Before addressing myself to this Bill, let me say it was refreshing to have the few exchanges of courtesies that took place between the President and the leader of the Opposition. I hope that such nice exchanges will characterise our debates in the next few weeks. Having said so much, I was rather struck by the fact that this particular Bill has been sandwiched in as a kind of comic interlude between the heavy scenes on the question of the powers of the people. This Bill does not appear to have very much chance of success. It got rather a bad reception all round, first of all from the manner in which it was drafted and secondly in its contents. I find that I cannot compliment the draftsman or those who inspired the Bill. On the question of the drafting of the Bill, my sympathies are entirely with Deputy de Valera and those on his side of the House, because it is extremely hard for a private member not in the Government Party to produce a Bill which, in all respects, will be in keeping with what should be put before the House. We spent a great many days and weeks discussing the power of the people and are still doing it on these Constitution Amendment Bills.
One of the worst measures that ever was introduced to take power from the people was the Local Authorities (Officers and Employees) Bill, 1926. Listening to the debate on this question, it reminded me of something that happened in another House just thirty years ago. There was a measure being discussed at that time in the British House of Commons which had for its purpose the abolition of one of the most corrupt systems of local government that ever was known in this or any other country. I refer to the old Grand Jury system which was undemocratic and corrupt from start to finish. If there was one Act which the British Government gave us that conferred the benefit of democratic control on the people of this country, it was the Local Government Act of 1898.
Listening to the debate on this Bill, if one closed one's eyes, one would think he was back thirty years ago. It is an extraordinary thing, in an assembly of Irishmen, conducting Irish affairs, to hear the libels on the Irish people that were perpetrated in this House, as to the manner in which they dealt with local government—that our public bodies are corrupt from start to finish, and unfitted for the duties of appointing a porter, that they are unfitted to deal with a tender for a bar of soap. That is the condition that we find our country in now after five or six years of self-government. Nothing as bad as these arguments was used thirty years ago by those who wished to frustrate the efforts of the British Parliament when they were giving Ireland a Local Government Act. I have heard people dealing with other measures talk about getting freedom to obtain freedom. The greatest act of freedom to obtain freedom that this country got was the Local Government Act. Were it not for that Local Government Act we would not be sitting here. It gave the people freedom to obtain freedom. But the people in this country to-day are being told that they are unfitted for freedom and unfitted for local administration. When this Local Government Act was first passed it was passed with a two-edged idea. Some people thought that with the granting of local government there would be no such thing as a further effort to secure self-government, and others thought, and thought wrongly, that if local government was given to Ireland the Irish people would make a mess of it in a very short time. What are the facts? Up to 1918 local government in Ireland was an example to the world of purity in public administration. I defy contradiction of that. The administration of local government was pure. What corrupted the purity of local administration? We must face facts, and when anybody brands the people of Ireland as corrupt we must exactly understand what the justification is for such a stigma being put upon them. I say that the people who corrupted the Irish people are in this House—the leader of the Opposition and the President of the State. There have been a few years of local government in this country when corruption did get in. Why did it get in? Because men were elected or selected—they dare not go forward for election. Men were selected to act on local boards not because of their administrative capacity, but because they had none. They were deliberately put in to defy authority because they were unfitted for administration, and it was a very excellent weapon. Let me compliment both the Leader of the Opposition and the President on the manner in which that weapon was used, but I cannot compliment either of them on the aftermath or reaction that was bound to come from using men to defy authority, and on their saying, when they have got into office, that this country is unfitted for local government. It is corrupt because they put in office men who were bound to bring the country to corruption. They brand every person in the nation as corrupt because of that system they themselves inaugurated.
We do not want the Local Authorities (Officers and Employees) Bill in the Free State, nor do we want an amending Bill. What we do want is a Bill that will enable us to trust the people, a Bill that will enable those who are good administrators to come forward. At the moment they will not come forward because of the fear of being branded as corrupt. If Deputy de Valera wished to do justice to the people he would not have brought in an amending Bill. There is not a provision in the Bill which does not presuppose that this country is corrupt from start to finish. He agrees with the Commission, and he agrees that the people are not fit to make appointments. Why are they not fit to make appointments? I heard the most ridiculous arguments in this House as to the corruption of public bodies. Deputy Dr. Hennessy said that a man is corrupt because he voted for a doctor who was after getting his diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons, the National University or Trinity College. If he voted for a man who had been given a diploma to practise as a doctor he was corrupt. He went so far as to suggest that no man is fitted for a position as medical officer in this country who has not done a post-graduate course. In other words, the diplomas which are given by the College of Surgeons, the National University and Trinity College do not fit men for public appointments. To perpetrate a bull, no man should be allowed to graduate unless he has done a post-graduate course. That is about the size of it so far as public appointments are concerned. Deputy Wolfe is one of the awful examples that we have in this House of corruption.