Gerard P. Craughwell
Labour Panel · Independent · Ireland
“I omitted to formally congratulate the Leader yesterday on his elevation. I assume there will be bonfires all over Tipperary as he arrives home this weekend. I ask him to please forgive me for not officially congratulating him. I will say a few words at the start at our Presidency of the European Union.”
“It sends a confused and troubling message about hierarchy, authority, respect and the place of the Defence Forces within our nation's life. This matters.”
“The decision to have the Secretary General of the Department of Defence, a civil servant, however reputable, take the salute from newly commissioned officers before handing them their commission represents a deeply inappropriate blurring of roles. Let us be clear.”
“I say to the 64th naval cadet class in their achievement that they remain significant, their commitment remains admirable and their future responsibilities remain vital.”
“It is simply unacceptable that not one Minister or Minister of State of the 38 available was present to officiate at the commissioning of new officers into the Naval Service. I remind colleagues that this is not a minor diary clash or an administrative oversight; it is a profound signal of disregard for the State's most loyal servants.”
“It is an honour for me to extend my congratulations to the 64th naval cadet class on their commissioning into the Naval Service. Their commissioning should be a moment of unambiguous pride for them, their families and the State they have chosen to serve.”
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“If the Government wants to build in checks and balances, it can build the checks and balances within the State itself. Let the citizens of this State decide. I am not saying we should go to a referendum every time we need to deploy troops, but we can build a system whereby, first and foremost, it would be debated in the Houses of Parliament, the Oireachtas, both the Seanad and the Dáil. Perhaps the Council of State or a body such as that could have oversight of that debate. Maybe that is the way forward.”
“Yesterday, I spoke on neutrality and the triple lock, and I want to return briefly to that issue. The Tánaiste, Simon Harris, is about to bring forward legislation on the triple lock and there is a lot of discussion and debate among wider society about this terrible thing that is going to be brought about by the Government. There are many misconceptions that the triple lock was always there, but it was not; the triple lock is a fairly recent part of Irish history. The public need to ask themselves whether we really want somebody outside our sovereign State making decisions for our Defence Forces at any time. I am not advocating for the Government to have carte blanche to send troops wherever it wants. What I am saying is that we should not be subservient to the United Nations Security Council at any stage.”
“Senator Clonan and I differ on the triple lock, which is perfectly reasonable, and I differ from other retired members of the Defence Forces on it while others see it from my point of view, but we can have an informed argument on it. Ultimately, we had a situation in Kabul where we needed to remove people, and the triple lock could have cost us seriously. I ask the Leader to organise the debate.”
“There is only one form of neutrality, and that is the one that comes under the Hague Convention. Members do not need a lecture from me, nor I am sure from my colleague Senator Clonan. Rather, what is needed are independent people to brief Members of the Oireachtas so that when we make public statements, they will have currency and be based on fact, not opinion. We need to be extremely careful as geopolitical plates are moving in this world. Statements made by politicians are being heard outside the country and we need to be sure that, when our politicians speak, they speak on the basis of knowledge and fact, not on the basis of what they feel or do not feel.”
“There has been a newfound interest in defence in this country. This weekend, there was not one publication that did not have an opinion piece of some sort expressing a view on where defence should be at. They were written by various people. It is a matter of serious concern to me that people in this House and the Lower House find themselves speaking on such things as the triple lock and neutrality without the basic information they need to do so. My colleague Senator Clonan, who is here right now, speaks with informed knowledge of these things, but there are too many Members of this House who speak with uninformed knowledge of what the triple lock is about, what neutrality is about and what is required under international law when we talk about neutrality. We hear terms like “politically neutral” and “militarily neutral”.”
“We do not represent any geographical area. We represent the vocational panels we have been elected to, the university panels we have been elected to, or we represent the Taoiseach, who has nominated 11 people. In 2013, before I was a Member of this House, I fought to save it when excellent people like Feargal Quinn, Michael McDowell and various others also were out there fighting to save it. There was an implicit promise that reform would come. Reform has not come. The public have been cheated. It behoves all of us in this House to fight for the reform of the Seanad. It is an institution that should perform without party interference at any stage. We are not Dáil Members. Most of us who are here do not or should not want to be Members of the Dáil. We should want to be here in the reforming House we are in.”
