Looking back to May 1919 and the discussions that were taking place in Dáil Éireann then

The first Dáil Éireann

Oftentimes, looking backwards at where we have come from and what we have endured provides as important a perspective as looking towards the future. In this article I look back to 09 May 1919 (103 years ago) to recount some of the statements made by the country's then political leaders.

Home Secretary Arthur Griffith reading out a statement on the effects of England's occupation on Ireland's population:

"The statement I have to make will be a very brief one. At the beginning of the war, or during the progress of it, we read in the English Press accounts of the extermination of the Armenian Nation. It was stated that the Turks had fallen upon the Armenians and had almost destroyed that ancient race, and recruits for the English army to fight for and avenge the Armenians were asked for. The war is now over, and having been over, certain Armenians a week or two ago went to the English Foreign Office in London and there asked for an accession of territory for Armenia. The English Government explained to them that the Armenians should want no territory since they were exterminated. Whereupon the Armenians replied that their extermination existed only in the English Press.

There is a country where the people were and are being exterminated to a greater extent than any other country in Europe or the civilised world and that country is our own. And that extermination has not been carried on by the brutal and courageous method of the sword, but by methods that no other country or empire has used against its people. We were asked at the beginning of the war to sympathise with Bohemia against Austria, then with Alsace-Lorraine and the other little nations, and the picture of the oppression these nations endured was painted in the darkest colours by England.

But no oppression that any country in Europe suffered could equal or be equalled by the oppression that England has inflicted on this country. We in Ireland always sympathised with Poland and other oppressed peoples, but we know that what they have endured under their Governments is as water unto wine compared with what we have endured under the Government of the usurping foreign power in this country.

Until recently, as John Mitchell said fifty years ago, England possessed the ear of the world, into which she poured her story. To-day that is no longer true. England is no longer able to pour any story she wishes into the ear of the world, and we must tell the world that there is no nation in Europe which has suffered so much under an existing Empire as this nation of ours. Poland suffered nationally under Russia, but economically she was fostered. Bohemia, no doubt, suffered to some extent under Austria, but she grew in prosperity and population. Alsace-Lorraine doubled her population under Germany's sway, and Finland, under Russia, doubled its population. But in this country our people have been swept away not in hundreds, not in thousands, but in millions. Now, when a few years ago we were asked to fight for the freedom of Belgium it was pointed out to the Irish people that the Belgians in 1841 numbered half of our population, whereas to-day she has double our number, and when later on it came to be England's role to denounce Russia she reversed the old story of Poland. It was known to the world that whereas we in Ireland, 70 years ago, had double the population of Poland, Poland has twice our population now. In Prussian Poland in 40 years the population has doubled.

Now I stand for a constituency in the North of Ireland, N.W. Tyrone. In Co. Tyrone, in 1841, the inhabitants were double the number of people who are in the place to-day, and in that year there were 54,419 homesteads. At the last Census, in 1911, there were 22,000 homesteads. No war ravaged Ireland during these 70 years, and the story I have related of this Ulster county is true also of the rest of the country. I will ask my colleagues to give the facts in regard to other counties."

In reply:

Cathal Brugha

In the Co. Waterford in the period between 1841 and 1911 the population has decreased by 112,621, and in the same period the number of homesteads has decreased by 12,000.

Eamon de Valera

In the Co. Clare there were 182,162 people destroyed between 1841 and 1911, and in the same period 24,532 homesteads were destroyed.

George Noble-Plunkett

In Co. Roscommon in 50 years the population, which might have been more than doubled, had been reduced by 160,000 people and in the same period the destruction of homesteads was 24,133. It was a mistake to take this figure as representing the mere destruction of the population - it meant that a fairly populated county had become empty and that large masses of land had been acquired by a few people. The vast plains of Boyle were now without a plough and the people were without homes.

Michael Collins

In 60 years three people out of every five in the County Cork have been destroyed, and one homestead out of every two. Let them see if that record can be beaten in North-East France during the recent war.

Ernest Blythe

In 70 years the population of County Monaghan has decreased by 64 per cent.

Art Ó'Connor

Between 1841 and 1911 the population of Co. Kildare has been reduced by 48,000, or two-fifths, while the number of homesteads has been reduced by 5,000.

William T. Cosgrave

County Kilkenny has lost in population 137,000 people, while the homesteads have been reduced from 32,000 to 15,000.

