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Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 4 Nov 1924

Vol. 9 No. 8

DAIL IN COMMITTEE. - LOCAL GOVERNMENT BILL, 1924—THIRD STAGE.

I move that Section 1 stand part of the Bill. It is merely a definition section.

Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 2.
The following portions of this Act, that is to say, the whole of Part I, Sections 8 to 14, and Section 19 in Part II, Sections 21, 22, 23 and 25 in Part III, and Section 50, 55, 57, 61, 64 and 65 in Part V shall not apply to the County or the City of Dublin.

I beg to move that Section 2 stand part of the Bill. This section is necessary owing to the fact that a Commission has been set up to enquire into the system of Local Government in Dublin County and in the County Borough. It was considered desirable that nothing in this Bill should conflict with any of the findings of the Commission. We have accordingly excluded, by this section, parts of the Bill from operating in that area.

The other sections, which will not in any way affect the decisions of the Commission, are still applicable as in the rest of the country.

Before we pass this section, I would like to know from the Minister whether its passing will entail a further postponement of the local elections in County Dublin. The city does not matter so much as the Minister has intervened already, and the principle of popular election is suspended for the time being. In regard to the country, these local bodies have already been in office a great deal longer than the period for which they were elected, and a certain amount of dissatisfaction is being felt with regard to the manner in which some of them are functioning. I raised the matter about a year ago as far as the county councils are concerned. I am glad that the Minister has been able to influence the county councils in the direction of a reduction of rates and more reasonable administration, and the discontent is not so keen perhaps as it was a year ago. There is, however, some discontent with regard to the administration of some of the councils in the county and some of the townships. A further postponement of elections which have already been postponed two or three times, will not be looked upon with favour. Will the Minister tell us whether the section involves a further postponement—I imagine it does—and will the Minister also say whether he will have to bring in another Postponement Bill, for if so I shall have to vote against the section as a protest?

There is another aspect of this question. The application of the operations of the Act to the City and County of Dublin is to be postponed pending a report of a Commission which is being set up to inquire into local government in this area. We are to pass an Act, including public health matters, in respect of the rest of the country. Then we are to have a commission to inquire into the administration and the best procedure regarding public health after setting up by this Act these public health authorities. It is a curious inconsistency. We have a Commission to inquire into local government administration and also into public health. That, at least, was the understanding. In one case we are to have a Commission set up first, and legislation postponed pending the results of that inquiry. In the other case we are to have legislation introduced and passed, and then we are to appoint a committee to inquire into what sort of legislation is required. It is a curious procedure and I would hope that the Minister would be able to explain the inconsistency, or is he satisfied that there should be no further inquiry by any committee or commission respecting public health or the best methods of conducting local affairs? Are we to assume that the projected commission is now abandoned?

I would remind Deputy Johnson that the situation in Dublin is undoubtedly different to any other part of Ireland. Dublin is the capital of the Saorstát, and is by far the most important city in the country, and it has innumerable complex problems that do not apply to any other part of the country. The special difficulties affecting that area have never been considered by a Commission before, and for that reason it is very desirable that a Commission should consider the peculiar circumstances relating to Dublin. On that account I consented to allow a Commission to inquire into the whole matter before applying to Dublin the provisions of this Bill. With regard to the rest of the country, we have had Commissions inquiring into local government before this. In particular, I would call Deputy Johnson's attention to the Public Health Council which sat in 1920 and went very fully into the question of public health administration all through the country, and it is mainly on the findings of that Commission that the present Bill is based. I am afraid that I cannot give complete satisfaction to Deputy Cooper on this point. We cannot have everything in this world which we desire. If we are to have the best possible system of local government in Dublin, county and city, we have to take time and trouble in finding out what kind of government and what kind of measures are more suitable for that area. Accordingly we have to set up a Commission to inquire into that matter. At the same time it is desirable that we should have elections, but we are in this position, we have to choose between the two evils—the evil of allowing the existing conditions, which most people agree are not satisfactory, to continue without any attempt to remedy them, as against the evil of postponing the elections. On the whole, balancing the two, I think it is better to allow the elections to be postponed until the Commission brings out its report than not to go ahead with the Commission. It is quite possible that the Commission will have brought in its report before the next elections.

If the Commission has not reported, then will another Local Election Postponement Bill be introduced?

Dublin County will be automatically excluded. I need not apply the Election Act to Dublin city and county. There will be no necessity to bring in another Bill.

We are postponing our local elections until next March, and if they be postponed later surely another Postponement Act will be necessary, or could the Minister do it by an order or an administrative act outside the Dáil?

We will hold the elections in that case, but we have to postpone them until March.

Even for rural district councils?

Is it the intention of the Minister not to hold any elections throughout the country until the 31st March, or will he allow the elections on 15th January?

As the Order stands at present the elections will be held on the 15th January, but if I find it impossible to get this Bill through to hold the elections before the 15th January I will have the power to postpone the elections until March.

You are not in a position now to say when the elections will be held?

It all depends on the time it will take to get the Bill through.

The procedure of the Commission should be expedited. I know it is composed of men who are very busy and find it difficult to arrange dates on which it is easy for everyone of them to come together; otherwise we shall have the ludicrous situation of elections held for Balrothery and Celbridge No. 2 Rural District Councils and for no other Rural District Council in the Saorstát.

I think the Deputy may rest assured that the Minister is going to appoint Commissioners to administer these areas.

Question—"That Section 2 stand part of the Bill"—put and agreed to.
PART I.
ABOLITION OF RURAL DISTRICT COUNCILS.
SECTION 3.
(1) From and after such date, not more than two months from the passing of this Act, as the Minister shall appoint to be the appointed day for the purposes of this Act, all rural district councils shall cease to exist, and upon the appointed day the powers and duties (subject to the provisions of this Act), and the property, debts, and liabilities of the council of every rural district within a county shall be transferred to the council of such county, and the council of such county shall be the successors of the council of such rural district.
(2) Any debt or liability of a rural district council which is transferred to the council of a county by this section shall be paid or defrayed by means of the same rate by means of which such debt or liability would have been discharged before the passing of this Act, and the area of charge for the expenses of discharging such debt or liability shall be determined in accordance with the rules set out in the First Schedule to this Act.
(3) If any debt or liability (whether existing on or arising after the appointed day) transferred by this section to the council of a county relates to or is connected with any property transferred by this section to that council, such debt or liability shall so far as possible be paid or defrayed out of any profit or revenue received by such council out of such property.

Amendment 1. If this amendment is defeated Amendment No. 2 falls with it.

I cannot understand why No. 2 must fall, because one amendment is to delete the section, and the other is to appoint 12 representatives, not elected, but nominated by the County Council. I do not see that the amendments compare at all.

If the Committee refuses to delete the section, then it is not deleted.

In that case I would withdraw Amendment 2, if the section is deleted. If the section is not deleted I hold that I am in order in moving Amendment No. 2.

If the section is not deleted, the Deputy cannot move Amendment 2.

I hold it is a different amendment.

I appreciate the idea that it is a different amendment. Amendment 1 is a proposal to delete the section, and if the Committee decides that the section cannot be deleted, then the Deputy cannot move to delete it.

There is an entirely different purpose in these two amendments. Deputy Corish wishes to retain rural councils as they are, and Deputy Lyons wishes to set up a new body. I agree that if the Dáil decides to delete the section the amendment cannot be moved. Is there no method by which Deputy Lyons' amendment could be moved?

Of course, there will be another stage. When we come to the motion that the section stands part of the Bill, after the amendments have been disposed of, Deputy Lyons can make his point.

Would my amendment be in order then?

We can see whether it would be possible to draft an amendment which would meet your point.

I move: "To delete the section." My reason in bringing forward this amendment is that the step which the Minister is about to make is, I believe, retrogressive, and no matter what the Minister has said to the various deputations that have waited on him in this connection, as reported in the Press, I do not think he has succeeded in convincing anybody in the State that there is any necessity for his action. I am wondering if his decision to abolish the rural district councils is based upon any data which have come within his knowledge from the functioning of these councils during the last three or four years, because I do not think it is a desirable thing for him to use such data, or the experience of his Department in dealing with these councils during that period. It is within the knowledge of everybody that the councils, as at present constituted, are composed of politicians pure and simple, that the names of nominees belonging to a certain political party had, I think, to be submitted to the headquarters of that party in Dublin in the year 1920, and it is only on the political record of the particular nominee or candidate that the candidature was accepted,, and not because of his business capacity to serve on a public board. I do not think it is fair that the Minister should use anything that has come to his knowledge, or the knowledge of his Department, in connection with the functioning of the present councils, and use it as an argument in favour of their abolition.

The proposal is to abolish rural district councils and to transfer their duties, functions, liabilities, and every other thing pertaining to their office to the county councils. Everybody in the Dáil who is conversant with the duties and functions of county councils knows, I think, quite well that th present county councils find it absolutely impossible to carry out the duties that are imposed on them. The average agenda of a county council is made up of about thirty items per month. My experience is, and I had it no later than yesterday, that about ten per cent. of the agenda is gone into , month after month, and the remainder is left to the officials. I think everybody will agree in those days of supposed democracy that that is not a desirable state of affairs, and it is not fair for the Minister to come forward now in a new State and ask the county councils to take on more work than they can do, and which it can be proved to the satisfaction of everybody they would be unable to do.

Rural Districk Councils have many functions to fulfil, and in spite of what the Minister has said to the various deputations that have waited on him, I hold that it is absolutely necessary these rural district councils should be allowed to function as at present. That is absolutely necessary if public health and sanitary matters are to be given the attention that their importance warrants. Because of the comparatively large representation of the various districts it is a fact that the representatives are in direct touch with the needs of the people, and it is necessary now, more than ever, that they should be, because during the Black-and-Tan regime we had the position that the various councils did not recognise the British Government, having been told not to do so, and I am very glad they obeyed the request. I think the most obvious example of what the scrapping of rural district councils will do is before us, when we remember that under the amalgamation of Unions Act the Boards of Guardinas were scrapped, and it is apparent to anybody who has any connection with public health boards, or any connection with boards of guardians, that the poor are not receiving the attention now that they got under the old Board of Guardians system. I am not one of those who advocated the old poor law system. I rather agree with amalgamation of workhouses. I agree with the scrapping of the workhouse system, as we have known it, but I do not agree, and I never did agree, that the Boards of Guardians as such, should have been abolished. As I said, the poor are not receiving the attention that they should receive. The public health board in each county meets once a month, and the representation of each area is not sufficienct to warrant that each individual application would get the attention it deserves.

That is not dealt with in this section. I merely point that out in order to try and convince the Minister that he is going to have the same state of affairs when the district councils are abolished.

I think it was in the year 1898 that the district councils were created. They were created in response to the people's call for better representation. I think at the time it was the popular feeling that the country should have district councils. As I said at the beginning, I do not think it is fair, at this stage, for a young Government to come along and abolish district councils. I think, at least, that the Minister for Local Government should postpone this proposed action until the councils have an opportunity of functioning under normal conditions. I say that because we have not had normal conditions in this country for the past 6 or 7 years. I think the Minister will find, after some time, if this proposal passes, that there will be such a state of chaos in the different counties that he will have to do many things that will not be palatable either to himself or to the country. To my mind, the Minister is making a countribution that will ensure that the county councils will get into such a mess as will justify him in the appointment of Commissioners in every county in the Free State. One whether this is not what the Minister is aiming at. I would ask the Dáil to consider carefully the proposal that is outlined in this section and to vote against what I consider to be a very retrogressive step by the government so far as the working of local bodies is concerned.

