Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 28 Jan 1959

Vol. 172 No. 9

An Bille um an Tríú Leasú ar an mBunreacht, 1958—An Cúigiú Céim. (Atógáil). Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1958—Fifth Stage (Resumed).

Tairgeadh an Cheist arís: "Go rithfidh an Bille anois."

Question again proposed: "That the Bill do now pass."

Mr. Dillon

My train of thought has not been interrupted because I keep thinking of this word "stability". Mind you, it has been one of the great foundations on which Fianna Fáil sought to build their case for closing out of this Parliament any dissentient voice. What did they mean by stability? There is no authoritarian Government in the world at the present time, which is not most touchy lest they be described as anything but the democratic Government of the country in which they exercise that control. Chou En-lai in Pekin is insisting that the Government at present acting in China should be described as the Popular Democratic Government of the Chinese People. Bonn is described as the Government of Western Germany and Herr Ulbricht of Eastern Germany is cast into dismay if his Government is not described as the democratic Government of the German people. Czechoslovakia is the democratic Government of the people and the more bloody the tyranny becomes in Eastern Europe, the more emphasis is the word "democratic" in that title given.

It is a modern method of propaganda to take words of well-established meaning and give an entirely different meaning to them and then make them part of the vernacular in the special meaning you chose to attach to them. There is nobody outside Eastern Germany who looks upon that as a democratic Government. There is nobody outside China who looks on the bloody tyranny there as a democratic Government. There is nobody outside Czechoslovakia who believes that the Czechs are living under a democratic institution. There are few people even behind the Iron Curtain who believe that the Hungarians are enjoying what we understand as democratic institutions under Mr. Kadar, but all these gentlemen are eager to describe themselves as democrats.

That is the way in which they have prostituted the word "democracy". Are we travelling the same road with the word "stability"? What I am concerned to have in this country are stable democratic institutions. By that, I mean that the life and liberty of every citizen of this State shall be sacrosanct under the law, whatever Government is in office in Ireland. What I mean by stability is that Parliament shall truly function as a citadel of individual liberty for all sections of our people, whatever Party is in power. What I mean by stability is that our political institutions will be so well organised that the disappearance of any one of us or any group of us will make no difference to the continued functioning of a free Parliament.

I direct the attention of Deputies and the people to the avowal of the Leader of Fianna Fáil. His idea is that stability in this country means that the Fianna Fáil Party shall be the Government of this country and if there is any departure such as happened in 1948 and 1954, that is evidence of instability. Whatever constitutional reforms may be required to prevent the possibility of that event occurring again must be made to ensure what they call stability, but what, in fact, means the impossibility of anything displacing a Fianna Fáil Government in this country.

What will happen in this country if the electoral machine is so rigged that there never can be in the future anything but a Fianna Fáil Government? Suppose the present Government realise their dream, achieve what they want and wipe out of the mind of the people the belief that there could ever be a change. Does anybody seriously believe that the kind of parliamentary institutions which we have grown up in this country to revere would long survive? Does anybody want a Parliament in this country in which it is unthinkable and impossible for a Government to be formed except from one Party? I do not.

I think it is a healthy part of normal political democratic parliamentary government that there should always be present to the people and available to them, when they want it, an alternative to any Government and I think that is what the Fianna Fáil Government seek to take away. I call in evidence their own words as uttered in the course of this debate.

I welcome the fact that Fianna Fáil are beginning to get cold feet on the issue of the referendum. It does not surprise me for I know Fianna Fáil too well. When the cold breath of possible defeat blew upon them, they throw in the Taoiseach as they would throw in anything else, in the hope of averting defeat. I acknowledge the danger that the warm sympathy of our people might mislead them if the Presidential election and the referendum are held on the same day, but I earnestly hope and pray that our people will be awake to the true nature of the decision set before them.

Will they vindicate the electoral system which has given this country three Prime Ministers in 30 years, the political system which has given us Governments with clear majorities in this House, the system which has given us Governments from Fianna Fáil and inter-Party, the average of which has been, down through the years, three years longer than the period of election to the American House of Representatives, longer than the statutory period for a Government to survive in the Commonwealth of Australia? Will they vindicate that system by their vote or will they deliberately sweep all that away and launch out into the unknown to be characterised by this sinister picture—this is what Fianna Fáil hope for and this is what the people must give them if they are to accept the counsel and advice of the Fianna Fáil Party—the Taoiseach in the Park as President, himself and his son as controlling directors of three national newspapers and his nominee and henchmen constituting the Government and the Executive of this country, all at the same time?

