The purpose of amendment No. 1 appears to be to remove the retrospective provisions of the Bill. A decision on that point may be arrived at on amendment No. 1 on the question that the words proposed to be deleted stand. If that is answered in the affirmative the subsequent amendments, Nos. 2 to 6, fall. If, however, Deputies have special points outside that aspect of the case to raise on amendments Nos. 2 and 5 they may do so. The Chair does not see that those two amendments have any other purpose than to remove the retrospective provision of the Bill.
Land Purchase (Guarantee Fund) Bill, 1935—Committee.
(1) In order to remove doubts, it is hereby declared and enacted that—
(a) every deficiency in the Purchase Annuities Fund arising (whether before or after the passing of this Act) by reason of the non-payment of purchase annuities is a charge on the Guarantee Fund and may lawfully be paid and made good out of that fund to the Purchase Annuities Fund at such time or times and in such manner as the Minister for Finance shall, either generally or in respect of any particular case, direct; and
(b) sub-section (4) of Section 6 of the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, as amended or extended by subsequent enactments, and all regulations made under that sub-section (as so amended or extended) for the time being in force apply and have effect in relation to every payment out of the Guarantee Fund to the Purchase Annuities Fund made for the purpose of making good any such deficiency as is mentioned in the next preceding paragraph of this section in like manner and in all respects as the said sub-section (as so amended or extended), and the said regulations apply to a payment made out of the Guarantee Fund to the Purchase Annuities Fund for the purpose of making good any such deficiency as is mentioned in sub-section (1) of the said Section 6.
(2) Such deficiency in the Purchase Annuities Fund as is mentioned in the foregoing sub-section of this section shall be deemed to have arisen whenever (whether before or after the passing of this Act) the amount received by the Irish Land Commission on or before any 31st day of January or 31st day of July in respect of instalments of purchase annuities payable into the Purchase Annuities Fund which accrued due in the half-year ending on such 31st day of January or 31st day of July (as the case may be) falls short of the full amount of all such instalments.
Amendment No. 6 is an amendment to Section 2.
Having the same object, it stands or falls consequentially on amendment No. 1.
I move amendment No. 1:—
In sub-section 1 (a) to delete the words "whether before or" in line 18.
In the first place, retrospective legislation is dangerous and in this case it is more than dangerous. We are endeavouring, while not accepting the principle of the Bill, and while not accepting that either justice or equity can be met by the operation of the Bill, to come as far as we possibly can to the assistance of local authorities who are at present in very sore straits. Particularly is that so because of the moneys which the Government withheld without apparently any legal right to withhold them, as this Bill has proved. The majority of local authorities in framing their estimates last year were confronted with a very serious situation, but they did not dream at the time that the threats of what professed to be a poor man's Government would be carried out to the extent to which they were carried out, and local authorities did not make provision for the serious deficits occurring in their estimates owing to the withholding of grants on the head of the annuities. Firstly, Sir, the best case I think that can be made for this amendment is that generally county councils are not notified in time with regard to the amount of grants withheld from them. This year particularly when the withheld amounts were of such enormous size the position was most unsatisfactory. To tie local authorities definitely down to the losses which must ensue as a result of the operation of this Bill by having it retrospective would be, to my mind, a gross and serious injustice and entirely outside the laws of equity and justice. Further, I maintain that local authorities in this respect have been victimised to a very great extent, not only by the Minister for Finance, who withheld the grants, but by the Minister for Local Government. Ordinarily, local authorities are supposed to budget for the full expenditure. Last year I do not think any county council did. They were relying to a large extent—at least many of them were relying—upon the fact that these grants would not be withheld to the extent threatened; that some effort would be made by the Government to meet the situation.
The position that confronts local authorities if the Bill is to be retrospective is that they have to make good a sum of over £567,000, which at the moment is unprovided for, in addition to the provision which they made last year of £159,000 to meet the withheld grants. It is a very serious state of affairs, more particularly when we look at the situation which confronts local authorities generally even outside this matter altogether. I am sure the Minister and the Government must realise when a situation exists in the country which demands on their part the withholding of £716,000 from local authorities that that situation must be very serious and that the condition of the people who failed to pay their annuities to that extent must be very sad indeed. Coupled with that we have the position of the local authorities in connection with the uncollected arrears of rates. We have enormous sums carried forward last year as uncollectable and enormous sums written off. We have the unpaid annuities, then the withholding of the grants, and we have the unpaid rates—the uncollectable rates, and the written-off, irrecoverable rates.
We have even further figures supplied in reply to a question by Deputy Doyle on 13th June, which show that the arrears of cottage rents have been increasing since 1932. According to the figures supplied by the Minister for Local Government, in 1932, on a particular day, there was outstanding in arrears of rents of labourers' cottages in each county health district a sum of £34,519, or 21.5 per cent. In 1933 that had increased to 27.5 per cent.; in 1934 to 33.5 per cent., and this year it is practically the same. Taking all these figures together, they reveal a very sad state of affairs in the life of the community. Together with all that we have the sum of £716,000 withheld from local authorities last year and, I maintain, withheld entirely outside the law, as this Bill proves. Although there was a threat to withhold the moneys, local authorities generally felt that it really would not be carried out, that the grants would be forthcoming in some other way. The cost of living is going up, and the credit of the people is going down. Taking it all in all, I wonder does the Minister realise the difficulties which confront the people and which confront local authorities at present if they are ever to get out of the rut in which they are? Does the Minister think that by making this contemptible little Bill retrospective, so that he can hold on to his £716,000 which he withheld last year, he will put local authorities on their feet?
It is high time that the Minister and his colleagues took stock of the situation and considered what is happening in the country. Taking into consideration the huge sums which the Minister felt compelled to withhold for the purposes of his Exchequer in order to meet his outgoings, and that he is endeavouring to pass this type of Bill to ensure that in future the grants ordinarily accruing to local authorities will be withheld to the extent of the unpaid annuities in each county, he should at least allow local authorities to get on their feet; he should at least have the decency to say, "I was outside the law last year in what I did; I am admitting that and I will give the local authorities what they were entitled to last year inside the law, and will give them the opportunity to get on their feet in that way." Instead of that we have this Bill put before the House to-day. Not alone is it ensuring the future of the Exchequer so far as the grants to local authorities are concerned, but it wants to ensure that the huge deficiencies in the estimates of all local authorities will be real, and that the financial embarrassment which confronts local authorities will not be an imaginary but a real one.
I am sure that if the Minister considered for a moment the situation he would feel that the local authorities are entitled to some consideration and that a retrospective clause such as this ought not to be inserted in the Bill. The rates last year all over the country were enormously increased. The increase over those of a few years ago was something like £500,000—that is the normal increase. Then there was an enormous increase of arrears carried forward and, in addition, we have £716,000 withheld, which the Minister now endeavours to validate by this Bill. The local authorities will be obliged, if this particular section is passed in its present form, to provide for huge sums for which they have little or no resources at present. It is outside all justice and equity that a Bill of this type should be brought in at all. I have always maintained, and still maintain, that local authorities ought not to be responsible for unpaid annuities, because they have absolutely no control over them. Legislation which not alone makes that secure for the future, but makes it retrospective when local authorities were not prepared for it, and when they are passing through very hard times, is, to my mind, a type of legislation that ought not to be accepted by the House. Consequently, I move the amendment.
We have not heard the purpose of this amendment explained to us.
What does the Minister say?
We have not had the purpose of this amendment explained to us.
Perhaps the Minister would make it as clear as he did in the Irish Times to-day.
That is clear enough.
He has converted the Irish Times anyway.
Let us hear the Minister.
We might have a vote on it.
There are just a couple of things which we ought to make clear at the earliest opportunity on the Committee Stage of this Bill. The Deputy said that the Minister has gone outside the law. I should like to say that I do not admit that we have gone outside the law, but whether we have or not——
Hear, hear.
——we have been carrying out the intentions of the Legislature which passed the Act of 1933. I do not think that can be challenged. It has never been challenged here in relation to the vote for the Land Commission or in relation to the vote for the Minister for Finance in 1933, 1934 or 1935.
It was never put in the Act.
It was never challenged here.
It was not there to be challenged.
It was made clear to the Oireachtas when we were debating the Act of 1933 that we were charging against the Guarantee Fund any deficiency which would arise in the collection of the Land Commission annuities. That was never challenged in the Dáil, and in passing this Bill we are not acting contrary to the intentions which the Oireachtas had when it passed the 1933 Act.
The Deputy has made the point that the local authorities did not budget for the £550,000 in respect of the draws upon the Guarantee Fund. Why did they not budget? Are we responsible if the local authorities did not budget when the Government policy and the policy of the Oireachtas in relation to this matter was stated plainly and unmistakably? Are we responsible that they did not budget? Are we responsible if they choose to disregard those warnings and to adopt some other course? I think there is another reason why the local authorities did not budget to the extent of £556,000 for the Guarantee Fund deficiency. The reason is this: that against that £556,000 for which they did not budget there was advanced to the Guarantee Fund a sum of £550,000, which left the uncovered deficiency then at £6,000. That is why they did not budget. That is why they were not compelled to budget for it. We realised that there was a transition stage. We realised the incitements that were uttered in the country in order to paralyse the local finances, and we advanced out of the expected £550,000 to the Guarantee Fund to allow a corresponding amount to be released to the local authorities. That is why the local authorities did not have to budget.
What is at stake here? A sum of £716,000. We heard in speeches from Deputies that they proposed to oppose this Bill because they did not believe that honest people should be called on to discharge the debts of dishonest people. That is the argument that has been advanced. If we do not get £716,000 from the Guarantee Fund where is it to come from? It is going to come from the general taxpayer, as I pointed out on the Second Reading. It is going to come from men and women who do not own a perch or a rood of land——
Bluff.
The Deputy says "bluff."
Yes.
Well he can only say "bluff" on one assumption—that the Deputy's method of dealing with this question is that we would reduce the grant which is made in relief of rates on agricultural land by £716,000.
Double bluff.
Very well. The Deputy says "double bluff." Then the Deputy is not going to reduce the Agricultural Grant. Will he tell the House where he is to get it? Is he going to get it out of the unemployment assistance?
Treble bluff.
Can I have a reply?
More bluff.
Is he going to get it out of the Widows' and Orphans' Fund?
He will get it out of the £2,000,000 which the Minister was going to save on national expenditure.
Get it out of the bounties.
I would like to hear Deputy Davin say "yes" or "no" as to where the money is to be got. Is the Deputy going to get it next year or the year after from any Government services?
Is the Minister admitting his inability to collect the money? He is responsible for that collection.
I assume from that reply that the Deputy is not going to get the money out of any Government services. Is he going to get it out of increased taxation? When the last Budget was going through the Dáil the Deputy opposed the Government in endeavouring to make provision for social and other essential services by increased taxation. If he is not going to get this £716,000 out of economies, is he going to get it out of increased taxation?
What about the ground rents?
Is that sextuple bluff? While the Deputy is not going to get the money out of economies, and while he is not going to get it out of increased taxation, he says there are other methods, and the other matters are bailiffs and the battering ram.
Yes; they were indicated in the Minister's speech.
We cannot get the money out of taxation, nor out of economies, and the only thing then to do is to employ the bailiff and the battering ram.
How about the guns in Marsh's Yard—the guns of the gentlemen who shoot the farmers?
I wish the Deputy would keep his head in this matter.
I wish the Minister had a head to keep.
Other methods which have not been employed were suggested to collect this money. I have described what the methods of Deputy Davin were. The Deputy, having first of all alleged that we had not recourse to these methods, comes along now and says we are using them. I think the series of answers which the Deputy has given to the queries I put showed the confusion of mind which exists in the Labour Party. But let us consider this matter further. One of the grounds upon which this Bill has been opposed is that Deputies object to making honest men pay for the liabilities of dishonest individuals. I was pointing out that the alternative which has been offered to us by the Opposition is that instead of having a limited number of people belonging to one section of the community becoming responsible for the debts of the persons in that section who have defaulted in their commitments to the State—to make responsible the general body of the taxpayers, including, as I have said, men and women who do not own an acre or rood of land. That is the alternative which is offered to us by the people who say they do not want to compel honest men to pay the debts of dishonest people. But what is going to be the position now? Let us consider how the situation with which we are dealing has arisen. There are some very wealthy areas in this country.
Not now.
There are some wealthy agricultural areas in this country. There is the County of Cork, for example. The total amount of annuities collectible in that county from 1st November, 1933, to 31st June, 1935, was £505,000. The actual amount in arrear on the 31st July in respect of this was £227,000, or 43 per cent. of the total annuities collectible. In County Donegal, the county in which Deputy McMenamin is interested, and in which Deputy Dillon has a passing interest, the total amount of annuities collectible to the 31st June, 1935, was £136,000 and the amount of the arrears was £10,018. The position in regard to these two counties is that whereas Cork failed or refused or conspired in the matter of the payment of 43 per cent. of the annuities collectible, Donegal, a very much poorer county, with very much less opportunity to pay, failed to pay only 8 per cent., and yet Deputy McMenamin's attitude in this House is to make the honest, poverty-stricken people of Donegal discharge the obligations of the very much more prosperous and the wealthier community of County Cork.
What about Limerick, Clare and Kerry?
All in due course. I shall possibly be in a position to analyse the figures in Deputy Davin's constituency.
I shall be glad if you do so; it would help me.
It is obvious the Deputy requires some help in the position in which he has found himself. Now, with regard to Tipperary, in Tipperary South the total amount of annuities collectible for the same period was £202,000 and the amount in arrear on the 31st July was £103,000 or, 51 per cent. of the total collection.
Does the sum of £202,000 cover the two Ridings of Tipperary?
No, Tipperary South.
What are the figures in regard to Tipperary North?
The total amount collectible is £140,000 and the arrears represent £49,000, not very creditable, but somewhat better than Tipperary South. Let me now deal with County Monaghan. I was pointing out that in Tipperary South 51 per cent. of the annuities collectible were in arrear, but in Monaghan, where the total annuities collectible amounted to £114,000, the amount in arrear was only £7,906.
The good old Border!
In Monaghan they were only 7 per cent. in arrears.
That shows you how smuggling pays.
As an Ulsterman I am proud to say that the Ulster counties, which are suffering hardest in the economic war, are setting a headline to the rest of the country in this matter, and they are to be admired.
They are setting a headline for very successful smuggling and we admire them.
The good old Border!
It is quite obvious Deputies opposite do not want the facts to be put before the House.
It looks like it.
In Monaghan, which is not a wealthy county, because they have no beet and they find it difficult, I believe, to grow wheat and they have been very badly hit in relation to their pig-rearing industry, they are, nevertheless, only 7 per cent. in arrears in regard to their land annuities. The proposal made by Deputy Morrissey is that the honest people of County Monaghan are going to be penalised; they have got to discharge not merely their guarantee in relation to the 7 per cent. of their county annuities which are in arrear, but also to take a part, and a very onerous part, of the 51 per cent. and the 43 per cent. of the annuity arrears in South Tipperary and County Cork.
Will the Minister give us the figures in relation to West Cork?
The Minister will tell you a lot before he is finished.
Give us the figures for Belfast.
I assume that Deputy Burke put his question because he thought I should have figures here which would show that West Cork had been discharging its obligations in regard to these annuities. May I assume that?
You may assume it.
I regret I have not the figure which would carry conviction in that regard, but if the Deputy does believe that West Cork has discharged its obligations in regard to these annuities, why should he ask the honest people of West Cork not merely to assume liability for the obligations of their brethren in the less honest portions of the county, but also obligations in regard to counties like South Tipperary and the others to which I have referred? We shall now come to Offaly and Laoighis. One is not quite so bad as the other and neither of them is quite so bad as Cork or South Tipperary, but I regret they are not so good as other parts of the country. In Offaly the total amount of the annuities collectible between 1st November, 1933, and 31st July, 1935, was £134,000, and the arrears in respect of Offaly for the same period amounted to £41,577, or 31 per cent. Now we come to Laoighis, in which Deputy Davin has a very great interest. In Laoighis the total amount collectible was almost the same as in Offaly; it was £136,000. The amount in arrear was only £33,273, so that whereas in Offaly 31 per cent. of the annuities were in arrear, in Laoighis only 25 per cent. was in arrear. That is a nice point for the Deputy.
It is very good when compared with a place like Cork.
Obviously there are 6 per cent. more honest people in Laoighis than there are in Offaly, and the Deputy opposing this Bill because he does not want the honest people to pay for the debts of the dishonest people, is now asking the 6 per cent. more honest people of Laoighis to discharge the debts of the less honest County of Offaly.
Is it in order for the Minister to laugh at his own speech?
He can well afford it.
Apparently the Deputy does not enjoy the flippancy of this speech in the same way that he enjoyed the flippancy of the speech on the Second Reading. There is just one other county I might mention. There is Mayo where the total amount was £204,000. The amount of that in arrears on the 31st July was £22,800, only 11 per cent.
Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney will be interested in that.
1/9 in the £ on the rates is what it means.
The Deputy is interested in that. He is going to ask the Dáil to ask the honest people of Mayo who paid 89 per cent. of the annuities collectible, not only this year, but the total annuities collectible since the 1st November, 1933, to discharge some part of the obligations of the less honest people of Roscommon who, out of a total of annuities collectible of £179,000, have failed to pay £43,600.
Not bad at all.
So that a much poorer county like Mayo, where the people on a total collection of £204,000 are in arrears for only something like £22,000, are not merely to make good their own £22,000, but a considerable part of the £44,000 owed by the people of Roscommon.
Are there no taxpayers who are ratepayers also?
Deputy Brennan is a very forceful person in the councils of his Party, but I did not think he could put it over Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney to that extent.
The Minister does not understand. He cannot make a proper comparison.
I could go down through this whole list——
What about Limerick, Clare and Cavan?
They are not as good as they ought to be, but is that any reason why they should pay for counties which are better than they are?
Give us the figures.
In Limerick the total amount collectible was £278,800; the amount in arrear was £87,000 or 31 per cent. of the total. In Clare the total amount collectible was £176,000 and the arrears amounted to 23 per cent.
Can the Minister give us the figures for Louth?
Yes. In Louth the total amount collectible was £96,800 and the amount in arrear was £15,181. That is to say that Louth, which was only 16 per cent. in arrear in collection on 31st July, 1935, has to make good the deficiencies of Limerick, Kerry, and Clare. I am sure that will bring joy to the heart of Deputy Coburn. I am sure the taxpayers of these counties, which have made honest attempts to discharge their obligations, will realise what a delight it is to not merely have to pay for the deficiencies of their neighbours, but to have also to assume responsibility for people in other counties who are much wealthier than they themselves are——
May I ask the Minister a question? How much was collected by the British Government during that period?
Before I sit down——
Tá bodhar Uí Laoghaire air anois.
——I would like to make clear——
You should not accuse the Irish farmer of being dishonest.
——that the figures I have given show the state of the collection up to the 31st July this year. But there is no reason to anticipate that this £716,000 which, up to the present, has been withheld from the local authorities is going to be permanently withheld from them. It is clear, from the figures I have given, that the arrears in a number of those counties are withheld deliberately and do not arise from an inability on the part of the general body of the annuitants to pay but to an unwillingness to pay.
They paid them over and over again.
Order.
And my reason for saying that is that whereas on the 1st February this year the total amount of the annuities in arrears was £1,185,000, by dealing with this non-payment campaign the amount in arrears has been considerably reduced and I have no doubt that, now that people have been convinced that the annuities have to be paid, all the arrears outstanding will be reduced. And each county council, and particularly that of Cork, where this campaign has been rampant, will find their position speedily improved, and that by the normal operation of the Guarantee Fund we will be able to release, in due time, a considerable part of this £716,000 now impounded. Therefore, I think there has been a great to-do about nothing.
Why the Bill?
Why the Bill? To save those unfortunate ratepayers——
From themselves?
——from engaging in futile and useless litigation. As I said from the beginning, the purpose of this Bill is to make clear what the law is and what the Oireachtas thought the law was when it brought in the 1933 Act—nothing else. I have not any doubt that, if our predecessors were in the same position, they would do the same thing.
In introducing his amendment, the Deputy said that he was opposed to this because it was retrospective legislation. On that question, and as to the need for that, I think I might refer to a speech that was made here on the Copyright (Preservation) Bill, 1929. On the Second Stage of that Bill, the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Mr. McGilligan, said:
"I move the Second Reading of the Bill.... The Act is a short one and is simple. The necessity for it has been brought about by a decision given by the Supreme Court in a case litigated over a year ago, and by virtue of the decision of the Supreme Court which, of course, is recognised as the highest authority on what the state of the law is at any time in this country, it has been discovered that the intention of the legislature, as expressed here, during the course of debate, with regard to the Industrial and Commercial Property (Protection) Act, 1927, has not in fact been carried out."
As a result of the position after the judgment.
The Deputy wants to wait until the court has committed itself before taking action. Mr. McGilligan went on to say that The Performing Rights Society, to which he was referring in his speech, took their case to all the courts in this country before whom they could bring it and that their case had been turned down. He then went on to say:—
"We want to amend the law and to amend it retrospectively."
Not to interpret it.
Will the Deputy dissociate for me the process of making the law from the process of interpreting it and construing it?
I am not here to educate the Minister.
When a Bill is going through here, do we not try, so far as we can, to write into it the interpretation which the Legislature wishes to be put upon it? There is no doubt that the speeches of the acting Minister for Lands, in introducing the Land Bill of 1933, and the decision which the Oireachtas took in relation to amendments to abolish the Guarantee Fund, make it quite clear that it was the intention of the Oireachtas that the Guarantee Fund procedure should apply to the reduced annuities under the 1933 Act. Are we going to wait until people have wasted their money, until judges have wasted their time, until we have a decision which may or may not be in accordance with our interpretation of the law; which may or not be inconsistent with the intention of the Legislature; and if it is inconsistent, are we to follow this regrettable precedent and bring in a Bill to reverse the decision of our own Supreme Court? No. Before people waste their time; before people waste their money, and before the public services are disorganised, we come in here and say that if, as some people allege, the Statute, as it was enacted by the Oireachtas, is ambiguous, we will clear up the ambiguity before the matter goes to the judges. We would have been entitled to do that at any time during the past two years. If Deputies, who now profess that there was a doubt in the matter and that we have not acted in accordance with the intention of the Oireachtas in charging these deficiencies in the purchase annuities against the Guarantee Fund, had raised the matter here in the House at any time during the past two years, as I said already to-day, the position would have been clarified. However, better late than never. It is never too late to mend, and, if there be indeed a doubt on the matter, we are asking the Oireachtas now to make its intention clear.
If I might be permitted to intervene for a moment, I should like to point out that the case mentioned by the Minister has absolutely no bearing whatever on this one now before us.
This is no obiter dictum. It is the truth, and the Parliamentary Secretary knows it is the truth, if he knows anything about the case.
I do.
Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us what he knows?
No, let the Parliamentary Secretary proceed with the obiter dicta.