I wish to support the amendment, and in doing so I believe I am voicing the opinion of the vast majority of the people whom I represent. The Minister is alleged to have stated that the district councils are costing the Saorstát £85,000 a year. This £85,000 is paid in salaries. The Minister is supposed to be out for economy, and the suggestion is that all this money will be saved to the people of the Saorstát if he succeeds in abolishing the district councils. I venture, however, to doubt whether this amount will in reality be saved. What is to happen a district when the district councils are abolished? Surely the Minister does not expect that the county councils will be able to do all the work that is now done by the district councils. I do not see how it can be done unless the intention is to make the position of county councillor a permanent whole-time job. It will take the county councils their whole time if they are to transact the business that the Minister expects them to do under the Bill.

I agree with Deputy Corish that at the present moment the work of the county councils is too much for them, and in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred the county councils are not able to get through their agenda at the monthly meeting. If you throw on them all the work that is at present done by the district councils what will happen? This work has to deal with the repair and maintenance of roads, the care of pumps, and sanitary work of dispensary districts. I wonder how many members of the county council are going to attend to all this work unless it is the intention of the Minister to see that each councillor is paid a decent salary, for he will have to neglect all his own business and devote his whole time to the administration of the affairs of the county if this Bill goes through.

I submit that district councils are necessary, and if the people of the district are to have a proper say in the administration the district councils must remain. One of the few rights the people have secured is the selection of their own representatives. They can utilise their vote by voting for the men in whom they have confidence, and the men whom they consider fit to discharge local affairs. Does the Minister want to deprive the local people of the right of selecting their own representatives? These representatives are in the majority of cases good business men. I quite admit that since the 1920 election the business of the district councils has not been conducted in a manner that might be ragarded as satisfactory to the district itself or to the Saorstát as a whole. That, however, is because we have been too much wrapt up in politics. When the district councils commenced to function in 1920 after the local elections, their first act was to swear allegiance to the Dáil. That was the order sent down from Dáil Eireann. the district council did not recognise the foreign power. The idea has been bred into the very bones of the members of these district councils that they were not to recognise the British Government. They did everything they could in the way of passing resolutions against the recognition of the British Government. Naturally they got acclimatised to the passing of these resolutions for political purposes, and they continued passing these resolutions. I am sure if in this year an election for the district councils was held, you would find the personnel of the councils immensely improved. I say that the Minister for Local Government is not acting justly or fairly by the people who elect these district councils. The Minister claims that the county councils will be quite capable of transacting all the business that will now fall to them. That is to say, the county board of health, the mental homes, the agricultural and technical committees, and the work of the county council itself will all have to be done by the members of the county councils. If that is to be the case it would take at least five days in every month of the time of each member of the county council, and they would require the remainder of the month to think out the best way in which the work at these meetings should be carried through. No man who is not paid for it could be expected to devote so much time to public matters.

I quite admit that under the Bill the County Councillor will be allowed travelling expenses. I would remind the Dáil of the resolutions against this Bill that are being passed by the various Councils in the Saorstát. I know that every District Council in Westmeath has passed such a resolution and they are rebelling against this Bill. It is my conviction that the Minister for Local Government and the Government themselves will be making themselves unpopular if they insist on the abolition of the District Councils. Up to this, every Bill passed by the Government has resulted in setting a fresh section of the public and the electorate against them. This Bill is going to clinch the nail.

In the coffin?

I do not say that it will be clinching the nail in the coffin, but it is going to clinch the nail as far as the Government is concerned if ever there is an election again. If you are going to abolish the District Councils you will get citizens in every district all over the Saorstát, who demand the right to elect their own representatives, up against you. I would ask the Minister and every Deputy here to agree with the terms of the amendment. The District Councils have functioned well. They have carried out their duties to the best of their abilities. In some places I quite admit that there was too much of the political ideal apparent, but I may tell you that is not so in Longford and in Westmeath. I only speak for those counties. I can speak with authority for the District Councils in Westmeath and whatever I suggest should be done in regard to them should also be done in regard to every other district council in the Saorstát. All the District Councils in my constituency have a great sense of their responsibility in regard to the people who elected them.

In Longford they make good roads.

Yes, they make good roads. I repeat that the district councils there have a great sense of their responsibility. They fully understand the necessities of the people. They understand the requirements of the district in a proper manner, and since 1920 they have, to the best of their ability, represented the people who elected them. I quite admit one district council resigned some time ago as a protest against a certain action on the part of the Government. If I was a member of the council I, too, would have resigned. It is but right for any district council, or a county council or county board of health, to protest against any government action they resent, and to refuse to function because of some Government action of which they disapprove.

This Local Government Bill is going to do great injustice, not alone to the district councils, but to the people in general. It would merely be an injustice to those who desire to have the honour of putting D.C. after their name; it would be also an injustice to the people generally. I am quite convinced that if the Minister succeeds in his efforts to abolish district councils, that is the rock he is going to perish on. I am absolutely convinced, because of the resolutions that have been passed in the country and of the representations that have been made to the Minister, that if the District Councils are abolished the Government party will find it hard to secure at the next election one-quarter the amount of support they got at the last. It might happen that the very people whom you are seeking to prevent being elected on district councils could be elected to this assembly, and they might become Ministers of the Government.

I rise to support Deputy Corish's amendment. I would like to point out that the district councils that were functioning during the last four years were not there altogether to carry out business as it used to be carried out, but they were there as a war necessity. They were called upon to assist the army of the day, and both that army and the old councillors responded to the call. For that reason the way in which they functioned during the last four years should not be taken as a criterion or as a reason why we are going to abolish rural councils altogether. The people of the country in general are in favour of retaining the councils, and I think that is is but democratic that any Government should govern according to the wishes of the majority of the people. As Deputy Corish suggested, I would be inclined to think that the Minister should postpone this Bill and give those bodies a further trial during the next three years, now that we are going to have a fair election. The people should be allowed to choose their administrators for the coming three years.

As Deputy Lyons pointed out, it would be very hard for the people of a district to be looking after county councillors. The county councillor would much rather go to district councillors of their own choice who would know the needs of the district and who would be conversant with the need for, say, a water supply or other sanitary arrangements in the district. The people with local knowledge would be able to avoid the type of person who might otherwise be able to use his purse in a certain direction, and whom the local representative would not tolerate or allow to be tolerated. Any claim for trespass that would be committed over a cottage plot, or any claim in connection with a water supply, would be better known to the local representative than to the man who would be 10, 12 or 15 miles away. The Minister should seriously consider postponing this Bill in order to give a further trial to the present members of those councils who are carrying out local administration. Under the 1898 Act an opportunity was given to the Irish people to show that they were fit to govern themselves. Now, they are told that they are not fit to govern themselves and that the councils are to be abolished. In turn the county councils will be abolished, and by some Divine act you will find this place will have to be abolished. I think it would be much better.

Again I appeal to the Minister to postpone this Bill. Six months ago here one evening the Bill was adjourned; it was rather a sudden adjournment and we are not a bit the worse for it since. I would suggest that instead of abolishing the councils we should amalgamate them and get the clerks of one council to do the work of two or three others. In County Cork, the largest county in Ireland, and the place where they have the best people, we have three or four rural councils with £100,000 of a valuation. Two or three of them would make a nice county, and two of the clerks would be able to do the work. If you bring them all in under the county council you will have a clerk or two for every rural district that will be coming in, and you will have to enlarge the different courthouses because there will be no room for the clerks and the books otherwise. Every move we are now supposed to make is for the purpose of economy. I do not believe this move tends towards economy. I think the Minister and his staff, together with the Cabinet, should consult and draft a scheme of amalgamation or otherwise adjourn this Bill and give a further trial for three years to the existing councils. They should do that rather than bring the guillotine down on the first instalment of self-government that we have got from the British Government.

I desire to support the amendment moved by Deputy Corish. I wonder what case the Ministry proposes to put up for the step now proposed? I think it is a revolutionary measure, this Local Government Bill, in so far as it affects Rural District Councils. As far as I know, the Government has got no mandate from the people to go ahead and take such a far-reaching step as it now proposes to take.

What does he hoep to achieve by abolishing them? What is the real reason for this project to abolish Rural District Councils? What is the real reason for centralising Local Government and putting all the work on the County Council? If the Minister had any experience of County Councils and of the work they have been doing for a number of years, he would realise that at the present time they are not able to cope with the business they have to discharge, without the addition of the work of the Rural District Councils. What actually happens at most County Council meetings is that there are from 16 to 20 or 30 items on the Agenda. Three, four or five hours are taken up by discussing the first three or four items and the rest of the business is rushed through in half-an-hour, in order to give County Councillors an opportunity to catch their trains for home. I submit that is not a satisfactory way of doing business, and it will lead to a lot of confusion if the Minister insists on putting through this section which proposes the abolition of Rural District Councils. Further, there is the point that Deputy Daly alluded to to be considered. You want to have on the Councils men who are in touch with the people. If Rural District Councils are abolished, as Boards of Guardians have been abolished, the whole work of the county will fall on a few members of the County Council. Of course, the Minister will get up and tell us that there are thirty or forty members of a County Council. But we all know that it is very difficult at most County Council meetings to get even a quorum. What will actually happen is that very large districts in each county will have no representative at all. I think the time of the Government and of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health would be much better occupied in trying to provide work for the people of the country, and trying to bring about some kind of stability and security, than in going ahead with this proposal to abolish Rural District Councils. That proposal could be very well left over until there is time to go into the matters calmly and in detail.

I would like to break the continuity of voices that are raised against this section. If one can judge by what we have heard this evening, the Minister must feel rather uneasy. Looking at the Bill in general, I think it aims at a satisfactory reform. When one comes to analyse this contentious subject of the rural district councils, one is struck by the absence of any claim on behalf of those Councils that they have done good work. No Deputy who has spoken so far has put forward that claim. One would imagine that Deputy Daly, in his advocacy of the cause of the Rural Councils, would have pointed to the great work done by these councils in the past.

It is not necessary. Everybody knows the good work.

In that case, I am afraid Deputy Daly was too apologetic when he got up to speak in favour of the amendment. He might have indicated, in a slight way, some of the merits of the rural councils. As I understand it, the essence of the Bill in connection with the reform of Local Government is the forming of the ocunties as separate units. That is an explainable policy. Under the various measures passed in the Dáil, such as the Courts of Justice Act, there is regard to this idea of constituting the counties separate units. To me that appears to be a reasonable reform in administration. One of the arguments used here is that rural councils are more in touch with their particular district than the county councils. It does not seem to be impossible that the work not alone of the rural district councils but the other public work could be so organised on a county basis as to be generally economical and perhaps more efficient. As far as I can see, in the Bill there is nothing to prevent a county which is over-weighted with work, forming committees to deal with any particular localities or any particular subjects. I do think that the time has arrive when the functions of the rural district council would be better merged in those of the central body, formed to discharge the business of the county as a whole. There does not seem to me to be any reasonable justification for continuing these councils. But I say that with great respect to the Deputies who have far more experience regarding this matter than I have. On the other hand, timate knowledge of and their association with these bodies they have become prejudiced. I think they have become conservative in their ideas— notwithstanding that some of them sit on the Labour Benches.

Labour always tries to conserve good things.

