IRISH FREE STATE

Grey River Argus, 29 April 1932, Page 5

IRISH FREE STATE

OATH BILL Rival Leaders State Attitudes (Aus. & N.Z. Cable Assn}. LONDON, April 27. The debate on the second reading of the Removal of the Oath Bill began in the Irish Free State Dail. Before the debate, the Government motion that the entire day should be devoted to consideration of the Bill was defeated. An Independent Labour deputy, Mr Morrissy, moved that the motion on unemployment, standing in his name was more important and should be taken up to 9 o ’clock tonight. Mr De Valera resisted, and on a division the Government suffered defeat by 74 votes to 66. The Oath Bill debate then proceeded and Mr De Valera recalled the terms of his Party’s election manifesto, of which the first item was the removal of the article in the Constitution making the signing of the oath of allegiance obligatory on members entering the Dail. The Government proposed to honour that pledge. (Received April 2 Bat 5.5 p.m.) DUBLIN, April 27.

President De Valera agreed to discuss the unemployment question at the evening sitting. He added, in moving the second reading of the Removal of the Oath Bill, that the presence of the oath in the Free State Constitution had resulted from coercion. Article Seventeen of the Constitution was not obligatory under the Treaty. There was no obligation to consult Britain in that connection. Moreover, the deletion of the article was consistent with the Free State’s position as coequal partner in the British Commonwealth of Nations. He asked where was the equality of status with Britain and the other Dominions if the Free State could not introduce a bill to remove the oath. He remarked:— “If we asked Britain’s permission, it would be a retrograde step. I do not intend to be drawn into negotiations thereon. ’ ’ Mr Do Valera added: “I have a letter in my pocket which Mr Lloyd George wrote to the late Arthur Griffith, showing that the articles regarding status were on a different footing to the others in the treaty.”

Mr Cosgrave. Opposition Leader, described the Bill as “one of the greatest pieces of political chicanery in history.” The validity of international agreements, he said, depended not on their form, but on their substance. The Free State was a member of the Commonwealth on a national level with Britain. He said that Air De Valera had no mandate for the removal of the oath, his Party being in a minority of two hundred thousand at the recent general election. He had only a mandate to negotiate with Britain.

PROTECTIVE DUTIES. FOR IRISH INDUSTRIES. DUBLIN, April 27. The Free State has increased duties on British and foreign ready-made clothing to 45 and 60 per cent, re-, spectively. Woollen worsted fabrics are subject to twenty per cent, duty British, and thirty on foreign. The “Irish Press” declares that the Irish woollen industry was crushed by England’s tyrannous but still flourishing laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Duties could be revived, reducing unemployment. The new tariff is deplored in Yorkshire, as bound to hit a large and profitable trade.