Last night the Minister for Local Government stated that the Government of which I was a member ignored the Constitution with regard to the division of electoral areas. I do not know whether the Minister realised what he was saying. Either the Constitution required that such a change should be made within a fixed time, and we failed to do that, or else we did not ignore the Constitution. If what the Minister stated was true, it would mean that he is not a Minister and that I am. It would mean that the 1932 and 1933 elections were illegal and, as one Government remains in office until another legally takes its place, in that case everything that the present Government has done during the last two years and more would be illegal. It would be a great godsend to the farmers and a great many other people to know that they had a legal claim against any action taken by the Government. Of course, we know that the Minister was not really bothering about truth. He said that any change that was made would be described as gerrymandering. He seemed to think that the use of the word "gerrymandering" was a cliché. It may be a slang word, but that is all that can be said about it. There is one clear way of avoiding the suggestion of gerrymandering, and that is to have the same principle governing the whole Bill in this redistribution of seats.
The Minister says that he likes small constituencies. He knows as well as everybody else that the system of proportional representation that we have is not compatible with small constituencies. He knows that, on the one hand, he has got rid of proportional representation where it suited him and that, on the other hand, he has retained big constituencies where it suited him. There has been no principle whatever governing the matter. The Minister thinks in regard to each case put up that he can invent some excuse. For instance, he says with regard to the change made in the constituency of Carlow-Kilkenny that it goes back to some ancient Gaelic arrangement and that the barony of Idrone was associated with certain other places. On the one hand, he goes back to Gaelic times just when it suits him; another thing he will excuse on the ground of small constituencies: another on the necessity to maintain proportional representation and so on.
The word "gerrymandering" means, as far as I understand it, an attempt so to arrange constituencies that a given Party will receive more representation than is due to it. The Minister stated last night that we had a Bill ready before we went out of office. I do not remember the details of the Bill. When it was pointed out to him that just one minor dishonest thing in their manifesto at the last election was their ardent desire to reduce the Dáil in the interests of economy, and that what they did was not to reduce the Dáil as much as would have been done if they had not been elected, he went off at a tangent and said that we ignored the Constitution. He knows that is untrue because, if it were true, he knows perfectly well that he would have no right to introduce this or any other Bill—that this Bill would not be a legal Bill and that the Government would not be a legal Government.
He says that the Constitution requires that the representation per population must be identical as far as possible. Just note that in regard to this constituency. If the constituency of Carlow-Kilkenny is retained as it is, it will work out, as far as my figures go and the Minister can correct me if I am not right, at one Deputy for 21,093 inhabitants. That means that there is a certain amount of leeway allowing for a diminishing population. It would mean that there would have to be a drop in the population of 5,446 before it would be necessary by law to diminish the representation. With the constituency as it is, it would mean one Deputy for 21,093 inhabitants. With this arrangement, so far as Kilkenny is concerned, it will require 23,663 inhabitants to elect a Deputy; so far as Wicklow is concerned, it will require only 20,498, less than the number in the case of Kilkenny to the amount of more than 3,000; as far as Wexford is concerned, it will require only 20,358; and as far as Carlow-Kildare put together are concerned, 20,663. He has split this constituency so that, on the one hand, Kilkenny will have to have a larger number to elect a Deputy, namely, 23,663, and on the other, Wexford will require only 20,358, more than 3,000 less. If he leaves it as it is, the whole constituency will require 21,093, which will be almost half-way, as you might say, between those two extreme numbers which he uses.
It will be noted that as far as the constituencies which he is anxious—if I may, without upsetting his literary sense, use the word—to gerrymander, the number required to elect a Deputy is brought down to the very minimum. That means that if there is the slightest change in population, in the way of a reduction in numbers, there will have to be at the first opportunity another Bill introduced and another change made in this constituency. He leaves no margin for change of population. He is taking a bit from Carlow and—he can talk about Gaelic times, but geographically it is ridiculous because the two places are separate— and adding it on to Wexford, so that Wexford can retain its five seats. He would like us to believe that he is moved by no Party motives in desiring to retain five seats for Wexford. The population in Wexford diminished between 1911 and 1926 so that, by the Constitution, it was not due to have five seats. It is, therefore, due to have only four and by the figures which I have got and which I do not guarantee, it means that if Wexford County is retained as a county constituency, as at present, it will require 23,962 votes to elect one Deputy. The difference between that and what he proposes with regard to Kilkenny is about 300 and he is taking from Carlow and adding on to Wexford when he should retain Wexford County as a constituency, as it is at present, and give each the representation that is due to it.
What excuse can he give for this elaborate arrangement? That it would be unfair to Wexford to have only four, because Wexford would require in that case 300 more people to elect a Deputy than he proposes in the case of Kilkenny. I do not like to throw the word gerrymander about, because, strictly speaking, I have no feeling on the matter. So far as I am concerned, it seems to me that once a Party has a majority and is going to get a majority elected, it does not matter twopence if they get the whole lot. With regard to Kilkenny, I have satisfied myself that the reason that constituency is made is because it is hoped that Fianna Fáil, or Fianna Fáil and Labour, by having possibly one-half of the support of the people, would be able to get two-thirds of the representation. Personally, I do not think it would be so, but that is only a matter of guesswork and judgment, but if it is so, I, personally, have no objection to an electoral system that would give the Party which is going to get two seats out of three the entire three seats, because the whole point of elections is to create a Government. So far as an Opposition is concerned, my own view is, and has been always, that the real purpose of an Opposition is to be there as an alternative Government if it becomes necessary or if the people desire that the Government be changed.
