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Dáil Éireann - Volume 40 - 15 October, 1931

In Committee on Finance. - Constitution (Amendment No. 17) Bill, 1931—Money Resolution.

Minister for Finance (Mr. Blythe): I move:—

That it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas of any expenses that may be incurred in carrying into effect any Act of the present Session to amend the Constitution by inserting therein an Article making better provision for safeguarding the rights of the people and containing provisions for meeting a prevalence of disorder.

It is impossible at the present stage to say what expenses will be involved in carrying out the Bill. There will be expenses in connection with the Tribunal and also in connection with the holding of prisoners. The amount, I think, will not be very much. I hope that we will be able to manage this whole business expeditiously and economically.

Mr. Derrig: I think the House is entitled to know to what extent the Minister proposes to organise new forces, and what the cost of these forces will be.

Mr. Blythe: That will depend on circumstances. I do not think that any new forces will be necessary.

Mr. MacEntee: Last night, when the President was addressing himself to the urgency of this Bill, he told us that what they wanted was time and leisure to deal with the grave economic crisis that is now upon us. No person has a better knowledge of the extent of that crisis than the Minister for Finance. He knows very well that at the end of this years he is going to be faced with a Budget deficit of at least two and a half million pounds, and in this notion he is asking the Dáil to give him a blank cheque in order to carry out a policy the cost of which he himself has not been able to envisage. He has no idea and has not made an estimate of the cost of this.

I think that before this policy of fomenting disorder is embarked upon the House at any rate should be given some information as to the liabilities which are going to be incurred under the Bill, and how these liabilities are going to be discharged. The present position of the Exchequer is this, that with the deficit which is facing him the Minister next year will have to impose a very heavy addition to the income tax, will have to impose and additional duty on tea, will have to tack on an additional duty on beer, spirits and sugar, and a heavy impost on every article of necessity. On top of this he is now embarking upon a policy that is going to disturb the whole course of trade in the country. I think that before this goes any further we ought to try to see for ourselves whether the game is worth the candle. I know that there are some men unfortunately to when life means little, but to whom property is everything. I should like them to look into the future with regard to this matter. If the Executive get away with the Bill, succeed in securing the assent of the Dáil to this policy, and succeed in setting themselves up as a dictatorship, does any man imagine that they are going to maintain themselves permanently in that position? The life of dictators in all countries is comparatively short, but the expense of a dictatorship may be very great, and at the end who is going to pay for it? I do not know who will be in this House when the accounts in this regard come to be totted up at the end of the regime. Possibly I will not be here, and possibly my Party will not be here. Other people will be here. If they are here, I charge them with this as their [249] responsibility and as their duty, that whatever this Bill costs the cost of the Bill will not be borne by the community, but will be borne by those who are now driving it through the House against their better judgment in default of any evidence that there is any necessity for the Bill. There are men on the opposite benches who are quite calmly going into the Lobby backing the Government by their votes. I hope when there is another Minister for Finance replacing the present Minister that he will see that these men who backed this policy by their votes will back it by their private fortunes as well.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. McGilligan): A situation which was very much the same as this was previously considered—I am not quite sure whether Deputy MacEntee was raised to what was called Cabinet rank in his organisation at the time—certainly by members who did arrogate to themselves such Cabinet rank, and they decided this:

The continued existence of the Free State Government will depend largely on the ability of the Free State leaders to improve the economic condition of the country and to restore stability and security to its industrial life. They cannot do this with any degree of success while there remains in the country an armed force not under their control and hostile to their State, implying by its very existence a threat of armed action against them at any favourable moment.

That was written by Deputy Lemass, Acting-Minister for Defence, to the Cabinet.

Mr. Lemass: A very sensible observation.

Mr. Davin: What was the date?

Mr. McGilligan: 1925. That was the view in 1925 held by Deputy Lemass, that a country could not get economic prosperity as long as there was an armed force on the flank. We propose to take steps to take away that armed force from the flank. It will tend to the economic betterment of the country.

[250] Mr. Lemass: I think that a very useful thing has been done both by the Minister for Industry and Commerce just now and by the Minister for Agriculture some time ago in tearing off completely the mask of hypocrisy with which the President succeeded in covering over this proposal of the Government. The President came here in the guise of a statesman. He came here appealing to all Parties to consider the situation that he alleged existed in the country, and asking that the representatives of the people would discuss and decide what action was best suited to deal with the situation. But the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, in quoting that document, and the Minister for Justice last night in quoting a similar document, made it quite clear that the main purpose behind the proposal was the making of Party capital for Cumann na nGaedheal—the sole and main purpose behind the proposal. The observation which the Minister has just read from that document is a very sensible observation, but I want to know now if these documents which the Minister has secured, and which relate to the year 1925, are the reason for this Bill. Have they anything to do with it? Is this Bill introduced because the Minister discovered these documents?

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: Not a bit.

Mr. Lemass: They have nothing to do with this discussion. They are introduced to make a point against Fianna Fáil.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: No. I quoted one specific document yesterday to show that a certain gentleman was in receipt of Russian pay in the year 1925. I made no allegation against the Deputy.

Mr. Lemass: The document did nothing of the kind. The gentleman in question was not in receipt of Russian pay. I know more about it than the Minister.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: Why did you not say so?

[251] Mr. Lemass: I say so now. The document, on the admission of the Minister, has nothing to do with the proposals before the Dáil now. These proposals have nothing to do with the professed desire of the President to have peaceful and stable conditions in this country. These proposals are introduced here in order to create a position favourable to Cumann na nGaedheal in the coming election. It is my sincere conviction that the introduction of the Bill, accompanied by the speeches made by various Ministers in this Dáil and outside, will have the effect of strengthening the organisations that they purport to suppress, and I say that that is what the Government want. They are trying to squeeze Fianna Fáil between the hammer of Cumann na nGaedheal and the anvil of the I.R.A. That is the political design behind this measure. It was not produced as the result of any sudden crisis which arose. The Minister for Local Government, in a rash moment, “blew the gaff” last night—he gave the game away. This measure, he said, was introduced because the Government decided that the civil was is going to start when the Government want it to start and not when the I.R.A. want it to start. That is what the Minister for Local Government said last night, and by that declaration he destroyed the whole pretence that these proposals are the result of any crisis which has arisen in the past few months. He revealed the fact that the Executive Council coldly and calmly sat down and decided to provoke a civil war now for some particular reason. What was the reason?

Mr. Brady: The Eucharistic Congress.

Mr. Lemass: What is the reason? That is a question which the Dail has to ask itself. The Government no doubt visualised the I.R.A. as a potential danger but they did not contemplate that danger manifesting itself in serious form now. They have decided to provoke it now. The Minister for Local Government has told us that the Government has selected this period in which to have whatever disorder is to [252] come. Why did they select this period? What particular advantage is there to them in having that disorder now instead of at some other period? There is a Eucharistic Congress next year. No one could contemplate the Government deciding to start a civil war as a sort of side-show to that Congress. Besides that there is a General Election due. I say that the Bill is introduced and the situation provoked because the Government think that by doing so they can create a favourable atmosphere for themselves at the General Election.

It was obvious to-day from the speech made by the Minister for Agriculture that his one concern was to discredit his political opponents in this House. Every point he made was the point of a party politician. He was not at all concerned about the effect of his utterances upon the country as a whole. He was not at all concerned with peace, order, progress and stability. He was concerned only with getting votes by any unscrupulous means that he could. We have to take it anyway on the word of the Minister for Local Government, who is an authority on civil war, that the Government have decided that this time is suitable for a civil war, or, at any rate, whatever civil disturbance they can provoke. In the next month or two months or three months they are going to use the powers conferred under this Bill for that purpose, and they have decided that it is advantageous to the nation that they should do so.

