I think Deputy Cooper's amendment is outside the scope of the Bill. I do not think it could be entertained in Committee.
LOCAL ELECTIONS (DISSOLVED AUTHORITIES) BILL, 1926—THIRD STAGE.
The Dáil went into Committee.
Question—"That Section 1 stand part of the Bill"—put and agreed to.
SECTION 2.
(1) Save as hereinafter provided, sub-section (5) of Section 72 of the Local Government Act, 1925 (No. 5 of 1925) shall not apply to any of the local authorities mentioned in the Schedule to this Act (being local authorities dissolved under Section 12 of the Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1923 (No. 9 of 1923)) and in lieu thereof it is hereby enacted in respect of each of the said local authorities mentioned in the said Schedule to this Act that not later than the 31st day of March, 1929, the Minister shall by order cause a new election of members of such local authority to be held and that upon completion of such new election all the property, powers, and duties of such dissolved local authority shall vest in the body so elected, notwithstanding that the same may have been transferred under either of the said Acts hereinbefore mentioned to any other body, persons, or person.
(2) In the event of any of the said local authorities mentioned in the Schedule to this Act being dissolved under the said Section 72 of the Local Government Act, 1925, at any time after a new election of members thereof has been held under this section, the said sub-section (5) of the said Section 72 shall from and after such dissolution apply to the local authority so dissolved as if this Act had not been passed.
Amendment by Deputy Cooper:
To add at the send of sub-section (2) the words "Always provided that nothing contained in this section shall empower the persons, or person, acting on behalf of any of the local authorities mentioned in the Schedule to this Act, to remove any public monument in the areas under their jurisdiction, unless authorised thereto by a resolution of both Houses of the Oireachtas."
I accept your ruling, of course, and I have no intention of discussing the amendment, but I should like to ask the Minister for a general statement as to the position of the Commissioners whose term of office we are extending under this section. It is admitted by everyone that these Commissioners have done very good work. But they appear to be in an entirely irresponsible position. Their salaries are not on the Estimates. There is no body of ratepayers to whom they must render an account. My suggestion is that if the Minister intends to prolong their term of office for another three years—and I am not arguing against that—he should create some machinery, by legislation or otherwise, whereby some opportunity should be given to the Oireachtas or to some other representative assembly to discuss their actions. The public should have some idea, for instance, of the financial position. At present they issue budgets and reports to the Press. But these cannot be discussed anywhere. I do not know if these Commissioners report to the Minister. If they do, would he be willing to lay the Reports on the Table of the Dáil? That would give us some slight knowledge of their actions and control over them. It is a great tribute to the character of the Commissioners and the work they have done that no criticism of their work has yet arisen in the Dáil. One, however, can conceive that in certain circumstances there might be a desire to criticise their actions. If that were so, I do not know what opportunity there would be. I do not know whether those Commissioners are entirely autocratic bodies and controlled by anybody, or whether, in the last resort, the Dáil or Oireachtas would have a right to discuss their action.
This is a question which should have been raised on the Second Reading of the Bill. I think the statement I made on that occasion and the answer I gave to points raised more or less cover the situation. I realise that this is an anomalous position. The position has arisen merely to meet an emergency. There was no intention to keep the Commissioners in their present—what might be described as—irresponsible position, in office longer than necessary. But the difficulty we are faced with is that in order to alter their position in any way we have to resort to legislation, and that takes time. It would be inopportune to rush through legislation, ad hoc legislation with an attempt to remedy, perhaps, an obvious grievance and at the same time perhaps impose other grievances that might prove to be more urgent as time goes on. There is, as Deputy Major Cooper knows, a Commission considering this question of Greater Dublin, and the administration of the city. I understand that the Commission will report very shortly, and it would be very foolish, I believe, on my part, to attempt to forestall what legislation will follow that report. The Commissioners have wide powers. They are in exactly the same position as the Corporation which they substituted. Perhaps the only control I have in the matter is the power I have to suspend them, if necessary, and put somebody else in their places. As I say, it is only an emergency position. It is a question of balancing the good against the evil of the present system.
I think that Deputy Cooper himself has admitted, and everybody who is willing to express a fair opinion on the matter is satisfied that the Commissioners have done extremely good work. Whatever evils may arise of a very slight kind from the fact that they are, to a large extent, an irresponsible body, are very much more than counter-balanced by the extremely efficient and economical way in which they have carried out their duties.
Will the Minister tell us something about the continuity of the responsibility of the Commissioners—if the dissolved Corporation came to certain decisions with regard to its employees and the Commissioners come in and run counter to the previous decisions of the dissolved Corporations—will the Minister tell us what is the position with regard to the continuity of the responsibility of the Commissioners to employees who were in a different position under the old Corporation according to the published statement of their proceedings as supplied to the Local Government Department? It is important the Minister should say something about that.
It is open to the Minister to say that Ennis is not in either Dublin or Cork.
Deputy Hogan is speaking of the Dublin Commissioners.
The general question of authority is one the Minister may answer.
The position is, as I say, exactly the same as if the Corporation had not been dissolved, and the responsibility is exactly the same as if the original body were continued. It would have been open to the original body, if it had never been dissolved, to remedy mistakes they had made, and it would be open to a newly elected body to do the same thing with regard to the actions of its predecessor.
