Seanad Electoral (Panel Members) Bill, 1937—Recommittal (Resumed).

Debate resumed on amendment No. 53.

Mr. Norton

The arrangement provided in this amendment is, in itself, a symptom of the lack of proper consideration in respect of this whole Government scheme. We had an admission from the President on the previous occasion that certain bodies will be constituted nominating bodies for the purpose of this Bill, and that they will be allocated to the various panels and will be entitled to exercise certain functions. Explaining the ramifications of the amendment, the President told us that when there are a number of nominating bodies entitled to make nominations in respect of a particular panel, they will be able to make only equal nominations, so that a situation will develop where you may have four bodies in a particular panel entitled to make nominations and one body may represent 100,000 persons, or perhaps 200,000 persons, while the other three may be entitled to speak for varying numbers from 1,000 to 5,000 or 10,000 persons. The President tells us that under this scheme the body speaking for 1,000 persons in that panel will be entitled to make as many nominations as a body entitled to speak for 100,000 or 200,000 persons. I think it is patently unfair that these bodies should be put into a panel and a small body, not representative of any extensive number of people in the country, should be entitled to make a nomination of equivalent weight to that of a body which represents 50 or 100 times the number of persons it speak for. I do not know on what basis the President seeks to justify a proposal of that kind.

We had a good deal of talk on this Bill about the virtues of proportional representation and we were told that proportional representation was the right way in which to order the election of members of the Seanad, and to order the election of committees to supervise the machinery for electing those members, but when we come to the panels, proportional representation is apparently thrown to the wind, and a small body, representing a relatively small number of people, is evidently to exercise the same weight, and have as much influence, as a body very much larger. The President and his Party were highly indignant when weight was attached to another scheme discussed here, but here we have a weighted scheme because a small body is going to exercise the same power as a large body, and we are having that scheme passed by the House, notwithstanding all the denunciation of a previous arrangement whereby a body was to exercise a voting strength which would probably not be justified if that strength were wielded on the basis of the application of proportional representation to an electoral scheme. I think it is a thoroughly undemocratic procedure to enable a small body to get the same representation in the matter of nominations as a body very much larger, and I do not know on what grounds the President can justify it.

The President

At the end of the debate on the last occasion, I gave the reason to the Deputy. It is that that would be one of the considerations which the returning officer would have in mind when registering the bodies. If this provision is passed, he will have to give to the bodies, so far as nomination is concerned, the right to nominate the same number of people. Therefore, he will not allow discrepancies of the kind the Deputy suggests, unless these new bodies are of such a sort that they introduce into the total panel some particularly new feature from the vocational point of view. It was with a view to getting Deputy Norton to understand generally the ideas in relation to throwing up, using Deputy McGilligan's phrase again, suitable people, to understand clearly the principles on which we were working, that I read out that long extract from the commission report. It seemed to me that there was a possibility of a number of Deputies not understanding that, and seeking to find in this matter of nomination, and so on, some system of proportional representation. That is not being attempted, because the various bodies are to throw up people, but the electorate, if there is sufficient number to select from, will make its selection, and will have to decide whether, his qualities being what they are, A's experience as the representative of a large class is going to be more valuable than the experience of B, belonging to a more limited class and a body of less general value from the point of view of a House of the Legislature.

The point is that, in deciding what bodies he will put on the register, the returning officer will have to mind that they shall not overlap, and shall have the right to nominate the same number of persons, and, consequently, he will have to have in mind the possibility of having a very large body and a small body. The only justification for putting on a small body, if he has a large body already provided for, will be that it is of such a character that it will put forward people who will have such special knowledge and experience that that special knowledge and experience should be availed of in the Second House; and then, when it comes to the question of election, the electorate will have to decide as to whether the people put forward by the association A, so to speak, are to be put on in preference to those put forward by association B, A being a large association and B a small association. They will decide that matter partly in relation to the particular candidate put forward, and their estimate of his ability, and so on, and partly on their estimate of the type of experience and knowledge which he has, and which he can bring to bear on questions of legislation. You cannot get a scheme, unless it is to be desperately complicated, which will cover all the cases that can arise in regard to the size and diversity of nominating bodies. Consequently, the Seanad returning officer has considerable latitude in the making of his decisions. He is given considerable liberty to make decisions in regard to nominating bodies. There are certain rules and certain limitations prescribed, but within these rules and limitations he is given considerable latitude on which he can exercise his judgement.