It may be, and I can see Deputies on the Cumann na nGaedheal Benches considering it advisable to proceed in this way to bring whatever situation there is in the country to a head, to get it over and done with, but I can see an alternative also which Deputies are choosing to ignore. We have discussed a number of questions in the last two days which have, in my opinion, little to do with the situation we are now dealing with. I would like very much somebody like Deputy Good or other Independent Deputies who were not associated with the Sinn Fein movement at any time to tell us quite frankly what they think of it all. They [253] see us and see that Deputies opposite were members of the Army Council of the I.R.A., and were in the Inner Council of the I.R.B. up to 1922, 1923, and perhaps 1924. Some may be in it still. They see that we were in the Army Council of the I.R.A. and other organisations up to 1925. Was there any particular virtue in 1923 or 1925 which made them right or made us right in deciding to cease our connection with these organisations? Undoubtedly the situation has changed. We must not take it that all the virtue is on one side. The people with whom we are dealing do not regard themselves as criminals, but it is difficult to try to express their attitude here as I see it without being misrepresented as advocating their policy or outlook. I do not want to do that, but I do suggest, in view of our past and the associations of individuals on the Government Benches and on these benches with that movement, it is our duty to try the method of common sense before we try the method of repression.

I say whatever situation exists is due to three main causes, and I would like to put the three causes in the order of importance as I see them. The first is the absence of an Executive Council that will make any serious attempt to progress towards complete independence. Secondly, the bad economic conditions, and, thirdly, the restrictions imposed upon the political action of certain groups. If these three causes were removed, if there were an Executive Council in office which had as its declared policy an advancement from the present position, if economic conditions were better, and if it were possible for all groups to send their representatives into this Dáil without compelling them in advance to forswear any political policy they had, we would be able to deal with the situation by the existing law. It is merely because we choose to ignore this, and because we refuse to consider any remedy for these causes, that this drastic legislation is to be enacted.

The Dáil, however, cannot take the attitude that there is no alternative to the Bill before it. There is the alternative which Fianna Fáil is prepared to try, and which it believes will [254] prove more successful than the method proposed by the Government. I choose to call it the commonsense method. Call it what method you like. The basis of the suggestion is that the root causes of whatever discontent exists should be removed before repression is resorted to. If there is violence, if there is an organisation started for the purpose of committing acts of violence, if those root causes are removed, whatever powers the Executive Council in power require to deal with that situation should be given to them. I am not talking of general theories that would apply to all countries. I am talking of the particular situation that exists in this country. In view of the past of the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Local Government, as well as the past of Deputy de Valera, myself and Deputy Aiken, we are morally bound to try the method of common sense before we try to let the idea of brute force fill our minds to the exclusion of anything else.

The demerits of the Bill have been discussed at length. Deputies have heard speakers put forward proposals. Deputies have heard the lucid exposition of Deputy Geoghegan that some of the provisions had no parallel in any legal code in the world, and that this Government had taken on powers that no other European Government except a group of brigands in some Eastern European State had taken on. They are taking powers to declare any act to be a crime which they certify a crime. The President read out yesterday a list of incidents that occurred. He referred particularly to the suppression of an Orange meeting in Cavan. There was also one suppressed in Leitrim. Why did he not refer to that? Is Deputy Paddy Reynolds, who organised the suppression of that, going to be tried under this Bill?

Mr. Reynolds: On a point of order. Deputy Paddy Reynolds did not organise the suppression of that Orange meeting. That is a lie.

Mr. Lemass: It was reported in the Press.

Mr. Reynolds: I went down to cause peace. Will you apologise?”

[255] An Ceann Comhairle: The most abused words of this House are “point of order.” This is a point of personal explanation. The Deputy should not have said “That is a lie!” That is out of order.

Mr. Lemass: The President and other speakers were at pains to assure us that this Bill would confer no hardship on law-abiding citizens. Is that true?

The President: Perfectly.

Mr. Lemass: Is it a fact that this Bill could not be used against any law-abiding citizen?

The President: No law-abiding citizen need fear any interference.

Mr. Lemass: We have to take the President's word for it.

The President: Yes.

Mr. Lemass: He is taking power to interfere with every citizen.

The President: No.

Mr. Lemass: Is he not taking power under this Bill to arrest, intern, and even to shoot any person?

The President: Nonsense.

Mr. Lemass: Under this Bill could not my action in voting against the Second Reading be certified by the Minister as an act designed to impede the Government?

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: No.

An Ceann Comhairle: Let us have more common-sense and less cross-examination.

Mr. Lemass: That is in the Bill.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: No.

Mr. Lemass: The Government should only ask from the Dáil the minimum powers they require. Instead of that they ask the maximum. One of the few safeguards in the Bill the Minister is proposing to delete by an amendment. They are asking power to declare anything a crime, no matter by whom it is committed, five years ago if necessary. They are asking power [256] to have a man arrested, tried, sentenced and executed without one word appearing in the Press.

The President: Does the Deputy believe that?

Mr. Lemass: It is in the Bill.

The President: Let us at least be honest.

Mr. Lemass: I am concerned with the power which they are asking. We know that the President and the Executive Council cannot be trusted with too much power, that that power gets to the heads of some members of it. I have personal knowledge that members of the Executive Council have deliberately stated things to be true that are not true. Let me give an example.

The President: Is not the discussion on this measure very largely due to prejudice against certain members of the Executive Council? It started from the speech of the leader of the Opposition in attacking at least two members of the Executive Council. It could have been avoided, and we could have a discussion on the Bill without that prejudice. Deputy MacEntee comes along and says someone will be charged in a year or two with the cost of this. That brings a counter-attack. Cannot we deal with the business side of the Bill and its connections?

Mr. Lemass: Does the President ever try to reconcile his words with his actions?

An Ceann Comhairle: The debate on this Money Resolution should really be confined to a consideration of the finances of the Bill. Perhaps that is altogether——

Mr. Lemass: Too much to hope for.

An Ceann Comhairle: I accept that. I am not making any attempt to insist upon it, but I want to point out that Deputies have the choice of a discussion on this Money Resolution, leading to a Second Stage debate on the Bill, and a discussion on amendments. In the circumstances it does not seem that [257] the Chair should interfere. But whatever we are going to discuss should not be discussed by way of question and answer or cross-examination across the floor of the chamber. Deputy Lemass could, I think, be a little more pertinent to the Money Resolution without explaining how some member of the House deliberately said something that was not true.

Mr. Lemass: The point I put to the House is that we should not take the risk of giving to the Executive Council the powers it seeks in this Bill merely because the President assures us that he is only going to use these powers sparingly.

The President: I have not said that.

Mr. Lemass: He has not even said that, and he is asking powers to deal with the life of every citizen in the country.

The President: What I asked the Deputy was: did he believe we were going to do what he said.

Mr. Aiken: You did it before.

Mr. Lemass: I am not concerned with the assurances the President gives here now. The President's words will not be in the Bill. The sections in the Bill are what I am concerned with. The speech the President made in introducing the Bill and the speeches he made in the course of the debate will not, I am sure, be read before these military tribunals when some prisoner is brought up for trial. We are concerned with the powers the Executive Council are asking, powers which, we say, are not necessary to deal with any situation in the country that we know of, except they want to provoke a situation, as the Minister for Local Government hinted, in order to make political capital for themselves. A certain situation does exist. I am not saying that everything in the garden is lovely, that the country is peaceful and the flowers are beautiful, and that there is no need to worry. There is a situation which concerns all of us. But that will not be improved, and it will not be removed by enacting legislation of this kind or by the use by the [258] Executive Council of the powers that this Bill will afford them.

There is another method—the common-sense method. We think that the Dáil, before arming itself with jackboots to deal with these people many of whom, however mistaken they are, hold their convictions quite sincerely, should examine that method. It was made abundantly clear, particularly by the Minister for Agriculture, that the main purpose behind this Bill is political. The President himself indicated that by the motion he put down to curtail discussion. Before we saw the Bill at all we knew that it was going to be rushed through this machine by the method of the guillotine. That may be good Party tactics, but it is not statesmanship and it cannot possibly parade itself as statesmanship. We knew that also by the speech the President made yesterday, in which he attempted to convey that any Deputy who wasted time, as he said, discussing the Bill was encouraging crime. That was not statesmanship. That was a small, petty attempt to score a point over political opponents. We knew it also by the speech of the Minister for Justice, who talked about the Fianna Fáil Party running away whenever they were asked to come down and do something practical. He was not concerned with statesmanship. Quite frankly and openly, he stood up to make as much capital for his Party out of the Bill as he could. He did not make much. It was not his fault. The spirit was willing but the ability was weak.