If that is not the picture of a power megalomania in one man, I do not know what it is and it is between that megalomania for power and the continuance of a free Parliament in our country that the people are to be asked to choose. It is a choice that they should never have been asked to take. It is a disgrace to the Government that proposed it. I trust and pray that our people, demoralised as they have been over the past 20 years by all that Fianna Fáil stand for, will recall their great traditions in their long struggle for freedom, as we understand the word, and their passionate attachment to democratic parliamentary institutions as we understand those words in Ireland and by their votes on this referendum declare, unequivocably and emphatically, that they will not have a dictatorship in the Park, a dictatorship in the newspapers or a dictatorship in Parliament.

Bear in mind that the true stability of this nation which rests on Parliament and the faithful allegiance of our people to the institutions we now operate will be gravely prejudiced if in this referendum the verdict is by a narrow margin. Fianna Fáil may glory if the verdict goes in their favour, but let them remember that if they take from our people through a handful of votes representative of a microscopic majority in a referendum, a fundamental constitutional right precious to every section of the minorities at present in Dáil Éireann, they will strike a more deadly blow at the stability of the institutions of this State than anyone has ever done before. If we hold these institutions only by a narrow majority, and Fianna Fáil declare their intention of returning again and again to the charge for the purpose of destroying them, they will strike a deadly blow at the stability of the institutions of this State.

Fianna Fáil never should have put this matter in issue. They should never have claimed the right or avowed the desire to satisfy the megalomania for power of one man, but, to do it by forcing this Bill through the Oireachtas, is to do this community and this State a grave wrong. It is possible they may change their tune yet. I hope they may yet be defeated in the Seanad and that this matter may be prevented from presentation by an Irish Government. I hope that such a defeat would make this Government think again. It is true that even though this Bill were defeated in the Seanad, it would result in no more than 90 days' delay, but it would give time to a Government to think and think again before taking a step, no matter what the issue is, that will shake and gravely shake true stability in Ireland.

This Fianna Fáil Government may claim to be the servants of Ireland, but they are in fact its executioners. History will pass verdict on the man who shakes the foundation of this State so painfully built up in his despite and without his help, but all the resources of which were gladly committed to his hands, once he secured a parliamentary majority in this country. If he is maddened by the fact that the people exercised their sovereign right in passing that authority from him to others twice in the past ten years, he should remember that those who went before and handed it on to him bore no malice towards the people who made their decision but were able to carry on the opposition in this House until the people gave them the authority to take back from Fianna Fáil what they had so scandalously misused.

That was the true tradition of parliamentary democracy which I hope will be forever served by those of us who sit on this side of the House. I have sufficient confidence in the people of this country to believe that they will ultimately vindicate our attitude and reject the proposals submitted in this referendum by voting "no" and, at the next general election which I hope will come before 1961—it could not come too soon for me; to-night, if possible—will put an end to a Government who, by their conduct in this matter, have so utterly disgraced themselves.

Minister for External Affairs (Mr. Aiken)

The last referendum in relation to which Deputy Dillon asked the voters to vote "no" was the referendum on the Constitution.

Mr. Dillon

I shall be back in a minute.

Mr. Aiken

Lest anybody reading this debate might be led astray by certain of the charges Deputy Dillon hurled across the House, I want to put it on record that he is one of the gentlemen who tried to organise a Fascist Nazi organisation here. They went around the country in blue shirts and said that as the Blackshirts had won in Italy and as the Brownshirts had won in Germany, so would the Blueshirts win here. I do not want to go into it any further than that, but I want to put that on record, in view of some of the things the Deputy said.

Let us now take this question of "mob law" which is how Deputy Dillon described the referendum. I believe that the mob on this occasion —what Deputy Dillon calls a mob— will give him the same answer as they gave him when he last appealed to the people on the referendum for the Constitution. I believe they will vote "yes" in this referendum just as they voted "yes" for the Constitution in spite of Deputy Dillon and others who wanted to cling to the remnants of the Constitution forced upon us by the British under threats of immediate and terrible war.

