Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 7 Oct 1937

Vol. 69 No. 3

Seanad Electoral (Panel Members) Bill, 1937—Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

The President

As Deputies are aware, the new Constitution provides for a Second House of 60 members, 11 to be nominated by the Head of the Government, six to be elected by the universities, and the remaining 43 to be elected from five panels of candidates. The Constitution indicated in a general way what is to be the character of these panels. One of the panels is the cultural and educational panel, another the agricultural panel, another the Labour panel, another the industrial and commercial panel, and finally the administrative panel. The Constitution, in general terms, indicated the class of persons whose names could be put upon these panels, but it does not prescribe either the number that are to be elected from each of these panels, nor does it prescribe any manner by which the panels are to be formed, and finally does not prescribe the electorate by which selection is to be made from the panels. The purpose of the Bill before the House is to complete the Constitution and to implement it, if I might use that word, by making the necessary provision for the selection of panel candidates. The first thing that has to be determined is the number to be allotted to each panel. The numbers that are proposed in the Bill are five for the cultural and educational panel, 11 for the agricultural panel, 11 for the Labour panel, nine for the industrial panel, and seven for the administrative panel. One of the first things that would suggest itself by way of criticism is the small number allotted to the cultural and educational panel. That number was intended to be added to the six elected by the universities, so as to give to the professional, educational and cultural panel a total of 11. That is why the number is smaller than that of any of the other panels. The highest number possible is given to the agricultural and Labour panels.

The Constitution prescribes that not more than 11 and not less than five members are to be selected from each of the panels. The first explanation that should be given is that the number for the educational panel is put at five, because we consider the six that will be chosen from the universities would be largely from a class belonging to that panel. There is no necessity, I think, to justify giving 11 to the greatest industry in the country. That is the greatest number and it is given to the agricultural industry. Labour is given the same number, meaning rural labour, agricultural labour and, of course, industrial labour. These would get representation—perhaps I should not use the word representation, because the whole idea is not a representative one—so as to get from the various organisations of our industrial life people who will have a special knowledge of that particular branch of the economic life of the country. When we think that on that panel we would have both rural, agricultural and industrial labour, there is no need to justify giving Labour that number. With regard to the other industries, it might be said that, with the development of our manufacturing industries, we ought now to get as large a section from that as from agriculture. I do not think the time has yet come when that could be said. At any rate, with the numbers at our disposal we consider that nine would be sufficient to get from it representatives of our manufacturing industry, sufficient to get men and women who would have a through knowledge of that section of our economic life.

Finally, we have the administrative panel on which it is suggested there should be seven. That, we think, would be sufficient to enable us to avail of the services of persons who had experience in public administration; of those who had experience by being members of some Government, of those who had experience, say, as chairmen of county councils and, if it was considered advisable, retired members of the Civil Service who had an exceptional opportunity of studying and knowing the details of public administration. As regards the numbers, from what I have said I think I have made it clear that we are not tied to any of these numbers.

I think I should say at this stage that the Government's attitude to this whole measure is one of trying to get the best possible. We are anxious to have the assistance of all Parties in doing that, and any suggestions that can be made for the improvement of the Seanad within the terms of the Constitution will certainly receive full consideration from us. I feel certain that if there is any reasonable proposition put forward, and if it should be rejected, it will be because the arguments against it are found to be overwhelming. As I am on this topic, I should perhaps, before going further, indicate that the arguments that I put forward here on previous occasions with regard to the Seanad still have their full weight. When the Constitution was before the Dáil I made it quite clear that we were not the Party who believed that an ideal Seanad could be got. We believed that any Seanad that could be got was going to be very far indeed from the ideal, and we were far from favouring a Seanad which was going to be a reproduction of the primary House. To our mind a Seanad was going to be of very little use if we were going to have in the second branch of the Legislature exactly the same political controversies or antagonisms and the same political Party manoeuvring as in the First House.

Consequently, in choosing the Seanad that was suggested by the commission to examine this question, a Seanad formed on a vocational basis, we did that because we believed that it might be possible on that basis to get a Seanad which would not be a mere reflection of the primary House. If you were to select the Second House on any general democratic basis you could hardly avoid that, that is, if we were to have any general method of election such as that by which the Dáil members themselves are chosen. So that the selection of the ideas put forward in the Minority Report was made in the hope that we might, on that basis, get a Second House which would not be a mere reflex of the first. That undoubtedly could be got if our economic life was at the moment organised on a functional basis so that we could get representative functional bodies who could themselves directly elect on to the Seanad. If we were organised in that way, I think, as was claimed in the Minority Report, a Second House formed on a functional basis would be a very useful supplement to what they call geographical democracy, or a House that was built up or formed as the Dáil is on a geographical basis. Unfortunately, from the point of view of getting a different Second House we are not so organised. If we should become organised in that way in the future, there is provision in the Constitution so that a measure such as we are now proposing could be amended to allow representative functional or organisational bodies, when formed, to elect their members directly on to the Seanad and reduce by a corresponding number those elected on the panel system. We are not organised in that way, and in the main I think there are scarcely any statutory bodies to which we could hand over the power and the right to elect members directly on to the Seanad.

Consequently, we have to try to get this functional Seanad by an indirect method. The question is, how can it best be done? What substitute can we find, in other words, for the representative functional bodies that we certainly in the Government would give power to elect directly to the Seanad if they existed. The Minority Report of the Seanad Commission in dealing with this principle indicated that there were certain bodies that might be allowed to nominate on to the panel, and in order to get these bodies specified and identified, and to give to each the number that it should be entitled to put on the panel, we have in this Bill the device of a Nominating Bodies Order. That is, from year to year there would be made by the Government an Order specifying what bodies were entitled to put names upon the appropriate panel of candidates. That Order would be made every year in May, and would be laid before both Houses. By doing that an opportunity would be given to Parliament, if there was any objection either to the list of bodies that were entitled to nominate for panels or to the number of names they could put on a panel, to have the matter raised in the Dáil, as well as an opportunity to the Dáil itself to pronounce judgment on the matter. So, therefore, we tried, indirectly, to meet the situation of getting nominations on the panel from bodies of a functional or vocational type by enabling these to be designated in a Government Order. There are a number of voluntary bodies, and these could be designated in a Government Order which would be laid before the House and which, if it were not objected to, would be regarded as being made by the House, or approved by the House at any rate.

The opportunity for dealing with the particular bodies—the number of names—would then arise each year when this particular Order was being made. We are not, therefore, in this Bill, directly and immediately specifying what bodies would be entitled to nominate or to put names on to these panels. There is one body, however, which is mentioned, and that is the Dáil itself. The Dáil is to have the right of nominating members on to each panel, and here comes, perhaps, one of the greatest difficulties we have in constructing this measure. From one point of view, one would like to give the members of the Dáil—any small group—an opportunity of nominating members on the panel, but if we are going to have either the Dáil itself or, as is proposed in this Bill, the candidates at an election, as the final electorate, it is pretty clear that those who will be put on the panel by the Dáil are almost certain to be elected. In other words, those who are selected and put upon the panel by the Dáil are almost certain to be elected, because the assumption will be that, in the main, the electorate will still follow on that line.

Now, if you allow a small number of Dáil members to nominate and put members upon the panel, you will practically be excluding the possibility of the outside bodies' nominees getting elected at all, and it would be futile for outside bodies to continue for any length of time nominating on these panels if, in fact, their nominees were not elected or ran a very poor chance of being elected. My own belief was that they should be assured, roughly, of one half: that as long as we have the Dáil going into it at all, the outside bodies should be assured practically that one half of the total number that were to be elected would come from their nominees, and that it would not be much less than that because, as I say, if they are much less than that, then they will naturally say:

"What is the use of our nominating members on to these panels, if, finally, the electorate is going to select from quite a different set of names?" That brings us to the difficulty that, in order to keep the number, which can be put on from the Dáil, down, we have, of necessity, to have a fairly large number as the smallest nominating group—25. If we have 25, it will mean that the Dáil will be nominating five. If you were to take a smaller group, say if you were to take it that ten members of the Dáil could nominate on to the panel, then you would have 13 names and that would practically exclude altogether the possibility of anybody coming in from the names that were nominated from outside bodies.

Mr. Norton

Perhaps the President would allow me to intervene for a moment. Is it possible, under this scheme of nomination envisaged in Section 12, for a Party in the Dáil to nominate, say, five members for the cultural panel and for these to be the only members elected from the cultural panel from this House?

The President

Yes. The Deputy has put his finger on a matter to which I intended to refer. Five works out reasonably enough. Five is the number that the Dáil, we will say, would put on, and I think it is not unreasonable to say that we may anticipate that those that will be put on by the Dáil will be elected—that those who are put on to the panels, by the Dáil's nominations will be finally elected unless it is that those who nominate only do so for show and are not in earnest. If they are in earnest about their nominations, then I think that, whether the electorate is the Dáil itself or the electorate that is proposed in the Bill, those who are nominated will be elected.

With regard to agriculture, that is not so unreasonable if we are going to keep the Dáil at all. Six nominees of outside organisations would be elected—at least six. In regard to Labour, the same would be true. There would be five of those who would be put on by Dáil nomination, and at least six that would have to be chosen from those that would have to be put on from outside. In the case of the industrial panel, the same would be true. Assume the figure five again. Five would come from the Dáil nominations and four from outside. In the case of seven, there would be five and two, but I think that the Dáil itself is the best body to select the administrative panel. I think it is not unfair to say, that, probably, it is the most competent body we could get for nominating people on the administrative panel. So that, if you have five out of seven in that case, it is not unreasonable. You will say, however, "What is the use of having five for the cultural panel? If the Dáil can select the five, then what is the use of outside bodies nominating on to that panel at all?" The only way out of that would be to enlarge the number of nominations that would be necessary for that panel so as to make an exception for that panel, and prevent more than, say, three members from being nominated by the Dáil.

As I told you, however, the small number, five, is justifiable only on the basis that the Universities, who are electing directly, will in the main send forward representatives from that group, that is, from the professional, cultural and educational group. So that, in answer to Deputy Norton, I can only say that it would be possible in the Bill as it stands for the Dáil to nominate five members on the cultural panel and for these five to be the only ones that would be elected; and you would say then: "If we have on that panel nominating bodies such as, let us say, professional organisations representative of law or medicine, and if the Dáil kept firmly to its own nominations and voted for them, it is possible that any of these that would be put on by the professional nominating bodies would not be elected, and perhaps it would be wiser in that case to insist on a larger number than 25 names as necessary to complete a nomination." Personally, I would rather have a larger number for all of them. Instead of having it possible, for instance, for the Dáil to have five, I would rather if the number were cut down to four, but I did not think that the Dáil would be likely to accept a proposal of that kind. However, if there is any indication from the Dáil that they would prefer to diminish the number that the Dáil could nominate and to increase the number of the others, I should be very glad indeed to consider it and see whether we could not move in that direction.

My attitude, and the attitude of the Government, with regard to this is that we would greatly desire to have a measure of this sort generally agreed upon. The Government of to-day may be the Opposition of to-morrow and vice versa—the Opposition may be changed about. Therefore, in matters of this sort, both from the point of view of the general national good, and also even from the narrower point of view of Party interests, it is advisable that a measure of this sort would, as far as possible, be agreed upon. But, again, we would have as many opinions on this matter as there are minds—there is not the slightest doubt about it. There is no question on which probably there will be a greater variety of opinions than this whole question of a Second Chamber and how it should be formed, etc. The works written upon it, the commission that we set up ourselves to deal with it, and our discussions here, all prove that home. So that, consequently, it will be necessary to come to some decision at some stage and unanimity or anything of that sort is probably impossible. But, in so far as we can get unanimity, it is our desire, naturally, to get it so far as it is possible to do so by giving way to anything that is reasonable, and I think the Government will be quite prepared to give away.

I have told you the numbers proposed to be put on each particular panel and, in the main, how the panels are to be formed. The next matter of importance is the electorate—what should be the body that would finally decide from these panels and elect the Seanad. There were two proposals. One was the Dáil itself, and the other was the proposal made by the Seanad Commission, that the electorate should consist of the candidates at the general election for the Dáil immediately preceding, it being understood that the number of votes each candidate would have would be in proportion to the number of first preferences he got. The actual proposal in the Bill is that a person who got over 500 first preference votes should have a vote; that he should have one vote for every 1,000 first preferences cast for him, a fraction of 1,000 over 500 being regarded as 1,000, and 500 or under being neglected.

As to the relative values of the Dáil itself as an electorate and the somewhat more complicated electorate indicated here there is likely to be a difference of opinion. The balance, I think, is in favour of the proposal in the Bill. It does make it more difficult, at any rate—and the more difficult it is the more likely is it to operate—to have a Party organisation possible here in the Dáil so as to select the people on Party lines. On the other hand, it is a little bit more cumbersome and, possibly, in the long run it would not reach a result differing to any considerable extent from the result that would be got if the Dáil itself was the electorate. However, a number of people think that it would be better not to have the Second House immediately and directly formed by the Dáil, and also that it would give a better opportunity to assert their strength to smaller Parties if you had this electorate that is proposed here. Finally, as I said already, it would possibly make Party manoeuvring somewhat more difficult. These are the main provisions of the Bill. The rest of the Bill is largely machinery. It is mainly on this, I think, that differences of opinion will manifest themselves, and it is on this provision that we would like, if at all possible, to get agreement.

There is another provision in the Bill which, I think, is necessary, but to which there may be certain objections raised, and that is to the power given to the Government to act as a nominating body for interests which are not organised properly at the moment. If there was any particular interest, such as an agricultural interest, or, let us say, a professional interest—though I think in the case of a professional interest it is not likely; if there was any interest, at any rate which, on examination, it was thought should be represented on the panel of names, and there is nobody to which the task of making a nomination could be committed, then there is power left to the Government to make nominations in their stead. There is also power given to the Government to complete any panels. If, for instance, a certain interest, a certain organisation, is entitled to put a certain number of names on a panel, and if they failed to do it, or did it incompletely, in order to fill up the complete quota for the panel, power is given to the Government to do it instead. The Government also has the power, of course, of making the Order in the first instance, but really once the Dáil can deal with that I do not think it is a power which the Dáil will be likely——

Mr. McGilligan

How can the Dáil deal with it?

The President

It has to be put in an Order before the Dáil.

Mr. McGilligan

They can only annul it, not amend it.

The President

Annul, not amend it. They can annul it. I am perfectly certain that if there is annulment of an Order by the Dáil on any occasion the Dáil will be able to give such good reasons for the change that the Government will have to go back and try to meet the views of the Dáil on the matter. The point, I take it, of the Deputy is that the initiative rests with the Government in the matter.

Mr. McGilligan

No, but that the Dáil cannot add or subtract; it can only wipe out.

The President

Indirectly it can.

Mr. McGilligan

No.