The position in which the Dáil finds itself is that, having been moved, as, no doubt, they were by the President's speech, and induced to give a First Reading to the Bill, there are now revealing the whole works behind it. They can see it as something probably devised by the General Secretary of Cumann na nGeadheal with an eye to the coming General Election and an ear to the result of the past by-elections. Knowing the Government Party had a very poor chance indeed of coming back with one-fifth of its present numbers in an election under [259] the circumstances which existed a week ago, they decided to change the circumstances and to try to precipitate a situation in which they would have a khaki election. No doubt, they succeeded. We cannot go back to the situation of a week ago. The very introduction of this Bill has created a new situation, but so long as the people of the country know the game the Government are up to much damage cannot be done. It is only if they are taken seriously that irreparable disaster may be caused.

Captain Redmond: I had not intended to speak a second time on this Bill but I cannot refrain from expressing my gratitude to Deputy Lemass for a few of the sentiments to which he has given expression. A phrase that came into common parlance years ago in Parliamentary circles in Great Britain commenced in this way: “What Gladstone said in '86,” and then went on. The British people, in time, grew heartily sick and tired of this phrase and this cant. I was delighted to hear Deputy Lemass state this afternoon that it was time that both sides—Fianna Fáil and Cumann nGaedheal—gave up talking about what was said in 1922, 1923, 1924 or 1925. The country has had enough of that. The country wants to know what is going to be done here and now in the present circumstances and situation. Deputy Lemass's solution for the present situation, which he does not deny is a serious and grave one, is on similar lines to what I understand to be Deputy O'Connell's solution. Deputy Lemass says: “Remove the root causes.” Deputy O'Connell says: “Bring about revolutionary reform.” I ask both these Deputies what is going to happen meanwhile— before you remove the root causes and before you bring about the revolutionary reform? Do they think that they will be able to solve the unemployment question in a few months? Do they think that they will be able to remove in a few weeks the grievances of the small working farmers who are not getting good prices for their produce? Do they think seriously that [260] if they were to remove the Oath from the Constitution to-morrow that they would satisfy those who openly profess the doctrines of Sovietism and declare that what they want is not an Irish Republic, but a Soviet and a Workers' Republic? I do not think that they can possibly believe that that would be the case. Therefore, I think it is not fair for them to say, and it is not just to themselves, or to those they represent, to say that that alternative is one to which any body of sensible men could lend countenance for a single moment.

Deputy O'Connell has spoken strongly against military courts. I also have spoken strongly against military courts. I opposed the last Public Safety Bill largely on the ground that military courts were being set up. I hate the prospect of military courts. I hate the idea of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act or doing away with trial by jury. The last Public Safety Bill was introduced after the assassination of Kevin O'Higgins. That time was serious enough. At that time I myself believed that the legislation introduced by the Government was nothing short of panic legislation. The same cannot be said of the state of affairs to-day. In the meantime there has been a growth of various organisations throughout the country. There has been a development in arming and drilling. There has been an importation of rifles.

Mr. Lemass: Who told you?

Captain Redmond: It is common knowledge.

Mr. Lemass: It is not.

Mr. O'Connell: Cannot the President tell us that?

Captain Redmond: I shall give my own information only and say that I have been informed that arms have been imported into this country.

Mr. Lemass: By whom?

Captain Redmond: I cannot say by whom.

Mr. Davin: Where was that?

[261] Captain Redmond: I cannot say.

Mr. Flinn: This is the kind of evidence that will be given before the military tribunals.

Captain Redmond: There is no question but there are plenty of arms and ammunition in the country. Has it not actually been boasted in “An Phoblacht,” when a dump was discovered in the Dublin mountains, that there were hundreds of other dumps all over the country? It cannot be denied that there are arms in the country, and it cannot be denied that these arms are being sought to be used, and used unlawfully, against an innocent and unoffending people.

Mr. Derrig: They were there in 1927!

Captain Redmond: The Deputy says they were there in 1927. I say none of them ought to be there to-day, and that is one of the reasons why I am in favour of this Bill. Whether they were there in 1927 or not has nothing to do with the case. I say there is no reason for any lethal weapons, revolvers, rifles, or anything else being in the country except they are under the control of the proper authorities in the country.

The solution we have heard from the Fianna Fáil Party, backed up by portion of the Labour Party, is, to my mind, a very unworkable and academic solution. We have to deal with facts as they are and conditions as they are. When Deputy O'Connell spoke against military courts I quite agreed that if posible military courts should not be set up, but what is the use of civil courts under conditions like these? What is the use of having men brought before juries, and what is the decency of asking jurymen to act?

Mr. Derrig: You are an expert on juries.

Capt. Redmond: I know a little about juries. I never served on a jury, but I have appeared before many juries.

Mr. Cooney: It was well for you it was there.

[262] Capt. Redmond: I did not catch what the Deputy said.

Mr. Cooney: What I have said I have said.

Capt. Redmond: The Deputy quotes Joseph Chamberlain. That was a very intelligent remark and I am afraid I cannot answer it. Military courts should not be the ordinary law of the land, and they will not be the ordinary law of the land, they will only be the law in cases of grave emergency, where the Executive Council consider it their duty to cope with them. After all, who are to be tried by those military courts? Are they to be harmless civilians or innocent people?

Mr. O'Connell: They might be.

Capt. Redmond: Harmless civilians who never profess militarism. I say the people who come before these military courts, possibly, will be those who have always proclaimed themselves to be soldiers of Ireland, soldiers of the Irish Republic, and who should, if they are to be tried at all, be all the more desirous of being tried before military rather than civil courts. If they are the great soldiers they call themselves——

Mr. Lemass: It is a privilege, I can tell you.

Capt. Redmond: If they are to be tried at all let them be soldiers and let them be men and let them be tried by soldiers too. We have heard from Deputy O'Connell of the possible danger to the law-abiding citizens if this Bill is passed into law. Of course there is a possible danger to the law-abiding citizens; nobody denies that fact. But I venture to say that the danger to the law-abiding citizen when this Bill is passed will be far more remote than the dangers to the law-abiding citizen before this Bill is passed. What is the position of the law-abiding citizen to-day? How does he know that at any time if he does not please certain gentlemen who profess to be soldiers of the Irish Republic, and who have arms and ammunition at their command, that he will not be set upon and sent to his grave? I say the danger to the law-abiding citizen if this Bill [263] is passed will be far less and more remote than the danger and the risk he is incurring and running to-day.

We heard explanations, almost justifications, as some Deputies said, for the attitude of violence adopted by some sections of the people in this country. It is suggested that because economic conditions are so bad here they have almost the right to resort to such means, that it is only to be expected that the use of the revolver and methods of violence should come into play. I ask Deputies seriously to consider how that doctrine can be sustained. Is it to be suggested that across the water in Great Britain, where things are far worse than they are with us to-day, where there are 3,000,000 of unemployed, that the people would tolerate the threat of armed force and resistance to the institutions and the law of the land.

Mr. P. Hogan (Clare): There is no Safety Bill there.

Capt. Redmond: There is no Safety Bill; there is no necessity for a Safety Bill there. If the necessity arose such a Bill would be brought into existence and with drastic powers, and the great majority of the British people would be in favour of its introduction, passage into law and speedy operation.

Mr. Davin: What about the Naval revolt?

Capt. Redmond: I am asked about the Naval revolt. The Naval revolt was a matter of very short duration. In the Naval revolt there was no question of the use of lethal weapons. The Naval revolt was merely a strike.

Mr. P. Hogan (Clare): For an increase of pay.

Capt. Redmond: It was a strike. There is nothing in this Bill against that.

Mr. S. Jordan: We will certainly have no Naval revolt here.

Capt. Redmond: We have no Navy. There is nothing in this Bill to prevent anything in the way of a legal strike. A strike is not always illegal. If the [264] future Minister for Finance in the Fianna Fáil Party would only consider the matter for a moment he would come to realise that strikes are not necessarily illegal. If I might be allowed to proceed I will say that if what I have described as a legal action on the part of the employee, amounting to what is called a strike, were to take place in this country after this Bill is passed there would be nothing whatever unlawful in it.

Mr. Hogan: Was it legal for the Navy to revolt?

Capt. Redmond: I am not going to answer whether it was legal for the Navy to revolt or not.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle: Deputy Redmond is entitled to make his speech.