Then I might be justified in saying that Labour Deputies might have been stronger in their advocacy of the system in operation as being the right and proper system to continue. I do not think that Deputy Corish or Deputy Morrissey did much more than apologise for the rural councils, because they have not lately been discharging their functions at all.

We have the right to speak twice yet.

I realise that I have, perhaps, done a service to the House when I succeeded in getting this promise from Deputy Corish of a further elaboration of the subject by him and other members of his Party, after they have heard one or two Deputies deal with the other side of the question. I think that a great deal of the importance of this Bill hinges on this section. If this section were deleted, the whole machinery of the Bill would, I think, be thrown out of gear.

I am going to support the Minister in his motion that the section stands. I have no feeling against the rural district councils. They may have done good work in the past. I really do not know very much about the work they have done. I do know, however, that many sanitary matters were left under their control that would be very much better under the control of the county unit. I feel very strongly that the sanitary laws should be co-ordinated under the central unit. there is provision in this Bill whereby county councils can pass on sanitary work to boards of health, and the Minister has made a further wise provision whereby he has given power to the boards of health to appoint local committees to work ad rem. These local committees can be constituted not alone of members of the board of health but of people who are interested insanitation, and who may be co-opted. They will be able to appoint these committees in the various districts, and to include amongst the members men who will be familiar with the particular work which the Minister will require to be carried out.

The Public Health Council appointed in 1920 were strongly infavour of getting this principle carried out, that the county council should be the unit in which the medical services, and particularly the sanitary services, should be co-ordinated, and it is in connection with that co-ordination that I feel strongly and, therefore, I will vote against the amendment I have been told on previous occasions that these district councils were very expensive ornaments throughout the country, and that they have done very little work; if that were true it would lead me to oppose the amendment as it stands. Deputy Corish tole us that they are capable of doing good work. He does not claim that they did very excellent work for some time past and I do not think that any of the speakers have made out a very good case for the District Councils, but at all events I am extremely anxious that this work should be carried on by the country councils.

May I ask whether it is customary for the person making a proposition to change the law to submit reasons why the law should be changed? We have had no reasons submitted to us why there should be any change and surely they onus for that change rests upon the Minister who is proposing it.

May I point out that Deputy Johnson's party put itself in the wrong by proposing an amendment to delete the section. If they were opposing a motion that the section should stand part of the Bill they would have a right to call upon the Minister for his reasons but by putting themselves in the position of attackers they gave the Minister the right to wait upon the defensive until he thinks it wise to speak.

In my view the rural district councils became an anomaly as soon as poor law union amalgamation schemes were carried through. For three or four years I attended meetings of rural district councils and boards of guardians, and my experience was that the board of guardians met every week for something like three or four hours, and carried through their work of the poor law. Once a fortnight the rural district councils met for about half-an-hour. I think that nearly everybody who has had experience of the rural district councils would say that their work occupied a very small amount of time, and was of relatively very minor importance. So long as you had a board of guardians the guardians had to have offices, and a clerk, who was clerk also to the rural district council, so that there was no great reason for abolishing whatever little jurisdiction the rural district council had. But now that the guardians have been abolished, and that a special clerk must be maintained for the rural district council, and that elections have to be carried through for that body at considerable expense, I certainly think it should go. I think it is desireable from the whole point of view of local government to extend the jurisdiction of the county councils. It is difficult in the case of the rural district councils to get your personnel of as good quality as the county councils. In the average county you find difficulty enough in getting a really good county council, and in getting the requisite number of councillors of the proper quality to come forward. Many men who would be desireable county councillors cannot afford time, or for various reasons are of rural district councils the diffiulties are increasing. It is much more difficult to get men of the right stamp to come forward. Even if you cannot get men of the better stamp, it does not tend to business like efficiency to have these men coming together with very little to occupy them.

Before the Minister goes further I would like to set him right. The rural councils held meeting every fortnight for a short time, but they also held a quarterly meeting for the purposes of the roads.

That is not a point of order. Deputy Daly will have another opportunity of speaking after the Minister has finished.

As regards the amount of road work these councils do, a great deal of that comes before the county councils, and there is duplication so far as road work goes. You have these bodies meeting with very little work to do and in public life it is an undesirable thing to have a body passing resolution about everything from the action of the French Government to that of the British Government and to the Saorstát Government instead of attending to the things that they are elected for.

The county councils do not do that?

We are told that they have a great amount of business and they have, therefore, no excuse blame the rural district councils for doing it.

You were often glad to have these resolutions.

Times have altered. There is no case at all for the maintenance of the rural district councils now except that they can create a great deal of clamour. Every person on them is liable to be roped in for the passing of resolutions against this Bill and this particular clause. I have known boards which have been disbanded in another way, and even those who criticised most in advance and wished to Heaven that they were abolished, when the actual abolition came were a little sore about them. Members of district councils who believed that the bodies served very little purpose could be roped in to pass resolutions against this particular section. I think no attention need necessarily be paid to those expressions of opinion. From people not connected with these bodies, I have heard no opposition to their abolition. Any opposition I heard came from members of the rural district council or perhaps from officials of the rural district councils, who did not represent any real body of opinion in the country so far as I could gather. To talk about this being a retrograde step and undemocratic has no foundation at all. The county councils are a democratic as the rural councils; the franchise is the same. There is nothing undemocratic in removing a minor body whose functions can be well transferred elsewhere. The matter of the congestion of the business of the county councils is another question. That is a matter of procedure and system, and the addition of the little bit of work done by the rural district councils will add nothing appreciable to the congestion of the county council business. I say that in dealing with the local bodies the whole question of procedure will have to be very seriously considered.

It was problem here in theDublin Corporation. It is bound to be a problem in any big Corporation, and probably will be in the county councils. It may be desirable that there should be some division of executive and legislative functions so far as these bodies are concerned. I do not propose to suggest at the moment how it can be done, but I do believe that the work could be more efficiently managed if a smaller number of persons were delegated to consider matters and make definite proposals in advance. I am positive, from what I have seen of the working of all sorts of locally elected bodies—and it was my misfortune to attend a great number of them at one time—that it would be very easy to economise time and get the work of the councils much better done by really giving more attention to devising a proper system of transacting business.

The Minister for Finance argues a good deal from the experience he has gained in the work of the administration of rural district councils. The amendment of Deputy Corish would cover the amendments that I have on the same section, and I want to say that I would to put Deputy Sir James Craig's mind at ease so far as my point of view is concerned, by telling him that I would centralise in one body the work of sanitation and public health within the county. I would not be prepared to support Deputy Corish's motion on the understanding that district councils were to continue to exist and to function just as they are at present. With that I would not be in agreement, but Ido believe that the work of district councils might be and could be very easily arranged in such a way as to suit the needs of the district and make administration by rural district councils a success. The abolition of district councils—what will that mean to a county? I cannot agree that Deputy Heawat would be in a good position to judge the effects on a county. Deputy Daly mentioned the County Cork. In a county, whether it be large or small, where all local administration is to be centralised—the public health services, the county home, sanitation, county roads, district roads and many other works, that the county councils will, under the new system, be called upon to perform—it will really mean that very many people will lose all interest in local government, and very naturally.

It will mean that from one district, perhaps forty or fifty miles from the centre, as is the case in some counties, you may have one or two men coming away from that district, representing hundreds and thousands perhaps, of ratepayers, to spend thousands and thousands of pounds. If these men are to do the work of that district and represent the people properly, they will first need to be men certainly of more than average ability and they will have certainly to give more than half their time to the work of local half their time to the work of local administration. I cannot see any counties where you can find such public-spirited men as those, nor can I see any countries where you can have the county councils composed of men of the calibre you will require to do this work. There is no use in arguing that the new County Councils will be composed of men better educated, more intelligent, and with better public sprit than our District Councillors. They will not. You will have but a few of this type on every County Council. You have them to-day, you will have them to-morrow and they will composed of the same type you have got on District Councils— nothing better and nothing worse. If failure in the past because of the type charged with their administration, the County Councils of the future cannot be, by any stretch of imagination, a success, because the same people will have to do the same work. There is no use in saying from that point of view things will be better done. There is the question of economy and it is argued that the abolition of Rural District Councils, the saving on elections, and the saving of the salaries of officials will mean economy. I can see no reason if district councils are to continue in existence why the District Council and County Council elections could not be held on the one day. That would not mean any additional expense.

They are at present.

Then the argument falls to the ground. As regards the question of the saving of the salaries of officials, I do not think even the Minister for Local Government can say that the work which the District Councils have been doing, and even the little they are doing to-day, will not have to be paid. We may, it is true, dispense with the present officials; we may give them pensions. But are we to give them large pensions and create new positions for other men and after a time give them pensions? And mind you, we have done that already by legislation in this Dáil.

The Minister for Finance has told us that from his experience, outside the members of the district councils and some interested officials, there is no great volume of opinion against it. When the sixpenny delivery charge was introduced there was no great volume of public opinion against it, but Deputy Cooper and others, and even the Minister himself, recognise now that there is a volume of opinion against it. Perhaps after a little bit when district councils cease to exist and some of the work they have done in the past, however badly, is no longer done, then we will have public opinion very strongly the other way. Let us take one or two of the services that might be administered, and very well administered, by rural district councils. First, let us take our county councils. They are charged with the administration of the roads. I do not know except what we hear generally, what some county councils do in this respect. My experience of road administration in one or two counties is that our county councils are doing the work rather badly and not at all in a satisfactory manner, and I am afraid that complaint is becoming very general. What is more, they are only making an effort to keep the county roads in repair. The main roads are very badly maintained. The bye-roads and the district roads are receiving absolutely no attention, largely because all the money that could be grabbed is expended on the main roads, and the poorer rural districts get no attention at all. What will we find later on? We have the district councils ar present, it is true, having some control over the administration of district roads, and because of the district rating, they are able to get roads now and again made in the backward rural districts, but which go to the homes of men who are often very large rate-payers and who have not got the advantage of living perhaps near highways and have to go across all sorts of inconveniences, and these men very often never travel on main roads in the county, towards the upkeep of which they are paying. Under the present administration we have the county roads a county charge, and we have a man who is 60 miles away on the top of a mountain paying for the upkeep of roads he has never seen and probably will never see. That is the position to-day, whereas the district roads—which might be of service to them and are really—they get for the rates they pay, are getting no attention at all. Under the new arrangement with the abolition of district councils, can we expect that things will improve? Certainly not. From my point of view, as I see things, there will be no consideration at all as everything will be centralised.

Perhaps there may be some improvement with regard to our main roads. Perhaps, I say. I hope there will. What about the district roads? Special works will be entirely forgotten. Taken the administration of County Home Help, Outdoor Relief, as it was formerly known. Unfortunately it has become a very serious charge on rate-payers in every county, and I am inclined to the view that it has become a serious and heavy charge because there is not that local supervision that there used to be. I think that the time of a rural district council and the salaries that its officials are to be paid would be very well spent in meeting once a fortnight, or even once a month, if only for an hour or two, to supervise that service. In fact, I believe it is absolutely essential, to administer this service properly, that there must be a local committee for every district. There are cases of injustice, and I have known them myself. Some people have not beengiven assistance, though they ought to have got it, and in other cases people have been given county assistance who have no need of it. That is all because there is not that local knowledge and that local wupervision that there should be. Remove your rural district council and you have nobody in existence to do the work. Perhaps it may be suggested that committees are to be established. I do not know. If you are going to establish a committee in a district, you must have an official to that committee who will bring them together to a meeting. You certainly cannot put that on the registrar of a County Home Committee. If you did, it would be necessary that he should take himself away to the district and incur expense. If you have not an official these people cannot meet.