The President

Not directly or immediately, but indirectly it can. If the Dáil refuses, on certain grounds, to let an Order pass; if it annuls an Order, it can do it, I take it, on certain grounds. If there is a resolution put forward annulling an Order, it will not be simply done without reason. There will be some reasons adduced for the annulment. If the Dáil indicated that it wished certain things changed, then I do not see how the Government can do other than change them. I admit that the direct power of initiative and so on would be better; but even here in the case of the Dáil somebody has to initiate. Although the Dáil can amend a measure and not merely reject it, at the same time, I think, in the case of an Order, although it is not as direct, it is in substance able to do it. The power, however, to constitute the Government as a nominating body is open to more objection by the Opposition Parties. I do not see, however, unless you were to put instead of it some composite body of the Dáil, that you could avoid that. The Government is sitting from day to day and is closely in touch, through the respective Ministers, with the various interests. I think, as in a number of other cases, you will simply have to allow the Government, as long as it is the Government, to do these things. If they do not do them properly you have first to get rid of the Government. At this stage there would be no point in going into further detail. I have covered the essential parts which are contained in Part II, and the early part of Part III. I would stress, however, even at this stage, that our attitude on this Bill is that we wish to have the co-operation of all Parties in trying to frame the best possible measure within the terms of the Constitution.

Mr. McGilligan

That is the difficulty.

The President

If Deputies, who in the past refused co-operation, will now change their minds and give co-operation it would be very heartily welcome.

Mr. McGilligan

Inside the terms of the Constitution.

The President

Within the terms of the Constitution.

Professor O'Sullivan

And provided we are reasonable.

The President

I think we can listen to the objections to the Bill now.

Professor O'Sullivan

Despite a certain amount of experience of the President, and despite an experience of him on constitutional matters, suppose I take seriously his proposal that he is willing to consider objections? I admit I was a bit shaken when he told me that they would have to commend themselves to reason, that is to his reason. We had an experience on the Constitution where many suggestions and arguments were put up on different sides of the House. He asked our co-operation, the co-operation of the different Parties in the House, and he turned down every suggestion they made. The more he considered them the more strongly he turned them down.

Mr. W. O'Brien

There has been a general election in the meantime.

Professor O'Sullivan

I might say to Deputy O'Brien that I do not think that will makes much change in the conduct of this Parliament.

Mr. Davin

Wait and see.

Professor O'Sullivan

I shall wait and I shall be glad to see. There was, I think, a motion handed in rather late —am I correct in this?—by the Leader of the Labour Party.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

You did not see it?

Professor O'Sullivan

No, I did not actually see it.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

I did not see it.

Professor O'Sullivan

The Minister yesterday was omniscient and had a full knowledge of the law. To-day apparently he is all-seeing and while there was a motion handed in, not to the Vice-President but to the Chair——

Mr. O Ceallaigh

I did not hear about it.

Professor O'Sullivan

It was handed in. Why this hasty repudiation of that motion?

Mr. O Ceallaigh

The Deputy may have been consulted about it. I was not consulted.

Professor O'Sullivan

I heard there was such a motion.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

I never heard it.

Professor O'Sullivan

Why this haste to protest—"I never heard it?" That in the case of another Minister would raise certain suspicions but not, of course, in the case of the Vice-President. Candidly if the President is serious—and for the moment I pay him the compliment of believing that he is serious—even if that motion arrived in late, I think, he could consider acting on the sense of the motion, namely postponing this Second Reading until there was an opportunity to consider some of the main propositions of the Bill. I presume the main propositions of this Bill are the constitution of the panel and the electing body.

The President

I wonder if the Deputy would permit me to make a short statement?

Professor O'Sullivan

Certainly.

The President

The Deputy is referring I take it to some suggestion that was made that the Second Reading be postponed. Is that so?

Mr. McGilligan

The Vice-President does not know anything about it.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

I heard a suggestion that it should be postponed after I left here—in the corridor. I was told that something which I had not seen even and did not know anything more about, had been submitted to the Ceann Comhairle.

Mr. McGilligan

What was it you did not know?

Mr. O Ceallaigh

I did not know about the motion.

Mr. McGilligan

You did not know to what Bill it was attached?

Mr. O Ceallaigh

I did. It was attached to this Bill.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Perhaps we had better allow the President to explain.

Professor O'Sullivan

I shall certainly allow the President to intervene, but before the President intervenes may I state that my proposal would be that the main objections, of the difficulties that some people see in this Bill, should be heard. Having done that, if the President is convinced that a postponement would be a good thing, he should then consider it.

The President

That is exactly my mind in the main on the matter. My view is that the Second Reading should take place. The Bill is largely a Bill of detail. If we look at the principle of the Bill——

Mr. McGilligan

There is no principle in it.

The President

I think you will find it difficult to find any principle in it except that it is to implement the Constitution by arranging for the election of 43 members who are mentioned as panel members in the Constitution. Everything else, as far as I can see, is detail. There is not a single part of it that in committee we could not have amended. The details which I have dealt with in my speech are things on which there are likely to be differences of opinion. These will relate to detail. The principle of the Bill is that we implement the Constitution. I take it there is going to be no objection to that.

Mr. McGilligan

There is no way out of that.

The President

Very well. There is only one way to settle that clearly. That is a thing that has to be settled clearly and definitely. This Government is going to implement the Constitution, and I hold that any Government that comes into office is bound to implement the Constitution. As far as the rest of the Bill is concerned, it is a Bill of detail, and I would be prepared if it were considered that a special committee rather than an ordinary committee was the best way of dealing with the Bill, to accept a proposal that this Bill should be considered on the Committee Stage by a committee which would report to the House subsequently, a special committee consisting of representatives of all the groups here. That committee could report to the Dáil and the Dáil could take action on the report. I think that that ought to meet the views of people who may have different ideas with regard to the method by which the Constitution is to be implemented. Clearly, what we have to do here is to implement the Constitution, and there is no use in opposing that. The passing of the Second Reading of the Bill would not commit anybody to anything further than that we are going to see that the Constitution is implemented in this respect. The Deputy will have an opportunity of explaining his point of view. The attitude I would take on the matter from the point of view of the Government is this: that we shall not postpone the Second Reading inasmuch as, in my view at any rate, and as I am advised, what is being decided here on Second Reading will be mainly a question of whether you are going to implement the Constitution by a Bill of this kind or not, the rest being detail, and if it is considered that that detail can be better met by a special committee I am quite prepared for that.

Mr. Norton

I should just like to ask the President one question. Does he consider, this Bill being almost entirely machinery according to himself, that that machinery can be completely overhauled in any respect without infringing on the Second Reading of the Bill?

The President

I think so.

Mr. Norton

The President said he was so advised. Was that authoritative advice?

The President

I have asked some people whom I would regard as expert in the matter, but I would suggest that the authority which would decide that obviously is the Chair. This is a matter on which perhaps, before a final decision is taken upon it, the Chair would be able to indicate an opinion. I do not know whether I am in order in asking for such a decision from the Chair, but I take it that the Chair is the authority to decide it. As I understand it, we are not, by passing this Bill, committing ourselves to anything further than an implementation of the Constitution.

Professor O'Sullivan

On that point raised by the President, there are certain matters in this Bill which might be regarded as matters of detail so far as the Bill is concerned. Whether you have six members or five members representing any particular panel is a matter of detail, but there are two matters which I regard as the principle of the Bill as a Bill. One is the electoral body and the other is the nominating body. Those are the two principal things that I wish to ask the House to consider. I should not like the House to commit itself to a Second Reading of this Bill under the belief that it is merely committing itself to implementing the provisions of the Constitution, and merely assenting to the setting up of a Second House of 60 members with some sort of panels. I gather that that is the view of the President—that all we are doing in passing the Second Reading of the Bill is assenting to what is provided already in the Constitution. I hope it is the correct view that the President takes, but it does not seem to me in accordance with practice that a Bill is merely implementing the Constitution and that there is no principle in it except what is in the Constitution already. I hope his view is correct. I should be glad to see, as long as I was in opposition, that particular precedent running right through all Bills, and all efforts to deal with those Bills.

First, I am taking the President's expressed word, that he is willing not merely to listen to but to heed certain criticisms of this Bill that may be offered. I am prepared to believe that he is possibly more ready to do so on this occasion than he was in the case of the Constitution, because although he is setting up a Seanad he is still an unconvinced believer, if I may use that particular phrase. "All the arguments that he ever urged against a Seanad are still sound!" Of course they are. The President's arguments always are sound and never change. I am glad that there is to be a Second House. That is provided for in the Constitution. Listening carefully to the statement of the President it seemed to me that he laid down certain principles, certain ideals, certain desires. He did that whilst putting before us a Bill that in the essentials of which he was speaking seemed to depart the furthest possible distance from the ideals that he laid down. He said that he and his Party were never the Party that believed in an ideal Seanad. I sometimes wonder whether the President not only does not heed but does not even hear what the Opposition says. We always protested against the effort to find an ideal Seanad, and a lot of the trouble on the part of the President and everybody else is the talk of an ideal Seanad. Any kind of Seanad that is handed down to us traditionally is out of the question. There must be some new method devised. The method of election cannot be perfect or watertight. Accept that, but go as near as you can to what you profess are the aims that you have before you. As I say, I think that all this talk of an ideal Seanad was extremely harmful in the past, and clogs us so far as the future is concerned. It is because the President himself was looking for what he thought was impossible that we have had a lot of this trouble.

I think if you make up your mind to have a vocational Seanad you will not get any perfect method of designing that Seanad, but I think with a little effort you could go much nearer to it than do the provisions of this Bill which seem to be the furthest departure possible from it. Here you have what professes to be a vocational Seanad, what, so far as the provisions of the Bill are concerned, would at the first hasty reading appear to be a vocational Seanad, but which is no more vocational than this House. There is no guarantee that it will be any more vocational or elected on more vocational lines than this House. There is an election for the Dáil. Who go for it? Farmers, Labour candidates, professional men—exactly the same type. And what have you in the Dáil? A mixture of all these, and you get them without all this facade and pretence of a vocational panel which we find paraded here. You get them here in the Dáil. The vocations are represented here, every one of those vocations mentioned in the Bill. I do not object to a facade, but I object to it when it is all stucco, as it seems to be on this particular occasion.

What do we want? I agree with many of the things that the President said. We want a Second House. You want to get a Seanad that is not a replica of this House. I do not commit myself to quite the exact harshness of some of the phrases which the President used as regards relations in this House. He did not use the word "intrigues," perhaps "manoeuvrings"—party manoeuvrings. You do not want a replica. That was the ideal he set before himself, but in what I hold is one of the two main provisions of this Bill he sets himself out to get a replica of this Dáil as closely as possible. By the old system you could get a Seanad different from this House because there was a hang-over. The Seanad did not go out with the Dáil. Some of the Senators carried on over the lifetime of the Dáil. There was constant renewal. The Seanad first held office for 12 years and then afterwards for nine. What have you here? The Seanad goes out immediately or practically immediately on the dissolution of the Dáil, and you have the election of a new Seanad, practically by the Dáil, as the President said. He says the proposed system is a more cumbersome system than election by the Dáil—namely, that the defeated candidates should join in. Technically, it is possible that a member of the Dáil might not have a vote at all and a defeated candidate might, but that is a matter of very little importance, perhaps. What is clear is that the Seanad you are getting under this Bill must be a replica, and nothing else except a full replica, of the Dáil. If you wanted to set out to do what you professed you did not want to do, I do not see how you could better have gone about it. You will have a Seanad elected, one month after the Dáil election, by the different Parties in the Dáil. What will you get, what can you get, except a replica of the Dáil? What should I regard as the principal purpose, the principal advantage, of a vocational Seanad? There may be various kinds of Second Houses, but what could you regard as a striking advantage if you could get a vocational body? The main point is that it would not be a replica of the Dáil, that it would not be bound down by Party ties, like the Dáil is. There may be other advantages in a vocational Seanad, but I think the President will agree that that would be one of the principal advantages if you get a vocational Seanad, that it would be more removed from politics. I do not say that politics would be altogether removed. It is impossible to think that they should be. A non-politician dealing with politics has always seemed to me an absurdity. You will get men with political views, but I think if you could get a kind of sifted Seanad of that kind, independent of your Party politics—I am not speaking of the immediate future; I am merely talking of the kind of Seanad you want in this State—then you would have done something useful for your Constitution.

I do not think that, on the whole, a wisely selected Seanad, except on certain occasions, will oppose a Government very strongly. They will generally try to compromise with the Government. However, there will be occasions when they may feel bound to do so, oppose, to use to the full, whatever power is given to them under the Constitution. But, on the whole, I think, you will get a smoothly working body and a useful body if you could get something elected of the type I have suggested. But, then, the President has said that we have not advanced sufficiently in the direction of the organisation of our industrial and cultural life in this country and, therefore, we cannot get an absolutely water-tight system for vocational nomination and election. Therefore, we jump into the very opposite extreme which we laid down it was our main business to avoid, namely, a mere replica of the Dáil. I think the President agrees that, so far as what you want the Seanad to be, there would not be much difference between us, but if the President will examine his proposals with that openness of mind that he professes, he will see that he has done the very opposite thing to what he intended doing.

I do not know what his conception is as regards what ought to be the relations between the Seanad and the Government and the Seanad and the Dáil. In his own heart I know what he believes, namely, no relations at all because there ought not to be a Seanad. I know the President is a very obstinate man and he once sponsored, from a man I always regarded as being a very unsafe political guide, the celebrated maxim that if the Second House agrees with the First House it is no use, and if it disagrees, it is dangerous. He still wants to justify his old friend the Abbé Siéyés and he produces a House that is an absolute replica of the First House. He admits that the electorate that he has chosen in practice will practically achieve the same result in an election as if the election was in the hands of the Dáil, but he says there are some who think the opposite and "I am a reasonable man where unimportant things are concerned and the Seanad is of no importance, therefore I will give way to them." That is the attitude revealed in the speech.

As we have this particular Bill before us, I should like to direct the President's attention to the complete absence of clarification. I admit that on this occasion he gave some reasons for some of his proposals. He did not content himself by saying: "Well, read the Bill or, if you want it, I shall read it for you." He went a little further than usual, but I would ask him to consider this, that on all the vital issues he gave us no information. Who are to be the nominating bodies? Not a bit of information on that. He has various panels, and it is possible that there might be ten or 20 nominating bodies for each panel. We have no information at all on who they are to be, and we are really giving a blank cheque to the Government. Of course, these things will be laid before the House, but the House need not positively approve of them. Even the President has been long enough in Parliament to know what is the fate of matters of that kind laid before the House. How often are they challenged? It might be slightly different, not much, but there might be some improvement if they had positively to be approved by the House.

The President must realise that beyond setting up what he calls machinery and determining a certain mode of nomination and election, this Bill does not give the House the information it ought to have when it is asked to adopt the Second Reading. Why are there not set out in the Bill the nominating bodies? We are just as wise in that respect as we were when the Constitution and the criticisms on it were being so carefully considered by the President. We are told now the electoral body will be the candidates for the Dáil who obtained a certain number of first preferences. We knew that was in the President's mind because it was in the first draft. It did not remain in the final form of the Constitution. What everybody would like to know, and would like to see determined here by law, the nominating bodies, are not referred to. Is the President going to tell me that he does not know yet? Does he know yet what are to be the nominating bodies? Have the Government considered it?

Mr. Moore

They will not be permanent.