Mr. Benson

Another point arises on this section. While I do not intend to compete with the President in mathematics, if my calculations are correct, the number of candidates which may be nominated on the panel increases as the number of nominating bodies decreases. As far as I can explain it, if the total panel consists of five, under (a) there will be five, under (b) six, under (c) six, and under (d) six. If the panel is four the discrepancy is greater, and under (a) it will be four, (b) six, (c) six, and (d) five. I do not know of any method by which that could be met. It does not seem right that the smaller number of nominating bodies should be able to nominate a greater number of candidates on the panel.

The President

As I explained on the last occasion, the general consideration behind the proposal with regard to numbers might be slightly improved by putting on two more. You want to give the electorate a reasonable choice. If you bear in mind that the number that can be elected from the cultural panel is four, that is the number that can ultimately be elected, no more and no less from that panel. Suppose there were six nominating bodies on the register for the cultural panel, then they would get one apiece, or there would be six nominations going forward for four places. The electorate would have to select four out of the six. If there were only three, they would be given two. That would only give a panel of six out of which to select four. The intention is that if you diminish the number of bodies on the panel, you must increase the number of representatives they get, so that the number of selections is greater than the number to be elected. This is based roughly on the idea of having at least one more available. I think it would be better to give the electorate a bigger choice. If it is too big, and if it is compulsory on bodies to put up the number allowed, it may be difficult for a body to put forward suitable candidates. There is nothing for them, if there were too many, but to put up those who might happen to be least desirable from the point of view of the Legislature, if elected. If you keep the number too small you are practically giving to the nominating bodies power absolutely to choose who will be their representative.

A better plan would be to work rather on the basis of two more than the number that could be elected. If you halve it you must double the number that would be allowed. All you have to aim at is to get on whatever number of bodies you have, so that the number of candidates will be, at least, two more than you want. We have mentioned one in this proposal. I should like to give it further consideration. My own belief at the moment, and since I was speaking previously, is that, on the whole, it would be somewhat better to aim generally at having at least two more than the number that could be elected. I took the example of the cultural panel. If I take the example of the agricultural panel, five are to be elected. If you have eight bodies they would get one apiece, out of which five would be selected. If there were three bodies on the agricultural panel, according to this scheme they would be given two apiece. If there was only one nominating body you would have to give six to get five according to the scheme. I think we would improve the scheme somewhat by aiming, at least, at having two more than the number that could be elected, because that would give a better choice to the electorate. I do not think there is anything unreasonable in the scheme. When there is a small number of bodies they would be regarded generally as representatives of the bodies we have got.

We may have difficulty, for example, in the case of Labour. The Seanad returning officer may find when he examines the matter, that there might be only a small number of bodies that he would put on the panel. A small number of bodies ought to be able to nominate sufficient nominees to give a selection—I would like two—of two more than the number that could be elected on the Labour panel from outside bodies, that is five.

As far as I am concerned, I am interested in seeing that there will be a body set up which will be capable of reviewing and examining in a critical way the Bills that come up to it from this House, examining them with knowledge of a definite character. In my opinion, a vocational Seanad would be the better one generally for that purpose. These are the general principles underlying this, and I am anxious to get, in so far as we can, the vocational idea preserved. I am not able to do it in present circumstances. The purpose here is to give to the outside nominating bodies a majority. The Deputy does not want that, but the House does want to give them reasonable power in selecting the people who will ultimately get on to the Second Chamber of the Legislature.

Mr. Norton

The trouble with the President on this question is that he wants to say one thing in 1935 and an entirely different thing in 1937. Well, that is not unusual. It is quite understandable. The extraordinary part of the thing is that the President wants to say that he is right when saying things that are entirely different, one from the other. In 1935 the President said we wanted to abolish the Seanad because he said he did not like it.

The fact of the matter is that under this Bill the Seanad returning officer is permitted to register, as nominating bodies, certain persons who have certain qualifications. When he allows those bodies to register, you may have a situation arising whereby he will allow in on a particular panel one large body and three other bodies representing a small fraction of the total membership of the larger body. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent the Seanad returning officer doing that. If he does it there is no means by which that procedure can be upset. There is no appeal against a decision of that kind, once it is established that the three smaller bodies do, in fact, represent interests which have the qualifications required for registration in the panel. You may have a situation arising where the Seanad returning officer will be presented with, say, eight applications for registration in a particular panel. He may rule out the first four and say that they do not represent the interests required to be represented by that panel, or he may say "In any case they are just branches of the other four or in some way subsidiary to the other four." He may rule out the first four, and say that they do not fulfil the qualifications required for registration in that particular panel. He will then be left with the other four, and may rule that they are quite entitled to be registered having regard to the bodies that they represent.