I do agree that there is need for reconsidering the position as regards rural district councils. They should not be permitted to continue as they are at present. I believe their duties ought to be reconsidered, and they ought to be allocated work that will be suitable for them, that they are capabl;e of doing, and that will be better administered by them by any county council, however capable and however representative it may be.

I am wondering, as I was wondering last Thursday night, on the motion of Deputy Nagle, whether there is any use in making representations from these benches. The Minister for Finance asked what good work had the councils done. If he reads the files of the old newspapers from 1898 onwards, he will see that the district councils have been praised for the work they have done since they were set up by the British Government. That is a well-known fact. He twits us also on the way that they have carried out their duties since 1920. It comes very well from the Government Benches to twit councils that have done the work that has set up this Parliament here. Further, the Minister, in speaking about those who are in opposition to the abolition of the councils, said that they were mostly district councillors themselves, and perhaps officials of the district councils. I would like to ask the Minister what body of opinion is behind him, or where was his plot hatched to do away with the representation of the plain people. Where was it hatched, or what mandate has he for it? He has no mandate from the people. This was given to us by the British Government, and I say that it is a retrograde step for any Irish Government to bring in such a proposal without consultation with the people.

If the work of the county councils is to be carried out like the work of the boards of health throughout the country I think it is time to cry halt. Yesterday I was in Naas. There were forty or fifty people, men willing to work, who could not get a penny of home help, or any money from the Unemployment Exchange in Newbridge. It is time for the Minister of Industry and Commerce and for the Minister for Local Government to look to it and see that the people do not turn against everything that stands for civilisation in this country, for that is what it means, and this, I suppose, will be the final step in turning the people against the Government.

I cannot help being impressed by the amount of opposition and the amount of lamentation that has been produced from the Labour Benches, and from some of the Farmers' Benches, by the proposed extinction of an entirely English institution. The rural district councils were introduced by England and modelled on the English plan.

That is rather cheap.

So was the Parliament.

Exactly. But I venture to think that if Brian Boru and Owen Roe could come back to-day they would understand the Irish army, and I am afraid they would understand the Irish taxpayer but they would say: "What in the name of wonder is an Irish Rural District Council?"

And what is a Parliament?

Would they come here?

They would know something of the nature of a Parliament, an assembly of the wisest in the land. They might not entirely recognise it in its present form, but they would know that it was something of that kind. I did not make the point merely as a party point; I made it because the Rural District Council was based on a condition of affairs that existed in the country districts in England fifty or sixty years ago, where you had a comparatively large number of persons of private means who were able and willing to render public service and to give a certain amount of time to it. That condition hardly ever existed in Ireland. It existed to a limited extent in the case of Grand Juries. That was a class from which the members of our Rural District Councils were largely drawn in England at the time the Act of 1898 was passed. These members existed to a limited extent in Ireland. They have now, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. That is why the Rural District Councils have not functioned successfully, because the men who could afford to give their time, who could afford to study matters, have not been forthcoming. It is no discredit to the small farmer to say that he could not give the time to read what was being done in other countries, even in other counties, in regard to public works, and that he could not follow the theories of local government in the same way as Deputy Johnson has done. It is no discredit to them that they were not in a position to do it. Deputy Baxter propounds the theory that because you cannot get enough suitable men, the best thing is to get a large number of unsuitable men; that because you have no really first-class men, therefore you should have a large number of second-class men sitting on Rural District Councils. I do not quite follow that.

I think the Deputy misunderstands me. What I tried to point out is that, if you have not men capable of running a District Council, how do you expect that they would be capable of running a County Council and making it a success?

I am very sorry if I misunderstood Deputy Baxter. If Deputy Johnson when interrupting would either speak a little louder or a little lower—

The Deputy's argument is an argument for a superman in complete power over the country.

That is certainly a possibility. I am coming to that in a minute. I just wanted to deal, inadequately perhaps, with Deputy Baxter's point. Deputy Baxter said that there are certain vested interests. Whatever problem you deal with you always have vested interests. They should be dealt with justly, and even generously, but if you are going to allow the fact that certain people have vested interests, that certain people are employed in certain jobs, you will never get anything done if you lay down the theory that these people must enjoy their jobs to the end of their days. The Minister for Finance has spoken about Article X of the Treaty and how he is hampered by it. If you are going to admit vested interests as a reason for doing nothing, then there is no progress of any kind. Deputy Baxter interested me very much when he laid down the suitable services which a rural district council might perform, because I thought we were then getting to the kernel of the matter. But, in the long run, he only mentioned two. He mentioned roads. I think the general trend of opinion is that roads should be a centralised service, possibly even more centralised than they will be under this Bill. Once you begin, it is frightfully hard to differentiate. You can begin to quarrel as to what is a main road and what is a county road. You will at once create an enormous amount of new problems. The other that he mentioned was a thing I call by the name that is familiar to me, out-door relief. Out-door relief is a thing which, I am afraid, sometimes goes by canvassing, and whether it will be advantageous to give an applicant for out-door relief eighty people or twenty-five people to canvass, instead of two or three county councillors who live in the neighbourhood, I do not think it desirable. I do not think that Deputy Baxter quite made his case there, though perhaps he will amplify it, because I came to this discussion with my mind more or less open; I did not give any pledges in either direction, and I was prepared to listen to the arguments and weigh between them. I think that all the functions that Deputy Baxter intended the rural district councils to perform could be equally well performed by sub-committees of the county councils, but the mistake that is being made by a great many county councils at the present day of putting all their members on every sub-committee, or almost all, and making their sub-committees far too large and far too unwieldy must be avoided. The only result in that case is that the sub-committee meets and debates a thing, and the county council then meets and debates it all over again. That is a mistake that I think exists in many county councils, and if the Minister could discourage them in that I think there would be more efficient administration.

Finally, Deputy Baxter said there would be a lack of interest in local government, as there would be only one body like the county councils to deal with those things. If in County Cavan there are only two men who can come here to attend to the business, and if Deputy Baxter does not get many letters from his constituents, I am bound to say that I find that my constituents take an interest in what could be done here, or what might be done.

Your constituents have more time than Deputy Baxter's.

Very likely that is possible, but I find that my constituents enjoy a knowledge of local government. If people are interested in the state of the roads and in sanitary matters they will take an interest in the county councils. When a man is getting anything done he is interested. I do not believe there will be any real falling off of interest in local government.

Good drafting is, I understand, responsible for placing this very contentious section amongst the first in the Bill. It would be much easier for us, in this debate, if the section came towards the end of the Bill, because the abolition—I prefer to refer to it as amalgamation—of rural district councils is not the cause but rather the effect of the various provisions in the Bill. The result would be, or we hope the result will be, a centralising of the various functions under the county authority, which anyone who gives deep consideration to the matter must realise would be better performed by one central authority than by several who cannot give them the same specialised attention. This Bill is, to a great extent, consequential upon the Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Bill, 1923. That Bill did away with boards of guardians, and centralised their duties in boards of health. To some extent the duties performed by boards of guardians, were centralised in and performed by rural district councils. They had the same personnel as the rural district councils, except that probably the work performed by the guardians was a good deal more important. It certainly took a good deal more time. At present you have this position—that men elected to perform various duties, and officers appointed and paid to carry out these duties, are now only doing about one-fifth of what they were originally appointed to do. The bulk of their duties is concentrated in the central authority, and the result is you have overlapping at every point. That is uneconomic and unsound.

On a point of explanation, would the Minister say what proportion of the clerks' salaries was paid by the Board of Guardians and what proportion was paid by the District Council?

At the moment it is not easy to answer Deputy Corish accurately. I should say that a rough estimate would be about one-fifth.

Would it not be right to say that the great proportion came from the District Councils, showing conclusively that the greater part of the clerks' work was with the Rural District Councils and that the Guardians' business was only a minor part?

That is not true: it is the other way about.

I think it is true.

The principal duties of the Boards of Guardians were in relation to what was called the curative side of public health. These duties have now been transferred to the County Board of Health. The Rural District Councils are carrying on the duties in regard to the preventative side of public health, mainly sanitation, to a great extent initiating policy with regard to roads, carrying out duties with regard to the collection of rent and repairs to labourers' cottages. This Bill will abolish the office of Superintendent Medical Officer of Health in a rural sanitary district and will concentrate the duty in a county medical officer. This officer will be a whole-time medical officer with very high qualifications and with experience in public health matters. He will be in a position to carry out all the public health duties of the county very efficiently and very economically. Once this officer is appointed it will be extremely difficult to differentiate public health duties from those of a curative and preventative kind. The duties of a curative character include such items as dispensary medical treatment, medical attendance, nursing and medical attendance, hospital treatment in county infirmaries or cottage hospitals, sanatoria, fever and mental hospitals. On the preventative side public health includes such matters as sanitation, water supplies, housing, control of infectious diseases, medical inspection of school children, dental inspection, care of expectant and nursing mothers, administration of Dairies and Cowsheds' Order, inspection of food, etc. It will be seen that in practice it would be very difficult to differentiate between these two categories, and it would be ridiculous to expect that a county medical officer could perform or look after one of these sets of functions and various nondescript local authorities looking after the remainder.

Unification of these services is also necessary, because, even if it were a practicable proposition, it would mean greatly increasing expenses. You would have establishment charges both for the central body and for the various local or minor authorities. It is also necessary to enable this and other full-time officers to be appointed throughout the country, thereby increasing efficiency and having the duties performed with much greater economy. If you leave the present system in being you can only carry on the duties of the various public health services by the appointment of numerous half-time officers who will, of course, perform them much less efficiently than men who can give their whole time to the work. That is the reason why at the present time the public health services in this country are maintained at anything but a high standard. We have really no method of co-ordination and no officers who are devoting their whole time to the work. If the health of the people is to be properly looked after, and if food is to be produced in a condition that will enable this country to continue in competition with the food products of other countries it will be necessary to have control of sanitation and health services so that food production will be on a much higher level.

So much for public health. With regard to roads, when he had a Second Reading of this Bill most of the Deputies seemed to be in favour of even going further with regard to centralisation than this Bill goes, and I found the same view seemed to prevail with regard to the General Council of County Councils. So far as popular opinion is concerned, it seems to be unanimous in agreeing that the functions of those bodies can be better performed by a higher authority than the rural district council.

Will the Minister ask the Minister for Finance whether the General Council of County Councils has any view as to the abolition of district councils?

I understand that body has changed its view quite recently. I do not know at the moment how it stands.

The Association of Municipal Authorities had something to say about the abolition of rural councils.

I do not see what they had to do with it seeing that they are municipal authorities. There are about 200 local authorities at the present time concerned with road administration in the country. The bodies charged with the administration of the roads approached the question from the wrong angle, and I might say that Deputy Baxter's statement seemed, to me, to savour of the same weakness. They approached the standard from the petty and local point of view. It was not a question of providing the best kind of road for the community in general. It was a question of providing the best kind of road to the house of the rural district councillor or to some small area of very little national importance. The point has been raised about not having any sanction for introducing this measure. With regard to the Public Health Council of 1920, I might say before they met, a body primarily concerned with the administration of poor relief in the country, recommended the centralisation of those services and also the appointment of a county medical officer. This policy of centralisation has been in the minds of those intimately in touch with local government matters at least since 1909. The question of public health did not come before any Commission especially as such until 1920. The Report of that Commission was altogether in favour of such centralisation.