The particular case mentioned by the Minister is one in which the Oireachtas passed laws in connection with copyright, believing that they were putting the position beyond doubt. The case went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court found that the Oireachtas had not done so. The decision of the Supreme Court was not interfered with in the least iota by that particular Bill. They said that, in so far as a person has gone to the court and got a decision, his case is settled, but for every other case the Oireachtas laid down the law. If the Minister thinks that that is a parallel of the present case, I make him a present of his case.
There is only one other member of this House who could exceed the performance we have just witnessed from the Minister for Finance, and that is his chief lieutenant, the Parliamentary Secretary. I have no doubt that the Deputy will succeed in doing so, although the Minister has set him a fairly hard task, even for Deputy Flinn. This is, perhaps, the most important matter that has come before this House this year, with the exception of the Budget; and the gentleman who is responsible for the finance of this country treats it in the manner in which he has just treated it. We had an exhibition of buffoonery, flippancy, and of dealing with everything except the matter before the House—an absolute refusal to recognise the condition to which he and his Government have reduced the public authorities in this country. If the Minister did one thing, it was this: in the course of his speech, to demonstrate very clearly what effect his so-called economic war has had upon the ratepayers of this country. Why are all the thousands due? The Minister says that there are rich agricultural counties in the Free State. There were! There are very few of them to-day, and if the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary do not know it, there are members sitting there, farmers and members of public authorities, who know it, and know it quite well.
Deputy Corkery knows it.
They know the fight that the local authorities have had to make for the last few years, and they know that there is hardly a county council in the Free State that is to-day in a sound financial position. They know that there are county councils that have been unable to pay their road men. They know that there are county councils that have been compelled to reduce their services to the barest minimum. They know that one of the reasons we have so many extra thousands of unemployed to-day is that county councils and other authorities are not able to give the same employment as they were giving some years ago. The Minister talked about honesty and dishonesty. He blathered in every sentence about the honest farmers of this county and the dishonest farmers of the other county. If there is any dishonesty and demoralisation in this country it is the people on the opposite side who are responsible for it. Perhaps the greatest crime they are guilty of in this country is the fact that they have gone a long way towards demoralising certain sections of the people and have done their damndest to make certain people dishonest. Then we have this sort of tripe trotted out by the Minister. I notice that the Minister laughs at that. Probably he never heard of it. They do not keep that at the other side of the Border. The Minister must have learned something about it, particularly in the days when he was learning how to get up here and treat us to the exhibition we listened to a while ago. Honest and dishonest! Would the Minister give us the other side of the picture? Will he tell us how many millions of pounds have been lost to the farmers of this country? Has he any figures to show what the economic war has cost the farmers of Tipperary, Cork, and the other counties he mentioned? The Minister talked about the annuities and about the £1,185,000 that had been outstanding. He said that they had taken action and that that amount had been reduced. Yes, with the battering ram, the bailiff and the revolver.
They were not used.
That is the kind of action that was taken by the Government until they found that it was not succeeding. Then they resorted to the old system of dealing with them through the State solicitors. They did that when they found that they could not browbeat the people into meeting unjust demands. They found that when the people were treated in a proper way and given time, they did their best to meet their obligations, as they always did. Has the Minister any idea of what the position is? There are Deputies sitting on the other side of the House who are members of county councils, and they will tell the Minister how hard put these county councils have been to meet their demands.
Does the Deputy expect the poor farmers in Mayo, Leitrim and Donegal to pay for the well-to-do farmers in Tipperary, Cork and Limerick? Is he aware that in 1925 or 1926, when there was no economic war, the Roscommon County Council, of which Deputy Brennan was chairman, had to strike a special rate to meet deficits arising out of default in the payment of land annuities?
If the Deputy will listen to me for a moment I will explain the position. The present Government has succeeded in making the farmers pay their annuities twice over.
Ten times over.
Now, the Minister is bringing in a Bill to make the ratepayers pay their rates twice over. Is the Deputy aware that, so far as certain counties are concerned, the passage of this Bill, with the retrospective clause in it, will mean an extra 2/- or 2/6 in the £ on the rates?
Bunkum.
It means nothing of the sort.
Deputy Donnelly says "bunkum." In the case of North Tipperary it will mean an extra 2/1 in the £ on the rates. I wonder would the Deputy tell us what will be the amount of the increase in his constituency? Is there any Fianna Fáil Deputy, who is a member of a county council, who will get up and say that the ratepayers in his county are in a position to-day to meet an increase in the rates? Are we to be told that there are county councils that can afford to meet, not only their ordinary demands, but as well the increased demands that this Bill will mean? A burglar comes in and robs your house. He takes everything in it and beats you because you do not give him more out of nothing. That is the position that we have reached, as far as this Bill is concerned. The Minister, if he were not so brazen, would be heartily ashamed to stand up and defend a Bill like this in the House.
I am quite satisfied, as I have said, that an attempt will be made to excel this piece of tomfoolery. The Minister talked about the intentions of the legislature. It is not the intentions of an Act that count once it has been passed by the Oireachtas, but rather what is in the Act and the interpretation put upon it by the judges. In future, is the position to be that we are to change the law every time a case is brought before the courts? The Minister has told us that the Act of 1933 is all right: that it is watertight, and that he is safeguarded. The Minister has stated that it expresses the intentions of the Government, and of Government policy, plainly and unmistakably. If so, why this Bill? I would like to have the real facts at issue here met, not by the Minister or by Deputy Hugo Flinn, but by some person who has practical knowledge of the country and of the people, of the work of the county councils and the difficulties they are faced with in getting in the rates. I have not the slightest doubt that Deputy Hugo Flinn would be able to get up and make as good a case against the Bill as for it. In fact, I think he would be able to make a better case against it. I grant that the Deputy has that kind of facility. I do not want to follow the Minister's example of wasting the time of the House in this discussion. The Minister succeeded in wasting about threequarters of an hour.
He was interrupted a lot.
Only for that he would not be able to say anything at all about the Bill. I think that any little knowledge he has of the Bill was given to him by way of interruption. Were it not for those interruptions the Minister's speech would have been about as clear as his letter to the Irish Times to-day. I confess that letter was not very clear to me. It was not any more clear than the Minister's speech. So far as I could understand the Minister's speech, it was an attempt to suggest that the reason why this Bill had to be introduced was: (1) because of the dishonesty of the ratepayers of this country, and (2) because of the campaign against the payment of rates. Of course, it was necessary to resurrect that again as one of the reasons for introducing this Bill. Are we to take it that Fine Gael, which is supposed to be at the back of this alleged campaign, is so strong in every county of the Free State that their supporters are able to paralyse the collection of the rates?
It has been suggested in the course of the debate that there are Fianna Fáil supporters in the country who have paid their rates or annuities. I think that on one occasion I was able to give a certain amount of information on that. I refer to the time when the Department of Local Government issued a circular to local authorities suggesting that the names of members of councils who had not paid their rates should be published. The names were published in one particular county in which I am interested. There were five members of the council there who had not paid their rates, and it turned out that they were five strong, loud-voiced supporters of the Party opposite.
I would suggest to the Deputy who has sat down that the introduction into Parliamentary debate of the word "buffoonery" is inadvisable.
I said that the Minister gave an exhibition of buffoonery, and if the Chair thinks that is an unparliamentary expression, I certainly withdraw it.
If that is the case, I would like to remind the Minister for Finance that he used that expression towards me some considerable time ago.
When?
It does not matter now, but it is on the records of the House as being a Parliamentary word. The Minister referred to certain action on my part as "buffoonery." I think he said it twice, but it does not matter. It slipped off me.
I have no recollection of it. If I had, I would withdraw it.
If the Minister did not say anything worse than that, it would be all right.
I rise to support the amendment. The Minister, in the course of his speech, quoted a lot of figures which, in my opinion, hardly have any bearing on the matter before the House, when one considers that the farmers, whether rich or poor, in Donegal and Mayo, have not only paid the amount claimed from them, but also the amount that the British Government collected from them. What has happened is that they have paid their land annuities at least twice over. Coming as I do from a county for which figures were not given, I am aware that in Longford this Bill if it is passed will increase the rates next year by 3/6 in the £. If a rate is not struck to meet that amount it means that there will be a deficit. I am assuming that the amount for which the rates were struck this year will be paid. A rate for £5,000 was struck, leaving a debit of £10,000, and, adding approximately a similar amount next year, the total will be equivalent to a rate of 3/4 in the £. That will be the result in a county of small farmers, where they have always done their best and made every effort to meet their liabilities. I think that would be an outrage.
The Minister says that the Legislature has a right to interpret the law and to say what was the intention of the Oireachtas. I admit that would be right, provided it carried out that principle, but we find that if there is an increased imposition and that it will be a hardship upon the citizens, the Legislature will take no steps to remove that hardship. On the other hand, if it is found that the Legislature, by passing an Act, gives some advantage to the citizens or to the community, in steps the Government to take it away. It is only what benefits the community is to be amended. In that way the principle is not carried to a logical conclusion. Seeing that it has been the custom to leave what is a hardship upon the citizens, even where that was not the intention of the Legislature, if citizens get some advantage it should be left to them. The Minister stated that the citizens have got an advantage and that what he is trying to do is to save himself from spending money in the courts. In that case, people who want to avail of the courts to ascertain their rights should be able to do so. This legislation reminds me of something that was discussed in the debates on the Courts of Justice Bill. I told the Attorney-General that I knew of a case that went to the Court of Appeal where the person who was appealing said: "We will mend our hands and make a new case the next time." That is what this legislation is doing. The Minister tried his case with the Act that was supposed to re-establish the Guarantee Fund. He found that it did not do so, and he now comes here with an appeal by mending his hand and trying a new line. That is what he is doing, and it is something that the House should not approve of.
A county like Longford that is meeting its obligations as far as it can, and meeting them well as far as the rates are concerned, is now to be called upon to increase the rates by a substantial amount. If the council strikes the full amount that will be required it will represent approximately 3/6 in the £, plus other increased expenditure that will arise, and with the present rate of 11/3 in the £, Columcille's prophecy, to which Deputy McGovern referred recently in this House, will be nearly fulfilled, "the rates will be higher than the rents" and the farmers will not be able to pay them. That is the position we have under a Government whose representatives went to Ballinamuck in 1931 and told the people to support their families, to live reasonably well, and to let the sheriff and the rate collectors go to a hot place.
Deputy Victory went there.
Deputy Victory could not go to the county because he was in it. One of these people was an eminent lawyer and a member of this House. The two Deputies came to Ballinamuck and expressed these views. Therefore, I suggest that if we had a non-payment campaign, because a hardship is to be imposed on the county council, it was generated and developed by the Party that now forms the Government. There are people who will pay this imposition, but it will entail very great hardship that they will not easily overcome. I am satisfied that the House should not pass any retrospective legislation against its own citizens where admittedly they have got an advantage. It might be argued, of course, as the Minister stated, that it is better to mend your hand late than never. It is an extraordinary admission, that a Government has to mend its hand. Of course it has been proved that that is so for three or four years past in the case of several Acts. It is admitted by the bringing in of this Bill that citizens and the community got an advantage, but this House is now asked to take away that advantage, and it is going to increase the rates on honest as well as dishonest ratepayers, if such exist, in every county. Whether a county council was honest or not, this Bill will increase the rates definitely. A number of county councils, I submit, did not strike the necessary rate, as they believed that some county which was not controlled by Fianna Fáil would take the bit in its teeth against the Government. I admit that the Government was wise when the county council elections were being held, when they said they wanted to get control of the county councils and local bodies, because they would then have "yes, yes men" on them, who would do everything they were told.
Where did the voters come in?
What about the Cork promises?
Where did the voters come in at the local elections?
They were told that the economic war would be ended if they elected Fianna Fáil councils, and the Fianna Fáil Party developed and made full play of that in order to get control. What is the result? Have the county councils and the local authorities got the advantage? How far are they meeting your wishes? What you have got is a number of "yes, yes men" who are prepared to impose taxation on the ratepayers at the behest of the Minister for Finance who, by retrospective legislation, is to see to it that if they have not the courage to contest this within the next month they cannot do so. I say to the House and to Deputies on the opposite benches that this amendment should be supported and that they should show the courage of their convictions, because, in his heart of hearts, every one of them, including the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, believes that this is not a Bill that should pass this House.
Might I ask how the Deputy knows what is in my heart of hearts?
The very same way as the President knows what the people of Ireland have in theirs—by looking into his own.
Then we both know.
There is a very simple question before the House: Do you or do you not believe in embezzlement? If this Bill is made retrospective, it is an act of embezzlement by the Executive Council. It is that and nothing else. County councils and, through them, the ratepayers, have by law the right to recover certain sums of money. Sums of money are payable to them under statutes passed by this Oireachtas. They have a vested right in these sums of money and the Executive Council, by this measure before the House and by this principle which is being debated on this amendment, ask from the House leave to embezzle sums of money which it is their duty to pay to the county councils. That is the plain, simple issue before the House, in this amendment—do you or do you not believe in the right of the Executive Council to embezzle money? It is upon that issue, like it or do not like it, because that is the real issue here, every Deputy in this House who votes must cast his vote.
It is an extraordinary principle, and I say, having listened to the Minister for Finance with great care, it is an unprecedented principle which this Bill embodies and which we wish to drive out from its confines by this amendment. It stands absolutely unprecedented. The Minister talked about the decision in the Performing Rights case; he talked about the decision in the Bray Urban Council case. The object of the legislation was to set up the decision of our courts. When there was anxiety to amend the legislation, it left the decision of the court untouched and did not take away any rights from any individual but it set up a right by legislation. The Minister, if you please, talked here, and, taking the extraordinary course, in order that he might gain publicity, of writing a letter to the Irish Times, quotes the fact that there was an Indemnity Act passed after the civil war had been dealt with. Of all the impertinences that could be given utterance to, the Minister and his colleagues talking of the Act of Indemnity after the civil war are guilty of the greatest possible impertinence.
What did the Act of Indemnity do? What did the whole course of action taken by the then Executive Council do? The present Executive Council— most of them, at any rate—and their friends had taken up arms against the Government of this country. They had endeavoured by force of arms to upset majority rule. They had become traitors to the State and to the Government which they now represent and traitors to the people of this country. Their lives even were then forfeited, and now, if you please, it is to be flung in the teeth of the men who were then members of the Executive Council that they did not put into force the laws of treason against those who had been guilty of treasonable offences against the State and with whose connivance and approval members of this House and other persons had been murdered. It is now to be put against the members of the Executive Council of that time that instead of enforcing the law in its full severity, they showed a magnanimity shown by very few Governments in the history of this world, and instead of putting into force the laws against the people who had broken the laws and who had endeavoured by force to disturb the foundations of this State, they preferred to walk the ways of clemency and to tread the paths of mercy.
That is supposed to be the precedent for the passing of this Bill which takes away from certain citizens of this State the moneys justly due to those citizens. I do not suppose anybody pays much attention to the Minister for Finance. I listened to him here to-day and it struck me that mentally he is something like an early 19th century young lady who has walked straight out of the pages of Jane Austen indulging in a fit of the vapours. That seems to me to be about the best description that could be given of the exhibition we saw by the Minister for Finance to-day. What he says on a question of law, however, is not a matter of very much importance, but I deal with the same matters when they are expressed by another person who is Attorney-General for the Irish Free State and whose views on law and on the interpretation of statutes must be treated, because of his high office, and, I will say, because of himself personally, with respect. But I must say that anything more astonishing than the views which were put forward by the Attorney-General I could not well imagine. If there is one thing which is clear, if there is one thing which is definite, it is that in the interpretation of our law, it is the expressed intention of the Legislature that can be looked to and nothing else. Where did the Attorney-General get his new canon of interpretation? What authority has the Attorney-General, or what authority can he quote to this House, for the view that in the interpretation of statutes in the future, you are not to look to the expressed opinion of the Oireachtas, within the four corners of a statute, but to interpret statutes by the speeches made by Ministers when introducing the Bills?
The Attorney-General
I will ask the Deputy to quote me because I think he is completely misquoting me. I think I said quite the opposite to what he suggests.
What the Minister said when introducing a Bill is not to be taken into consideration at all in interpreting statutes. There I am with the Attorney-General entirely, because the Oireachtas can speak with one voice only, and it does not matter one button what any Minister said when introducing a Bill. That is not the voice of the Oireachtas, because it can speak with only one voice. That voice is the statute, and in interpreting the statute, what the Minister or the Leader of the Opposition or any back bencher of the Fianna Fáil Party said is entitled to the same weight.
The Attorney-General
Would the Deputy quote me as saying anything different?
That is what I am saying.
The Attorney-General
Would the Deputy quote me?
The Attorney-General knows that we have not received the parliamentary reports. I listened to the Attorney-General's speech and that is what I understood him to say, unless my memory is terribly at fault. I heard him quote speeches made in the Seanad. For what purpose were they quoted?
The Attorney-General
For this House.
They have absolutely nothing to do with the expressed opinion of this House. The Minister comes along with a pathetic complaint: "Why, when this Bill was introduced, was not its real meaning pointed out to me; why was I not told what was meant; why is it that I am left to find out its meaning when an action has been brought against me?" What duty of ours is it to instruct the Minister for Finance? What power have we to put brains into the head of the Minister for Finance? Yet, the Minister pathetically complains to-day of his deficiency of brains.
I should not ask the Deputy to share his poverty.
Will the Attorney-General or the Minister for Finance contradict me when I say that they stated that they had an intention in their minds which they were not able to express and that now they want to do by retrospective legislation what they intended to do in 1933 and make the position the same as if they had expressed what they wished to express in 1933? A general principle flows from their action on this Bill—that it is within their competence and it is even their duty, when they find that a statute has been interpreted by the courts in a manner different from that which they intended, to introduce retrospective legislation and render the position the same as if they had expressed themselves clearly and properly in the first instance. That is the general proposition over which the advocates of this Bill, which is retrospective, must stand. Let me give a concrete example to show how that principle will work. In introducing a similar Bill—the Land Act of 1933— the Minister in charge of the measure —the Minister for Defence—said:—
"We definitely state that, notwithstanding anything in this Bill or in any other Act, a man shall not be disturbed for any purpose other than the relief of congestion in the same locality in which the farm is situate or for the provision of sports fields,"
provided, as he says in another place,
"adequate employment is being given and the land, taking the situation of the whole country into consideration, is producing a sufficient amount of food supplies."
That is a clear statement of intention.
The Land Commission have interpreted that section in a different way. I myself was in a case in which a man from the neighbourhood of Tuam —near the beet factory—who was growing a large quantity of beet and wheat, had his land taken up, not because there was congestion in the immediate vicinity but because the sub-commission held—and there was no appeal from their finding—that it was quite sufficient if there was congestion in any other part of the country. There, the law is being interpreted in a manner different from that which was intended by the Minister and that interpretation has been acted upon in scores—I might say hundreds—of cases by the subcommission. If the Attorney-General is right, it is the duty of the Minister for Lands to introduce retrospective legislation now to give effect to his intention and to bring about the same position as if that intention had been embodied in the Act of 1933. If the Attorney-General is right, every acre of land which has been taken over through misinterpretation of this section should be restored to the owners. Every single person to whom this land has been distributed should, if the Attorney-General's contention is right, be dispossessed and a position should be created the same as if the Act had been worded as the Minister for Defence thought it was worded. That is an example. Men have obtained vested rights. If the Attorney-General is correct in his view, all these rights should be divested. If the Attorney-General is correct in his view, the title of every tenant who has had title vested in him through a misinterpretation of this statute should be divested. I put that example before the House to show the meaning of this principle—that it is right and proper when a mistake has been made—I assume for the purpose of argument that a mistake has been made—to set that mistake right, not from the date of the discovery, not as to future occurrences but so as to divest persons of rights acquired as a result of the mistake.
The county councils, in this instance, have acquired rights under statute to sums of money. These sums of money are being withheld from them. We have had some extraordinary arguments from the Minister for Finance. A strange argument seemed to have caught the attention of a Deputy whose name I do not know. He seldom intervenes in debates in this House but I presume he represents Leitrim. Why, he asked, should Leitrim be made to pay when it has paid its way? This charge would fall on the general taxpayer. Are there no persons who pay taxes except ratepayers? I should like to know if the Minister for Finance is a ratepayer in respect of agricultural land. Is the Attorney-General a ratepayer in respect of agricultural land? Is the Deputy who is so fond of interrupting—Deputy Kelly—a ratepayer in respect of agricultural land? Is even Deputy Donnelly a ratepayer in respect of agricultural land? I should like to know how many of the Fianna Fáil Front Bench pay rates on agricultural land. Yet, the extraordinary argument is put forward by the Minister for Finance that if the ratepayers of one county do not bear the burden, then the ratepayers of another county will have to bear it— and they alone. There is no sense in his argument otherwise.
Our contention is that those principles are wrong—those entirely new principles which this Bill introduces: one making it retrospective and the other making a selected number of taxpayers responsible for the non-payment of taxes by another. Those so-called annuities are not annuities in the proper sense. Those moneys do not go to pay off any sums which were borrowed for the purchase of land. They are taxes, and nothing else but ordinary taxes, and the principle that is sought to be set up here is the principle that the poor rates of the country are to be made liable for a deficiency in taxes payable to the State. That is an entirely unsound principle.
Then we have the argument of the Minister for Finance—and we had the same from the Minister for Education the other night—that the Irish farmers are a wretched, dishonest set of fellows; they will not pay. "Let us put it on the rates," said the Minister for Education the other night, "because the farmers are so cowardly and dishonest that they will not pay." The honest counties are to pay for the dishonest counties. Running through the speech of the Minister for Finance, there is the suggestion that those wretched, dishonest farmers do not want to pay their way. I remember some years ago there used to be a number of speakers sent over from this country to England, who were paid at the rate of 30/- a day to run down the people of this country, to attack the people of this country, and to abuse this country in every way in their power. Those men were nicknamed "the carrion crows." I had hoped that the breed was extinct, but I find it is not extinct. I found a couple of very finely developed carrion crows in the Executive Council. I found the Minister for Finance and I found the Minister for Education attacking and abusing and accusing of dishonesty the most honest section and the best section of the Irish people—the farming community. The Minister may keep running down the agricultural community of this country; he may call the agricultural community of this country people who will not meet their debts, but any person who knows this country knows that the agricultural community endeavours to pay its way, and knows that there would be no arrears of land annuities were it not for this Executive Council, which has exhausted the last resources of tyranny in collecting or endeavouring to collect from the agricultural community money which they have not got to pay.
