Perhaps, Sir, we might get some idea as to where we stand?
Seanad Electoral (Panel Members) Bill, 1937—Report.
As to where who stands?
I do not know how many Bills we have before us at the moment, if I may put it that way. Roughly speaking, so far as the real essence of the matter is concerned, we have at least four proposals—two coming from the Government, because I assume that the original Bill is still before us; one, divided into two parts, coming from this side of the House, a proposal for a transitional Seanad and a proposal for a permanent Seanad; then we have a proposal from the Labour Party. I should like, Sir, if the House could get from you or from the Government an indication as to how many more stages it is proposed to give in connection with this Bill, what will be the procedure for the future stages and what opportunity there will be for proposing our amendments and discussing them on their own merits.
The Bill before the House is the Bill as originally introduced. The proposals of the Government, which were on a White Paper, have now been embodied in the amendments, and appear on the green sheet. I sent to-day to the President and to Deputies McGilligan, Costello and Norton, a hurried note indicating the procedure which the Chair intended to follow in dealing with this Bill. The note runs as follows:—
"To afford the Committee an opportunity of arriving at decisions on the pivotal points, the Chair proposes the following procedure:—
The scheme for a Transitional Seanad and an Electoral College of 22 will be decided by a question on amendment No. 2. The Special Report of the Special Committee will arise incidentally on many points. It is suggested that it will arise particularly in the discussion of amendments Nos. 2 and 7, also of course, on the Government's main proposals. The decision on amendments No. 2 will rule amendments Nos. 16 to 21 inclusive. As regards nomination, Deputy Norton's scheme will be decided on amendment No. 7. If that amendment is negatived, the implementing amendments—Nos. 8, 13, 14, 15, 41 to 48, 54, 59, 61, 73, 74 and 77—fall consequentially. The Government's scheme of nomination will be decided on amendment No. 23. If that amendment is accepted, the amendments implementing that scheme flow consequentially, but may, of course, be discussed. If the Government scheme is accepted, the alternative scheme set out in amendments Nos. 34, 35, 36 and 110 is ruled out consequentially. As regards the electorate, the question is whether the electorate is to be the Dáil only or the Dáil and county councils' electors, if I might so style them. The Chair will allow Deputy Norton to move an amendment to delete paragraph (b) of amendment No. 90, because amendments tabled by Deputy Norton for that purpose will fall if Section 19 is deleted as is proposed. As for the ballot paper, there is no apparent difference of principle. In respect to the deposit of £10, as that amendment might be equally applicable to any scheme, the Chair is prepared to allow it to be moved."
First of all, I think there is a misprint. I see a reference here to amendment No. 33, and I presume that is a misprint.
Yes. It should be amendments Nos. 34, 35 and 36.
There are two points I wish to raise. One has reference to the opportunity of amending what, for all practical purposes, so far as the main purpose is concerned, is almost a new Bill. I should like to know what opportunities will be given to the House to consider amendments of that in detail, if the Government's new scheme is adopted? Secondly, what opportunity will there be of positively moving our amendment, not on the question of nomination but on the question of election, to which I attach more importance? In the paper which the Chair was so kind as to circulate in order to guide us, under the rubric of nomination it is suggested that a certain scheme of ours will fall out. I attach quite as much importance, more importance in a way, to the ultimate electorate than I do to nomination.
Will there be any opportunity given us positively to move our own amendment and have a discussion on it, apart altogether from any alternative schemes? We are in the position that we have the Government Bill still before us. We will be discussing the question of the electorate. We will be really discussing four different systems of electorate at the same time. I think that will be rather complicated, but it may be impossible to avoid it now. What I am anxious about is that we should get some opportunity of moving our particular form of electorate as a substantive motion, to stand on its own merits. Will there be an opportunity of discussing in detail these 15 or 17 new sections that are proposed by the Government, if these sections are adopted?
The procedure suggested by the Chair is based on established precedent. We have here a Bill to which various amendments have been submitted, embodying three schemes. The Deputy knows that the normal procedure has been that when cognate amendments on any section or motion are tabled, some by the Government and others by Opposition Parties, Government amendments take precedence. Furthermore, the time at which amendments on similar subject matters are submitted regulates their place on the Order Paper. On this occasion Government amendments were handed in first. The Chair, therefore, has no option but to take them in that order. The House would obviously stultify itself if it came to two divergent decisions on the same stage of a Bill. The majority vote must decide. If any one of the schemes secures a majority, a contrary or divergent scheme cannot on that stage be put for decision.
That makes even still more important the question I have raised.
That is the decision of the Chair, following normal practice.
The promise was that this Bill would be recommitted. I do not at all raise a question as to the order in which the amendments were submitted. I have raised the question as to what further opportunities will be given us to discuss certain matters. I do not mind whether those opportunities are afforded on another stage or now. I am anxious to know what opportunity will be given us to move our proposal as a substantive motion, not necessarily on this stage, but at some subsequent stage? It has not been debated or ruled out or voted against on its merits.
That fate has often befallen amendments—to be ruled out without further discussion consequent on an earlier decision. As to the nature of amendments that will be in order on the Report Stage, that would be a matter for the Chair. No amendment defeated or radically at variance in principle with what has been decided in Committee could be accepted.
I am quite aware that an amendment that has been positively defeated on the Committee Stage could not be moved again. It is the point concerning the attitude of the House towards the action of the Committee that I am not quite so clear upon. My point is that even if the Committee now agrees with the Government's proposals, the House may disagree with the Committee; it may disagree by striking out what the Committee has done or by moving an amendment.
The Chair will have to consider very carefully the nature of any amendments submitted, but the Chair could not pledge itself in advance with regard to any amendment of weight.
How many more stages will we have?
This Committee Stage will, I presume, be followed by the Report Stage. That is a matter for the President.
What opportunities for discussion will be given on the Report Stage?
There is one thing that occurred to me, a sort of second recommittal stage. I do not know if such a thing could be contemplated. I have had prepared for myself, in order that I could see it as a whole, the Bill as it would appear if the Government amendments were accepted. I think it is right that at some stage Deputies should have that before them. One way would be to interrupt the stage which we are anticipating by talking like this—that is, the Committee Stage. Perhaps we could interrupt the Committee Stage and get a reprint of the Bill circulated. Of course, the Rules of the House would not permit us to go back over that. I think it would meet some of the difficulties if we could contemplate a second recommittal, it being understood—I think we would like to get some understanding—that any points that would be raised would relate to detail and would arise as a result of the examination of the Bill as it would appear as a whole.
As regards the other points raised by the Deputy, is it not a fact that there are different schemes and they hang together? If you get any particular part of a scheme, such as the nomination scheme of Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Costello, that hangs with the election scheme in the main, we could take the view that the House is expressing itself on the thing as a whole. In the same way, Deputy Norton's scheme and the Government's scheme would be considered and the House would give its decision. The whole scheme consists of the electorate and the method of nomination. The outside bodies come in, so far as Deputy Norton is concerned. Our scheme has a certain electorate and a method of nomination and that includes outside bodies. In regard to any one of these schemes, particularly in the case of the electorate, if we could have a preliminary discussion and get through with it on the electorate, we could perhaps finish the whole thing. I do not know if there could be a special procedure.
On the Committee Stage, we proceed section by section and it is not permissible to revert to sections that have been passed.
We are discussing the whole question as to which of these schemes is to be debated. Therefore, I suggest that, if there is no difficulty about order, we should take any one of these things as determining not merely the nomination which goes with the scheme but the scheme as a whole. If the Government amendments go through, I shall arrange to have a reprint of the Bill so that Deputies will have an opportunity of seeing the scheme as a whole and I do not think that there will be any difficulty in having the Bill again recommitted.
No. The Bill might be recommitted for purpose of amendments.
To put matters in order, I now move that we recommit the Bill.
Agreed.
I am not clear as to what Deputy O'Sullivan is pleading for. So far as I understand, his view is that the House should have an opportunity of pronouncing judgement upon complete schemes without being limited to discussion of particular amendments. There is a certain merit in that arrangement because it enables one to advocate a complete scheme and get a decision on that. If that decision is a negative one, then all the amendments which have been submitted for the purpose of giving effect to that scheme will automatically fall. If it were possible to have an arrangement of that kind before we entered upon detailed consideration of the Committe Stage, I think it would be useful but I am not sure whether the rules of the House would permit discussion on those lines. If they did, I think that we would probably get a better discussion and a more expeditious decision in that way than we would by hanging the discussion around particular amendments.
Amendment No. 2 affords scope for wide discussion.
If it causes any trouble I do not want an answer but I should like to know what happens the resolution of the committee, adopted by a majority?
We might consider that as an amendment as well. It is a report to the House and it does not bind the House.
Is it in Limbo?
I fear so.
Buried without any funeral oration.
Sections 1, 2 and 3 agreed.
SECTION 4.
(1) As soon as practicable after the commencement of this Act the Minister shall appoint a fit and proper person to be the returning officer (in this Act referred to as the Seanad returning officer) for the purposes of the first Seanad election.
(2) Immediately upon a dissolution of Dáil Eireann the Minister shall appoint a fit and proper person to be the returning officer (in this Act also referred to as the Seanad returning officer) for the purposes of the Seanad election consequent on such dissolution.
(3) It shall be the duty of every Seanad returning officer to conduct the Seanad election for the purposes of which he is appointed, to count the votes cast thereat, to ascertain and declare the result thereof in accordance with this Act, and to do such other things in respect of such election as he is required by this Act to do.
(4) The Minister for Finance shall from time to time prepare a scale of maximum charges for Seanad returning officers, and every Seanad returning officer shall be paid by the said Minister out of the Central Fund or the growing produce thereof his reasonable charges in respect of his services and expenses in relation to the Seanad election for the purposes of which he was appointed, but not exceeding in any case the maximum charges specified in the said scale of maximum charges for the time being in force.
I move amendment No. 1:—
In page 3, before Section 4, to insert a new section as follows:—
(1) In this Act—
the expression "the cultural and educational panel" means the panel of candidates formed in pursuance of sub-section 1º of Section 7 of Article 18 of the Constitution;
the expression "the cultural and educational panel" means the panel required by the said sub-section 1º to contain the names of persons having knowledge and practical experience of the following interests and services, namely, the national language and culture, literature, art, education and such professional interests as may be defined by law for the purpose of this panel;
the expression "the agricultural panel" means the panel required by the said sub-section 1º to contain the names of persons having knowledge and practical experience of the following interests and services, namely, agriculture and allied interests, and fisheries;
the expression "the labour panel" means the panel required by the said sub-section 1º to contain the names of persons having knowledge and practical experience of the following interests and services, namely, labour, whether organised or unorganised;
the expression "the industrial and commercial panel" means the panel required by the said sub-section 1º to contain the names of persons having knowledge and practical experience of the following interests and services, namely, industry and commerce, including banking, finance, accountancy, engineering and architecture;
the expression "the administrative panel" means the panel required by the said sub-section 1º to contain the names of persons having knowledge and practical experience of the following interests and services, namely, public administration and social services, including voluntary social activities.
(2) The professional interests for the purposes of the cultural and educational panel are hereby defined as—
(a) law, and
(b) medicine, including surgery, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and pharmaceutical chemistry.
This is really a transposition of the old Section 8. I notice just now that a preliminary sentence of the old Section 8 is not embodied here. Its absence, if intentional, can only be explained if the word "panel" does not appear anywhere without qualification. If I find that this sentence has been dropped out by mistake, I shall have to move on Report Stage that it be inserted.
Is the President arranging to have the words which have been omitted inserted?
In either case I shall be taking a chance. If we put it in now, the draftsman may be able to explain that it is not necessary as the word "panel" does not occur anywhere without qualification. I have no means of determining quickly whether the omission has occured by accident or design, but I have been told just now that it is a printer's error.
Does the President want to amend this amendment further now?
I suggest that where "panel" is defined the sentence which has been omitted be inserted. If I find that the omission was by design, the sentence can be omitted on Report Stage.
Would it not be more in conformity with procedure to adopt the incomplete amendment as it stands, with notification from the President that he will make a further amendment on Report Stage to complete it, if necessary?
I am prepared to take that course if there is any objection to the other course.
I prefer the course I have suggested.
Amendment agreed to.
I move amendment No. 2, in the names of Deputy McGilligan and myself:—
In page 3, before Section 4, to insert a new section as follows:—
(1) (a) The Electoral College means the body of twenty-two persons to be selected by Dáil Eireann in manner provided by this Act;
(b) the Government Group means the members of Dáil Eireann who shall be certified by the Chairman of Dáil Eireann to be on the relevant date members of the largest or Government Party in Dáil Eireann;
(c) the Principal Opposition Group means the members of Dáil Eireann who shall be certified by the Chairman of Dáil Eireann to be on the relevant date members of the second largest Party in Dáil Eireann;
(d) the Labour Group means the members of Dáil Eireann who shall be certified by the Chairman of Dáil Eireann to be on the relevant date members of the third largest Party in Dáil Eireann:
(e) the Independent Group means the members of Dáil Eireann who are not members of either the Government Group, the Principal Opposition Group or the Labour Group;
(f) the relevant date means the date on which Dáil Eireann shall first meet for the purpose of electing the Electoral College.
(2) The Chairman of Dáil Eireann shall fix a day on which Dáil Eireann shall meet for the purpose of electing the Electoral College and Dáil Eireann shall meet for the purpose on such day and on such further day or days as may be necessary for the completion of such election.
(3) A person who on the relevant date is a member of Dáil Eireann shall be disqualified from being nominated, elected or acting as a member of the Electoral College.
(4) A member of the Electoral College shall be disqualified from being nominated as a Senator for the purposes of a Seanad election or from being elected as a Senator at a Seanad election.
(5) On or before the relevant date the Government Group shall nominate twenty persons, the Principal Opposition Group shall nominate fourteen persons, the Labour Group shall nominate eight persons and the Independent Group shall nominate two persons as candidates for the Electoral College and from the persons so nominated Dáil Eireann shall in manner by this Part of this Act provided elect the Electoral College.
(6) The members of Dáil Eireann who are not members of the Government Group shall voting on the principle of proportional representation select from the persons nominated by the Government Group ten persons to be members of the Electoral College.
(7) The members of Dáil Eireann who are not members of the Principal Opposition Group shall voting on the principle of proportional representation select from the persons nominated by the Principal Opposition Group seven persons to be members of the Electoral College.
(8) The members of Dáil Eireann who are not members of the Labour Group shall voting on the principle of proportional representation select from the persons nominated by the Labour Group four persons to be members of the Electoral College.