“I too will take the same position as my colleagues and will not participate in today's election. I find it deeply regrettable that we find ourselves in this situation. We have two excellent candidates. I was not aware of Senator Flynn's emergence into the competition until this morning. I had committed to Senator Byrne, a very fine Senator and a wonderful parliamentarian; both of them excellent qualities. However, we have been thrown into this abyss because of what has happened. I want to put something on the record. We talk here about parties; we recently went through a count for the Senate seats that we sit in, and nowhere on the ballot paper does it reflect party membership. Most of us are elected to this House because of the vocational expertise we bring to it. We are not elected to a geographical area of any sort.”
“I would ask Members when they speak, to speak into the microphones. I am deaf and we put in a loop hearing system here, which is very good, but if a Member holds notes in front of the microphone, I cannot hear the Member. I ask colleagues to bear in mind that there may be more people deaf in here, not just me.”
“There is no cover from Shannon after 8 o'clock in the evening. There is 215 miles of Atlantic coastline to cover, and the coastline of the entire length and breadth of Ireland. It is deeply worrying. The one thing which the House will recall is that during the negotiations for this contract, both the then Ministers, Naughten and Ryan, informed me in writing that they had no oversight of the negotiation of the contract. I wish to make one final point.”
“We already saw the same company involved in Norway trying to short-circuit the changeover time it takes to prepare crews in new aircraft. One life was lost and five people were injured in Norway. I am hearing that there are multiple injuries not being reported in the training that is taking place at the moment in Sligo. I ask the Leader to call for an emergency debate here. The people of Ireland have a right to know what to hell is going on with respect to the SAR contract for helicopters. Either the company is capable of doing the job or it is not. If it is not doing the job, then we need to go back to the existing contractor, which is taking up the slack for the failure of the new contractor to take over the job. This is crucial, particularly on the west coast, where the Leader himself is from.”
“Over the past four years, I have spent considerable time expressing my concerns about the search and rescue, SAR, contract that was being negotiated at that time. The Leader will be aware as a Galwegian that the former GP from the Aran Islands has expressed her deep concern that Shannon is now not able to provide 24-hour, 365 day, SAR services. It is only open from 8 o'clock in the morning until 8 o'clock at night. Sligo was supposed to become operational last Friday and it will not now become operational until possibly April. We are in the situation where a contract has been awarded to a contractor that will cost the taxpayers of this country some €800 million and, if past experience is anything to go by, it will probably cost €1.2 billion, and the contractor is unable to fulfil the commitments. This has gone too far for too long.”
“It has given it to us and we can debate it, discuss it, criticise it, vote on it later on today and we can let it pass but for God's sake, let us not waste the next five years arguing over things that do not need to be argued over.”
“If it has, then let the Government find a solution to that but we need to stay within the Constitution. I say to Senators that as they serve here - there are lots of new Members present - whenever they have a doubt, they should go to the Constitution and look at it. They may feel somewhere along the line that somebody has set aside the Constitution in the greater need. There is a great argument for that but if it is set aside for one thing, it can be set aside for everything. It is grand when you set it aside for a greater need until that greater need is human rights, access to the courts or something else. Before we start flogging the Government to death on this, at least it has come out in the open.”
“That is what the courts are there for and that is what we should do but we must never allow a situation like the case I currently have with respect to the secret deal with the RAF. Nobody should ever be able to sign a secret deal on anything. At the end of the day, we should know. It should be open and transparent, as this legislation is. Like it or lump it, it is here and you can read it. Everything you need to know is in it and if you want to argue it, you can argue it. We should argue it and we should test everything that comes through this House. I commend the approach being taken by Sinn Féin today. It should bring it down to the courts, which are the final arbitrator of the Constitution, and let them decide if the Constitution has been usurped.”
“I will give the Government a lash every chance I get, but there are times when you have to step back from giving the Government a lash and deal with things because they have to be what they are. I hope we will see this legislation passed. The courts will decide, in their wisdom, whether we have in some way usurped the Constitution. All my colleagues here were handed a copy of the Constitution when they were elected. It is the rule book of the society in which we live. It is the rule book that was agreed by the citizens of this country. It is the guide for all of us. I commend colleagues who have decided to go to the courts to have this legislation or agreement tested.”
