I put it to the President that the issues joined between the Parties here are not of fundamental importance. Our proposal is that the ex-Attorney-General, the present Attorney-General, and the leader of the Labour Party should constitute this committee. The Minister for Finance makes a point which does not appeal to me very much but which may appeal to the President. In matters of this kind, the question of whether Bills are, in fact, Money Bills or not will not arise again so long as the President can sustain his abolition of the Seanad. Therefore, he has no reason to apprehend that he will be over-ruled or that the Chair will be over-ruled in a matter of this kind in the future, so far as he is concerned. Quite apart, however, from this particular issue of a Money Bill, this fact is going on record: That the first precedent to be established by a Fianna Fáil Government—and remember this is the first unprecedented constitutional situation that the Fianna Fáil Government has had to deal with— the first precedent you are going to establish, the first committee, the constitution of which the Fianna Fáil Government is going to ordain, is going to be the first packed committee of this House in the whole history of the State; and, while in the particular issue that is going to be judged here, it does not very much matter, the precedent that is going to be established and that is going to be appealed to is going to do infinite damage to parliamentary institutions in this country, and it is going to lend colour to what seems to me to be the detestable doctrine that the Deputies of this House are so base and so incompetent and so unworthy of parliamentary institutions that you could not set up parliamentary committees because you could not find men in this House to man them. That is not true. I speak as one who has never been on a Committee of this House, except as a member of the minority, and I never experienced on a Committee of this House the kind of tyranny or dishonesty that President de Valera and Deputy MacDermot apprehend is the common rule. It does not exist. But why go out and publish to the world that parliamentary institutions have become impossible in this country because we are all debased and corrupt? We are not. The rational and sensible thing to do in a committee, over which the Chief Justice of the State is to preside, to decide a very complex question in law as to whether a Bill certified as a Money Bill by the Ceann Comhairle is a Money Bill or not, and the construing of a paragraph in the Constitution, is to have on that committee the Attorney-General and the ex-Attorney-General and then a non-legal Deputy who will represent the cross benches in the House. Deputy Norton is not the only Deputy who would have done that. An Independent Deputy would have done it as well. It was natural that the contribution of the Government would be the Attorney-General; that the contribution of the Opposition would be the ex-Attorney-General, and that from the cross benches in the House there should come a Deputy who would represent the minds of the non-legal members. When two Deputies here make a case for a committee to be set up their Party ought to be represented on that committee by at least one Deputy. I do not attach so much importance to improving the representative capacity of the committee. We can leave that out.
We are interpreting the Constitution and on that committee there should, from the Government side, be the Attorney-General and, from the Opposition side, the ex-Attorney-General. From the cross Benches a Deputy reasonably representative would be found. Surely such a committee would do this House more credit than the proposal that we should have two members from the Government Benches and the third the leader of the Labour Party. The leader of the Labour Party would be acceptable to me as a representative Deputy of the cross benches, not that I do not know him to be a politician for whom I have no respect. But I always found him, as I found members of the Fianna Fáil Party, concerned for the rights and privileges of the House and prepared to take a certain stand as a member of the House.
I appeal to the President on this matter, which in a sense is a trivial one, not to slander the House with the imputation that we cannot carry on parliamentary institutions. I appeal to the President to dissociate himself from the suggestion that if the ex-Attorney-General and the Attorney-General, practically the two heads of the legal profession in this country, sit down together they will deliberately betray their profession and give, as their opinion on a point of law, an opinion that they honestly believe to be false. There is no responsible Deputy in this House who believes that will happen. It could not happen, and I appeal to the President to associate himself with us in taking the view that it will not happen and so set clear before the other countries of the world that we are following the ordinary decent course in a matter of this kind; that we are reposing our confidence in Deputies of the House no matter whence drawn; and that we are doing that in the knowledge that the particular Deputies will have as their primary, and in fact only, concern to construe faithfully this Article of the Constitution.