Professor O'Sullivan

Certainly not permanent, but there should be in the Bill as full information as possible on the nominating bodies. They could be changed or added to by a positive resolution of the House. If that were done, at least we should not be completely in the dark as to what bodies will have power, say on behalf of the agricultural community, to make nominations. We have not the remotest idea who these bodies are. Who is to stand for unorganised labour? Who is to stand for organised as well as unorganised labour? Take a cultural body. The President more or less suggested it did not matter in that case because enough will be nominated by the Dáil. The Government should let us know what, in the concrete are their proposals in this respect. We hear talk of implementing the Constitution. That is the very thing this Bill does not do. The real implementing of the Constitution is to be done by Government order—that is apart from one or two things to which I have alluded.

I understand the President is undertaking to consider criticisms. The most obvious criticism, even of the Bill as it stands, is the failure of setting forth the nominating bodies which the Government has in mind. The President may not have them ready. But I suggest they are just as much ready now as they will be three or four months hence. In three or four months time the President will find himself before the fence and he will jump it and these bodies will all be taken in without any more consideration than they could have got up to the present. That is the position in which we are. The nominating bodies should be set forth and make such concessions to such practical needs and afterthoughts as may be found necessary by providing for amendments by a resolution of the Dáil.

I must take the President as being serious notwithstanding that this Bill that I have before me would make one doubt that. The President said that he was more attached to some general views than to the details of this Bill. Well if he is serious in his anxiety to avoid having a mere replica of the Dáil and if he wants a vocational body, I suggest he should go to some trouble to get it. This will require a certain amount of trouble. Merely repeating what is in the Constitution will not do. It must be worked out and I suggest that is the business of the Government and they have failed to do their business. It may be necessary to set up different registers, say a register for the farming community and another for unorganised labour units. It need not be necessary for the different members to be elected by the same method. Some could be elected by their type of register and others could be elected by existing bodies. There is no reason why that could not be done.

I do not know whether it is too much to ask the President to give a certain amount of thought to a thing in which he does not believe—that is the setting up of this particular Second Chamber. What you are doing here is deliberately setting up a political body on all fours with, and a complete reflection of, the Dáil. I am not so sure that the nominations we shall get from any bodies mentioned in the nominating order will not be political nominations. I wonder whether the President, in asking us to assent to the Second Reading, asks us also to assent to the proposition that the Government would never do anything through Party motives. He has before now often asked us to swallow that particular camel. The President could appoint his nominating bodies. I presume he will do it, that he will appoint certain bodies that may seem representative of the various vocations. But these panels may be highly political in their structure. That will give the electorate, as set forth in this Bill, a limited choice.

As a member of this Dáil, and a member of the new electorate, I may have the privilege through the Bill as it stands of voting for certain people nominated by this Dáil. But I also have to make a choice afterwards between certain very definite undesirables. That could easily happen, and the President knows it can happen. On principle, I have no strong objection to the nominations by the Head of the Government. Arguments have been put forward by various people in favour of and against a nominated Seanad. Something may be said for it. But here you are getting something that is apparently only to a small extent nominated, but which in practice can turn out to be very much nominated. The real power of the President to appoint Senators is by no means limited to the apparent powers contained in this Bill. In the course of his speech the President pointed out and gave us reasons why it would be necessary to have 25 members as the minimum for nomination through the Dáil. He said in effect that if you bring it down you make illusory altogether the privilege of those vocational bodies to nominate. They may nominate, but they cannot elect. It looked a sound argument, and so far as the Opposition Parties are concerned, it was a sound and effective argument. But then there is a provision in the Bill that enables the Government Party completely to get out of it to the full extent of their electing capacity. The only thing that really gives reality to power of nomination by the nominated bodies of the vocational kind is the hang-over, so to speak, the extra voting power that belongs to the Opposition beyond their nominating strength. But the Fianna Fáil Party could nullify the privileges of these nominated bodies to the extent that I have mentioned—the full extent of their electing capacity. That would be true of whatever Party may happen to be in the majority at the time. I suggest there is a conflict there between the expressions in the Bill and the realities as we find them. The President suggests that the reality of the privilege of nomination is to a large extent gone— but the power of Ministers to nominate takes away 50 per cent. of what is left.

Apart from these things, there are obscurities in this Bill that I find it rather difficult to explain as regards the temporal relations, as I may call them. There seem to be sections in this Bill that assume the possibility of the closing of a panel before a certain date, but not later than the date the Dáil assembles. I may be misreading that portion of the Bill. There are other obscurities in provisions relating to matters of detail. I do not intend to discuss them now.

The President said that he did not want a representative Seanad in the sense of a vocational Seanad and that, when he called in vocational bodies, it was not because they represented a narrow, vocational view, but because they would be politically independent and that they would bring certain general knowledge to bear upon the questions which would come before them. That is a laudable aim, but this Bill does not carry it out. It does the very opposite. He says that he is driven, because industry and so forth are not organised on a vocational basis, to elect a functional Seanad by an indirect method. I agree that the method is indirect, but you are not electing a functional Seanad. The method is a winding one, but you are not getting a functional Seanad, as a cursory examination of the Bill will show. The President's peculiar type of electorate will in practice give a result no different from election by the Dáil. It will be a little more cumbersome and it will be more to the advantage of the better-disciplined Parties. That is what the President professed to be anxious to avoid—and he takes steps to do the opposite of what he professes.

I wonder whether these objections will get the same careful, calm consideration that our objections to the Constitution got. We shall see. I am a little more hopeful in this case because the President does not believe in Seanads and therefore, like the great body of modern apostles of toleration, he is highly tolerant in matters that he thinks are not of the slightest importance. Unfortunately, on what is important and what is not important, the President does not agree with many people. I think that the House should have these points clarified before it moves on.

Mr. Norton

The fact that the new Constitution provides for the creation of a Second House probably makes it worthless for anybody to express an opinion at this stage as to the need or otherwise for a Second House. The Constitution provides that a Second House is to be elected, and I presume the only duty of the Dáil is to decide upon the procedure to be adopted in the selection of the Second House. I should personally prefer the President to have stood where he did some time ago when he abolished the Second House. No case whatever has been made in the meantime for continuance of the Second House. At that time, Deputy O'Sullivan said one of the reasons why we should not have unicameral Government in this country was that Russia had Single Chamber Government.

Professor O'Sullivan

I never said that.

Mr. Norton

Did the Deputy not say it at that time?

Professor O'Sullivan

No.

Mr. Norton

Then, I withdraw the statement, but I think the Deputy will recollect having heard that echo from his own benches.

Professor O'Sullivan

I certainly do not. I always considered the Russian system of government much too complicated to make any such statement about it.

Mr. Norton

When discussing the abolition of the Seanad, the stock cry of the Fine Gael Party was that we were lining up with Russia.

Mr. Costello

Who said that?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It does not arise on this Bill.

Mr. Norton

I thought it was Deputy O'Sullivan who said it, but, in face of his repudiation, I withdraw my statement. Since then, Russia has adopted Double Chamber Government and we are doing the same.

Mr. McGilligan

And you are not satisfied.

Mr. Norton

Personally, I still believe that no case whatever has been made for the reinstitution of bicameral Government. None of the disasters which were prophesied as inevitable when the Seanad was abolished has materialised. This Bill is another example of the legislation which is presented to us when we try to do things which are not needed. The proposed method of electing the new Seanad is probably the most cumbersome method that could have been devised. That is because we are trying to create a piece of machinery the need of which nobody feels. In order to give this Seanad a somewhat different complexion from the previous one and to give the impression that we are not really reconstituting the old Seanad, but have discovered a new type of Seanad, we are providing for its election on vocational lines. When we come to look at the vocational lines proposed, we find that the country is sadly deficient in the type of vocational organisation which would be necessary if we were to have a Seanad elected on proper vocational lines. The fact of the matter is that, in this country, you have not the effective type of vocational organisation which would be necessary for an election on a vocational basis. For instance, it is provided that certain persons are to be representative of labour, whether organised or unorganised. What type of vocational organisation will give us a person really representative of unorganised labour? What type of person can you get on the labour panel——

Mr. Gorey

If it is not done, the Government will do it.

Mr. Norton

That is one of my objections to the Bill. I am rather suspicious of the manner in which it will be done.

Mr. Gorey

The Government will do the whole job.

Mr. Norton

Then, you get provision for electing 11 members on a labour panel as distinct from an agricultural panel, as if a person in agriculture did not labour or as if a person in industry or commerce did not labour. This method of election on a vocational basis seems to me to have been devised for no other purpose than to appear to give the Seanad certain new characteristics which, in fact, it will not have. I do not think that we have reached the stage at which we can have a satisfactory method of vocational election here. I do not think, in any case, that under the scheme of election proposed in this Bill, you are going to get a Seanad composed on a radically different basis from that which existed prior to the abolition of the previous Seanad. After all, the previous Seanad was as vocational in character as this new Seanad is likely to be, and if we just dwell for a moment on the type of people who constituted the old Seanad, I think we shall be able to recognise that the old Seanad did consist of persons who might well claim to be in a cultural and educational panel, to represent agriculture, to represent labour, to represent industry and commerce, and to have a knowledge of administrative work and social services, so that the old method of electing the Seanad at least gave us a type of Seanad in which all these interests were represented.

What, therefore, is the need for creating this elaborate panel system and trying to get that panel system from a vocational organisation which does not exist, when in fact we can get just as good a type of Seanad by the simple method of electing a Seanad in the same way as the previous Seanad was elected? I think we are creating a needlessly heavy machinery here which will give us almost a replica of the kind of Seanad which we would get if this House, either on its own or in conjunction with a second Seanad which would be elected, were acting as the electorate for the election of that Second Chamber. I think, therefore, that in its approach to this problem, both in the Constitution and in this Bill, the Government has simply made changes for the sake of changes and that the result in the long run will not give us a Seanad very substantially different from the previous Seanad. It will, however, put on the State quite a considerable amount of needless and burdensome machinery.

I complain, too, against this Bill because in its language and its entire method of approach to the problem, it seems to be aiming at a Government-made Seanad, and, reading this Bill even with the most impartial mind, one gets the impression that the body which exercises most functions in connection with the election of the new Seanad and which has most to say as to who will constitute the new Seanad is the Government, and that is not a desirable situation to create if we want, as the President used to want, a Seanad which is not a replica of the first House. For instance, under this Bill, the Government creates the nominating panels and the Government revises the panels from time to time, and it is quite easy to see that since the Government itself is a political body, concerned with its tenure of office here as a political Party and anxious always to get a renewal of confidence from the people, it will all the time be actuated by a desire to take such steps as will best serve the political interests of its Party.

Mr. T. Kelly

How is the Deputy so sure of that?

Mr. Norton

I should imagine that Deputy Kelly is as sure as I am.

Mr. T. Kelly

I am asking the Deputy that question—how is he so sure of that?

Mr. Norton

Because I am not just as simple as the Deputy apparently thinks I am.

Mr. T. Kelly

That is no way out.

Mr. Norton

Deputy Kelly may be horrified at this suggestion, but the President is a very skilful Party manager and the President will keep a veneer of independence and dignity in the selection of people for these panels, but Deputy Kelly need have no doubt that the President's cards will be very carefully stacked in the pack and that the game will run out just as the President wants it to run out.

Mr. Kelly

The Deputy might not be so cocksure about that.

Mr. Norton

I have more faith in the President as a Party manager than Deputy Kelly has. The President is quite a skilful Party manager and this whole business will operate in such a way as best to serve his Party interests. As we go through the Bill, we will see the President's plan unfold itself in such a manner as to enable Deputy Kelly to recognise that it is quite a skilful scheme for duplicating the Government's strength and even multiplying the Government's strength in the new House.

As I said, the whole language of the Bill and the whole method of approach, the provision by which the Government creates the nominating panels and revises them give the impression to anybody reading the Bill, apart from the powers themselves, that this is an effort to create a Seanad in which the Government will have its fingers well on the side of the scale which best suits its own interests. The President, of course, says that these regulations creating panels and for the revision of panels will come before the Dáil and that the Dáil may annul any Order, but that is no effective safeguard at all when a Government sure of a majority of one, or a majority of two, can come along and simply create any type of nominating panel it likes, revise the panel any time it likes, make it perhaps innocuous in the first instance, if it has not got a clear majority and revise it to give it greater strength when it gets a majority. The President may say that he has no such intention in mind, but it is not this Government is going to implement this. It is a future Government and even though the President would disown any such intention on the part of the present Government, he might consider the possibility of its being utilised in that way by some other Government. The fact that the Dáil is given an opportunity of annulling a nominating panels Order and a revising panels Order is no effective check so far as the Dáil is concerned, because once a Government has a majority and decides in the Party meeting room that such and such bodies are to constitute the nominating panels, all the eloquence that may be used in the House, all the cogent and convincing reasons submitted to the House, will avail nothing against the Party majority.

Probably one of the most unique features of this Bill is the type of electorate that is provided for. We are going to have a scheme now by which the electorate for the purpose of electing the Second House will consist of persons who were candidates at the previous election and who received a minimum of 500 votes. If they received that number of votes they will be deemed to have one vote for the new body; if they received nearly 2,000 votes, they will be deemed to have two votes; and if they received nearly 3,000 votes, they will be deemed to have three votes. Look at the kind of electorate we are creating. Under our normal electoral laws, we provide that a person who cannot get one-third of the quota in a Dáil election is considered a kind of political nuisance and because of his failure to commend his candidature to more than one-third of those whose votes would constitute the quota, he is fined £100 by the State.

Take the case of a constituency where there was a quota of 9,000, a candidate might come along and stand for election and get 2,600 votes. Our electoral law says that he is a political nuisance. He will be fined £100 for failing to get one-third of the quota, which will cure his ambitions in the future. What happens under this Bill? From being a political nuisance under the ordinary political machinery, that person is elevated to the category of being able to cast three votes in the Seanad election. Why he should be looked upon with such disfavour under our Dáil machinery, and looked upon with such profound favour under this Bill, I cannot imagine. Even further inconsistency may arise with that type of electorate. It might happen that a particular Dáil candidate, having been duly fined for his misplaced ambitions as a Parliamentary candidate, might misconduct himself and come into conflict with the law or he might, in fact, commit a misdemeanour of one kind or another. Is he to be allowed to exercise a vote in an election for the Seanad? I do not see that he is disqualified from doing so under this Bill. Supposing he were a legal man and, after being an unsuccessful candidate for election is a good Party man, if it was subsequently desired to promote him to the Bench, could he exercise three votes in the election for the Seanad? Suppose he took the notion to join the army and became a soldier, could that person exercise his votes in these circumstances? It seems to me he could. I do not see any prohibition against doing so. With a transitory type of electorate of that kind, we do not know the qualification from day to day. It seems to be rather a risky kind of electorate to which to anchor the new Seanad under the Bill. This method of election is unsatisfactory. It may be novel, but there is nothing very constructive in the novelty the President offers.

I should much prefer to see the electorate for the Seanad constituted of those who are members of the Dáil. That would automatically ensure that we would have an electorate the bona fides of which could not be questioned in other respects. Section 12 deals with the rights of members of the Dáil to nominate to any of the panels. It is provided quite definitely there that:—

"...any person may be nominated in accordance with this Act by not less than 25 members of Dáil Eireann to any of the panels constituted for that election."