I believe "the mob" on this occasion will vote as they voted when we asked them in 1937 to vote for the Constitution which they gave themselves. The foolishness of Deputy Dillon is disclosed by that phrase that a referendum is mob law. The people who might read these debates can judge by that phrase what is behind a number of the arguments that have been used by the people on the opposite benches. They can judge what is behind their opposition to this proposed amendment of the Constitution by that phrase. They can also judge the reason for the words in which Deputy Dillon described the straight vote system on the last occasion that it was debated here on the Committee Stage. On that occasion he said that the straight vote system is "political dictatorship gone mad". In the same debate he declared it to be "an outrage on every standard of public decency".

Democrats in other countries who might be led to read this debate to see what the Irish are doing about their system of election can see that the principal opposition to the change from the proportional system imposed upon us by the British comprise gentlemen who went around this country in blue shirts trying to repeat here the Fascist victory that was obtained by their confréres in Italy and in Germany, and who regard the American direct voting system as "political dictatorship gone mad" and an "outrage on every standard of public decency".

According to Deputy Dillon, a referendum is "one of the most undemocratic procedures ever conceived by the mind of man". In the ordinary presidential, senatorial or congressional elections in America hundreds of referenda on various items throughout the country are held on the same day as the presidential or the congressional elections. If there is a dis pute on some matter between the representatives elected by the people it is regarded as a normal thing for a local state Government or a city Government to agree to put it to a referendum and allow the people to decide what they want by a majority vote. Deputy Dillon, although denouncing the Fianna Fáil tendency or the Fianna Fáil plot, as he put it, to destroy minority rights in this country is also denouncing as mob law the putting of a question to the people which will be decided one way or the other by majority vote.

While Deputy Dillon, other mem bers of his Party and other groups in the House are very eloquent about the rights of minorities, they have put a limit to the number of minorities they will allow to be represented in this House. None of them has proposed that the size of the constituency under P.R. should be extended so that smaller minorities might come in None of them has proposed that the whole of the State should be one constituency so that if a person could get one vote in every 150 he would be returned to the Dáil. At the present time in most cases he must get one vote out of every four to be certain of being elected. If we could have a P.R. system where one vote in 150 could elect a candidate, we could have the leaders of 150 Parties here to coalesce and play musical chairs. If we were to satisfy some people who want to go to this extreme of having representation for every petty or every small section of the community——

Mr. Dillon

"Petty" was the word the Minister meant.

Mr. Aiken

——we could look up the references Deputy Mulcahy gave us to the list of bodies which gave evidence before the Commission on Vocational Organisation. Here we have several pages of groups or organisations all of which, if we had a large enough membership in the Dáil, and had the State as a single constituency, would have an opportunity of being represented here. Pointing that out shows the absurdity of trying to get every very small section of the community represented by a person who has the label of his trade or profession on his coat. We are all representative here of those 200 or 300 groups who gave evidence before that commission. Both sides of the House have farmers, bakers and candlestick makers. I take it that within our different Parties we discuss the problems that affect all these sections of the community and after debate at our Party meetings we come to a reasonable compromise in solving the difficulties under discussion.

Mr. Dillon

That is what you want to change.

Mr. Aiken

If this straight vote system works here as it has worked in the United States over the last couple of hundred years and in Britain for quite a considerable time, the tendency will be that we may have two groups of Parties allied within themselves or we may have one large Party and two allied Parties forming an Opposition. Then the people will know what type of Government to expect. If they vote for one of the large Parties or for a group of two or more traditional and well-known allies, the people will know, when they vote for any candidate, what type of Government they will get.

The difficulty about P.R. is that the people cannot know at all what type of Government they will get. Once the rot sets in and the proportional system is carried to its logical conclusion, splitting the representatives of the people into the greatest number of small Parties, no one can know under which thimble is the pea. The Labour Party can go out and denounce Fine Gael and the Farmers' Party. Fine Gael can denounce to their supporters the Labour Party, Fianna Fáil and Farmers' Party, but afterwards they can come together and form a Coalition. Each Party put up their own policy as the only policy they will support after the election, and yet they can come together afterwards to form the Coalition. Deputy Norton calls that making a deal.

We do not mind two Parties making a deal provided it is not a double deal, provided they make it in advance and tell the people what they intend to do and not tell them to support one Party in an election and then make a double deal or a double-cross when the election is over. Let us get rid of the hypocritical system whereby half a dozen Parties will go up for election each advocating in the most violent way its own policy in order to get a number of members that will ensure that the small Party will get a Ministry to run. We cannot make the progress that we should make here if we have that sort of system. Even larger, much more powerful countries than ours, have been brought to their knees with the electoral system which encourages a large number of small, violently antagonistic Parties.