(9) The members of Dáil Eireann who are not members of the Independent Group shall voting on the principle of proportional representation select from the persons nominated by the Independent Group one person to be a member of the Electoral College.
The object of the amendment is to provide temporary machinery merely for the purpose of creating the first Seanad, which must be created within the next few months in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution. Before I explain the details of the proposal for the electoral college, I should like to make perfectly clear that this proposal is merely for the first Seanad and that it is not contemplated that it should provide machinery for the election of future Seanad. The Constitution contemplates that the Seanad shall, as far as possible, be based on vocational lines or principles. We wish to carry out the principles of the Constitution so far as is possible with the materials at our disposal. The proposals made by the group representing this side of the House at the Special Committee were more complicated than those contained in this amendment. It was felt that the proposals were intricate, that the machinery to give them effect would require careful examination and elaboration, and that the necessary examination of the proposals and the building up of the machinery to give them effect would take a considerable amount of time. Accordingly, the proposal for temporary machinery for the first Seanad was put forward. The machinery provided is in no way to be taken as an abandonment of the principle to which we desire to give effect—that the Seanad should be elected, as provided by the Constitution, on vocational lines.
The proposal here is that the first Seanad should be elected by an electoral college consisting of 22 members, and provision is made in the scheme for nomination by various vocational bodies and persons to the panels set out in the Constitution. The election of these 22 persons would take place by members of the Dáil voting on the principle of proportional representation. In this scheme, as in the other scheme we outline later on for the election of a permanent Seanad, the guiding principle we have in mind, apart from the necessity of providing a vocational Seanad as far as possible, is that this new Seanad should be based upon a different principle from that upon which the popular Assembly is elected. We want as far as possible to avoid this Seanad being a mere replica of political parties in the Dáil or a pale representation of the various political parties in the Dáil. We wish to have that principle adhered to in every respect. The scheme for the finding of a transitional or first Seanad is based on an endeavour to secure that even in respect of the first Seanad, that first Seanad will not be elected merely on political principles, and that the new Seanad will not be merely a refugium and a place of rest for political party hacks. So far as it is possible, under this first scheme, we endeavour to give effect to that principle, and when the details are made clear, the intentions and bona fides of every member of every Party in this Dáil will be clearly apparent when the various persons who are to be nominated to this electoral college are nominated by the various Parties in the Dáil.
It is provided that this electoral college should consist of 22 members, ten of whom should be more or less the nominees of the Government Party, seven of the Fine Gael Party, four of the Labour Party, and one of the Independent group. It is proposed that the Government Party should nominate, before the election day, their nominees for election by the Dáil; but so that, so far as possible, some check may be placed upon the representatives in this college being merely Party nominees and Party hacks, it is provided that whereas ten nominees of the Government Party will ultimately be elected to the electoral college, before the election of the college, 20 members should be nominated as candidates for election by the Government Party. Those 20 members would then be put to the other members of the Dáil for election. In other words, the people who would elect from the 20 nominees of the Government Party the ten nominees on the electoral college would be the other members of the Dáil, voting on the principle of proportional representation. The same would apply with reference to the nominees of each other Party. Instead of seven who would ultimately be elected as the nominees of the Fine Gael Party, it is proposed that 14 nominees should be placed upon the panel for nomination, and in respect of those 14, seven should be elected by the members of the Dáil who are not members of the principal Opposition Party. So in respect of Labour. They will have four nominees eventually on the college, and, therefore, they would put forward eight nominees, and from those eight nominated by the Labour Party, the other members of the Dáil, not members of the Labour Party, would select four. The Independents would put forward two, and from those two the remaining members of the Dáil would select one, and in every case the voting would be on principles of proportional representation.
By that machinery it was hoped that some check would be placed upon the nominees of the various Parties to this Electoral College being merely the nominations of purely political parties, and, as I said, if this scheme were to be adopted, the bona fides of each Party would become clearly apparent once their nominations were made public. When the 20 nominations of the Government Party appeared, it would clearly be seen whether those 20 persons were being selected for their political services or merely as persons who could be relied upon to do the job when the function of the Electoral College came to operate, namely, the selection of a Seanad. If, on the other hand, they were 20 outstanding people whose judgment, integrity and honesty would commend itself to all sections of the people, it would be quite clearly apparent that the Government were honest in their expressions that they wished to have a new Seanad something different from the mere replica of the Dáil. In the same way, if the Fine Gael Party nominated people who are mere adherents of their Party, their bona fides would be very clearly open to question; but if they, in their turn —and so with the Labour Party and Independents—nominated people of outstanding ability and integrity, it would then be seen that the bona fides of each political Party could be relied upon, and that the people who would be selected to carry out the election of the elected members of the first Seanad would not be mere political Party hacks, or people who could be relied upon merely to carry out the dictates of a political party.
That is the general scheme for the election to the College. When they were elected, they would receive nominations and the idea would be that there would be unlimited nominations proposed and seconded by members of the Dáil, but that the various vocational bodies which are specifically set out in the Schedule should have the right of nominating to the panel. These bodies were taken, so far as we could collect them, from the information before us as representative of the bodies and groups contemplated by the Constitution as being entitled to representation in the Seanad on vocational lines. If there were other bodies entitled to be put into the Schedule, no difficulty could arise in getting them put there. The main thing is that we have given an indication of the only vocational bodies we have been able to ascertain are in existence in this country at present. It would be essential that the persons whom they would nominate as candidates for any particular panel should have the qualifications set out in the Constitution for inclusion in that particular panel. It was contemplated that when the nominations were completed, the Electoral College would examine the qualifications of each person put forward as a candidate, and would rule upon their qualifications, so that some check would be in existence on persons being put forward merely with the necessary voting power behind them, and lacking the necessary vocational qualifications provided for in the Constitution.
I fully realise, of course, that the provision in the Constitution whereby no person shall be elected to a panel, or even nominated to a panel, unless he has the qualifications mentioned in the Constitution, is a Constitutional provision. Nothing that we can do in the House by mere legislation can get over, in my view, at all events, the difficulty that will and must arise on any scheme —the difficulty of determining what is the proper tribunal to rule upon the qualifications of any person who may be put on a particular panel, and eventually may be elected to that panel; but it was endeavoured, at all events, to provide a simple check by means of examination by the personnel of the Electoral College on people who are not qualified to represent the interests and vocations they purport to represent when put on a panel, getting on a particular panel without any qualification for being there.
There is another provision that there should be a deposit of £10 in respect of each candidate. That may seem a somewhat unusual and novel provision, but in as much as it is provided that all sorts of people could be nominated under the scheme, this provision of a deposit would serve as an additional check against trivial nominations and the nominations of people who had no chance whatever of ever being elected to any of the panels provided in the Constitution. It is provided, when all the nominations are vetted by the electoral college, that they should be placed in the various panels—that of the number nominated by the Dáil, 22 Senators should be elected in the first instance by the electoral college, and when elected placed in their appropriate panels, and subsequently, 21 should be elected from the various vocational bodies.
There is one aspect of the scheme which will provide material for plenty of strong eloquence on the part of certain Deputies. We provide that four nominees of the Labour Party should be ultimately elected to the electoral college. As matters stand if only two nominees of the Labour Party were elected they would not be in a position to get from the various Labour groups they represent in the country sufficient weight to pull the number of representatives they would be ultimately entitled to get on the Seanad. Throughout this Constitution we have very high-sounding phrases in reference to the principles and the social policy of the Oireachtas, to the future conduct of its affairs and legislation. If we are to give proof of that, on the first occasion, if we have any opportunity of giving practical effect to that part of our social policy, here is the opportunity. I am not saying that the Labour Party represents every section of labour in the country, but I say that they represent a fair element of labour organisations and labour people. If we are to have all that respect that we were told we are to have for what is enshrined, more or less, in pious platitudes in the Constitution, for the principles of our social policy, let us be honest here by giving expression on the first occasion we get the opportunity of doing so. This college would elect the first Seanad. Its operations and results would achieve something, we believe, in the way of getting a Seanad which would command the respect of the country.
In our view a Second Chamber is essential. We made that perfectly clear as part of our policy in the course of this Bill and on the last one. If we do not get a Seanad, by whatever machinery is adopted as a result of this Bill, which will command the confidence of the people, then the institution of a Second Chamber is, for that reason, going to fall into very grave disrepute. It is, therefore, in our view, essential that we should have a Seanad which will command the respect and confidence of the people, a Seanad which will be based on a different principle from that of the Dáil. We make no secret of the fact that in the proposals we are putting forward here in reference to the first Seanad, and to the proposals which will be subsequently put forward in respect of the permanent Seanad election, we intend, so far as lies in our power, to act upon a different principle. The principle upon which the Dáil is selected is based on popular election by universal suffrage. It is not essential in the Seanad that it will not be based on the principle of popular election, or even that the principle of popular election should be completely absent from it. The Seanad is a body with very limited powers. The object is to give the Government the benefit of people of practical knowledge and experience, and with a considerable degree of independence when dealing with legislative proposals which will emanate from the Dáil. It is, therefore, essential that they should not be merely subject to popular election and popular representation, or that they, in their activities in the Seanad, should be actuated as to how their actions and their judgement will affect their chances of being elected at the next election. The schemes put forward by the Government so far, and that they are seeking to put forward for the first time in these amendments, indicate, apparently, that the Government cannot get away from the idea that they must have some roots in popular selection in connection with selection for the Seanad. We put forward this scheme at the Select Committee that was set up by the Dáil and, at one stage, it looked as if unanimous agreement could be got. That was found to be, in a very short time, a very illusory hope. We discussed the various schemes. We discussed this scheme and something emanating from it was carried by a majority of the Select Committee. In all our deliberations we never heard a word of the scheme which has emerged for the first time as the Government scheme for the new Seanad. We understood that our function in that Committee was to endeavour to arrive at a basis upon which unanimous agreement, if possible, could be achieved. Our contribution to that was this transitory arrangement for the election of the first Seanad, a scheme based upon direct election from vocational registers. The Government put forward no scheme as an alternative to the one we put forward. They put forward no scheme to tide over the difficulties of thinking out an arrangement or machinery, for the selection of a permanent Seanad. We never heard of the scheme put forward now for the first time in the Government amendments. We were told they were open to reason, that they wished to get agreement, that they were open to discuss the merits of proposals we put forward, but we were then told that they had reluctantly come to the conclusion, as a result of exhaustive examination over a period of 12 months, that the best method they could think of was the method embodied in the Bill which was brought before the House before the setting up of the Select Committee, that that was the best scheme they could think of, and, up to the end of the deliberations of the Committee, they were not able to think of a better one. They have produced a scheme now, apparently in opposition to the scheme we are putting forward, not one word of which was mentioned or breathed during the deliberations of the Select Committee, and in reference to which no opportunity was given to members of the Committee to consider or to put objections before the Government, or to have the matters sifted out in the calm atmosphere of the Select Committee. From the examination we have made since this proposal emerged within the last few days we still think that the proposals we put forward, while not ideal, are the best that could be thought of in the time and within the limits of the Constitution. I stress the phrase "within the limits of the Constitution" because if we had been framing the Constitution we would not have adopted particular provisions in reference to the Seanad in the Constitution.
But within the limits of the Constitution, and confined in our activities by those constitutional provisions, we feel that the object which we desire to achieve is a Seanad that in the first instance will command the respect and confidence of the people. It will be a Seanad based upon the findings of the Special Committee. It will be a Seanad which will not be a replica of the Dáil. Those objects will be achieved by the methods which we propose.
We are definitely of the opinion that these objects cannot be achieved by the methods set out in the proposal now put forward by the Government. Those proposals were not even mentioned during the deliberations of the Special Committee. They were not put before those who had wasted their time on that committee. The proposals now put forward by the Government are worse than those contained in the original Bill. They are considerably worse than the original provisions which were condemned on all sides and by all sections of the various Parties in this House. It seems that the Government cannot get rid of the idea that they must have a basis of election to the Seanad somewhat on the same lines as the Dáil. There is no question that the proposals now put forward by the Government will, if adopted in the creation of the new Seanad, undoubtedly work so that the Seanad will be the merest pale replica of the political Parties in the Dail.
The Government have framed these proposals with the idea of getting as many nominees of the Fianna Fáil Party as possible in the new Seanad. Even their own allies, the Labour Party, will be deprived of the amount of representation to which they are entitled in that Seanad. That will be the result of the Government scheme now put forward. If this scheme is adopted, the Labour Party will practically have no opportunity of electing their particular nominees. One of the extraordinary provisions of this new scheme of election that is proposed now in contradistinction to our proposals, is the Dáil and some nominees of the county councils, including even nominees of dissolved county councils. In other words, people who were not thought proper or fit to conduct parish politics; people who were dismissed either because they were not doing their job or were not fit for their job, or were defrauding the ratepayers, are considered fit and proper persons to make nominations to the Seanad.
Is the Deputy referring to his own amendment?
The Minister is muttering something.
I asked the Deputy if he is referring to his own amendment?
I am moving my own amendment. If the Minister refers to the fact that I am including county councils in that amendment, he is going to get an answer. These were put in there for a special purpose, as the Minister well knows from his colleagues on the Special Committee. That special purpose was explained to the Minister during the proceedings of this Special Committee. As the Minister knows, we put forward a scheme by which agriculturists would have a register of their own. These people would have their own register and they would be in a position to nominate and elect their own people. The Minister vigorously objected to that as a cumbersome plan. We said, "Very well; if the Minister objects to what he calls the cumbersome plan of allowing farmers and farm labourers to elect their own representatives, we will give you an alternative one that is not, perhaps, so cumbersome. The county councillors are more or less the representatives of the farmers and the farm labourers. We will put in the county councillors for the agricultural panel." It is for that we are putting in the county councillors. That is for the election of the agricultural panel. The Minister's proposal provides that these county councillors will elect every panel.
But they are the same people.
They are not the same people, as a matter of fact.
The House is again to be troubled with this Bill. It is clear that the House is going to devote a considerable amount of its time in a further discussion on this Bill in the same way as it has already devoted a considerable amount of time to the previous stages of the Bill. The consideration of this matter arises from the fact that the Government, having in the first instance abolished the Seanad, have now wobbled on that question. We find the President in the extraordinary position of, after having destroyed the Seanad, now yearning to create a new Seanad. Two years ago the President told the House that it was quite a desirable thing to get rid of the Seanad which then existed. At that time the back benchers of the Fianna Fáil Party were enthusiastic when they saw the last of the old Seanad. After abolishing the Seanad, we find the President wobbling so hopelessly on the subject of the Seanad that with his own desire to conceal his real reasons about the Seanad and to conceal the fact that he was then sorry for what he did, he made in the new Constitution provisions for a new Seanad.