Capt. Redmond: I am perfectly well able to make my speech, and I only welcome these fatuous, rather irrelevant, and, I am sure, friendly interruptions. This Bill does not deal with acts which are ordinarily illegal. It deals with acts of a special class which amount to treason or sedition, or the preaching of doctrines that tend to subvert the existing institutions and to overthrow the State by violence or force of arms. I welcome the statement made by Deputy Lemass that he wished we would not keep on reverting to 1922 and the year or two following; that we would concentrate upon the present and do what we can to bring about a state of peace and order, so that ordinary self-respecting, law-abiding citizens will feel that there is the security which is granted to them by the Constitution, which should be theirs by right, and which should be enjoyed by this country in its present condition.

Mr. Davin: I asked the President, or some of his Ministerial colleagues, yesterday, to produce whatever evidence or documents the Government had in its possession which would justify the introduction and the passage of this measure, which is regarded by the Government as being so urgently required. The only documents [265] read in the debate by any Minister were documents that it seems to me apparently passed between certain individuals in the year 1925. What in the name of goodness has what happened in 1925 between Mr. Sean Russell and Deputy Lemass, and other individuals not then in this House, to do with the measure that is now before us? Has the Government any documents or any evidence in its possession which were discovered in recent times to show the extent of this menace that exists, and that will prove that there is justification for this Bill? I want to know from the Minister for Justice if he has any document in his possession which would justify the recent speeches made by some of his supporters—Deputy O'Connor, Deputy Dolan, and Deputy Hassett—in Tipperary? I have read the newspapers very carefully, and I want to know if what I saw in the “Irish Independent,” which generally gets notes of the speeches made by Government Deputies beforehand, is correct? Do I understand that Deputy O'Connor, Deputy Dolan, and Deputy Hassett and other Government Deputies, when referring to the importation of Russian money, had these documents in their possession? Do they regard them as their personal property, or are these documents supplied to them from the headquarters of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party? Does the Minister for Justice know anything whatever about the money that is supposed to be coming to this country from Russia and elsewhere, about which we heard so much from the Deputies referred to.

A document was read last night by the Minister for Justice giving the whole contents of a communication which was sent by Mr. Russell to Deputy Lemass in 1925. Surely to God that has nothing to do with the present Bill. If it has I suggest that the more recent Army Officers' mutiny would come under the terms of a Bill of this kind. We know that there was a mutiny recently amongst Army officers, and that it led to the dismissal and resignation of some officers from the Army and from the reserve of officers. If a document which dates as far back as 1925 is read surely to goodness the [266] Government might tell us about incidents of which they know a good deal more in connection with the Army officers' mutiny. If they like let them go back to 1922, or to 1916. In the opinion of members of this Party who are opposed to the Bill, none of these things have any reference to the measure before the House and the Government makes no attempt to justify a measure of the kind. Deputy Redmond, like other Deputies, who hear whispers in the Lobby, and who are in constant communication with the Government Party managers told us about arms imported recently. I was told that arms had been landed in Kerry and in Westport. Can the Minister for Justice, or the Minister for Defence answer for that? Can the Minister for Defence tell the House if there is any truth in the statement that has been recently circulated that arms were landed at Westport and in Kerry? Is there any justification for the circulation of the statements that are going around the city of Dublin that sixty or seventy men drilled in the public square in Listowel on a recent occasion? If not, why are the Party managers and the principal Government supporters making use of these statements for the purpose of frightening the population which has nothing whatever to do with these irregular organisations, and that the Government intends to put down through the agency of this Bill.

I want to know from the Minister for Finance, or from some other minister, the number of additional men that have recently been employed on protection duty? What is the pay of these men and the expenses per day, whether all the men employed are ex-officers of the National Army, and if they are in receipt of military service pensions?

Mr. Derrig: And how often do they get promotion?

Mr. Davin: We are now discussing a Money Resolution, and I contend that I am quite justified in asking for the information, particularly the pay and expenses involved by the setting up of a force for the protection of Deputies [267] and other people whose lives may be thought to be in danger.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: What force?

Mr. Davin: I want to know from the Minister what is the pay of the men engaged on protective duties and the maximum daily allowance for expenses, and whether all the men are ex-officers of the National Army and in receipt of military service pensions.

Mr. Derrig: And why are they staying at the Gresham Hotel?

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: I am afraid that Deputy Davin reads “truth in the news.” The Deputy has seen in that very interesting paper a statement that there has been a new body brought into existence, a new protective force. Is that what Deputy Davin thinks—that a new body of men has been brought into existence?

Mr. Davin: I have personal experience that additional men were recently recruited for the C.I.D. or detective force.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: No. There are no forces in the State at the present minute except the Army and the Guards, and any person who is on protective duty at present is either a member of the Guards or in the Army.

Mr. Davin: Every one of them?

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: Every one.

Mr. MacEntee: Of long standing?

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: Of a different standing, I should imagine, because they are selected men, but there is nobody on protective duty who has not been several years in the Guards. Nothing has been done except to utilise the Guards for this special purpose, and while they are on this particular duty, these men get their ordinary plain clothes extra allowance.

I want the Deputy clearly to understand that he should not take statements he sees in certain daily papers as being correct. There has been no new force established and as far as recruiting goes, there have been comparatively few men recruited this [268] year. These were recruited to make up for the ordinary vacancies which occur from time to time in the Guards. So much for that. Deputy Davin asked me why I quoted a document from the year 1925. I quoted that document because Deputy Davin asked me what evidence was there that there was any inter-communication between this country and Russia. I started off by showing that a person who is now a person of importance was then shown to be in Russian pay.

Mr. Davin: Have you any more recent document?

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: No. I have never said I had. I have never suggested that there was any more recent document at any time, and I tell you definitely and distinctly——

Mr. Davin: Tell it to Deputy Hassett.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: I tell the Deputy definitely and distinctly that there is a steady inter-communication between the irregular forces in this country and the forces which are making in Russia for general world-wide disorder.

Mr. MacEntee: Have you proof of that?

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: Yes. I told you that yesterday of a particular gentleman who went to Russia and of particular young men who were put into that excellent Lenin Academy to learn revolutionary propaganda that they might spread in this country.

Mr. MacEntee: Give us their names.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: I told you yesterday, also that the Saor Eire organisation was an organisation founded upon Soviet principles and that linked up with that was the I.R.A. I showed you yesterday, and if Deputy Davin and Deputy Lemass had listened to me, they would know that I showed them by analysis what the programme of Saor Eire was. I will show you now some further definite information from a paper which calls itself “An Phoblacht” and describes itself as the official [269] organ of the I.R.A. I will tell you what the aims and the objects of that army were in March, 1931, and all because Deputy Lemass has been repeating this foolish nonsense which was given expression to yesterday, and which certain orators have been ringing off platforms round this country—“Take away the oath and all will be peaceful. Take away the oath and all will be well. That is all the people want. Take away the oath and these Communists will become law-abiding persons.”

Mr. S. Jordan: A Leas-Chinn Comhairle, the Minister has stated that Deputy Davin should not pay attention to certain daily papers in Ireland. I might suggest that he should pay no attention to the paper which he is quoting, because that may be wrong too.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: This paper says that it is the official organ of the I.R.A. It is for circulation amongst the members of the so-called Irish Republican Army. It is their great propaganda sheet.

Mr. S. Jordan: What were you insinuating against Deputy Davin?

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: Because that propagandist organ is rather imaginative in the news it gives to the public.

Mr. Jordan: Might I call the Minister's attention——

An Leas Cheann Comhairle: The Minister for Justice should be allowed to speak just as every other member of the House.

Mr. Jordan: I would love listening to the truth.

An Leas Cheann Comhairle: The Deputy must listen, whether it is true or not.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: From page 3 of that interesting document I read as follows:

“Revolution is possible when two conditions are fulfilled; there must be a mind collected within an organisation; and there must be a widespread restlessness from the pressure of conditions, and against injustices and wrong existing things. The restlessness manifests itself in [270] unrest that is made clear in big meetings, voices in public bodies, demonstrations, etc., and the presence of the organisational factor is demonstrated by the fact that these mass gatherings are not allowed to go down soft bye-ways. The restlessness must develop into challenge to the machinery of State and produce clashes between the machine and the people.”

