. He ended his speech by appealing to the Minister to live up to his responsibilities and pay these Irish public servants the funds due to them.
I know now that the Minister, Deputy Brennan, is busy but we have not heard him make his point of view known since the change of Government. At the same time another prominent member of the Opposition, who is now a prominent and effective Minister in Government — Deputy Albert Reynolds — made a number of important points. He assured the House — at column 2182 — that, if the Government wanted to solve this problem they should bring in the necessary legislation. He guaranteed the full backing of the Fianna Fáil Party. He said that, if the Government wished to reconstitute an Irish shipping company, they should "forget about another committee which will go on talking until the Government are talked out of power". He stated, and this quotation must come directly from the debate:
... leave the matter for the Fianna Fáil Government who are already committed to reconstituting a shipping company.
In winding up that debate, in which 65 Fianna Fáil Deputies voted, Deputy Reynolds, as the official spokesman for the party, argued that "Fine Gael should try to stop betting each way". He said that if the Government had any humanity they would see that the principles of justice were applied. He told the Minister he would make a name for himself by standing on his own feet and he hoped that the principles in this case of firmness, equity and justice for the ordinary people would apply.
I can say no more than that. All I ask is that the Minister of State here tonight will ensure that the principles of firmness, equity and justice — promised by Deputy Reynolds on the evening of 26 June 1985 in the interests of the employees of Irish Shipping Limited — will be applied in a practical manner to ensure justice for these people. In an aside, and it may be prophetic, in that same debate Deputy Reynolds accused the Government of wanting to start a fashion of getting rid of semi-State bodies. This is something which the employees of the National Social Service Board, An Foras Forbartha, the Health Education Bureau and many others may find a rather hollow ring to at present.
The principal speaker for the Fianna Fáil Party in that debate of 26 June 1985 was Deputy John Wilson who was then the shadow spokesman on this portfolio. He spoke eloquently, as he is able to do, and he argued on the motion in the name of the Fianna Fáil Party that Dáil Éireann, in view of the loyal service given by employees of Irish Shipping to the people of Ireland, calls on the Government to pay adequate compensation to the staff of Irish Shipping of six weeks salary per year of service and restore the pensions of all former Irish Shipping staff to their pre-liquidation level.
That was the Fianna Fáil position in June 1985. Deputy Wilson made it very clear that his purpose in putting down this motion was to try to change the Government's attitude to the treatment of the employees of Irish Shipping. He made it very clear that the Fianna Fáil side of the House recognised the importance of Irish Shipping. I will quote from the Official Report, at column 1864:
... our commitment to the Irish Shipping workers — judging by the deaf ears upon which our words have fallen now, the Fianna Fáil Party seem to be the only channel through which the workers' grievances can be channelled and discussed openly with a view to changing Government policy.
Is this still the case?
Deputy Wilson had decided that the claim being made by the workers in Irish Shipping was a fair and just claim. If it was fair then, surely it is even fairer now, given the three years of deprivation and suffering these people have had to endure. He attacked the Government for not acting. He asked was it because of financial sensitivities and he said that these words take the biscuit. He dismissed any question of financial sensitivities out of hand. He then came to what I think was the nub of the difficulties in 1985. I never agreed with the arguments that were put forward, nor did Deputy Wilson. He said, at column 1865:
There were also legal sensitivities. That gets under my skin totally. This is the House that deals with legislation. Here is the place where a Bill could be brought in to nurture the sensitivities or wipe out the sensitivities or get rid of or whatever we have to do with these legal sensitivities. This is the House that could do it.
I submit that the Dáil, the other House and this House are the Houses where this can still be done. If the promises made in 1985 were genuine, if the arguments behind them were valid then, surely they are equally valid tonight.
I have deliberately played down this debate. I have not, as was always the case in the past, invited in the spokespeople for Irish Shipping. I did not tell them this debate was on. I welcome the opportunity to put their case, made by the Fianna Fáil official spokesman of three years ago, to the Minister here this evening. Have they become more of the forgotten people? Is there any sense of fairness or justice for these people, even at this late stage, when a promise was made to them in the solemnity of Leinster House, backed by the solemn commitment of the main Opposition party and put to the test of a vote after a six-hour debate over two days in that House, a vote in which virtually all Members of the other House took part? That was the solemnity of the occasion. That was the seriousness of the commitment of the then Opposition party. However solemn or serious, the fact is that the misery and the suffering of these people still remain. All I ask this evening is that the Minister tell us what his Government propose to do for the former employees of Irish Shipping and to tell us, yea or nay, if the promises given so solemnly in Opposition have any hope of being honoured.