The following are extracts from the Report:—

Section XXX. — Attention has already been drawn to the absence of co-ordination in the local administration of the Public Health and Medical services of the country, due to the fact that in each county there are several more or less independent authorities charged with public health and medical functions.

Section XXXI.—We accordingly strongly recommend that the local unit of administration for all matters pertaining to health and medical services should be the County or County Borough, as the case may be, and that in each County and County Borough there should be established a board of health which should be the administrative health authority for the area concerned.

Section XXXII.—We also consider it desirable that in each County and County Borough there should be a County Medical Officer of Health.

Section XXXIV.—(a) So far as public health administration in rural areas is concerned, it appears to us that there would be little difficulty involved in, and considerable advantage to be derived from the transfer to County Health Boards of the powers and duties of Rural Sanitary Authorities.

I might say while the struggle against the British Crown Forces was going on, this question of local government came up before the Dáil Commission, and the second memorandum of that Report came out strongly in favour of centralising those services. On the Commission appointed to go into that question you had people of such views as Terence McSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, M. O'Callaghan, Rory O'Connor, Dr. Dick Hayes, the present Postmaster-General, the present Minister for Justice, and various other prominent men of that time.

All representing the cities.

Representing popular opinion. So it is by no means a new matter or a Party matter. With regard to the charge that this is undemocratic. I cannot see any foundation for that. The county councils are elected on the same principle as rural district councils. As a matter of fact, from our point of view, if we were merely trying to centralise our power it would be much better to have local authorities distributed through a lot of small bodies than have them centralised in strong influential bodies like the county council, because in a strong body they would be better able to resist us if we wanted to enforce our will on them.

The present rural district area as it is constituted now is not by any means an ideal area for representing the views of the people of a locality. It is purely a haphazard area, constituted by chance. Rural district councils have developed out of the original unions. They came into being in 1898. When rural district councils were established, if they happened to fall within the same county, they coincided with the union areas, but if they happened to fall between two or three counties then each portion of the union area became a rural district. The result was that you had most extraordinary differences between size, valuation, and area of these various districts. They were never popular with the Irish people. You never found clubs, bands, teams or any associations of that kind belonging to rural districts. They have no historical or social origin. They are purely haphazard, geographical expressions. There has been another point raised about county councils not being able to do all the work given to them. Under this Bill they will really have no extra work. At present the county councils have to deal with the roads, and the rural district councils also have functions with regard to the roads. The rural councils initiate proposals and the county councils have to pay. In a great many cases the county council has to re-submit the proposals of the rural councils for revision. In 1921 a certain rural district council unanimously passed proposals for thirty-nine roads. Thirty-one were rejected by the county council and, I understand, that at least two were nothing more than avenues leading to the houses of rural councillors.

Was not the rejection of these roads due to the Ministry refusing to sanction them?

No, that is not so.

It was in Westmeath anyway.

This is Roscommon.

What is the position of the County Council of Roscommon now?

Is that one of the counties which has no county council?

Is it one of the county councils to which you are handing over the powers of rural district councils and is that council still in existence?

And is it still as corrupt and as unfit to do its work as the rural councils?

I am not making any charges against the Roscommon County Council, but if you have corruption it is better to have one corrupt body rather than twenty. As a matter of fact the abolition of these councils will take a great deal of work off the county councils with regard to roads, and will also take a great deal of work off the shoulders of the county surveyor, who has to attend all meetings of the rural district council where these proposals are brought forward. I understand that in some cases out of three hundred working days the county surveyor has to spend one hundred in listening to proposals at these rural councils. The only result of these two hundred authorities dealing with roads is that Ireland is the most "over-roaded" country in Europe and maintained in the worst manner. The area at present under roads amounts to the size of an average county. There may be some sense in the argument that the county boards of health will have a good deal of work under this Bill. They will have more work than the county councils, because all the public health duties will be concentrated in them, but they have power to appoint committees which will relieve them of much work. We have power under the Bill to create as many boards of health in the county as are considered necessary. The fact that we are appointing a county medical officer in each board of health area will also considerably relieve the elected personnel from work. He should be able to give advice to elected representatives on all matters pertaining to public health and to keep them in touch with several matters about which at present they are not in a position to get information.

Speaking the language of Deputy Hewat and using his identical words, I may say that I feel it necessary to renew continuity and restore communications with my friends. I favour the amendment to delete the section. When you come to such a great question as local government you have to view every principle in the clear light of reason, to sum up the equities, to balance them and to submit everything to very deep criticism. What strikes me in all this thing and what I gave expression to last week was that liberty is not an incorporeal abstraction, and while I admit that democracy does not perhaps represent absolute liberty it is in this country, at least, if not the equivalent, the substitute. What is democracy? Does it not mean the delegation of responsibility? That is the essence of democracy. That, too, is the underlying principle of all local administration.

When you have a district council with its members elected from a small area and responsible to a small electorate you will find, and I believe it cannot be denied, that such councils are far more efficient and the councillors take greater pains to represent the people who elected them than you could have in a large body where the representatives are elected over a more extended area and with a diminished and divided responsibility to the people. I think it was Solomon who said that in a multiplicity of counsellors there is wisdom and safety. I submit that in these instances there is safety for the councillors but not for the people.

The Minister's idea has been more or less to go on with a policy of centralisation. He has taken the county as the unit. Why did he not take the nation? Why did he not take the principle to its logical conclusion? After all, the county is only an arbitrary line drawn. If he were to take the nation he would have carried not alone his logic to its fullest extent, but he would, in addition, perhaps, have shown the more substantial advantages of a centralising policy than by taking this arbitrary line of demarcation, or this piece of territory which it encloses, and which we call a county. He says we must abolish district councils. I am afraid in this matter he gives a somewhat pedantic adhesion to the formula of centralisation. In my opinion, district councils have done very good and useful work, and no case has been made out in the Dáil why they should be extinguished. I am sure every Deputy will agree with me when I say that district councils have been rather a training ground for local administrators, and that deprived of that ground many men without experience in public life would be handicapped if they were sent to a larger body with far more onerous and exacting duties to discharge than in the district councils.

Another point which seems to have been overlooked is that these county councils elected for very large areas can hardly be regarded as representative. I admit the Minister says he is giving twice the number of representatives to them. But, after all, twice the number will really make the county council machine more ineffective, because you will have a greater volume of talk—in fact you will have a body constituting itself as a wee Dáil, and, like the Dáil, with bushels of words but giving a poor return.

The case for the abolition of rural district councils has been based largely on the doings of the last three or four years, but, as Deputy Daly, I think it was, pointed out, that is an abnormal period, and it is not a fair criterion, and it is not right to draw the conclusion that because they were a failure for the past four years they are no longer needed, or that they can fulfil no useful role. I say that they have been a failure for the last four years, and I make no hesitation in saying that if I were to epitomise, to summarise, the careers and write perhaps epitaphs of these councils during the past four years, I would say: "They were born, they lived, they were wretched, and they died; they were more damned in the world they went to than in the world they left." It is because the present bodies are not representative that the demand has been put up for their abolition, but we should separate the general from the particular. The theory of local administration is sound, but the men and the methods are wrong. That is what is at fault, and it is no justification, and represents an obvious confusion of thought on the part of the Minister or his party, to contend that because the system under its present administrators has failed it needs to be extinguished.

I have not given that as a cause for abolition at all.

Mr. HOGAN

It was put up in the Dáil, not quite by the Minister but, if I mistake not, by the Minister for Finance, who said something of the kind. I have a hazy impression that he said they were more or less a failure. So strongly do I feel on this matter, I would say that instead of abolishing the rural councils their jurisdiction should be enlarged. You will have that large body, the county council of the future, really responsible to nobody, or at least whose members will only to an extent share in a large and undefined responsibility to an enlarged electorate. If the proposed county councils are to function with any degree of success, it really represents a whole-time job. It is true that it is no longer an honorary profession. The principle of payment is involved, and it is admitted in the Schedule to the Bill. To allow county councillors travelling expenses and subsistence allowances is desirable, theoretically.

They are not allowed subsistence allowance; they are only allowed travelling expenses at a very low rate.

Mr. HOGAN

I think the point was raised, and it was not answered, that so far the best men have gravitated towards the district councils, and the wastrels and the rakes towards the county councils. Few men can well afford to spare a few hours in the month to attend district council meetings, but how many men will you get to spend a week at a county council? Very few, and the result of this manipulation will be that the most undesirable men in any county will set themselves up for election, and they will gravitate towards any place where money can be had. Even the little sum allowed for travelling expenses will to many, I am afraid, become a lure. That is perhaps taking a very cynical view of human nature, but I defy anyone to deny its correctness. In addition, although the careers of the rural district councils are to be terminated, their duties continue, as the Minister can see by Section 4: "If at any time when any powers, duties, property, or liabilities are transferred to a county council by this Act." That, presumably means that certain powers and duties would be transferred, and that they must still be exercised. The idea has been expressed that it will mean more economical administration. I deny it. The Bill provides for a superannuation scheme. Every clerk of a rural district council can come out under very favourable terms, but the county or the district will be saddled with his pension, though according to Section 4 the powers, duties, etc., must still be carried on. That will mean that you must appoint a new man; in other words, the county or district will be paying two men while getting one man's service.

If Deputy Cooper wanted to make out that people in the country were taking a very large share of interest in the work of the Dáil, I doubt if such a thing can, with any fairness, be applied to a county council. The work there will be largely done in the dark. I do not suppose the Provincial Press can give their columns week after week to reports of proceedings, and lots of things will be done, and perhaps expenditure will be incurred, which the people would not publicly justify and which they would resent. They might be things, perhaps, which they would make the strongest representations against. Again, too, all that would go on in the dark, whereas in the district council the news of the proceedings trickles through faster. It is open to people to make very strong representations and objections to proposed expenditure. In those county councils there is at all times a general idea that the expenditure can be thrown over a very large area of charge, and they have not such a direct responsibility and they need not be so watchful. That is a well-known fact that cannot be disputed. Some Deputy raised the point, and I quite agree, that the county councils will not be able to afford the necessary time to debate all the problems that come before them. What then? The work will be largely delegated to their officials. What does that mean? It means the ascendancy of bureaucracy in this country, a thing which we must be out to prevent. It will certainly mean the ascendancy of bureaucracy. I know that what is said on those Benches will fall on deaf ears. The Minister has a dense phalanx—and I leave him to interpret the word "dense"—behind him, against which reasoned argument and eloquence plead in vain. I feel obliged to say of this proposal to abolish the district councils that it is not a popular demand. No Deputy seeking election to the Dáil last year demanded it, and I challenge the Minister to take a plebiscite at the present time on it. I even ask him to withdraw the party machine and give a free vote to the Dáil on this thing. I deny that this proposal is put forward in the interests of advantages that would result from a change. Rather is it the idea of a prurient mind, seeking innovation and seeking to remodel every form and every department of our public life.

We have heard a lot about the sins of the old district councils. I am going to read an extract to show what these changes are leading to. If any board of guardians, 5, 10 or 20 years ago, had such a report as I am about to read to you, it would create considerable comment. I am only giving this report as an illustration of what the new departure means and what exactly will result from change. I ask the Minister to weigh this well. It is the report of a sworn inquiry into the working of the county hospital at Ennis, one of the hospitals set up under the amalgamation of Unions in 1922:—

"Following the Inquiry, I visited this hospital and was much displeased with the general conditions prevailing. The floors and windows were dirty; the beds were not properly made; the bed linen in many cases was no longer fit to receive patients, and milk was laid in large quantities here and there, and in a manner sufficient to neutralise its purpose. The floors and basins in the operating theatre were dirty. Temperatures and pulses were not in all cases registered, and empty bottles, jars, boxes, etc., were to be found in all directions, adding to the general neglect and confusion. There are seven nurses engaged here, too many, in my opinion, but from this number you would expect much better results."