Perhaps one of the immediate causes of the introduction of this Bill at that time was that we were galvanised into taking action, seeing how France was brought to its knees, possibly the richest country in the world per head of the population, if you judge by its resources, leaving out the United States. From the point of view of its natural wealth, the skill of its people, its industrial traditions, and all that, France is probably, after the United States, the greatest and richest nation in the world, and it was brought to its knees by the fact that its people could not unite, by the fact that the representatives of its people could not unite to pursue a constructive policy long enough to put that constructive policy into effect.

There are many members in this Dáil who are very well acquainted with a great number of the representatives in the French Chamber. They know them to be decent men, men whom you could trust to carry into effect what they promise you to do, but they have been in this frightful situation over the last 20 or 30 years that the various systems of election which they had, threw up ten, 12 and 20 Parties, with no one Party having a majority, and all feeling that if they pressed their case hard enough they could get in charge of a Ministry to put into effect some little portion of the policies they advocated to the people. That is what brought France to its knees and it would bring this country to its knees if it were in operation long enough.

You cannot expect to have for ever, under the present system, a large Party with the standards that Fianna Fáil has displayed over the last 20 or 25 years. Rather than form a coalition in which we did not believe, which we thought would be disastrous for the country we walked across the floor of this House twice. Anyone who knows the situation at that time would realise it could have been much easier for us to form a coalition in 1948, or in 1954, than it was for the various small groups that had to be brought together in order to form a coalition. We opposed coalition because we believe that our country cannot make the progress under coalition that it can under a large, well integrated Party. Under the direct voting system, the alternative would be another large, well integrated Party, or two Parties so well integrated, and which are so long in alliance that they are generally recognised as one throughout the country. You have the two things in various countries and I believe, from the point of view of the Labour Party, Deputy Dillon is trying to scare them and saying that they are going to fade out under this system. That depends on the Labour Party; it does not depend on the system of election.

Whether Fine Gael is going to fade out or come up as a strong Government Party under the straight vote depends on Fine Gael and what the people think of it, and not on what Fianna Fáil thinks of it. What is going to happen Fianna Fáil under the straight voting system over the period of years ahead depends on what the people will think of Fianna Fáil in the period ahead, and not on what we think of ourselves at this particular time. It gives an opportunity for Parties who believe in themselves, Parties who believe in their policies, who are prepared to work hard and canvass the country and organise the country. It gives them a chance of coming up quickly.

It gave that chance to the British Labour Party. In 1918 they had only a handful of seats but, by 1924, they were the Government and during the period between 1918 and 1958 they have increased the number of their seats in the House of Commons 20 times. During that same period, or at least between 1922 and to-day, the Labour Party here, under the P.R. system, have gone down by half. No, it was six fold the British Labour Party went up at the same time as the Labour Party here went down by half under P.R. Nothing can save the Labour Party but themselves and nothing can save Fine Gael except themselves. That applies to Fianna Fáil also. If we do not act, and do not propose policies which the people want, Fianna Fáil can fade out under the straight vote system, just as the Liberal Party faded out in Britain.

Deputy Dillon is playing a very dangerous game. It is not the first time he has done it by indicating that a Government here, elected by the Irish people under a system of election that the people approved, would not have the moral authority to deal with any revolutionary group that denied the validity of the Constitution enacted by the Irish people. That is a very dangerous game. The Constitution was enacted by the Irish people. Our moral authority to use force if necessary, to prevent anybody using force against the institutions of the State, springs from the fact that the Constitution was enacted by the Irish people, and that the Government is acting in conformity with the constitutional law.

If the system of election is changed the people must approve of it under the constitutional procedure set out in the original Constitution, and that then becomes the moral basis for a Government, elected under this Constitution as a whole, to enforce the authority of the people against any section that would deny it. Deputy Dillon is entitled to stir up that section of the Irish people in order to get them to vote against the referendum if he so desires, but do not let him go so far as to deny the moral authority of the Government to enforce the law, if it acts constitutionally under the fundamental law enacted by the Irish people.

Deputy Dillon denounced Fianna Fáil for demanding, as he said, a court of appeal from the Dáil. He cannot have it both ways. If we had the constitutional right to pass this Act, to change the electoral system by a mere majority in the Dáil and Seanad, then we need not appeal to the people. We could pass it if we had that right, but now we are also going to take the constitutional step that is necessary in order to make the passage of this Bill through the Dáil effective. We are going to the people to ratify and confirm the decision as made by their representatives. It is a queer way to put it, that a referendum is a court of appeal from the Parliament when we are bound by the Constitution to put it to the people.

