I move:—
"That the Bill do now pass."
CONSTITUTION (AMENDMENT NO. 7) BILL, 1928—FIFTH STAGE.
Yesterday, I think it was, the President said that we had an opportunity of putting forward alternative schemes and that we had not taken the opportunity of doing so. Now, that is not so. We went into the matter of the Seanad at the Joint Committee that was set up with our position clearly understood—that we were against the Seanad as it was constituted, and that until a much better case than was made out could be made out for the Seanad we were against having a Seanad at all. When we went into that Joint Committee we found that the Terms of Reference precluded the possibility of proceeding along that line; rather it was a question of modifying the present constitution as regards numbers, method of election and so forth. Our view is that if there is to be a Seanad its powers should be purely those of a revising body, a body that would look over legislation when it came to it from the Dáil, would send it back, making such recommendations as the Seanad thought fit, and if the Dáil did not accept the recommendations, that the Dáil's will should prevail and prevail without any undue delay. As regards the numbers which came into the whole scheme, we were of opinion that about thirty-six. which is the size of the Senate in Australia, would be a reasonable size. We made out a case for that. But the position did not recommend itself to the majority of that Joint Committee, half composed, as it was, of persons who were themselves Senators. For the period of years, our final suggestion was that it should be a period of six years, one-third retiring every two years. We proposed that the age be thirty years, and that the electors should be the members of the Dáil. We proposed that the panel should be constituted by the Dáil and Seanad. That proves that what the President said in this case, as he said in another connection yesterday, is not true. There is a great tendency on his part to launch into rash judgments simply or else he wishes deliberately to misrepresent the position of opponents. Now, that is just to meet the point that we have not put up alternative suggestions. We have. In the matter of the Bill leaving the period as long as nine years, we had very definite views and we put forward our case, but just as all our cases have been met on the other side, the Executive Council took up a certain position. They thought that it would be a sign of weakness to make an accommodation with respect to common sense or reason. We simply propose at this stage to vote against the measure.
I just want to say very briefly what our position is with regard to this measure. The principle of the measure was the reduction of the period of office of the Senators, and because we regarded that as the principle we voted for the Second Reading. We would be anxious to have the period shorter than nine years, and because of that we voted for the amendment proposed by Deputy de Valera to have the period reduced to six years, but not having succeeded in getting that, the alternative, as we see it now, if this Bill is defeated, is that we go back to the position where Senators would have a twelve-years' period of office. For that reason we propose to take the alternative of supporting the Bill as it stands, having the period shortened by three years.
The leader of the Opposition has repeated his unfortunate inexactitude as regards figures. As regards the number of Senators in other countries, he has repeated to-day the statement he made previously, that there are 36 Senators in Australia. As a matter of fact there are 234 Senators in Australia.
How many county councillors are there in Ireland?
Or four times as many as there are in this country. There is one Senator to every twenty-five thousand inhabitants there, whereas we have one Senator here to every fifty thousand. I regret to interrupt, but I only do so in case any future historian, reading the debates on this Bill, should come to the conclusion that our legislators are ignorant of the elementary cognisances of the world at large, which are necessary for the proper conduct of legislation.
It is too bad that the Deputy is not a member of the Seanad.
Deputy Esmonde is apparently determined to outshine President Cosgrave in the area of misrepresentation. He has made a very good attempt at it. Will he state whether all the Senators he referred to in Australia are in the one Parliament? Will he state if it is not a fact that Deputy de Valera referred to the Federal Parliament? Will he state if he has counted all the Senators in Ireland, or if he counted only Senators in the Free State? I would like to ask him also when he speaks on any Bill to give a fair representation of the position.
When I mentioned the fact before that there are more Senators in Australia than Deputy de Valera had stated, he asked me how many county councillors there are in Ireland.
I did not ask the President that question.
Yes, the Deputy asked me that question some months ago. When I was referring yesterday to the conduct of the Deputy and his Party in connection with these Constitution amendments, I went back to the Report of the Joint Committee. I will endeavour now to go back a little further, and to remind the Deputy that on the occasion when the motion was proposed for setting up the Joint Committee, the line that he took—and I think he was followed by his very able second in command—was that we did not want any Seanad at all. The Deputy was against it, and he delivered a speech on those lines, saying: "We want to do away with the Seanad." Notwithstanding that, he went into this Joint Committee, and looking over the Report of the Committee, while I accept what the Deputy said, that he was constrained by the circumstances to submit disjointed proposals, and so on, there does not appear to me to have been a considered plan in connection with the whole reorganisation. It is not evident from him, it is not evident either from the manner in which these Bills were received here, and it was not evident in the amendment disposed of yesterday to reduce the term of office from nine to six years. The Minister for Local Government said that if the Deputy's proposed limit were adopted it would mean that we would have three Seanad elections in the space of the lifetime of a single Parliament. It would have meant an election in 1930, the normal election for the outgoing Senators in the three years' period which would take place in 1931, and an election again in 1934, and these little complications the Deputy apparently overlooked when he was framing that amendment, and I am sure his very able second in command would immediately have discovered them had he looked at it carefully. The position in regard to this is as Deputy O'Connell has stated; it is a reduction of the term of office of Senators from twelve to nine years. That is the recommendation of the Joint Committee. As I said yesterday, if it were my Report that whole Report would have been different, but as it is, and as it has been subscribed to generally, I subscribe to it, and I put it to the House that it would be advisable to pass this measure.
You are not at liberty to do otherwise.
Perfectly at liberty.
It is not your plan. Yours would be different.
Question put, and declared carried.