The Executive Council should know, and this House should know, what the truth of the matter is, and that is that the Irish tenant farmer is as honest a man as there is in this world, and that those statements that the Irish tenant farmer is dishonest and unwilling to pay his debts are false. There was one course, and one course only, open to the Ministry here if they wished to act in accordance with precedent, and that course was to amend the law as from the present time. I would oppose them in amending the law, because the principle is wrong. The principle of making the poor rate liable for the non-payment of other classes of taxation is wrong, but the principle here is worse still, because it is coupled with the embezzlement from the people of this country by the Executive Government of sums of money which are payable by the Executive Government in relief of the rates, under laws which have been passed by this Oireachtas. We are asked to do all that to save the face of the Minister for Agriculture and to save the face of the Minister for Finance, this great Minister for Finance, who is so proud of his language, this petit amongst orators, this wretched poetaster among poets, who cannot understand the plain meaning of the words in which he wishes this House to embody the legislation that he asks this House to pass. This Bill, Sir, is a dishonest Bill. It is a Bill which is establishing two completely new, unsound and vicious principles, and if this Bill in its present form, or indeed in any form, passes this House, it will show that this House has no sense of right, no sense of justice, no respect for law, no respect for our courts, and no respect for its own dignity.
The Attorney-General
I think that the artificial heat which the Deputy has generated has somewhat clouded his reason. I think in the first place his memory is at fault as to what I said on the Second Reading. I do not know whether or not he was present in the House——
I was present during the whole of your speech.
The Attorney-General
I certainly did not intend to convey what the Deputy has now stated I did convey. I think, furthermore, that he has misunderstood the Minister. Apparently he has so much contempt for the Minister, his oratory, and his various failings that he becomes riled every time the Minister speaks. Anybody who has listened to the discussion on the Second Stage of this Bill, and to this discussion so far, I think, will agree with me when I say that Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney has exaggerated beyond all reason the failings and faults of the House, and the possible sins of the Government in connection with this measure. I do not at all deny that the introduction of retrospective legislation is not a good practice, and I agree that it is one to be commended. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney has stated that the position is that if a Bill is introduced here and it turns out that, when it is interpreted in the courts, it does not exactly express the intention of the Legislature, a new principle is now being adopted whereby the Government will come back here and seek to have the legislation amended, and amended retrospectively, so as to deprive the successful litigant of any right which he may have succeeded in having vindicated in the courts. I suggest that that is a gross and deliberate exaggeration. Retrospective legislation, or legislation to clear up a doubt in past legislation, is, however, a step to be taken on the rarest of rare occasions. It is only justified in exceptional circumstances.
I do not at all say that this House is not justified in examining in the most critical way a measure which is designed to clear up ambiguity or to make clear something which an earlier piece of legislation had failed to make clear—at least to make it so clear that the courts would correctly interpret the intentions of the Legislature. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney seemed to suggest that I had advanced for the acceptance of this House a principle of interpretation binding the courts, namely, that they could look at the speeches delivered in this House in order to gather what were the intentions of the Legislature. I never intended to convey any such thing. Possibly my words may not have made my point clear. The very fact that we are bringing in such a measure shows that I could never have thought of such a thing. I merely read the speeches delivered in the Seanad by the Minister then in charge of the Bill—I think the Minister for Defence —and referred to the fact that the Seanad apparently interpreted the Bill as we have been interpreting it since its passage, as continuing the Guarantee Fund as a support to the Exchequer right to take over the annuities. It was so interpreted by the lawyers in the Seanad. So much was this the case that they actually framed an amendment designed to abolish the Guarantee Fund. They introduced that amendment designed to do something which Deputies say now was not necessary. That amendment was discussed in the Seanad and brought back to the House here, and after discussion in this House it was rejected by this House deliberately.
On the Second Reading I merely said that I thought, in this particular case and in exceptional cases such as this, the Government is entitled to come back to the Legislature and ask the Legislature to make clear what were its intentions when the original Bill was before the House. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney rants and raves here and we had several other speakers also working themselves into a frenzy about this being retrospective legislation. One would imagine that such legislation was being introduced for the first time. No reference is made to earlier pieces of retrospective legislation. There have been several. Some of them were defended on the grounds that nobody would question the propriety of a Government, after a period of difficulty and disturbance when it would find itself constrained to act quickly, to take certain measures in defence of itself, coming to the House subsequently and seeking ex post facto ratification by way, say of an Indemnity Act for what it had done.
I do not want to enter into a discussion of what did happen and about the parallel which can be drawn between the Indemnity Act and the present measure, but I would say to Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney that he forgets the fact that a good many of the sections in the Indemnity Act refer to steps which were taken under a resolution of this House. The resolution was passed in this House on the 22nd October, 1922, I think. When I say this House, I should say perhaps the Provisional Parliament. That resolution was passed although at that time it was open to the House to pass an Act. It deliberately refrained from passing an Act. It merely passed a resolution and it came back years afterwards to ratify its action by an Act in the Dáil—a step that could have been taken on the first occasion. However, I am not stressing that as a parallel. There have been several instances of legislation dealing with very minor matters. There have been in several finance measures sections introduced having retrospective effect, sections validating what had been the practice, sections introduced while cases were pending in the courts, dealing with the precise points at issue in the courts. That has been a feature of legislation here.
I accept whole-heartedly the principle that if by any chance individuals discover that they have certain rights under legislation and seek to have these rights vindicated in the courts, the Legislature should hesitate very much before it should interfere with these particular rights. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney must have been in this House on an occasion in 1930 when the then Minister for Finance, now Senator Blythe, said, on the Committee Stage of the Finance Bill, as reported in Vol. 39, column 1376-77:—
"We act really before there is a final determination as to what the law is on the matter.... As a matter of fact, both here and in England legislation has had to be introduced with retrospective effect.
"In the present year's Finance Bill in Great Britain, pending a decision of the final court, a section was introduced because they feared that a decision might be given which would have upset the practice as it had existed for 40 or 50 years. Before the court had announced its decision at all, a section was introduced to continue the existing practice if it proved to be necessary. You can get the most extraordinary results if the whole meaning of legislation is going to be revealed, by some court decision, to be entirely contrary to what was intended and to what it was always believed to be. In those cases, no injustice is done if what everybody has been doing is confirmed as right. In many cases a grave injustice would be done if the practice were entirely upset. Though certainly no injustice might be done in a high degree to individuals, a grave injustice might be done to the community as a whole."
I suggest to the House that this is an exceptional case, in which a certain practice has been followed by the Minister for Finance dealing with considerable sums of the taxpayers' money. A practice has been followed by him which was in line with the practice observed since the first time the Guarantee Fund was set up under the Land Act. I suggest that when the Act of 1933 was before the House, as a Bill, it was made clear by this House that it intended, notwithstanding the fact that there was a change in the destination of certain annuities, that the Guarantee Fund provisions should apply, that that practice has been followed by the Minister and that if that practice is now to be upset —by reason of the court's discovery that the House did not clearly express itself in the Bill, now the Act —a situation will arise which will make it necessary for the Minister to go to the general taxpayer to make good the deficiency which he is now making good by draws upon the Guarantee Fund. It is only in exceptional circumstances such as those that a Government would, I think, come to the House and ask for retrospective effect to be given to clear up the position while a case was pending in the courts, to have retrospective effect given to the interpretation upon which it has been acting and which everybody must admit who looks at the debates, was intended by this House should be contained in the legislation. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney worked himself up into a frenzy—in fact it was a regular crescendo while he was speaking—about the abuse of the honest farmer by the Minister and the Minister for Agriculture. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney can hardly have such a short memory if he was in the House, and I think he was, during the whole of the Second Reading discussion. If my recollection serves me right, the use of the words "honest" and "dishonest," particularly the word "dishonest," which roused the Deputy's wrath so much, came from opponents of this measure. It was trotted out as an argument against the Bill.
It came from the defender of the measure.
Deputy Davin was the first person who used it.
The Attorney-General
I may be wrong about the first person who used it, but my recollection is that it came first from the opponents of the measure who said it was unfair that the honest ratepayer should have to pay for his dishonest annuity-paying neighbour. That is how the use of the contrast between the dishonest and honest farmer ratepayer or annuity payer came to be used in the House. I think it is quite unnecessary and quite improper, but, of course, in this kind of a debate almost anything is fair.
Does the Attorney-General agree with the principle?
The Attorney-General
I believe that you must enable the Minister for Finance in some way to secure the payment of these moneys. If you are to abolish the Guarantee Fund provision, then the Minister must only have recourse to some other means of obtaining this money or depriving the county councils of it. There are other ways which the Minister could have availed of to prevent the county councils getting this money. If I am right, he need not have introduced some of the Votes unless he felt he had this Guarantee Fund to fall back upon. The last state would be as bad as the first. The machinery of the Guarantee Fund is, in a sense, I suppose, a sanction—whether a good one or not is a matter of opinion—to bring home to persons who are liable for annuities and to the ratepayers in a particular area that, if default is made in the payment in their particular county, the ratepayers in that county will suffer for it. The other alternative is to say that if the annuity payers are allowed to escape, or are able to evade payment, the general taxpayer should suffer. It is a choice between the two things. I cannot see how Deputies get out of that.
No Deputy who has spoken has yet said what is to be done to meet this deficiency. Some Deputies suggested that the Minister had in his hands machinery for the collection of these annuities and that he was not making full use of it—that the deficiency was due to the fact that the machinery was not being availed of. That sounds to me a most startling suggestion from any Deputy, considering the withering fire directed against the Government on several occasions about the use of the new powers which they took in that same Land Act, in Section 28, and the suggestion that they were behaving with the utmost cruelty in their attempts to collect the annuities. Deputies cannot have it both ways.
Another Deputy suggested that it was unfair to county councils that they should be made suffer for the non-payment of these annuities if they are not to be in the position of being assignees of the debt and allowed to collect it. No Deputy has come forward yet to make the practical suggestion that when they are called upon to suffer the loss in the amount which would be otherwise payable owing to default in payment of annuities the Land Commission should then assign to them these annuities and allow them to collect them. Apparently, that does not appeal to any county council. They are not prepared to undertake collection of the annuities, although that complaint was made.
They have no power.
The Attorney-General
I do not know that there is any other point that occurs to me in Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney's speech that demands an answer. I suggest that a great deal of it was mere artificial froth, attempting to make political capital out of the situation by suggesting that something is being done contrary to all precedent, unjustified by any examples which could be quoted as a parallel to this, and that the Government was adopting some wholly new procedure and going about it in a wholly new way.
I admire and respect the Attorney-General more at the moment than I did heretofore. I must say that my respect for him has increased by the very apparent shame he displayed in having to stand over a Bill of this type; for his apologetic tone and confession that really, in fact, the principle contained in this Bill is definitely bad practice and the type of practice that should only be availed of in the rarest of rare circumstances. That is a very important admission from the principal law officer of this State. It is a very important confession from the Government Front Bench that the principle contained in this Bill is not one to be commended, that it is not good practice, and that it is the type of expedient that should only be utilised on the very rarest of occasions. Is it any wonder that for the first time in the history of this Dail you find lined up against this measure 100 per cent. of all the units and elements constituting this Dáil except one Party.
Except the majority.
We will come to that question of a majority and how a majority is reached. Is it reached by spokesmen who break their necks to get downstairs to find a "pair" to escape the shame of voting for this Bill? For the first time in the history of the Dáil you have all the Parties and elements other than the Government Party lined up. You have lined up at the outset the political Opposition, the whole weight of the Labour Party and, if it were not for the Party Whip, we could claim to have the Attorney-General lined up with us also. I think it is only fair, and it is due to the Attorney-General, that at least we pay our tribute of respect for the honesty he displayed in condemning that measure and for the shame he displayed in having to support it. We have this particular Bill, as its long title states, to remove any doubts that may arise as to the interpretation of the law, and we have had it introduced by a Minister who blatantly tells this House that the supreme authority is the authority of the Minister speaking on behalf of the majority. Now I think that was a statement in keeping with the whole tone of the Bill. It was the statement of a petty tyrant, a would-be dictator who writhes under the law of the equality of the humble and the great——
Will the Deputy quote the words he attributes to me?
The Minister knows that the Official Report will not be out until to-morrow. If I am misinterpreting the Minister I apologise. I can only, in the circumstances, give him my own recollection of his remarks. My recollection runs definitely along these lines—that not once but many times in the course of the Minister's opening statement he referred to the fact that a Minister speaking with a majority behind him——
Is competent to speak for the Oireachtas.
——that a Minister speaking with a majority behind him was the authority to decide.
Oh, no—was competent to speak for the Oireachtas.
Why, that statement is exactly on a par with the one I am quoting—that the only one competent to speak for the Oireachtas is a Minister with a majority behind him. The Oireachtas has not become a Single Chamber as yet. The Oireachtas at the present moment consists of the two Houses——
And the King.
Yes, two Houses and the King, who is served by the Ministers opposite. I think it was a thoroughly outrageous statement on the part of the Minister to make. It was a statement in keeping with the whole principle running through this Bill. The gravity of that statement is not, in my opinion, the financial injustice it will inflict on every county in the Saorstát. Its gravity is not in the heavy load that it is going to impose on the shoulders of the ratepayers, who are only a minority of the people. There may be something in the principle that if one section of the people goes bad and fails to pay that the people as a whole will have to make good. If that argument were advanced in favour of the principle that the taxpayer should make good the deficiency, there would be something in it. If it were the case of an extremely wealthy individual who occupies a room, say, in an hotel and can slip from one place to another, there would be something in making him pay. But under this Bill it is the people who are the poorest and the most hard hit at the moment who are the people specially selected to make up the deficiency.
The financial penalties imposed by this Bill are not its most serious aspect. The really serious aspect of the Bill is the precedent it creates and establishes. It is a fact that this Bill is a blatant defiance of the Irish courts. It is a brushing aside of the Irish courts. It is trampling on the Irish courts. The Attorney-General advances arguments here which, to my mind, would more properly be put in court. We can all surmise that the reason why they are advanced here rather than in court is that he knows the arguments are not in themselves sound. Remember the principle we are establishing here. What follows is that at any time a citizen or group of citizens think they find a loophole to escape from some Ministerial ultimatum and appeal to the Irish courts in order to settle the point beyond yea or nay, the Minister speaking on behalf of the majority will walk in here, click his fingers at the courts and tell us, in fact: "I do not care a fig what the law is on that point. We will settle the law and the doubts as to the law without the Irish courts."
Has it been done before?
The Deputy or any member of that Party is the last man who should attempt to do this and compare it with what was done in the case of the Privy Council. Whatever was done in that case of the Privy Council was done in defence of the findings of the Irish courts.
Was that the only case?
We have got in this country to train our people up in reliance on rather than in defiance of the courts. The precedents we are establishing here will live long after you and I are gone. Governments will come and go, Parties will disappear and be forgotten. The present Deputies will be gone and forgotten when this particular precedent will be used and abused by people hereafter. We have got to remember that. Young as this country is in its independence, young as this House is, we should lose money from both pockets before we take a hand or play a part in establishing dangerous precedents in this State. We have got to remember that we are living in a country whose history is interwoven with lawlessness, sometimes glorious and sometimes glorified, where the popular thing, the popular cause was the cause that was most lawless. Every one of us who sits in this House has that type of blood running all through his veins. We have got to legislate and mould our behaviour here along such a road as will drag the people back from the old hereditary tendencies. If the Government should get an awkward dot in the nose during a case in court and get that through a flaw in legislation or through an omission in the Act which provides the loophole for the annuitants to escape, even in such a case we should be very slow to rob that man or any man of the right of seeking guidance and a ruling from the courts.
What is done in the case of the county councils in this Bill can be done against any individual to-morrow, next month, or next year. Remember the real principle that is sticking out of this Bill is this: that when any individual challenges the Government in the Irish courts and is likely to win, a Minister, speaking on behalf of the majority, will come in here and lay down the law. What is the good in bleating about democracy and bleating about the equality of the people within the law if certain individuals are put over the law and if there is to be no fair hunt within the law. A régime sooner or later has got to be established in this country where the humblest person and the mightiest person in the land will be equal by the fact that they are both within the law, and that both will get the same race. How does that apply to this case? With a law made properly or improperly, carefully or carelessly, with the whole weight of hundreds of highly-paid officials behind you, you go down the country to collect your annuities from the hard-pressed people, not with the decree of the courts but with the Minister's writ in one hand and a machine-gun in the other. Between the two, the hard-pressed ratepayer sees a possible channel of escape by seeking the protection of the Irish courts, by asking that an Act if illegal will be defined as illegal and that a practice if unlawful will be defined by the courts as being unlawful. The response of the Government to that is to walk into the courts and say: "This is a frivolous action, it is factious, it is vexatious," and the answer of the courts is that it is neither frivolous, factious nor vexatious and the case at that stage goes against the Government. And the defiance and contempt of court is not just in the Bill itself; it is in the repetition by the Minister for Finance, in spite of the ruling of the courts, that the case is factious and vexatious. The Attorney-General remembers putting up that himself in the Irish courts, and he recollects the answer he got and now, apparently, the most expeditious and economical manner of setting and deciding legal doubts is by coming in here and listening to the Minister for Finance, speaking on behalf of the majority. What are the courts for, what is the law for, what are the judges for, if we have only to listen to the voice of the Minister speaking on behalf of the majority?
What is the Dáil for?
It is the duty of the Parliament to legislate, and it is the duty of the courts afterwards to interpret that legislation. It is never the function of the Parliament to interpret its own legislation. That is what the courts are for. The taxpayers are paying heavily for those courts. The people of the country are looking with hope and confidence to those courts. The courts were always a big, respected institution in this State. The very minute we have this kind of legislation pushed through the House by a Minister, speaking on behalf of a majority, who can respect them? Why should anybody respect an institution that has only the life of a mushroom from day to day? How can anybody with any intelligence——
The Deputy might prefer a dictatorship.
That is where we are driving, drifting to rapidly. The Second House is to go by Resolution; the courts are to go by the Minister, talking on behalf of a majority. The people in here and outside are not blind and the various elements other than those who are whipped behind at the crack of the whip can see where this legislation is pointing. Why should any business men or anybody else ever again risk money in a big legal case when a political ward heeler may pull a string and we will have a Minister talking on behalf of a majority telling the courts what the law is. No wonder the Attorney-General is ashamed. Any democrat, not to speak of a democratic lawyer, should be properly ashamed to have any hand, act or part in that type of legislation. Look at what the aim of the whole thing is. If certain people are unable to pay certain contributions into Government revenue—because that is what it amounts to now —by retrospective legislation a selected group of people will be called on to make good the amount, not all the people. If, as is suggested opposite, the deficiencies are due to dishonesty, to national crime and national sin, even assuming that they were correct, surely a nation must pay for its own crimes, for its own sins, and not a selected group of individuals.
Assuming, on the other hand, that the real truth of the situation is that some people are so bent or broken that they are no longer able to pay their contributions, then, if there is any legal way out—as every member of the Cork County Council unanimously conceded—they are entitled to get whatever benefit or whatever relief from pressure the laws of this State permit. But when they seek that relief, when they contribute their money in an attempt to make an escape through that door, they have the answer that the case does not matter, the verdict does not matter, and all that matters is the voice of the Minister speaking with the majority behind him.
I ask every Deputy in the House to remember this, that what is done to-day can be repeated next month, and what is done to-day in order to get the Government out of a difficult situation will most certainly be repeated every time a Government is in a difficult situation, and any time a body of men, a trades union, any group of taxpayers, any section of the community, find themselves armed with the law against the Government, as you had in this case, the Government will brush aside the courts, make a new law defining what the law is and give it retrospective application. I think even at this stage of the Bill the Ministry should pause. This Bill is bad and it will be evil in its results; but the real gravity of it is the weapon that it puts into the hands of further Governments in this country.
You saw in connection with this Bill the delving that was indulged in for a precedent, for anything that could be claimed to be parallel to what they are attempting to do. You can see the value in the hands of legislators of a precedent for what they are doing. Should this Bill go through, successive Governments will not have to dig or delve to find a precedent for any evil act they want to commit in order to deprive the public of the benefit of having courts to protect it. The precedent will be there and it will be created by the votes of people who call themselves Irish democrats. That is the problem inside, but the problem outside will be how any of us can go outside after the Bill becomes law and preach to anybody respect for the law or reliance on the courts. A happy country is a country where, next to God, the greatest power is the power of the law and the greatest evil, next to godlessness, that could inflict any country is lawlessness; and the way to bring about lawlessness is to undermine respect for the law or the authority of the law or the extent to which people rely on the law. Once this Bill becomes law, once that precedent becomes the established practice, once that weapon is placed in the hands of any group who happen to sit over there, what is the use of anybody preaching reliance on the law?
What is the use of anybody talking, or attempting to glorify the authority of the law? What is the use of anybody preaching respect for the law? Humbugs we would be to preach respect for the law if we have no respect for it ourselves. Humbugs we would be to tell people to rely upon the law, if we were to snatch the protection of the law from them when they attempted to rely upon it. The first law officer—the Attorney-General—was merely apologetic when he spoke on this matter; he was merely ashamed. He should have spoken right out for the case of those who are attacking the attackers of the law. He should be their champion in opposition to those who advocate this particular type of administration. Better than any of us he knows the dangers, and he knows the manner in which a Bill of this kind can be used afterwards. Better than any of us he knows how dangerous it is to establish the kind of precedent now proposed to be established by the Government in this country. It is an insensate effort to have a political crow over two county councils.
The authority of the law is to go. The supremacy of the courts is to go, so as to have a political crow over a couple of Irish county councils. Have we nothing better to do than that? Have we nothing better to do in this place than to use the Parliament of this country in order to snatch the protection of the law from the county councils of this country? Is it not really a thing, when you think it out, that we would be thoroughly ashamed of being associated with? We are told that when the Minister speaks he has a majority behind him. Has he a majority behind him in this case? Is the majority of this House so devoid of conscience and a sense of fair play that when a humble body appears to get the best of the Government in the Irish courts, they should be deprived of the benefit of their test case? How many people opposite who voted for this Bill would vote for it if it was left to a free vote of the House? The real test, of whether there is a majority behind this Bill, would be by allowing Deputies to give a free vote in this House. It is being made a test of Party discipline. I respect Party discipline, but I do not think it is fair when doing injustice to the people of this country, and when you are doing harm to the future, that you should brag about a majority that can only be secured by the rigid use of the Party Whips. If the Minister is so sure of his Party majority behind him, would he not risk a free vote of the House upon this amendment? The Bill can alter the law for the future, but this amendment merely deals with the past. Would the Minister submit to that test whether he has a majority or not?
After all, none of us can divide himself into two. There are people on the Government side of the House, when no Party Whips were cracking, who honestly did justice by their county men, and the body they belonged to, when they gave their assent to the case being tested in law. There their consciences spoke; the individual spoke; men with free minds spoke and acted. Those same individuals come up here, and tramp the stairs to the Division Lobbies against the action they took in their own areas. Is that fair to those individuals? Would it not be more reasonable, if the Government are so sure of their majority, to leave this amendment to the free vote of the House? I tell the Minister that if he left it to the free vote of the House, and got a majority, then he would be in a position really to claim that the majority of the House, as individuals, acting according to their consciences, were in favour of this Bill. The Minister knows that is not so. The Attorney-General knows it is not so.
