I move the motion standing in the name of the President:
Ná fuil sé oiriúnach Có-Choiste den dá Thigh do cheapa chun breithniú agus tuairisciú do dhéanamh i dtaobh ar mhaith an rud é na hAirtiogail den Bhunreacht do leasú a choisceann baill den tSeanad a cheapa mar bhaill den Ard-Chomhairle.
That it is not expedient that a Joint Committee of both Houses should be appointed to consider and report upon the advisability of amending the Articles of the Constitution which prevent members of the Seanad being appointed members of the Executive Council.
The President has asked me to put briefly to the Dáil the considerations which prompted the Executive Council to take the view that the Dáil ought not to take part in a Committee with the terms of reference set out in the resolution sent down from the Seanad. The objection to that course is in a sense two-fold. The first objection deals not so much with the merits of the proposal as with the setting and attendant circumstances in which the proposal comes before us. Deputies will remember that some time ago a Bill was passed through the Dáil, and sent to the Seanad, providing that the maximum membership of the Executive Council should in future be twelve rather than seven. The reasons for that step were explained when the Bill was before the House.
Enthusiasm for the Extern Minister idea has waned, somewhat, by our experience in the actual operations of the Constitution. I explained that the single responsibility of an Extern Minister was a matter, even under the Constitution as it stands, rather more of theory than of fact, because for every major departmental proposal the Minister must look for finance, and, looking for finance, must turn towards the sphere of collective responsibility, and as long as we retain our present system of financial control this single responsibility of the Minister who is not a member of the Executive Council is largely theoretical.
In the matter of staff also, you have a radiation from all departments into the field of collective responsibility. Civil servants hold office on a tenure dependent on the Executive Council. They are removable only by the Executive Council. The personnel of the Civil Service is controlled substantially by the Establishment Branch of the Department of Finance. There, again, you have that necessary overlapping as between the Department represented here in the Dáil by an Extern Minister and the field of collective responsibility that is covered by the Executive Council. While we felt that these considerations, cumulatively, were not, perhaps, strong enough to make a case for the complete elimination of the Extern Minister idea from our Constitution, at least they sufficed to warrant us in asking the Dáil and the Seanad for a discretionary elasticity for each succeeding President as to the extent of the field of administration that he would choose to take into the sphere of collective responsibility—that each President, judging his own position after election, would decide how much of the general administration of the country he would call into the circle of collective responsibility and how much, if any, he would leave outside that circle. That Bill went to the Seanad. Members of the Seanad took the view—the view that really underlies this resolution that is before us—that that Bill constituted an encroachment on their rights. One may wonder what rights? An encroachment on their right to be Extern Ministers? That, in so far as it is a right of members of the Seanad, is a right also of every citizen of the State. It arises under Article 55 of the Constitution—
"Ministers who shall not be members of the Executive Council may be appointed by the Representative of the Crown and shall comply with the provisions of Article 17 of this Constitution. Every such Minister shall be nominated by Dáil Eireann on the recommendation of a Committee of Dáil Eireann, chosen by a method to be determined by Dáil Eireann, so as to be impartially representative of Dáil Eireann. Should a recommendation not be acceptable to Dáil Eireann, the Committee may continue to recommend names until one is found acceptable..."
Deputies will note that there is nothing in the Article prescribing that Extern Ministers shall be members of Dáil Eireann, nor is there anything in the Article prescribing that Extern Ministers shall even be members of either House of the Oireachtas. As I interpret it, any citizen approved ad hoe by this representative Committee of the Dáil could be an Extern Minister, on complying with the provisions of Article 17 of the Constitution. So that if there is an encroachment on a right by the Bill that was passed here and sent to the Seanad, enabling the maximum number of the Executive Council to be raised to twelve, it is not a right peculiar to Senators but a right which Senators share with all citizens.