Labhrás Mag Fhionnghaill

Westmeath has lost 81,314 in population from 1841 to 1911, while in the same period there has been a loss of 11,385 in homesteads. All that has occurred in a time of "peace."

Edmund John Duggan

Co. Meath has lost 118,737 of its population in 70 years. But these figures do not take into account what the natural increase in population would have been in those 70 years. More than half the population of this rich and fertile county have been wiped out in an average life-time.

Sean MacEntee

It is a standing refutation of the English lie that Ulster is prosperous that in the space of 70 years the population of County Fermanagh has been reduced by 74,000, while the homesteads in the county have been reduced by one half.

Conor Collins

In 70 years 186,900 people have been exterminated in the County of Limerick, while 21,000 homesteads have been destroyed.

Arthur Griffith concluding:

I do not wish that further time should be occupied in dealing with these figures. What you have heard is true not alone of the counties referred to, but of every county in Ireland. What has happened in Ireland is not that we have lost half our population, but that we have lost a great potential population. Had this country been under Russian rule from 1841 to the present time, what happened in Poland would have happened here. Poland has in that period increased in population threefold, and had Ireland the good luck to be under the Russian instead of under the Englishman she would have to-day a population of 24 millions of people. And had she been under the heel of Prussianism instead of being under the hoof of Englishism she would have now 12 millions of people instead of 4 millions.

 At the beginning of this war England discovered a use for the Irish people and that was as a help to save her from the menace of Germany. Without a war in Ireland our man power has declined from 4,072,000 to 2,090,000 at the outbreak of the war. That is to say that two million potential fighting men had been banished from Ireland. In her dreams England set herself to kill two birds with one stone to destroy her great commercial rival. Germany, and to complete the extermination of the Irish people. Well, in the last part of her programme she has not succeeded. We have survived her last and greatest attempt at our destruction.

The province from which my ancestors came, the same county which I represent in this Dáil, England has painted to the outside world as being opposed to the remainder of Ireland politically and is being prosperous and contented. It must not be taken for granted that what England chooses to tell the world about another country is true. The Province of Ulster has suffered more than Leinster under English rule. In 1841 there were 2,400,000 people in Ulster; now these are 1,580,000. She has thus lost one-third of her population in 70 years. Every county in Ulster has suffered, and some of them to a greater extent than the counties of Leinster.

I will give you the detailed list: Antrim, which is the only county in Ireland which is opposed in every shape and form to the independence of Ireland, has lost 92,000, or 32 per cent. of its population; Armagh, 112,000, or 48 per cent. of its population; Cavan, 104,000, or 53 per cent. of its population; Derry, 81,000, or 37 per cent. of its population; Down, 121,000, or 37 per cent. of its population; Donegal, 79,000, or 32 per cent. of its population; Fermanagh, 95,000, or 60 per cent. of its population; Monaghan, 128,000, or 64 per cent. of its population; Tyrone, 170,000, or 54 per cent. of its population.

Those are the figures for the 9 counties of Ulster. One city in Ulster Belfast has increased its population, but not to the same extent as other industrial cities in England have increased. Its prosperity is largely due to the fact that it was made the centre of that trade to promote which all Ireland was taxed - namely, the linen trade - and to the fact that a foreigner named Wolff had started a shipbuilding industry there, so that Belfast's prosperity has been raised on a basis of German gold.

Let it not be thought that the destruction of the population affects only one class or creed. The foreign usurping Government claims, and falsely claims, abroad that Protestant Ireland is opposed to the remainder of Ireland, and asserts that Protestant Ireland is prosperous. The difference between the two is that the English Government has detroyed one Protestant in three and one Catholic in two. These figures speak for themselves. Every figure represents a man or a woman, and when we talk of 56,000 or 57,000 people gone we have to think of them with children born in this country being forced to leave that country, or of having been destroyed by the artificial famine of '47, of the human hearts and the human hopes destroyed. The effort to destroy Ireland has been going on for three centuries. It was carried on at first openly and by the sword, and later it was continued by the subtler method of famine. If we were governed by some other country to-day and these same things happened the whole world would cry out in rage against the country that did such a thing. I am old enough to have heard the stories of men who lived in Ireland through the famine years, and I have read the stories of how my countrymen and countrywomen and the helpless little children died of starvation in a land of plenty. I read in the columns of the London Times in the year following that of the famine, a comment on that famine in which the English mind revealed itself exultingly: "The Celts are gone with a vengeance, and God be praised." Well, to-day we have the Celts back with us.