The idea of an Opposition struggling for one seat here or there seems to me to be more or less purposeless and so far as that is concerned, I have no great feeling about it. I would not mind if the Government introduced a Bill which set out that whatever Party got the maximum number of votes should have the maximum amount of representation. But this tricking about, this pretending to retain proportional representation when it is not there—and, as I have said, I have no feelings whatever about proportional representation except that I dislike the system we have—this pretence that the Minister is moved solely by the most meticulous desire to fulfil the most rigid requirements of the Constitution is dishonest. He breaks up the constituency I represent so that one portion will require 3,000 votes more than the other portion to elect a Deputy and then cuts up County Carlow, arbitrarily adds a portion of it to Wexford, which is geographically very much separated from it, while if he did not do that, if he left the Wexford constituency as it is, it would only require about 300 more inhabitants to elect a Deputy than is the case as he proposes it shall be in Kilkenny.
I should have been quite satisfied to listen to what the Minister had to say if he had one principle governing the whole Bill, but this business of dragging in old Gaelic times and what happened 100 years ago, the largeness of an area and one thing and another in one district when he has quite another argument for another shows that he has no such principle. We can all of us justify anything as long as we can change our grounds of justification and that is what the Minister has been doing in his argument on this Bill all through. He said that we all said that personally we had no fault to find but that was a careful misrepresentation of what was said. A number of Deputies explained that they had not any personal feelings on the matter, so far as they individually and their own personal interests were concerned. My interest in this is, first of all, that I should like to have used any power I have to get the present Government to depart from the system of geographical representation.
The present Government was in a much better position with regard to this Bill than we were. The present Government under this Bill—except in Clare, where they wanted a big constituency, so that President de Valera would have a big poll and so on—in the vast number of constituencies have abolished proportional representation. They could have done that straightforwardly. If we had done it in our time, there would have been an outcry all over the country, that, for purely Party purposes, we were abolishing proportional representation so as to get an unfair advantage in the elections. For myself, I think, that once it is certain that one Party has a majority, I do not mind what advantage they are given, but this Government has a splendid opportunity. The Minister then argued that we, for some devious or some occult reason, had failed to bring in a Bill as was required by the Constitution.
I pointed out a few minutes ago that if that were a fact, if the Minister were saying the truth and not the opposite of the truth, he would know perfectly well that this Government is an illegal Government and that this is an illegal Dáil at the moment, because if the Constitution requires certain things to be fulfilled with regard to elections and if those things are not fulfilled, this Dáil, elected by these elections, is an illegal Dáil and the Minister knows that as well as I do. Just examine that. His Government, as he says himself, was elected and came to power in March, 1932, with a Bill ready drafted and ready to bring into the Dáil. In their manifesto, they had said that they were out to reduce taxation because the country had been so overtaxed before and one of the minor methods which they just threw in was a diminution of the Seanad and another was a reduction of the size of the Dáil. By his own statement, there was a Bill ready by which the numbers of the Dáil were to be reduced.
What did they do? Although he says that it is ignoring the Constitution not to bring in this change of Constituencies Bill at the first possible moment the Government allowed more than two years to pass. He suggested yesterday that the 1932 election was an illegal election, not fulfilling the requirements of the Constitution, due to our inaction, yet his Government allowed a year to go by, and had another election, while they had a Bill ready which really reduced the membership of the Dáil and did not go in for this elaborate gerrymandering. It allowed another year to go by, and ignored the Constitution. As far as we were concerned at least our consciences were clear, because we were satisfied that we were not acting contrary to the Constitution. By his own statement he and his Government had a Bill ready which really reduced the Dáil, which they had dishonestly assured the people they were most anxious to do in order to save the people's pockets.
A year goes by; they hold another illegal election, with the Bill ready. Then more than another year goes by until they had worked out very elaborate mathematics to find an elaborate system of twisting and changing, without reference to any one principle, making one principle apply in one constituency and another in another, just as they thought suited themselves. Then they bring in this Bill under which, to take the constituency we are dealing with, a constituency which is two integral counties that have been together for Parliamentary purposes for twelve years, and which are, geographically, peculiarly related to each other, one having a slight enveloping movement round the other, is divided so that one portion will require 3,000 more people to elect a Deputy than the other portion, part of it being added to Wexford, whereas Wexford could be left alone as an integral county and the difference allowed to elect a member there, and in Kilkenny as he proposes it would only be a matter of 300. Personally I would not say it was blameworthy if the Minister got up and said he believes the Fianna Fáil Party in any election is likely to have a majority; that once they had that majority it is right that they should be given responsibility of Government; that when a Party is given responsibility of Government it should not be in a constant condition of jeopardy, dependent upon the smallest possible majority and liable to be knocked out of office by the mere sickness or absence of an individual member. If the Government got up and said that, personally I could not argue against it. I am quite prepared to believe that the arrangement, particularly with regard to Kilkenny, which is the one I know something about, is likely to work out unfairly to the Fianna Fáil Party. That is only a guess, and I should not like to prophesy with regard to it. It is certainly arranged to give a specially beneficial position to the majority Party. It is certainly arranged to knock out my poor friend Deputy Pattison. At the same time as far as Wexford is concerned, a portion is being taken off Kilkenny and arbitrarily added on to give Wexford a Deputy more than it ought to have, in order to save the Minister for Agriculture for his Party and save the job for him.