The President wants the House to think that the Seanad that he dissolved was different from the new Seanad. The President does not want us to tell him that he has changed his mind. He never likes to be told that. He likes to be judged as the one straight, consistent man. In order that he will not be told that he has now recanted his past declaration and that he is undoing what he formerly did, he wants to try now to get a rather unique type of Seanad in the hope that that may save him from attacks for having abolished the previous Seanad. He now apologises for his actions and asks the country and this House to provide a new Seanad as part of the Legislature here. That is the explanation of the Government's Bill. The real explanation of the Government's Bill is the endeavour to save the President's political face. He asks the House to give him a type of Seanad different from the last one so that he can wrap himself in a white sheet and say: "Oh, well, we abolished the previous Seanad; remember the one we are reconstituting is something different from the one that was abolished." I think the President was right when he abolished the previous Seanad and he is wrong now. I can discover no real desire on the part of the ordinary people of this country to have a Second House reconstituted here.
Have they not already decided to have a Second House?
Unfortunately.
Very well. We agree on that.
I do not think I have so far said anything in that connection which might transgress the rules of order beyond indicating that the President has changed his mind on the question of the Seanad. Because of that curious action on the part of the President, we are now being asked to give legislative sanction of a proposal of creating and setting up a type of Seanad which has no parallel in the whole world. The ordinary people are not concerned with whether they get a Seanad or what type of Seanad it is. But if there is a Seanad to be set up, it should not, at all events, suffer through the weakness that is outlined in this—that it is capable of the political manipulation which is possible under the Government Bill and under the President's proposals. In Rome in the old days when people cried for bread, the Emperor offered them circuses. Here, when we protest against the price of bread and when we protest against the high cost of living, we are offered a Seanad. The fact is that we ought to be dealing with things of much more concern to the ordinary people of the country. Because of the manner in which the Chair has ruled as to how these amendments must be dealt with, we have necessarily, at this stage, to consider the amendment which has been submitted in the names of Deputies Costello and McGilligan. This amendment is somewhat on all-fours with the scheme outlined by the Fine Gael group at the sitting of the Special Committee which was appointed by the House to consider the Bill. I said then, and I want to say now again, that I was never enamoured of the scheme then submitted. I realised that it had weaknesses and that it had imperfections, but with all these weaknesses and imperfections, I preferred the scheme envisaged in this amendment to the provisions in the Bill, and I still prefer it to the provisions enshrined in the Government amendment. I never stood for this scheme; I think it can be attacked upon various grounds. But, when its imperfections are examined and its weaknesses disclosed, I think it is a very much better scheme than the scheme which is in the Government's Bill or in the amendment now submitted by the Government.
It is because I dislike the Bill intensely, and because I dislike the Government's amendments to the Bill intensely, that I prefer this scheme to the scheme in the Bill or in the amendments, but I prefer the scheme which the Labour Party submitted to the Special Committee to the Fine Gael scheme on the one hand or the Government scheme on the other hand. The one objectionable feature in the Labour Party's scheme, as submitted to the Special Committee, was that it provided for Dáil nominations and Dáil election. That would give you, therefore, if you were to have a Second House, a Second Chamber approximately the same as the Chamber which was abolished, and, of course, the President would not at all consent to accept a scheme which, by any chance, would enable anybody to say to him: "Ah, you are agreeing now to reconstitute the Seanad which you asked the House to abolish." That is the only reason why the Government are opposed to the Labour Party's amendment submitted to the Special Committee. We could not get an answer from the Government nominees on the Committee as to why they were opposed to the scheme. All questions directed to them on the scheme could not elicit from them a single valid reason as to why they were opposed to it. They did not like it; they preferred the scheme in their own Bill, and all for the purpose of being able to pretend to the country that the Government that is reconstituting the Seanad is reconstituting one which is somewhat different from the one which was abolished. Political face-saving is the real reason why the Government is opposed to the Labour Party's scheme which was submitted to the Special Committee.
My objection to this scheme, and I said so at the Special Committee, is that it provides for nominations by outside bodies. It seems to me to give to small professional groups who, in the aggregate, do not represent many thousand of the population, the right to make nominations to the Seanad, while large masses of the people are deprived of a similar right exercisable to the same extent. I said at the Special Committee that, in my opinion, we had such a scrappy moribund type of vocational organisation in this country—that it had not developed to such an extent—that it would not be possible for us to elect a Seanad on strictly vocational lines, but I said that although you might have an imperfect vocational organisation, you could, nevertheless, get a vocational Seanad by ensuring that those nominated and elected had certain vocational interests, of a kind described in the Constitution. I indicated that it was possible for the Dáil, or possible for any single man in the country, to elect a Seanad of 43 people, and, when electing them, to have regard to the qualifications which they were expected to have under the Constitution and under this Bill. I think that it is a mistake for us to imagine that we have a type of vocational organisation here capable of giving us proper vocational representation in the Seanad, and, recognising that fact, we ought to drop this whole notion at this stage, at all events until such time as we get a better vocational organisation, of electing a Seanad on a type of vocational organisation which is extremely unsatisfactory.
When we were discussing this matter at the Special Committee a proposal was carried by eight votes to seven, whereupon the Minister for Industry and Commerce treated the committee to a display of discourtesy and bad temper, and, in the course of his bad temper, said that rather than accept this scheme he would go off and produce a scheme by which special registers would be established and people would be asked to vote in accordance with their vocations. Although he had said a fortnight earlier that that scheme was impracticable, nevertheless, a fortnight after he had made his declaration, he said that he believed that it would be possible then to get a scheme within a fortnight, so that what he could not do in a month in the first instance could be done in a fortnight when the Minister lost his temper. The Minister, having cogitated over the matter for a fortnight, wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Special Committee in these terms:
I do not think he cogitated for a fortnight. I think it would be more correct to say 48 hours.
This is the letter:—
"At the meeting of the committee on Thursday last I undertook to consider the submission of proposals for the preparation of vocational registers for the election of Senators.
From my consideration of this matter, I am of opinion that it is not practicable to arrange for the establishment of such registers in the time available for the election of the first Seanad under the new Constitution.
Furthermore—
and here is the considered judgment—
I am very doubtful if it will be found possible to create satisfactory vocational registers at any time unless and until there has been a considerable development of vocational organisation amongst the public.
I have to inform you, therefore, that I will have no proposals for the establishment of such registers for submission to the committee at its next meeting."
Here we have the Minister for Industry and Commerce telling us that he is doubtful if it will be found possible to establish vocational registers "unless and until there has been a considerable development of vocational organisation amongst the public." In face of that declaration by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the farce of trying to elect a Seanad on a vocational basis is being continued by the Government under this Bill, and, unfortunately, is being continued by the movers of this amendment in the type of amendments which they have submitted. I said at the outset that I prefer this amendment to the Bill or the alternative Government amendment, but I prefer the Labour Party's scheme, as submitted to the Special Committee and now enshrined in amendments which have been submitted by us to the Dáil, to either the Fine Gael scheme or the Government scheme, because I realise, and others may realise it although they are not candid enough to say so, that the new Seanad, whether we like it or not, is going to be a political body, and anybody who says it is not is either deliberately misrepresenting the position or living in the clouds.
Do we not all know perfectly well, have not some of us got experience of it already, that the politicians or the ex-politicians or the prospective politicians are already canvassing their prospects of getting into the new Seanad? What is going to happen under this scheme of electing the new Seanad is that, in the main, the people who will constitute the new Seanad will be actively associated with the various political parties in the State. That association, and the political weight which these people will use, will, in the long run, count much more in getting into the new Seanad than all the qualifications in any of the arts, services or sciences referred to in the Constitution. I, fortunately or unfortunately, meet people of all kinds, and the one thing that has struck me during the past two months while this question of the new Seanad has been under discussion is the number of people who want to get into the new Seanad, and who think that they can get votes from this party, from that party or the other party. Some of them, as a matter of fact, have already indicated the kind of political campaign that they are going to run in order to get into the new Seanad, and in spite of that we are asked to assume that the new Seanad is going to be such an impeccable body, so free from politics, so impartial and so dispassionate in its approach to problems that nobody will ever be allowed to get into it if he has had any marked political attachments.
Everybody who is not a Simple Simon must know perfectly well that the overwhelming body of the members of the new Seanad will be politicians and that, at least, if they are not politicians before they go into the new Seanad, it will not be long after they get there until they are converted into politicians. I recognise that fact at this stage, and I prefer to recognise it at this stage instead of carrying on this simple nonsense of imagining that you can get elected in this country—where politics are of such a stormy character, as we all know—a Second House in which there will be no politics. I hold that to imagine such a thing is simply to be moving in the clouds. In view of that fact, I think that the obvious and the simplest course to adopt with regard to the speedy election of a Seanad would be to say definitely that, as the Second House, obviously, is going to be a House that, from the nature of things, will be dealing with political matters, and that as matters are dealt with from a political point of view here, they will not be dealt with in a different way elsewhere.
Matters are dealt with politically here, and the Constitution provides for the enactment of the measures dealt with here, and when these measures go to the other House they will be, naturally, the same type of political measures as have been passing through this House. Is not the sensible thing to do, then, to try to devise a scheme which will enable members of the Dáil, responsible to the electorate in the country, to nominate the persons to constitute the new Seanad and to elect them? That, at least, is a simple method of electing the new Seanad. It was the method previously used, and I venture to say that the old Seanad was at least as good a body as we will be likely to get as a result of either the Government or the Fine Gael amendments. As far as I can make out, the only difference between them is that one will not be as capable of political manipulation as the other; and the case for the abolition of the new Seanad will be at least as strong as the case for the abolition of the previous one, and no stronger.
I notice that the Minister for Finance has had a considerable amount to say about this amendment before it was submitted for the consideration of the House. With his flair for writing indecent and obscene letters, he evidently thought it was best to write to the Irish Times and to tell the Irish Times, in that crude and vulgar language, what he thought about this proposal—apparently imagining that he finds an echo of sympathy there. I do not know sufficient about the relationship between the Minister and that organ, but since in the course of his letter to the Press he expressed a point of view which he has expressed in this debate, it may perhaps be as well to deal with the point to which he was referring, and which was to the effect that this proposed scheme was a violation of the principles of P.R. and a violation of the principles of democracy. When we come to consider democracy in relation to this new Seanad, however, and when we come to consider the principles of P.R. in relation to this new Seanad, we get some amazing results. The Minister for Finance says that this scheme does violence to the principle of P.R., and is giving one Party special representation in this electorate college to select a new Seanad, but the Minister who says that cannot be induced to open his mouth at all on the question of the violence to the principle of P.R. which is done in the Constitution, which provides that 11 members of the new Seanad shall be nominated by An Taoiseach, and it must be remembered that the Taoiseach is no other person than the present President—Mr. de Valera—who is the present head of a political Party.
That provision has been approved of.
I know, Sir; but this is an argument to show that what is proposed to be done in this amendment is not nearly as bad as what the present Minister for Finance stands for in other respects. If he is prepared to stand for the nomination of 11 members by the Taoiseach, an amendment which at least does not do much worse than that should not be so objectionable to the Minister for Finance or to the President. The Minister for Finance pretends to by outraged on the ground that the principles of P.R. are being done violence to by this amendment, but apparently he has nothing whatever to say about that provision in the Constitution whereby the present President, who will be renamed "An Taoiseach"—he is not the real President—will be able to nominate 11 persons to the new Seanad.
The point I wish to make is that the Deputy cannot attack a provision in the Constitution through an amendment of this kind.
I am not attacking it, Sir.
He is not attacking it.
I recognise the fact, Sir, that, unfortunately, that portion of the Constitution has been approved of by the people, and I realise that it would only be a waste of time on my part to attempt to convince anybody, at this stage, as to whether or not it can be undone. I am only pointing out that this amendment, with all its imperfections, is not nearly as bad as the scheme whereby one person—An Taoiseach, the head of the party—is empowered to nominate 11 persons to the new Seanad, without being obliged to consult a single person as to the standing, character or political outlook of those whom he nominates; and, of course, we can be sure—as the President himself said so candidly when we were discussing the question of the abolition of the Seanad—that anybody in that position, realising that he was the head of a political party, and having the power to nominate 11 members, would be bound to put 11 ward-heelers into position. The Minister for Finance thinks that it is a terrible thing that one Party on this committee should have two votes more than it would normally have if the principle of P.R. were adopted, but I submit to you, Sir, and to the Minister for Finance, and to all reasonably-minded persons, that that apparent inconsistency is not nearly as harmful at all as the scheme whereby the President, when this new Seanad is about to be formed, may take his 11 rabbits out of his pocket, attach Party labels to them and let them scamper around the new House, rendering only one loyalty, and that is loyalty to the person who nominated them and to the Party of which that person is the President. If ever any scheme did violence to democracy or the principle of proportional representation, the scheme whereby the Taoiseach could put 11 people into a Seanad of 60 certainly does violence to it.
The Seanad Committee, at least, did one very valuable thing. It enabled the Minister for Industry and Commerce to lose his temper and, when he lost his temper, we got very valuable information. We asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce what was the idea of having the Taoiseach having these 11 nominations in his pocket. The Minister blurted out: "Oh, well, it is desirable that the President should have 11 people in his pocket so as to make sure that the Government could command a majority in the Seanad." There is the reason, blandly given by the Minister, why the President should be allowed to fix definite political labels to the persons whom he nominates for the new Seanad. It is necessary to have 11 sympathetic people, well-tried, who will know all the time that they owe their seats in the Seanad to nominations which they get from the Taoiseach. That is the whole purpose underlying this Seanad Bill and underlying the 11 nominations by the Taoiseach—to enable the Government Party to get a majority in the Seanad which they cannot get on the votes they got at the last election, on the votes they hold in this House, or any votes they can command anywhere by the application of the principle of proportional representation.
It is quite true that this scheme is weighted in a particular way and that the weighting is somewhat favourable to the Labour Party. But the Labour Party is not concerned with the weight it gets and the number of seats it gets in the new Seanad. I hope that some day a Labour Government in this country will abolish the new Seanad which is being elected and I hope it will not change its mind with the speed with which the President changed his on the matter. The Labour Party is not concerned with the number of seats it gets in the electoral college or the number of seats it gets in the new Seanad. The new Seanad will be a thoroughly worthless body, merely an echo of this House, with power to do absolutely nothing from a legislative point of view. I am not concerned with what number of seats it gets in the electoral college. I am not concerned as to whether it gets any seats in the electoral college, or whether it is established or not. I am concerned in opposing the lopsided scheme enshrined in the Government's Bill and the President's amendment.