A Party representing almost one-seventh of the membership of this House would not be entitled to make nominations for the Dáil panel at all, though that panel would elect 25 of the 60 members to constitute the new Seanad. In fact, two Parties, representing one-fourth of the strength of the Dáil, but not desiring to combine for manoeuvring purposes of this kind, would be deprived of any right to make nominations to the Dáil panel. I think that is a most unfair and a biassed provision, and is calculated to give power to the big Parties in the Dáil that is completely at variance with the whole principle of proportional representation enshrined in the Constitution. I cannot see why that provision should remain, unless it is desired to manipulate things in such a way that a big Party or Parties might be able to have things very much their own way in the matter of who is to be elected to the new Seanad. Deputy O'Sullivan stated that under the Bill it was likely the new Seanad would be largely a replica of the First House. I think it is clear that there will be duplication, and that you will have much the same trouble as formerly. It was said of the old Seanad that one of the defects of electing it was that the majority Party in this House could elect a majority there. That was true as a general principle. There was, of course, a hang-over from one election to another, whereby a minority Party here might, at a particular time, be able to get a majority in the Seanad, but, as a general principle, it was true that the majority in the Dáil could elect a majority Party in the Seanad. At least, that system had this merit: that the majority Party was able to do that by virtue of the fact that they got a majority of the votes in the country at the previous general election, and claimed the democratic virtue of using the power that they had got from the people in such a way as to elect a majority of the same thought in the Seanad. We are not going to have that situation any more. We are going to have an inversion.

What is going to happen under the Bill is that the Party in the Dáil that is not able to elect a majority in the Dáil is going to be able to select for the Seanad a majority Party there. The President says that is quite wrong. Of course it is not wrong. When we see the President's 11 nominees, we will see if it is not clear.

Mr. McGilligan

Election plus nomination.

Mr. Norton

What is going to happen? The Government Party have approximately 50 per cent. of the strength of the House. There are 43 members to be elected. Let us assume that the strength of the present Government Party is such that, having 50 per cent. of the representation, it can get 50 per cent. of the 43 seats. Let us assume that the Government Party, by using its voting strength, gets 21 seats out of the 43 to be elected. Then the President has 11 nominations in his pocket. The President's 11 nominees, with the 21 that the Party can elect, would give a total of 32 in the new Seanad out of a House of 60, and all the time there is the chance of returning one or two members of his Party to represent the universities. That is the situation we are going to have under the Bill. A Party failing to elect a majority in this House can, nevertheless, manipulate this electorate in such a way, with the President's 11 nominated members, as to constitute a majority in the Seanad. Bad as the old Seanad was, by virtue of the fact that it was a replica of this House, the majority Party here could have a majority in the Seanad. At least, that was done by virtue of the fact that the Party had a majority here. We are going to have precisely the same situation in the new Seanad, except that the Party here will not have a majority, but will be able to manipulate things in such a way as to produce the same results.

It is provided in the Constitution that the President is to nominate 11 members to the new Seanad. I think we ought to have had in this Bill some idea as to what way the President's mind was moving in connection with the 11 people to be selected, for instance. Is it for their knowledge of the various categories of national activities referred to in the Bill? Are they to be selected because of their culture, agriculture, labour, industrial and commercial or administrative experience when being nominated by the President? Is there to be any regard to the fact that it would be an advantage if they had political associations that would be useful to the President? Are we sure that the hard luck candidates at the previous election will not figure prominently amongst the 11? We ought to know from the President—he has had a fair amount of time to think over the matter since the Constitution was passed, and I have no doubt that he has thought over the matter a good deal since the Constitution was passed and, in fact, probably thought a good deal over it before the Constitution was passed—as to what way this scheme will work out. We ought to know from the President, on this Bill, what he proposes to do with those 11 nominees that he is entitled to place in the new Seanad under the Constitution.

I asked for the postponement of the Bill so that I might put down a motion proposing to have it deferred until such time as a committee representative of all Parties in the House had an opportunity of considering proposals for legislation of this kind which would implement the provisions of the Constitution in a manner satisfactory to all Parties. But the Government were in such a hurry with this measure that they wanted the Second Reading passed, and wanted the Bill as a matter of fact, passed. The Vice - President magnanimously said that he was quite satisfied to get the Second Reading in a week. He did not want the five stages in a week. That gives an idea of the hurry that the Government have displayed in connection with the Bill. It gives one an idea of the haste and of the whole attitude of the Government towards the Bill. An essential piece of information in connection with this Bill is to know what bodies are to constitute the nominating bodies, who they are to be, where they are to be got and the types of persons who are going to constitute the nominating bodies. We ought to have all that because it is essential information if we are to get any proper picture of the nominating bodies which are very important in considering this Bill. Has the President got that information at present? He will probably say that he has not. If he has it, he ought to have told us about it. If he has not got it, what then is the need for rushing this Bill through until such time as we can see the Orders which the Government propose to make constituting certain nominating bodies for the purposes of this Bill. I think, therefore, that the Government ought to give us some indication as to who the nominating bodies will be, and if that is not possible at this stage then I think we ought not to be asked to enact this Bill until such time as we can ascertain how the nominating bodies will be constituted.

This Bill has a defect in it which I think is calculated to deprive minority Parties in this House of fair representation in the new Seanad. The various panels are to be self-contained, and they are constructed in such a way that minority Parties in this House, now or in the future, may conceivably find it difficult to elect a member to any panel although they may represent a fair percentage of the membership of this House. Under Section 12 they may find it difficult to elect a person to any one of the five panels set out in the Bill. I would like to have the Bill considered, as I think it ought to have been considered in the first instance, by a committee representative of all Parties in the House, so that there could be some approach to an endeavour to get a Bill which met, as far as possible, the wishes of all Parties in the House. Instead, we are presented with a Bill which, in its whole construction, leans very strongly towards the Government side. I would have preferred, therefore, if it had been possible for the Government to have referred this Bill to a committee so that the machinery of it might be of a kind that would be acceptable to all Parties in the House.

I wanted, for instance, to suggest to a committee of that kind a scheme which cannot be very effectively discussed in this House. If it is desired to maintain the vocational character of the Seanad, I think that that ought not prevent us voting for all the candidates in one group instead of five separate panels. Let us say, for instance, that there will be five members from the cultural and educational panel, 11 members from the agricultural panel, 11 members from the Labour panel, nine members from the industrial and commercial panel, and seven members from the administrative panel. My idea would be to permit the Dáil, with the type of electorate that is provided in the Bill, to elect these members not in separate panels, but to regard the whole of them as candidates for election to the Seanad: that when the five members were elected from the cultural and educational panel, if there were any more candidates for that panel, that no more would be elected, and that after the fifth was elected the others would simply fall out and to follow the same procedure as regards the other panels. In other words, to have a general scheme of election providing for the election of these separate groups, but not providing for their election separately, as part of a comprehensive whole.

I think a scheme of that kind would give minority Parties in the House much fairer representation than they are likely to get under the Bill. That is a matter which could be more effectively considered in Committee than by means of discussion in this House because the technicalities involved prevent adequate discussion here. If it were possible to get the vocational method dropped, which I do not think can be worked satisfactorily in the circumstances in this country, and get back to the method of electing the new Seanad in the same way as the old Seanad was elected, I think that would be a better scheme even than the scheme in this Bill or in the Constitution. I do not think that we have reached the stage when we can get satisfactory vocational representation on the novel electorate proposed in this Bill. I think it will be found to be most unsatisfactory, full of dangers and bristling with complications which I suggest it is not desirable to have when alternative methods are available.

This is essentially a Bill that I think ought to be examined closely in Committee by persons who have devoted some study to the problem of electing a new Seanad. I would like to know whether it would be possible to deal with this Bill in Committee in such a way that the machinery could be drastically altered without infringing any principle which the Bill may contain. If it is possible to have the Bill altered in Committee, or to have the opportunity given for altering it in Committee, I would prefer if the Government would indicate their agreement to that, and send the Bill to Committee with the hope that the type of machinery provided for electing the Second Chamber will be as nearly satisfactory to all Parties as it is possible to make it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I do not know whether Deputy Norton intended his last question for the purpose of getting a ruling from the Chair, but on the line that he took I intended to point out to him that the Constitution specifically provides for five panels.

Mr. Norton

My scheme would keep the panels, but would not necessitate the election of the panel members separately.

Mr. Flinn

Do I take it that the Chair has ruled that except in so far as they are barred by the Constitution, amendments for the machinery of this Bill are in order?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Of course we cannot reopen what the House has already decided in the Constitution.

Mr. Flinn

The point that you put to Deputy Norton was that the point which you thought he had in mind might be debarred by certain provisions of the Constitution. Do I take it that, broadly speaking, where an amendment is not barred by the Constitution, it would be in order?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair cannot give any ruling except on something that is definitely before it. Therefore, I cannot give a ruling on something that is in the air. I understood from Deputy Norton that he was dealing with some kind of new panel that he had in mind, and before he developed that to any great extent I wanted to indicate that the Constitution, as approved by this House, specifically provides for five panels.

Mr. McGilligan

It says the manner of their appointment can be determined by law.

Mr. Norton

Can I have a ruling on the question as to whether, when this Bill has passed its Second Reading, it will be possible, if it is otherwise desirable, drastically to alter the machinery of the Bill so long as any drastic alteration does not infringe the provisions of the Constitution in respect of the vocational character of the Seanad?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Obviously, I could not give a ruling upon that. Deputy Norton and I might not agree upon what constituted drastic alteration.

Mr. Norton

Well, Sir, we have had a statement from the President that he consulted certain authorities, unspecified, in regard to this Bill and that it was his information that it would be possible to do anything with the machinery of the Bill. Now, that is a very encouraging statement from the President but it would be quite disappointing, of course, if the Chair is going to rule quite contrary to the advice the President has got from the authority he consulted.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair would take advice from the proper authority, of course, but the Chair must have something definite before it before the Chair can come to a decision.

The President

Perhaps I could help in this matter. I will say this, that if at any stage the Chair should find that what we were doing was running counter to some principle, we are prepared to withdraw the Bill. In other words, I cannot say how the Chair will rule. I can only give the advice that I have got for myself on what is likely to happen, but I think I could say that if we got into difficulties about meeting what would be regarded, from our point of view, as changes that ought to be met, I would be prepared, so to speak, to get over the difficulties that might be caused by the ruling of the Chair, contrary to the opinion I have expressed, by, if necessary, withdrawing the Bill.

Mr. Norton

And introducing a new Bill on which we might be able to find agreement?

The President

Yes, withdrawing the Bill, if necessary, and introducing a Bill on which we might hope to get agreement. That, however, is on the question of agreement. We have, however, the duty as a Government of implementing the Constitution. We have got to start somewhere. There is no hurry, and we have not been hurrying this Bill except in accordance with the requirements of the Constitution. It was simply the first natural business to take on. I take it that the time for getting agreement and for discussion with a view to trying to meet opposite views would be when the principle of the Bill was agreed upon; namely, that we were going to implement the Constitution by a Bill, and I cannot see one thing in this Bill that could be said to be the principle of the Bill except the question of panels which is already provided for in the Constitution. I take it that this is altogether a Bill of machinery and that you cannot pick out one single part of it and say that it is a principle more than another. Consequently I think that when we have got through this, we can send it on to Committee, and then, as far as I know, every line of it can be altered except, as I say, where there is a question of principle.

Mr. Norton

That is perfectly reasonable. The alternative suggested by the President of withdrawing the Bill and introducing another is perfectly reasonable.

The President

That is, if we get into difficulties owing to the Chair's ruling. In that case I would be prepared to withdraw the Bill in order to meet the situation that might be created by that.

Mr. McGilligan

I claimed, as a member of several Dáils, that no Dáil in which I have had the honour to sit is so unrepresentative of the democratic principle as this one. There has been a greater unsettlement of the opinions of the people, as indicated by their votes, thrown up in the personnel of this Dáil than there has been in any other Dáil. That was achieved, of course, by a very careful system of gerrymandering of the constituencies before the election, and it is appropriate enough that, in a gerrymandered house, so definitely unrepresentative of the votes cast by the people at that election, one of our first actions should be an attempt to gerrymander the proposed Second House. This is an amazing effort at gerrymandering. It is worse than that. We know what the President's attitude towards a Second Chamber is. Deputy O'Sullivan has referred already to-night to the President's attitude, in a quotation from the Abbé Siéyés: "If a Second House agree with you, it is unnecessary; if it disagrees with you, it is a nuisance." At any rate, the President has made up his mind that the Second House is not going to be a nuisance. He has made up his mind that it will be useless and futile. In that way, the Seanad, owing to the peculiar method of election, proving to be no good, the President will be able to say: "There, of course, as I told you, is an institution bound to decay and to lapse." It is for persons who believe in bicameral government, as I do, therefore, to try to put into the President's mind and under his control an instrument that will work if it is given a chance. It is impossible to fashion such an instrument under the present scheme.

Deputy O'Sullivan held out to-night two items as being necessarily tied up with the principle of the measure we are discussing. I gather that we are not recognising this Bill as having any principle in it at all. If, however, this Bill were to be discussed in this House in the way Bills are ordinarly discussed, there would be an insistence here on Second Reading that there are two points of importance in connection with this Bill, one dealing with the nominating bodies and the other dealing with the electoral body. Both are unique, as far as I can find from a reading of constitutional matters. I cannot find that there is any first principle upon which either is founded. Certainly, there is no example to be got throughout the world, I think, of this method of nominating bodies and of this method of a confined and a peculiar electorate. Much the worst feature, however, is the nominating body. Deputy Norton has told us that what was alleged against the last Seanad was that it was a replica of this House—whether it should be regarded as a virtue or a crime that it would be a replica of this House is not clear— but he admitted the virtue that it did correctly correspond to this House. Deputy Norton, however, I think, drew the unwise conclusion that this Bill meant, by a round-about method, the reduplication in the Seanad of at least the divisions in this House. It does nothing of the sort. This Bill will throw up a Seanad of a particular type, and it is intended to do so. It is not going to be a replica of the Dáil, but it is going to be, in the main, a replica of one side of the Dáil.

Look at the situation that is about to be created. In this House, with what I call the unbalanced nature of the representation here, the Government sits, having had a minority of votes cast for it in the country equal in its representation to every other Party in the House. Is every other Party in the House, supposing they were all going to vote together, likely to get their full weight represented in the Upper House? By no means. The Government has seen to that. It is first to be before this House, or this House plus the defeated candidates at the election. There is to be a nomination, and who nominates? The Government nominates. Take this Party to which I belong. We are entitled by our strength throughout the country to elect so many members, say, to one of these panels. Supposing that we could exercise our full Party strength, will we be able to exercise our full Party strength in electing to the Seanad? By no means. We may not have people whom we like sent to us, because, let us say, in regard to the agricultural or the industrial panel, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, or the Minister for Agriculture can, by his careful selection of the nominating bodies see that we will not have presented to us for our votes people to whom we would like to give these votes. I understand that there used to be in biscuit factories in the world one individual always selected before whom the contents of the eggs to be used in that factory were thrown up by a light and his job was to see that no bad egg passed. Ministers are going to see that no bad eggs from the Party point of view are going to pass or at least a small enough number to allow the President to say that he has given full scope to the Party strength in the House, whereas he knows that with the careful guidance of his Ministers he can prevent people being presented to the different Parties for the application of their votes who would ordinarily be acceptable to them.

