I am afraid that I shall have to repeat myself to some extent. I regard this Bill as wrong. It is a proposal that the present register, which is limited to rated occupiers, should be extended to give adult franchise. The responsibilities of local government are different from those of the Dáil, because the Dáil legislates, and its legislation affects the lives, safety and conduct of the people of the country. Local bodies assess and collect rates and spend rates. There is another little point of difference. That is that the whole mass of the people elect Deputies, and these Deputies themselves become almost an electoral college for electing the President and Executive Council. The real power is centred in the Executive Council, of which the President is merely the senior member. With regard to these local elections, the people elect a body of men who are to assess, collect and spend the rates, and that body of men is actually to be the executive for that purpose. Everybody who pays rates, whether living in a small room or whether he owns a mansion, has the right to vote. If the father and mother of a family have a son or daughter living with them over 21 years of age, the vote does not extend to the son or daughter. Under this Bill everybody, men and women, over 21 years of age will have a vote. What is the purpose of that?
We must recognise that in the management of local government you do want responsibility, and you want care, so as to ensure that the people who have to provide the money for the rates should get good value for that money which is provided. The best way to secure that is to see that the people who pay the money shall have the power to vote. That right has in no way varied according to the sum they pay. It means that the people voting have merely an interest great or small in the spending of the rates. In modern countries there has been a great development of that thing so dear to Labour parties—social services. In this country there is a tendency towards providing greater social services at the moment. I do not say that there is anything wrong about that. If the Government consider the moral well-being of the people, I cannot see what the purpose of this Bill is except to hand over the power to a very large number—an enormous addition to the register—many of whose interest in the rates is that they are potential beneficiaries. It means that these new voters will not have much consideration as to how great the rate will be. Voting will largely be a scramble to get a share of the money to be collected from the people who have to pay the rates. I say that the attempt to create that spirit is one of the unfortunate results of a mentality where you have everybody hoping to have the machinery of local government used for the purpose of taking money out of other people's pockets and putting it into the pockets of those people who pay no rates.
Whatever may be said about universal suffrage for the Dáil, as far as these local government electors are concerned there is a limit to the power and control of the people they elected. Their power is limited to collecting and paying out the rates. There is really no principle behind this Bill at all. It is a suggestion that the power over the rates shall actually be put into the hands of people who are not themselves going to be affected by the payment of the rates. I know that a whole lot of people think this is quite a splendid thing. On examination anyone will see that there is a large element of inequity in the proposal that another body of people will come along, a body of irresponsible outsiders, and that while others will have to pay the rates, they will have no feeling of responsibility so as to see that the spending of these rates is done economically and that the services will be economically run, and the work well done.
It seems to me that this is a definite retrograde step, and the only purpose is, as everyone knows, to secure that the present Government, who are not satisfied to be the most supremely powerful Government in the world in so far as their control of the country is concerned, should also have power over those intermediate associations like local government bodies. They want to have control in each individual area through the local bodies. It seems to me most extraordinary the Government has come out openly to say that it is necessary for them that they should have their own creatures controlling those bodies, men who when the Government sing will dance, and when the Government cry will appropriately weep. This is the policy pursued. This Government is going to be all-powerful, and the people in this country are to have no power except they belong to certain classes, because everybody knows now that we have in this country a Government who make their appeal to one class, and that the basis of their appeal to that class is that it is most numerous. Now here having done the thing in general, they are really extending it to the particular.