PRIME MINISTER: Just before you came we had a message from the Boundary Commission. They said it was important that we should be aware of their proposals and they intended accordingly to send a Secretary down with documents, maps, etc. I have of course had no previous indication of the Commission's findings. In a short conversation with me before this meeting Mr. O'Higgins has agreed that the Secretary of the Commission should come and be on the spot here although we need not necessarily see him. At any rate we are talking in the air till we have seen the Commission's Report: we are going now on the Morning Post report which may be inaccurate.

MR. O'HIGGINS: The Morning Post report is, we understand, inaccurate.

PRIME MINISTER: Whatever the report is, when it is published it becomes law. That is the situation we have to meet. We must discuss how we can delay the report or postpone indefinitely its publication.

MR. O'HIGGINS: What I have to say is contained in Mr. Cosgrave's letter (which had been handed to the Prime Minister before the Meeting commenced). When Cosgrave met the Executive Council on his return from England we discussed the situation most thoroughly and after the most careful consideration it was the general feeling that no one on the Council could recommend the proposals to the Dáil. We could not carry our own party and would run into certain defeat. The situation in Ireland is so fluid that this is a prospect we could not face: it is emphatically the case that no party but ourselves is ready or able to carry on against those who oppose the Treaty. I do not anticipate that the country would give an explicit mandate to the Republicans if Cosgrave were defeated; but it would mean such a degree of chaos that ultimately a negative victory for the Republicans, i.e. the smashing of the Free State, must be the upshot. In fact there is no other Parliamentary group capable of forming a Government which could withstand the elements menacing the Treaty. These latter had been divided and without money; everything had pointed to disintegration among the opponents to the Treaty: but now we have a crisis which may be the defeat of Cosgrave and lead, if not directly then eventually, to a break-up of the State based on the Treaty. If we face the Dáil on the basis of the old line with a few concessions from Craig (e.g. prisoners) our own Party would scout us: they would vote in a negative way against the Government without any alternative policy but thinking that anything, even chaos, would be better than this Government. If it only meant our political extinction we should not worry, but we feel that you should know that these are the reactions we anticipate and that England will have to cope with these reactions. It is fruitless to elaborate our views on the Commission's Report. Everyone in Ireland regarded the Commission as set up merely to see how much of existing Northern Ireland should not fall into the Free State, and to delimit more fairly than the 1920 Act how much of Northern Ireland wanted no communication with the Free State. We thought that the British signatories held the same view - Lord Birkenhead expressed it on December 7th and Lloyd George on December 14th in the House of Commons, what they said is on record in Hansard, but e.g. Lloyd George's words were 'If Ulster desired to live isolated, only by coercion can Fermanagh and Tyrone be kept in Ulster.' I suggest that Fermanagh and Tyrone have in fact had that coercion by police and restrictive acts; and Ireland thought that this Commission was going to rescue them. If Cosgrave, in the face of this, was to say that the best he could achieve was that the old line should remain and a few prisoners be released, he would have the entire Dáil against him, and anyone who took his place could not long survive the anti-Treaty element.

THE PRIME MINISTER: We must look at the facts of the case. The Commission was set up under the Treaty; they got to a certain point where the judgment about to be given had the assent of all three parties. Then one party resigned, and we are at the stage where the Commission is about to report with the consequences we know. As signatory of the Treaty England wants to do her best to get Ireland over her difficulties. There are three courses open and trouble, in the nature of the case, attends any of them. The first alternative - Let the Boundary Commission deliver judgment. The second alternative - Accept the existing boundary. The third alternative - The delimitation of a boundary to be agreed between the two Governments. This last seemed impossible and Cosgrave and Craig had so regarded it. As an outsider I cannot see how even an angel could devise a boundary which would be agreed, so we are thrown back on one or two. Can you see any other?

MR. O'HIGGINS: I must advert to what you said on the subject of MacNeill. Up to a point an award was taking shape which met with the approval of all parties.

At an early stage Mr. MacNeill agreed in the abstract with his colleagues that if the award was not going to make matters worse it should be signed by all three but that this should not imply that there was no disagreement on details. Sector by sector they worked their way down the line, McNeill fighting all the way: they began at Derry and finished at Newry. It would have been better if they had begun the other way as Newry is nationalist up to 75 per cent: the economic hinterland is nationalist and I cannot understand how the award could leave Newry out. The same arguments for leaving Newry out of the Free State were used against putting Eastern Donegal into Northern Ireland and applied in full - or fuller - force. The award took shape sector by sector and it came before the Commission for consideration as a whole on October 17th. Soon after the Morning Post came out with its forecast of the award. MacNeill saw that the motive which had made him give his undertaking to his colleagues to sign with them (i.e. that the award was likely to have a peaceful issue) was not going to be realised. The Free State Government told him that any award like that envisaged in the Morning Post would be disastrous and that he should withdraw from the Commission. For a month he had felt that he ought to stand to the undertaking given in advance that he would sign with his colleagues and during that period he was vacillating while the unhappy tendency of the report was becoming more apparent to him.