This type of legislation is bad in itself. It will be evil in its results. It will provide an excuse for anybody who follows the path of lawlessness, in this country, if this Bill is passed. It will be a justification for anybody who says: "You need not go to the courts because the courts cannot be relied upon; because there is a political junta that will overrule them." The evil that will be done if this Bill is passed is of a type that will grow each year. This House should aim at building up rather than destroying. But the whole trend of Government policy, latterly, is to destroy and replace by nothing. So in the long run we shall see come to pass what the Minister talked of in his opening speech, namely, that the only authority worth relying upon, or taking account of, is that he has a majority behind him.
The Minister for Finance, with all the pomp and authority he carries with him, got up in this House on Thursday last and deliberately accused me of having made a dishonest speech in opposition to this Bill, and he proceeded—I shall quote his words —to try to justify that allegation. He said: "The Deputy stood up with the decision of his Party in his pocket and he knew in speaking that no matter what he (the Minister) said it would not change his mind on the matter." Are we to understand by that kind of argument that the Minister has come to the conclusion that the majority of Deputies sitting on those benches, and who have sat here since 1922, are incapable of realising, or understanding, the implications of a measure of this kind? I sat here with the majority of those here now, during the discussions on the Indemnity Act, or Bill, as it was at that time. Those who put forward that measure put it forward for the purpose of giving legal sanction to things already done, with, or without, the authority of the Government of the day during the civil war period. Does the Minister contend that there is any comparison of any kind between the Indemnity Act of 1923 and the measure now before the House? Has the leader-writer of the Irish Times, who apparently is the new-found friend of the Minister for Finance persuaded him that the members of this Party would vote for anything or everything put forward by the Minister regardless of the consequences of such measures? I have been reading the articles in the Irish Times, and I would like to hear from the Minister for Finance the reason for the conversion of the gentleman who writes these articles. I know many of his articles slander the members of this Party, but I would like to know what is the Minister's standard of honesty in politics?
The Minister is entitled, more than I am or more than any ordinary member in this House, to a Christmas holiday. I hope he will enjoy it, and that during the Christmas holidays, if he thinks of politics, if he has any spare time to refresh his memory on things that happened when he was not here and on things that happened when he was in opposition, he will read his own speeches in connection with the Landlords and Tenants Bill of 1931 and the reasons given for supporting 87 amendments to that Bill at that time. I hope that he will compare them with the dishonest excuse which he gave last week to the Ard Fheis for refusing to bring forward a Town Tenants Bill now when he has the power to do so. Is that the standard of honesty the Minister stands for?
I am glad that the Minister has read out in this House figures in connection with the arrears due by the various counties, and I am glad to have the privilege of speaking here as a native of the County Laoighis. I am glad to accept his figures and claim that that county stands one of the highest counties on the list of those which have proved their honesty to this Government since it came into office. The proof of their honesty is that, at a particular period, the 31st July this year, they only owed 25 per cent. of the amount due. That is due by people who, in my opinion, are honestly unable to pay. I speak here in this House, not as one who gave any encouragement to the non-payment of land annuities. I speak here —and the Minister knows it perfectly well, and if he does not know it he can find it out from the Minister for Agriculture and from the Minister for Lands and Forestry, or from others of his colleagues—as one who did my best to give every encouragement, both verbal encouragement and encouragement other than verbal, to my friends and relatives and other supporters of mine to pay their way even if they found it difficult to do so. On the records of the Land Commission there is proof that I gave more than verbal encouragement to my friends to do that, and I know that the records will show that there are other Deputies in this House who did the same—gave more than verbal encouragement to their friends to pay their way, and I hope the Minister understands what I mean by that. One would think, from the Minister's attitude and from his speeches during recent times, that it is an injury to public credit to criticise constructively the Minister himself. I never saw such a jack-in-the-box exhibition as was given here the other evening by the Minister in moving the Second Reading of this Bill. The Minister gave such an exhibition that he drove every one of the members of his own Party, except five, out of the House. He even drove Deputy Corry—he was so ashamed of the Bill—into the lobby to look for someone to pair with him rather than have to vote for this Bill. Is that honest or dishonest, or is it a fact or is it a lie?
Those of us who were members of this Party since 1922 are quite capable of summing up the meaning of a measure of this kind, and quite incapable of being misled by the Minister's dishonest argument that he compares this Bill with the 1923 Indemnity Act. There is no precedent since this House was set up for this particular measure. Give me the name of a Bill that was brought into this House since this House was set up which purported to set aside the decision of a court after a case is brought to court and while the case is still at hearing and before a decision is given by the judges. The Indemnity Act is certainly not one of those that would bear comparison with this particular measure.
Does this Bill do that?
This Bill has been introduced into this House since a certain case was brought before the courts of this country; and after a certain opinion had been expressed on the measure by a certain judge, who is paid by this Government to do his duty impartially. The Minister knows perfectly well that the hearing has not concluded, but before the judge can hear the case the Minister brings in this Bill as a sort of blackthorn stick to bully the judge or judges that may be called upon to give an impartial hearing on the case at hearing. Is that a fact or is it not a fact? The Minister, of course, says that we should have waited for his Second Reading speech in order to hear the real case in support of this measure. Now, I admitted the other day, and I say it again to-day, that we had come to a Party decision on the matter. I give my colleagues credit for having some common sense, and I hold that with our experience—an experience longer than that of the Minister—we are capable of understanding the meaning of a measure of this kind; and, having understood the meaning and implication of the measure, after careful consideration we did come—I present the fact to the Minister—to a decision. We did come to a decision, but I think that if we had waited for the Minister's Second Reading speech, as he suggests we should have done, it would have only meant this: that it would have enabled us, at any rate, to come to a decision sooner than we did.
Of course, they all came in with their minds free!
Whether they came in with their minds free or not, the whole lot of them became so alarmed that they all cleared out, with the exception of five.
Five good men and true.
I am afraid I shall have to take the Deputy's word for that, but I shall pay this compliment to Deputy Tom Kelly: that he sits here all the time listening to everything, and i know that he was one of the five—the Big Five.
The mention of that was too much for him.
We oppose this Bill because it is without precedent, because it is an attempt to interfere with the impartial judgment of our judges upon a matter of prime importance to the people of the country as a whole. What did the Minister say to-day when speaking against this particular amendment? He said that it was brought in for the purpose of preventing the ratepayers from wasting their money and preventing the judges, if you please, from wasting their time. Is the Minister a good judge of whether the judges are wasting their time or earning their money, and what right, so far, has the Minister to express opinions on these matters? If you have no confidence in the judges who are there to administer the laws we make, then sack them. The Minister for Justice came in the other day to this House and said that he had no power over judges who would not do their duty. I suggest that judges who acted in that manner should have been brought before the Military Tribunal, and probably they would have been dealt with much quicker than have been the cases which have come before them recently. The Minister for Finance himself is not a good judge of the ability or inability, of the willingness or unwillingness, of the people of this country to pay the land annuities. I claim to be a better judge of the position in my constituency than the Minister is, in matters of that kind. There has been no organised agitation in my constituency against the payment of annuities. There was an attempt in the earlier stages by some of the people in my area to lie quiet and to lie low and go slow in the matter of paying the annuities. Again, the Minister can find out from some of his colleagues what my attitude was on these matters at the time.
And then a commissioner was sent down.
Deputy Donnelly says that a commissioner was sent down, but Deputy Donnelly knows quite well that he has nothing whatever to do with the collection of land annuities. That is one of my reasons—one of my two reasons—for opposing this Bill. I understand that, when the Agricultural Grant is being allocated for the relief of rates, the relief only goes to the relief of rates on agricultural land. I also understand—and I want to be corrected on this if I am wrong—that when the county authority, who is the Commissioner for Laoighis, to whom Deputy Donnelly refers, in this case, is compelled by order of the Government to make up the amount of the deficiency, he then is compelled, as all local bodies are, to increase the rates on all the people in that county regardless of those who occupy land or otherwise.
Does the Minister for Finance know that, and, if he does, why did he make the ridiculous statement that he made in support of the Second Reading of the measure by asking whether we want him, as an alternative, to penalise the poor for the sake of the rich? Is it not a fact that every cottage tenant in this country and every small farmer —I speak for the small farmers of my constituency 75 per cent. of whom have paid their annuities this year—will have to make up next year the amount of the deficiency in that county? If the Minister for Finance does not know that, then I suggest to him that he should send for the Minister for Local Government and ask him to educate him with regard to the operation of this Guarantee Fund and of the unfairness of this measure towards the small-holders in Donegal and in every other part of the Free State who pay their way.
The Minister talks about the small-holders in Donegal and Timbuctoo paying for the bad debts of the people in the County Cork. I had nothing to do with the organisation of that campaign in the County Cork. I know that there was an organisation there at one time for the purpose of preventing people or, at least, of encouraging them not to pay their annuities. The Minister for Finance also said—I suggest it was bluff on his part—that the only alternative to this measure was to increase direct taxation upon the poorest of the poor. But, before he sat down, he said that they had smashed this organisation that had been started against the payment of the land annuities, and that the payment of them was now going on in the normal way. If that is so, how is this increase in taxation going to be justified and why is this Bill brought in? I suggest that it is all bunkum. It is bluff, double bluff and treble bluff. We get a good deal of bluff from the Minister on occasions here, but he is not going to get away with it this time. I want to say at once that I prefer this Government in office to the Party that now sits in opposition.
We settled that at the last election.
I hope I am charitable to Deputy Donnelly when I say that before the next election he will have carried out all his promises. Look up the records of the divisions that have taken place in this House, and there you will get proof of who put the Minister sitting where he is to-day. It was not Deputy Donnelly, but the seven of us who sit here. I had the duty cast upon me in my constituency of defending the policy of this Government and of all its works and pomps when some of those who sit in the Government Party were silent, or, at any rate, would not do so.
That was a terrible responsibility.
It was a tough job.
The Deputy will not do it again.
Is the Deputy now making his recantation?
No, but I claim the freedom, and have the freedom, to vote on all measures in this House on their merits. I challenge contradiction on this: that I raised the question of the operation of the Guarantee Fund on the relevant section of the Land Bill of 1933 when it was being discussed on Committee in the House. I protested against it then and I protest now, seeing that the Land Commission annuities are now part and parcel of the revenue of this country. I protested against a continuance of the existing procedure which attempts to penalise the honest people of the country, and, which, in my opinion, is one of the things that have helped to increase the number of people who have not paid and do not want to pay. Take the case of the hard-working honest people in my constituency who are paying. Could there be anything more demoralising than for these people to see their neighbours, who are not paying, getting away with it? These honest, hardworking people have paid this year, and, next year, they will have to pay an increased rate to make good the default of those who could pay and would not pay.
If the land annuities are not being collected, why does not the Minister use the machinery of the central government for the collection of them, the machinery that he employs where income tax and excise duty, or any other direct tax, is not being paid? It is his duty to find some better way than the way that he proposes in this Bill to make good the deficiency. It is certainly a wrong thing to make the local authorities responsible for the collection of the annuities. It is not fair to make the honest ratepayers pay, in the following year, for those who, perhaps, could pay and would not pay in the previous year.
That is my attitude on this Bill and I stand or fall on that. I raised this matter before on the Second Reading of the Finance Bill for this year. When the President came into the House he dealt with it, and said it was a matter for serious consideration. I wondered, when I heard the Minister for Finance speak on the Second Reading of this Bill, what amount of consideration has been given to this unfair procedure since the President made that statement in the Dáil. Has there been any consideration given to it except the consideration which prompted the Minister to take the hasty action that he has taken to prevent the ratepayers of this country from getting the benefit of the law. The only place that they can get the benefit of the law is in the courts, set up by the Oireachtas, from the impartial judges appointed to administer the law. Would the Minister explain to me what is the difference between the land annuities and income tax or excise duty? I say that the threat made by the Minister is all bluff: the threat to increase direct taxation if he is not able to recover the full amount of the land annuities. When income tax payers in Leix or Offaly fail to pay their income tax who makes good the deficiency? The land annuities are now part and parcel of the revenue of this country, and, again, I ask would the Minister explain what is the difference between the land annuities and income tax, excise duty or any other form of direct taxation that has to be collected from any and every section of the community?
The threat of economies in salaries and of an increase in the price of food is, I suggest, all so much dishonest political window-dressing employed to mislead the people and intended to carry them away from the real meaning of this measure. We had a lesson in the meaning of this kind of legislation long before the Minister ever dreamt of coming into this House: at a time when the Minister was afraid to come into the House or would not come in. The experience that we had then makes us realise the serious consequences of a measure of this kind. It is much more serious in its import than any of those which were mentioned by the Minister. Personally, I do not mind in the least what the Minister said about my speech on the Second Reading of this measure, as to whether it was honest or dishonest. What the Minister said about me will not matter a thraneen to the people of my constituency, and it is to them that I am responsible. As long as I am honoured by being elected here as their representative, I will vote against legislation, and especially legislation coming from a Government that I had some responsibility for putting into office, that would put a premium on dishonesty. I will never vote for a Bill of this kind or for that type of legislation.
I have heard this Bill discussed a good deal through the country, and I find that it is one of the most unpopular measures that have ever been introduced. I was pleased to hear the references that were made to it by the members of the Fine Gael Party. I gathered from their speeches that their object is to try and extricate the farmers of the country from the quagmire of economic ruin in which they now find themselves, but I suggest to the members of the Opposition that they have just as much responsibility for the position in which the farmers now find themselves as the Government in office. During the whole of the period that the Opposition formed the Government of this country they took very little interest in the farming community. They allowed the farmers gradually to sink deeper and deeper into the state of bankruptcy in which they now find themselves.
On a point of order, is this relevant to the amendment before the House?
The Deputy has not gone very far yet.
If the Deputy would allow me to develop my argument perhaps he might be of a different opinion by the time I have concluded. In withholding the agricultural grant, amounting to £716,000, for which the present Government now seeks legislation, I consider that to be the last straw on the ratepayers and farmers. It has been stated on all sides that farmers have been going through a terrible hard time during the last two or three years. They have borne the burden of the economic war without assistance from any class in the community. Where is the responsibility going to be placed if this Bill becomes an Act? On whose shoulders will the burden be placed? Will it not be placed on the county councils who are responsible for the collection of the rates? In my opinion if that happens every honest person will be made a defaulter. If they become defaulters how in the name of heavens is the Government going to collect the annuities and the rates? Do they expect people who pay the annuities and the rates to turn around and to bring the bailiffs on their neighbours and to seize their cattle because of default in the payment of annuities and rates? One of the greatest mistakes made since the Government became a Government was to place this burden of taxation on a people who, at the present time, are groaning under the weight of taxation. In my opinion it would be well for the Government to withdraw this Bill. By doing so, the farming community will be given an opportunity of carrying on, and of honouring their obligations and trying to pay rates and annuities. It should be remembered that no class works so hard, from morning to night, under adverse conditions, as the farming community. In fact, they are slaves from the time they are born until they go to the grave. To suggest that the farming community is dishonest is to create a false impression, because there is no more honest or hardworking people in the community. They are in difficulties, but they are trying to pay their way. No one would like to see the sheriff's officers or the cattle waggons going into farmers' yards if it could be avoided How are they going to continue to be honest? If this Bill becomes law it will make everybody dishonest in the eyes of the Government and it will mean the breaking up of the farming community, because it will reduce them to poverty and misery from which it will take them generations to recover.
The whole atmosphere of this debate can be summed up by the single phrase used by Deputy Kent, when he said that the farmers of Ireland were slaves from the cradle to the grave. In other words, Deputy Kent summed up the whole spirit of grave and deliberate exaggeration which was evident in every speech against the Bill. Deputy Kent does not believe that every farmer in Ireland from the cradle to the grave is a slave. No man who examines the economic agricultural position in Ireland would dare to say anything of that kind, if he desired to have any reputation amongst his fellow-men as a reasonable man. Take the line from Monaghan to Limerick, and from Limerick south to the Old Head of Kinsale. There is no low valuation land east of that line. There is no man practically, and certainly no electoral area in any county, and no recognisable geographical unit which could be selected in that area of which that could be said with truth. There is not any truth whatever in the suggestion that the Deputy has made. If you take the other area west of that line you will find places in which farming is a heroism and the continuance of human life a miracle. These are not the people who are kicking up this row; and they are not the people who are in arrears with their annuities. These are not the people who are trying to hand on their obligations to someone else. I am deliberately raising that point of exaggeration because I think it is time we got back to something like a perspective in the matter of this Bill. In my opinion there was one good speech delivered on the Second Reading, and that was by the Chairman of the Cork County Council, Deputy Broderick. There was not another speech which had any matter of any sort which was worthy of any respect. But Deputy Broderick's speech had nothing to do with the Bill. It was a speech which, in my opinion, could very properly and very valuably be delivered if the question before the House was that the law should be altered. That is not the question before the House.
The second line of country that we had here is fairly well represented by Deputy O'Higgins, who had no use for a majority, and who poured contempt on majority in every possible form so long as it was expressed through this House. Unfortunately we are the heirs of our predecessors. We live within their precedent and, to some extent, are bound by their bad custom. A precedent which is made is made, and nothing that happens afterwards will remove it. The first time a thing is done it is done. You may strengthen it by a second or a third performance of the same act, but it is the first doing of the act that makes a precedent from which there is no escape. For anyone with any respect for his own reputation to say that there is no precedent in this House for the interpretation of the law by this House; that there is no precedent in this House for overruling a decision given by a court and declaring it to be wrong from the beginning, is absolute nonsense. To say that there has been no interference with the court during the actual time it was trying a case is also not a fact. Deputy Davin put up to me the problem of finding one single Act which covered all the possible indignities, if you like to use the term, which a legislative assembly can put upon a court, one single Act that would contain the whole of them. There is not such an Act, but there is no indignity as far as I know in relation to the authority of a court which this Dáil has not already accomplished. I believe as a rule in painting on small canvases. I believe that small incidents which do not contain the elements of passion and prejudice can illustrate a principle as well as, or better than, those which do regiment passions in that manner. There was the case of a man who, on interlocutory motion, went to a court in Ireland in relation to the patent on a lamp—not a very important thing. The judge on that motion, an entirely preliminary motion, declared the law to be of a certain character and hot-foot the then Minister for Justice, without waiting to reduce the Act even to a title, came down and told the House that if the black flag of piracy—that was his phrase—which had been raised in that preliminary decision was not pulled down by a further court, it would be pulled down by this House.
I suppose you have a quotation for that?
I will get it later.
It is wrong.
It is not.
It is.
Obiter.
Quite definitely, you have not got the quotation. There is a rule in this House that when a member purports to quote, he shall give the quotation, the ipsissima verba of it. I want to get that quotation.
We will find the ipsissima verba later. You are not going to get it now.
Are we to understand that the Parliamentary Secretary is withdrawing that phrase?
I am withdrawing nothing.
It is the practice of this House that when a phrase is given purporting to be a quotation, the phrase ought to be given accurately. Can we have the quotation?
When did the Deputy become Ceann Comhairle?
He is entitled to make a point of order.
Can we have the date? I suggest that that is entirely the practice of the House, as is well known over there. Can we have the quotation, the date and the record?
I am not quite sure—perhaps the Deputy would remind me—as to when that rule was made. I know there is a practice that when a Deputy purports to quote, he gives the reference to what he is quoting from so that it can be examined and verified.
If we are to take it that this is not a quotation, I pass on, but it was given as such.
It is a perfectly honest and full summary of the spirit in which it was done.
I suggest the Parliamentary Secretary has now brought himself within the rule. Can we get the reference to the quotation?
This is not the end of it——
Again, on a point of order. May we get the reference to the quotation in order that we can have the matter discussed properly?
That is so, as far as my recollection goes.
It is wrong.
Is the Parliamentary Secretary purporting to quote the exact words?
No, Sir.
Let him go on now. We have nailed him on that.
It is very good of the Deputy to allow me to proceed.
But not to proceed with dishonesty. Proceed with honesty.
The Deputy is a judge.
I am not in the Criminal Court, so I am not over you.
We had another case which did not regiment dangerous public feeling, and that was the case of the Local Authorities (Mutual Assurance) Bill. The Oireachtas passed an Act for a specific purpose— the specific purpose of enabling a particular company to be registered and to function without putting up £20,000. That was the declared purpose and intention of that Act. After this Act had been in operation for some considerable time, certain other insurance interests in this country that did not see why this particular company should be privileged in that matter, went to the courts and the courts decided that the Act did not in fact do what it set out to do, and the Oireachtas passed a law stating that the law is, and always has been, what the court said it was not.
That again is not a quotation?
Let us take another case. You have the Finance Act of 1929. Why I have tried to put things in a quieter and more moderate tone is because I think that a case can be made for something entirely different from what is being contended here to-day, and that those two things are being confused. If, for instance, someone were to get up here and speak to a resolution that retrospective legislation should not ever be part of the machinery of this Dáil, a good many of the speeches, which in my opinion have been irrelevant in that matter, would then be relevant and there would be a great deal to be said for it. What I am going to say to the House now is what we have already said. When these precedents were being made, we were not silent. We tried to prevent these precedents being made, and after they had been made, when one after another these recurrent precedents were put before the House, appeals were made to those who were then responsible for the Government——
Does this apply to the Indemnity Bill?
I could not tell the Deputy, but I will go into that later.
He was in the hills then.
We will take the Finance Act of 1931, which used these same words "to remove doubts" and, speaking on this matter, I said:
"This is not to remove doubts; it is to alter the law and to alter it retrospectively.... Why I am taking this point is this: we have had those particular phrases included in other Bills. If they had not been included in other Bills I would ask the House to fight them word by word and line by line. Once you have included in any Act those words every contract which has been made by this State of every sort and kind, big and small, with individuals or with larger bodies, is at the disposal of the majority of this House. A precedent has been made, unfortunately, and you cannot get away from precedents. Retrospective legislation means that every pension which is paid in this country can be abolished under exactly the same power. The security of tenure of every civil servant can be abolished under that power. Every contract of every sort and kind which the State has made with an individual or which individuals have been enabled under the law of this State to make with each other can be declared to have been null and void from the beginning."
What is the Parliamentary Secretary quoting from?
I am quoting from the debate on the Finance Act, 1931, Volume 30, column 1638. In the face of that, for anyone to say that the position in which we are to-day, dealing with retrospective legislation, is unprecedented is to talk nonsense and to know that he is talking nonsense. It was suggested by Deputy O'Higgins that no retrospective legislation had been passed, or should be passed, which would affect existing rights. He used very elaborate phrases. Here is the last clause of the Copyright (Preservation) Act, 1929, and its caption is "Prohibition of remedies for past infringements." That could not be any clearer.
Read the clause.
Here it is:
Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act, no remedy or relief, whether by way of damages, injunction, costs, expenses or otherwise, shall be recoverable or granted in respect or by reason of an infringement in Saorstát Eireann before the passing of this Act of a copyright by this Act declared to subsist or deemed to have subsisted in Saorstát Eireann.
I think there is more than that.
That is the whole of it. In case the Deputy may have any doubts, I was wrong in saying that that was the last clause. There is another clause, Clause 5, which states: "This Act may be cited as the Copyright (Preservation) Act, 1929."
Do you know the meaning of the clause you are after reading?