Now, I put it—Deputy Costello, Deputy Dillon and others are here— there is no reason why we should have the referendum and the Presidential election on the one day. There is no reason why there should be a Presidential election at all and if the Opposition are so keen to keep these things separate and not to put the expenses of two ballot days on the people, they can arrange that the man who is going to go in will not be opposed.

Mr. Dillon

That is their idea of an election: the way to settle this is——

Mr. Aiken

The Deputy cannot have it both ways because he has the option, if he objects to having a Presidentail election——

Mr. Dillon

"Let our man in."

Mr. Aiken

——on the same day he need not fight the Presidential election. The result, whether you fight it or not, is going to be the same, and everybody knows it is going to be the same. If you fight the Presidential election, the only reason you will do so is that you could not get anybody to come out and vote against the referendum. You are going to try and stir up a number of your supporters simply because you have a candidate in the field. That is the reason you are going to fight the Presidential election. Now, would Deputy Dillon please give up——

Mr. Dillon

That is typical of the arrogant insolence of Fianna Fáil.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. Aiken

Will the Deputy please give up calling a referendum mob law? He does not do himself any good. As far as the people in this House are concerned he could not do himself any good because we all know him too well, but it does not do the country any good, to think the Deputy Leader of the principal Opposition Party in this democratic State calls a referendum a mob law.

Mr. Coogan

What do they call it in Red China?

Mr. Aiken

Outside a lunatic asylum you would not hear anybody call a referendum a mob law in the many democratic countries in the world where referenda are a not uncommon event. Indeed one might say they are an everyday event. Outside a lunatic asylum you would not hear anybody call a referendum a mob law. Outside a lunatic asylum in the United States of America, or Britain, or any of these other States that have survived with stable Government— and by stable Government I mean the stable governmental institutions in which Opposition takes over from Government and Government takes over from Opposition—you would not hear anybody saying, as Deputy Dillon said, that the straight vote is a political dictatorship gone mad, or that it is an outrage on every standard of public decency.

The fact of the matter is that this amendment which we are proposing to the Constitution has been clearly indicated as the right thing to do by every responsible person who has had experience of Government, and the difficulty of Government, over the last 30 years. It is no secret that in 1927 when Fine Gael, then called Cumann na nGaedheal, issued their election propaganda they spoke about it. Foreigners coming here and talking to Ministers of the then Cumann na nGaedheal Government realised that they were against this system of P.R. and the disaster of coalitions which it bred. From 1927 to 1932 Fine Gael spoke consistently against the idea of coalitions and spoke about the weaknesses of the P.R. system and its tendency to create a multiplicity of small Parties, which made coalitions inevitable. In 1937 Fianna Fáil proposed the Constitution to the people. We did not include P.R. One of the reasons we did not include P.R. was because there was a terrific opposition to the Constitution, sparked off by the Opposition, the various groups of Opposition at the time, saying that if the people adopted the Constitution women would not be allowed to leave their homes and could not take jobs outside their homes and that the President was going to be a dictator and all the rest of it.

If Fianna Fáil had insisted at that time in putting the straight vote system into the Constitution it might easily have been defeated. We thought it advisable at the time to get the Constitution accepted by the people, to take no chances on it, but to put into the Constitution the provision under which we are acting at the moment, that whenever the people decided that any part of the Constitution should be changed they would have the right to do so by following the procedure that we are following in making this proposed change.

Mr. O'Sullivan

What about the three-year period when it could have been changed without a referendum?

Mr. Aiken

We will take that period. In 1937 we were in a minority. When the Constitution went through there was an election and we were returned in a minority. In 1938 we were returned in a majority but 1938 was the year of Munich. If we had decided to make the change at that time we would have had to go through all this procedure and it would have taken us long after 1938 to get the Bill into the Dáil. It would have been two years after that; it would have been 1940. I do not think any Government, in the middle of the war, would go through that procedure.

In 1943 we became a minority. In 1944 we were elected again as a majority but after those years you had not only the last couple of war years but the greatest period of economic difficulty the world has ever seen—for a couple of years thereafter. But whatever we did, or did not do, all during that period events were moving in other countries.