The President says with regard to the electorate that it is better to have the defeated candidates joined to the personnel of this House because in that way Party management would not be either so direct or so effective in regard to the choice. I think in a sense he is right. I say, certainly, with regard to any of the Parties who are not the Government Party at the time that it will not be so easy for the Party point of view to be impressed upon people who are not at the moment members of a political Party group here. Will that have the same effect with regard to the Government Party? Are defeated candidates likely to be recalcitrant when the President asks them to cast their votes for certain people? Will defeated candidates not remember that the President has in his grip all the time 11 nominations, and is Party management, Party strength, not going to be immediate, direct and very effective on one side of the House, whereas the scheme will certainly make it slightly relaxed so far as the Opposition Parties are concerned.

That is the second way in which this is balanced in favour of one Party in the House, a Party, as I say, which holds equal representation with every other Party in the House, although on voting strength it is revealed to be in a minority. If we are allowed, in this method proposed to the Chair, completely to reverse the scheme of nominations and to tear asunder this particular electorate thrown to us, we need waste no more time on the Second Reading, because if these two things are properly adjusted some attempt can be made to get functioning a Seanad which can, by the work it will hereafter do, commend itself to the people of the country, and, in commending itself, will commend the institution of two-Chamber Government. But, if we are to be left with this idea that Ministers can select the nominating bodies, that they can present unacceptable people to other Parties, that they can in that way see that the full Party strength of other members will not be voted, then, of course, the Second House becomes much worse even than that vicious one previously in this country, the pretended vice being that it was a replica of this House, because it will not be a replica, it will only represent in the greatest way one side of the House, and the other people will not have power to give full effect to the votes they have behind them in any way as shown through their representation there or the votes given to their candidates at the election.

I do want to say this in general apart from the Bill. Deputy Norton stands here as a believer in Single Chamber Government. Unless a Second Chamber is given some function to perform, and unless some distinction be made in its method of selection, Deputy Norton will probably prove to be expressing the majority view hereafter in the country. Second Chamber Government is a growth from old times. It is a growth from the days of the monarchy and from the days of the hereditary aristocracy. But it is a strange thing that even the new Constitutions in Europe—all of them with the exception, I think, of the Baltic States and one other country —even the new democratic countries decided in favour of two-Chamber Government. They sought around for some new principle to apply instead of this aristocracy of birth, and they found it in a different way. They thought they could get a Second Chamber of some value if they could get a Chamber in which they would have men of specialised knowledge and specialised experience, and if they gave these men of specialised knowledge and experience some decent function to play in the parliamentary life. In most countries it has been found possible to do that. Most countries in their search for a principle to get that Second House elected have turned in the direction of what has been canvassed here to-night. Deputy Norton talks of vocational representation. He says, and I think says correctly, that if we are going to go on the basis of vocational representation we have not, so to speak, sufficient organisations representing those vocations to give us a proper electing body. I think that there the mistake lies that most people are drifting into in this connection.

What most people think other countries have founded upon is vocational organisations, not functional representation, which is a different thing. You try to give representation to people, not because they are geographically grouped in certain areas, but because the particular talent given to them leads them to work in certain directions. You need not look for organisations grouping these people. You could not get it in this country, because we are not so far advanced. You can get these people to vote by getting the folk who are functionally engaged in certain matters on a certain register. If you get a register you do not want organisation—it will grow after that. I do not see why it would not be possible. It will take some labour and some time in the thinking out, and more time in writing down in black and white for a parliamentary measure. But I do not see why we should be repelled by the task of trying to see is it possible to group the people of this country in some way other than by geographical divisions; to see could we not get a certain groups of people divided because they labour in a particular way; some because they are in professional classes, some because they are industrial, some because they are agricultural. But we need not go to organisations to nominate Certainly we need not go to Ministers to select from these partly-built up organisations ones that Ministers will think to be the proper ones to give us a body of people for whom to cast votes.

I hope that this matter will go to a committee. Now that we have decided on a Second Chamber, even although it is a Second Chamber with very little powers, I hope that they are going to be people to think along these lines, to recognise that we have not organisations representative of people in certain vocations, but to recognise that we have people so divided that all we have to do is to engineer the machinery, and that, I think, can be done. That is an ideal, that is rather a hope. If we are to go on this Bill, of course, it is not merely that the particular Seanad thrown up will be of no great good, but the institution of a Second Chamber will certainly have suffered defeat. With it the Second Chamber will be in the mud when that Bill goes through.

I want to suggest to the President one way in which he might look at this, one way that will probably jolt him from his present view that this is a good measure. Supposing it was suggested in the North of Ireland that some relief might be given to minorities by giving them representation in a Second House. Supposing after a promise to that effect had been given, a measure like this were introduced and it was found—we may talk definitely along the distinctions that are prevalent there—that whereas the Catholics represented a certain percentage of the community, and the non-Catholics another percentage, when the scheme to elect a Second Chamber came along, your Catholic vote was going to be made to operate on a personnel thrown up by the allocation of their votes by Lord Craigavon and his Ministers. Would the President consider that carrying out the promise to give proper representation to the Catholics in the North? The President does exactly here what he would loudly denounce, in the way I have suggested, in the North of Ireland. Why should we pretend that we are giving people who have deserved representation and who have got it in this Bill, full scope when we are offering them a measure which means that, right at the start, before people are thrown up for the allocation of votes, the Government comes along and says:

"We shall only appoint such and such a body as the nominating body. You have got to cast your votes for them whether you like it or not." There is even worse than that.

I can see a scheme in which the Seanad would be elected with this deliberate purpose, that a Government going out of office would leave its successor faced for a few years with a Seanad mainly coloured with the viewpoint of the departing Government. I think that would be fair enough if it went on, if the Government that came in eventually could get a Seanad complexioned like itself, and that it departed leaving behind it some group with the viewpoint of the Government. But the President here arranges that the outgoing Ministers will have appointed the nominating bodies before they leave office. The President is going to get a Seanad which he is certainly going to take care will not be a nuisance to himself and, as far as he can manage it, he is ensuring that his successors are going to get a Seanad which will be a nuisance to them. That is a double-edged weapon.

Mr. Costello

It is not my intention further to whip a dying, if not a dead, horse because so far as I can see this Bill is practically dead, in its main provisions and its fundamental principles, in so far as it has any fundamental principles. It must have been quite apparent to the President even when he was moving the Second Reading of the Bill that the measure was not acceptable to this House. The provisions of the Bill, as he has stated, are largely machinery and, on the basis of the machinery provided in the Bill, the fundamental principle is this administrative Order made by the Government forming the nominating bodies who are to select the people for the panel. The second principle, as Deputy McGilligan pointed out, is the electorate to elect members of the Seanad. We would have been perhaps attracted by the President's offer to regard this Bill as being a Bill containing only the principle that there must be some sort of Second Chamber, within the ambit of the constitutional provisions, and that so far as he was concerned he was willing to discuss every amendment put forward to provide, within the ambit of the Constitution, as perfect a Seanad as it was possible to devise, were it not that we have experience of the President's offers in respect to reasonable amendments. I have still present in my recollection the weeks we spent debating the Constitution when every single amendment we put forward was turned down. The only reason given by the President for turning down the amendments which we put forward, in a spirit of desire to help, was the now famous reason: "I have made up my mind." We feel that on every proposal we shall put forward in connection with the amendment of this measure, we shall be faced with the suggestion that the amendment is not a reasonable amendment, or else that the arguments are so overwhelming against it—to use the phrase used by the President to-day—that the suggestion cannot be accepted.

Although we are approaching the task we have to face in connection with the amendment of this Bill with no enthusiasm whatever for this measure, we do feel that we are under a duty to do what we can to improve this Bill. To that extent, whilst as I say we have no enthusiasm for it, we shall put forward proposals at the appropriate time to make the Seanad that will be set up as far as possible a workable institution. I have no liking for the Seanad that will be set up, nor do I think has any other member on this side of the House. I think it will be one of the worst possible Seanads that could be devised. It purports to be based on a vocational basis. It purports to represent functional interests. I adopt in this matter the words of the late Chief Justice in his minority report when he dissented expressly from the views expressed by other members of the Commission in regard to the setting-up of a Seanad on this basis. He dissented from the proposals of members of the Commission who suggested the setting-up of a Seanad on this basis. I think, even in his own opening statement to-day, the President practically repeated some of the words of the late Chief Justice. "Economic life," said the Chief Justice in his report, "in the Saorstát is not organised on what is called a functional basis. There is no indication of functional councils in any direction. There is no prospect of a vocational basis for our national economic life arising in the near future or at all. If it were otherwise I would urge that the Second House should be the crown of such a system and that its personnel be found through the functional councils. In the state of facts as we find them, I disregard a functional basis altogether."

Summarised in that paragraph, to my mind, is the real reason why an attempt should not be made to set up a functional or vocational Seanad in this country. We are attempting by the provisions of the Constitution and of this Bill to set up a functional Seanad, without the proper foundation for such a functional institution. We have not got the corporative system that exists in Italy which would be a basis upon which a functional Seanad could be set up. We have no indication in this country at the moment that the development of our economic life will tend to the creation of such a corporative system or that any functional corporation or functional councils will develop out of the ordinary natural reasonable development of our State. Therefore when you have not got proper members for a functional Seanad, there is no use trying to set up machinery for something which has no proper foundation. That is what we are trying to do in this Bill. That is why we must inevitably fail. That is why the Seanad will not be a proper reflex of our economic life. That is why any system we may devise, with the best goodwill in the world, will not give you a functional or a vocational Seanad.

I have very fundamental objections to the provisions of the Bill enabling the Government to make orders appointing those nominating bodies. I have the usual, the ordinary objections, that practically everybody has to legislation by administrative order, but that is not my real or fundamental objection to this provision. I object to the system because it is one which gives a blank cheque to the Government. It is a system which, as some of the other Deputies who have spoken here to-day pointed out, will tend to give the Seanad a peculiarly political complexion, but further than that, and perhaps more objectionable than all the other matters I have stated before, the system that is going to be set up here will tend not merely to make the Seanad political but will tend to give a political complexion to the other bodies who are mentioned as nominating bodies. We may have the Academy of Music holding political meetings. We may have the Institute of Fine Arts holding political meetings. That may seem rather far fetched. Most of those bodies that are mentioned in the report of the Seanad Commission that was set up by the Government are bodies which are non-political in their basis. The Federation of Irish Industries we must assume to be non-political, to be based on business considerations. If bodies of that kind are to be faced with the task of nominating the various panels for which they are responsible, they are bound to be influenced in their selection by political considerations, because the electorate is political.

There is no use in getting your name on a panel. There is no use in getting the name of a person representative of industry with peculiar knowledge and experience of industrial matters, a person who would be a good Senator and whose work in the Seanad would be useful to the country, and to the Government of the country in carrying out the tasks entrusted to them. He will not be elected, however good he is, unless he has political support amongst the electorate, and the electorate for the Seanad is a purely political electorate, whether it is composed of members of the Dáil or follows this peculiar provision that is envisaged in the Bill of an electorate consisting of Deputies plus defeated candidates. Whatever system is adopted, either one or the other, the electorate is political. There are two fences to be jumped before a person can become a Senator. One is to be nominated to a panel, and the other is to be elected by the electorate. It would be a comparatively simple matter to get nominated to one or other of the panels, but it would be an extremely difficult task for a person who ought to be elected to the Seanad to get the votes of the electorate. That is, to my mind, a very fundamental objection to the system proposed.

It has been pointed out that the Seanad will tend to be political. Personally, I have no very great objection to that, but I have the objection that you will have the nominating bodies— the councils of agriculture, any bodies representative of the agricultural industry, the county councils, the bodies representative of fine art, culture and education—all tending to become political. There is another objection that I wish to advert to very shortly. Assuming for a moment that a representative of industry, having been placed upon the panel, has been elected by the political electorate contemplated by this Bill. He becomes a Senator. Who is his master? Is not the whole idea of a Seanad, the only useful purpose which a Seanad can have in the country, to provide a body or an institution consisting of individuals with specialised knowledge and experience, with individual liberty and freedom from political considerations and from business affiliations, to place their experience and knowledge at the disposal of the Government and the country? Let us suppose that this person is placed upon the panel and elected by the political electorate. Assuming that he is able to shake himself free from political shackles, is he not bound still tighter to his business affiliations? If he is elected by an industrial organisation—I do not wish to make an invidious example; I am taking it merely as an example —as a representative of industry he comes into the Seanad and when proposals affecting industry are being considered and dealt with by the Seanad —proposals affecting the business of the people who sent him there, proposals affecting not their political interests but their pockets—he has to consult the body that put him on the panel, and he has to act upon their dictation. A person whose liberty of action is so circumscribed by business or sectional affiliations, which he must have in the first place, and by political considerations in the second place, cannot be a useful member of a deliberative Assembly such as it is contemplated that the Seanad should be.

Many other considerations against the proposals in this Bill can be adduced. We will have an opportunity of dealing with them at some further stage. I only wish to direct attention to one or two outstanding matters in connection with this Order system that is contemplated in the Bill. I think that the whole system of nominating individual bodies such as is contemplated here is entirely wrong. I take it that the President does not stand upon that system as a principle to which he is tied by Government policy, and that if a better scheme is put up he will be prepared to consider it. Therefore, I will not further elaborate upon the defects of this system. Deputy Norton has drawn attention to the defects in the electorate system proposed in this Bill. Personally, I would not vote for any Bill containing a provision that defeated candidates were to form part of the electorate. I can see no justification for it.

The President gave only one reason. I was interested in listening to the President, because I anticipated that he would give some cogent reasons for the adoption of the suggested electorate. The commission which was set up by the Government some time ago to consider the question of a Second House recommended this peculiar electorate, but they gave no reasons for it. I have not yet heard any reasons from anybody to justify this electorate. The President gave only one, and I do not think that even he was convinced by that reason which he put forward. The only reason he put forward was that the bringing in of the defeated candidates tended to give a Seanad which would not be so precise a replica of the Dáil as a Seanad elected merely by the members themselves.

Deputy Norton has already drawn attention to a number of the anomalies that will result from the adoption of this system of election. Everybody knows there are numbers of people put up by various political Parties at a general election as a kind of— you could hardly call them stool pigeons, but they are rather selected to attract pockets of votes. They are put up under the system of proportional representation because they can get 500 or 600 first preference votes in their own particular parish for parochial consideration and nothing else. A person of that kind, getting his little parish pocket of votes, is able to take part in the election for this Second House of the Oireachtas. There is no justification for such a system. I have not heard any justification from the President. I think the President does not appear to be enamoured of it, and surely that particular method of election ought to be dropped.

There are two fundamental matters in the Bill that we object to—the setting up of these bodies and also the electorate. But there is one omission in the Bill which, to my mind, is even more serious, if possible, than the two matters I have adverted to. We have under the Constitution, as the President has already pointed out, to make provision for some sort of machinery to provide for the filling up of the panels contemplated in Article 18. That only provides, taking the words of the Constitution itself, machinery by law for the formation of the panels. Paragraph 7 sets out:

"Before each general election of the members of Seanad Eireann to be elected from panels of candidates, five panels of candidates shall be formed in the manner provided by law..."