You will have an opportunity of interpreting it.
I should like to have your view of it.
My view is that it is a prohibition of remedies for past infringements.
Of what?
Of this Act, if you like.
Not at all—of a right deemed to subsist by that Act but which the court found not to exist.
Perfectly right—a prohibition of remedies for past infringements. I take up a point raised by Deputy Davin, not for the sake of the heat of the matter but for its significance and importance. He referred to the Indemnity Act of 1923.
The Minister did.
You asked what we had to say about it. If you do not want me to say anything about it, I shall not.
If we had less of the second person, the proceedings would be more orderly.
I was trying to be nice, kind and gentle to the Deputy.
Thanks very much.
I am not asking you to walk up any by-way with me, as in the case of Deputy Curran. One of the things that the Indemnity Act claimed to legalise was the execution, as it was called, of Rory O'Connor and Liam Mellowes. The day after that had been done, there was read out in this House a statement of the reasons why it had been done. That written statement is an indictment for murder of those who executed.
At a time when there was respect for the courts.
There is no question whatever in my mind that the mere production of that document in court would have rendered the people who so executed liable to a charge of, and, in my opinion, to conviction for, murder. Is that small matter not to be regarded as a precedent?
What is the comparison with this Bill?
This Bill is much more dreadful than that. I want to understand Deputy Davin's position, because he, with five or six others—I forget how many—went into the Division Lobby to help to make the total of 63. I am inclined to think that there is a difference of attitude of mind between Deputy Davin and some of those with whom he went into the Lobby—not of his own Party. I want to get that clear, if I can. The position of Deputies opposite is that the people who have not paid annuities should not have those annuities extracted from them. I think the position of Deputy Davin is different.
He said they could not pay in Laoighis-Offaly.
If there is one person in the world who could not help me, it is Deputy MacDermot. What has happened? A minority of 63 in the Division Lobby is made up of two sets of people who go into it for diametrically opposite reasons. I understand that Deputy Davin thinks that some intensive enforcement measures should have been used by somebody to get in the annuities.
Will the Deputy quote me correctly?
I am merely trying to understand the Deputy.
I did not say any such thing.
I am very anxious to find out what the Deputy does mean. What was his reason for going into the Division Lobby? I shall give way to him while he tells me.
The explanation was given last day and to-day.
What I understand is that the Deputy thinks there was other machinery by which these payments could have been enforced. Do I misunderstand the Deputy?
You can understand or misunderstand me as you please. You will find what I said in the Official Debates. I said that I never supported a no-rent campaign and that I never will. I also said that I would not vote for a Bill which puts a premium on dishonesty.
This Bill does not put a premium on dishonesty.
It certainly does.
The Deputy will allow me to discuss the question as to whether it does or does not. Let us take the statement which Deputy MacDermot has hurried out of its place. Deputy MacDermot would have been much wiser to leave that alone for a few minutes. Deputy Davin says that the people in Laoighis who have not paid cannot pay. Does he require any further activity, from the point of view of the Government, in relation to those who cannot pay? He does not. Therefore, there is going to be a deficit. That is what I wanted to get. There is going to be a deficit.
It would be less than Cork, anyway.
Now we are getting off the point.
We are getting back to the real point.
I am prepared to go to Cork quite willingly. There is going to be a deficit. How is that deficit going to be made up?
In the Budget.
In the Budget?
Yes.
Right. And every Deputy on the other side is going into the Lobby to vote for the increase of taxation? Is Deputy Davin going to do it?
There is no necessity.
When Deputy Davin is asked about taxes he says "Oh, no; no food taxes; no tax on coal; no tax on anything of that kind, but a tax on income-tax and a tax on ground rent." But those are already earmarked by Deputy Davin. It was for that reason —because those taxes, in his opinion, were available in the last Budget—that he refused to vote for coal and sugar, and other taxes of that kind, which, in the absence of a tax upon income-tax and ground rents, would have been absolutely necessary for the purposes of the public services and the social services which Deputy Davin demanded.
You are forgetting the plan. What about the £2,000,000?
I will agree even with Deputy McGilligan——
What about the £2,000,000?
Let us assume, for the moment, that there is no £2,000,000——
I cannot do it.
You cannot? Then you did not listen to your colleagues. Your colleagues can assume anything. One of them got up here to-day and told us that we had exhausted all the resources of tyranny, that there was embezzlement from the people of this country by the Executive Council.
So there is.
But surely, if they say nice gentle things of that kind about us, the mere suggestion that we might conceivably have made a mistake in regard to such a little matter as £2,000,000 is not too much for Deputy McGilligan to swallow.
If you admit both the embezzlement and the £2,000,000 I will be glad.
At the moment I want to know why the supporters of Deputy Davin went into that Lobby; they are perfectly entitled to go in—I am not blaming them—but they ought to tell us some logical ground. Are they going into it to say that taxation has to be put on in the Budget for the purpose of finding this deficit?
No.
I do not think they are.
They need not say it.
Deputy McGilligan has now been briefed as counsel for Deputy Davin.
It is the worst brief I ever had.
I quite agree.
But we had a statement about that £2,000,000.
Deputy Davin wants this money not to be collected——
So says Deputy Flinn.
Deputy Davin has said that there is no money in Laoighis which is outstanding and which can be paid.
It would be equally true for me to say that Deputy Flinn wants no income-tax.
All right, I will say that.
You have often said it.
That is too far back.
Deputy Davin wants this money taken from some other source than his constituents in Laoighis.
I did not say that.
He would not provide money during the last Budget by a tax upon anything new except income-tax and ground rents.
Go on with the other ones.
Give me another one.
You should not pretend to quote me if you have lost your memory.
He voted for a tax on tobacco.
And super-tax and excess profits.
Super-tax and excess profits tax are very different from income-tax.
It would probably hurt the Deputy if that were put into operation.
We will assume, then, that the Deputy did not, in the last Budget, consent to any increase of taxation except income-tax, super-tax, excess profits and ground rents.
Oh, he did.
Yes, I did.
Those are the sources from which Deputy Davin thinks that all the future revenue which is required can be got.
No.
And he already wants it for the social services.
Is it fair that the Deputy, whose memory is supposed to be good, should go on saying that those are the only taxes I voted for when he knows quite well that I voted for many other taxes?
Those are the new taxes which the Deputy wanted.
On a point of order. I admit that Deputy Hugo Flinn is not the first offender, but I think he is going further than anybody else has gone in straying from the terms of this amendment. I submit that we are really getting altogether too far afield from the amendment to be dealt with.
He is being constantly interrupted.
How long is the Deputy the judge of relevancy?
I am afraid that nearly every Deputy who has spoken has wandered very far afield from the terms of the amendment. I think that if the Parliamentary Secretary were allowed to make his speech in his own way he would not wander so far.
If he addressed the Chair it would be a good thing.
I am very pleased that the Chair should feel as I do that it is my natural instinct always to keep rigidly to order, and that any digressions have been due to weakness in the face of misleading by interrupters. I am glad to feel, Sir, that you do appreciate my position, because sometimes it is painful to me that anyone should think I would wander from the razor-edge of order.
Retrospective legislation has not been limited to this; there is retrospective crime. Just imagine that! This House, which is horrified at the idea of this Bill, has actually introduced and passed through it an Act creating retrospective crime. Under the Public Safety Act a court could decide that a thing which was not a crime at the time at which it was committed became a crime afterwards, and such a crime was punishable at the discretion of the court by any sentence up to death. And we have no precedent in this House for retrospective legislation! I think it was Deputy O'Higgins who—due to the fact that Deputy Morrissey had got up before him, was robbed of his usual speech; in his usual speech Deputy O'Higgins said that the speech just before his was the most despicable, the most abominable and the most complete bit of buffoonery he had ever heard in his life—had to get a new line, and told us about the horrible doctrine which had been enunciated in this House by the Minister for Finance. This is how he quoted it: "The highest authority is the authority of the Minister talking for a majority." Now, the mere fact that the Minister did not say that does not mean that it has not been said; does not mean that it has not been acted on, and does not mean that this House is not controlled by the precedent that it has been used and has been acted on. There was a Minister for Agriculture, who once did sit on this side of the House—apparently he will not condescend to sit on that side —and who said that a majority could do anything it damn well pleased, but that may be regarded as one of the hectic and loose expressions of the Minister in a moment of irresponsibility. But there was a precedent; there was a President who, when his attention was called to the fact that not an ordinary Bill but a Bill altering the structure of the machinery of this State—the Constitution Amendment Bill—had been passed by a majority of one, said: "That is democracy." That President was the then President, President Cosgrave. No wonder Deputy O'Higgins talks about bleating about democracy. He says that this is blatant defiance of the Irish courts. What was the Public Safety Act but the complete abolition, in criminal cases, as far as they could do it, of the whole jurisdiction of the courts in Ireland? And behold, we have no precedent for actions of this kind!
If someone would put down in this House for consideration on another day, a motion which would raise the question of under what limiting condition retrospective legislation could or could not be introduced in this House, I would be very glad. I think it would be a debate which would be extremely valuable and on which the lines of demarcation would certainly not be the lines of demarcation of Party Whips. I think it is a subject which would, undoubtedly, develop very great differences and in which Deputies who, like myself, are absolutely against retrospective legislation and the interpretation of the law by a legislative Assembly, if it could be avoided, would find themselves up against very real difficulties such as the real difficulties that have arisen in relation to Acts which have been already passed by the House. But in relation to an Act of this kind, in which the whole thing has been already done, I think the position is entirely different. Deputy Brennan, who got up here, first told us that these accumulated arrears were due to the fact that the people did not think they would ever have to pay them, and did not think that these Acts might ever be enforced. I think there is a lot of truth in that. They were led away by the wagons and the banners and the salvation armies that wandered round the country. They had come to believe that by some means or other this agitation would be strong enough to prevent the necessity for payment eventually and the result was, not merely in relation to annuities, but in relation to rates, in relation to rents of cottages, in relation to ordinary debts, people began to think that if you could get an agitation of that kind strong enough, you could get out of your liabilities. These debts would then continue to accumulate unless and until it was made perfectly clear to all those concerned that these debts are debts, that they will be collected by the machinery available and that no one is going to get away from his obligations by means of agitations of that kind.
Deputy Morrissey asked why all the thousands were due. They are largely due for that reason, because a good many honest people very foolishly were led away into the idea that if their next neighbour were refusing to pay while he could pay, there was no reason why they should pay. This is a sanitary measure. It is in order to clear up this whole position and to see that these debts are not going to accumulate until they are a milestone too heavy to carry, that this Dáil is called upon to reassert the law in this Bill. If I might quote the devil in my defence, I would call Deputy Davin into the witness-box. The Attorney-General told us that when the Act of 1923 went to the "House of Lords" they attempted there to amend it and that they did amend it in the direction in which Deputies opposite now want it amended, and when it came back to this House, this House took out that amendment, and Deputy Davin is the witness——
The Parliamentary Secretary is referring to the Seanad, I take it?
Yes, Sir. I think it is the equivalent.
Deputies were not allowed to refer to the Broy Harriers.
What delicacy is the Deputy getting rid of?
I am making a comparison of the same type the Deputy intended to make.
This would-be humorist amongst humorists! Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney this evening referred to poetasters amongst poetasters.
This is the slimy sort of comparison the Deputy attempted to make.
Deputy Davin told us during the discussion that he himself, under the full impression that the law was as the law is now stated to be in this Bill, attempted to have it amended. There cannot be any better testimony than that the Deputy himself tried to amend it out of the position in which this Dáil is now going to declare it was, is, and always has been.
Membership of this House has many privileges and pleasures and it has an occasional torture. I have often suffered torture, and often when the Deputy who has just sat down has dared to speak of men like Kevin O'Higgins, I have wondered if my feelings when he spoke of Kevin O'Higgins could have been realised, as I think they must have been realised, by members of the Party opposite, who must have experienced the same torture when he spoke of Roderic O'Connor. It is no wonder that the Deputy should open his speech with a reference to slaves and heroes, because he has had the experience of, in fact, being the one and has, in theory, been the other. It is no wonder that he, like others, as Deputy Brennan has pointed out, has had to delve into the background to try and get a precedent in order to justify what they know cannot be justified. Even a man so full of revolutionary ardour, so steeped in the French revolution, such a delightfully sansculottist person as Deputy Flinn, cannot get a precedent although he has turned the barricades over and over again. He should not be afraid of a breach of the internal law. It is through breaches of the internal law that individuals like the Parliamentary Secretary arise and get into Assemblies like this. Why is there the necessity for all this precedent? Because it is clear to everybody that wrong is being done. Supposing there was a true conscience about this matter, is it not a simple thing to say: "There are such and such arrears; we intend to have them paid. By certain councils they have been paid. We have failed in the law by which we tried to make them pay but we shall let them go and take it out of them by a new Bill"?
Why not come in with a new Bill? Why not make the drafts on the county councils so much less, or even carry it over two years, if there is not sufficient to draw upon? Why not start anew? The Deputy knows that he dare not ask that lot, no matter how tied they are, to have such a Christmas-box sent to the local councils. So it has to be done under the shadow of a previous Act, and that this is merely a carry forward of what was always intended. You have people tied by what was previously done. If there was any manliness or a decent feeling about this or a consciousness that it was right, and that people when faced with it could vote honestly, openly and smilingly for it, and people were faced with a debt to pay believing it was just, we could deal with this and get rid of the taint of retrospection by having a Bill brought in simply to pay the money as a debt accruing as from the date upon which the Bill was brought in. The reason that that is not being done is because, hard as Party discipline is, and sharp as is the crack of the Party Whip, men would break through rather than vote for that as a new measure. They must have some little bit of clouding of the atmosphere, some little bit of secrecy as to what they are to vote upon.
Again, we have the further excuse given that it is not breaking or amending the law. We were told by the Deputy who has just spoken that some of the speeches made might have been relevant if it were meant to change the law, but the law is not being changed. The bringing forward of an argument like that shows the scarcity of good argument and definitely shows the straits to which certain people are reduced. We are not changing the law. Why? Because the Attorney-General has advised that the present two actions taken by the Cork and the Louth County Councils must succeed. If we are not changing the law, we are doing this—we are forestalling because we know what the decision of the court is going to be.
The Attorney-General has often been paraded in the courts of this country in a very dishonoured and, I should say, dishonourable way. He certainly appeared as a man of no substance, of no weight. He has, I might say, been cuffed around the courts of this country in certain actions in which he had the temerity to appear. In these two actions he claimed that the proceedings instituted by these councils were a nuisance, and he was, in so many words, told that he himself was a nuisance, and that the vexatiousness was not on the part of the county councils but on his part. He hides all that ignominy and shame in the phrase he used the other night, that he could not advise the Government that they could succeed. He knows well that he must have advised them that they were going to lose, and the loss is before this House at this moment as clearly written down as if the court had decided that what the Government have been doing is wrong and illegal. Therefore, we have this patching up and haste to get the matter right before the court will have taken a decision on these actions.
The Parliamentary Secretary told us that Deputy O'Higgins had derided a majority of this House. I was here for his speech, and it is warping his phrase to say that was his speech. What he derided, and properly derided, was a majority of this House uncontrolled by a second House or the courts. That is where the trouble and scandal in this matter arises. We get back to a very disordered, very barbarous and savage state of society if people do not know the rules they have to obey, if the rules can be changed by those who have strength at a certain moment, and changed to operate backwards. That was the old-time system when people were ruled in certain communities and certain areas by the strong hand, and what the strong man said at any time was the law; he could change the law at any time for his subjects. But when we come to decent times and to ordered society one of the things inherent in ordered society is that the rules of the game are known before you start to play, and that the rules cannot be changed while the game is in progress. People who have established rights, either definitely or in a prima facie way, or people who are on the road to establish rights, should be allowed to proceed with whatever they have instituted until the rights are declared. Then, if the Government do not like it, they can change it as from that moment on. I do not mind if there is a change as long as it does not hurt people, as long as it does not work against people who have been assured of rights. It is because it is known that this action has thrown us back into the most disordered state that we have all this delving and seeking for precedents.
Deputy O'Higgins was on the right note when he said that it is not a good mark for the society that we want to have established here that you should have one House ruling by a majority of one, say, with no second House to control, advise or supervise, even to delay, and certainly without any judicial power independent of this House to interpret what has proceeded from this House, always subject to the fact that this House at any moment can from a given date change. Men in communities all over the world have built up this system of checks and balances —the two-house system and the system of a judiciary quite independent, put on a pedestal, free from interference with salaries or conditions of employment or dismissal. These people should be left to interpret the laws made here. What Deputy O'Higgins reviled was the system sought now to be introduced, by which a majority of one individual in this House is going in future to rule the whole community and to overawe and overpower the judges with regard to something the judges might have said five, 10 or 15 years ago. That is not ordered society. That is not what men have progressed to. That is the bad old system, that is retrogression, that is reaction, if ever the terms could be applied.
Why not be naked and clear? Why not get to the point that Deputy Cosgrave spoke of the other night, that men ought to have given to them as a warning, when they seek to introduce any action in the courts, that they should first of all ring up some Minister, some head of a Department, and ask him: "If I succeed in this, is it so contrary to Government policy that a retrospective piece of legislation will be introduced and that the fruits of my victory will be snatched from me"? Nobody could stand for that, plainly and openly stated, but can people vote for it when stated in a mess, because that is the principle that juts out from what is before us now? That is definitely going back from an ordered state of society to the more savage position where the strong hand rules; and the strong hand is now pretending to rule in accordance with democratic forms, when its strength is merely being used not to support democracy but to break down democracy. We have on the Government Benches a delving into the past for precedents and a sorry lot of precedents have been brought forward. I want to make this statement very distinct—that as a member of the Executive Council for a certain number of years, and a member of this House for a longer number of years, I know of no Act which reverses the judgment of the Supreme Court of this country. I know of several Acts which re-establish the judgments of the Supreme Court in this country.
You know of no attempts to reverse the judgments?
I know of no attempts. I intend to go through these measures; I will quote them. I know of several Acts that were passed to validate and strengthen, if that were necessary, the judgments of the Supreme Court in this country and to prevent any judgment being got from anybody else outside this country against the judgments of the Supreme Court. I stand for that. That was upholding the judgments of the Supreme Court that we always regarded as the supreme judicial authority in this country. What happened? The main example brought forward here has been the Copyright Act. Phrases have been repeated here as if they formed precedents for this Bill.
Will the Deputy read his speech on that Act?
I will, and read the comments on it also. The best comment on it was passed by the best legal mind that the Senate had and he wound up by saying that this Act was upholding the Supreme Court judgment. I accept it as such. I argued for that Act as upholding the Supreme Court judgment. The Minister does not know the reactions of the Copyright Act. The Minister has not stopped to think. I intended a small reference to the Supreme Court judgment. I referred to four cumbrous sections in that Act. There had been copyright in this country under laws passed—not in this country—up to the Treaty. It was thought that the 1911 Copyright Act had been carried forward by Article 73 of the Constitution. There was an Act passed in 1927 to continue such copyright as there was. Now the Bray Urban Council got a band to play a tune called "Lilac Time." The Performing Rights Association did allege that they had copyright in that tune and they sought for those rights in our courts. The High Court decided that there was an infringement of the copyright of the Performing Rights Society. The Bray Urban Council went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court held, contrary to the view—that was the view of everybody who thought about the matter—that there had been no copyright. In a certain limited way, the decision, as far as it affected two sets of litigants, was this, that the Bray Urban Council who had done what was supposed to be against the law, had in reality done only what was within their right and they had not to pay the costs. The Performing Rights Association who had all along thought they had copyright were mulcted in costs. They had to pay the costs of this action.
We brought in a measure here to validate that judgment of the Supreme Court. Now there had to be a view beyond that. We were a member of an international union. We had attended a Copyright Convention, the Berne Convention as it was called. Under the provisions of that convention we were bound to continue copyright in this country and we did so. We gave to people whom we supposed to have copyright before that judgment of the Supreme Court, this much right, that their copyright would not be broken in the interim. These were based on the paragraph that the Parliamentary Secretary quotes as showing a breach of the Supreme Court judgment. Think of the situation. The Supreme Court said they had no copyright. We said we would tie up the breach of copyright again. Here was the situation that people like the Bray Urban Council might be discovered to have been breaking copyright which never existed. And so we said: "We will tie up the years but in between we will hold to the judgment of the Supreme Court; if anybody has broken the law there will be no breach and no penalties for the infringement." We validated the judgment of the Supreme Court and having validated it we said: "We will not allow anybody to get damages for infringement." Because we did that I am told here now that the section which did it is breaking the Supreme Court judgment. The fact is that not merely was that section in support of the Supreme Court judgment but it implemented it in the fullest possible way. It implemented what the court had found.
If there had been a little more thought this matter of the Copyright Act would certainly never have been thrown in as an example. Copyright is a monopoly right. It gives a position adverse to the whole world in favour of one person. We had another alternative to the Copyright Act. I could have said that "copyright was to be deemed to have existed from this on." I had to enlarge the terms of the Act by adding a number of years in which it was supposed to be dead and I enlarged it by the intermediate term. What we did was to say: "We thought that you had carried forward copyright in 1922, and in 1927 we found that was not the position. You had no property in the meantime in any copyright and anyone who has broken it will not suffer for it." I am told this evening that that is the precedent for what is happening here now. I stand on that Act as validating, upholding and implementing in the fullest possible way the Supreme Court view. Whatever else we did, I did because as a member of the International Union we were bound to remake the Constitution and we remade it because no person had a right to have it broken. And even though we thought it was theoretically right, or that there had been an infringement of the Copyright Act, we carried out everything because the Supreme Court said that in that period there was no copyright in this country. And that is the example that has been given here this evening of retrospective legislation. This at any rate is clear, that as between the Bray Urban Council and The Performing Rights Society we made no change. I thought that the Bray Urban Council had gained a victory that it should not have gained. I thought that the Performing Rights Society had been mulcted in costs for doing what I thought they had a right to do. Did I change the burden? I left it as it was.
Are the Government prepared to leave the actions by the Louth and Cork County Councils to take their course and not disturb the findings of the court? That would approach what I did in the case of the Copyright Act. But it is the last thing the Government will think of. The other example quoted here is based on a speech and criticism by the Parliamentary Secretary of some part of the Finance Act of 1931. I do not say it for the purpose of evading criticism or examination of that or what he was referring to. He read out a speech that would appear to refer to what was retrospective legislation. That does not bring confidence to me. We would have a better case if he had quoted to us the provisions which he said were retrospective under that Act. It was possible for him to found an argument to prove to him that it was retrospective but to do so it had to be on his speech and not on the provisions of the Act.
What about the Indemnity Act?
The Indemnity Act was retrospective. That Act started by saying that there were conditions prevailing in this country that were not governed by law at all. If they were governed by law Deputy Donnelly would not be here.
You did your best to stop us.
Possibly, and it may be a pleasure now that we did not succeed, but we might not have thought so then.
What about the decision of the courts?
There was only one decision of the courts, and that decision of the courts ran and was upheld. We changed the law from that moment on.