“The children's hospital is going on so long in this country that I cannot remember when it started, but it did start at about €600 million, and it is looking likely to go to €2.5 billion, and what is the answer we get? It is that we will have the best hospital in Europe. Is that a legitimate answer? It is not. How is it happening? It is happening because Ministers have too many responsibilities and portfolios. They do not have time. I do not know why anyone would even take the job of a Minister. They do not have time to deal with any one thing. My own experience, for what it was worth, was if you bring people along with you, you can actually make things work. If you try to run everything yourself, you are doomed to failure. We have seen too many failures in this country now.”
“If a new Minister goes into a new Department, something goes wrong and there is a major problem coming down the road, it is the Minister who takes the hit for it, not the people who have been managing it all along. We need to get real about what politics is doing in this country. We need to become more supportive of our politicians. I accept that we have an Opposition, a critical Opposition that calls out Government on everything it does wrong, but we must also come together as public representatives and demand better from those who are actually doing the work in this State. In the last Oireachtas, we were talking about bicycle sheds, security guards' huts and children's hospitals. All of these things have gone on over several decades.”
“Let us look at this as a way of moving forward whereby we get a slightly better Government than we had the last time, insofar as people have fewer responsibilities thrust upon them, and that we get a much better reaction. Let us also look at the reform of who is and how people are answerable to this Oireachtas - to joint committees, the Seanad itself and the Dáil. Secretaries General are paid a fortune, far more than any Minister. Why are they not responsible and directly answerable to committees of this Oireachtas? We see millions of euro being spent, yet these people can hide behind the ghost, push the Minister forward and let the Minister answer the question. As we know, we stay for four or five years at the most.”
“In a couple of years' time, there will probably be a requirement for another ten Members of the Oireachtas and, very soon, we will have to have tiered seating down in the Dáil. Let us get real about it. Any party that finished up in government this year would have been faced with exactly the same problems on how we go forward. It is not a time for posturing. This country has serious problems. I have heard people in here talk about housing, disability, health and all of those things, yet one individual is expected to take responsibility for a number of Departments where he or she might only get a briefing once a month for half a day. Then, when something goes wrong, that individual is brought in here and flogged to death, or flogged to death down in the Dáil, and the press and everybody else has a go at him or her.”
“If I am not mistaken, in the last Oireachtas, we had a Minister who was responsible for post and telegraphs, part of transport and part of search and rescue, and had some responsibility in communications as well. For God's sake, let us be honest about it. Rather than arguing and trying to down this, let us look at it as a temporary move as we move forward. Some day, whether we like it or not, we are going to have to go to the public in this country and say to them that we need to increase the number of Cabinet Ministers and that has to be done by referendum. We are also going to have to say to them that we have to put a stop on the growth of the Dáil itself. We are at 174 Members today.”
“Then let us look at the inevitable mistake, error or problem that arises, that my colleague Senator Kyne adverted to. An issue arises and we want answers. What do we do in politics? We fire the Minister and we create all hell around them. In the last Oireachtas, however, while I spent four years trying to get a Secretary General to come before a committee and explain what was going on in his Department, the answer was, "It is the Minister who is answerable to the Oireachtas." Let us wake up and be honest about what we are talking about here. We are talking about three extra super juniors. It is not the end of the world. It might make for better management. One of the things I would like to see happen is that we narrow down what people are responsible for, instead of having them sprawling across three or four Departments.”
“The Cabinet should probably, in this modern world - Senator Pat Casey mentioned it a few moments ago - have 30 Cabinet Ministers in order to handle the complex issues that come before the Oireachtas on a regular basis. I look at the Deputy Simon Harris. He is Tánaiste; he is also Minister for Foreign Affairs, which is a massive portfolio. He is also Minister for trade, which is a massive portfolio, and, stuck somewhere at the end of it, he is Minister for Defence. Can anybody in this room, whether Opposition or Government, tell me how any single individual can be responsible for all of that? How much time does defence get with the Minister? Does it get a half day a month? How much time does trade get? It needs an enormous amount of time. How much time does foreign affairs get?”
“Can anyone in this room honestly say that a corporate entity would be run where the CEO of the organisation had responsibility for everything? I ran a business in the 1980s where I took responsibility for everything. I was the salesperson, the chief executive, the accounting officer and everything, and I was broke. I lost everything. I lost my home and everything I owned, and I learned the dearest lesson anybody will ever learn, and that is that no man or woman can be responsible for everything. What we really should be talking about here is that this legislation is a temporary move before we go to the people and establish what we should have as a Cabinet.”