I note, however, that in the Constitution provision is made for the election of a Seanad in which Labour, whether organised or unorganised, shall have a certain voice. When we come to interpret that provision in the Constitution through the machinery of this Bill we find that the idea is that Labour, as a particular political or economic thought, should have 11 seats in the Seanad. That is the idea underlying the Government Bill—11 seats to be allocated to Labour thought whether organised or unorganised Labour, in the new Seanad. The scheme envisaged in this amendment would not give Labour thought more than eight seats in the new Seanad. Is there anything wrong then with giving Labour thought expression to the extent of eight seats under this amendment, when, in fact, the Bill provides that that thought should be expressed by 11 seats? There is a well-known principle, well-known in democratic organisations, by which when groups are claiming representation at a congress, conference or committee, there is always a special weighting given to some groups which are not as large as other groups. It is a well-known principle, recognised by trade unions themselves in representation at Labour and trade union congresses. That is all that is enshrined in this amendment. If that is the only weakness in the amendment, then that weakness has been incorporated in hundreds of democratic bodies, not only here, but throughout the world where democracy is permitted to survice.
As I said before, there are other features of the amendment which I do not like. The attempt to hang on to the shadow of vocational organisation in this country is, I think, a very definite weakness in the whole amendment. I would prefer that the Labour Party scheme of a Seanad nominated by the Dáil and elected by the Dáil should be adopted by the House. There is no case that I know of against that scheme, except the case made by Fine Gael, that, if that is done, there will be trouble with people looking for nominations for election to the new Seanad and, by the Government, that it is open to the sinful crime of giving the country a Seanad similar to the one which the Government abolished. The Government do not want to be accused of reconstituting the Seanad which they abolished.
I think the Labour Party scheme is a much better scheme than that of the Government or of Fine Gael. I think it will give a Seanad speedily, and as good a Seanad as the Seanad you will get under the Bill, no matter whether it is amended by the adoption of the Government's alternative scheme or that of Fine Gael. In any issue between the scheme submitted by Deputies Costelloe and McGilligan and the scheme enshrined in the Labour Party's amendment, I definitely prefer the Labour Party scheme, and when it comes to a vote on the question I will vote for the Labour scheme in the hope that that scheme will be carried in opposition to this scheme. But, when I come to look at the thing in the only way in which I can now look at this amendment, having regard to the way in which the discussion has been sectionalised, I am placed in the position of having to make a choice between this scheme and what is in the Bill. I think the Bill has been drawn up in a way to make it capable of political manipulation in the interests of one Party, and that the amendments which the Government have submitted make the Bill more than ever capable of manipulation in the interests of one Party. It is because I dislike this Bill and the amendments that I prefer this scheme, but I would prefer the Labour Party scheme either to the Fine Gael or the Government scheme.
I suppose it is no surprise that each particular group should think its own scheme the best. We are prepared for that. We have been debating and deliberating this question of a Seanad over a long period. We set up a Commission and we implemented to a large extent the ideas, not of a particular Party, but of some of the groups that were on that Commission, and we put them into the Bill. Then, in the hope that we might possibly arrive more quickly at decisions and, if possible, at a unified scheme, I proposed, after the Second Reading of the Bill, that we should set up a Special Committee at which the whole matter should be examined. The report of the Committee has been circulated, and I think it tells its own tale. I for one, at any rate, am not going to speak about any particular thing that happened at that Committee further than it is recorded in the report. We decided that we would not have the Press present and that we would not have full reports in order that there might be freer discussion and an opportunity of acting less formally, perhaps, than would be possible if we had reporters present. I would suggest to other speakers that, from every point of view, it is better that the attitude I am taking in regard to it should be the attitude generally. In all essentials it tells its own story completely. The Committee came to a certain decision. There was a lot of preliminary discussion, as the report shows. Various proposals were put forward, and then the time came when decisions were necessary. The moment it came down to final decisions we got up particularly against one point on which the Committee divided, eight to seven. The Government representatives could not see their way to implement, as we would be required to do, the decision which is practically that which we are discussing just now, the decision to work it by means of a small electoral college on the lines of the amendment which is just now being discussed.
I would suggest to Deputy Norton that there is no need to try to impute motives on anything of that sort. We are doing a practical piece of work, and it can stand on its own merits. If there are objections to the scheme, they can be put forward, because, in regard to some of the motives which he suggested, I can say that he is definitely wrong. In that matter I can be a better judge than he can be. The Government's proposals are being brought forward as the best of the various proposals that have already been made, in our opinion, for the constitution of the Seanad. At an early stage I, at any rate, recognised —and I said so here—the difficulty there was in getting anything that could be regarded as a really satisfactory Second House. An appeal was made that even if we did not get a really satisfactory House, a bad Seanad was better than no Seanad. Under certain circumstances that could, as a proposition, be accepted, and having in the Constitution defined and limited the powers which the Seanad could have, we set ourselves out to give to those who thought that even an imperfect Seanad was better than no Seanad, such a Seanad that we, at any rate, thought could do no positive harm and might do a certain amount of good. The good that a Seanad can do is mainly by as independent criticism of Bills as possible —measures to be criticised from the point of view of knowledge and the point of view of the general good. Independent criticism, then, was the one thing which we hoped might be got.
To prevent dangerous situations being created, we adopted one of the suggestions of the committee, and that was that the Seanad should go out, roughly, at the same time as the Dáil, so that we might not have a position in which there would be a carry-over of political antagonism from one administration, where a particular Party represented or proclaimed that it represented, the popular view, and a position in which, after an election, it was shown that the former Opposition, for example, did in reality more clearly represent what the view of the people was than did the former Government. It might help us somewhat to approach this in a calm way, without suggestions that these proposals are being intended for Party purposes, if we looked over the Report that was issued by the Seanad Commission. It was set up, as you know, over a year ago, and there were put on that commission a large number of people who should at least have knowledge, and a number of whom had experience, of what a Second Chamber should do and could do. I shall read completely one or two paragraphs of the Report, because I think they will help to put this debate in its proper setting.
In the Report signed by the late Chief Justice the following occurs in paragraph 20:
"It was in regard to the method of selecting the members of the Second House that the greatest diversity of opinion prevailed. While the proposals made to the commission—with one exception—included nomination as a method for obtaining a part of the membership of the Second House, the proposals differed as to the number to be so obtained, and, principally, as to the method by which the remaining members were to be selected. The main proposals for constituting the House—other than the proposals embodied in this Report—may be summarised as follow:—"
I am giving these because we are discussing at this moment, I take it, three propositions, and I want to show that these propositions are by no means alone. The report continues:
(i) That the members of the Second House should be elected by a direct vote of the people;
(ii) That the Second House should be, in part, nominated, and, in part, elected—the election to be held in constituencies based on provinces;
(iii) That it should be, in part, nominated, and, in part, constituted by dividing the elected First House—a certain number of members at each General Election being elected to Dáil Eireann in excess of those required to constitute that body;
(iv) That it should be, in part, nominated, and, in part, elected by a system of Vocational Election;
(v) That it should be, in part, nominated, and, in part, elected by Dáil Eireann from a Panel of persons actively concerned in certain specified public interests or services—the nominating authority to the Panel to be (among other suggestions) a Committee of Dáil Eireann;
(vi) That it should be obtained, in part, by election by Dáil Eireann from a Panel prepared by a nominating authority having regard to the qualifications specified in paragraph 22, and, in part, by uncontrolled nomination, the nominating authority in both cases being the President of the Executive Council;
(vii) That it should be obtained, in part, by controlled nomination, and, in part, by uncontrolled nomination, the nominating authority in both cases being the President of the Executive Council.
21. The majority of the Commission decided to recommend that one-third of the members of the Second House should be nominated, and that the nominating authority should be the President of the Executive Council.
22. The majority of the Commission is of opinion that the remainder of the members of the Second House should be selected from a panel of persons who then are, or have been, actively concerned in public interests or services to be specified, the panel being prepared for each election.
23. The majority of the Commission is of the opinion that:—
(i) The selection of the panel from which members are to be elected should be made by a nominating authority or committee of persons (not necessarily members of Dáil Eireann) elected for that purpose by Dáil Eireann on the system of proportional representation;
(ii) The nominating authority should be required by its terms of reference to nominate for the panel not fewer than twice the number of persons to be elected having regard in each case to the qualifications set forth in paragraph 22 and, as far as practicable, to the representation of the public interests and services indicated in paragraph 25;
(iii) Any two members of the nominating authority should be entitled to make six nominations to the panel;
(iv) The nominating authority should consist of seven persons, of whom one shall be chairman.
24. The majority of the Commission is of opinion that the members of the Second House to be elected should be so elected by a College of Electors, to consist of every person who had been a candidate at the immediately preceding General Election for Dáil Eireann.
There is a number of other paragraphs dealing with this matter, but I think if I complete the reading of this paragraph I will have read sufficient to indicate generally the diversity of opinion that there is. Continuing, paragraph 24 says:—
The Election should be conducted in accordance with a scheme whereby each elector would be entitled in the election for a Second House to cast one vote for every 1,000 first preferences he received at the Election for Dáil Eireann. A fraction of 1,000 exceeding 500 to be reckoned as 1,000.
The Election to be by means of the Single Transferable Vote, and to be by Postal Ballot.
The whole country should be a single constituency.
From those paragraphs which I have read from that report I think it will be seen that the proposals which were in the Bill were based very largely upon some of those recommendations. There was no single recommendation; there was no real majority report. There was a report on a number of suggestions which had been made. When we had, first of all, to deal with the Constitution, and then when we had to deal with this Bill, we had the background of this work which was done by this independent committee. If you want to read the names, you can see whether it can be suggested that they were nominated for the purpose of getting a Party report. In so far as it was at all possible or reasonable to put those into either the Constitution or into the Bill, we did it. Now the Bill, as far as the electorate was concerned, proposed that very electorate which I have read out last from that report, namely, that the electorate should consist of those who had been candidates at the previous Dáil election. I told the House, when I introduced the Bill, that that was a proposal which I had put there because it was regarded with favour by a number of the commission, and because I saw that something could be said for it on the grounds that it was a wider electorate than the Dáil, and that if there was to be machining—it was suggested that there might be machining by Parties in the Dáil in regard to the election—it made that machining somewhat more difficult any how. I never pretended at any time that I was in love with it.
In the amendments we have changed the Bill to meet two or three distinct objections that had been raised. One of the objections was to that widening of the Dáil as an electorate in that particular way. There did not seem to be anything like agreement upon any of those proposals, and I asked myself if we were going to widen the Dáil electorate what was the best way to do it? It occurred to me, as the question of electoral colleges had been in the air, that probably the best way of widening the Dáil electorate would be to give to county councils and county borough councils an opportunity of selecting a number of electors, and the number was chosen so that a Party which had at least one-eighth of the membership of a particular county council or county borough council could have its representation amongst the seven electors. If some people think it would be better to have it at nine, I am quite prepared to take nine. My idea in taking a number like seven was that it appeared to be sufficiently large to enable any group representing anything like a fair number of the electorate to have an opportunity of getting their proportion amongst the electors. A good deal could be said for that as a method of getting an electorate. It might be said even that you could eliminate the Dáil and leave it altogether to the outside bodies. My own view on that is that the Dáil has a certain amount of information and a certain understanding of what the business of the Second House should be, and of the quality and the character of the type of man who would be best in it, and consequently that they ought to have a reasonable voice in the selection or election of those candidates. Having no desire of any kind to serve any other purpose except to get a reasonable electorate that can be got easily and that can be defended as being fairly satisfactory, I myself would vote for that as against any other proposition that I have seen put up for forming an electorate.
On this question of the electorate, there is a very wide diversity of opinion. There was that diversity in the commission which I have mentioned. There was that diversity in the committee. There is probably that diversity of view in all Parties in the Dáil. We have now come to the stage at which we must take a decision on the matter, and I would say that there is a number of points on which there is a great deal of unanimity. Well, I will not say unanimity of opinion, because I do not think it is shared by all members in the House, but I would say that there would be a very large majority of the members who would agree on certain propositions. I think the first of those propositions would be that if possible it would be desirable to have a vocational Seanad, rather than a Seanad of what I might call a territorial kind, rather than the kind of Seanad that would be elected, for example, if there was an election for Senators by the people as a whole at the same time as a Dáil was elected. I believe the majority of the House would agree with that proposition— that a vocational Seanad, if we could get it, would in our circumstances be better for us, particularly with the powers that they have got, in order to get independent criticism, than one elected on a territorial basis. That is the view I have. That is the view enshrined in the Constitution, and the Constitution takes account of the fact that we are not functionally organised at the moment. It indicates quite clearly that, if we were to become more and more functionally organised, then we could pass a law under the Constitution giving to any functional organisation the right of selecting and electing directly. We have not, however, arrived at that stage yet. I hope we will. I hope there will be a development in that direction, which seems to me to be a natural and a normal development. In my view it would be a healthy development, provided that it comes definitely from the vocations themselves, and is not forced from above by the State.
There is, therefore, in our Constitution a certain incentive to work along these lines, and I, for one, put it in the Constitution, hoping it would be an incentive to that type of organisation. But we have not arrived at that stage. What is the best we can do? Having the principal part in trying to work out this scheme, I put forward the idea that we should begin by getting bodies of that sort, in so far as they could at all be regarded as existing, and give them, to start with, the right of nomination. But, knowing that an attack would be made on such bodies, such as has been made by Deputy Norton when he said a few moments ago: "Here are a number of people who have come together anyhow; they cannot be regarded as representative in the same sense as the members of this House," I was anxious, lest there be anything real in that suggestion, to see that at the start, in any case, they should not have the absolute power of nomination.
There is, side by side with that, a representative body which would commend itself to some sections of the House. The idea was that that representative body would have an opportunity of nominating, roughly, one half, and that the outside bodies would also have a chance of nominating, and the possibility of getting elected, the other half. That was the basis on which the Bill was planned. That is the basis on which our proposals will be carried forward. Our proposals mean that outside bodies, similar to those mentioned by Deputy McGilligan and those that have been mentioned in the Seanad Commission Report, would have the right of nominating to the panels, with the assurance that a certain number of their nominees were going to be elected.