On the same date?
Possibly. I do not care about this Government saying with regard to these annuities: "You will pay from this moment on." That is not retrospective. What we are at, the evil we are against, is the changing of these rules with backward effect. If we are going to be in a state of ordered society, people ought to know the conditions under which they are to live, and those conditions ought to be made clear to them. They ought to be capable of ascertainment by the independent judicial authority set up for that purpose. It ought not to be possible for a Government to say: "That is not what we meant," and it ought not to be possible for the House here to tell the courts what they are to find. It is a wrong thing to let people live in certain circumstances under the belief that their rights can be ascertained by an independent authority, and then the Government can come along and say: "That is not what we meant," and the Government then sets about altering things. The present proposal is that a certain condition of things will rule backwards to the extent of two years.
So we are agreed as to what we do mean?
There is many a man who signed a contract in the belief that it meant a certain thing, and when it was discovered to mean something else he had to pay for it. Would Deputy Moore like business in the commercial world to be run on the basis that any man can declare what he meant a particular contract to be?
This is no contract.
It is simply the law imposed by a superior force, the majority in this House, on the community. The proposal is that the superior force of the majority can impose its will after a certain date. It has always been regarded as contrary to the dictates of order in any community to do that with any backward effect.
There has not been a single assertion by any Deputy that he understood the Guarantee Fund arrangement was not to apply.
I do not care if the House were unanimous, if there was one man who took an action to test it and got a declaration against the unanimous view of the House, the judge's decision ought to hold against the unanimous view of the House.
That is mere formalism.
If the Deputy was the one man he would not consider it formalism. Any one man has a right to be indemnified against the blunder of even a unanimous House if the courts find the unanimous view was not properly expressed.
The courts have not found that.
The Minister for Finance knows that the Attorney-General was chased out of court as a nuisance.
The Deputy knows that is not so.
I know it is a fact that the Attorney-General was chased out of court.
The Deputy knows that the court found there was a case to be argued.
I know the Minister for Finance sent the Attorney-General with a motion looking to have a particular action dismissed on the ground that it was a nuisance and vexatious, and the result of the court's judgment was that he was a nuisance himself. That is not a parody. That is the fact, and if it was not the fact there would not be this Bill. All that is being asked is that the Minister will do what has been done in another Act. The Minister for Industry and Commerce introduced a Bill this year to amend an Act and give it retrospective effect and to preserve all proceedings instituted before the introduction of the measure. Will the Minister for Finance take that easy way out of the situation? Why should not people who start proceedings, looking for a decision, be allowed to have the independent minds of the people who were established to rule as judges in an independent position?
On an entirely technical point.
On an entirely technical point? Will the Deputy not move his group? If this is so technical, if it is clear it is technical, then there should be no hesitation about the Deputy's group voting for a new Bill which will not have retrospective effect but will have the same result; which will simply deem a debt of a certain amount to exist on the county councils arising, say, as from to-morrow, and that will be collected from them in certain payments. If there is only the difference between these two things, and that it is due to a technical defect, the Deputy surely could justify himself in his constituency. Why not go on that foot? The Deputy knows well he could not go to any constituency and say, without knowing what the law was going to be, not caring what the law was going to be, that Deputies on his side of the House with their majority were simply going to mulct the county councils in certain moneys. That will not be done, and the Deputy knows it.
The Deputy suggests that the difference between the Government's proposal and what I suggest is only formalism. I submit there is no case against what I propose. We have all this groping for precedent; we have all this talk about the Finance Act of 1931, the Copyright Act, which was not understood, and the question of the Indemnity Act, which is ludicrous in the circumstances. After we have done with these so-called precedents we get to the reality. The non-payers, according to the Parliamentary Secretary, should not have the debts extracted from them—that is the view of the persons who vote against this measure. He asked Deputy Davin if he had not suggested a more intensive enforcement of measures in order to have compliance with the law, and the Minister told us what that meant—bailiffs and battering rams. We are supposed to be voting against the application of more battering rams and the impact of further bailiffs and their batons on the people. Supposing we say we are not in favour of more bailiffs and battering rams, is there anything shameful in that? Will Deputy Moore, the man who feels the farmers would suffer anything for the mere exaltation of upholding a Party standard, be prepared to advocate more bailiffs and more battering rams?
Some of the Deputy's Party are voting for more bailiffs and battering rams.
If we are we would like to have it better explained to us, and it might bring a little enlightenment as to what members of the Minister's Party are voting for. We are asked, do we want non-payers to get off? What we want is that, just as in ordinary commercial dealings, the people should get the law declared for them by the judges, and the law can be changed if it is decided it is not a good law to have running. But it should only be changed with forward effect. I am against bailiffs and battering rams for retrospectively declared debts—I am definitely against that. We are supposed to be in the dilemma that if we are not for more bailiffs and battering rams we are for more taxes. I am not in favour of that either. Until I get a clear confession that the members of the Government, who hold their positions through a certain plan that they promulgated to the country some years ago, now realise that that plan was nonsense, I will not rest satisfied. I am still going to stand on this, that there were economies to the extent of £2,000,000 promised as feasible in this country. If we are £2,000,000 short in any regard, let us get the economies. There were economies to be got without cutting salaries or imposing hardships on anybody.
There is no amendment to that effect.
The Minister made speeches about it.
There was a plan to that effect, and there was a Government that should have given effect to that plan. I am not in the dilemma that I must fight for the sheriff or the battering-ram or the new taxes, unless there is a definite confession that the £2,000,000 plan cannot be produced. To protest against that does not mean that we are driven back to these unfortunate alternatives. The non-payers who, we are told, have been dishonest and defaulting, require some consideration by having their appeals heard rather than being subjected to the bailiffs and the battering-ram. Should not there be some consideration, in this year 1935, as to why there is so much deficiency in the payment of the annuities. Remember we are supposed to have an almost new heaven in this country. There are signs of prosperity all round, we are told. New schemes are being embarked upon. Government money is being lavished about. There is help and subsidies and the declaration of new markets here at home as well as the waning ones abroad. The whole country, we are told, is very well off. Why then so much non-payment? It must be that there is a great deal of vice in the community if people are to hold that view.
Will Deputies in this House go to their constituents and tell them that that is so? Will they go to their constituents and say that is the position, though in their heart of hearts they know that this measure should really be passed. Will they tell their constituents that only the honest people will be mulcted? How many Deputies will go to their constituents and tell them these things and get away with their lives? Are there any men in this House prepared to say that, other than Ministers? Has any man representing a constituency courage enough to stand up and say that in the main this Bill will hit dishonest people and should be voted for? Does anybody believe in that? There is much truth in what Deputy Davin said, that the people are so beaten down and depressed that they cannot pay. It is a secondary consideration, but it also has its effect, that you may be doing this wrong in retrospective legislation in securing this result.
What is the good, at a time when nearly £760,000 is outstanding, in regard to those annuities alone, in trying to get that from people who are more in arrears now than at any other stage in history, with their ordinary rates? If a man cannot pay a pound one year, there is no use asking him to pay £5 the next year if he has got deeper into arrears in the meantime. That is what is proposed here. The ordinary rates brought forward this year show greater arrears than any for several years past. There is nearly £760,000 outstanding in regard to this matter. Less than £160,000 of that has been carried forward into the new rate, so far. There is nearly £560,000 extra money to be found, and that has to be found from people who cannot pay their ordinary rates. If it was nothing else than a matter of expediency, then expediency would suggest to the Minister to pause in view of the facts disclosed showing the terrible state to which the ratepayers have been brought. It is not very much good setting up precedents and rules for ordered society if we find ourselves in the position that no matter what the wrong, or what section of the community are attacked, the majority of the House can do nothing to protect them. It is not much good for the Government to do what they are doing from the angle of expediency if, when it is done, it is not going to bring any advantage or any result. In such circumstances the Ministry will have failed doubly, because they will have deprived the institution of the judiciary of any respect or power they have, and they will not get their money at all now unless through this dishonest way of pilfering it from the community.
The Government are doing two things here. They are establishing a precedent, as Deputy O'Higgins said, blatant and clear for everybody to see, and that nobody in any predicament can fail to see. The only hope is that the results may be so bad that although it is seen clear as a precedent, still, folk in a predicament may not be inclined to follow it, because the result is as damaging as the precedent is bad.
In speaking against this amendment the Minister for Finance referred to the dishonesty of the farmers of this country. I, as a farmer, and as one representing farmers, think I am in duty bound to offer my protest against that insinuation in this House. He referred to an organisation in Cork against the payment of annuities, but I would point out to the Minister that there is no organisation in Cork against the payment of annuities. There was an organisation against having to pay them over and over again. Deputy Flinn said: "Hear, hear!" when it was stated there was an organisation in Cork against the payment of annuities. Will the Deputy say "hear, hear" now to what I have said?
Hear, hear!
Deputy Flinn said once that he came into this country to get money out of it.
In fact he did not.
And he is getting it too damn soft. The Minister for Finance rebuked Deputy Davin because he said there were 25 per cent. of the people in Laoighis who could not pay these taxes.
I would like to point out what Deputy Corkery, speaking at the Ard-Fheis last week, said: "This thing has come to the breaking-point with the people living in the poorer districts. They are barely existing at the present, and it is the duty of the Government to see that some means be devised by which they will be able to live at least in some kind of comfort." I am sure Deputy Corkery will stand over that statement. He is a business man and has been amongst the farmers, not like the Minister who never stood in a farmer's house in his blooming life. I am sure, when the Minister for Finance was knocking around he looked for better quarters than he could get in a farmer's house in this country. He was always a keen gentleman and looked for a good time. The Minister for Finance referred to the manner in which the people of Mayo are paying their annuities. I wonder what the Minister has to say about the commission that Deputy Corkery was demanding to have set up to find out the real position of the farmers. He might then find out they paid them at the loss to themselves or their families of something which they very much needed, or perhaps, leaving the shopkepers to wait for their debts. These are points we would like to have investigated in connection with this matter. Deputy Flinn refers to the deliberate misrepresentation of Deputies who drafted this. It is very easy for Deputy Flinn to talk like that, but will he vote for such a commission if it is brought forward in this House? Is he prepared to vote for the setting up of a commission similar to the one demanded by Deputy Corkery at his own Ard-Fheis last week, so that we can find out the real position of the farmers in this country? I am not demanding it on political grounds. I am demanding it because I worked with the farmers during my life and always tried to improve their position; but, God knows, when I look back at the sacrifices the people of this country made for the last 30 years and see the whole thing being destroyed by people like the Minister for Finance and Deputy Flinn, I say: May God help the people of this country.
Deputy Flinn has let the cat out of the bag and says to us: "If we do not find this money from the farmers, how are we going to find it?" He, therefore, admits that this is not a land annuity; that it is a tax. I agree with him, because the President himself has stated in this House, on more than one occasion, that the farmers of this country had paid their annuities to the British Government and that they had been extracted from them in a more painful way than they had ever been paid before. How has the Minister for Finance the audacity to stand up here in this House and speak as he has spoken to the people of this country, particularly the people in the cities who do not understand the position of the farmers of the country? How would some of the supporters of the Minister for Finance, who are not farmers, like to be compelled to pay their debts twice, and three times, and four times over, and even ten times over, as a great many small farmers have had to pay them? Deputy Flinn says that the farmers want to hand their obligations to somebody else. On several occasions, Deputy Cosgrave gave the figures for the ten years previous to the coming into office of the present Government, and pointed out that the farmers had met their responsibilities during that period. The Minister for Finance, last week, asked me how it was that I never protested against paying my annuities to the British Government. I paid them because I had to pay them, and I pay them now, and there is no use in the Minister trying to get away from the question at issue. My annuity was fairly large, but I can tell the Minister that it was far easier to pay it during that time than I find it to pay my annuity now. There was no such thing as slaying calves at that time. My calves were worth £3 10s. apiece at that time, but to-day it is very hard to get £1 apiece, and if I were to wait for Dr. Ryan I would probably get only a shilling or two.
Deputy Flinn referred to Deputy Davin. He wants to know where is this money going to be taken from if not from the farmers, and what article are we going to put a tax on. Deputy McGilligan has pointed out that, before they came into office, the Government promised the people of this country that they would reduce taxation by £2,000,000 without interfering with any of the public services. They should go back and try to fulfil their promises to the people of this country in that way. The President himself has been boasting about the fulfilment of their promises. In any case, I am supporting this amendment and I do so, and I am proud to say it, along with the people in Cork, the representatives of the different political Parties on the county council, who have been unanimous in demanding that this Bill be withdrawn. I have great pleasure in supporting them in doing so.
It would be very difficult to conceive of a more audacious attempt by any Government to filch from the people the rights that are theirs by law. It is an attempt for which there is no precedent, and the Government, by its action in unlawfully withholding money from the county councils, has created chaos in the whole local government of the country. In a time of depression caused by Government policy, the Government have illegally withheld grants from the county councils to which they are entitled. That is one of the chief causes of all the wrong that has happened the county councils of the country and is the main cause of the embarrassment which exists in so many counties. In my own County of Westmeath it has resulted in the County Council being abolished and the whole administration handed over to a paid nominee of the Government. The difference in the amount of grants paid to the Council of Westmeath in the first year of the present Government's term of office and the last accounting year—not the present financial year— is over £30,000, an amount which the Council has to make good by an increase to that extent of the rates. There is nothing about arrears of annuities in those years, and the amount this year would be hard to count, it is so large. The Westmeath County Council had struck a rate this year, and they were ordered by the Minister for Local Government and Public Health to strike a fresh rate to meet the arrears of annuities. We sent a deputation to the Minister to try to point out to him that the people would not be able to bear the increased rate. Nothing was done, however, and we were told to go back and strike this increased rate. At the next meeting of the Council that was called, nobody turned up except the Fine Gael County Councillors. Westmeath has a majority of Fianna Fáil County Councillors, but they would not come in. They wanted the Fine Gael Councillors to do the dirty work for them, and then they could come in afterwards and pose as great fellows. I came in to the meeting and I told the councillors that I was not elected by the people of Westmeath to strike a rate for the Government. I told them I was not elected by the people of Westmeath in order to be a tax-gatherer for the Government.
We are told that the arrears of annuities is the chief cause of the stoppage in grants, and that there would not be any stoppage if the land annuities were paid. The farmers have two very excellent reasons to account for their position in regard to land annuities. The first is that they maintain that they paid them in full, if they did not pay more, through the tarrifs which were imposed by the British Government for the purpose of meeting the liability to the bondholders. The second reason is that they are unable to pay because the Government, through its policy, has pauperised the agricultural industry of the country.
The Government now seek to penalise the farmers by transferring the liability for the annuities to the ratepayers who, in the main, are the farmers, and the way they are punishing the farmers and ratepayers of Westmeath ought to make every member on the Government side hang down his head in shame. In September, 1934, they sent down four squads of Broy Harriers and, in eight months, they took from the people of Westmeath three half-years' arrears of annuities and frightened them into paying two current half-years as well. The people were so frightened that they tried to pay the two current half years also. Never in the worst days of landlordism, or of British tyranny in this country, was a thing like that done to a body of farmers and ratepayers in this country; but now we have a native Government sending down its agents to terrorise the people and, after taking seven half years of annuities in nine months from the people of Westmeath, they dissolved the council. They dragged three half years of arrears from the people and the people were so frightened that they were compelled to pay the two current half years also. The people tried to pay their rates, and then the Government sent down a commissioner and compelled them to raise the rates up to 2/- in the £ on top of all that, while the neighbouring County of Meath, which had as large an amount of arrears, got off scot free without a raising of the rates.
We have been presented with this dastardly Bill because it has been brought home to the Government and its officials that it is illegal to stop the grants. Now they are trying to transfer the liability arising in connection with the annuities to the ratepayers. Their object in bringing in this Bill is to make legal what has been declared to be illegal, and to take from the ratepayers the freedom that is theirs by law. This Bill is a piece of barefaced political dishonesty, and if introduced by anybody, except the Government, would be scouted out of any properly constituted Assembly. It would be treated with the scorn and contempt that it deserves. If there was a spark of honesty in the members who sit on the Government benches they would vote against this measure. It gives one a true indication of what is going to happen to the people when all power to make laws in this country is vested in the Dáil, and the Dáil only. What, in fact, will such an Assembly be? It will be composed of a small body of members forming an Executive Council. I trust the Dáil on this occasion will show it has sufficient independence to refuse to take this step towards absolute dictatorship.
As an ordinary farmer I would like to say a few words on this Bill. In my opinion the Bill seems to be framed for the purpose of destroying the agricultural community. It is a rapacious piece of legislation and, so far as the farmers of the country are concerned, may be said to be the last straw. It shows absolute contempt for the honesty, impartiality, and sound judgement of the courts of this State. During the last election Fianna Fáil promised the people a reduction of £2,000,000 in taxation, and said that out of that they would completely derate agricultural land. But the position to-day is that we find ourselves called upon to pay rates which are much higher than we can afford. Agriculture produces 80 per cent. of the wealth of this State, but to-day the farmers find that, as compared with two or three years ago, they are 80 per cent. worse off. In the county which I have the honour to represent, and which had, perhaps, the honour to elect the President, the sum of £25,000 is being withheld from the Agricultural Grant this year, and £2,700 of the Road Grant has been withheld as compared with what we received last year.
A few days ago the Clare County Council, of which I am a member, passed a resolution asking the Government to give 50-50 towards the relief of the unemployed at Christmas. The Council proposed to give £3,000 of the ratepayers' money if the Government would give a similar amount. We now find that the Government are giving us the very generous sum of £1,000 out of the Exchequer as against the £3,000 put up by the unfortunate farmers of Clare. The net result of that will be an increase of 2/- in the £ on the rates in the County Clare during the coming year.
We, as the representatives of the people of this State, have a duty to perform, and that is to establish peace and order in this country with reasonable prosperity. I hope every Deputy realises that. I wonder if any of us would be ashamed to go outside the door of this House and have to admit that we had brought the country to a state of lawlessness, destruction, despair and bankruptcy. I should like to say that the time is fast approaching when the farmers will again have to band themselves together, as they did during the land agitation under the leadership of Dillon and Davitt, and let the Government see that no Acts of Parliament will deprive them of their homes and of their land. It would be well for the Government to realise that the farmers of this country can organise themselves just as the Fianna Fáil Party or any other body in the country can, and I think it is time they did so. I admit that there are decent farmers and decent members of the community representing other branches of life sitting on the Fianna Fáil Benches. We had an example of that here some evenings ago when one responsible Fianna Fáil Deputy spoke on this Bill and did not vote for it. I hope his example will be followed by many other Deputies here to-night: by those who realise their duty to the country and remember that the people are greater than any little Act of Parliament.
I desire to stress my opposition to this section of the Bill and to support the amendment moved by Deputy Brennan. The county that I have the honour to represent was, to use the phrase of the Minister for Finance, one of those responsible for the institution of the legal proceedings that have been referred to. I would like to say that the members of that council, to which I have the honour to belong, did not take that action with the express intention of being, to use a familiar phrase, "again the Government." The people of Louth have always been remarkable for their observance of the law as it exists to-day, as it existed yesterday, and they will continue to observe it. The members of that council have as their Chairman one of the best citizens to be found in this State. He is a man who, I believe, commands the confidence not alone of the present Ministry but of the past Ministry. On behalf of the members of that council, I resent most emphatically the suggestion made by the Minister for Finance this evening as well as on the Second Reading of the Bill, that the people of Louth were animated with no other idea than that of starting an action that was supposed to be, in the words of the Minister, a vexatious action. The members of that council—the elected representatives of the people and the custodians of the people's rights—considered this matter at an ordinary finance committee meeting. They went into the question in great detail. Having done so, they did as every other council would do under the same circumstances. They referred the matter to their solicitor. He took counsel's opinion. That opinion was to the effect that, as the law stands at the moment, the council had a good chance of winning their case on the question of the reduction of the agricultural grants due to the deficiencies in the Land Purchase Annuities Fund. The council, having received that opinion, institued legal proceedings in order to defend the rights and the interests of the people whom they represent. I am a member of that council, and one who, possibly, may not have the same knowledge as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance—I believe he has been styled by the members of the Fianna Fáil Party as the greatest orator since the days of O'Connell——
Why drag in O'Connell?
——I always held the opinion that law, after all, was nothing more than ordinary commonsense. The man in the street takes the view that as the Guarantee Fund is not functioning as it was intended, there could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be any deficiency in that Fund, since the Government is not paying any moneys. The ordinary members of Louth County Council—simple men no doubt —not having the brains of Deputy Donnelly, or possibly the brains of Deputy Corry or Deputy T. Kelly——
They must be a poor lot.
——thought that our people were duly entitled to these moneys and, consequently, entered upon this action, as they were entitled. The sums involved for the years 1933-34 are £5,157 5s. 1d.; for 1934-35, £3,034 19s. 4d., making a total of £8,192. In connection with the Estate Duty Grant, the amount involved from 1932 to 1935 was £10,000, the combined sum making a total of £18,000. That is a sum worth fighting for, but even at the risk of losing the case, we were prepared to spend anything from £400 to £500. Let me say at the outset that as a member of the council I was not at all happy about entering upon these legal proceedings, because I thought it was possibly a question of luck, we might lose or we might win. The introduction of this Bill is, I am glad to say, confirmation of our action, because it means that we are going to win. From that viewpoint alone I am deeply grateful to the Attorney-General, who, I suppose, advised the Government to introduce the Bill. On the other hand, I think it is nothing short of dishonourable on the part of a Government to introduce a Bill, having for its object the anticipation of a judgment of the Supreme Court of this State. We have always more or less prided ourselves on the fact that we are a just people, an honest people, and that we like to see fair play. There is absolutely no fair play in this matter. We are prepared to abide by the decision of the courts. If we lose the case we have to pay, but, if we win we are entitled to have the benefit of whatever decision is given by the courts duly constituted in this State. The judges are men who by their position are free from every influence when interpreting the law. In introducing this Bill the Government has thought otherwise.
A great deal has been said about the members of the Fianna Fáil Party, and that individual members of the Party possibly are against this Bill. I suppose there are individual members against it, but I am conscious of the fact that one of the things President de Valera is fortunate in having is unanimity amongst the members of the Party. The reason he has such unanimity amongst the members of his Party is that, if any member dared to put up his own mind against that of President de Valera he would be put out of the Party. Not one member of that Party could on his own get ten or 20 votes in any constituency in this country. That is the explanation of the unanimity that prevails amongst the members of that Party. I advise my friends on the opposite benches to have a little of that very necessary quality known as moral courage. I never accused members of that Party of having that.
You sacked Deputy Belton for that.
That is the Party that masqueraded outside this House for six or seven years as republicans, created damage amounting to £30,000,000 or £40,000,000, then swallowed their principles, came in here and took the oath and their seats and £360 a year. The men who would do that would do anything. I was never surprised when people said what a wonderful thing it was that President de Valera had such unanimity amongst his Party. That is the explanation. Not one Deputy could leave the Party and hope to get ten votes.
