I can give you the names of the three managing directors, three very prominent directors anyway, of three limited companies, three men who are associated in the minds of the people of Cork with those companies. Deputy Good can have any little shade of difference he likes in suggesting that they were elected under their own names and not as directors. They were elected due to the fact that they were known to be what they were functioning as, or that they were in contact with the people with whom they were in contact or because they occupied the position which they did occupy. In exactly the same way, I believe, in the City of Dublin responsible business men will be able to make that contact with the electorate, and will, if they deserve it, have that amount of confidence of the electorate which will enable them, without any of those privileges, to be elected to that council. Remember this Bill and the evils which are going to remain in it, I mean to the extent to which it is not amended, is a Dublin version of the Cork Act. Our actual experience under the Cork Act was that the provision of this special franchise is absolutely unnecessary.
Now the suggestion is that we should provide a franchise which, in addition to those who would be elected of the particular calibre under the ordinary representation, will give them a special representation. The suggestion is that there is some special virtue, some special decency in relation to the administration of public affairs by people of this kind. There is not. It is all nonsense. I am a member of the Cork Harbour Board, which at one time did consist entirely of these very nice people. It has now been corrupted by democracy. Some very ordinary people, even more ordinary than myself, are now members of that body, but there are officials in that body who have had experience of the administration of that body when it was constituted of the two different qualities of human beings. I went to one of these very experienced officials and I asked him what difference he had noticed in the administration of the Board since it had been corrupted by these democratic elements. He said that the difference was that now if it were a job it was a 30/- job, and before, if it were a job, it was a job well worth while.
There is not any special virtue, there is not any special patriotism, there is not any special honesty in any particular class of the community over another, and the suggestion that there is is certainly not based upon any experience which anyone can have in relation to the old Dublin Corporation, and the House knows it. The House knows of land reclaimed in the City of Dublin when very much nicer people had charge of it than the recent Dublin Corporation, and they know the definition of the difference of the administration which was given by that responsible official of the Cork Harbour Board was true, that while under a board corrupted by democracy you may have occasionally little jobs, under the old grand jury system, under the old really first-class, hand-picked people the jobs might not be so many, but they were a lot better worth while.
If it is shown as the result of the experience of an Act out of which this special provision is cut that elements in this State which are entitled to representation, even though they be moneyed elements, do not get representation, due to the cutting out of this provision, then I for one will unhesitatingly say that that is a defect. I will unhesitatingly be in favour of providing machinery which will enable due representation to be given to every element of the population, but on the face of our actual experience of the administration of this Act in Cork without the provision for special facilities, I say there is no necessity whatever on any democratic principle or any principle of fairness to provide special representation for those whom our experience has shown can already get a great deal more representation than they are entitled to, a great deal more representation than our experience has shown they are capable of efficiently and honestly using.