In the present condition, and as a step in the direction in which we ought to go to get a good Seanad, I think our proposals form a good intermediate step. They give the right of nomination for a part instead of what I would expect ultimately would be the development, so that there would be, by bodies of this sort, election as a whole. Nomination of a part is given as an incentive to move in the right direction and as the best midway step I can think of. A lot of sweeping statements have been made that it is worse than the Dáil.
I do not think we have yet fully discussed the President's proposals. I think they are to come on, and I can assure him that he will hear enough of objections when we come to discuss his proposals.
At the moment I am merely following the suggestion of the Deputy that we would talk of these proposals as a whole. It is not a question of voting against Deputy McGilligan's proposals as being essentially bad so much as relatively being unsatisfactory.
I merely wanted to alleviate the President's mind and to indicate to him that he has not yet heard any criticisms of his proposals.
Then there is a good time coming?
Yes, when we come to deal with your proposals later on.
I have heard some sweeping statements made by Deputy Costello and Deputy Norton, but I would like to hear more definitely what the objections are. The Dáil as a part electorate is defended on the ground that I have given, that I think it would be a rather big leap at present to give the whole selection of the House to outside bodies which would come more or less in a haphazard way together. The extension of the Dáil so as to include the electorate to local bodies can, I think, be well defended on the ground that these local bodies have interests in national affairs in that they also will be men in a position to be able to pass judgement upon the various candidates who might be put forward for election, and they are fairly comprehensive: they cover the whole country and there is no attempt made to weight them in regard to population. Some people may say that is a weakness. All I can say is, that I could produce a complicated scheme, giving so many votes according to the population of a particular area, but I think it would be inadvisable, and I do not think it is necessary. I think this method has the merit of simplicity.
In the United States of America you have got a situation where even the populous States and the States where you have a small population have equal rights in this matter. Not merely have the States with the small population the power of being electors, but they actually elect an equal number to the Senate, so that giving equality does widen the electorate and gives an opportunity of local judgement being expressed. If it is suggested that this is going to give a particular advantage to any special Party, I cannot help that. This is not made for the present circumstances; it is made to continue until something better can be put in its place. It is an Act like any ordinary Act: it can be repealed and a new Act brought in. Seeing the time we have spent trying to get a Seanad, and with all the talk about wasting public time, I do not think we ought to commit ourselves that this ought to last for only one year, as is proposed in the amendment put forward by Deputy Costello and Deputy McGilligan.
I think we ought to take the stand in this Bill that this is a Seanad which will continue unless it is deliberately put aside by a better Seanad. I do not think that we, or any House that might be here after this House, ought to be committed to bring in another proposal for a new Seanad. I think we ought to do the best we can at the moment on the understanding that the Seanad can be replaced if something better can be thought of at any time. This Seanad that we have proposed should continue. In my opinion it would be a reasonably satisfactory Seanad, and it could continue until we had advanced to the stage of development which, I hope, we will advance towards when we will have bodies not merely nominating but electing directly a certain quota of Seanad members.
Now, coming to Deputy McGilligan's proposal, I think that it is unsatisfactory, that it is really illusive. It is based, as was said on another occasion, somewhat on the idea that if you want to get an exact division of a piece of land, if two people are to get it, you would get one of them to divide it and give the other the choice of the parts to be taken. I think that does not apply here at all. You could get a very good result, if you are dividing a piece of land between two people, to let one draw the dividing line on the clear understanding that the other person will have his choice of the parts.
But that idea does not work out in this case. What does it mean? It is suggested that the Parties here are going to be machined and are going to act in a very definite Party manner. This proposal does not prevent their doing that. It does not even make that action more remote than it would be if you allowed the Parties to make directly the nominations to the 22, leaving out the question of weighting for the moment. It would mean that the Independents would put up two. If they are going to play Party politics, as it is called, they will surely be able to get double the number allocated to them whom they can depend upon to act as they desire. All they have got to do is to double the number they would otherwise have and put up persons who can be depended upon to act in a Party way. If the Labour Party are to get four, they have only to select eight. If they want to select four on the understanding that they will act exactly as the Party desire, I do not think it would be beyond their power to get eight who would do the same thing. As you go up the scale and come to Fine Gael, the same thing is largely true. I do not think it would be difficult for Fine Gael to get double the number they would have under the proposal who would be prepared to act as they desire, but I admit that, as the number increases, the difficulty is somewhat greater. But if the presumption is that action is going to be in this particular Party manner, you only make it a little more difficult for the Parties to act in that way. The suspicion will be in the mind of each Party that the other Party will act in this fashion. It is like the question of disarmament. If there could be a complete assurance that no Party would be deprived of any advantage by selecting people who would not act in a Party manner, it might be all right, but the suspicion is there. It is the same way with nations. Each nation thinks that if it disarms, it will be completely at the mercy of others. Parties will assume that they will have no chance unless they act as they assume the other Parties are going to act. They will take care, if they are selecting two persons, that the two will be of the same type as one would be and, if they are choosing eight, that the eight will be of the same type as the four that they want elected. It does not matter what selection is made by the other Party, they will get what they want.
Deputy Costello said that this plan would show up the bona fides of each Party. If we were to determine methods for “showing up,” I suggest that that would be done by the selection of the exact number and by their direct election. If I had to choose between direct election by Parties of those they would put on and this complicated system by which twice as many are selected as are to go on, I would be straight about it and I would let them select the exact number and put them on. This proposition is illusory in so far as there is any hope that you would get a much better selection than you would get if the Parties in the Dáil elected on to the 22 direct. Consequently, I believe that that proposition is of very little value—that is, the complication of it. If you were to say: “Very well, let the Parties elect on to the 22 directly,” my answer would be that whatever hope there might be from a fairly big electorate of securing the desired end in this way, I should hate to see the method confined to a small group if that group is to be selected directly on a Party basis. There is a better chance of getting independent judgement when you have a large group. There are fewer opportunities for bargaining and all that could go on if we were to visualise the worst.
As to the weighting, I think it cannot be defended. The suggestion has been made that we are not dealing with proportional representation at all. I read from the reports of the Commission the suggestions about nomination. When the Constitution was passing through the House, hardly any part of it was less criticised than that which dealt with nominations by the Taoiseach. If this Government is the Government under the Constitution, then, if I remain as President of the Executive Council, I shall continue as Taoiseach. This particular Party would, therefore, be the Party which would have the power of nomination. If another Party were the Government, they would have it. That was based on a principle. It was mentioned in the Seanad Commission report that it was based on a principle. The principle is not that the Taoiseach would do as was suggested by Deputy Norton—have a number of Party hacks whom he would immediately put into the Seanad to make up the 11. It was based upon two ideas. One was that there might be minorities or particular interests which might need representation. If the Taoiseach thought they deserved representation, he would be empowered to give them representation. There is, then, the point of view—a practical point of view—that if there were a Seanad which appeared to be overwhelmingly against the Government, when nominated, that overwhelming majority might, to a certain extent, be remedied by means of these nominations. The fact that the Seanad goes out of office at the same time as the Dáil is an indication that, behind the proposal, is the idea that the Seanad should not necessarily be hostile to the Dáil or to the majority in the Dáil. If there was danger of a really hostile Seanad, there is no doubt that the Taoiseach could use his power of nomination and remedy the situation to a certain extent. That provision was in the Constitution and if you look at the reports of the Dáil debates, you will find that hardly any proposal was less criticised than that proposal. When it was suggested that there would be a very large number of nominations, I said that it would be a mistake to think that the Taoiseach could be completely and absolutely independent. That is a fact you have to bear in mind in connection with proposals of this sort. It was a matter we had in mind when the Constitution was passing. We knew that pressure of that sort was likely to be exercised and, notwithstanding our knowledge of that fact, we put that provision in and agreed to it. Elsewhere, we have provided for the proportional representation method. You give the power of nomination to one individual who is in a specially prominent position and whose actions will be under a strong light. He would be open to a great deal of public criticism if he acted unfairly in the choice of the 11 Senators. It does not matter what choice is made, there will be criticism. That is inevitable. But it is a different thing to give that power of nominating certain persons for certain understood reasons to an individual, selected deliberately in the Constitution—and I might say this was done without any strong opposition in the Dáil—and to depart elsewhere from the principle of proportional representation.
The Constitution provides that Labour will get 11 representatives in a particular panel. You have Labour in this country organised and unorganised, but it does not matter which it is or who elects them. The point is that they must be people who come within the class covered by the term Labour. You may say that the definition of the class is not sufficiently close or something of the kind, but the fact is that 11 Senators will have to be elected who should be reasonably representative of the Labour point of view, have knowledge of Labour problems and, in other ways, be able to assist the Seanad by a particular knowledge of the needs of those who would be classed as Labour. They are organised and unorganised. There is what might be called urban labour and there is also agricultural labour. There will undoubtedly be amongst the nominating bodies outside bodies that will be able to represent what might be called organised, and, in the main, urbanised labour. There is hardly any doubt that you will have bodies outside entitled to nominate for election to that panel—people who would be representative of organised labour. Unorganised labour, agricultural labour, will have to be dealt with otherwise. It is open to members of the Dáil—to the Labour members or anybody else—to nominate any particular person, and you will have an electorate which consists of the Dáil and of local bodies, or at least, representatives of local bodies, and it seems to me that that body ought to be able to judge fairly as to the suitability of one of these candidates as against another. I think, therefore, that the proposals in the amendments are an improvement on the original Bill, both as regards the electorate and as regards the question as to how the elections shall take place in connection with the nominations.
One of the parts of the old Bill which I disliked most, but for which I was not myself able to think of a remedy, was the proposition that twenty-five members were necessary to nominate a member on the panel. The difficulty was that I wanted to make sure that outside nominees would have a chance of being elected, and, as the Dáil was the preponderating part of the old electorate, the only way to ensure it was to ensure that there were not more Dáil nominees than would leave a fair margin for those elected from outside. If we wanted to limit the number, a very large number of Deputies was required to nominate and the objection naturally was that that was unfair to smaller Parties, and that while bigger Parties could easily get twenty-five it was a difficult matter for a smaller Party to get such a number. There was a proposal made which I have adopted—I think it came from the Labour Party, but a study of the report will show from whom it came— that there should be one ballot paper instead of a number of ballot papers, and that there should be voting right down that ballot paper, irrespective of the particular panel. Of course, the effect of that is that you will get proportional representation, with a higher degree of representation for smaller Parties, very much better than you would with voting panel by panel. Consequently, as a fairer method, we adopted it. Instead of having voting for each separate panel, the scheme is that there should be continuous voting right down through the whole panel, and that according as they are elected, those belonging to that panel will be eliminated.
We have had to come to some definite conclusion, and I am putting these forward as the Government proposals, as the proposals we are prepared to stand by and as the proposals which we think will give a reasonably good Seanad and a better Seanad than any of the proposals we have seen will give. It is in that way I am putting them forward, and I hope the Dáil will accept them. The Labour Party are putting forward the Dáil alone as the electorate, but I think the Dáil alone is not going to be as good an electorate as the Dáil plus the local bodies, and as between the two I hold for the extension of the electorate to take in the local authorities. So far as nominations are concerned, two Deputies now can nominate, and we are ensuring by a different method for the nominations of outside bodies the election of half by a scheme which the amendment set out in detail. Consequently, I am opposing the amendment of Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Costello, and, as an alternative, I am putting forward the proposals which are worked out in full in the amendment in my name.
The President has been rather delicate in his allusions to the history of this whole matter, and it is more notable as coming from him who is so apt to rely on history in regard to so many matters. He has, however, ventured to talk about the commission he set up, and he has introduced quotations from it as if that commission had sat to consider a scheme having the Constitution before them. That is completely and entirely wrong.
I did not suggest that, did I?
I insist that the President's remarks conveyed that suggestion. He may not have intended it, but in order to correct any such misapprehension, if there be any, I want to point out that the Commission reported on 30th September, 1936. They had been asked to do this: to consider and make recommendations as to what should be the functions and powers of a Second Chamber of the Legislature in the event of its being decided to make provision in the Constitution for such Chamber. They were told in other words: "Sit down, and if you find a scheme that will please me, I will accept it and I will do something about it in the Constitution; if you do not find such a scheme, we will have none of it." They must have known that that was his viewpoint when they remembered his famous quotation in connection with the old Seanad, from the Abbé Seyés:—
"If the Second Chamber is of the same political complexion as the First, it is useless, and if it is of a different political complexion it is mischievous."
I suppose they had their orders: "Whatever you bring out, do not bring out a Chamber which will be mischievous within the meaning of that term. Let it be one thoroughly and completely useless. Keep to that rather than to the type of Seanad that might be described as mischievous."
That Commission reported, and in the end this Bill emerged. I have just been looking through this Bill, and I have marked it from the angle of the amendments sent in. I have marked in blue pencil the Government amendments, and I do not suppose I have more than a page of print of the original Bill left. The Government scheme arising out of their consideration of that Commission's recommendation was brought before this House, and the President, in a very lame and fumbling speech, threw the whole thing to the wolves. He announced that he did not see any principle in the measure, and he gave a definite assurance here that if the Committee which he proposed to set up met, and if their deliberations led them to something that seemed to be even contrary to the Second Reading, he would withdraw the whole measure and introduce fresh proposals so that there could not be any suggestion that the way was blocked for anything.
We did meet in Committee, and a most abnormal Committee it was. I think it is the only Committee that has not yet reported in accordance with the views of the majority of the Committee. The views were expressed on a couple of occasions by a majority vote. The Committee has not presented a report along the lines of the majority vote. The Committee, of course, as Deputy Norton said, suppressed certain other matters. The President asked us when discussing this to-night to let the Committee's report speak for itself, and not to bring in any reference to what happened there.
Deputy Norton has referred to the time when the Minister for Industry and Commerce lost his temper, and in the process of losing his temper gave the Committee a very valuable find, because they discovered his true thought, and the true thought was that the Minister was very much concerned about the possibility of any Seanad, any Electoral College, getting out of hand, and getting out of hand meant not obeying the crack of the Party Whip. Once it was possible, we would have an Electoral College that might be removed from the Dáil. The Minister told us in vehement language that now there was no longer a chance of agreement or even of acquiescence to any proposals which would emanate from the Committee. I consider I am entitled to go into these details if for no other reason than that a member of the Government the day after the Committee's report thought fit to write to the Press alleging a corrupt bargain as between myself and the Labour Party on the Committee. I wonder did he speculate secrecy by any stretch of imagination, or I wonder had he overnight a conference with his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture or anyone else, or was it merely the product of his own imagination? I suggest that it was not, because the phrase quoted was very definitely the phrase used by the Minister for Industry and Commerce at the Committee. Deputy Norton was quite right—and I think it is illuminating—in asking the part the public are entitled to know. We did proceed to discuss a variety of schemes. We left one night with the prospect of agreement on essential points, and it was left to the President, as chairman, not to bring forward a compromise scheme on suggested lines, but to record the points upon which agreement was found possible. One of these expert letters which appear over the signature of Mr. Childers says: "The President's compromise"—of course, he is wrong in calling it such—"The President's compromise, therefore, was rejected, and the responsibility for the breakdown of the Committee rests upon those who rejected the President's memorandum."