The Constitution makes provision to the effect that five panels of candidates are to be found somewhere or another in a manner to be provided by law.

But there is a very much more fundamental requirement in the Constitution which is completely ignored in this Bill—the type of person whose name is to go upon that panel. These panels are to contain, respectively, the names of persons having knowledge and practical experience of certain interests and services. Who is to decide whether the persons who are nominated on these various panels are persons having knowledge and practical experience of the various interests they are supposed to represent? I think it is an omission in this Bill of a very fundamental and serious character that there is no provision made by which the names of persons to be nominated, in whatever manner ultimately they will be nominated, in these panels may be checked in reference to their qualifications to be members of the Seanad. To my mind it is of the utmost importance that people who are to be upon this panel should be people fulfilling the constitutional requirements.

We had in the original Constitution of this State, Article 30, which provided for the qualification of Senators. The qualification at that time was that people who were nominated, who were proposed for the position of Senator, should be proposed on the ground that they had done honour to the nation by reason of useful public service or that, because of special qualifications or attainments, they represented important aspects of the nation's life. I think it is right to say that the first Seanad that was a nominated body and that was set up in this country after the State was founded, was a body which in every respect fulfilled the requirements of Article 30 of the Constitution and set a headline for every subsequent Seanad. It is possible to argue and even to affirm that the personnel of subsequent Seanads did not conform to the requirements of Article 30. I do, however, believe this, that if machinery could be devised by which a provision such as was contained in Article 30 of the original Constitution could be properly and effectively given effect to, that you would come nearer to getting the perfect Seanad than any scheme that has yet been put forward.

What you want is some machinery to select the personnel, to see that the persons nominated fulfil the requirements and that they are not put on the panel because they happen to be hard-up, because they happen to have a local pull, or for any other reason of a somewhat similar nature. I think the constitutional requirements will not be carried out in reference to the Seanad election unless some machinery is devised and given the force of law by which, if I may use the phrase, before a candidate for the Seanad can get on to the panel, he is passed through some sort of sieve to see whether or not he is a fit and proper person to become a member of the Seanad in accordance with the constitutional provisions of Article 18 (7).

You will not have a proper sort of Seanad so long as any Tom, Dick or Harry can be put down in one of these panels and so long as there is no test by means of which some sort of a decision, whether it is the ideal decision or not, can be come to on the question laid down in this Constitution as to whether the person has practical knowledge and experience of the interest he purports to represent. I feel it is essential, if we are to have any sort of decent Seanad at all, any sort of Seanad that will command respect and will be an effective body, that there must be somebody who will test the qualifications of these people put forward, whatever the machinery that may ultimately be agreed upon, for insertion on these various panels.

We are starting out now to revert back to the bicameral system. I entirely disagree with Deputy Norton, and we as a party fundamentally disagree with him in his contention that a bicameral system of Government is something to be deplored, something for which he, personally, and his Party will not stand. We are satisfied that a bicameral system of Government is essential and that any sort of a Seanad is better than no Seanad at all. It is in that spirit we approach the proposed Seanad, trying to make it, as we hope to do, within the limits allowed to us, as effective a Seanad as possibly can be made. We have no great enthusiasm for the proposed kind of Seanad. So far as is possible, we will endeavour to make it a good Seanad.

A large number of people in this country voted for the Constitution, not because they wanted the new Constitution, not because they even liked many of the provisions of the new Constitution, but because it set up a Seanad, because it reverted back to the bicameral system of Government. Very many people voted for the Constitution for that reason. Any sort of Second Chamber is better than none. If the President is serious, as we assume on this occasion he is, in stating that he wants help, then let us hope he will accept suggestions from this side of the House in a different frame of mind to the manner in which he dealt with suggestions from this side in reference to the Constitution.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance (Mr. Flinn)

I have listened with very considerable interest to the discussion which has taken place, and I have listened from the point of view of a person who approaches this Bill with the perfectly open mind with which the President has suggested it should be approached. Now this is a unique Bill. People use the word "unique" without knowing the meaning of it. In this case the Bill is unique in the dictionary meaning of the word. There never has been a Bill of this kind introduced before with the spirit and with the definition with which this has been introduced. There never has been a Bill introduced under the circumstances and for the purpose for which this Bill has been introduced. The President has told you that some Bill of some kind had to be introduced for the purpose of implementing the Constitution in this matter. The first characteristic of this Bill is that it is obligatory. Now nothing could possibly be more favourable to the point of view of the Opposition, to the point of view of a body who desired a different kind of Bill, than that we would have a Bill introduced with that notification—introduced with the notification that it was purely a machinery Bill, with the further notification that every portion of that machinery would be subjected to the will and judgment of this House, and an invitation given for suggestions to be made in relation to alteration in it——

Mr. Davin

Yes, to have them turned down.

Mr. Flinn

But it has gone further than that. Again I would remind you of the word "unique" used in connection with this Bill. It was a Bill introduced not merely with all these qualities but it has the further additional provision that in the event of circumstances which might emerge preventing the House using that discretion, that this would be dealt with by the President by the withdrawal of the Bill, if it were necessary to do so, in order that there should be free discussion on it. Can you conceive any possible method of introducing a Bill for the necessary purpose of initiating a contribution more fair, open and liberal than these conditions? I ask you to define more liberal conditions? I cannot conceive them. That being so, I personally think that the Opposition, while they were right and while they are bound to put forward every possible objection and especially every possible constructive suggestion for the improvement of the Bill, would have shown better tactics if they had done the same work in a different tone.

I think that if Deputy Costello's excellent speech had been delivered with the acceptance of that principle instead of suggesting that it is a three-card trick or something of that kind, he would have built up a claim to consideration which all these suggestions and improper motives and intentions, to some extent, have tended to destory. I am not saying this out of a spirit of controversy. I am saying it because I think, and the President thinks, that it is the business of this House to provide the best machinery. I think that this Bill should be discussed in the atmosphere which would make concession, co-operation and coordination possible to us as distinct from the atmosphere in which everything is going to be regarded as some trick which is being found out, some evil which is being intended and which is being avoided instead of what this Bill ex-proviso is—an attempt to implement the Constitution as the Government is bound to have it implemented, with free discussion and with an open and cordial invitation to the House to improve it in any particular in which it can be improved.

To me it seems that this Bill is an attempt to get away from the method which previously existed of electing a Seanad which did in fact repeat this House. It is an attempt to get away from a political method of electing a Seanad which would be political. It is an attempt to find, through the use of nomination from so-called functional associations possibly, different people for whom one could vote than would otherwise have been provided. It is an attempt to enlarge in some way, to liberalise, to de-party and to depoliticise to any extent that is possible while still keeping in from with the mathematical expressions of the electorate's mind—that is, the electorate for the Seanad. The Bill is an attempt on these lines. To me it is a matter of pure opinion, a matter on which one may hold any opinions one thinks fit as to whether or not that attempt should be made and as to whether or not any such attempt would be successful.

If I read part of Deputy Costello's speech aright, he wanted a more political Seanad. Some people may want a political Seanad. I think they are quite entitled to that point of view. They are quite entitled, under the invitation they have received, to put down here amendments which would make the Seanad a more political Seanad. There are people who think that the Seanad should be more vocational than it will be under this Bill. That would entitle them to put down as an amendment to the Bill the provision of machinery that will ensure that the Seanad will be more vocational. Again, that is a matter of opinion. I am not even going to be controversial at the moment. I am not going to express an opinion as between the two. Deputy Costello raises the point that not merely should this Seanad be composed in its panels of men with certain qualifications, but that the machinery should be provided to ensure that they have those qualifications.

As I read the Bill, there is nothing whatever to prevent anybody from putting down an amendment to ensure that, if they can find the machinery with which to do it. Now, I think we all know the difficulty of setting up machinery which will do that. For instance, I could go through any one of these panels and I would challenge anyone to question my right to be on any of them. I would find hundreds and thousands of people who would deny my right to be on any of them. What standard of education, what history of education, what state of professional qualifications-professional or otherwise—would you regard as keeping you in or out of the cultural panel? Which one man in this country could not claim positively or negatively that he had a connection with agriculture? Every member of this Dáil, every local councillor, everybody who ever voted for a local councillor or refused on principle to vote for a local councillor would regard and claim himself to be a person having contact with administrative life. I am putting these considerations before the House simply and solely on the ground that it is going to be difficult for anybody to set up a standard, but if anybody does know of a method whereby a standard can be set up, there is every opportunity for him, under the Bill, to put it forward.

Deputy Costello raised a question as to what are called "non-political associations" being corrupted with politics due to their being used for the purpose of nominating people on panels to an organisation which, when elected, will be a political organisation. It is a pity to corrupt any organisation that is not yet corrupted by politics, but, frankly, I do not know that organisation. As regards chambers of commerce, a chamber of commerce always starts out by saying: "We are an entirely non-political body." They say it in exactly that tone. They say that politics is one of those things which they do not touch. I have had the experience of being present at meetings of chambers of commerce and hearing addresses in which there was not a single word that was not politics—and politics of a particular kind, introduced by an entirely honest man with the statement that it was a non-political address and that he was a non-politician. You will find politics in all sorts of places. If, for instance, you had a sports organisation or an organisation for development of the body or for development of national health as one of the vocational institutions, one of its branches might be the local Rugby Union. Anybody who has stood on the grand stand at an international Rugby match could have little doubt as to what the result would be if they were polled politically. I am merely giving that as an example. There are other organisations about which you would have little doubt as to how they would poll politically through they are not, in any sense, political bodies. The point at issue is that none of the objections raised by any person in the House up to the present is an objection an amendment to remove which is barred from the Bill as it stands.

As regards the question of the electorate, my objection to the electorate as it is down in the Bill is that it does not do what it honestly tries to do. I have taken the trouble to have the whole of the election returns for two or three elections analysed from the point of view of using these two different electorates for the purpose of electing a Seanad. We worked out a new Seanad on the two bases for two or three elections, and there was no difference of any kind whatever as between the two. The only possible chance would be a slight leakage between the control which can be exercised in relation to members in a small body here and the degree in which you could exercise that same control over men with whom you would have to get in contact by post and otherwise. I worked that out also from the point of view of the representation of big and little Parties in the House.

Mr. Davin

How does that work?

Mr. Flinn

Broadly speaking, it would be in favour of the little Parties. The Deputy asked the question. He may not have made an analysis, and he ought to treat his own question with respect. Under the proportional election system, the tendency is that the larger the Party and the larger its representation, the smaller the number of first preferences it requires for the purpose of electing a Deputy. For instance, it cost the Labour Party in one particular election 10,000 votes to elect a Deputy. At the same time, the Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil Parties were electing their men with about 9,000 votes.

Mr. Davin

Seven thousand.

Mr. Flinn

You may take it that there is a discrepancy and, therefore, any method which does go back more closely to the electorate than the actual people delivered in the House tends to benefit those who are at present penalised under that system. In other words, if the smaller Parties in this House were to elect people to the Dáil on the basis of their actual vote—and that is what you are getting back closer to—they would elect more representatives than they would elect merely representationally. Unfortunately, when you come to work it out mathematically, you find that, so far as the small Parties are concerned, it means that instead of electing, say, 3.2 Deputies, they would elect somewhere about 3.35 Deputies. In other words, when subjected to the actual test of the number of people to be elected, the improvement is not effective to change the position. In addition, I am of opinion that the smaller Parties will probably have more leakage as between their control of the Deputies, as elected, than the larger bodies. Examining the matter without prejudice to see whether this scheme would be to their benefit, I formed the opinion that while, theoretically, it was slightly to the advantage of the smaller Parties, in practice it would not be. The only objection—I regard it as a matter of very small importance now—to this particular electorate is that it elaborately does what can very simply be done. The same result would be obtained by the simpler method. If anyone thinks that there is that large amount of advantage in the method proposed, as distinct from the other, it is up to them to put it forward. Deputy Davin, apparently, felt at the beginning that this method did not help the small Parties. I do not know whether he holds that view now or not. The proposal in the Bill is certainly not to the detriment of the smaller Parties.

Mr. Davin

The Bill is dead. You are performing the funeral ceremony.

Mr. Flinn

The actual question is whether or not a better system than a system of election by the Dáil can be formulated. If any member of the House has any such proposal, he is entitled to put it forward. I have listened to the entire discussion and I have listened with an open and receptive mind to that portion of it which was intended to be constructive criticism, and I certainly have not heard a single suggestion put forward by the Opposition that is not capable of being included in an ordinary amendment to the Bill. Having regard to the fact that the Bill has been introduced for the purpose of giving the House an opportunity itself to implement the Constitution, itself to improve the proposed method, and that every possible device of liberalism that can be attached to the Bill has been attached to this Bill for the purpose of carrying that out, I think the Dáil should accept it in that spirit and make every attempt to use the facilities which have been offered it for the purpose of seeing that when this Bill does emerge from the Dáil, it will provide the best institution which the combined brains and intelligences of this House can create.

Mr. T. Kelly

Listening to Deputy Norton this evening, I at once came to the conclusion that the shift which his Party have made from these seats to their present residence has not been good for their morals. The Deputy spoke in very disparaging terms of the President and the character attributed to him was not such as one would expect from the leader of the Labour Party. I always took a very neighbourly interest in them when they were here, but they shifted without even bidding me "good evening."

Mr. Davin

We had no room there.

Mr. Kelly

There was plenty of room but that is the way of the world. When people become big they do not want their little friends. They have shifted now, and are travelling towards the Left. Deputy Norton's argument with regard to this Bill put me in mind of this great fact, which I think members ought to get into their skulls—that the one man who made himself perfectly clear regarding the question of a Seanad was the President. He did not want one. Over and over again did he make that statement; but having regard to the fact that he found, probably, a considerable volume of opinion in the State, he decided to give it a chance, and he appointed—with great care, as the House knows—a committee to inquire as to the best method of forming a Seanad. That committee met for months, and I know from what I could hear that extraordinary pains were taken in constituting the personnel of that committee. That committee made three of four reports, and based on these reports you have this Bill.

Deputy Norton made a point this evening which at first blush seemed to me to be a good one but which turned out to be merely a debating point. He said that there are certain persons in this country who constitute themselves nuisances at election times. They go up for election, and it costs them £100 and they never go up for election any more. They only get a handful of votes, and these persons are now to have a vote in the nominations for the Seanad. I think the Deputy should be the last man in the world to complain of that. He speaks here as the representative of a minority, but surely if a candidate gets 500 votes—he may be a nuisance, if you like, and a candidate you would not vote for—it is certainly giving the minority representation if you give him a vote for the Seanad. The point at first puzzled me a little, but as I thought it out, and sought the opinion of others, I came to the conclusion that there was no substance in it and that it was a point he should not have made. Deputy Davin, his second in command, I presume—I do not know whether he has got any stripes yet or not—says the Bill is dead. But, of course, the wish was there. It is not dead; it is going to live.

My reason for interfering here at all was to take exception to the small number to be given to persons representing cultural interests, if that phrase would suit. They are to have only five, while agriculture is to have 11, labour 11, commerce and industry nine and administration seven.