The Bill was referred to a Special Committee of the Seanad, which I attended. The proposal that emerged from that Special Committee was that no further progress should be made with the Bill that was passed here and sent to the Seanad; that they should mark time on the Bill; that they should pass a resolution inviting the Dáil to take part in the proceedings of a Joint Committee, the object of that Joint Committee being to decide whether or not Article 55 should be amended so as to make Senators eligible for membership of the Executive Council, the view being that if the field of Extern Ministers was to be encroached upon, as it might be under the Bill and under the discretion which the Bill proposes to give to succeeding Presidents, then the compensation for that must be that Senators must be eligible for membership of the Executive Council. Whatever may be said for or against the eligibility of Senators for membership of the Executive Council or the propriety of making them so eligible, the Executive Council objects to the bargaining complexion of this resolution, the suggestion that unless this resolution is passed—unless the Dáil agrees to take part in a Committee which would consider the alteration of Article 55, so as to make Senators eligible for membership of the Executive Council then, presumably, the Bill which was passed by the Dáil, which is at present before the Seanad, will be consigned to some Limbo reserved for Bills that fail to secure the assent of both Houses. In other words, there is underlying this resolution a threat—a leverage: Senators must be made eligible for membership of the Executive Council or a Bill, which aims at giving a discretion to succeeding Presidents as to the total number of Ministers to be included in the Executive Council, will not be passed.
We object to the setting of this resolution; we object to its bargaining complexion. We object to the underlying threat, that unless this resolution is passed, and, presumably, unless those who represent the Dáil on the proposed committee agree that Senators should be eligible for membership of the Executive Council, then the Bill that is before the Seanad will not be passed by the Seanad. We do not think that public business—important public business—ought to be dealt with along lines of that kind. That is our first objection to this resolution—our first reason for asking the Dáil not to accept the proposal embodied in the resolution. The second objection is on the merits. To accept this proposal to take part in the proceedings of a Joint Committee, to consider the alteration of Article 55 of the Constitution, so that Senators may be eligible for membership of the Executive Council is, in effect, equivalent to giving a Second Reading to the proposal that Senators should be eligible for membership of the Executive Council. Are we sure they should? The Seanad at present consists of 60 members. Thirty-one of those members were elected; twenty-seven were nominated; two were co-opted.
But none of these persons, whether nominated, co-opted or elected, were nominated, co-opted or elected with a view to their being anything else than members of a Second Chamber, a Second Chamber with powers of revision, powers of criticism, powers of suggestion, and even powers—maximum powers—of delay. None were elected, co-opted or nominated with any advertence to the possibility of their becoming members of a body which is collectively responsible to the people for major matters of administration, for the handling of the finances of the country, for the bigger issues of policy, domestic and international, that may arise. The Executive Council do not consider that the Dáil should commit itself to the principle of Senator-members of the Executive Council, even to the extent of agreeing to take part in a Joint Committee to consider that proposal.
I have been reminded that elsewhere members of the Second Chamber, or the Upper Chamber as its own members prefer to call it, are members of Cabinets, sharing in Executive responsibility. But clearly, when the Constitution was being enacted, there was very definite provision that that should not be the case here. To make an effective liaison between the Executive and both Houses it was provided that Ministers should have a right of audience in both Houses, that Ministers can go with their Bills after they have been passed by the Dáil to the Seanad, attend there at every stage and explain, expound and defend their proposals. If elsewhere you have members of the Second Chamber members of the Executive it is largely for the purpose of providing a liaison between the Executive and the Second Chamber which would not otherwise exist. I do not think it is too much to ask of any man who is ambitious to take part in the administration of the affairs of State, in deciding in the counsels of the State, the major political issues that may arise, that he should face a constituency in the ordinary way, and stand for election to the Dáil. I think it would be a wrong thing, an unsound thing for the Dáil or the country to say that persons who have been nominated in a rather haphazard way or, even persons who have been elected in the peculiar circumstances in which Senators were elected, should be even eligible to become members of the Executive Council.
Some time ago one of our daily papers committed itself to the statement that people were apt to forget that the Seanad was even in a wider sense than the Dáil a democratically elected chamber. I have the exact quotation here, and in a matter of this kind one ought to be exact:—
There is too great a tendency to forget that the Seanad is even in a wider sense than the Dáil a popularly elected body.
That statement is, of course, blatantly and demonstratively untrue.