Let it be understood who they were. The President himself and his supporters. Everyone else in the room, except the President's Party supporters, were in favour of the President's so-called compromise. That is the progress of the committee. The first two nights we found agreement, agreement, so far as it was possible for the President to draw records of the agreement, and we left the room thinking that we were ultimately going to advance on this agreement. When we arrived the next time, whether there had been a Party conference or what, there was a decided change of opinion, and the President with his Party supporters on the committee alone voted against this agreement, so we went to further proposals. Let me just commend the letter written over the signature of Mr. Childers for that observation that "responsibility for the break-up of the committee rests upon those who voted against." Let it not be added to that letter that it was the President led the vote against, and that the only Party who voted against it was his own Party nominees on the committee.
The next proposal that came forward was the question of the Electoral College to the number of 21 or 22 and weighted in a particular way. That was carried by eight to seven, and when carried we had a revelation of the mind of the Government Party, through the mouth of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. We were told that there was no longer a prospect of agreement or acquiescence, that if these proposals were persisted in, the Government would not recommend them, and would have no hand, act or part in them. Immediately after that there was a big cooling-off, and the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who has vehemently objected to the idea of special registers as an impracticable scheme, announced that he was now converted to that scheme. He announced that he would bring in a proposal with regard to the registers and when he was quizzed, as he was quizzed, on the sudden change, he said it did not matter, that the revulsion from the other scheme was so great that he would bring proposals with regard to registers. He was asked if he thought it possible to have the registers ready for the first Seanad, and while he was hesitant about answering, his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, said "Yes," that they could be brought in in time for the first Seanad. So we parted that night; but by a letter of the 9th of November, which was read in the House to-day, the Minister announced a further change of view. The Minister said:
"At the meeting of the Committee on Thursday last I undertook to consider the submission of proposals for the preparation of vocational registers for the election of Senators.
"From my consideration of this matter, I am of opinion that it is not practicable to arrange for the establishment of such registers in the time available for the election of the first Seanad under the new Constitution."
That had to be put in because the Minister for Agriculture said it was practicable. The Minister went on:
"Furthermore, I am very doubtful if it will be found possible to create satisfactory vocational registers at any time unless and until there has been a considerable development of vocational organisation amongst the public."
Deputy Norton read that and commented on the peculiar change of view twice taken up by the Minister. He forgot to add that the Minister was questioned if he would put a time limit on the phrase in the second paragraph, "at any time unless and until there has been a considerable development of vocational organisation amongst the public." As far as I remember he said 25 years, so the man who on the 4th of November thought it possible to bring in proposals for vocational registers, and that his colleague thought possible to have for the first Seanad, on the 11th wrote that he did not think that at all a practicable proposal for the first Seanad and, on examination, thought it would not be a practicable proposal for 25 years. Is it any wonder the committee broke up in such confusion when these were the gyrations of a Government Party on it?
There was one further matter of public interest that should be mentioned about the committee. There was a definite reluctance at any time at the committee to submit for the votes of the committee the Government Bill. It was pressed for time after time, and once even that, as on other proposals, the Bill should be given a chance. The timidity was such that it was never put to a clear a vote. Of course, I need not say it depended upon one expression, the President's power. The committee never had before it the proposals now before the House. We got the President's view that the Seanad is futile and, if not futile, is going to be mischievous. These were the only alternatives. We got a change of mind that we might have a Seanad, and we got a Constitution with a lot of detailed provisions. We got a Bill brought in and torn up on Second Reading. We got a committee established and a variety of proposals put before it, and Ministers showed a definite divergence of views as between two week ends, on whether it was possible to have registers established or not.
In the end we get a completely new proposal put before this House. That is a proposal that was never suggested even in its outlines to the Special Committee. Why could we not have been allowed to see these new proposals during the sitting of the Special Committee? Why could not the proposal be given a chance of discussion before the committee that was set up to perform certain functions for this House? Surely if the new scheme was thought worth having we should know of it. We should have been allowed to see it and discuss it. Why were we not allowed to see and to discuss it?
The facts are, that after all that peculiar dilation the President arrives in here to-night with a completely new proposal. Deputy Costello and I have a proposal before the House. That is part of the proposal that was put before the Special Committee. There is inherent in that a recognition of this fact: that the best possible Seanad will not be achieved through this electoral college. It is, in our considered view, the second best. The best proposal would be that it would secure a group of Senators, not nominated, but chosen by and elected by certain groups which I think it possible to set up. We realise that it is not possible for this register to be prepared in time for the first Seanad. We asked for time. That proposal was before the committee and it was one of the proposals which got a majority vote. There has got to be some principle set out on which to build a Second Chamber.
I submitted in a memorandum what I think should be in the foreground in the matter of the Seanad. I indicated that I did not claim originality for my proposal. It was what seemed to be current and the most modern thought on the composition of the Seanad, and that was that—
"some new principle for its constitution must be found other than that of popular election. In the following proposals for the composition of the Seanad the fact that the method of selection or election of Senators is not based entirely on the votes of the people should not be regarded in any way as a defect in the system."
I then set out a variety of views expressed by a variety of people:—
"What is required is to obtain a body of persons possessing specialised knowledge and experience—the aim is to secure the special representation of intellect, character, political knowledge and valuable experience."
I did not know at the time that the members of the Oireachtas Commission had read the same text-books that I have read, but some of their phrases read very like an echo of what I have just quoted from my proposals. On page 9 of the Report of the Second House of the Oireachtas Commission this phrase occurs:—
"In the recommendations put forward by the commission for the constitution of the Second House, the commission had in mind that the Second House should be constituted of persons chosen on account of their ability, character, experience, and knowledge of public affairs."
In the additional report from the chairman, paragraph 10, page 19 of the Oireachtas Commission, we have this statement:—
"The type of man (which includes woman) I have in view, is the type of man experienced in affairs (rather than "educated"), with general knowledge of the business of life; not the scholar but the man who reads the newspapers, knows and understands broadly what is going on around him, who has a responsive mind and not hardened arteries."
Previously he has said:—
"It is definitely not a representative Assembly either as regards ‘interests or classes'."
There you have a deliberate statement made by the late Chief Justice as to the sort of person who should be elected to the Seanad. The minority report of the Oireachtas Commission, paragraph 12, says:—
"Selection upon a functional basis seems to us to be the most desirable method of composing a Second Chamber. Apart from its advantages as an adjunct to geographical democracy, this method would provide a diversification of type and a variety of expert knowledge which, it is generally agreed, should characterise a Second Chamber. Even those who do not approve of the general principle of organised functional democracy might agree to accept our recommendations as providing a method of selection which would minimise party conflicts and secure the services of persons who would normally remain out of public life, although exceptionally fitted for the task of criticising and improving particular types of legislation."
In a further minority report there is a phrase used. That phrase is not exactly on the same lines as the one I have just quoted but it is analogous. It reads: "But a new schedule defining the organisations entitled to make nominations would have to be devised for each subsequent election in the light of the circumstances then existing. The disadvantages which would accrue from having a variable schedule of representative organisations changeable every few years by legislation and involving periodical controversy as to the claims of rival bodies would perhaps be more than offset by the more comprehensive organisation of economic and social activities which the statutory recognition of responsible representative bodies would encourage."
There appears to be there a general view, a view which prevails almost entirely amongst people who have studied this matter, that if you are to build up a Second Chamber you must have on it people who are not appointed on any representative basis. Such people may be appointed but that may be an accident in the building up of the Second House. It is not the fault of the Second House if it is not chosen on principles of ordinary government. Neither should it be alleged as a defect in the Second Chamber if a number of people have voted more than once. I do not mean in the sense in which Deputy Tom Kelly says people should vote. What I mean is that there might be plural voting.
That was the principle upon which we decided that we would build up some sort of Seanad. There was a variety of other matters. One of those was what was set out in the Chief Justice's addendum—that we should try to minimise Party conflicts in the setting up of this Second Chamber. What I am saying now will have greater application to the registers. There is a scheme proposed for an electoral college, that is a college of 22 to be chosen by the members of the Dáil, voting on the lines of proportional representation. That was put forward to ensure the weighting of that college. That device was adopted by the committee. First of all it was provided that no member of the Dáil could sit on that electoral college. In that way there was a hope that we would get a committee which would be composed of people who would be less amenable to Party discipline. We also put forward as part of our proposal that anybody who went on that college forfeited his right to be a Senator. We thought that was a good device because it prevented people logrolling for themselves inside the college. Incidentally that gave a powerful weapon to the Government with regard to their nominees on the college because while no other Party could promise a senatorial reward to anybody for doing good work, the Government could because the President had his 11 nominations in reserve and he could give a reward to the members of the college by nominating some of them afterwards. The device did not entirely prevent the misuse of power; in so far as there was a defect in the scheme, it was in favour of the Government Party. The idea on which the President has so lightly touched, was this: Take the number of 22 that is stated, the representation was set forth for the present Dáil as ten members of the Government side, seven Fine Gael, four Labour and one Independent. It was suggested that each Party would nominate twice the number who would eventually appear as its nominees in the electoral college, and that when it came to the final selection it would be made by Parties voting for all nominees other than their own. There are two points that I consider of value in that. One, that when the Government Party were faced with the task of finding 20 people to represent them, or to be possible representers of them in the electoral college, one could discover, when the names were issued, whether the Government, in making their selection, were actuated by completely Party motives or whether they were prepared to act in any sort of an independent manner. If this scheme were carried out, and if the 20 selections made by the Government were found to be 20 hard and fast Party men, tied hand and foot to the Government machine, then there was clear proof of what the President has referred to as a showing up—a definite showing up—that, when it came to the building up of a Seanad as a real body, the Government had no other thought than that of having Party interests prevail. The same would apply to the 14 put forward by Fine Gael, to the eight put forward by Labour and to those put forward by the Independent group.
The suggestion that these numbers should be reduced to the ten, seven, four and one who would eventually emerge, and that the reduction would be made in each case by Parties other than the Party whose nominees they were, has, I think, this good point in it: that if the Government did put forward, or if Fine Gael put forward, a mixed group with some definite appearance of Party, tied hand and foot to their machine, and some who were not, the other Parties could choose the better people—those who were not tied so fast. It was suggested to me that a way out of that device that might occur to a hardened politician was this: to put forward, say, amongst the 20, ten complete nonentities and 10 tied to the Party machine. Well, of course, that device could be easily countered by having the 10 complete nonentities selected instead of those who were tied definitely to a Party. It is a small matter to introduce into this scheme, but it is on small devices like it that constitutions have been built up. It is this interplay of checks and balances that makes constitutions practicable, and makes them work justly. It is that small type of matter that occurs in almost every constitution with regard to the interplay between the judiciary and the Executive, the method upon which amendments to constitutions are carried or rejected, and to the method of voting in a House built up on federal lines. I can see nothing against the proposal. I have given two good reasons for having this device—that each Party will nominate twice as many as it will have in the Electoral College, letting the other Parties decide, from amongst the group, who will be the eventual nominees.
The second device is that which has been referred to as the corrupt bargain. The committee, as weighted, eventually emerged with 10 Government Party representatives, 7 Fine Gael, 4 Labour, and 1 Independent. At the committee's deliberations I asked what would be the exact representation if the House here voted strictly on the lines of proportional representation. The answer given to me was that the Government Party would elect 11, Fine Gael would elect 8, Labour would elect 2, and the Independents 1. What I did was to subtract one from each of the two big Parties and give that over to Labour. I think I could easily have made a case for subtracting one or two from the Government Party and giving them to Labour, because, always remember that in the background there is the President with this full team of 11 of his to put on to the Seanad to counterbalance anything which might come from the building up of a Seanad otherwise, and which might make the Seanad a mischievous one according to the terms of the quotation that I have given—one that would be of a different complexion from the present Government.
There are many reasons why this weighted proposal should be accepted. The first is this, dealing only with the first Seanad, and, therefore, only with the present Dáil. I was at a meeting of the Committee when this proposal was put forward by phrases which seemed to indicate an almost idolatrous worship of proportional representation—people bending the knee to proportional representation who entirely forgot that they were standing erect in its presence when it came to the question of the Presidential nominations. The atmosphere was thick with laudations of proportional representation. The only thing that could be urged against this scheme was that it made a breach in the general proposal in regard to proportional representation. This House is not elected on ordinary, clear-cut, rigid lines of proportional representation. The calculation has been made that at the last election the seats gained by the present Government Party were got for 8,689 votes per seat, and that all other Parties had to poll 10,510 votes before they got a seat. That, of course, was achieved by the gerrymandering of the constituencies, so that this House is not thoroughly representative, on true lines, of proportional representation because of that gerrymandering. Supposing that all Parties in the House got seats on the equal casting of votes, the present position in this House would be that the Government Party would have 62 seats and all others would have 75. There is a member missing, because there is one-half in each lot. On the poll cast the Government Party should stand here, let us say, 63 strong, and all other Parties 75.
The Deputy does not understand the principle of proportional representation.
Not the Minister's idea of it. I do understand proportional representation as it used to be, and I understand how it would work if the constituencies had not been deliberately gerrymandered to give the result that we have. Supposing there was equality of votes required to get seats, the position in this House would be that Fianna Fáil would stand 63 strong, and all other Parties 75. Labour would have gained on the extra representation, and the Government Party would have gone down. That is one point.
The second point is that there are these 11 nominees, the President's own —the good 11. They have to be thrown in at the end. Why do we raise such a furore about proportional representation? The Constitution is not built on proportional representation as far as the Seanad goes. I do not object to the system of nomination. There is quite an amount to be said for it. When a Party that has brought forward a Constitution which contains the idea of direct nomination on the sole responsibility of one person, and when they have that as part of a built-up Seanad, it is not open to them to complain that some other scheme with regard to the rest of the Seanad vitiates and strikes at the proportional representation idea.