In Germany, Hitler came up through a multiplicity of Parties created by P.R. and Mussolini also came up. Many of the small countries were threatened. Belgium got through only by the skin of her teeth because there was in Belgium before the war the Rexist Party and also the Communists. In France there was the same thing, extreme Communists and another semi-royalist Party—I forget its name—on the extreme Right. These people came up because, while the straight vote increases the power of the minority in the centre, P.R. increases the strength of the minorities on the extreme left or the extreme right in any nation. It is almost ludicrous, or indeed it would be ludicrous, to say in the light of the lessons we have from other countries, that under the straight voting system minorities are denied their rights. Indeed, one criticism of the system is that it gives the minority in the centre too much power, that a swing of 5 per cent. or 10 per cent. of votes in the centre can bring down a Party that had a big majority sending it back with a very small number of members, or bring an Opposition that had perhaps 40 per cent. of the seats back into power with 60 per cent.

That has happened on many occasions in these straight vote countries. We have seen what a swing of a small percentage did in the United States in the last congressional elections. We saw what happened in Britain several times since the war when a small percentage change in the popular vote meant a 5 per cent. or a 6 per cent. change in the number of seats in Parliament. It is ridiculous in the extreme to say that the straight vote denies minorities power. Nobody is so crazy as to say that all the 200 or 400 minority organisations represented in the vocational groups should be facilitated each to send a member into this Parliament bearing the ticket or badge of one of these organisations to kick up such a row that nobody could hear their ears advocating in a violent way the interests of the particular minority or group he represented.

There is something here that is beyond the 200 or 300 identifiable minority groups in the community; there is the community as a whole. There is the consideration that somebody must look after the general interest of all these people, the general common interest, and if the Dáil is comprised of members each representing a sectional interest and nobody representing the general interest the nation must go down. There may be many agile brains, cranks and soreheads, as Deputy Dillon described them, thinking up the thousand and one proportional systems, but the system of election that has served longest is the system that is operated in America.

In the modern world the straight voting system was really originated in America where it started with adult suffrage. Before that, in Britain you had pocket boroughs and all the rest of it but in the United States since the revolution in the 18th century, the straight voting system has been retained.

Mr. Coogan

Tammany Hall.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. Aiken

Whatever criticism you may make of the United States—and there are many criticisms that might be made of its politicians just as could be made of ourselves—there is this to be said. It is a miracle that any country could be composed of such a multiplicity of sections, of races and colours, and yet keep ordered Government. If they had the system of P.R. in America it is not one civil war they would have had but permanent civil war.

One of the difficulties the Jewish people are facing in Israel at the moment is that the various sections that came from the 30 or 40 different countries are each keeping a sectional approach. I think there are about 40 different Parties in the Israeli Parliament. Two considerations are keeping them together in some sort of ordered Government. One is outside, immediate pressure which is a very good cementing force when the people have to recognise their common interest; the other is a very old and well-respected leadership. But the difference between Israel and the U.S. is this. In Israel, where under P.R. you have all these groups—although fundamentally they are of one blood— each one keeps to his own different section or Party, but in the United States although they are of 100 different races, many different colours and shades, they are cemented together under the direct vote system into two Parties and the two Parties give them stability. The two Parties vie with each other for the votes of some of these minorities and give the minorities greater representation and take greater care of them than these minorities could possibly take of themselves under any system of representation of the various sections through P.R.

If we are to succeed as a country we must unite as closely as we can on as many things as possible. We have 3,000,000 of a population and I suppose 2,500,000 of them have reached the age of reason. Each one has his own particular approach or combination of approaches to all the problems There is no means of consulting them from day to day on the various things that crop up for decision here or in the Government. We must try to unite them, outside this Parliament. The coordinating work cannot be done here because we have no room for 2,500,000. We must have a system that encourages the people to get their representatives to put forward their views or policies and to make them effective locally in the local organisations of, say, two major Parties or two groups of Parties or whatever number comes out of these elections.

I trust that the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party after having discussed this for so long will, perhaps, take another view of the Bill before it goes to the people. I feel confident that the people will pass it. It is difficult to explain in some ways, but the people generally understand the difference between the proportional system, which created weaknesses here and which created fatal weaknesses in other countries, and the straight vote system which we are proposing to operate here, which has brought good results in other countries and which is likely to bring equally good results here.

Cuireadh an díospóireacht ar athlo.

Debate adjourned.