The rest does not really matter, yet that is the system.

The system that the Minister is trying to abolish.

He will, perhaps, at some further stage indicate the steps he is taking to right this state of affairs. This is an impartial report made by an inspector of the Minister's own Department after a sworn inquiry——

After a sworn inquiry!

Yes, after a sworn inquiry. That is the extract I have read. This is the report. If a hostile critic of the amalgamation of unions had come forward with that, he would be put down as an outrageous liar; but it is symptomatic, I repeat, of the confusion that must inevitably entail upon the transference of powers from local bodies to a more centralised, and not quite so efficient, an authority.

The section we are dealing with does not merely say that on and after a certain day the Rural Council shall cease to exist. It goes beyond that, because it says that the powers and duties of those Rural District Councils shall be conferred on the County Councils. To oppose the section does not mean to imply that we are defending or supporting a continuance, without change of any kind, of the Rural District Councils. We are sensible enough to know that fifteen or twenty years' experience of the working of the Rural District Councils may well lead to the conclusion that some changes in the powers and functions and of the administrative area of these councils might require alteration. But there is a far cry between modification and alteration of the functions and powers of the Rural Councils and saying that they shall cease to exist and and powers shall henceforward be transferred to the County Councils. We have to defend the proposition that the County Council is the body which should administer the affairs of the Rural District Council. Everything that has been said in criticism of the working of the Rural District Councils within the last few years has been said by the Minister and by other Deputies in the Dáil regarding the working of the County Councils, and for the same reason, to a very great degree, that they were elected in great part not for the purpose for which they were originally designed, but elected for one purpose and one purpose only—to smash the Local Government machine as administered by the British authority. They did that efficiently. That does not mean to say that you have a right to denounce the machine which was elected for an entirely different purpose because the new people have not worked it to your entire satisfaction.

I submit that the argument in favour of this section has not been sustained, and the onus of abolishing the rural district councils and transferring their powers to the county councils is upon the people who are proposing that change. We cannot avoid noticing that this particular section is in harmony with the other sections of the Bill and tending to what we have already denounced, the centralisation of local authority nominally in the county councils, but actually in the officials of the county councils. The Minister has based his case upon the desirability of centralising the administration of roads and public health. If that were all to be said, that to centralise the administration of roads and public health services it was essential to transfer all the powers of the rural district councils to the county councils in the way that was proposed here, then the Minister would make a case. But there is no necessity whatsoever for that. What is happening here is that you are removing from the people in the rural area any control over matters affecting their local government. The Minister says that the county council is no less democratic than the rural district council, because it is elected on the same franchise. The Minister has a very narrow and shallow conception of democracy if that is what he puts forward as a defence of the democratic character of this Bill. It was a Frenchman who took a plebiscite, I think, to have himself elected as Emperor. He might call it democracy, but I doubt the applicability of the term. Simply because you have people elected to do certain things, you hand over to them all power, and deprive the people of any continuous interest in their local government. That is the antithesis of democracy, in my opinion. That is the tendency of this Bill, in many of its sections, to remove from the people in their locality a continuing interest in their local services.

There is no provision in this Bill for the appointment of local committees of the county councils. There is a provision in the Bill for the appointment of local committees of public health. But even that provision leaves it optional to the Board of health to appoint local committees. Even then they need not be local committees. They may be sub-committees, local or otherwise. There is nothing in the Bill to ensure that there shall be a local interest in the administration of affairs of any particular territory. I do not know whether Deputy Hewat is interested in the proposition that representation and taxation should go together—that there should be no taxation without representation?

This Bill provides for the continuance of taxation upon an area for local purposes, without any representation of that area, or any control of that expenditure by the locality. You have in Section 13 the possibility that new charges may be imposed upon a district, but you have removed from the local authority any right of control. In some public communication which the Minister supplied to the Press a little while ago, in justification of his proposal, he quoted the case of County Cavan, pointing out that there was wide differentiation in the size and valuation of the Rural District Councils. He quoted the district of Mullaghoran and compared that with the rural district of Cavan. It might be some satisfaction to certain Deputies who are very keen on economy to note that the small area with a valuation of only £10,300 had a rate of 2/7 in the £, while the other district of Cavan, with a valuation of £127,000, had a rate of 5/- in the £. Whatever might be the value of that argument it is that a small area is more economically administered. If the Minister puts that proposition forward on the score of economy—I do not know whether that is his point—the argument is for the small rather than for the large areas. I would very much rather that the case should be made not for economy but for efficiency of administration, which is not the same as economy. I do not think that any case is being made—and certainly very few people have been convinced— that the method of administration and amalgamation of unions, and the like, within recent times, has really led to efficiency. All I can hear is that the contrary is the fact.

I wish Deputy Johnson had that in mind when the Railway Bill was going through.

The Minister for Finance said the only people who were interested in this matter and stood for the defence of the Rural District Councils were the Rural District Councillors and officials of the Rural District Councils. It is something in the recent life of this country to find out that there are any people interested in the measures that are going through the Dáil. We had a certain amount of interest created in one or two measures, but only in one or two, before they were passed. The facts are that the most responsible authorities that have had to do with local government in any way have declared against the proposal in the Bill for the abolition of the Rural District Councils. It is a sound instinct that leads to that opposition, because it is realised that the tendency to bureaucracy exhibited right through this Bill is a tendency which is going to be destructive of interest in local government.

It is not only the rural district councils that are threatened. The urban district councils are also threatened. In Section 61 the Minister takes power to abolish urban district councils, to reduce urban district councils to the category of town commissioners, and to abolish town commissioners and merge towns governed by such commissioners in the county areas. Right through the Bill there is this tendency to remove from the local area power and responsibility for the administration of its local affairs and to centralise such responsibility in the county council. The county council is to have authority which it cannot undertake, unless it sets up officials to administer the work in the area. You are going to have the minor locality getting its back up against the central authority, which is to administer its affairs through an official. You are going to have a conflict right through the country between the area to be administered and the county authority. The veterinary officer, the medical officer, and the county surveyor cannot be in every part of the county at the same time. He will have to trust to somebody in the locality in which he is serving. The tendency will be to create antagonism where there ought to be co-ordination and the proposition in this section to abolish the rural district council is going to intensify any antagonism that at present exists.

took the Chair.

How are you going to get the county council, even through its members or through its officials, to take an interest, say, in the establishment of a rural library? You are transferring all authority on every matter of local concern from the rural council to the county council. You are not setting up a local committee of the county council. You are going to work your local administration through officials. How are you going to have anything like an economy of officials or a reduction in the number of officials? How are you going to get the smaller affairs of any rural area or village considered? I say that you are going to reduce to a point that means utter retrogression the interests that people have in the affairs of their own locality. Instead of devolving responsibility on a locality, you are removing from the people the responsibility for good administration. You are centralising it in the county council and inviting that council to do all its work through an official. I say that is an entirely reactionary proposition.

Instead of abolishing the rural councils the Minister would be well advised, in my view, to revise the areas of jurisdiction, increase the powers within those areas over purely local matters and also to throw greater responsibility on those smaller councils. I believe that there will be, of necessity, some kind of guiding-hand required for many years but to remove powers and responsibility from the local people is retrogressive and, in my opinion, is entirely against the trend of progress which not only deals with things but with people and the responsibility that the people have for administering their affairs. I hope that the House will stand in favour of government by the people in their own locality and that they will accept the amendment to delete the section and impose upon the Minister, by doing that, not the retention of rural district councils in their present form but the obligation to bring in an amendment for the revision of the powers and authority and the areas controlled by the rural district councils.

The alternative is not the maintenance of the rural district councils in their present form; it is to alter the Bill in such a way that it will create a new local authority but that it will be an authority dealing with purely local matters.

I rise on account of Deputy Johnson's reference to my opinion on the question of "No taxation without representation" and its application to this particular subject. It seems to me that the weakness of Deputy Johnson's argument is that rural district councils hardly come within that category. The county council, if my knowledge of the procedure is right, levies the rate which maintains the rural district council in office. I think one of the greatest absurdities and greatest weaknesses in connection with recent and present administration is that you have got bodies authorised to demand rates, which they themselves do not collect. If Deputy Johnson's argument was quite sound, you would have to make those local authorities—the rural district councils—justify their charges, by putting them on the locality that they are administering. What do they do? They make a general charge on an irresponsible basis. In other words, they have not to collect from the people the money they spend. I venture to suggest to Deputy Johnson that that is a very weak spot in the present administration.

Does not each rural district council make its own district charge?

It makes its own estimate and forwards it to the county council, which levies the rate.

That is exactly what I maintain. They send forward a demand for a certain sum and they are perfectly irresponsible to the people they represent for the tax levied.

The argument which Deputy Hewat stood up to stress seems to me to be made without any knowledge of local administration. He says rural district councils demand a rate which they do not collect. True enough, district councils formulate their estimates and send them to the county council for adoption. That is no fault of the rural councils.

Does Deputy Gorey contradict what I said?

I am going to contradict it in this way, that the administration proposed in this Bill will be delegated to committees. We will have the Asylum Committee, which Deputy Hewat has probably heard of, the Board of Health, which Deputy Hewat may have heard of, and several other committees and sub-committees of the county council. They will send up estimates in the same way as the district councils do. It will be merely a demand in the name of another authority, so that Deputy Hewat's arguments do not amount in weight to so much chaff. I quite agree that there is no room whatsoever for district councils in their present form: I agree with Deputy Johnson in that. I admitted that here on the occasion of the Second Reading. They are an anomaly at the moment. But you provide for committees, in this Bill, under the Central Authority. Certain services are to be attended to by committees—and that by nominated committees. The members may be wholly or partially members of the county council. Deputy Cooper urges that greater efficiency would be secured if county councils could go outside their own body and nominate committees. Is it democratic to replace election by nomination? Is that the policy of the Government? If you are going to have those committees, let them be committees elected by the people. Let them be elected and not nominated or semi-nominated. That is a retrograde step. I do not see what virtue Deputy Cooper discovers in nominated committees that elected committees do not possess. If the general body of the electors is not able to elect the right men on its committees, then it is not able to elect the county council itself. The same voters are responsible in each case.

If the argument is good in one case it is good in another, and if it is wrong in one case it is wrong in the other. On the Second Reading of this Bill, and every time that it was brought up since, I made the appeal that Deputy Johnson has made—to try to fit in those councils and elected bodies into the scheme of home help, and into the scheme of local administration. In their present form there is no room for them, but you could give these bodies supervision of some of the services that they have not at the moment. Why not add to their duties the supervising of the administration of home help? Have you proper administration and supervision of them now under the Board of Health? As a nominated member of a board of health, I say you have not. I prefer an elected body any time to a nominated body; and I prefer it from several points of view. There is no need to labour that matter. I do not think any Deputy or public man could stand upon any platform and say he preferred a nominated to an elected body. I can visualise a county authority with a predominating party-vote electing their sub-committees altogether from their own political viewpoint. Take, for instance, the case of a county council of thirty-two members. Seventeen are of one line of political thought, and fifteen are of another. That majority is able to nominate every man they like upon the sub-committees. I am not saying it would be done, but they could do it. That is a line that this legislation does not guard against. It is something that the Minister and the Government ought to think about. I am not, as I said, putting it forward as a probability, but it certainly is a possibility. Now, if the Government cannot agree, and if they will not agree, which I think more accurately represents their mentality, to extend the powers of what is known as district councils, fitting them into the schemes of home help and local administration, there is certainly no case to retain them in their present form. But I maintain there is a case, and a strong case, to extend their powers and to fit in the local bodies, locally elected, to supervise and administer the necessary county services. I say that your proposals in this connection, as Deputy Baxter has suggested, should be reconsidered and recast.

