David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

-----but we may not take the full time.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2016, the principal purpose of which is to repeal spent and obsolete Acts that were enacted between 1922 and 1950. Sinn Féin will support this Bill's progression through the Houses of the Oireachtas and we acknowledge the work that has gone into making the Irish Statute Book a more relevant and accessible exercise of work.

My party colleagues have pointed out previously that this exercise should have begun years ago, although luckily we have moved past the point at which we are still discussing the repeal of Acts that were passed in the 1600s. It would be useful, however, as my colleague, Teachta Ó Snodaigh has called for previously, if there was an archive of repealed laws available in this State. Many of the Acts that are being discarded to the dustbin of history make for fascinating reading and will be of interest to historians now and into the future.

Within the Bill before us there a number of laws are being repealed and we will not, nor do we have the need to, go through them all here. There are other curiosities which speak to issues of today. At first glance the League of Nations (Obligations of Membership) Act 1935 might seems archaic and out of date, when we take into account that the League of Nations no longer exists, but the Act relates to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and calls on countries not to help Italy in any form or fashion in its aggression against Ethiopia. The sentiment in the Act is one that states that one does not take the side of the aggressor and that illegal wars should, and must, be opposed.

Last week in this House, Sinn Féin proposed a Bill that would have put to the Irish people a constitutional amendment that would have enshrined the policy of neutrality in the Constitution. It was, of course, defeated with the help of Fianna Fáil Party and some Independents who are propping up the Government. This Government, like its predecessors, seems hell-bent on adopting policies that compromise and undermine our neutral status. By so doing, it is at odds with the majority of Irish people who value and support our neutrality.

In a document by the Irish Peace and Neutrality Alliance, PANA, which I presume all Deputies were given, I saw a reference to the only poll I know of that was carried out to ascertain the public’s view on neutrality. It was a RED C poll that was carried out in 2013 and it found that 78% of the public supported in full Irish neutrality. The most obvious example of how successive Governments have discredited Irish neutrality is the continued use of Shannon Airport as a military stopover for US armed forces. Since the illegal invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, more than 2.5 million US troops have travelled through Shannon in transit to and from conflict zones in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Kurdistan, countries where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, maimed or left displaced and destitute. There is evidence that indicates Shannon Airport is a stopover for CIA rendition flights, involving a blatant and perverse contravention of our neutrality. The sentiment in the League of Nations (Obligations of Membership) Act 1935 should not be so easily forgotten even as it is removed from the Statute Book.

Similarly, the Poor Relief (Dublin) Act 1936 is being repealed at a time when we have more than 1,000 families homeless in the capital and people dying of hypothermia. The Poor Relief (Dublin) Act relates to the clearing of the workhouses.

In October 1924, six months after the Government of the day had passed the Housing Act, which gave tax subsidies upper middle-class households, the Minister for Industry, Agriculture and Commerce told the Dáil in a debate on unemployment and welfare assistance that "there are certain limited funds at our disposal. People may have to die in this country and may have to die through starvation." This was in response to evidence of accounts of starvation which were coming in from around the country. In January 1925, Dr. Brian B. Crichton, who had a long association with the Coombe and Rotunda hospitals, told the Rotary Club that "a child’s chances of life in the City of Dublin are worse than were the chances of a soldier in the trenches during the Great War". He said that women often came to him to the clinic but "instead of medicine, he often gave a note to some... [charity] organisation to enable them to get food". The same month, the Clare Health Board was informed of a man and his wife who lived near Kilmikil who had died of starvation and neglect. The relieving officer had found the woman "lying in a corner of a filthy... room, covered only by a dirty rag. The man was also in a deplorable condition, weak and hungry." In another case, a doctor visited a house in "New Hall, near Ennis, and found two old people living in a terrible condition of filth. They had been eating portions of the carcase of a calf, which was lying in the kitchen." In Longford, two married women were charged with stealing potatoes from the mental asylum garden. One of the women was quoted as saying "I took the potatoes for my children, who are starving at home."

It was increasingly clear that Cumann na nGaedheal, the forerunner of Fine Gael, used its time in government protecting the financial self-interests of the class it represented, while the rest of the nation could, quite literally, starve.

In a memo sent by William Cosgrave in 1921 while he was Minister for Local Government in the underground Dáil Éireann, he laid out clearly what was to become the social policy of the Free State in respect of its treatment of poor and vulnerable children and adults. He said:

As you are aware, people reared in workhouses are no great acquisition to human society. As a rule, their highest aim is to live at the expense of the ratepayers. As a consequence, it would be a decided advantage if they all took into their heads to emigrate. When abroad, they are thrown onto their own responsibilities and have to work whether they like it or not.

The UCD historian, Professor Diarmaid Ferriter, has made the argument that Cosgrave's memo highlights the class bias of the post-1922 Free State where "Ireland’s vulnerable children were an inconvenience to the conduct of the campaign of independence". Although many of those who were able emigrated from Ireland to other countries, those who could not go abroad because of age, disadvantage or disability were forced into a form of internal emigration.

This was a place The Irish Timesdescribed as "a dark hinterland of the State, a parallel country whose existence we have long known but never fully acknowledged. It is a land of pain and shame, of savage cruelty and callous indifference". This place was in the Irish Free State, but not of it - an unfree state. Today, people are still dying on the streets and we still experience massive levels of poverty and inequality. Some of the sentiments expressed by Cosgrave, while not perhaps as stark as his, would still be expressed by those who hold power in the Government. A class bias is evident still in many of the policies pursued by the Government parties. While it is interesting to revise the Statute Book and reflect on laws passed many years ago, there are still parallels between the thinking of politicians of different ideologies at that time and the ideologies of politicians today.

There is a need for an archive and this important point has been made by Teachta Ó Snodaigh previously. I am sure he will elaborate on this because we cannot consign these Acts to the dustbin of history. There must be an archive that historians and parliamentarians can study and use.

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