Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Defence Forces (Second World War Amnesty and Immunity) Bill, which addresses a unique set of circumstances in Irish history. I agree with Deputy O'Donovan that the State has been slow to apologise in the past and admit it got things wrong. The Government has embarked on a course of trying to right historical wrongs. The Bill represents another step in another area in trying to right the wrongs of the past and give recognition that the State makes mistakes and when the State makes mistakes it apologises.

Ireland remained neutral during the Second World War and yet a sizeable number of our trained soldiers took it upon themselves to fight against some of the greatest threats the world had seen. Irish citizens entering the Second World War on the Allied side knew the horrors they would face. They also knew the great personal risk they would take and yet they went bravely and courageously. The Bill address a terrible travesty inflicted on patriotic Irishmen who during the years of the Second World War, at terrible peril to themselves and their families, went to war. The choice to enter the British army, among others, to fight the terrible threat to the liberty of our new Republic posed by Nazi Germany and the other Axis powers was a courageous and selfless act, which received nothing but mistreatment. Those dismissed were disqualified for seven years from all public or Civil Service employment and from pension entitlements from the day they absconded, and were not entitled to unemployment assistance.

Clearly there needed to be a system of discipline and other speakers have alluded to this, but normal disciplinary procedures were not followed in what can only be seen as a degree of vindictiveness and nastiness inflicted by the State on these men. These actions placed an undeserved penalty on these soldiers and their families. It placed an extreme level of social and economic pressure and had the effect of socially isolating these families as well as impoverishing them. In putting these 6,000 to 7,000 men through military tribunals or dismissing them en massewith the Emergency Powers Order (No. 362) 1945, the sacrifice they made was ignored and never acknowledged by the State.

I commend the Minister for Defence on his apology on behalf of the State in June last year and for the Bill which recognises the special circumstances in which these events took place, the harshness of the treatment of those persons affected and provides them with immunity from trial for these acts. It is clearly important to uphold the chain of command and discipline in any army and we must also place on the record of the House our great satisfaction, tribute and gratitude to those who stayed and did not fight and remained in the Irish Army. The Bill recognises the degree to which there is a distinction from the normal circumstances for desertion and the circumstances around those who left the Irish Defence Forces to fight in the Second World War. I welcome the immunity from trial for these acts which the Bill brings, the exoneration of these men in respect of their desertion and dismissal, and the vindication of groups such as the Irish Soldiers Pardons Campaign who have sought the Bill for many years. The Bill will address the concerns of those men who remain alive and it will lift the veil on the families of those who have already died.

I wish to make several other observations. At the beginning of my contribution I mentioned the neutrality of the nation. There has been much media and political discourse in recent years about neutrality. At some point the State needs to have an honest and mature debate about neutrality and what exactly it means. In my view some of the threats facing the world today, quite similar in ways and different in others to the threats which faced the world during the world wars, are issues on which one cannot be neutral. Ireland's role in the European Union and the solidarity we show with other nations makes it an issue on which we need a mature, calm, thoughtful and reflective debate.

Deputy O'Donovan commented on the decade of commemoration which is about to begin. We need to have a debate and discussion on what Irishness means. It absolutely sickens me to see people, many of whom commanded private armies, try to wrap themselves around the flag of this country and declare themselves more Irish than the next. The men who fought with the British or other armies during the First World War or the Second World War were just as Irish as the next. They too made a sacrifice in what they viewed as the best interests of their family and country. No one political party or political ideology owns Irishness. It is very important when we embark on what will be an exciting decade of commemoration that we commemorate all of our history from all perspectives because this is what a true republic is about and what true republicans should be about. I commend the Bill to the House.

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