There are cases where a county has seven or eight district councils. Some of them cover large areas, with a valuation of £70,000 or £80,000, and perhaps more. Others are small, because the administration of the local poor law extended over perhaps two or three counties, with the result that two or three district councils came into existence. That is a state of affairs that exists in Carrick-on-Suir, where portion of the poor law district was in Tipperary, portion in Kilkenny, and portion in Waterford. Under the new scheme they became three separate district councils. We say, where it is necessary to do so, do away with that position. We say that a certain number of the councils should be retained in those districts and given power of supervision and authority. The Government has referred to the mentality, and to the honesty, perhaps, of some of the members who composed those councils. The same argument may well apply to the county councils, both in intelligence and in honesty. I think, if I were asked to make a choice between the intelligence and ability of the two bodies, I should naturally expect to find a better standard in the county councils. But that is all. They are largely composed of the same men. Generally, the men who are county councillors are also district councillors in their own districts.

The Minister for Local Government and Public Health made a remark that I think ought to be cleared up. He referred to the fact that the rural councils in many counties were there for the purpose of making roads to their own residences in many cases, and certainly for the purpose of making roads of very little national importance. Am I quoting the Minister correctly?

More or less.

Well, that is a statement, to my mind, that ought not to be made by a responsible Minister. There may be cases—I do not know of any—where rural councillors got roads made to their own houses, but when he talks of roads of very little national importance, I would like to know what he is really talking about. I come from a rural district of a county, and I know the class of roads there. The people are living on the mountains. The Government and the county councils and local councils and central authorities made no apology for collecting rates from those people who live on the mountains as well as those who live on the highways. There is no question of forgiving them any portion of the rates, because they live on the mountains and have no reasonable facilities for reaching their homes. It would be very much better to give those people something like reasonable access to where they live on the mountains, instead of compelling them to use roads over which it is almost a danger to take a horse and cart, not to speak of a motor car.

The Minister tells that these roads are of very little national importance. I have heard that argument in another form from the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. The road-making principle applies also to Post delivery. Is it the policy of the Government that the people should be removed from those inaccessible places on the mountains and brought under the cultured and intellectual influence of some of our budding statesmen?

If that is not their policy, if they want the mountains inhabited and the rural districts inhabited, they must provide for those people what they never had before, namely, some reasonable access to the places where they spend their lives, and out of which they pay their rates. If you think that the rural population does not deserve road or postal facilities or the same amount of State services that their more fortunate fellows enjoy, say so and we will understand you. We are not demanding a twentieth part, or a hundredth part, of the class of road that the people of the more populous and fortunate districts have, but we will demand and we will have some reasonable approach, and we do not want that sneered at by the Minister as being a question of very little national importance. I say that it is of the first national importance, and people have spent their lives in boreens where it is almost impossible to bring a modern vehicle. Some people are more fortunate because, like Ministers and some Deputies, they can afford to live elsewhere; they can afford to come up to Dublin. But I do not think that they ought to sneer at the poor unfortunate people who cannot accommodate themselves like that, and who have to live in the country. I ask the Minister not to force this clause, but to recast it, to continue these District Councils, and change the form; fit them in to deal with local administration, public health, and home help. Deputy Baxter talked about the supervision that existed previously. That supervision has departed, but it has not departed for the good of the people.

ACTING-CHAIRMAN

As a matter of order, Deputy Davin must not read a newspaper in the Dáil.

It has not departed for good; it has departed for an increased rate. That lack of supervision has meant an increased rate, a grossly increased rate. In County Kildare and some other counties where these gross extravagances have taken place people cry out bitterly against the recent abolition of their boards of guardians and about the institution of their boards of health, and they have reason to cry out; their increased rates is the reason. You are going to do away with a body of officials again. You did it in connection with your boards of guardians, but you have had to employ another swarm in place of those you dispensed with. You will find that the officials will not be able to do the work, and that the new duties you put on to the present officials will have to be compensated for. That is the position you will find yourselves in. You will have a duplication of officials and you will have no saving. I appeal to the Minister to reconsider the whole position.

The case for the abolition of rural district councils was made by the Minister for Finance. He was the only Minister who has attempted to defend the abolition of rural district councils from the Ministerial point of view, when he said that the rural district councils invariably dealt with every matter under the sun except with what they were elected to deal with. He told us that they passed resolutions criticising the Government of France and the Government of the Saorstát, and insinuated that many people were anxious that the rural district councils should be preserved as an institution in the country. But he did not tell us that possibly that is the reason that the Government is anxious to abolish them, and that the criticism that comes from them as representative of the expressed wish of the people is the criticism that he wishes to avoid. The abolition of rural district councils and the putting in their place a nominated body, suggest that the County Councils might be more easily amenable to the wishes of the Government, and that therefore from headquarters you could manipulate and mould public opinion through the county councils, which would not criticise either the Government of France or of the Saorstát.

In dealing with the matter of the abolition of rural district councils there has been a good deal of theory. We have had theorists from all the benches who suggested that their abolition was not only necessary but commendable. Has anybody who has any experience of local administration, and encountered the difficulties which face these boards, tried to visualise for himself what would be the state in a county council that would be responsible for having a directing and vetoing power over the action of all its committees? I was unfortunate enough to be a member of a board of health. We started out with high opinions of what wonderful achievements we were going to do, that we were going to bring about the millennium, and all that sort of thing. Did we do it? We found when we met to transact the ordinary business of the board of health that we were supposed to scan and consider carefully all the recommendations that came into us from the different bodies that were under us, that were supposed to report to us and submit their schemes for our consideration, censure or otherwise. We found that we could not possibly, if we were to deal with them all, attempt to go on with the ordinary business of the board of health. What have you? You have the county councils responsible for all their work, and you will be adding another load to their shoulders, to glut their already overfull agendas, and to put them out of court altogether as bodies that would be able to do any practical work for the country. Yet, in abolishing the district councils it has not been suggested that you should not nominate bodies to do their work. Why should you nominate them? Why not elect them? If they are to be representative of the will of the people, why should they be representative only of the county councils? Why should they not be representative of the people whose administration they are charged with? Let us take any county council area. And let us send a county councillor to transact the local affairs of that area in the county council. What does he know about the local needs of every part of that large county area? Does he know the needs of a lighting scheme in some small town in that area? Does he know the needs of a paving scheme, the needs of the paths, the needs of a water supply, or does he know the needs of the poor people in these areas? He would need to be a travelling encyclopædia. It is absurd to suggest he could do it. You suggest abolishing these councils and putting in their place, not a body that would be amenable to the wishes of the people, but a body that would be nominated and only controlled by the county council, and as Deputy Gorey rightly points out, it is quite possible for any body of political thought to secure a majority on these local committees.

It is quite possible to secure that and that will make the administration, administration not for the people, but for a political party. It is true that most of the bodies at present functioning in this country were not elected. It is perfectly true most of the county councillors and district councillors were men selected because they were supposed to have sufficient backbone and strength of character to put out of order the machine that was adopted as an administrative weapon for the control of the country. You put in these men because you expected they would wreck that machine then, and in putting it out of order, and doing it very effectively, they have neglected other matters, but that is not the fault of the men. It is the fault of the struggle they went through, and it was owing to other considerations which they had to attend to that they were unable to look after local administration as closely as they might. If you scrap the rural district councils because of the men you put into these positions you, as a matter of fact, pass a vote of censure upon yourself, because these are the men you selected yourself, and these are the men who made the machine so bad, that you suggest scrapping.

We are reminded that the rural district councils are an English institution and that we should pay little heed to them because of that. Possibly that is so. I wish we would be logical and pay a little heed to all the other English institutions we have copied, and copied very closely. We cannot forget that this Dáil as a matter of fact is modelled on an English pattern. I wonder if the Deputy who spoke of the scrapping of the rural district councils because they are an English institution would suggest that we should change our mode of dress. It is a well-known fact that it was made necessary by the English invader at one time that you should shave your upper lip. I wonder would any Deputies suggest that we should come here dressed in kilts, wearing whiskers, and speaking the Irish language. If we were logical we would, and if the only arguments that can be put forward for the abolition of district councils are that they passed resolutions condemning the action of the Saorstát Government, in certain cases, or because the rural district councils are English institutions, I think both the Government and its supporters have failed to make their case.

I want to ask the Minister one question. Can the Minister tell us the number of thousands of pounds extra cost for local administration, now borne by the present Government as compared with the cost of administration of local authorities formerly for the thirty-two counties? To my mind it costs a great many thousand of pounds more and it is all due to the amalgamation schemes put forward. The Minister for Finance put forward the amalgamation schemes and he converted this country, that was supposed to be a nation of saints and scholars, into a a nation of pensioners. In Co. Westmeath in 1920, the cost of superannuation was £27, but under the amalgamation scheme they have to pay £2,327. The same thing happened in every other county. If the Rural District Councils are abolished it will cost that much more, probably twice that much, to pay superannuation to public officials.

The Minister spoke to-day about appointing a county Medical Officer. A county Medical Officer will have a salary of at least £500. At the present time in County Westmeath there are about eight medical officers and these doctors are only in receipt of about £20 each per year for this work. That is £160 and you are going to give £500 to one man to do the work which eight men did for £20 each. I do not say that is the whole salary of these men because of course they would not be able to live on it.

There is another point which I think is worth noting, that the Minister has not even said one word in favour of section 3 of the Bill. He has not said why District Councils should be abolished. I really think it is only an experiment on the Minister's behalf and on the part of the Government. You may have 5 other men for whom you have not got positions. By abolishing the District Councils you say this Co. Council must be dissolved, and you do it for the purpose of putting somebody else into that position as a commissioner. I do not know whether that will suit the Minister for Finance. At any rate it will not be economy. It will cost you hundreds of thousands of pounds. In the Co. Westmeath there were 9 relieving officers, each receiving anything from £60 to £65 per annum. They have been dismissed and are now getting superannuation up to £62 per annum. The County Home had to appoint two home-help inspectors at £250 each, and in order that these two should carry out their duties properly, the Government sent down an order that another inspector should be appointed at £360. That would make in all £860.

The fresh appointments were £125 each.

You appointed two at £125.

You said two at £250.

That is £750 anyhow, and that cannot be denied. Of course it is amalgamation, and it is an experiment. The same thing would apply to this. You have the clerks of the district councils and you have several engineers. What is to become of them?

Provision is made for the taking over of them by the county council.

