December 29 1923
Mr Frank Gray, the well-known Liberal MP, who won and held Oxford City for his party, must have received a letter bearing the name of Mr Cahir Healy, MP, as a signature. The text of the letter was published in last Thursday’s Westminster Gazette; presumably the document was supplied to the Liberal organ by Mr Frank Gray.
Now it appears that Mr Healy, MP, has denied authorship of the letter and repudiated any connection with it. According to a statement issued from Sir Dawson Bates’ [Richard, Northern Ireland Minister of Home Affairs] department last evening, “Mr Healy, on being questioned this (Friday) morning, states that the letter was neither written nor passed out of the place of internment (Larne Workhouse) by him”.
Therefore the letter received by Mr Frank Gray, passed on by the English MP to the London paper and reproduced in The Irish News yesterday from the Westminster Gazette, was a forgery.
Who troubled to forge it? What purpose did the concocter of the forgery intend to achieve? He compiled a simple statement of the facts regarding the arrest, detention and general treatment of the northern internees; he intimated (writing in Mr Healy’s name) that the matter would arise immediately on the re-assembling of the new House [of Commons] in January”; also that “a letter would be read from the Northern Home Office notifying the Speaker that I am still in custody”; and finally the hope was expressed that the English MP “would be in a position to do something then”.
The mystery of that letter sent by someone may be solved or it may not be solved but the issues raised by the writer cannot be shirked or shelved. A member of the Imperial Parliament of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is held as a prisoner without charge or trial.
Irish News editorial claiming, regardless if a letter lobbying to have Cahir Healy released from internment was a forgery or not, the injustice remained of arresting and detaining without trial a Westminster MP for over a year and half.
Free State to Remain in Possession of Leinster House
The “Irish Builder and Engineer” states it has excellent reasons for believing that the proposal to transfer the meeting-place of the Irish Free State Parliament to Kilmainham has been definitely abandoned. The feeling of the country has been wholly against this proposition. The probabilities are that the Senate and the Dail will continue to meet in their present temporary quarters until such time as a permanent worthy of the Irish capital is made available. No other place presents such attractions as the old Parliament House in College Green, but of course there are difficulties, mainly financial, in the way of providing the Bank of Ireland with another home.
Despite the temporary nature of Leinster House initially, it has remained the home of the Oireachtas ever since.