In passing, may I say that the President has not yet given us a clear idea of how these 11 are to be nominated. At the committee he used what he derided here to-night—what I may describe as the show-up argument. I had used the argument, when putting forward the group of 20 or 14, that the Party doing that would be judged by the particular complexion of the block of 20 or 14 put forward—the argument of the show-up. The President derided that argument here to-night, but when we asked him about the 11 nominees, he said that they would have to be on his own responsibility, and that he would be shown up—his own phrase— if he picked them purely on political or Party lines. There, however, they are to be picked, and we know, from the quotation here in the daily Press that, in 1935, he recognised that nobody would be so foolish as to think that a leader of a political Party, being in such a position, would use that power in any other way than in the interests of his own Party or those of his own political way of thinking. These are his own terms of reference to himself, and that is the way in which these 11 members are going to be picked.
Apart from those two arguments— and very strong arguments they are— there is this further point to be considered. This Constitution was shouted through the land because of certain distinctive principles that were supposed to be enshrined in it. These principles are contained in Article 45, the heading of which is "Directive Principles of Social Policy." First of all, it must be remembered, in regard to these principles, as set forth in the Constitution, that, for fear that they might be made effective in a real way, the first portion, or the preamble of Article 45, reads as follows:—
"The principles of social policy set forth in this Article are intended for the general guidance of the Oireachtas. The application of those principles in the making of laws shall be the care of the Oireachtas exclusively, and shall not be cognisable by any court under any of the provisions of this Constitution."
In order to get a little glamour about this Constitution, evidently, certain phrases were put in, but for fear that any judge, as a result of these phrases, would think that it was open to him to make certain rulings in a case in court concerning the application of these directive principles of social policy—whatever that may be—we have the phrase: "The application of these principles in the making of laws shall be the care of the Oireachtas exclusively, and shall not be cognisable by any court." The general principles, as set forth, are almost in line with the Papal Encyclicals. The Papal Encyclicals have not been made law in any country yet, but this country has put them, in effect, into a Constitution, while at the same time saying that they cannot be made law—and a more blatant piece of camouflage there never has been. In connection with this matter, I thought I might just test this question of the directive principles of social policy. Let us look at the first clause, after the preamble, which says:—
"The State shall strive to promote the welfare of the whole people by securing and protecting as effectively as it may the social order in which justice and charity shall inform all the institutions of the national life."
The next clause goes on to say:—
"The State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing
(i) that the citizens (all of whom, men and women equally, have the right to an adequate means of livelihood) may through their occupations find the means of making reasonable provision for their domestic needs.
(ii) That the ownership and control of the material resources of the community may be so distributed amongst private individuals and the various classes as best to subserve the common good.
(iii) That, especially, the operation of free competition shall not be allowed so to develop as to result in the concentration of the ownership or control of essential commodities in a few individuals to the common detriment."
And there is a lot more besides. They are in the Constitution—all these things—but apparently they are not to be taken cognisance of in any court of law. Now we are to have a Seanad which, certainly, is not going to play much part in the making of laws. It is not going to have very much of a representative capacity, nor is it going to be in the position to be able to put a Government out of office.
It is simply going to be a body whose functions will be, so to speak, largely a question of the polishing up of legislation. One would think, then, that, in a body of that kind, a little more attention would be paid to this matter of the so-called directive principles of social policy. That is what I thought—particularly when, in another part, I found that Labour, whether organised or unorganised, would be put in a separate group, and particularly also when I found this provision for the selection of 11 members. Labour is to have the power, seemingly, of electing 11 Senators—a fourth of the whole elected group. From that point of view, I looked at the present strength of the Labour Party in the House. Even supposing that they could swing their whole force and concentrate their whole force, how many could they return? I think that the number they could return, certainly, would not be to the liking of people who are very strong in their remarks about these directive principles of social policy. That, however, was not the worst of it. In the Bill it is proposed by the Government that the Labour Party are not going to be allowed, even in regard to the suggested panel, to play their full part or swing their full weight. Under the Bill the right of nomination was to be confined to Ministers, and under the proposals in the Bill Labour would have found themselves very much as the Labour idea finds itself in the Constitution—grandly phrased in the Constitution, but without any adequate machinery to give effect to the phrases. On these grounds, I proposed that some extra representation should be given to Labour on that first electoral college to select the 43 members for the first Seanad, and I did that having in view the present constitution of this House and the present strength of the Labour Party, and having in view the matters expressed through the Constitution here and everything else in the Constitution dealing with the building up of this new Senatorial body. The only answer I got on that proposal was that there was a big difference between Labour and Labour policy and the Labour Party. That may be so, but, again, thinking of this Dáil and of the first Seanad only, there had to be an admission—it was wrung from everybody on that committee—that the spectacular increase in the last election centred about one Party, which had not shown its full strength, mainly because of the gerrymandering of the constituencies which had taken place. Are we not to take that into consideration, and do we not think that the Labour Party may not put forward a claim in the future to speak with a little more authority on these matters than the two big Parties, who, undoubtedly, can speak about Labour, but who, nevertheless, are in this House mainly because of their political Party affiliations? I think that there is a good and sound reason for weighting this electoral college in this way. I think there is a very good reason for taking the election of the Seanad outside the Dáil. I have put forward a scheme, and I think that that scheme, if tested for the first Seanad, might prove in practice to be not merely workable, but so useful that it could be adopted for future Seanad. Of course, there is a variety of other matters to be added, but I think I see considerable value to be attached to having nominations made, not merely through the Dáil, but through outside bodies. I see such value in that, as it is half way, or moving towards the matter of special registers, that I would be disposed to support amendments to ask the Dáil to accept the idea that nominations should be made very freely indeed, but that there should be a division as to the type of nominees; that people would emerge eventually because they had been supported by two Deputies; that a Deputy could fill up as many, or second them as many times as he wanted; and that there should be another group who would emerge in the end because they had been able to find people who nominated them through some of these bodies—people who were members of some of these bodies. Eventually, when the ballot paper came to be cast, it would be cast in two parts, and from each part, as near as we can get equality, Senators would emerge. There has to be division because of the odd number— 21 from one group and 22 from the other.
The Government appear to think that there is great value in having these outside bodies as nomination bodies. In the committee the special argument used was that, although we have not these organisations in being at present, we will bring them forth all the more speedily if we give them some rights in regard to the Seanad. I agree, and all the more speedily still if we give them a real right—a right to elect instead of the right merely to nominate. I see considerable value in having nominations made by outside bodies and in saying to them: "Even although you may not get two Deputies who think it worth while signing or appearing as seconder to a nomination paper, if you can get other people to do it you can present yourself to this electorate of 22 by another road." Undoubtedly, there will be difficulty in regard to checking the votes. I am not sure that in the proposals set down here there is a complete answer to the difficulty that will emerge. But the scheme I have in mind is roughly this. That one of the groups was to be chosen first; that from amongst the nominees of one group 21 were to be chosen out of 22; that the votes would be all counted and a check made until a particular 22 emerged. If it was then found that there were more people for one panel than the maximum allowed, then the people having the lowest number of preference votes for that panel went off and the next two highest in the scale on some other panel came up. When that part of the election was carried out, those who had secured election were arranged according to the panels. There would remain a certain number of vacancies in each panel. Again, the process of the transferable vote would be gone through, and the same process of rejecting people who emerge, but, unfortunately for them, emerge to a panel already full, and the selection of others in their stead would be gone through.
It may be a rough-and-ready way, and under the machinery of proportional representation it might be possible to adjust it to give a more effective result. But, at the moment, I make that suggestion. Inherent in the proposals are these things—that it is better to get elected as Seanad, even a first Seanad, thrown somewhat out of the Dáil. You will get that by having an electoral college of 22, even although they have to be nominated by the Dáil. You will get that still better if that group of 22 is to contain no T.D. You will get much more virtue in it if there may not emerge from that body an elected member of the Seanad. I suggest that there is the virtue I have talked about in having the committee weighted as it is. For the first Seanad—it is only a second best proposal—if we could get registers immediately prepared, as the Minister thought at one time was possible, then I would be for the special registers and having the election completely outside this House. The members of this House, if they came into the voting at all, would only come in accidentally because they were on some of the registers, not because they were T.Ds. But, in the absence of that proposal, or the difficulty of making up that proposal fully in preparation for the first Seanad, I put forward this scheme as the second best.
The President has put forward a number of objection to this—there have not been very many. He told us that the special virtue in his proposal is that there are to be nominating bodies. If there is virtue in that, I suggest there is still greater virtue in using those bodies, not merely for making nominations, but for the purpose of making the selection. That leads to the register scheme. The President told us also that when the Constitution was being prepared the prevailing principle with regard to the Seanad was that the Seanad would go out of office at the same time as the Dáil, and the phrase he used was, that there would be no remnant of a previous political Party Government leaving behind it a group of people selected by it in the Seanad who would meet the successors of that Government. If that were the idea, it was not fully carried out in the Bill, nor is it completely carried out in the new proposal. That being the prevailing idea, the Seanad was to go out with the Dáil, so that the new Dáil would have complete control over the new Seanad; that with the weight of the new Party in the new Dáil it would have exactly the same weight in the new Seanad. What were the proposals? The proposals in the Bill originally, and that is the Bill that is before us, were that retiring Ministers would nominate the bodies to make the nominations. They could leave a very restricted field indeed from which their successors would have to choose. There was this further point—the fact that it was there showed a deliberate intention to carry over the weight of one political Party after an election at which that Party had been beaten.
Then the special position of the Ceann Comhairle had to be considered. The Ceann Comhairle gets a seat in this House by law. A certain viewpoint was expressed at the passage of that law. But when we came to the proposal in the old measure the Ceann Comhairle, who had previously sat as a Party man and who would be Chairman of the House, was to be allowed to have 7,000 votes credited to him which he never polled—to get these 7,000 votes in addition to his Party's strength in his constituency. It was supposed to be correct proportional representation that this House, after a new Government had been set up, should allow the Ceann Comhairle's 7,000 votes to be cast into the scale, possibly against, probably against, the new Government. If that is the idea of preventing a hang-over from one Party system when the new Government emerges, I do not know what the proposal is.
In any event, the great condemnation of this new proposal is that it was not thought worth while to bring it before any body, except that here, in the last stages of the discussion, it is brought in on what is regarded as the Report Stage of the measure. It was never talked about, and there was no hint with regard to it dropped at the Committee. The Minister, repelled as he was by the thought of the electoral college, flew in disgust to the idea of registers, and, having then confessed his failure with regard to the registers, confessed himself satisfied that nothing better could be had than the Bill. Then we come into the House and we get a completely new proposal to add on the county councils or representatives of the county councils to the Dáil in order to have an enlarged electorate. Of course, in that is, inherently, politics. There is nothing else in it except looking for a political majority. I think what emerged to the minds of the Government from the committee discussion was that they were in a precarious position in this House, and that, even with the President's 11 nominations, the Seanad might have some element of mischief about it, because it might to some large extent bear a political complexion not that of the Government. They decided that that had to be avoided, and that the best way of avoiding it was to throw in the local authorities. Of course, if the local authorities were elected on a proper basis, there could not be so much objection. Nothing has been urged yet why we should introduce them. But, if they were elected as they used to be, there would not be so much objection to them.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce went on the war-path with regard to the local elections in Dublin. He fulminated particularly against the Lord Mayor and said he had been a disgrace in his representation of this city. He asked that the electorate should come out with a thumping majority in favour of Fianna Fáil. Up and down the country, at the last local elections, the Minister's adherents went bombasting in the same way. The comment was that national policy, as thought out by Fianna Fáil, could not be carried out unless the local councils were to march step by step, as the phrase was. Having done their best to introduce as much politics into the county councils as possible, and having succeeded to a large extent, they now decide, in the interest of having an independent Seanad, to have a new group of about 200 people, nearly all of whom are politicians and certainly, as far as the Ministry could achieve it, were nearly all elected on political grounds. They are to be thrown in to give a new complexion to the electoral body. That scheme is much worse than what was originally in the Bill, and much as I dislike the proposal in the Bill, it was even a thousand times preferable to what is now put forward in opposition to the previous proposal.
When the Special Committee on this Bill met for the first time it was decided that the proceedings of the committee should not be officially reported. The suggestion that there should be no verbatim report of the discussions there came from the Government side. Behind it was the idea that in the absence of the official reporters we would get more frank discussion, a freer exchange of views and, consequently, a greater possibility of agreement upon the constitution of the new Seanad. We realised, however, that we were taking a risk, the risk that, if an agreement did not emerge from the committee, views expressed and actions taken by members of the Government Party on the committee could be distorted and misrepresented. Well, we did not get that agreement and we have got the misrepresentation. I do not propose to deal at any length with the account given by Deputy McGilligan of the happenings at the committee, except to say that in no single part of it was he strictly accurate. In respect to every expression which he attributed to some Government member of the committee or the attitude taken upon particular questions, he was inaccurate. I do not think that his memory was bad. I think he was merely leading up to the presentation to the House of the opposition to the Bill in a particular way.
The Government set up that committee because it was optimistic. We thought we could get from this House a non-Party approach to such a question as the constitution of the Seanad. Consequently, when the committee was being formed, we were not particularly concerned to see that Party strengths were accurately represented in its membership. The Government Party has half the membership of the Dáil, but the Government did not seek half the membership of the committee. In fact, the Government Party was in a minority on the committee and deliberately accepted the position in which it would be a minority, believing that it could get consideration of this problem other than on Party lines. Our hopes were dashed. It became obvious fairly early in the course of the discussions that the problem was being approached on a Party basis only and that the majority of the members of the committee were concerned to get from it the maximum Party advantage that they could. Hence we got this scheme which Deputy McGilligan has been elaborating this evening and about which we heard ad nauseam when the committee was in session.
I do not suggest that there was any bargain between the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party. It was not necessary to have a bargain. I do not blame the members of the Labour Party for taking four additional seats when they were flung at them. They were flung at them for a purpose undoubtedly, not, I am sure, that the Fine Gael members wished to add to the power of Labour, but that they wished to reduce the Government's voting power if the Seanad were to be elected by the Dáil, by a committee of the Dáil, or by a committee of outsiders chosen by the Dáil. So long as the Dáil was to be the electorate, or the basis on which the electorate was to be formed, they were determined to take from the Government Party some of the electoral power which their numbers in this House would give them. They realised that they could not take four seats from the Government Party for the benefit of the Fine Gael Party and hope to get for that the support of Labour, and, therefore, as the main purpose was to reduce the voting power of the Government, they decided to strip the Government of four seats and give the benefit of the manoeuvre to the Labour Party, hoping that the Labour Party would accept the price. The Labour Party resisted the temptation for a time. They struggled for a few hours, but eventually they accepted the offer of the four seats, voted against their own scheme and supported this particular project of a special electoral committee. I do not think that the members of the Fine Gael Party even yet quite appreciate the beauty of the scheme.