Mr. Davin

And 11 to Fianna Fáil.

Mr. Kelly

If there are 11 given to Fianna Fáil, it is work well done.

Mr. Davin

You are an honest man.

Mr. Kelly

I always got that character and it is a very disagreeable character to get, because I have gone through this world under a cloud of suspicion because of it. Thinking over what I would regard as cultural representatives, we would have representatives of medicine, law minus politics, literature, art, science, music, architecture, the teaching profession and—may I dare mention it—clerics. I consider a representation of five entirely insufficient, and I think that one could well be lopped off the other representations and given to cultural interests. It was for this reason that I got up to speak and I hope that in Committee this will be reconsidered and a larger representation given. With regard to University representation—both Dublin University and what is termed the National University— so far as I can remember, with the exception of the late Mr. Lecky, I do not know any representative from Dublin University who was not a virulent politician. In the recent University representation, we had a doctor and, I think, two professors, but I think that University will always have the one atmosphere, and the first consideration for electors there will be the atmosphere that always surrounded that institution from its very inception. As to the National representatives who were here, one was a lady who sat in this seat. I have succeeded to it and I hope I can succeed to the spirit that actuated her when she was a member here. We had another representative of Fianna Fáil who has become a judge. He was a politician.

Mr. Everett

Is that why he became a judge?

Mr. Kelly

No, that was not the reason, but he was elected principally as a politician. Then we have the third representative, Deputy McGilligan, a distinguished lawyer, who is a first-rate politician. There is no doubt about that. The Universities, in my opinion, will not add much to the cultural reputation here. I may be wrong. I hope the House will give this Bill its most serious consideration. After all, it is a great idea, having regard to the welter of politics, to have a Second Chamber that would be non-political, so far as it was possible to make it. We know what the last Seanad was—a political body that proved itself unsatisfactory.

Mr. Davin

You helped to make it a political body.

Mr. Kelly

I did not.

Mr. Davin

Your Party put defeated candidates into it.

Mr. P.J. Fogarty

The Labour Party also had defeated candidates in the Seanad.

Mr. Davin

Unfortunately, that is true.

Mr. Kelly

I hope I have not hurt Deputy Davin, who is a very able man. I say that the ideal in this Bill is a fine ideal and that we ought to act up to its spirit as best we can. I know that we are only human. I think the President, although he does not want a Seanad, and never wanted it, is to be congratulated on his great effort. This is a great effort to try to have a Seanad that would be a credit to the State, and that would never be looked upon as a partisan or a political body.

Mr. Anthony

The matters to which Deputy Kelly has referred can, as the Parliamentary Secretary suggested, be dealt with by way of amendment. It is up to the Deputy and others to move amendments on the Committee Stage. I would much prefer to move the rejection of this measure, after collecting facts and figures, and examining various divisions which took place here, to prove that the Fianna Fáil Party has made a complete volte face in relation to the whole position concerning the Seanad. The President did not state that he was in favour of the abolition of the Seanad. He stated very clearly and specifically on more than one occasion that he was against the Seanad “as then constituted.” I think these were his words. The Fianna Fáil Party came into power on the slogan, the abolition of the Seanad. They cannot have it both ways. They went to the country and told the people from many platforms that the Seanad was useless institution, only fit for people who were either suffering from early senility or were in some other way incapable. It was regarded as a dumping ground for the camp followers of political parties. That is how the Seanad was described to the people by the Fianna Fáil Party. Now, the Fianna Fáil Party will be canvassed, and their followers will be tumbling over one another in order to get into a Chamber which was decried and vilified before the general election. The Labour Party, to some extent, was responsible for putting as many of their nominees as possible, as well as their defeated candidates, into a Chamber that they so despised.

Mr. Davin

The Deputy helped in that policy.

Mr. Anthony

I did not.

Mr. Davin

You did.

Mr. Anthony

I am anxiously waiting to see the number the Labour Party will put forward for inclusion in the new institution. They have a poor chance. With the exception of the President, the whole Fianna Fáil Party are "in the soup" plus every member of the official Labour Party. They have to explain their position to their constituents concerning this new institution, which, by the way, is to be so free from politics—if I am to believe in the innocence of Deputy Kelly— that we are going to have the arts and cultural institutions represented. I do not want to associate music with "The Walls of Limerick," but I feel quite certain that in looking for musicians or authorities on music to instal in the Seanad, you will get some with a hankering after "The Soldiers' Song" rather than after the music of Beethoven or Mendelssohn. The Universities have been mentioned, and Deputy Kelly dubbed one institution as being what he described as inimical to the best national interests of the country.

Mr. Kelly

The atmosphere.

Mr. Anthony

The Deputy said that the "atmosphere" there was bad; but there was not one word about the "atmosphere" of the National University. Everybody in the National University must be an angel, and in the other something else. Deputy O'Kelly——

Mr. Kelly

I am not O'Kelly—plain Kelly.

Mr. Anthony

The Deputy must realise that his speech gives him away, as, if he had the making of the new Seanad, everyone in it should conform to some political standard which was stated by him. As he sits upon the Fianna Fáil Benches, we can see what kind of a Seanad we will get when it is to be nominated. I want to say that I regard this measure as a complete somersault by the political Party which went to the country, one of whose slogans was, "Abolish the Seanad." Now they are going to re-establish it. The Labour Party also shares in that.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should realise that the purpose of this Bill is to implement Articles of the new Constitution, which prescribe that there shall be a Seanad.

Mr. Davin

In the interests of truth I challenge the Deputy to show where the Labour Party advocated such a thing at the last election.

Mr. Anthony

I know that Deputy Davin does not like to hear that. I intend to put down the amendments to this Bill.

The President

I think on one occasion I said that it was beyond the wit of man to construct a Seanad that would be really satisfactory. I did not even say an ideal Seanad, but a really satisfactory Seanad, and my constant challenge to the Opposition during all the time we were debating on the old Seanad was, would they put up a Seanad or indicate to us a type of Seanad which was worthy of being a part of the Legislature.

Mr. Anthony

On a point of order. Is the President in order in discussing the Seanad?

An Ceann Comhairle

The President is in order in replying to criticism made in the course of debate on this Bill.

The President

We challenged the Opposition but there was no response. We asked them to partake in the building up of a Seanad, and we were told that when the matter came here for discussion they would take their part and would deal with it then. Then we set up a commission, and although the principal Opposition Party refused to take any part in the deliberations of the commission, we tried to have it represented indirectly with people who were competent—people who might be considered as reflecting somehow or other their views. I think if you look over the names of the members who were on the commission you will admit that it was not a commission such as the Government would put up if it wanted any particular type of report of a special character. It was a body which obviously was set up to try and consider this problem of suggesting a useful type of Seanad. The attitude of the Government about it was such that we did not even commit ourselves, in advance, on the result of their report that we would have any Seanad at all, because my own experience of trying to think out, and of getting a satisfactory type of Seanad, was such that I felt that even a commission of that sort at the end of their labours might not be able to produce anything that would really justify our having a Second Chamber at all. But they met, and I hold that the deliberations of that body proved beyond yea or nay how extremely difficult it is to get a satisfactory Second House in conditions such as ours. There have been Second Chambers which have worked satisfactorily in other countries, largely because of the fact that they were there traditionally, and that in the course of time they were modified and adjusted themselves to certain conditions.

Now, there was only one suggestion in this report that seemed to me at any rate really worth pursuing, and that was the suggestion of trying to get a Second House constituted on a vocational basis. I had often thought of that basis myself as a possible basis, but I was driven off that mainly because of the fact that we are not organised in such a way that we could have representative functional bodies. If they existed, then I would never at any time have hesitated. I would have said: "Give them powers of a certain type, but see that the powers are such as will not give them the opportunity of running counter to the democratically elected Chamber." I would have accepted such a House at any time over the large number of years in which that idea was before my mind. But this body quite independently, and of itself, sent up to us a report based on that principle, and believing, as I do believe, that ultimately there will be a natural development of organisation here along vocational lines—that is my belief; I may be wrong—but believing that that was so, I thought that we might attempt indirectly now to build a Second Chamber on the basis that was suggested by this minority report. We are attempting in this Bill to do that.

The suggestion all the time from the principal Opposition Party and from the Labour Party, too, has been that this Bill was designed to be of special advantage to the Government. Running through all this argument there was a sort of feeling that this Government was going to be always in office, and that this Government or the members of this Party were never going to be in opposition. I do not think that any reasonable people, thinking over a long period of years, were going to be so foolish as to design an instrument which was going to be altogether in favour of the Government of the day. There is one thing that I think I would defend under all circumstances, and that is that there ought not to be, by the form of its election, at the very start and irrespective of the measures which the Government may be bringing in, a block opposition to the Government, because that might hold up the Government of the country. That was precisely why we had to take action against the last Seanad. That was due to this hanging over, where there was a certain majority Party that represented at one time a majority in the Dáil and had ceased to hold that majority. Such a body was, in my mind, going to oppose Government measures mainly on the ground that they were Government measures. I thought, therefore, that there was one thing that we would have to try to arrange in this Bill, and that was that we should not set up a from of Seanad which, by its constitution, was inclined to be in opposition to the Government of the day. I think that would be a mistake. In fact, I believe the Seanad could not last any length of time if it took up that position and would have to disappear.

What you want is a Seanad that will take measures, irrespective of what Government is in office: that will deal with them on their merits within the limits of power which are very restricted, and deliberately so, in the Constitution: that within those limits of power it would try to get amendments in so far as the measures sent to it seemed to the Second House to need amendment. That was the spirit in which I approached this task of trying to get a method by which we could constitute a Seanad which would be, as far as we can get it at the moment, on a vocational basis, and, therefore, on a different basis from that in the primary House, and consequently not likely to reflect the opinions in the primary House: a Seanad not likely to be affected by any movements on a narrow political party basis.

The first thing that I want to impress on the House is this: that we would not be so short-sighted as to try and produce a Seanad which would be altogether unfair to the Opposition and solely in favour of the Government of the day, because looking over a period of time it is obvious that the Party that now sits here may be in Opposition on another occasion and vice versa. What I would hope the members of the House would do would be to consider this measure with the view that at one time they may be the Government, as they are the Opposition to-day, and may have to operate a Second Chamber of this sort. I would say to the members of the Government Party that they should consider that at some time they may find themselves in Opposition. Therefore, what you want is not something that will benefit Parties in a political way, but something that will be for the general good of the State.

Why is it that the Government is mentioned in a number of cases? It is mentioned as the most natural body to do certain things that are required to be done if this scheme is to be worked out at all. There is no other reason, and if any member can indicate a more satisfactory way of getting these nominations than the Government have done, I certainly have no prejudice against any such view. I might argue against it. If it be said: "Well, we are putting forward amendments; you must take them, and if you do not it is proof that you are not prepared to give them any consideration," I reply that an attitude such as that is absurd. The amendments put forward, just as the proposals that I am now putting forward, will have to be defended and reasons given for them. If they are better and obviously more satisfactory than what we have here from the point of view of getting an impartial Seanad —when I say an impartial Seanad I mean one that will examine the measures sent up to it without any view to Party advantage for the time being, but simply from the point of view of their general benefit to the community — then we can make progress.

Now, with regard to these amendments that are put forward, they will have to be defended, and if they are open to graver objections—the objections that are raised against them— then I hold they ought to give way. What are the proposals here? I shall repeat them. First of all, about the numbers: nobody seemed to raise any objections to the way in which we have distributed the 43 amongst the panels except Deputy Kelly. He found fault with the small number given to the educational panel. I pointed out already that, although I was open and ready to consider every argument, the reason we gave small numbers to them was because we regarded the University representation of six as being really of that class, and therefore the six and the five gave you eleven. If there are others who share Deputy Kelly's views on that, then that number, possibly, could be changed. My view, however, is that that is as good a distribution of the 43 amongst the five panels as we can get.

Passing away from the numbers, the next question is, how are we to get nominations to these panels? The body that examined this, and suggested this type of Seanad, indicated a number of organisations, that might, possibly, be given the right to nominate. One Deputy, when speaking, I think, wanted these to be actually in the Bill—as a schedule to the Bill, I take it, or something of that sort. I think that would be unwise. I think that the yearly method is very much better, because you may have things like this happening: you may have a division in an organisation, in which the organisation splits and there may be a question arising as to which part of the organisation properly would represent the organisation. On the other hand, there may be amalgamation of what were formerly independent bodies. When they are amalgamated you may have a new situation. I think, therefore, that it is necessary to have this thing flexible—to have these arrangements so flexible as to enable us to deal with such matters—and it appears to me that the best plan is that, every year. at a stated time, there should be laid before the two Houses of Parliament the Order that is to contain that list.

The objection that I have heard to that is that it would be used by the Government of the day as an instrument for getting special nominations. Now, I do not think that any Government that did that to any extent would last. I think it is one of these things that simply could not be done. Obviously, there are certain organisations that would specially claim to have a right of nomination under the circumstances which would obtain if this Bill passed, and you could not simply ignore certain bodies and then set up others and say: "We will ignore this particular organisation and set up that organisation, and we will set up that organisation, simply because we hope that that body will give us, on the panels, nominations which will be satisfactory to our own political Party." I, for one, think that the argument which has been made along that line has been altogether over-stressed. I do not believe it affords the Government, in that particular direction, any opportunity worth talking about to act, as I would call it, more or less corruptedly, because I would regard such action as corrupt. I agree, of course, that there may be differences. There may be two bodies, and one person may favour one body while another person may favour another body. Well, in that case, the Government of the day would probably divide the number that was going amongst these bodies, if they were entitled to representation. But I do not share the fears—of course, I may be wrong about it—that the Government of the day would use its power of putting certain organisation on an Order in such a way as to influence the type of Seanad you are going to get. I think that that argument is altogether exaggerated, and it certainly does not affect me.

The next place that the Government comes in is that, in the case of certain interests that should be represented on a particular panel, if these interests are not organised, the Government should be permitted to be a nominating body so as to put these names on the panel—names, I mean, representing that particular interest. Now, that undoubtedly, in my opinion, is the place, much more than the other, where the Government of the day might appear to have an unfair advantage.

Since we published this Bill the idea occurred to me that possibly, in such a case, we might leave it to a committee of the House instead of the Government. That, possibly, might be a fairer way—to get, say, a composite committee of the House, instead of the Government of the day, to do it. I do not know whether that idea, as a suggestion, would commend itself to the other Parties, but if there is any considerable body of opinion in favour of it, I would be prepared to take that instead of having the Government do it. That is, in the case of interests which are not represented, if there has to be nomination for these interests, where there is no organisation which could be said to represent them sufficiently to warrant their having nomination, that there should be a composite committee of the House formed on, say, a proportional representation basis, to deal with that matter. That, I think, would take away to a great extent the objection that is raised to the proposal that the Government should make these nominations. I think, however, that if you look at the report of the Seanad Commission in this particular matter, you will find that they suggested that the Minister of the particular Department concerned should make these nominations. The Government, as a whole, is probably a broader body than would be the Minister, and I would at least consider it. It is only an idea that occurred to me a few times. I have not examined it in detail, but it is an idea that I think we might discuss in Committee. However, if there is any desire shown to have that rather than the Government as the nominating body, then I am willing to accept it.

