FROM THE ARCHIVES: THE 24 hours after the Arms Crisis broke in 1970 were full of rumour and uncertainty and culminated in a midnight Dáil debate at which then taoiseach Jack Lynch accused his two former ministers of trying to import arms improperly. John Healy described the scene in his front-page Dáil sketch.
THE DRAMA of the longest political day ended in Dail Eireann this morning a minute short of 2.30 when an obviously tired Taoiseach, telling the House he had not shirked his duty and promising the country a new Cabinet, sat down to cheers from the massed members of Fianna Fail. For better than four hours he and the Party had taken a battering the like of which had not been seen in the House in this generation.
Anything he had to say tended to be an anti-climax after the sensations of the night but he reduced the House again to a dramatic silence as he told members of his four-minute interview with the former Minister for Finance, Charles Haughey, and his fear is that of the interview could result in “permanent damage” for the Minister who was suffering from a fractured skull.
He was cheered by the party when he promised to hunt down the murderers of Garda Fallon.
Mr. Blaney and Mr. Boland were not in the House for the reply.
The startling news of attempted gun-smuggling came in a Dail which was crisis-crowned from Chamber floor to ceiling. The House met at 10 p.m. and Mr. Kevin Boland, , made a circuit of the lobby around the Chamber smiling cheerfully. A minute later what remained of Mr. Jack Lynch’s Cabinet filed in, exactly as they had done 11 hours earlier, except this time there was a fuller muster: the Taoiseach, Mr. Erskine Childers, Paddy Hillery, back from London, Brian Lenihan, George Colley, Padraig Faulkner, Jim Gibbons and Paddy Lawlor. Joe Brennan was to follow later. And while they were still debating procedure Bobby Molloy joined the Parliamentary Secretaries and Mr. Blaney joined Mr. Boland at the railings of the lobby. Later they were to take their seats and looked extremely relaxed as the House got on with the debate which can only be described as quite sensational. The sensations started at 10.15 p.m. when the Taoiseach started the guts of his speech. In calm, cold language he outlined the events which started on April 20th and ended with two men fired from his Cabinet.
He spoke to a House which was so hushed that the thump thump of an engine in the bowels of the building reached into the Chamber and sounded like [its] communal heartbeat . . . He had finished in ten minutes and the political reputations of two Ministers lay in shreds on the floor. He sat down in silence.
Mr. Liam Cosgrave, the Fine Gael leader, got up with his version of how he, too, had done it, filling in names and adding further revelations as he named names. He was being heckled by one Fianna Fail deputy, to the annoyance and disgust of the Government party which tried to silence him. Mr. Cosgrave picked on one interruption at 10.30 and said: “I’ll not be silenced by anyone.” It was the cue for a very concentrated burst of applause from his massed backbenchers.
Mr. Cosgrave produced a note from his pocket when he said he had got information from Gardai sources. My hearing was that the information which he read out to the House was on Gardai notepaper. From my own position, directly over Mr. Cosgrave, I was unable to see the official note-heading, though the typewriting was visible. When he had finished he replaced it in his pocket and resumed his speech from scripted notes from which he departed now and again.
Mr. [Brendan] Corish . . . urged the need to speak with great care and talked of his being frightened by the pace of events which, he said, had brought us to the point where we could have been on the verge of a civil war. He attacked Fianna Fail’s duplicity and charged that Mr. Lynch, despite his vote of confidence , had lost in the past 24 hours the confidence of the country . . .
“It’s way past your bedtime, Brendan,” someone said as the clock came up to 10.50. He called for the Ministers concerned to come before the House to be judged by their peers. A Fine Gael deputy said: “Put them up against the wall.”
Mr. Corish ended on a strong note and said Mr. Lynch had forfeited the mandate he got from the people. He lacked moral authority and should go to the country inside the next 24 hours. Mr. Corish was applauded loudly by his own party and by about ten Fine Gael backbench deputies.
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