If that award is delivered no man or woman in the Free State could get up and say that it is in accordance with the wish of the people subject to geographic and economic conditions: it cannot lead to anything but hate and the starting of the old fires which the Treaty had laid. The growing friendship between the peoples would be quenched and on every platform it would be said 'We have been tricked again; see how your Treaty works when it comes to hard facts. 'We cannot stand up to these statements and say that they are not true because we believe that they are true and that the award does not fulfil the intention of the Treaty. If the award is made public we would formally accept it: we would vacate the transferred areas and take over the administration of the new ones;but we could not pretend to the people that the Treaty had been fulfilled and though we might try to avoid direct action the people would expect some safety valve for their feeling to be provided. They might have to consider whether Ireland's membership of the League of Nations opened up any course for them to take. We could go to the Dáil with the proposals made to Mr. Cosgrave on Thursday but we should be riding for a certain fall.

PRIME MINISTER: Look at our position for a moment. It is a pity the question was not allowed to sleep. However, a Commission was set up and the Labour Party chose a Chairman while we stood by not knowing what the Commission's findings would be. Had their award been satisfactory to the South and unsatisfactory to the North, the South would have expected us to carry it through even by force of arms. We cannot say that this Commission is unsatisfactory, so we will set up another: any award of any Commission will cause trouble.We want to-day so far as we can to help you in a difficult domestic position. I asked Craig to meet Cosgrave as between the two you are all Ireland so that as far as possible you could both agree what should be done. Craig said that so far as he could keep his more advanced elements quiet he would fall in with either alternative and he did not press either point of view. Cosgrave seemed to think there were less difficulties in the way of sticking on the present boundary than in putting the award into effect. If it were me I should have said that we cannot get a boundary that does not cause trouble: let us stay as we are and set up a small Commission from all Ireland to see if we can get in course of time some agreement and alleviation of our differences.

MR. O'HIGGINS: Craig always met us straightly and he defined his position frankly. He said 'I stand pat on the Act of 1920, and I will have none of anything else.' To the South of Ireland the existing boundary with a few prisoners as a makeweight is an impossible offer without in addition some substantial alleviation for the Nationalists of the North-East. If we could say that these Nationalists are not getting all that we expected in the Treaty but the Special Police are to go and other restrictions, political and local, are to be abandoned,there might be a chance for us to carry the Dáil with us. These Nationalists have had no proper representation under the Northern Government either in Parliament or in local administration; the constituencies have been faked to deprive them of representation. They are politically impotent and are kept down by an army of Special Constables paid and maintained by the British Government.We have to face the taunt that they have been maintained ad hoc - to influence and perilise the Boundary Commission, to impress its members with an idea of terrible things to happen if they acted strictly and fairly on their Terms of Reference.

The Commission took the line of least resistance; where the special police were thick in the North the Commission sheered away. This is what from all her supporters members of the Free State Government hear, that the Commission has been influenced by 'specials' standing with their finger on the trigger. It is no good in these circumstances getting up in the Dáil and saying 'We are very sorry but the old line shall stand and in return Sir James Craig will give up 24 prisoners.' I do not know whether there is anything to be hoped from a tri-partite conference and asking Craig to give 'Catholic emancipation' in the North-East.

MR. McGILLIGAN: I have not anything to add to Mr. O'Higgins' presentation of the case except this. He indicated that after proposing the offer which Cosgrave brought back, we might survive to consider whether the League of Nations might offer a remedy. My conviction is that from the moment that we appear before the Dáil with Thursday's proposal we disappear politically.

PRIME MINISTER: Of the two alternatives, which is the worse? Is it less difficult to carry out the award of the Commission?

MR. O'HIGGINS: We might try to do it but we should not last.

MR. TOM JONES: Do I understand this correctly? If, with the present boundary you could get substantial relaxation for the Catholics in the North-East, you might be able to ride the storm?

MR. O'HIGGINS: We might if we had far-reaching concessions and recognition that for three years past they have had very unfair and harsh treatment. The men who could never have got out under a boundary award from living too far North to be affected, would feel happier, and the satisfaction of those people would be some set-off against the disappointment of people who had been hoping that the award would get them out.