Where else does the Government come in? It comes in, in filling up nominations of panels where the panel has not been completed—where some body that had the right to nominate some numbers on the panel did not do it, and where you do not want the panel going in an incomplete from before the electorate, and then somebody has to fill up the panel. What body should do it? Again, in that case, the suggestion I have made in regard to the other case might be good, namely, that some sort of committee like our Selection Committee—a special committee embodying the principle of proportional representation—might do it. Such a committee might do it in this case also.

These are the three main objections I have seen with regard to the Government. The first is that the Government can influence the panel by the Orders. In connection with these Orders, I would repeat that they have to be laid before the House. Deputy McGilligan says: "What good is that, since, if the Government has a majority, it can carry it?" Well, I cannot have a system which is based on majority rule and all the time find that a thing cannot go because the majority is able to have its way. The majority will have its way, and must have its way at some stages, if we are to have government at all. However, I see no better method for getting this indirect election than by indicating by Order the bodies which will have the right to nominate. The Dáil will have an opportunity of discussing these, and if any sharp practice is being tried by the Government, it can be exposed. But, if the Government have a majority, I do not see how you can prevent that majority from having its way in that matter. It is an imperfection.

Mr. Norton

Will the President agree to allow a representative committee to assist in the compilation of that panel?

The President

There is one thing— we must not set up two Governments. One of the things I am anxious about is this. The Government, through its Ministeries and Departments, is in constant contact with organisations of various sorts. Possibly we could—I do not like to say "yes" straight off——

Mr. Gorey

Even the sham organisations you set up some time ago?

The President

The sham organisations have to face the Dáil. The Dáil will be master all the time. Are we going to have sham organisations put forward as being organisations to represent a certain interest? They would be objected to. Deputy Gorey, or anybody else who wants to do it, is at liberty to expose it. That is not the difficulty exactly. The difficulty is not that this will be done in the dark. The only insurmountable difficulty, so far as I can see, is the statement that the majority can have its way. That is, if an Order is brought before the House and objection is taken to the Order, no matter what grounds are suggested by the minority for objecting to it, the majority can have its way in the end. I do not see any way round that. Without consulting my colleagues in the matter, because it did not immediately crop up, I think I can say that we would be prepared to stand for a system by which a Committee of the Dáil would be constituted the nominating body, and that a Committee of the Dáil of that sort would have the right to put names on a panel which was incomplete.

As to the further question whether I would agree that a Committee of the Dáil would be entitled to make the nominating Order, I would not like to say straight off that I would agree. I see objections to it. One is, I think, that if we are not going to have a new class of Orders, a new type of Government, that the Government of the day ought to be made responsible for the Orders. Secondly, I see the point that the Government of the day has more information. It may be said that it could make that information available for a committee. I will promise to consider that suggestion; but, in regard to the others, I do not see any difficulty. I do see that there may be a difficulty on that particular point.

That covers the question of the panels, except the nominations of the Dáil on the panels. To be quite frank, if I could get rid of the Dáil altogether in this matter, I would do it. If I could see a way by which the Dáil would have no nominations whatever, and ultimately would have nothing to do with the election, I would do it. But, in this particular case, we are experimenting in a sense. This sort of Chamber has not been set up before. We are experimenting with it and I would like to go slowly at the start. This Bill is based on the idea that we will get at the start roughly half and half. That is, there would be one half, roughly, elected by the Dáil and one half coming in from outside. If we give the nomination to outside bodies, it might very well be said: "What are these bodies; how are they constituted; are they of sufficient importance to allow them to determine the selection of a Second Chamber?" as they would if you give them all the nominations, because all you can do if they present you with nominations, even if the Dáil is the electorate, is to make a selection from that group. Until we have proper representative functional organisations formed it would, I think, be rather giving to these outside bodies too much power to allow them to do all the nomination at the present moment. Therefore, there is a certain balance. We can swing more as time goes on, because this is only a Bill and it can be altered and amended as time goes on. As Governments think they are entitled to be given more power the swing can be towards giving them more and more power, until, possibly, in the end you can let them elect them completely and directly.

Deputies will notice that we have advanced from the report of the commission in regard to the Universities. The commission's report was, I think, that they would have the right to put on the panel, but as there was a body there which was capable of electing directly, we took that body and let them elect directly. If we had other bodies as well constituted as the universities electorate is constituted, I certainly, and I think my colleagues also, would be inclined to move along these lines. The idea then of the Dáil nominating a certain number originated from the fact that these outside bodies are scarcely sufficiently well-organised and important at the moment for us to take the risk of committing it entirely to them and allowing them practically to select a Seanad. On the other hand, if they are ever to develop, we must let them feel from the start that they can get a substantial share. That was my difficulty when I came to the number that the Dáil could nominate. Even in the case of the cultural panel, five is too many. If I were inclined to make any amendment, one would possibly be to make a larger number necessary for nominating on the cultural panel, so that the Dáil would not nominate the whole five, at least it would be only able to nominate about three, so that the outside bodies, such as the Bar, teachers' organisation, and other bodies of that sort could have an opportunity of having their nominees on the Seanad.

With regard to the panels, the only big difficulty that I see is this difficulty which affects the Labour Party. Of course, I knew it would. Before we introduced the measure I knew at once that any group with less than 25 members was likely to say: "We cannot nominate one." But the numbers in the Dáil are not determined by the Government. The numbers in the Dáil of any Party or group are determined by the electorate outside. It is not designed to affect a particular Party. It is simply that any smaller number was going to give too large a nomination from the Dáil.

Mr. Norton

Who put the figure of 25 in here—the electorate or the President? The President said the Government has not determined the strength of the respective Parties in the Dáil. That is not the issue. It is: who put the number 25 in here?

The President

I have not got the point of the Deputy's remark yet. I say that 25 is determined by the fact that we did not want the Dáil to be able to nominate more than five on any one panel. There are 138 Deputies, and if you take much less than 25 you will be getting too high a nomination from the Dáil and, therefore, diminishing the chance of election for those nominated from outside.

Mr. Norton

If there is an over-riding number fixed for those, the Dáil can elect?

The President

The Dáil is to be the electorate. This is based on the idea that there is a composite panel to be formed. As the Bill stands, it is to be formed by outside bodies, plus those to be put on the panel by the Dáil. If the Dáil is going to be the ultimate electorate, or if the ultimate electorate is to be the electorate in the Bill, I believe that those who are nominated by the Dáil will almost certainly be elected; and, therefore, when the Dáil nominates five on a Seanad panel I think the five will get the vote from the electorate afterwards. If it were six it would be the same, or if it were seven it would be the same. Therefore if you are giving to the Dáil the power of nominating more than five, we are going to diminish the number that can be elected from the names put on the panel from outside.

Mr. Norton

And P.R. disappears.

The President

I agree with the Deputy, but we cannot have it all the time. P.R. within its limits, certainly. Supposing we had ten members instead of five. P.R. would give a representative to a group that is only one-eleventh of the constituency. Of course the bigger the number to be elected in a single constituency, the greater will be the opportunity for small groups to be represented, but we have the panel system. We have five panels and we have between five and 11 members in which we must work out our Bill, and the numbers down there are the best I can suggest. I think that if you give the Dáil more than five, the certainly that it will elect more than five, you will give no real incentive to outside bodies. There may be several outside bodies, and you will give no incentive to them to put forward nominees on the panel. I have said already that if I wanted to change this Bill there are two changes that I would contemplate. One would be to increase the number, if the Dáil were agreeable, beyond 25; but I came down as low as I could. I cannot go any lower than that unless I practically tell the outside bodies that there is no use in their nominating at all. In regard to the cultural panel, in my view the outside bodies that are getting representation are the Universities. In the Universities you have graduates. The teachers would be graduates, and they will have a voice in choosing the representatives. The professions will be represented, so that you have got the Universities directly electing six. If you take the cultural panel you will find that it is being provided for by these six and the five that are to be elected here. If there is any objection to the fact that in the case of the cultural panel it will be possible for the Dáil to nominate the five that are going to be elected, and that the outside bodies will get no chance, then I am prepared to say, "Let us increase the number, 25, in the case of the Dáil, up to, say, 50."

Coming to the question of the ultimate electorate, only two have been suggested—the Dáil and this other body. When the Constitution was introduced here first, we put in this electorate because, to my mind, it is largely a toss-up whether you have the Dáil or this other body. I did not want that to be a matter, however, on which there might be any great difference of opinion. Therefore, I did not want that to go into the Constitution and we dropped it. I have the same attitude of mind with regard to that question that I had at the time the Constitution was being debated. I think it is a little better than the Dáil, but although it is a little better it is more complicated. One argument has been used which does not affect me at all: that a man who is defeated is a political nuisance; that a man who is fined £100 because he did not get one-third of the quota is a political nuisance, because he went up for election and got his name on the panel.

Mr. Norton

I said our legislation described him as a political nuisance. I did not describe him as a political nuisance.

The President

I am not so well acquainted with that type of legislation as Deputy Norton is. At any rate, I thought it was a happy phrase of the Deputy's. The Deputy now suggests that it is in our legislation. It may or may not be, but I would be surprised to find that there was in our legislation any such term. At any rate, that has no weight with me at all, because the point is that he is only a member of an electoral college. That electoral college is to represent the community. He has got 500 first preference votes and he is going to cast his vote as a representative of these 500 electors. It is on that basis that he is selected and not merely because he happens to be a candidate. He is selected because the electorate have shown that there are 500 at least in that electorate who regard him as a worthy person to represent them, and he would represent them in casting his vote for the Second House.

Mr. Norton

They regard him as less worthy than the others.

The President

Not by any means. Those who are elected will gather up the first preference votes of those who do not appear amongst the elected. If one man is knocked out, then the other representative of his group will gather up these votes. Perhaps I am wrong in that because it is only the first preference votes cast that are taken into consideration for the purpose of deciding the elctorate. At least 501 people must have given their votes to a candidate before he can become a member of the electoral college. He is a member of the electoral college by reason of the fact that 501 electors have thought fit to vote for him. I see no argument of real worth that can be adduced against that. I think if you are going to get secondary representation, it is as good a method as we could have. The only question is, is it worth the trouble? Some people say it is; others say it is not. I have tried to make some calculations and I have asked myself how different the Seanad would be with this more complicated electorate than if the Dáil were to be the electorate. I do not think there would be very much difference. Because of that I would be inclined to give way and say: "Let us have the Dáil." One thing is obvious to everybody: I agree with Deputy McGilligan that it is easier to machine the Dáil. The members are meeting together. It does not matter whether it is a big Party or a small Party. In fact the bigger the Party, the more difficult it will be to get the machine going over the candidates. It is not, however, so easy to get a machined Seanad from this electorate as it would be from the Dáil. Any little preference which I had will therefore be probably in favour of that outside electorate but if there is anything like a strong feeling in the Dáil against it I do not think we, who are in favour of it, are sufficiently strong in our views to fight it. However, that is a matter of choice, but again I am quite willing to admit to every critic of this measure that the electorate there is not the type of electorate I would like to see.

Deputy McGilligan made a suggestion, namely that we should make up separate registers, so that it would be possible that those who want to be on the Labour panel and who would be entitled to be on it could be on one, those on the professional or cultural side on another, and so on. As Deputy Flinn pointed out, there would be some who would be entitled to be on all, and in that case they could be compelled to opt. It could be possible to say: "Well, you can go on one or the other." That is not new either. As a matter of fact, that was already suggested to me, but the difficulty about it is that it is rather complicated. First of all, you are in difficulty about the register. It would take time to do it. The election would be a much more difficult thing to carry out. In order to be useful at all, it would have to be carried out at the same time as the Dáil election. But, again, if there is any practical proposal by which such a scheme could be worked, I am quite ready for it. However, I do not think we can have it at this particular time. We have got to build up the Second House and complete the Constitution as soon as possible, and I do not think that we can contemplate that particular method at the moment. But this is not the end. It is not like the old Seanad where there were certain people carrying on every time, and you could not change it because you had to take their position into account. This particular method is such that you have only to wait until the time of an election to change it. However, if we are to get a satisfactory Seanad it will be by adjustment from time to time so as to get the best possible.

What I would say about that other suggestion is that even if there was agreement to be got upon it, I am afraid we could not have it for this particular election. It might possibly be brought in after another election, but I do not think we could do it at the present time. To get a Seanad elected in that way you would have all the trouble of a complicated general election. You would have to get your registers formed, which would take a considerable time, and after that you would have to have what would be as elaborate, in fact more elaborate, than a general election. I have been quite frank in giving my views about this measure, and if the Dáil gives the Bill a Second Reading I do not think we are committing ourselves to anything. This Bill is all detail as far as I can see. The principles were settled in the Constitution, namely, that it was on a vocational basis and on the basis of panels, but there is here in this Bill no one single principle. Every one of these things can be dealt with in Committee.

I would propose to the House—it is probably a better way to get this type of work done than by the ordinary Committee—that we should set up a special committee, and that this Bill should be referred immediately to a special committee representative of the different groups in the House, to be selected by the Selection Committee; that we should await a report from that committee; that the different points of view which have been expressed here and the different suggestions which have been made would be hammered out in that committee before it reported back here to the Dáil, that of course being without prejudice, I take it, to any amendments which anybody who was not on the committee might bring forward afterwards. I can think of no better way of trying to get what I genuinely want, that is the cooperation of all Parties.

We must begin somewhere. Something had to be put down as a basis of discussion. We have to implement the Constitution, and I am as certain as I am standing here that when this special committee has met, and when the objections to the new propositions have been pointed out, as the objections to the proposals here have been pointed out, they will find that their alternatives are not very much better. Probably they themselves will be ready to admit that their alternatives do not help the situation very much. It is in that way that I ask the House to vote for the Second Reading of the Bill. I should like indeed that the House, the position being as it is, should unanimously give us the Second Reading of the Bill, so as to enable this committee to be set up. In that way all Parties will feel that they are given full opportunity to co-operate in a matter which is of importance to every Party and group in the House. It would be the first time during all those discussion about the Constitution and about the setting up of a Second Chamber that there would be an attempt made by all Parties in the House to co-operate in doing a thing in which we are all interested, both from a narrow point of view, if I may put it in that form, and from the big point of view—the interests of the community as a whole.

Dr. O'Higgins

Am I correct in understanding that the President's suggestion is to this effect, that the Second Reading goes through and that the normal Committee Stage is outstanding until the Dáil gets a report from the special committee?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Bill would be referred to a special committee which would report to the Dáil.

Mr. Norton

Before the Committee Stage is taken?

An Ceann Comhairle

Yes.

The President

I should like to be quite clear in case there is any misunderstanding. I am not quite sure what the procedure will be, but my understanding is that the special committee would examine this Bill with a view to bringing in any amendments that might be agreed upon; that it would report to the Dáil, which would be in Committee, and that the Dáil, in Committee, would consider the report. I do not know if Standing Orders will permit of its being done in that particular way.

Mr. Norton

Without prejudice to any other amendments that might be moved?

The President

Without prejudice to the right of any other member of the Dáil to put forward amendments. I would suggest that the House should simply let the Second Reading pass without a division.

Mr. Norton

We are prepared to agree to that.

Dr. O'Higgins

That is agreed.

Question agreed to.