There is one of the aims of the so-called I.R.A.—to produce a clash between the people and the machinery of State. It goes on:

“The final stages of revolution bring the mass of the people and the forces of the State into conflict; the most courageous of the mass mind take the main shock of the clash with the armed forces; that is what the army of the revolution is, the stoutest hearts and the clearest minds.”

Mr. Flinn: It sounds like Blythe.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney:

“It has never happened (and it can't happen) that a sheer military instrument has achieved revolution; such an instrument may change administrations, but never overthrow a system. We are therefore forced to recognise that the building of the revolutionary struggle forced us to dislodge reform from the leadership of the bulk of the people. This must be done by building up a struggle against the interests that are degrading the people. Set deep as they are, in the people, the duty falls on the volunteers to help into groups these minds in the country that see that no solution of the evils that crush us is possible except in the tearing down of the system out of which these evils grow and if we build right towards that solution, the final stages will be a mighty drive to break the connection with England.”

There very clearly and distinctly is laid down for you the aims of the I.R.A., that they are going to tear down the existing system.

Mr. Lemass: Who said it was not?

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: You suggest here, “Take away the oath and they [271] will be content with the existing system.” That is the absolute nonsense with which the Deputies childishly seek to deceive their own minds. I wonder if they are quite so foolish as to deceive even themselves? They certainly do not deceive other persons. It proceeds:

“To-day we must begin at the root, and use language that is understandable at this stage and lead on step by step to the final struggle. An open revolutionary mass movement must be built up, and our Army will be big if the courage is high in that movement, and that will depend on the leadership being worthy. In this early building then, we must recognise that the building up of an open struggle is not something to do if it takes on easily; it is as necessary to revolution as an armed force, and if we separate these two factors we shall get Risings and Insurrections but we may never achieve freedom.”

There you have the complete aims and objects of the I.R.A. I gave you yesterday the aims and objects of Saor Eire. I give you to-day the aims and objects of the I.R.A. They stand for this and nothing else, open revolution by force. They stand for the overthrow of the existing state of society in this country, and you come here and say to us “Wait, be quite, do nothing, rest supinely, do not use any force. Let them carry on as much as ever they like, wait until we have settled every single economic problem, and when we have settled every single economic problem, then only are we to attempt to deal with them.” Deputy Lemass stated before and again to-night what is absolutely sound common sense, that if we allow an armed force in this country which is not under the control of this House, if we allow whatever persons who wish to go out to commit crimes and outrages, the possibility of a solution of our economic problems is impossible.

If we are going to solve the economic problems, the first and most necessary thing to achieve is peace and order. Peace and order must come first and order and peace will bring a solution [272] of the economic problems. Deputy Lemass talks about civil war. There will be no civil war. The country may rest at peace. Again and again I have stated and I stated here to-night that I am not in the slightest bit disturbed about the future of this country if the Garda receive the requisite powers for the maintenance of order and if there is set up a proper tribunal which cannot be intimidated. I said that from platform after platform through the country. I repeat again in this House to-night that I am satisfied that this Bill is going to restore order in this country and that it will enable us to give our whole attention to the settlement of economic problems.

Mr. Lemass: No.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: What does the Deputy want? He wants nothing done. He wants simply to wait. He has no solution. He talks about what he says are the methods of commonsense, but he does not tell us what his common-sense dictates to him. His common-sense, or what he mistakes for common-sense, seems to be this: simply to wait, wait, and let these evil-doers do precisely everything that they want to do.

Mr. Lemass: I did not say that.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: The Deputy said nothing else. I listened to the Deputy's speech and I could get nothing else out of it. He said that we wanted to provoke civil war. I deny it. We have taken here the powers which will prevent the possibility of civil war. The Deputy says it is a political advantage to us that we should bring in a measure of this kind. It may or may not. This is not the time in which Party considerations should be given any deep thought at all. This is the time in which every Deputy in the House should act, not as a Labour man or as a Fianna Fáil man; they should all act as Irishmen. They say that there is a difficult problem to be faced; that there are men who are endeavouring to upset the social system in this country. In that case they should rise above Party. I wonder if they will. I wonder if on the benches opposite [273] there will be found men who see and know as they must, the danger which is attacking the present civilisation of this country, who will have the moral courage to do what every single one of them knows in his heart of hearts is the correct thing to do, to support the measure which is necessary for the preservation of peace and the present ordered condition of society.

If we are getting any political advantage out of that the Deputies opposite can take that away from us. If it is a useful weapon for us it is a weapon that will be stricken in our hands if they wish to take it from us. They can come out and say boldly and openly: “We will have no more of this gun work.” But Deputies opposite make excuses for gunmen and say “We do not regard them as criminals; they do not regard themselves as criminals.” What are they? Crime is not a subjective thing. Crime does not consist of what a man thinks. Crime is the breaking of the laws of the country just the same as the breaking of the law of God. It is no use for a person to say: “I am not sinning,” when he is. Sin is not a subjective thing. The breaking of the law is sin.

Mr. Flinn: The conscious breaking of the law.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: Not necessarily. A person may cheat his conscience, and that is what you are encouraging these young men to do. You are encouraging them to cheat their consciences; you are encouraging them to go on in the belief that they are entitled to commit murder and that murder by them is not sinful or wrong. That is what you are encouraging them to do by your attitude to-night. Deputy Lemass talked of the President's case for the Bill. The President made an appeal to the Party opposite to act as patriots. What response did he get? None at all. I know that I, personally, and I believe every Deputy at this side of this House, would regard with delight if there came a good strong statement from the Deputies opposite that they were going to support us; that they were going to fling their whole weight and all the influence that they bear [274] in the State against the Party that is making for disorder. If they would get up on their platform, if their leader, and Deputy Lemass and others would say that it is utterly wrong for these associations outside to have arms; and if they would say to every follower of theirs and to every person whom they could influence: “Tell the Guards where the arms are to be found; tell the Guards where the dumps are to be found; give all the information that you yourself might have, or that you can possibly get as to where the arms were in 1925 and in 1926, or at any other time, and where they are now.” I ask the Deputies opposite to be thoroughly genuine if they are sincere behind their leader when I understood him to say that now this Oireachtas is the one and supreme power in the State. If the Deputies are sincere in their beliefs and sincere in following them, then they should do everything that is necessary for the preservation of the power of the Oireachtas. It is their duty to do everything that can deter these persons who are endangering that power or infringing on that power. It is the duty of Deputies opposite to plead with persons who have arms that they should give up and surrender these arms.

Mr. Corry: To the gunmen.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: If Deputies opposite are sincere in their statements and if they are opposed to crimes of violence; if they are opposed to unauthorised persons in endeavouring to upset this State by force of arms they will take that course, and that course will be the test of their sincerity. It is a matter on which the country at any rate should form some opinion. Deputy Lemass was not satisfied with what he could say himself about this Bill. He quoted Deputy Geoghegan.

I am glad to see Deputy Geoghegan is in the House at the present moment, because I do not believe that Deputy Geoghegan, who is a member of the Irish Bar, could possibly talk the inconceivable nonsense that he was reported by Deputy Lemass to have talked. I was not in the House when Deputy Geoghegan was speaking. I [275] am sure that he could not have said the unmitigated nonsense that Deputy Lemass unkindly attributes to him. Deputy Lemass said that Deputy Geoghegan declared that in this Bill there was the power in the Executive Council to make any act a crime.

Mr. Lemass: I made that on my own authority.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: The Deputy quoted Deputy Geoghegan.

Mr. Lemass: Not on that.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney: The Deputy quoted Deputy Geoghegan as an authority for that statement. Well, of course, that statement is absolute and entire nonsense. No such power is given in the Bill at all. There is no power given in the Bill to the Executive Council to declare any act a crime. Where a crime has been committed, the Executive Council can, if it is a crime of a political nature, send it for trial before the tribunal. It does not create a crime. It simply gives, in certain cases, power to send a certain class of crime before the tribunal. The creation of the crime and the choosing of the venue for the crime are things so hopelessly absurd that I am glad indeed to discover that it was not Deputy Geoghegan, a member of the Irish Bar, who put forward that view.