As far as Wicklow and Kildare are concerned, what happens? At the present moment I admit that under the situation as created by us in 1922 or 1923 proportional representation did not operate in Wicklow. What we did, we did as well as we could, in that we made constituencies of five and over wherever it was possible. There were individual places where it was awkward to fit that in, and as far as Wicklow was concerned I admit that under our conditions proportional representation did not work. In the last election it worked out that Fianna Fáil and their henchmen, Labour, got two-thirds of the representation in Wicklow. I think the same happens in Kildare. In those two constituencies, with six seats—I speak subject to correction—the Government managed to get four out of six people elected. Nobody is going to get up and say that that number of Deputies was proportionate to the number of votes cast for the different Parties, but here we have this elaborate operation performed on Carlow solely in the interests of a Party which has not the ordinary honesty to get up and admit it. The Minister said that, as far as this was concerned, one thing occupied his mind, and that was to keep Wicklow as an entity. That is a thing which no Government could do. He talked about the people in Hacketstown going into Baltinglass. I am not prepared to contest that, but from my own personal observation of the people of Hacketstown I should say that the town they tend towards is Tullow. That is only from casual observation. When the people in Baltinglass want to get to another part of Wicklow, what do they do? They come right up into Dublin and go down again. If you look at the map you will see a road from Baltinglass to Bray, through Enniskerry, but anybody who knows the district is aware that if you are there with a Ford car, or whatever it may be, and you want to get to Bray, you will not do that road unless you want what might be described as a scenic trip. You come into Dublin first. My colleague, The O'Mahony, lives in Baltinglass. He represents Bray, and the way he goes there is through Dublin. That is what anybody who knows the country does.
Wicklow itself is very much divided. Mountains run right down the centre of it. The whole centre of Wicklow is a range of mountains. East Wicklow is completely separated from West Wicklow. It is inevitable. The Minister said that the one county he wanted to keep as an integral whole in this Bill was Wicklow. The one county in the whole country that he would have been justified in dividing under this Bill would have been Wicklow. Kildare is a flat county. Carlow is a flat county, with a slightly mountainous portion dividing it from the Wicklow-Wexford end. Where the mountains were he has made them join; where the plain was he has made a divide. Instead of using our position when we were a Government to divide up the country in the way that was most calculated to be suitable to us, we really left it to Fianna Fáil. Personally, I was glad to do that, because I thought certain changes would be made that we would have to agree with, but that if we had effected in our time would have caused the usual de Valerian clamour all over the country and the usual Fianna Fáil propaganda that we were abolishing proportional representation or something like that. Before the first election in 1927 I came out plainly and said that I disapproved of the system of proportional representation which we had. Of course, I am always perfectly happy to give material to the propagandists of the opposite side, because I usually want propaganda on that point in order to try to lead up to a certain situation. When this Government came in they could have made changes that they know are desirable, that we know are desirable and that in principle we would have had to agree with, but, if we had made them Fianna Fáil would have made the welkin ring throughout the country by denouncing it as another dishonest Cumann na nGaedheal trick.
As far as this constituency is concerned its treatment is an absolute scandal. There is no doubt about that. If the Government wanted to have more Deputies elected than the number of their supporters warranted there were more honest or less harmful ways of doing it. Carlow could have been left intact if they wanted proportional representation. It would have been no injustice to Wexford if it had to drop to only four seats. I have no doubt about it that if Deputy Corish had been the Deputy who was likely to be wiped out, the Government would not have such strong feelings about it. As far as we can judge from the quota—I do not know what changes may have taken place since—Deputy Corish, even with a four-seat constituency in County Wexford, would have every chance of being elected, but anybody in Wexford who has given any thought to the matter knows perfectly well that the farmers of Wexford, who presumably ought to be represented by the Minister for Agriculture, have but one desire in life, and that is, to get rid of this appallingly incompetent Minister for Agriculture, through whose administration they have lost many thousands of pounds, and not only they but the farmers of the whole country. I strongly object that, because the Minister wants to do something for his friend the Minister for Agriculture, he should come along and outrage County Carlow in utter disregard of every possible argument that could be put up. When he was forced to it, what argument did he bring up? That at some far distant time there had been an old Gaelic Barony of Idrone associated with Wexford. He did not go into the association of baronies in other constituencies when he proposed to divide them. It was only when he was hard driven to find some excuse that he landed on the most patently humbugging excuse that anybody could get hold of. There is no excuse for this proposal that would be likely to carry conviction with any person of ordinary intelligence.