The county council will not require the whole lot of them. At present you have a county surveyor. You have three assistant surveyors, and are we to understand that all the engineers were acting for the district councils? Will those be taken over by the county council, or are they entitled to superannuation? If they are not they should be. The Minister for Local Government has so much compassion for the county surveyors that he does not want them to be working too hard going from district council meeting to district council meeting. So he is going to scrap the district councils in order to give the county surveyors a better time. County surveyors are satisfied to attend those meetings. The Minister for Local Government should go to their assistance. I hold if this Bill is passed, it will be passed against the wishes of the people, and we will see in years to come whether it will mean economy or an increase in expenditure. Personally I think it will mean an increase in expenditure. The Minister for Local Government or the Minister for Finance has not explained why we should agree to Section 3 of the Bill. It cannot be denied that the present Local Government administration is costing this country thousands of pounds more than the local administration cost in 1918 under another Government, and the upkeep now is only for 26 and not for 32 counties as compared with 1918. I would like the Minister to say how much is the total cost of the administration of the 26 counties now as compared with the 32 in 1918. The amalgamation system is not a success, and neither will this be, and I sincerely hope the Minister will have this adjourned for a time, say six or twelve months, or get the Minister for Justice to sentence this section to three years' penal servitude.

I also am against this, and I believe the feeling of this House is against the section. I am not in favour of the amendment as it stands, because I think the simple deletion of the section and the retention of the district councils with the small power they have at present would not fulfil any useful purpose. I believe district councils ought to be retained, and I believe the feeling throughout the country is in favour of the retention of those councils. I think the Bill will have to go deeper into the matter, and there will have to be readjustment of the duties of the county councils as at present constituted. If this Bill is passed the amount of work thrown on the county councils would be greater than the county councils can carry carry out. I have been informed from many sources that, as things stand, the work to be done by county councils at their meetings is not dealt with. Two, three, or four important items are dealt with sometimes in a cursory and casual manner, and the rest is left in the hands of permanent officials. That is my experience of public meetings. The members then get tired and perhaps go out for a drink, so that the other business is neglected. It has to be attended to by someone. It is done by officials. I am of opinion that the changes made by the Ministry are largely experimental and dangerous and that serious results may ensue. A county council will be given extraordinary powers. Boards of health have been given extraordinary powers of patronage and appointments. I have seen appointments made by boards of health since they got into power. I think there is grave danger of corruption, and that a comparatively small board might get into the hands of a small clique who will run the county for their own ends. The retention of district councils will not necessarily prevent that entirely, but it will to a certain extent. I believe the Ministry has been swayed by the conditions which existed for the past few years, and the Minister and those associated with him cannot be absolved from blame. The men who manned the county and rural district councils are their nominees. If these men have not done the work as they should have done it, the Ministry cannot be absolved from responsibility. I think another chance could be given for a certain period for the normal working of the present system or some similar system, so that men elected by the free vote of the people and subject to no political pressure, should be appointed. The people will get a chance of putting men into those bodies purely for business and economic purposes to run the councils on an economic basis. Deputy Baxter made certain suggestions, and I would like to support him. I think the county council is not the proper body to deal with home help. I cannot see how the county councils can deal with home help and anyone in the country with a knowledge of local conditions knows that.

The Bill has nothing to do with home help.

ACTING-CHAIRMAN

I think the Bill deals with the abolition of the body which now administers home help, and I think it is in order to argue why they should not be abolished.

That is not so.

ACTING-CHAIRMAN

I am willing to be instructed on this point. Does a rural district council not deal with home help?

No, the county board of health does that.

Has the county council any authority over the board of health? If so, the abolition of the rural district council means the transfer to the county council of functions respecting home help, with which the rural district council had to deal indirectly. The county council having any control whatever over home help brings this section into purview.

The county council nominates the board of health. The Minister for Local Government goes into that matter and he now objects to Deputy Heffernan going into it.

ACTING-CHAIRMAN

I think we cannot go into the question of home help on the motion to delete the section if the district council does not give home help. At the same time, a certain amount of latitude has been allowed, and various Deputies have discussed the matter, including Deputy Baxter and myself. I will, therefore, allow Deputy Heffernan to continue. Subsequently I think we had better keep off the subject of home help.

County councils in this section are given certain new powers. They cannot carry out these new powers as well as administer their present powers. Home help is one of the powers. If you give the county council new powers you are making it more difficult for them to administer home help.

ACTING-CHAIRMAN

I do not think that precise point was argued, and I think it would be out of order.

I believe that home help cannot be adequately carried on under the present system. I believe it should be relegated back to the management of the local body. If home help is to be properly administered I believe that it can only be administered by those who are in close touch with the people and who know the actual conditions. County councils represent large districts and do not know the actual circumstances of the applicants. They will have to depend upon officials appointed to carry on home help. It is not advisable that the administration of home help should get almost entirely into the hands of officials, as it will under the present system.

I also agree that the maintenance of district roads cannot be properly attended to by county councils. Such work would, I think, be more properly done by district councils. As the system stands at present, I contend that there is not adequate work for district councils to do. I believe the feeling throughout the country is that these councils should be retained, that there should be a readjustment of their duties, and that they should be given useful work, so as to prevent the accumulation of business for county councils—work which cannot possibly be done by an honorary body. While I support Deputy Corish's amendment, at the same time I believe that it will not fulfil my intentions. I believe, however, that it will be more useful than the abolition of district councils.

I am not quite certain that Deputy Gorey cleared up certain points that the Minister made in reply to some remarks of mine. I want to inform the Minister that when I was making points about the administration of district roads, I was considering the question of main or trunk roads being administered by, as I think they ought to be, some sort of central authority, and district roads by some sort of district authority. A section of the Bill states that the number of county councillors shall be increased by a number equal to twice the number of rural districts. That means that in a county where there are seven rural districts, if the councillors in these districts are abolished the number of county councillors would be increased by fourteen. Presumably that would mean two extra councillors from each rural district. The section does not say that but it might mean it. On the district councils at present we have, I should say, seven members doing perhaps a little work however trivial in their own district. One man may try to go to a county council to do the work and represent the point of view that seven men represented in a local area. I would like to hear if the Minister holds that one man would be capable of performing that duty. I do not believe that it is possible. I feel that there will be such dissatisfaction with such a system after a short time that the system would have to be altered and the present measure amended. The Minister has made very little effort to make his case. I think he should take into account the point of view expressed by Deputy Gorey and by other Deputies, to reconsider the position. He cannot blind himself to the fact that every Deputy here is as keen as he can be, while giving the Minister credit for doing what he thinks is best for local administration. Still Deputies also are expressing a point of view that they think will best fit in with local requirements as being the most sensible. We cannot help remarking that not one of the Deputies behind the Minister gave their viewpoint on the Bill. If the enthusiasm for the measure is indicated by the support it receives from the Minister's side of the House, then I think the barometer is very low indeed.

You will have it tomorrow.

Shall we wait until to-morrow? If the Minister is not prepared to reconsider his attitude on this section, very well. He may press and succeed in carrying it but I would point out that he may be carrying it not only against the sound feeling of the Dáil—that is his justification for the point of view he holds—but also against the strong feeling of the country that will after a bit because of dissatisfaction express its opinion in a way that will be unmistakable on the Minister's action.

I have been listening to this debate for four hours, trying to find out what was to be said in favour of the contention of some of the Deputies opposite. I must say I am not favourably impressed. Each and every one of the Deputies told us in turns that district councils are at present bodies that served no useful purpose. If they are bodies that serve no useful purpose, as Deputies have told us, why all this talk? I am not one who wants to centralise local government in Dublin or anywhere else. I want the people to have local government in their hands. In all seriousness I ask the Dáil what have district councils to do now. I think I know what they have to do. They have to collect the rents of labourers' cottages and to look after a few roads here and there. Every scrap of work they do must go to the county councils on voluminous forms to be accepted, amended or thrown out.

What have the county councils to do?

They have the whole work to do.

Do they do it?

I cannot speak for Kilkenny but I can for my own county.

Does the Deputy not know that everything the rural district council does has not to go to the county council? It is only matters in connection with roads that go to the county council.

All the work done in connection with the roads has to go to the county council on voluminous forms. Officers of the district councils are also officers of the county councils, and must attend both meetings. That refers to the county surveyor and his assistants. Are not these officers in a dual capacity? They have got to serve both bodies and try to please them. The limited amount of work rural councils have to do cannot, as far as I see, serve any useful purpose any longer. When rural councillors were also acting as poor law guardians they had sufficient work. When that work was taken away all that was left to them to do was to look after an occasional pump, collect rents of labourers' cottages—

Where does the voluminous, correspondence come from?

ACTING-CHAIRMAN

Deputies complain that members on the Government benches did not speak. When they do speak they should be allowed to do so without interruption.

The voluminous reports are prepared by the clerks to the councils, on voluminous forms sent out from the department in Dublin, and they must go to the county council and have the record made there so that the work may be done. It is a duplication of work in my opinion, and is so much waste paper. If it can be shown to me that the rural councils have useful work to perform I would vote for Deputy Corish's proposition, but I do not see that they do any useful work and therefore I will vote against it.

resumed the Chair.

Deputy Hewat mentioned this evening that after all I had said I did not point to a single good work of the district councils for the past twenty years. I was a member of a district council since its inception up to 1920 in Fermoy, and it built 600 labourers' cottages, flagged every village, and also put a water supply into practically every townland. It left nothing undone and if every rural council was as good as ours, the country would be at a great loss by the abolition of such a collection of councils as they were.

Amendment put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 20; Níl, 41.

  • Pádraig F. Baxter.
  • Séan Buitléir.
  • John Daly.
  • Connor Hogan.
  • Séamus Mac Cosgair.
  • Tomás Mac Eoin.
  • Risteárd Mac Fheorais.
  • Pádraig Mac Fhlannchadha.
  • Tomás de Nógla.
  • Tomás O Conaill.
  • Aodh O Cúlacháin.
  • Liam O Dáimhín.
  • Eamon Dubhghaill.
  • Seán O Duinnín.
  • Donchadh O Guaire.
  • Mícheál O hIfearnáin.
  • Seán O Laidhin.
  • Domhnall O Muirgheasa.
  • Tadhg O Murchadha.
  • Pádraig O hOgáin (Clare).

Níl

  • Earnán Altún.
  • Earnán de Blaghd.
  • Séamus Breathnach.
  • Séamus de Burca.
  • John J. Cole.
  • Bryan R. Cooper.
  • Sir James Craig.
  • Máighréad Ní Choileáin Bean Uí Dhrisceoil.
  • Patrick J. Egan.
  • Desmond Fitzgerald.
  • John Good.
  • John Hennigan.
  • William Hewat.
  • Seosamh Mac Bhrighde.
  • Liam T. Mac Cosgair.
  • Patrick McGilligan.
  • Seoirse Mac Niocaill.
  • Liam Mac Sioghaird.
  • Liam Mag Aonghusa.
  • Peadar O hAodha.
  • Mícheál O hAonghusa.
  • Criostóir O Broin.
  • Seán O Bruadair.
  • Risteard O Conaill.
  • Partholán O Conchubhair.
  • Conchubhar O Conghaile.
  • Eoghan O Dochartaigh.
  • Séamus O Dóláin. Eamon O Dúgáin.
  • Aindriú O Láimhín.
  • Séamus O Leadáin.
  • Fionan O Loingsigh.
  • Pádraic O Máille.
  • Risteárd O Maolchatha.
  • Domhnall O Mócháin.
  • Pádraig O hOgáin (An Ghaillimh).
  • Patrick K. Hogan (Luimneach).
  • Seán O Súilleabháin.
  • Caomhghín O hUigín.
  • Seán Priomhdhail.
  • Liam Thrift.
Amendment declared lost.

I move to report Progress.

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