We are told that there is power here to interfere with the right of every citizen. There is no power in this Bill to interfere with the right of every citizen. This Bill is a Bill which preserves the right of the law-abiding citizens, which preserves the rights of law, which preserves the rights of this House and may preserve the very existence of this House. There is no right and no power given in the Bill to interfere with any citizen unless the courts have got the suspicion that that citizen comes within the designation of a person who is engaged in breaking the law. And no person who keeps himself clear from suspicion, no person who lives a law-abiding life, unassociated with criminal conspiracies, need at all fear the operation of this [276] Bill. There is no use in misrepresenting, as the Deputy has done, what the Bill contains. This Bill contains a code of law which is adequate to deal with the present situation, adequate to deal with any situation which will arise, and adequate to obtain that there shall be no exercise of sovereign authority in this State by any power except this Oireachtas, the one spot in which sovereign authority is placed, the sovereign authority which comes from the people of this State.

Mr. Flinn: We have been told that this Bill does not embrace every citizen. It has been made very clear by the Minister exactly what that means. It does not embrace the citizen who can keep himself clear of suspicion. That is in other words a definition which includes a person is something entirely outside his control. If a person will keep himself clear of suspicion, clear of suspicion by somebody else, then he has no fear.

Mr. Corry: Suspicion of the C.I.D.

Mr. Flinn: Will Deputy Corry stay quiet? He has no power whatever, no power of any sort or kind whatever inherent in himself to keep himself clear from suspicion in the mind of somebody else. Everybody who is capable of coming under the suspicion of any one of a whole set if designated persons, who is capable of coming under the suspicion of any one of a collection of designated persons becomes automatically a person returnable for trial at the peril of his life by a closed court-martial with no procedure of any sort or kind set down before him, with no appeal, with no publication of the proceedings, with no standard of evidence upon which they are to deal. I do not know anybody in the whole country who does not come under the definition of the people who are included in the Bill as given by the Minister. Have they not suspected each other? Have they not accused each other of organising conspiracies in the organised forces of their own country? Is there one single man of them who is clear of the possibility of coming under the suspicion of any other one of them? There is nobody clear under this Bill. We [277] have got to find money for this thing. And what have we got to find money for? For a Bill which enables a Minister to declare any two people to be an association; and in so doing to declare these people to be members of an illegal association to subject them to the risk of trial by closed courtmartial at the peril of their lives for any offence. There is no definition of any kind which limits the word to any offence whatever which the Minister can be got to certify in writing, in his opinion, because under 7 (3) it would cover everything which one could possibly imagine a person to do.

I am probably one of the strongest pleaders for law and order in this country. I do it on economic grounds. I do it because I know the cost to this poor community of maintaining resistance against a small minority of anti-social people of any kind—ordinary criminals and enemies of the social structure—for the benefit of the whole. And because we cannot afford in this poor country the high extravagance of a costly legal organisation to maintain that, I want the law respected. But I cannot ask the people to respect the law until it is itself respectable. This law is not respectable. It is a law for worms; it is a law for crawling creatures. It is a law for a country which, if it respected it, would have no respect for itself.

They would lose the only basis upon which their testimony to the value of the law would be any good. We have had every sort of drivel talked from the exponent of sober justice, who is the Minister for Justice. Theology? Why does not the expert in theology, who keeps a Kempis on his shelves and Calvin in his heart, take him out and give him a few elementary lessons, or better still, get him a penny catechism and ask him whether a man can commit a sin without knowing he is doing it. That is the doctrine which is being preached by the Minister for Justice of this most Catholic portion probably of the whole world. He has actually had the effrontery to go upon [278] the Front Bench and declare, standing in his official position, the most scandalous heresy that I have ever heard uttered, a heresy which would be incapable of utterance by anyone who had any intelligence, whose intelligence had not been completely submerged by the national spirit which he has imbibed.

After three or four hundred years the American Republic introduced a few years ago their eighteenth amendment; I am going to give you a parable. It was introduced after extraordinary delays and extraordinary examination. Every single State in the country had separately to decide upon it. The whole State drawn together in its Congresses had to decide upon it. There were Referendums and Polls of various kinds and eventually they did decide on the eighteenth amendment. Its purpose was good. It was to deal with an admitted evil. The intention was to remove that evil. After four or five years the American people know that the result of that well-internationed effort to alter their Constitution after the most careful examination of the evidence upon which it was being done has been a mistake of a fatal and fundamental character. It has organised crime upon the highest scientific basis. It has built up an organisation of crime with an armoury, with financial resources and with technique of a kind such as the world has never seen. It has brought the whole body of American law into contempt and has risked the whole stability of the American State in the relation of its people to respect for the law, despite those careful precautions and the length of time taken in passing it with that good intention. What are we doing here? Not after consulting the people, not after careful consideration even in this House, not with proper time to consider the matter, and not after trying for alternatives and seeking those co-operations and helps which might have enabled the thing to be done, but hastily we have now introduced our seventeenth amendment in nine years and our sixteenth amendment in two years for the purpose of doing a thing which is ostensibly good, with the best objects [279] in the world, as professed, but which is going to have the same effect as the eighteenth amendment in the American Constitution. It is going to build up evil in the attempt to destroy it.

If I could see any hope in this thing, if I could see any means whatever by which this could be made for the benefit of the people, by which it could be made to bring the masses of the people, especially the young people, the 30,000 a year of new people who are going to be kept in this country behind the general body of the law by a motion of this kind the position would be different. But in my opinion this is going to drive a wedge in the law itself. In the amount of its punishment, in the method of its application and in the form of trial which leads up to the decision it violates justice in relation to professed crime, so that it itself becomes criminal. The whole body of the law in its sanctity in relation to the people is attacked in the process. You are wrecking any possible hope of putting the people in a real spirit behind the law when you pass a law which is obviously and fundamentally wrong, bad, unfair and dishonest in its application and capable God knows of terrible abuses.

When Draco was asked why he had for all crime the punishment of death he said that any crime against the State deserved death, and he knew no greater punishment for greater crime. Is that true to-day? Are there to be no preliminaries? Is death to be the gift for which men may pray upon their knees? You had a case given here on the personal knowledge and authority of two Deputies of the House. Deputy Boland, who as a witness to facts within his own knowledge, is a man whom no one in this House will challenge. You had that testimony certified by Deputy Dr. Ryan from his own knowledge. There were preliminaries to death in that case. Is that what is going to happen? Are these people going to be dragged in, any person that they choose, and before they are subjected to the farce of trial, before they are subjected to the certainty of condemnation by unnamed and hidden judges in secret courts, are they going [280] to be not merely questioned but put to the question? All that power is here, and it is given to men whose mentality in relation to those to whom they are opposed has been illustrated in their speeches and in their acts here to-night.

Assume for a moment that the Minister for Agriculture was the Executive Minister who was to certify in writing, a man who in this House has said that we were Catalysts of murder; that the whole of those who were responsible for the constitutional movement towards change were Catalysts of murder, what would be his responsibility in relation to this whole body and those who support it? The Minister for Agriculture has got up in this House and said that he would prove or attempt to prove—he believed himself that he had the proof and that the proof was good enough—direct connection between the men who sit upon this Front Bench and the murder gang. What would be his responsibility, what would be his absolute bounden duty in conscience but to throw the whole constitutional movement of Republicanism also under the ban and under the fear of one of those tribunals with a sentence of death for any offence which he might choose to imagine. That is the position. There is no man in this State who has an enemy over there who is not under this Bill in direct and immediate peril. That being so this Bill itself is fundamentally bad. You are putting into the hands of men whose previous conduct does not entitle you to regard them as responsible men in relation to the lives and properties of those to whom they are politically opposed—decent men—the power of life and death.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. McGilligan): Deputy Flinn got one shock in his life and it drove him to the writing of nervous literature. It has made him an orator. Whether he is addicted to anything more than oratory I do not know, but at any rate we get the oratory. What is all this oratory about? Let me relate it to two or three cases. John Ryan was murdered at night and left on the roadside; Carroll had his head blown off [281] in a lane near Dublin; MacInerney was shot in the back and the State Solicitor in Co. Clare was outraged. That is the oratory; that is what brings forth this oratory from the man who got a great shock the time the Great War was on. Now, relate this Bill to those things. No honest man, no law-abiding man should have any fear, or has any fear, of this Bill. Deputy Geoghegan, and God knows he never was more than a sheep in wolf's clothing at the best, had fear of the Bill before he saw it. He asked to-night why Deputies did not get at least a week to consider this measure—a week to consider and understand it, he said. Before he had seen it, even if seeing it would have led to his understanding it, he got afraid and he recommended that pressure be put upon people not to have this passed.