“The Minister State is welcome to the House. I am aware of the fact that, on one side, we have a parallel process going on where we have a number of judicial cases on this issue and, on the other side, we have a transparent process being entered into by the Government. On the basis that it is transparent and open, I welcome that. As to my colleagues who have cases down in the High Court, I wish them well. The State has deep pockets and will probably keep them there for years as they have been keeping me on a secret deal, running me through every process possible to delay the inevitable outcome. However, in this instance, I fully support the State. I fully support the Government in what it is trying to do.”
“We were told that Secretaries General did not answer to the Oireachtas. It was the Minister who would answer. We need to put an end to this situation. We need to get search and rescue up and running. The State needs a 24-7, 365 days service. If the Leader would not mind, I call for a debate on this matter.”
“Recently, we had to bring generators to the Aran Islands. Part of the contract entails being able to carry under the aircraft heavy goods that have to be shipped, like generators. Who did this job? It was CHC, the old contractor in Sligo. It came to Clare, next door to Shannon, picked up the generators and brought them to the Aran Islands. It is simply unbelievable at this stage that the contractor awarded an €800 million contract is unable to provide a 24-7, 365 days service in Shannon. It was due to take over Sligo this Friday, but CHC has just been notified that it will be required to remain in Sligo indefinitely. Somebody somewhere has to start answering for this situation. I attempted in the previous Oireachtas to get the Secretary General of the Department to come before the relevant joint committee to deal with this issue.”
“There has been some discussion here of the storm and the response to it. I published a document some time ago that I also circulated to Members of the House. I will circulate it to Members again. It is about the requirement to have a statutory-based, overarching emergency management system in the State. We are one of the few states in Europe that does not have a statutory emergency management system. The other issue I wish to bring up is search and rescue. We have been banging this issue to death for the past four years and it looks like we are on the way to doing so for another four years. We awarded a contract to Bristow for €800 million. It took over the Shannon base in October 2024. Shannon is not operational from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. There is, therefore, no cover for the Atlantic coast from Shannon from 8 p.m. until 8 a.m.”
“I know that my friend and colleague, Senator O'Loughlin, has always been very much on side with the Defence Forces as a Kildare woman. Now that we have a second Kildare Senator here, there might be a bit of competition between the two of them but I am looking forward to it. Once again, I congratulate the Cathaoirleach, the colleagues who have returned and the new ones who are here. We lost a number of very fine Senators in the recent brutal election. It was a brutal election. We did not all get 169 votes, but nonetheless, I guess one is rewarded for that.”
“I am asking colleagues today that one of the things we do in the very near future is look at how that legislation has impacted our security services because, as we all know, we have been speaking about it in this House for the last four or five years. The Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, has taken a particular interest now in the vulnerabilities of the State when it comes to security and defence, particularly in things such as undersea cables. The Cathaoirleach will remember that when I first came to this House, there were nine Irish Navy ships at sea. Today, there is one ship at sea at any given time. As the Taoiseach pointed out today, the Air Corps does not have the capacity to defend our airspace. In these troubled times, I ask that we take defence as something really serious to address over the coming months.”
“Having been nominated to the Seanad by the ICPSA which includes the Defences Forces and An Garda Síochána, it is vitally important, as a reforming House, that we look at the legislation that was brought in following the financial crash. We should look at the revision of some of the FEMPI legislation in particular. The post-2013 pension scheme, which impacts the Defence Forces and An Garda Síochána, is detrimental to the survival of both organisations. Young commissioned officers and soldiers are looking for a way out because the pension is not attractive. Gardaí are leaving in droves because the pension scheme is not attractive.”
“Go raibh maith agat, a Chathaoirligh. Congratulations to you. You served well as Cathaoirleach in your last term and I expect you will serve equally as well in this term. I understand you had stiff competition. That is always healthy. I am delighted that you made it across the board. The father of the House who introduced you today is a wonderful parliamentarian and a great friend. I thank him for what he has done. I congratulate my fellow Galwegian, Senator Seán Kyne, who has been appointed Leader of the House. He is another great parliamentarian and a great Galwegian, but I will take strips off him in the coming weeks and months. I mean to start as I intend to go on.”