Yes, and to make mistakes.
I take it from the fact that the Commissioners are appointed by the Minister and are, in effect, officials of the Ministry, the actions of the Commissioners with respect to local affairs would be discussable on the Estimates for the Minister's Department?
Oh, no, certainly not. I am relying on the Minister's statement of the law that the Commissioners are in the same position as the local bodies which they replace. The Dáil cannot discuss the affairs of local bodies except in so far as the Dáil can bring home some responsibility to the Minister. The Minister's relation to the local bodies is, I understand, governed by statute. He may sanction or he may withhold his sanction in certain cases. The Minister's activity may be, of course, criticised in the course of the Estimates, or in other ways, but the general doings of local bodies are not open to the criticism of the Dáil. If Commissioners are in the same position as local bodies the same rule would apply to the Commissioners.
I think that some of these Commissioners, if not all, are civil servants. Who in that way are responsible for their conduct to the State?
How are the Dublin Commissioners paid?
They are paid from the city funds.
If they are paid from the city funds their functions could not be discussed under the Estimates.
I am wondering whether the Minister has power to remove them and whether there is any charge growing up against the State as a result of their present employment —superannuation, for instance. Are we to take it this is a complete severance of their Civil Service tenure? If it is not, then when the time comes I would like to submit that their conduct is discussable on the Minister's Vote.
I want also to say that the Minister's assumption that the work of these Commissioners is perfectly satisfactory is a very big one. All that we know is what they publicly make known. We do not know what is happening; nobody knows what is happening except the Commissioners and their servants and it is too generous entirely for the Minister to say that these administrators of public affairs are perfectly satisfactory in their conduct of these affairs when nobody has an opportunity of knowing the unsatisfactory proceedings, if there are any.
There is no publicity except what they make public. You place them in the position of local dictators, autocrats, without any responsibility and with no public light upon their conduct. It is the easiest thing in the world to say that the things they wish to be let known are satisfactory. Of course they will only let be known the things that are satisfactory. If we were to judge every man's conduct by what he thinks of himself, the Minister for Justice will agree that the Law Courts would have very little to do. In the light of the responsible position those Commissioners are placed in, I think Deputy Cooper's request that some opportunity should be given to the public, locally or nationally, to understand what is happening in the general conduct of affairs by those Commissioners, and that they should be brought somehow into the light of public discussion is reasonable, and while, at this stage, it is not possible to discuss the whole system, I think the Minister is too generous in his assertion that those things which have been made known are perfectly satisfactory while hiding from us the rest of their conduct and administration.
I am grateful to you, sir, and Deputy Johnson for dotting the i's and crossing the t's of my argument. If I apprehend the position rightly it is this. We are on the Estimate of the Department of Local Government. We could discuss under that an individual person's action in removing a valuable civil servant from a sphere in which he was doing valuable work for the public, but we could not discuss the administrative action of the Commissioners once they had been appointed. That is all we are entitled to do, and I think we should be entitled to do more. The Minister complained that I had made a Second Reading speech. When you have a Bill before the House with only one operative clause you are bound almost to get a Second Reading speech on that.
The Minister has referred us to the Greater Dublin Commission which is sitting. It sits and sits. It has sat so long and so determinedly that I have no hope any chickens will ever be hatched out of it. He referred to that report in a way which had no connection with his part in correcting this anomalous position. I suggest he should have corrected it in this Bill, but in any case what about Cork? This Bill affects the people of Cork. Is the Greater Dublin Commission going to report that Cork is to be included in Greater Dublin? If so, I can see violent revolt in Cork. Fortunately Cork Deputies are absent to-day or a cry would have gone up.
Mr. HENNESSY
I am satisfied.
I explained that position on the Second Reading statement, and there was no cry from Cork.
The Deputies must have been equally absent then. I suggest to the Minister that he would be wise to find some means within the rules of the House of making it possible for us to discuss the action or inaction of those Commissioners. It is unwholesome for the Commissioners not to be controlled by public opinion. I believe they would welcome some form of control and discussion of what they have done, and while I am not going to oppose the passage of this section, because I believe it is in the public interest that their tenure of office should be prolonged, I urge the Minister to see his way to meet the points we have raised.
I understand the Deputy, who has just spoken, thought fit to attack the Greater Dublin Commission for what, I gather, is its inaction, possibly its negligence and possibly its disregard of public interest.
I merely criticised the delay.
Would I be in order in this connection in explaining why the Greater Dublin Commission appears, to the thoughtless, to have been guilty of delay?
I do not think so, not on this Bill.
Would it not be right that Deputies should not make charges at moments when it is not in order to explain away the accusation?
May I explain to Deputy Magennis, who did not hear either my speech or the speech of the Minister for Local Government, that the Minister gave as his reason for not taking action that the Greater Dublin Commission was not sitting. I said it was, and, possibly with undue flippancy, that it sat so long that I had no hope of any practical result coming from it. I apologise for that statement if I was unjust to the Deputy, but I was led up to it by the statement of the Minister. Otherwise I did not intend to refer to it.
Amendment not moved.
Question—"That Sections 2, 3, the Schedule and the Title stand part of the Bill"—put and agreed to.
The Dáil went out of Committee.
Bill reported without amendment.
Fourth Stage ordered for Tuesday, 11th May.