Will the Deputy come to the amendment before the House?
We returned you once.
No.
Do not forget the time.
I headed the poll and beat two big machines.
Order!
Would the President do the same and make the same fight that I did at five elections on my own between two big machines? That is a good record, and to-morrow I could do it again standing on my head. In support of the Bill it was stated here by the Minister for Finance that the people who have paid their annuities will have to make up deficiencies in the Guarantee Fund. The Minister went on to draw a comparison between the amounts outstanding in counties like Tipperary, Monaghan and Donegal. The Minister waxed eloquent on that and taunted Deputy Davin and members of the Labour Party on their attitude to the Bill. The Minister should be a little more fair in his comparisons. I put it to the Minister that there are farmers in County Tipperary who have 40 or 50 fat cattle to sell and who have to sell them on an average of from £9 to £10 apiece, which in ordinary circumstances would realise £15 to £16 apiece. There would be a loss of £6 a head in the case of 50 cattle which would represent about £300 on one item alone. Put that against the position of the average farmer in Donegal. It is well known that there is good land in Donegal. There may be some big farmers there, but not to the same extent as in Tipperary. A Tipperary farmer on one deal would lose as much money as would pay the annuities of hundreds of farmers in Donegal and Monaghan. The analogy is the same as what happened in connection with the British Post Office. When the Post Office included Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Ireland there was an annual profit of from eight to ten million pounds. On the Irish end nearly two millions was lost every year, yet we enjoyed the same privileges as Great Britain because there was a profit on the service as a whole. It is not a fair, a just, or an honest comparison to compare the differences in the amounts outstanding in Tipperary and Cork and in Donegal and Monaghan. I could quote examples to prove that that is not a fair basis to go on. Amongst other things, it was stated by the Minister for Finance that there was a campaign against the payment of land annuities.
There again, let me tell the Minister for Finance and President de Valera that it does not require a law to make the people of Louth or any man who has been brought up in the real Christian spirit law-abiding. We in Louth always paid our debts and I resent the suggestion of the Minister for Finance, because I myself had the courage to tell the people of Louth to pay their annuities and their rates so long as they were in a position to do so. If there is any Party responsible for the position in which the annuities fund is to-day, it is the Fianna Fáil Party, for, previous to their entry into this Dáil, they told the people to pay no rates and no annuities. On behalf of the people of Louth I throw that insinuation back in the teeth of the Minister for Finance. We in Louth have always done our best to pay our way, and, as a county having a 100 per cent. majority against the Government— two members out of three—there is not a county in the Free State that has done as much to put into operation the policy of the Government in the interests of the people of the country in general. They have sunk their differences and they have cooperated with the Government in putting into effect any measures which they thought would react to the benefit, not alone of the people of the county, but of the people of the Twenty-six Counties.
It is about time that the members of the Executive Council and of Fianna Fáil dropped all these old shibboleths about compaigns against the payment of annuities and rates. We have taken on this action in County Louth and we are prepared to abide by the decision of the courts duly constituted in this country, and, as a people, we resent the action of the Government in introducing this Bill to anticipate the verdict of the courts. If the Government had any decency left they would easily achieve the same object, if and when the decision of the courts was given, but they have thought fit to introduce this Bill in order to spike, as it were, the decision which the judges are about to give in this action.
It is another instance of the insolence, if I may so call it, of the members of the Party opposite. It is another instance of tyranny. It is an old saying that the greater the slave, the greater the tyrant, and members of the opposite benches who were always prating about the tyranny of the British Government, and of the tyranny and dishonesty of the late Government, and who owe their position to propaganda of that nature, are to-day the worst tyrants themselves. They have introduced this Bill with the idea that no matter what verdict the judges give, they are going to make that verdict null and void in so far as the Counties of Louth and Cork are concerned. As people representing a very important county in this State, we think that is not playing the game. It is not justice and it is not honesty, and I hope and trust that, even though this Bill goes through, there will be found time to decide this action and that the result will be a vindication of the views held at present by the members of the Louth and Cork County Councils.
I had no intention at all of taking part in this debate, but after the thunderous pronouncement by Deputy Coburn I cannot resist the temptation to say one or two words in reply. It is a great thing to hear in this House so many Opposition Deputies—and I see Deputy Coburn has joined the group—vying with one another about the steps they took in their constituencies and the advice they gave, the number of people they told "By all means pay your annuities," and how active they have been as propagandists in carrying out the policy of the Government in the collection of land annuities. That is a satisfactory thing coming even at this hour of the day. I am delighted to see that Deputy Coburn has joined that group, but I noticed that he avoided one very important matter with which the Minister for Finance dealt here to-day, in reading out the payments in the various constituencies and counties. Louth is one of the best counties; Louth is one of the places where there are very little arrears. County Louth is only 16 per cent. behind. What is the explanation of that? Is it due entirely to Deputy Coburn going around amongst the people of County Louth and telling them to pay, or is it due to the fact that they are able to pay? Will Deputy Coburn deny this, that of all the constituencies in Ireland —and County Louth is the one constituency in which the representation is 2 to 1 against the Government— there is no county or constituency in Ireland that had done better as a result of Government policy than the County Louth. Take it from whatever angle you like, I defy anybody to deny that, and that, to my mind, is one of the main reasons why there are no arrears and why the people are able to pay.
Put up your proofs now.
I will put them up. The proofs are in the fact that the cash has been paid, and there is no better proof than a patent fact. There are no arrears there.
Does the Deputy know any farmers in Louth?
Certainly, plenty of them; and many of them who used to go in for grazing have changed over to the intensive tillage policy. I believe that one of the most successful is the gentleman referred to—the Chairman of the Louth County Council.
You know all about it.
I do; I know that much about it. I am glad to see that Deputy Davin is back in the House. After all, I think our constituency has contributed a little to this debate.
The Deputy had better not emphasise that point too much.
I want to say one or two things in reply to the remarks made by the Deputy. He seems to stress, and very unnecessarily, I thought, the fact that the Minister for Finance and the rest of us were not in this House since 1922.
I did not.
Yes, the Deputy did. The Deputy was here from 1922, he said, and the Minister for Finance was not.
That is right.
That is quite correct; it is accepted. I want Deputy Davin to know that this Dáil is not the first Dáil set up in the country. There was one which functioned in 1919 and from 1919 to 1922. It was no bed of roses to be a member of that Dáil. The Minister for Finance and many men on these Government Benches attended there and it was no bed of roses, I can assure the Deputy. At no period during the activities of that Dáil did I see Deputy Davin there as a member, and I never even heard that he stood as a candidate. I think he would be well advised, when talking in future about attendances in this Dáil, to keep it at the back of his head that this Dáil is supposed to be the successor to one existing some time previously.
This is the one that counts for you and me.
This is the one that counts for you; the other counted with me, too.
The immediate relevance of all this does not jump to the eye.
Am I not entitled to reply to remarks made by Deputy Davin? Deputy O'Higgins referred to the poverty of the country and the bad state of affairs in the rural districts. Other Deputies did the same. Either Deputy MacEoin or Deputy Morrissey said that the policy of the Government had so ruined the country that it was necessary to come along with legislation of this sort, whip the people into submission and make them pay. Deputy O'Higgins subscribed to that statement a short time afterwards. I happened to be reading through a few old papers the other evening and I saw where Deputy O'Higgins was making speeches about the poverty of the country. Whoever is managing the organisation of which the Deputy is so prominent a leader ought to select their dates with greater care. Deputy O'Higgins was selected to make a speech in Fethard down in Deputy Morrissey's constituency. He referred to the poverty and the plight of the people. On the same Sunday at which he made the speech in Fethard, 47,000 people were paying £4,000 for admission to a football match at Croke Park.
All from Fethard?
No. On that day fortnight, the managers of this organisation arranged another meeting in County Tipperary at which the people were told that the country was broken and destroyed. On the same day 40,000 people were attending a hurling match. Yet, Deputy Belton and other Deputies go through the country saying there is not a penny left, that the country is destroyed and that everybody is broken and ruined.
Is it not a case of bread and circuses?
You are sitting on a volcano.
Some Opposition Deputies say that this is an attack on the privileges of the courts, that it is unprecedented, and that the people will have no respect for the courts after this Bill goes through. There is not much in that argument. Notwithstanding the statement of Deputy McGilligan that this is unprecedented, I think I could quote precedents.
Let us hear them.
I could refer to an attempt which was made, and made successfully, to torpedo a decision of the courts. A special meeting was called, and in five hours a Bill was put through the Oireachtas, got the final assent and was paraded in court the next morning to torpedo a decision given the morning before.
What Act was that?
The Public Safety Act, No. 2.
The Minister would not come in to vote against that when I wanted him to come in. When it was through, he came in—a fortnight afterwards—and took the oath.
Read the debate on that question. Deputy Davin will recollect it.
What debate?
The debate on the Public Safety Act, No. 2.
In July, 1923.
That is not the Indemnity Act?
No. Deputy O'Higgins introduced his speech this afternoon by saying that, for the first time in this House, 100 per cent. of the units opposed to the Government were aligned against a Bill and that, by our majority of one, we were going to bludgeon that Bill through. That position did obtain in this House before the last general election. So much did it obtain—this alignment of the odd Parties as against the Government of that time—that a general election was forced. The issue fought at that election was to give the Government a clear majority over all the possible combinations in this House.
Now the cat is out of the bag.
It does not matter here——
The business before the Committee is amendment No. 1. Deputy Donnelly purposes to be replying to statements made by Deputies in the course of this discussion. It would be possible for any Deputy to pick out all the "asides" or obiter dicta of previous speeches without once referring to the amendment. The Deputy must deal with the amendment in the main.
I was only replying to statements made by other Deputies.
The Deputy was replying to casual remarks or illustrations.
I am supporting this Bill and voting against the amendment. As I said on the occasion of the Budget, the collective sense, ability and brains of the Executive Council should be able to foresee events as well as any interested Deputy on the opposite side.
When business before the House has to be talked out, we see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance come in smilingly. When some makeshift arrangement has to be made, Deputy Donnelly is always found to be there. In the course of his few remarks Deputy Donnelly said that County Louth was one of the counties that were prosperous because that county, even though two to one against the present Government, has carried out the Government's policy. There is nothing like having a good opinion of one's self. Before a member of the Fianna Fáil Party knew what tillage was, County Louth farmers were the first farmers behind the plough in Ireland. Amongst them, no man led better than the Chairman of the Louth County Council—James T. McGee. At the present time, he is the only man in Ireland who has an all-in harvester.
He got it about two years ago.
Mr. McGee is a personal friend of mine and will have no objection to my stating that he is making money out of wheat. But he has grown it in the same land four years in succession. Is that farming?
Is it the amendment?
The whole necessity for the action in the courts and for this Bill has arisen out of an attempt by the Government, in 1933, to conceal its real intentions. There has been talk about honesty and about people in arrears with their annuities. I have never told anybody to pay their land annuities, for the simple reason that they had to pay them and are paying them—whether they like it or not—to the British Government. That case was made in the 1933 Land Bill. That case holds good to-day. What is this half land annuity which is supposed to be in arrear? It is no land purchase annuity at all. It is a land tax, and it is on that, I understand, that the lawyers advising the County Councils of Cork and Louth have based their case—that the Guarantee Fund was a fund which could and should be raided if there was a deficiency in the money to pay dividends on land purchase stock. What deficiencies have arisen in land purchase stock? None. All money coming in to this Government in the shape of land annuities goes into the revenue. The fact that this Bill is introduced is proof in itself that this alleged half land annuity is really a land tax. The position in which local authorities find themselves at the present time is a desperate one, and the deliberate misconstruing and exploiting by the supporters of the Government of the situation which confronts the local authorities is something which could not be done by anybody with a sense of responsibility.
If Deputy Donnelly can make a sweeping statement, and say why Louth is able to pay its annuities, I think the Minister for Finance should interest himself nearer home. I think he should interest himself in his own constituency, a constituency in which, from one end to the other, there never was more unemployment than there is at present. Never was unemployment so bad in County Dublin as it is at this moment. And what is the position of the Dublin County Council? The position of the Dublin County Council is that last year it had arrears of about £22,000 in rates and £13,000 in land annuities. That £13,000 was stopped from our grants, and it would come to us if this action were allowed to take its course. We had those arrears to throw into the estimates. We had to add £17,000 to the ordinary current expenditure, and strike a rate on that. We are collecting that rate now, and we have instructions from the Ministry of Local Government to take farmers to the courts and get judgment mortgages, when we cannot get any goods to sell in order to realise the rates. Only last night I signed a requisition to the Law Agent to have that done in the case of six or seven farmers. So well is the Fianna Fáil Party whipped up, that a motion to suspend Standing Orders, to give expression from the Dublin County Council to instructions—instructions which the county council in any county has a perfect right to give—to Deputies representing County Dublin, including the Minister for Finance——
They have no right to do that.
Are you above the people of County Dublin? If you are, I will meet you on the platform next time.
We are responsible to the electorate, and not to Deputy Belton and his clique.
The electors of County Dublin, and I as Chairman of the Dublin County Council, have responsibility to see that local government is carried out, and that the county does not go into bankruptcy.
You are putting it there.
How? I hope the Minister will answer that when he is replying to these criticisms, or that he will answer it anywhere in Dublin, at any cross-roads, and I will meet him at the cross-roads.
The Deputy must come back from the cross-roads to amendment No. 1.
If this amendment is not carried, we—I am speaking for the county I know best, and the administration of which I know best—will be up against a desperate situation. We have about £40,000 collected out of £280,000, and land annuity arrears are increased this year. We are proceeding in the courts to register judgment mortgages against farmers who are unable to pay, and who have no realisable assets. Unemployment was never greater in the county than now. Licences are being handed out for fat stock in the county, worth from £1 to £2, to be bought and passed from hand to hand; and there is a tax of £6 per head on those cattle when they are exported, all coming out of our only source of productive revenue in the county—out of agriculture. And those people who support the Government on that council calmly put down a motion that we should put up £3,000 for unemployment at Christmas. On last Monday fortnight a motion was carried there that we should put up £3,000 to relieve unemployment at Christmas, on condition that the Government would put up £8,000, and we have not yet got a reply from the Government. The right horse will be saddled this time.
The Deputy will not get a reply on this amendment, nor would a reply be in order.
If the county will have to bear the loss of that £13,000 deducted last year, and in all probability a much larger amount this year, unemployment will increase, and local government in the county will be impossible. Of course, a Chinn Comhairle, I realise that this is the Committee Stage, and that this is only an amendment to a section. While, in the ordinary way, if we were to claim privilege to answer all the points raised, we could go a long way, I think that perhaps, through no design, the debate has been a bit confined, but I appreciate that it is all the better that the debate should be kept within narrow limits. I feel that every Deputy in this House understands the position quite well, and if they were a free vote—if there were no Whips on—I am sure that Deputy Corry would be the first man into the Lobby to vote for this amendment, because he has the request of his county council to vote against the Bill altogether. There would be no pairing.
If the wishes of the constituents were carried out on this measure, as well as on this amendment, there would be an overwhelming majority for the amendment and against the Bill altogether. After all, I think that my old friend, General O'Duffy, has justified himself. The Party system and the Whips of Parties are permitting legislation to go through and compacts to be entered into by our Government and other Governments that the country does not want, that the country turned down and that Deputies in this House would turn down if they were only free to do it and if they were not tied to the tails of the Party machine.
The Minister for Finance and the Attorney-General, when they were defending this section of the Bill, made two claims, the first being that they were not interfering in any way with the courts. The Minister for Finance said that he does not admit that he is interfering in any way with the courts. He argued, in other words, that the courts have not given any decision in the matter, and that, not having given any decision, it is fair for him to step in and anticipate what they might possibly do. That reminds me rather forcibly of the story of a lunatic who escaped and struck an innocent man on the head. On being asked, "Why did you strike an innocent person who has not done you any harm?" he replied: "I am striking him before he can do any harm." The Minister is in fear and trembling lest the judges' decision might be adverse to what he considers would be good for himself and his Party. The Minister has in many ways tried to terrorise various sections of the community and to override the decision of bodies such as the Seanad. Deputy Cosgrave said that the proceedings in this House had been reduced to a farce—he did not use the word "farce"; I am supplying that myself—inasmuch as a minority of the House can control legislation. He went so far as to say that a majority of the Fianna Fáil Party, 39 Deputies, can control legislation in this House. I believe that Deputy Cosgrave was exaggerating, because I honestly believe that if there were a free vote the Minister would not get 39 Deputies to stand behind him in support of this amendment or the measure as a whole.
The second argument which the Minister advanced for this Bill is that it was introduced to clarify the intentions of the House, and particularly of his Party, as expressed by the Minister for Defence when he was in charge of the Land Purchase Bill of 1933. I see that that argument is repeated in a letter from the Minister for Finance in the Irish Times in which he gives, in defence of this Bill, a quotation from Deputy Aiken. If statements of the Minister in charge of the Land Bill, which were not translated into sections of the Bill, are to be taken as an excuse for the Minister in bringing forward this legislation, then certainly the Minister has got a very poor foundation for the introduction of the Bill. We find that on other matters referred to by the Minister for Defence, on that Bill, on questions on which there was extreme controversy in this House—and there was no particular controversy at the time the Minister made the statement quoted by the Minister for Finance—on sections of the Bill on which there was immense opposition, we had definite statements from the Minister that certain things would happen. He actually got the support of the House on the understanding that certain things would or would not happen. We have had an illustration, during the last two or three weeks, of the fallacy of putting any faith in that Minister's assurances, given during the passage of the Bill, in a case raised in this House. It is on a declaration made by that Minister during the passage of the Bill through this House, when he made other statements which it was afterwards proved could not be relied upon, that the Minister bases his claim to express the intentions of this House.
The Minister to-day said that they were not responsible to local authorities if they did not budget properly. I might inform the Minister that the local authorities are responsible to the people who elected them, whether they do or do not budget properly. The amount for which local authorities budget is determined by what they believe the people who elected them can pay, an amount which in some cases can only be dragged out of them. There is a story told of a man who went to borrow a fiver from a particular friend and the friend said to him: "I cannot give it to you for three reasons. The first reason is that I have not got it." The would-be borrower said to him: "Well, you can destroy the other two reasons." I would recommend that to the Minister, that there is a limit to the extraction of money from the taxpayers of this State. The limit is expressed in the first reason that that particular would-be lender gave, that he had not got it. That is the position of nine-tenths of the farmers at present.
The Minister made a foul accusation of dishonesty against the farmers and the ratepayers of this State in reply to Deputy Davin. I cannot even say that he did not intend to do it because he went on to qualify it in his comparison of Leix and Offaly when he said that there were 20 per cent. of the people of Leix dishonest and 25 per cent. of the people of Offaly dishonest or vice versa, and so on, with other counties. I hope the Deputies behind the Minister are not in agreement with him in this vile accusation against the hardest working section of the community. There are excellent reasons why this amendment should be accepted. The Minister, through his legal advisers, has at last come to recognise that some of the proposals which the Government anticipated would be met by little resistance when they set out to take a certain course two years ago, have not proved so easy of fulfilment as they expected they would be. When he was advised by seven lawyers of his Party that a certain action was proper and right, it is a pity that these seven lawyers did not at that time advise him that the consequences of his action would be that he would have to come to this House repeatedly to rectify the steps he was taking.
The Minister, when he withheld the land annuities and relieved himself of the responsibility of paying them to another party and turned the moneys received in payment of a particular debt into revenue, also believed that he still left himself authority to use a particular fund in a way in which it had been used when the necessity for the payment of certain sums to another party existed. He believed that he still had power to extract from the farmers, through the agricultural grants, the money that used to be paid over to another party for interest and sinking fund on borrowed money. That money is now used by the Government mainly as revenue and, as has been admitted in debate here by the Parliamentary Secretary, is purely and solely a land tax dragged unwillingly from the landowners of this State. When the Minister now finds himself in the position that he is not legally entitled to do that, he asks the House to support him in his efforts to anticipate an almost certain verdict of the courts that he was not justified in taking that action.
During the last couple of weeks we have had an expression of opinion from three or four county councils— most of them had not up to this got an opportunity of expressing their opinion — as to what they believed should be done with this Bill. We had the resolution of the Cork County Council which, it might be argued, is controlled politically by members of this Party. But we had the Limerick County Council, which has a strong Fianna Fáil majority, unanimously passing a resolution condemning this Bill, and we had the Wexford County Council, on which there is a majority of members of the Government Party, also passing a resolution condemning the Bill. I daresay that if we could wait for another week or so we would have similar resolutions from other counties and that, eventually, the Minister would find himself in this position, that there was not a county council in this State, whatever its political complexion, that did not protest against this imposition.
Apart from the legal side of this particular matter, there is the economic point of view. Even if certain circumstances had never arisen which raised a doubt in the minds of the people and the county councils as to the right of the Government to collect this money through the Guarantee Fund by reductions in the agricultural grants, there are other reasons why that particular procedure should not be adopted. The responsibilities of county councils are infinitely greater now than they were when the agricultural grant was instituted. The sum given as a grant in aid is totally insufficient at present, even though it has been increased threefold in the last ten years. When some years ago Deputy Cosgrave was President and proposed as an addition to a double agricultural grant a further sum of £750,000, the members of the Government Party, who then formed the Opposition, claimed that it was totally insufficient and that much more would be needed to put the county councils and the ratepayers in anything like a fair position. Will anybody say that the position of the county councils and ratepayers has improved since then? Will anybody deny that the position of the county councils and the ratepayers has not got much worse since then, and that the man who could pay £1 then would find it very difficult to pay 10/- now?
This Bill, especially in its retrospective aspect, is a further attempt to destroy the liberties of this House and the liberties, I might say, of the judges of this State, because it is an attempt to say to the judges: "You may do your damnedest, but we will do what we like in spite of judges or courts." Any effective opposition to Government measures is not now likely by any appeal to any other House, or any amendment by any other House, and a minority on the Government Benches, if so directed by the President, the Minister for Finance, or the Party bosses, can outvote what in reality expresses the opinion of a majority of this House, because, just as Deputy Corry ran away from the vote the other night there are numerous other Fianna Fáil Deputies who, if they had his guts, would do the same. Remember, there are some things beyond political expediency, that men have rights outside their political policy, and that some of us will come to be judged some day, by our political supporters if you like, without going to any higher sphere, by our actions in this House and outside it. It will not be an excuse for some of us to say that it was because of political expediency we voted for such-and-such a measure. After all, there is something in the words: "Loved I not honour more." I would appeal to the honour of the Fianna Fáil Deputies, if I cannot appeal to them in any other way; they were elected to this House as Deputies on some higher plane than as mere cats' paws for the Minister for Finance or any other Minister who brought in legislation which these Deputies in their hearts believed was doing a wrong to their constituents—to the people who elected them.
Mr. Corry rose.
Welcome back.
Deputy Bennett has talked about the position that has brought about this Bill. I wonder was he in the House on the last day when Deputy Brennan told us that the reason that so large an amount of annuities was unpaid was because the people expected, in plain language, that they would get out of paying them.