Does the Minister say that the Labour Party voted against their own scheme?
Their own scheme involved a Dáil electorate and you voted against a Dáil electorate.
Did you not vote with Fine Gael to defeat our scheme? Did you not lose your temper and say you would not attend?
This story of losing my temper is one of the items of misrepresentation.
It is a pity you had not a mirror.
I told the committee at one stage that in view of the position they had reached, and in view of the Party manoeuvring that was going on, the sooner we ended the business and got back to the Dáil, where the approach to all subjects is admittedly on a Party basis, the better. There is nothing in the minutes about my losing my temper, and the minutes are the only accurate records we have. Deputies may say what they like as to what I said. There is no verbatim report and no record of what was said, and consequently they can get away with any misrepresentation they like to utter. Here we have a really beautiful scheme. I want to emphasise the beauty of it, for the benefit of Fine Gael members. I noticed that some of them looked with a degree of astonishment at Deputy McGilligan when he was expounding this scheme, and even more so when Deputy Costello put forward his views, framed as they were in glowing phrases. One would think that the Deputy was conferring some great benefit on the democracy of this nation, solving some new social problem or establishing some new social principle when, as a matter of fact, all that he and his Party were doing was taking four seats in the Seanad from the Fianna Fáil Party. That is the whole basis of their scheme, no matter how eloquent their phraseology and no matter how much Deputy McGilligan may talk about Papal Encyclicals, which, apparently, he would like to see interpreted by our courts. Four seats in the Seanad were to be filched from the Fianna Fáil Party in order to reduce the power which the Government would have in the Seanad. We were told that this scheme was devised only for the first Seanad. Of course it was devised for the first Seanad only. Because it was based on the Dáil electorate, based on numbers in the Dáil, it was necessary to count heads here and the scheme was devised to deal with the situation that exists now. If there was another general election and some readjustment of the strength of Parties, this scheme would not work. It might have to be abandoned in those circumstances. Hence this emphasis that it is designed to deal with one situation, and one situation only—the present one. It is to be dropped as soon as this situation is terminated. We are to get a committee—not a committee of the Dáil, but a committee of nonmembers of the Dáil chosen by the Dáil. There is a number of elaborate clauses here providing that the Ceann Comhairle is to determine who belongs to which Party and who belongs to the other Party. He will have some difficulty with Deputy Anthony and some others of the Independents, but ultimately he will decide that we all belong to some Party. All that elaborate procedure is not necessary. To get the same result a much simpler provision could have been inserted in the amendment. The only thing which need have been put in is this: The Dáil will select 20 members on the basis of proportional representation, and Deputy William Norton will nominate two more. That would have exactly the same result: there would be the same membership; it is a much simpler provision. All this elaborate provision of the bringing in of the Ceann Comhairle, and the certification of the Chairman of the Dáil as to the Party to which a member belongs, is unnecessary. If that amendment is adopted by the House we can, I suggest, simplify it on the next stage in the manner I suggest—a committee of 20 selected on the basis of proportional representation, and two members nominated by Deputy Norton or Deputy O'Brien or any other member of that Party.
What about the Taoiseach's 11, which was to be used to give the Government a comfortable majority in the Seanad, as the Minister said on the Committee Stage when he had lost his temper?
I had not lost my temper. I have not lost it yet.
The Minister is better to-night, I will agree.
Anyway, we are to have a committee of 22, 20 of whom will be appointed to the committee on the basis of proportional representation and two of whom will be nominated by Deputy Norton. This committee is to be weighted in that particular way, we are told, for various reasons. It is designed to give special representation to the Labour Party, because the Government Party has one member in the Dáil for every 8,500 first preference votes cast for the Fianna Fáil Party, whereas there were on the average 10,000 first preference votes cast for the candidates of all the other Parties. That looks quite peculiar on the face of it, and there would appear to be, because of it, some justification for this additional strength that is to be given to the Opposition generally, or, at any rate, for this deduction from the voting power of the Government Party which is proposed in this particular scheme. I intervened to say that Deputy McGilligan obviously did not understand the principles of proportional representation. The essential difference between the system of election which prevails in Great Britain, where each voter gets a single non-transferable vote, and the system of proportional representation which prevails here, is that here the electorate gets a transferable vote. Counting the first preference votes is no indication of the probable outcome of an election. Each vote is transferable, and, if there are more Fianna Fáil members in the Party than one would have expected from an examination of the first preference votes cast for Fianna Fáil candidates only, it merely means that a much a larger proportion of the electorate gave their second preferences to Fianna Fáil candidates.
The Minister is speaking after dinner.
And in any event the membership of the House is a fair reflection of the political opinions of the electorate in the country.
So is Galway!
But if we are to give this special representation to the Labour Party as such, on the ground that they represent a special interest in the country, let us examine the extent to which they do represent that special interest. The Labour Party got at the election 130,000 first preference votes. There are 750,000 people in this country working for wages. There are 250,000 of those members of trade unions; 130,000 people—and they were not all trades unionists; they were not all persons who are themselves working for wages—voted for members of the Labour Party.
We only contested 20 constituencies out of a total of 34.
I am not trying to disparage the Labour Party in any way. I am dealing with the claim made by Deputy McGilligan—not by members of the Labour Party—that they should be regarded as having some special representative capacity which would justify us in giving them double voting power when it comes to election of members of the Seanad. Deputy O'Brien and Deputy Norton know well that behind this proposal of Deputy McGilligan there is no love for the Labour Party. There is merely a desire to clip a few seats in the Seanad from Fianna Fáil.
The Minister voted for that and beat our scheme.
I refer the Deputy to the minutes of the committee. I am not going to depend upon anybody's recollection of what was done there unless it is recorded in the minutes of the committee.
Read them.
I would ask the Deputy to refer me to what he is talking about. Anyway, we are to get this committee in a rather extraordinary way. The Fianna Fáil Party is to put up 20 people, and then we are to have some sort of device by which the other members of the Dáil will proceed to select from those 20 people the ten who are to be members of the committee. The job will fall on the Chief Whip of the Fianna Fáil Party to try to get 20 people to nominate. We have got to get 20 people who are to be entrusted with the job of selecting Senators; who are to be themselves ineligible to be elected as Senators, but who must nevertheless submit themselves to the humiliation of being voted upon by the Fine Gael Party for the purpose of determining which ten of them are the worst from the Fine Gael point of view. That is the proposal which is here made in cold blood and in all seriousness by Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Costello. Of course, the idea that there is any safeguard in that device against a Party trying to secure the full exercise of its Party strength in the election for the Seanad, is nonsense. It is possible for any Party to get, no doubt, a number of people upon whose loyalty it can rely, and concerning whom it can say: "It is a matter of indifference to us which of them is selected for the purpose of carrying out this particular function," but if there is any difference between them at all it is obvious that the electorate in this particular part of Deputy McGilligan's scheme will exercise their power to choose the worst of those who are put forward. No doubt, Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Costello think that the Government Party should trust Fine Gael to choose from the Fianna Fáil nominees the best persons to be entrusted with this duty of electing a Seanad. But we do not trust Fine Gael, and I am quite certain that Fine Gael will not trust us.
A Deputy
How could they?
Exactly! How could they? And when it comes to the nomination of the 16 Fine Gael persons, from whom we are to select eight, they will also take good care to put themselves in the position that they will be able to say: "We do not mind which eight are selected."
And we trust neither of you.
Deputy O'Brien quite correctly says that the Labour Party trusts neither of us. That system is pure nonsense. When we had a motion moved here in a former Dáil for the setting up of a committee on that basis it was thought that it was a joke. Well, when I saw that proposal set out in Deputy McGilligan's memorandum I thought it was a joke. Let us see what the committee selected by this particular method is to do. Deputy McGilligan referred to the possibility of a Party putting forward half its nominees as those whom it wanted to be selected, and the other half an equal number of nonentities. If they did that, he said the nonentities would be chosen, and we then got a committee perhaps of 22 nonentities who are to be put into a most remarkable position. Those 22 people are to choose, by a system of proportional representation, 43 Senators.
The quota in an election of that kind would be half a vote. I wonder do Deputies opposite realise how utterly farcical it is to attempt an election by proportional representation where the number of vacancies exceeds the number of electors? Of course, you cannot have—and Deputy McGilligan realised that you could not have—a quota of half a vote and, therefore, he divides the number of vacancies into two. But he gives each elector two votes, so that the quota will be one vote, but each elector will be able to provide two quotas in this committee of nonentities, this committee chosen in the particular way set out, and any single one of them can by his own vote elect two Senators. He does not need even the assent of anybody else; he does not need to get the one-hundredth part of a vote. By his own vote he can put two people into the Seanad. He will not be influenced by Party considerations. He can put in his brother, his mother, his son, his personal friend, his business associates. There is no one to stop him. Under these proposals there is no one who has the power to stop him. His one vote will elect two.
And that is the ideal system of election, much better than the scheme in the Bill, much better than that set out in the Government amendments. These 22 nonentities, selected by this farcical arrangement contained in amendment No. 2 in the names of Deputy Costello and Deputy McGilligan, are to select 43 members of the Seanad on the principle that each one can select two members. Is that going to be taken seriously by the Dáil? Can you blame the Government members of the Special Committee if they did not take it seriously there? Any member of this House who goes into the division lobby to vote for that proposal need not pretend he is voting for it on its merits as a system of electing a Seanad. He will vote for it because it contains within it this petty device to rob the Government Party of four seats in that House if the electorate is the Dáil or any committee representing the Dáil. That is the only purpose behind this scheme, and the rest is sheer nonsense.
Let me consider now the possibility of establishing vocational registers. Deputy McGilligan made play with the attitude which the Government members of the Special Committee took upon this question of vocational registers. We would like to see vocational registers. As President de Valera explained when the Bill was before the House on Second Reading and this evening, the ideal Seanad we visualise is one formed upon a vocational basis. But we do recognise that the vocational basis for the formation of such a Seanad does not exist in complete form at the present time. The vocational organisations which would permit of the direct election into the Seanad of people representative of those who might appear on these registers do not exist. When the Special Committee voted by a majority in favour of this harebrained scheme of 22 nonentities, each with the right to nominate two Senators, I told the Committee I was prepared to go back and consider again the possibility of forming vocational registers of any sort, because I felt that anything would be preferable to this scheme.
I did not pretend to the Committee, and nobody suggested, that ideal or satisfactory registers could be found, but we thought we could get something. I came to the conclusion that it was not possible to do that in the time available, because under the Constitution this first Seanad must be elected before the end of March. I came further to the conclusion that satisfactory registers could not be constituted until there had been a considerable development in vocational organisations amongst the public. To represent that as meaning that no registers at all could be constituted is a deliberate distortion.
There is a considerable difference between any sort of a vocational register and a satisfactory one. You cannot get a satisfactory one until you have widespread vocational organisations existing in the country, representative of all the interests constituted in the relevant Article of the Constitution. You have not that at the moment and you will not have that for a number of years, but we can move towards that by giving to such organisations as do exist the right which it is proposed to give them in the Bill in relation to the election of a Seanad, the right of nominating candidates with the certainty that a substantial proportion of the candidates so nominated must be elected, no matter who constitutes the electorate. That is our proposal.
When did you think of it?
Deputy McGilligan stated what I think Deputy Costello is trying to convey now, that the particular proposals contained in the Government's amendments were not put forward to the committee. Not in that form, but I will remind Deputy Costello and Deputy McGilligan that repeatedly it was stated by Government members of the committee that if it was desired to get away from the Dáil as the electorate, we could get a larger electorate. Constantly we urged that there was safety in numbers, that the smaller the electorate the greater the danger of machining, and canvassing, and wangling, and that the larger we made the electorate, within reason, the less you made these particular dangers. We urged that if the Dáil electorate was not to be taken as the basis, it should be an electorate larger than the Dáil, the members of the Dáil plus someone else. Deputy Anthony suggested the chairmen of county councils or local authorities, but he dropped the suggestion at once as soon as Deputy McGilligan said "Bah." The possibility of bringing in local authorities was frequently referred to there and objected to on the ground that they were too political.
It was never proposed.
Deputy Anthony most certainly proposed that the chairmen of local authorities should be added to the electorate, and possible modifications of that suggestion were undoubtedly discussed.
They were not.
Deputy Anthony is not here, but I am sure that Deputy Norton will bear me out in that. The addition of anybody from the local authorities was objected to, on the ground that these bodies were too political, by the same Deputy who now objects to the proposal in the Bill on the ground that we are introducing politics into the local authorities. They charge us with inconsistency.
You have not yet answered my question as to when you thought of this scheme first.
As the President said here this evening, a very large number of alternative methods of electing a Seanad have been put forward by everybody who has given consideration to the matter. We are not suggesting that the scheme suggested in our amendments is perfect. We do not think it is possible to get a perfect scheme of election, one that will give you the ideal Seanad.
When did you think of this first?
What does it matter?
We think it is better than any other scheme suggested. Is it a good scheme or a bad scheme?
It is a bad scheme.
Argue on that basis, then; do not argue on the ground that it is newly born. We learn by experience, and consequently the sum of our knowledge is continuously growing. Apparently some Deputies opposite never learn anything and some regard it as a source of pride. Consistency, said Emerson, is the hobgoblin of little minds. The only reason any members of the Party opposite give for any views they express now is that somehow or other they gave expression to the same views ten or 12 years ago.
Tell us this, when did you first think of the scheme?
What do you want to know for? What had that to do with it? Is it a good scheme?
It is a very bad scheme.
It has this advantage, that, first of all, it will be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for the Party machines to get rigid control of that electorate. I want some Deputies opposite to note the importance of the Party machine in relation to these Seanad elections. Deputy Norton had a proposal that members of the Dáil alone should vote, but there is behind Deputy McGilligan's and Deputy Costello's proposal another suggestion which the members of his own Party must note, and that is that the back-benchers of the Parties should be eliminated from having any vote in the election of a Seanad. When it comes to the nominating of the members of this committee of 22, it is the Party executives are going to do the nominating. If we stick to the Dáil, we shall give the ordinary back-bencher some say in the constitution of the Seanad but the scheme of Deputy Costello and Deputy McGilligan has the effect—perhaps it was designed to that end—of cutting these back-benchers out of the scheme altogether, probably because they know their back-benchers better than we do.
Tell us what you think of your scheme before the business of Private Members is reached.
Is it not a good scheme?
Tell us something about it.
I move that progress be reported.
Progress reported. Committee to sit again to-morrow.