Mr. Geoghegan: I did not.

Mr. McGilligan: “Go and see your Deputies.” Men have been called upon on other errands. People have gone to see folk about juries and the end of it was seen in what happened to Armstrong and White because of their jury service. “Go and see your Deputies.”

Mr. Derrig: That is a most dastardly insinuation. You were the first one to run away from the charge of felon-setting when a Public Safety Act was last under consideration.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle: There must be some order.

Mr. McGilligan: If Deputy Geoghegan gets any effect from that remark of his I hope it will be a just one. If there is to be any punishment I hope it will be justly given to him; I hope he is decently served and that he takes whatever comes to him.

Mr. Geoghegan: The Minister knows I did not make that remark.

Mr. McGilligan: We read in to-day's paper of a protest that has been made against this Bill. What are the circumstances of the protest as given in the paper? We see that two men called upon a town clerk and asked that a meeting of Commissioners be held to protest against this Bill. The [282] clerk said it could not be done until there was a requisition calling the meeting. They said to him “Go and get a requisition.” As the paper phrases it, “the town clerk complied.” A requisition was got, signed by the Chairman and five others, calling the meeting. Need the paper have gone on to say, as it does, that “the meeting was held and a resolution of protest was passed unanimously?” Deputy Geoghegan pressed the button, reckless and indifferent to what was going to happen after he pressed that button, Deputy Geoghegan going red! After his eyes had been fawning obsequiously upon the great red robes of the judges under the old British regime, it is but natural that he should go red. He goes red—a most nauseating sight to see respectability, as typified by Deputy Geoghegan, come to that point. The serious thing is that behind the follies of a man like Deputy Geoghegan one has to consider the position of people who are going to take that sort of performance as a backing for them. We are going to get the position that Deputy Lemass perfectly described in an old document.

This debate has started on a Money Resolution and on that Money Resolution Deputy MacEntee thought fit to talk of economic conditions in this country. I throw back to these Deputies their own summing up of the situation in 1925. I make no statement to the effect that there is any army that they control at this moment, but I say the same views are sound now with regard to any unauthorised army in this country. I will state those views as they are precisely phrased in this document: “The continued existence of the Free State Government will depend largely on the ability of the Free State leaders to improve the economic condition of the country and to restore stability and security to its industrial life. They cannot do this with any degree of success while there remains in the country an armed force not under their control and hostile to their State, implying by its very existence the threat of armed action [283] against them at any favourable moment.” I do not care who controls that army; as long as it is not controlled by and under the authority of the State, it does provide a menace to the economic stability of the country and we are not going to allow that to last a day longer than we can stop it. Deputy Lemass took from my reading of that, that I was making some allegation of connivance as between him and those groups. I do not need to tell him that I made no such allegation. The allegation, at any rate, was refuted elsewhere.

Deputies spoke of our trying to provoke a situation here for our own political betterment. Deputy Davin was one of the men who previously talked about dumps. He asked was there ever a dump and he threw doubts upon whether the Killakee dump was ever discovered. He threw doubts upon whether there was anything like that ever in existence. “An Phoblacht” came out immediately with its own comment upon that matter. I will take an except from the issue of 11th of July last: “There is a tendency to make the reports of conflicts between the Imperial forces and the I.R.A. a basis for stunt politics, to be fought out on the basis of facts manufactured to suit the needs of parties. Cosgrave gets ‘dumps’ into headlines and Fianna Fáil energetically strives to make their headline. ‘Dumps, moryah!’ Now, the fact is there are dumps: the arms stored in them are in good order —even enemy publicity comments on this—arms are in constant use for drill purposes, and generally an energetic campaign to build up an army that will serve the mass of the Irish people goes steadily on.” I accept Deputy Lemass's view in 1925 that while there is an army and these dumps there and arms being energetically used, there cannot be much in the way of economic stability in the country. People talk fatuously of tariffs. “A tariff a day to keep the I.R.A. away,” is no policy. Deputy Lemass propounds that policy and knows himself it is fatuous.

Mr. Lemass: I did not.

[284] Mr. McGilligan: The Deputy stated over and over again that there was not such economic progress as he expected there would be, and he himself has stated the reason for it. The reason is still there. We are asked: “Why not take some other method than the Constitution Amendment Bill”? I have heard no comment yet in detail with regard to the other method. Deputy MacEntee, I understand, talked last night of a conference with regard to Article 17. Deputy de Valera tried that already with the people who are now outside and did not succeed in getting them to accept his resolution in March, 1926. The Deputy stated that if the admission Oath was removed from this Assembly then it became not a matter of principle, but only of expediency as to whether people should enter. There was a counter-resolution tabled to that one by Father O'Flanagan saying that it was incompatible with the principles of Sinn Fein that anyone should enter any authority established under what they described as British legislation, and Father O'Flanagan's resolution beat Deputy de Valera's resolution. We are asked now to go to the people who refused that resolution from the Deputy and say: “We may take out this Oath,” and what is going to happen? At any rate to have such a conference would be weakness. If people in this country are going to be allowed to pick and choose as to what they will obey in the existing law and what they will not obey, then there is no end except chaos. If there is going to be a group idea with regard to the Oath to-day, as the President said yesterday, will there be a group idea with regard to the socialisation of property to-morrow, and when a new Government is faced with that, is there to be a conference to remove the impediment to these people talking part in political life in the later period?

There have been measures of this type before and on every occasion on which measures of this type were brought in we had threats about gatherings that were to be on the hillsides, about gaols being full of people, and, as Deputy Lemass said, there was to be an accession of strength [285] for the people aimed at by reason of the repressive measures put forward. We have had our experience and there was no great filling of gaols in the recent years and there was no accession of strength to the outside people. The fact that stares everybody in the face is this, that the Public Safety Act, passed in 1927, prevented all political crime while it lasted, and it was not six weeks repealed until we had the murder of Armstrong, followed by the shooting of White and by the series of things which the President read out yesterday, and which apparently Deputy Davin did not hear or advert to. He said to-night that all he could hear of was of documents going back to 1925, forgetting the actual incidents that were detailed in the President's speech, not a single one of which is as much as a year old.

A question was asked to-day in an earlier speech with regard to America and a contrast was made as between the number of amendments there have been to the Constitution here and the limited number of amendments to the American Constitution. Deputy Flinn tried to make play with that by talking of the long and detailed process that had to be gone through before a constitutional amendment could be passed in America. We, thank Heavens, have not that system. The Constitution is easily changed and can be changed to meet difficulties and should be changed to meet difficulties——

Mr. MacEntee: What about 1927?

Mr. McGilligan:—if and when the majority of the people want it, but not before. Why has the United States not to make any legal changes with regard to the sort of menace we are now facing? Because they have already made it in one stringent way, if not particularly in our stringent way. The law which provides for the acquisition of American citizenship has this clause in it:—

That no person who disbelieves in or who is opposed to organised government, or who is a member of or affiliated with any organisation [286] entertaining and teaching such disbelief in or opposition to organised government, or who advocates or teaches the duty, necessity, or propriety of the unlawful assaulting or killing of any officer or officers, either of specific individuals or of officers generally, of the Government of the United States, or of any other organised Government, because of his or their official character, or who is a polygamist, shall be naturalised or be made a citizen of the United States.

They have no room there for what Deputy O'Hanlon described as the Asiatic rats who are running through this country at present. They are not allowed to be American citizens and they can be deported if by any chance they get in.

We have tried for a number of years to get the people in this country to settle down under a particularly free and ordered Constitution. The majority of the people have accepted that invitation and are living in an orderly and peaceable way, and the order, peace and security of their existence are imperilled by a small group, some fanatical, others purely and decidedly criminal, who have stood out to break the Constitution and to break it by force, who talk to people, not by addressing them or appealing to their reason, but with a gun in their hands. The only way they can penetrate to these people's brains is with a bullet through the brain. We are going to stop the Constitution and the liberties of the people being imperilled by that group of people. I make a present to any Deputy who has spoken, or who intends to speak, of what might happen under this Bill. Let imaginations roam and say that every peace-loving citizen could be, under a criminally-minded Executive Council, brought into peril both of his liberty and of his life under this Constitution. We ask the people to believe that that is not-going to happen and we know they believe it is not going to happen.

