§ Mr. F. ROBERTSasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether an inquiry has been held into the action of the police in attacking Mr. Stephen Kane, of Tuam, 1949W county Galway, on 20th September, 1920; and whether the police asked him to resign membership of the Transport and General Workers' Union and, after his refusal, beat him to the ground with blows from their rifle butts and kept him in the street for five hours, during which time they made frequent assaults upon him?
§ Sir H. GREENWOODI have enquired carefully into the matter. Mr. Stephen Kane was arrested on the 20th September in a building which was searched by the police and in which seditious documents were found. He was brought to the police barracks, and there detained for some hours pending enquiry. He was not asked to resign membership of the Transport and General Workers' Union, and I understand has at no time had any connection with that body. The statements as to his having been kept in the street beaten to the ground with rifle butts, or frequently assaulted, are entirely untrue.
§ Mr. F. ROBERTSasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether any inquiry has been held into the action of the police on 22nd September, 1920, in seizing Mr. Daniel Lehane, of Lahinch, county Clare, firing several shots over his head, and finally bayonetting him in the throat in consequence of his refusal to disclose the whereabouts of his son; and whether the police later discovered his son and murdered him, throwing his dead body into the flames of his father's house?
§ Sir H. GREENWOODThe troubles at Lahinch following the ambush in which six policemen were murdered by expanding bullets near Ennistymon are still under enquiry, and I cannot at present add anything to my statement in Debate in the House on the 20th instant.
§ Mr. DEVLINasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether his attention has been called to the following happenings in Co. Tipperary; whether, on the morning of Tuesday, 26th October, uniformed men entered the house of Michael Ryan, of Curraghduff, and shot him dead, the body being riddled with bullets; whether at the house of John Kinane uniformed men ordered Mr. Kinane's two sons out of bed and said they were to be shot; when they were kneeling in the yard each covered by two revolvers the two brothers sprang up and escaped, one of them 1950W escaping to safety whilst the other was found in a field five hours later with two wounds; whether the house of a man named Gleeson, in the same district, was visited at about half-past three in the morning and James Gleeson inquired for, who was not present; whether an argument was going on between the father and the uniformed visitors when another son, a lad named Willie, called out from his bed, "Let them shoot me, father, instead of you," and one of the assailants said, "That is not the man," but on another one exclaiming, "He will do," the lad was dragged from his bed in his shirt, taken 200 yards from the house, and shot dead; and whether he will order a full and searching inquiry into these outrages?
§ Sir H. GREENWOODMy attention has been drawn to these tragic occurrences, but pending the result of the military inquiry in lieu of inquest in each case I am not in a position to make any statement.