No, Sir. I said that the county councils did not strike the rates. That is a different matter.
The Deputy said that the reason why the annuities were not paid was because the people thought that they would get out of them.
No; I expect Deputy Corry will accept my correction. I said the county councils did not strike the rates on the assumption that these grants would be deducted.
Well I expect that better means will be found to collect the annuities other than this method. Still we cannot close our eyes to the fact that this position of affairs has been very definitely brought about by those who preached the gospel about the country: "Do not pay them and you will never have to pay them; get away with the annuities now and you will never have to pay them." That gospel was preached throughout my county.
I have been accused of running away from voting here on the last day. I did not run away from any vote. Why I did not vote is because I am quite prepared to facilitate any Deputy because I expect to be facilitated myself at times. We all have to be facilitated some time or another. But there are Deputies over there who have different fads. One of them has an idea that he must kiss every baby born in Dublin as soon as the baby is born. I met that unfortunate Deputy out in the Lobby the other evening. Apparently several babies had been born in Dublin that evening and he wanted to kiss them all. It was in order to facilitate Deputy Byrne, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, in kissing babies that I did not vote that evening, but I do not think that this arises in any way.
It should not arise on this Bill.
Well this statement was made about my not voting on the last sitting on three separate occasions to-day.
Such a lucid and convincing explanation.
Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney made several statements to-day; he had the impertinence to say that he was present during certain speeches at the last sitting. He was present here, but I respectfully suggest to you that though he may have been present in spirit he was absolutely slumbering peacefully on the Opposition Benches.
Deputy Corry is the only Deputy who drives me to slumber.
The Deputy was sound asleep and could not account for anything that was said. I got up to speak because three Deputies opposite made statements about my absence from the division. When Deputies in future look for facilities from me I hope they will not come in afterwards and say, when a division is taken, that I deliberately absented myself. I would like to facilitate every Deputy as I would wish to be facilitated myself. If any Deputies over there want to kiss babies, young or old, in the future, I hope they will always be facilitated.
The Minister to conclude.
It is not a question of the Minister concluding. We are on the Committee Stage.
I do not want to go into the legal aspect of the Bill. That has been dealt with by people more able than I am to deal with it. I want to draw the attention of the House to what the situation will be in connection with local authorities when this Bill is passed, and when the considerable addition will have to be put on the rates. Deputy Corry understands that aspect of it just as well as I do. He understands what the situation will be in the various counties of the Saorstát.
A hang sight better than Deputy Curran, and that is why I am voting for it.
There has been too much of that sort of talk made use of here. Deputy Corry says better means will be found. By that I presume he means that the sheriff will be busier than ever.
Let Deputy Curran advise them to pay up and give good example himself.
There is one thing at all events that I never thought would come to pass in this country—that the bailiffs and sheriffs would be so active as they are at the present time. It has remained for the Fianna Fáil Party to bring about that situation. While I have heard people talking here about making farming pay, I will content myself with giving just one brief instance to the House before I sit down. I know a farm that was sold for £2,400 odd in 1929. All that farm would make on last Saturday was £900 odd. Is not that in itself a sufficient proof of the situation which is being operated up and down the country?
We have heard a good deal of talk as to the reduction in the land annuities. But is it not a fact that the land annuities have been already collected from the farmers by penal duties on live stock and live-stock products? Did not the President state that these annuities have been collected with perhaps more hardship than if they had been paid over at the beginning? Is not that the truth? Is it fair then to the farming community, who are hardworking and honest, that they should be compelled to pay them again after having paid them several times over? I am really surprised at Deputies on the Government Benches, who know the situation as well as anybody, as far as the land annuities are concerned, to be supporting a measure like this. Apart altogether from the precedent which this Bill creates, I am simply objecting to it from the point of view of the hardships that would be imposed on the local authorities and on the ratepaying section of the community. I venture to think that when the Minister for Local Government and Public Health will come up against it next year or the following year, he will find the situation in the country much more serious than it is now. Everybody knows the difficulty about collecting the rates already and the difficulty of collecting the land annuities. The position is that nobody can look with equanimity to the future if this Bill passes.
I am going to vote for this amendment. But the arguments that weigh with me are much more the arguments that have just been stated by Deputy Curran than those to which I have listened during the greater part of this debate. I will vote for this amendment because it is one avenue of attack on the Bill, and I am strongly opposed to the Bill as a whole. I regard the Bill as an attempt by the Minister for Finance to thrust on the local authorities, who have no responsibility for his policy, the financial results of that policy; I regard it as an attempt to make the local authorities face the difficulties that the Minister ought to be facing himself.
I would really give a silent vote for this amendment but for the fact that I do want to dissociate myself from some of the things that have been said in its favour. It is true, of course, that the retrospective character of this Bill is an additional objection to it. It is true we are, I gather, on all sides of the House opposed in principle to retrospective legislation when it can be avoided. But I do not think that the retrospective character of this measure is in any way the main objection to it, and, in fact, I think the case with regard to its retrospective character has been grossly exaggerated by several of the Opposition speakers. I think it desirable to say that, for I think it is an injury to the cause of democracy and liberty to be shouting "Wolf" at the wrong moment, because when the moment arises when there is really need to shout it, the shout does not carry the conviction it ought to. I listened with amazement to the speech of Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, for instance. I thought it was astonishing that a responsible front bench Opposition Deputy should reintroduce those expressions "traitor" and "treason" which, I think, have been absent from our proceedings for 12 months or more. I even regret that a word such as "embezzling" should be used in connection with the action the House is invited to take if it passes the Bill. I am strongly against the Bill, but I do not think it makes any sense to use such a word as "embezzling." This House has a right to pass legislation imposing burdens, even unjust burdens, and if it does do something unjust it is still not embezzlement, and it only confuses our minds to use expressions of that kind.
Retrospective legislation is not making its appearance for the first time. I see that many examples have been quoted. I quite agree none of them is exactly on all fours with this Bill, but they are near enough to make it impossible that the man in the street, who does not draw very fine distinctions, will see something extraordinarily novel in principle in what we are doing. Apart from precedents in this State, there have certainly been far more glaring examples outside this State. Take, for example, the action of the American Legislature in making it impossible for the holders of bonds with the gold clause in them to sue before the courts for their rights in that respect. That was certainly a piece of legislation very much harder to defend than anything that the Legislature of this State has been called upon to consider so far.
I do not believe there is justification for all this talk about tyranny and dictatorship that we are constantly being treated to, and it is a great mistake that such talk should arise before the proper time has come for it. After all, the situation about which Deputy Bennett has been complaining, the possibility of a small majority in this House passing some very drastic sort of legislation, is not a new situation. That existed under the Cosgrave Government. It existed when, under a previous Government, there was a Second House that could be practically relied upon to pass anything it was asked to pass by that Government. And, if you are looking for authoritarian language, I have not seen any in the reports of the proceedings of either House to compare with the language used by President Cosgrave, as he then was, when he was suggesting to the Seanad—I would rather say demanding from the Seanad—that they should pass a measure abolishing the right of referendum that had been guaranteed by the Constitution.
I am quite wholehearted in my opposition to the Bill. I do think that it is unjust, and that the whole principle of putting this liability on the ratepayers is wrong, even apart from the special difficulties created by the Government policy. But I do put it to my late colleagues and present friends of the Opposition that it is a mistake from the patriotic point of view to be shouting too loudly about tyranny and dictatorship before the need to do so really arises.
Thanks very much for the lecture.
It is rather difficult to understand the attitude of Deputy MacDermot on this amendment. The object of the amendment is to remove the retrospective character of the Bill. If Deputy MacDermot does not agree with the members of this Party in denouncing the retrospective character of the Bill, in other words, if he is opposed to the amendment in its essential feature, then it seems clear to me that he should vote with the Government against this amendment.
The Deputy may not have listened to what I said. I stated that the retrospective character of the Bill was an additional objection to it, but I added that the case on that subject had been overstated, that it was not so flagrant or so novel as represented.
As I understood the Deputy's speech, which was very short, it dealt solely and entirely with the retrospective character of the Bill and this amendment deals only with the Bill in so far as it has a retrospective character. The Deputy went out of his way to talk about the Cumann na nGaedheal Government — that it had been guilty of introducing retrospective legislation. I do not care a hang what Cumann na nGaedheal did, but retrospective legislation in itself is a bad thing. Every one knows that and appreciates the fact that if people have rights to-day, these rights should exist to-morrow. If this sort of thing is to go on, if retrospective legislation is to be recognised as a good thing in itself, something to which objection cannot be taken, then all I can say is this, that we will not know until the year 1940 what rights we have to-day, and possibly in 1940 the rights which we have to-day may be deemed not to be rights. Retrospective legislation seems to me to be essentially a bad thing.
Now, let me come to the facts of the case before the House. Almost every speech on this amendment and on the Second Stage of the Bill, which came from the Government Benches, was devoted to an examination of what Cumann na nGaedheal had done and what had been done in other countries and there was very little effort made to face up to the facts. At present there are two actions before the courts. The Louth County Council and the Cork County Council brought actions for the purpose of securing their rights as they exist. If, as the Minister says, the object of this Bill is merely to clear up doubts and not, in the words of the Parliamentary Secretary, to alter the present state of the law, then let the proceedings take their ordinary course and let us find out in the courts what the law is. Let men who are qualified to interpret the law tell us what it is. A motion was brought in the courts on behalf of the Minister for the purpose of having these two actions dismissed as vexatious and frivolous. That motion was lost in the High Court.
The Deputy is simply following Deputy McGilligan in a misrepresentation of what occurred in the High Court and the Supreme Court. So far from the High Court taking up the attitude which Deputy McGilligan stated it had taken up, the judge went out of his way to say that this preliminary point which was tested in the High Court was one which the defendant quite properly brought before the trial of the main issue.
What did the Supreme Court say?
Of course the Minister would be quite justified if he thought that the actions were frivolous and vexatious in bringing in this Bill. But I am concerned with the Supreme Court.
The case made in the High Court was that the action did not properly lie against the Attorney-General and should be brought against the Minister for Finance.
What did the High Court decide?
That is another matter.
We have this position: Two actions were pending before the courts, and legislation was brought into this House to defeat the purpose of those two actions so far as we can judge by the introduction of this Bill. It is brought in for the express and sole purpose of depriving these two parties from having their right adjudicated upon in the courts. Apart from the retrospective character, there is another thing that seems to me important in this discussion, and that is the nature of the Guarantee Fund itself. When we come to consider the Guarantee Fund, it seems to me there is no justification whatever for attaching the Guarantee Fund. That Guarantee Fund explains itself by its very name. It was put there to guarantee interest and sinking fund under the Act of 1891 to the people who subscribed the money to enable the farmers to buy their land. That purpose has ceased to exist. Money is no longer paid to the people who subscribed it. It is held by this State and paid into the Exchequer. It is now nothing more or less than a tax. In my opinion, the responsibility for collecting taxation should be thrown upon the shoulders of the Government, and for that reason, and because of the vicious principle of introducing such legislation, I intend to vote for the amendment.
I am in entire agreement with what Deputy McGuire said. I cannot understand the attitude Deputy MacDermot has taken up, because he devoted most of his time to making a case, not against the amendment, but making a case against somebody else. In my opinion, there is an unanswerable case against this declaratory Bill. It is a Bill which, if enacted, sanctions a very vicious principle, because, in the words of Shakespeare, it will be regarded as a precedent and many errors will creep into the State.
My words on this matter will be few. I ask Deputies to take note of what has occurred. The county councils of Cork and Louth made certain claims— that they were deprived of money for local government. The county councils brought legal proceedings to enforce what they believed, and what they were advised, were rightful claims. The proceedings were challenged at every step by the Attorney-General, on behalf of the Government, and now, when the case had reached almost its termination, the Government bring in a Bill to nullify any possible decision that may be given against them by the duly constituted courts of this country. I think, without using any talk about tyranny or despotism or dishonesty, this measure ought not to commend itself to any Legislature in this country or in any other. I do not care what the previous Government did, or what the United States Government did. But I challenge the Minister or his legal advisers to cite any declaratory Act which did not save through its provisions pending litigation which had not been decided.
I challenge the Attorney-General or the Minister or anybody in this House to produce any precedent of retrospective legislation which covered a case pending before the courts. Really it seems to me that at present, in the confused and confusing legislation of the present Government, the ordinary citizen does not know where he stands, and does not know whether his position to-day may not be altered by something to-morrow.
It reminds me of a British Bill called "the Colchester Prison Bill." Section 1 provided that a new prison should be erected in the town of Colchester. Section 2 provided that the new prison should be built out of the stones of the old prison, and Section 3 provided that the old prison should continue to be the prison until the new prison was built. That is a sample of the legislation we are getting here from a responsible Government. It has been stated here—it was part of the case made for the passing of this Bill—that it was the intention of the Act of 1933 to do what is now proposed by the present Bill. In other words, that the language used by the gentlemen who drafted the Act of 1933 was not sufficient to effectuate their intention. That is all right for the future, but I think, in all sincerity and solemnity, that the case now before the courts should be determined on the law that existed before the introduction of this measure. I take this opportunity of suggesting to the Minister that the county councils of Cork and Louth should at all events be indemnified against any costs they have incurred up to the present time. That would be only pure justice.
The arguments used in favour of the amendment appear to me to be not only lacking in force, but if applied, dangerous to the interests of the State. If the point made that retrospective legislation proposed in this Bill was going to injure the interests and safety of individual citizens in the State it would, in the ordinary way, justify arguments such as were put forward by the Opposition. But nobody can seriously contend that any vested interest is being interfered with in this proposed legislation. If the county councils of the Free State felt, since the passing of the 1933 Act, that they were ultimately entitled to have their grants paid, irrespective of the payment of the land annuities, there can be no serious doubt in anybody's mind that the county councils would have taken action in the last two years, and that they would not have waited until this point to take it. Even yet the case is an undecided one. It is merely a matter of second thought that originated this legal action which has given rise to this question at the moment. Therefore, since no decision has been made on it, nobody can definitely say that the established and recognised rights of any citizen or of anybody in the State, local or otherwise, have been interfered with. On the other hand, if the Government were to concede the point made by a number of speakers on the opposite side, with regard to the case of the two county councils which have already made claim to the refund of the moneys withheld for the last few years, and if the moneys due to all the county councils, which have run into arrears and which have had moneys withheld during those two years, were paid back to these bodies, what would be the position and what would be the actual happening at the moment? We would have the county councils, such as Cork, Tipperary, and a few others of those counties where very strong agitation during the last few years was brought to bear on the people not to pay their annuities, and where considerable arrears have accrued, receiving very bounteous gifts from the State as a whole, and we would have counties such as my own County Leitrim, a poor county, where the arrears were the smallest of any in the Saorstát, receiving the very smallest amount of benefit. You would have a proportion of the better-to-do counties receiving a very bountiful return. In other words, you would have the Government of the country giving benefits to people who deliberately opposed the administration of the law of the country. That would be a very serious aspect of the matter, and if there were no other argument in favour of making this legislation retrospective, then that would be a substantial argument, and, to my mind, it is an argument that all people in this House, who do stand for established law and good government, should be very slow to oppose. It is really the one thing upon which all Deputies in this House, at any rate, should give a lead, so as to demonstrate that opposition to established government should not be tolerated.
Certainly, it comes very badly from Deputies in this House, who claim that they are taking part in making laws and seeing that those laws should be applied and adopted generally by the citizens of the State, that they should ask the Government to pay a bounty to the people who are opposed to law and government and who are endeavouring in every way they can to destroy that Government. It comes badly from Deputies in this House to suggest that such a bounty should be paid to the people who have been successfully pursuing such a course. I think the amendment is a dangerous one, and I hope that the Deputies on the opposite side, in fairness to their constituents, will take the line of action I have indicated by withdrawing the amendment.
Before proceeding further, there is one aspect that I should like Deputies to consider, and that is with regard to the conclusion of this discussion. If there are several divisions to be taken, as it is quite possible there may be, it would be necessary to bring the discussion to a conclusion now in order to allow the divisions to be taken, if we are to have a decision to-night on this amendment. We have had 25 speakers already and, while the Chair does not wish to curtail discussion, the Chair thinks that there has been a good deal of discussion of most of the matter concerned. The Chair has no desire to interfere with the number of Deputies who may wish to speak, but if we are to have a division or divisions to-night, the Chair thinks that Deputies ought to consider the desirability of curtailing the discussion now and allowing divisions to be taken.
As far as we are concerned, we would be prepared generally to finish the discussion on this amendment now and go as far towards concluding the Committee Stage of this Bill to-night as the time will allow. We agree that there has been a lot of discussion directed to this amendment already, and we think that anything that might be required to be said later on could be said with as good effect on the Fifth Stage of the Bill.
I should be glad if that were generally accepted.
Is there general agreement that I should put the amendment now?
Agreed that the amendment should now be put.
I am putting the question: "That the words proposed to be deleted stand."
Question put: "That the words proposed to be deleted stand."
The Committee divided: Tá, 70; Níl, 64.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, William Frazer.
- Carty, Frank.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corkery, Daniel.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- Daly, Denis.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Doherty, Hugh.
- Donnelly, Eamon.
- Flinn, Hugo V.
- Flynn, John.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Doherty, Joseph.
- O'Dowd, Patrick.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Rice, Edward.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Geoghegan, James.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Hales, Thomas.
- Hayes, Seán.
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Jordan, Stephen.
- Keely, Séamus P.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- Lynch, James B.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C.
Níl
- Alton, Ernest Henry.
- Anthony, Richard.
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Bourke, Séamus.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Broderick, William Joseph.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Coburn, James.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John Aloysius.
- Curran, Richard.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Davitt, Robert Emmet.
- Desmond, William.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dolan, James Nicholas.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finlay, John.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Good, John.
- Hogan, Patrick (Galway).
- Holohan, Richard.
- Keating, John.
- Kent, William Rice.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Lavery, Cecil.
- Lynch, Finian.
- MacDermot, Frank.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McGuire, James Ivan.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Morrisroe, James.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, James Edward.
- Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
- Nally, Martin.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
- O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Neill, Eamonn.
- O'Sullivan, Gearóid.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary.
- Reidy, James.
- Rice, Vincent.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Rogers, Patrick James.
- Rowlette, Robert James.
- Thrift, William Edward.
- Wall, Nicholas.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and Smith; Níl: Deputies P.S. Doyle and Bennett.
Question declared carried.
That decision disposes of amendments Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
Question proposed: "That Section 1 stand part of the Bill."
The Committee divided: Tá, 70; Níl, 64.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, William Frazer.
- Carty, Frank.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corkery, Daniel.
- Hayes, Seán.
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Jordan, Stephen.
- Keely, Séamus P.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- Lynch, James B.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- Daly, Denis.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Doherty, Hugh.
- Donnelly, Eamon.
- Flinn, Hugo V.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Geoghegan, James.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Hales, Thomas.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
- O'Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Doherty, Joseph.
- O'Dowd, Patrick.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Rice, Edward.
- Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C.
Níl
- Alton, Ernest Henry.
- Anthony, Richard.
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Bourke, Séamus.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Broderick, William Joseph.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Coburn, James.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John Aloysius.
- Curran, Richard.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Davitt, Robert Emmet.
- Desmond, William.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dolan, James Nicholas.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finlay, John.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Good, John.
- Hogan, Patrick (Galway).
- Holohan, Richard.
- Keating, John.
- Kent, William Rice.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Lavery, Cecil.
- Lynch, Finian.
- MacDermot, Frank.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McGuire, James Ivan.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Morrisroe, James.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, James Edward.
- Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
- Nally, Martin.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
- O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Neill, Eamonn.
- O'Sullivan, Gearóid.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary.
- Reidy, James.
- Rice, Vincent.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Rogers, Patrick James.
- Rowlette, Robert James.
- Thrift, William Edward.
- Wall, Nicholas.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and Smith; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Bennett.
Question declared carried.
Question put: "That Section 2 stand part of the Bill."
The Committee divided: Tá, 70; Níl, 64.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Daly, Denis.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Doherty, Hugh.
- Donnelly, Eamon.
- Flinn, Hugo V.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Geoghegan, James.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Hales, Thomas.
- Hayes, Seán.
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Jordan, Stephen.
- Keely, Séamus P.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- Lynch, James B.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, William Frazer.
- Carty, Frank.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corkery, Daniel.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Doherty, Joseph.
- O'Dowd, Patrick.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Rice, Edward.
- Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C.
Níl
- Alton, Ernest Henry.
- Anthony, Richard.
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Bourke, Séamus.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Broderick, William Joseph.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Coburn, James.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John Aloysius.
- Curran, Richard.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Davitt, Robert Emmet.
- Desmond, William.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dolan, James Nicholas.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finlay, John.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Good, John.
- Hogan, Patrick (Galway).
- Holohan, Richard.
- Keating, John.
- Kent, William Rice.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Lavery, Cecil.
- Lynch, Finian.
- MacDermot, Frank.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McGuire, James Ivan.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Morrisroe, James.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, James Edward.
- Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
- Nally, Martin.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
- O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Neill, Eamonn.
- O'Sullivan, Gearóid.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary.
- Reidy, James.
- Rice, Vincent.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Rogers, Patrick James.
- Rowlette, Robert James.
- Thrift, William Edward.
- Wall, Nicholas.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and Smith; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Bennett.
Question declared carried.
Section 3 agreed to.
Long Title agreed to.
Bill reported without amendments.
Agreed to take Report Stage now.
Question put: "That the Bill be received for final consideration."
The Dáil Divided: Tá, 70; Níl, 65.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, William Frazer.
- Carty, Frank.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corkery, Daniel.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- Daly, Denis.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Doherty, Hugh.
- Donnelly, Eamon.
- Flinn, Hugo V.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Geoghegan, James.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Hales, Thomas.
- Hayes, Seán.
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Jordan, Stephen.
- Keely, Séamus P.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- Lynch, James B.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
- O'Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Doherty, Joseph.
- O'Dowd, Patrick.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Rice, Edward.
- Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C.
Níl
- Alton, Ernest Henry.
- Anthony, Richard.
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Bourke, Séamus.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Broderick, William Joseph.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Coburn, James.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John Aloysius.
- Curran, Richard.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Davitt, Robert Emmet.
- Desmond, William.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dolan, James Nicholas.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finlay, John.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Good, John.
- Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
- Hogan, Patrick (Galway).
- Holohan, Richard.
- Keating, John.
- Kent, William Rice.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Lavery, Cecil.
- Lynch, Finian.
- MacDermot, Frank.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McGuire, James Ivan.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Morrisroe, James.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, James Edward.
- Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
- Nally, Martin.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
- O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Neill, Eamonn.
- O'Sullivan, Gearóid.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary.
- Reidy, James.
- Rice, Vincent.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Rogers, Patrick James.
- Rowlette, Robert James.
- Thrift, William Edward.
- Wall, Nicholas.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and Smith; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Bennett.
Question declared carried.
Fifth Stage fixed for Wednesday, 11th December.