When we reported progress last night, I was making a reference to the Seanad's responsibility with regard to a Bill like this. I do not think that any of us can separate this Bill from the debate we had last summer on the proposal to amend the Constitution and the subsequent referendum and the decision of the electorate. To my mind, what is proposed and what is being done here is a deliberate attempt to frustrate the decision of the electorate in the referendum.
We know that we can all, as members of particular Parties, interpret the referendum to suit ourselves. We can say that the decision of the referendum was a definite swing against Fianna Fáil and we can interpret it as being a swing towards Labour; I suppose Fine Gael can equally say, with their hand on their heart, that it was a swing towards Fine Gael. I must confess that, in spite of being a Party member, I do not hold very strong Party views on this. I would be more inclined to the view that the referendum was a demonstration by the electorate of this country that they are responsible and that they wanted to retain as much control over Parliament as was possible. I do not think they made any conscious decision at that time in respect of Parties or in respect of what the composition would be of any future Government.
I look with suspicion on a proposal to change a system of election and a way of representation in Parliament which has been successful in this country and which has given us fair play and which, as I said last night, enabled us to act in a reasonably responsible way.
The electorate also decided that they did not want to deprive minorities of representation in Dáil Éireann. They really interpreted the proposal to change the system of election as meaning that minorities would not for the future be represented in Dáil Éireann in proportion to the support that the electorate might wish to give them from time to time. I suggest that what we have here now is a sneaky effort behind the backs of the electorate to try and frustrate what the Irish people decided in the referendum last autumn.
I want to draw your attention, first of all, to the Constitution. This point has already been made in the debate that the Constitution provides for the system of proportional representation in election to Dáil Éireann and it says that no law should be enacted whereby the number of members to be returned for any constituency shall be less than three. That is the very minimum. We are now finding in this Bill that there is a further swing towards the very minimum.
We would all accept that proportional representation cannot work effectively in three-seat constituencies. In a three-seat constituency the quota, as you all know well, would be 25 per cent of the valid poll plus one. This is the mathematical position and you cannot do better. A Party can win two seats with 46 to 48 per cent of the poll, but a Party must be certain of winning two seats with 50 per cent of the poll plus one. It would win two seats out of three. For 50 per cent support, a Party could get 66? per cent representation in a constituency. It is important to not that, on the other side of the coin, people are deprived because of that arrangement. A Party with 24.97 per cent of the vote, which is nearly 25 per cent of the support, in a three-member constituency will be left without representation. Representation of one-in-four is not unimportant and cannot be ignored or brushed aside.
In this Bill it is being proposed that such a Party would be deprived of representation in Dáil Éireann in a three-seat constituency. This is intolerable and is against the wishes and the decisions of the Irish electorate as represented in a very definite way when they rejected the proposal to amend the Constitution and abolish PR. What is being attempted here is to so arrange things that PR will be largely ineffective. It will be so weakened that the PR system will no longer give reasonable representation in Parliament to minorities in proportion to the support they are getting from the electorate. In four-seat constituencies we all know that the quota would be 20 per cent of the valid poll plus one. To get a majority of the seats a Party would have to get 60 per cent of the poll plus one, or three out of four seats. The Party with minority support of 19.96 per cent, which is nearly one in five, would be left without any representation whatever in that constituency.
We go on from there. We all know there is no need to demonstrate this to people who have been elected themselves under PR but the greater the number of seats in a constituency the more representative the results will be and the more effective PR will be. I know it will be argued that large constituencies with a big number of seats are awkward and hard to cover. These arguments were effectively made in the debate on the referendum but the Irish people decided that they did not want the handy, convenient single-seat small constituency. The Irish electorate came to a decision which we must accept and not try to frustrate it as the Government are attempting to do in this measure. Under our system of PR, which has worked up to now, there is a fair and reasonable relationship between the percentage support received by the various Parties and the representation they have secured in Dáil Éireann. Because of the way constituencies can be drawn by any Government there is a bit of a bonus for the larger Party. They tend to get a higher percentage of seats than they, in fact, get by way of first preference votes. It has not been unreasonable up to the present time. In 1951 Fianna Fáil gained 46.3 per cent of the first preference votes and got 46.6 per cent of the seats in Dáil Éireann. Fine Gael got 25.7 per cent of the first preference votes and 27.4 per cent of the seats. Labour got 11.5 per cent of the first preference votes and 11 per cent of the seats, and so on in the various general elections. On another occasion Fianna Fáil got 47.8 per cent of the first preferences and 50.3 per cent of the seats. Labour got 15.4 per cent of the first preferences and 14.7 per cent of the seats. What this Bill is designed to achieve is a lower percentage of first preferences. Under this measure Fianna Fáil would secure a far bigger bonus, they would get a far bigger representation in Dáil Éireann.