Mr. Lemass: Try them.

Mr. McGilligan: In that belief we are going to get this through, to operate it ruthlessly, so that economic conditions [287] will have a chance to come to the point to which we want to bring them.

Mr. de Valera: I am not going to deal with the Whitechapelism we have been accustomed to hear from the Minister for Industry and Commerce whenever he makes up his mind to address the House, but there are serious matters that he referred to and I want to deal with these. We are asked what is the alternative. I say we have been preaching what the alternatives is, and we believe that that alternative is one which will save this country and put it on stable conditions, if adopted. The Minister asks us what guarantee have we if the Oath were removed that these people would come in and accept the present Constitution, and he says when Deputy de Valera brought in a resolution at the Sinn Fein Convention some years ago he was beaten in that resolution. I know I was beaten on it. I was beaten by a very small majority on it, and if majority rule had obtained, if we were not told definitely beforehand that majority rule was not going to obtain, because a certain matter of principle was involved, I would have continued on in that organisation and in a very short time I am certain I would have got a majority vote in that organisation as I got it throughout the country. If the majority of people throughout the country had the barrier here removed so that they could come in here freely the chief reason for the opposition to this Assembly would be gone. I say it is the fairer way. We talk of the Kellogg Pact and we go over to Geneva and try to make peace between the Chinese and the Japanese and we say that we must no longer use methods of force, that we must try and secure that national objectives must be advanced by peaceful methods. Peace for everybody except for our own people. Understanding for every people except the people who were misled by gentlemen who are now assuming to themselves the powers of life and death.

We had the Minister for Justice speaking a while ago and reading out [288] articles from “An Phoblacht” and “Oglach na hEireann.” I am perfectly certain that the men who wrote these articles, if they were not inspired by the same motives, got largely the substance of these articles from a little book called The Voice of Freedom—selections from Irish Freedom from 1910 to 1913. One of the first articles is by Earnán de Blagd. He tells the young men of Ireland what arms means. He says there can be no military spirit worth anything if the men of the country are not virile and hardy, if their arms are flabby. We have heard that word in another connection recently. “If their arms are flabby and their palates crave delicate food, if they are but talkers and artists, crafty merchants and cunning artificers.”

We are taunted that it was not the interests of the trader or the worker we had at heart. We had this doctrine preached by Ernest Blythe and if some people are not yet able to see the changes that Ernest Blythe has convinced himself have taken place, at least he ought to have, in his heart, some pity and understanding for the men who think still as he thought and believed when he was organising for the I.R.B. “Ireland,” he says, “ceased to be the island of saints and scholars simply because her people gave too much time to their books and prayers and too little to feats of strength, daring and sword play. Let us, therefore, train our bodies to be strong and hardy and our minds to the thought of war that we may not shrink from slaughter. Let us learn the use of arms that we may be ready for to-morrow; for, to-morrow or the next day our opportunity will come. No vigilance of spies or guarding of ports can prevent us arming if we will, and if we have weapons and ourselves ready there shall be no failure and no fiasco.” The men who taught that doctrine and who are sitting in these seats because it was to a certain extent successful—these men who talk of a free Ireland—of the power of the Irish people now to rule themselves—these people who spread that doctrine in spite of the Church talk of the Church. They used secret societies which were condemned [289] by the Catholic Church. They have seen the errors of their ways. New circumstances have arisen which have convinced them. They are clear thinkers. Their brains are active. They are able nicely to discern exactly what the Governor-General does and does not mean, and what the Oath of Allegiance does or does not mean. But the average young man in the country has not that fine discernment they have got and at least they should have some bit of ruth towards him, make some attempt to give him a chance. There should be some attempt to lead to the right those beautiful sentiments and honourable ambitions of these young men and from the path to which they have been driven.

Every one of us who was in that movement—I am not talking of some of these men—this man to-day who talked of himself as a democrat first. He admitted he was in the national movement by accident. I am not appealing to these men. They have never felt the sentiment. I am talking to the men who must have understood it, who went out and braved everything in order to try to achieve the things that were intended, who tried to arm themselves when there was just the very same appeal for order, the very same appeal for respect for established authority. When all these appeals were made these men went out. They stood against it all. They were outcasts in their own country. They stood against it all because they hoped that some day those arms might be useful to win, as they put it, a crown for Dark Rosaleen. It is the same thought that is at the back of the minds of the young men who are driven mad by the attitude or want of understanding—the understanding that they can see can be got between the Chinese and the Japanese, but that understanding which Irishmen seem to be incapable of giving to brother Irishmen. I want to appeal to commonsense, to ask these men who, if they will only put themselves out of it for a moment, can understand these feelings: “Do you want to humiliate them? Are you not content with victory? Must they pass under the yoke?” The President of the [290] Executive Council once made the most shameful boast that ever came from a man who was in a position to represent the Irish people. The boast was that he had made his opponents go under the yoke, made them swallow the Oath of Allegiance to a British King. That is his boast. That is what he achieved after all the blood that has been shed in order to try to win, after seven hundred years, freedom for this country. They tell us we are free, and yet the moment they come to bring in even this Bill they must insert the Oath, the badge of slavery, recognised as such by all outside.

When the civil war was over I put forward a proposition honestly that went as far as it was possible for a human being, to get acceptance for it. So far, indeed, that Senator Jameson, as he was, and the man who accompanied him, Senator Douglas, when they saw it, said that of course they could say nothing, but to take it to the President of the Executive Council. One looked to the other and said: “As a business man I would take this.” He was anxious to see stability re-established after the war and an attempt made to give a new start to the country. That attempt was turned down because Eamonn de Valera, under it, they said, would get back again to public life. It is a terrible thing to think that men could be animated in big things by such mean motives. It is a terrible thing to think that because they thought I could get back to public life that that was sufficient to turn down proposals which in themselves would be good for the nation.

To me, anyhow, it is not understandable. I find it very difficult to think that there would be any men who had in their hearts a particle of love for Ireland—as these men must have had, I will admit, when they worked for Ireland in the past—who would be so blinded, as the result of strife, enmity and hatred, that they would be willing to sacrifice the good for the country that could have been obtained by negotiation on these terms. Look at these terms to-day and what are they? Terms which meant that the majority-rule of the representatives of the people would be accepted, terms [291] which meant that all arms would pass under the control of that authority, to be held, pending an election on the issue, terms which exacted only one thing, or asked for only one thing— that those who had honestly fought to maintain the State which that democrat over there prates about— he is not present at the moment— who prates about democracy. What are his views about a State that had been established on the most democratic grounds on which a State ever was established—about the Republic of Ireland, which was established here on universal suffrage and the free vote of the people? All the people who were defeated in that civil fight had pledged their lives to maintain that State, had fought to maintain it as long as they could, without the slightest chance of success, and they only surrendered that ideal, which had been the ideal of the people and which had led them into the path they had taken, had only surrendered that ideal and allowed the Republic to be disestablished when they were no longer able to protect it. At least, there could have been understanding of their attitude if anger, hatred and ill-will had not got into the hearts of the people who stood in the way of it. All that was asked was that these men should not have to endure the humiliation of an act of national apostasy, as they regarded it—to forswear the complete independence of Ireland and to accept the sovereignty of that Crown from which they had declared themselves independent a few years before. These are the men who are being hounded, these are the men who are being driven, without the slightest attempt to understand their motives, without the slightest attempt to make right use of those motives which are, in themselves, noble and good—the desire to have the complete independence of their country. Instead of giving them a chance to change with the new conditions, to accept the new conditions and to orientate themselves in the direction which is necessary if they are to advance in the future, these people are to be condemned to [292] death, condemned to the treatment we have been told of by Deputy Boland and to the treatment we know was served out to a number of other such people during the war. They are to be taken into those secret tribunals and maltreated and nobody is to hear a word about it, and nobody is to be allowed to raise his voice in protest. That is the situation.