They are allowed on to the panel for registration purposes. When he puts these four bodies on the panel you may have a situation whereby one body represents 100,000 people; another represents 10,000 people; another, 4,000 people, and another 2,000 people. According to the President, each of these is entitled to make one nomination, or may conceivably be entitled to make two nominations. Each is to get a certain overflow of candidates in order to give the electorate the choice of making a selection from the list. Nothing that the Seanad returning officer can do in that connection will prevent the situation developing whereby one body in that panel will represent ten times as many people as the other bodies in the panel, and each is to be allowed to make the same number of nominations. Now, the President says that the electorate, in the long run, will balance out that apparent inequality. How can it do so? Let us assume that in a particular panel there are five nominating bodies entitled to make a nomination each, and that the electorate have to elect four. The electorate being presented with the five nominations by these five outside bodies, may say: "Well, these five are nominated by five outside organisations, one each." The electoral college might desire to elect two or three candidates nominated by one particular organisation, on the ground that it was by far the most influential organisation in that vocation and that it stood for an element in national activity many times more important than the interests represented by the other four groups. What is to happen in a situation of that kind? No matter what the electorate may desire to do, they will only have presented to them the one nomination presented to them by that large and, perhaps, influential body, and they may be only permitted to elect one because that body is only permitted to nominate one, whereas the less influential or less important bodies will be able to put up four nominations as against the one nomination from the larger and more important body.

I say that there is nothing in this Bill to enable the returning officer to prevent a situation of that kind arising, and, in any case, he cannot change the facts of life here. You might have such a situation as that, in a particular vocation, there would be one or two large bodies and quite a number of small bodies. The returning officer cannot change that condition of affairs at all. He is not permitted to change it. What, then, is he going to do except to lump into the panel both the large and the small bodies, giving one to each, or perhaps two in certain circumstances? And it must be remembered that, when he does that—and does it because these people undoubtedly have certain bona fides— there is no way to change it; and then you have the inequality of a number of small bodies making nominations equivalent in number to those of large bodies. Nothing will enable you to iron out that inequality because the electorate will be powerless once they are presented with that set of circumstances. I think it is unfair and undemocratic. If the interests of certain bodies are to be represented, surely they should be represented on the basis of their importance in the community. You do not want a situation to develop whereby a very tiny organisation, relatively, can make a nomination to the panel and whereby only one nomination also can be made by a very much larger and more important body. I think that the returning officer in this Bill should be made to pay regard to the fact that the larger body is entitled to make nominations in accordance with its strength vis-á-vis the other bodies, and it is because that is not there in the Bill and because the Bill permits the contrary situation to develop that I am opposed to it.

The President

Well, I am afraid that we cannot settle this matter by argument, and that it can be only settled in one way. The position here is that, for the Second House, we are not going on the basis that there is to be representation according to the number of heads in an organisation. It is quite clear that that is the position. We are trying to get into the Second House people who will have certain qualifications from the point of view of critically examining Bills that come up from this House. How, then, can you get the situation about which Deputy Norton is talking? He says that we will have a large body of 100,000 and a small body of 4,000, 2,000, or some small number like that. Now, they must be of a different character. Otherwise, in registering them, the Seanad returning officer will not be acting in accordance with the general spirit of the Bill, which would allow him to delete or not to put on the panel any body the activities of which are already covered by some other body. So, if you have a body of 4,000 or 2,000, it will be because they are of a different character or class, and of quite different activities from the activities of those who are covered by 100,000.

It is not easy to get an example that would fit in with these figures, but let us suppose that we had some such situation as the Opposition had in mind when they mentioned the Fáinne. Let us suppose that you had 100,000 representatives in the Fáinne, for the cultural panel, and let us say that you had 1,000 in the medical profession. Now, that is probably the worst, or at least the most extreme, example of the working out of this that I could show. The point is that the medical body is allowed on the register there because it is of quite a different character. It is there representing a different vocation—a different activity, if you like—but if you had, say, the Fáinne, and also, let us say, members of the Gaelic League, and if you were to assume that the Fáinne is a larger organisation than the members of the Gaelic League, then, the returning officer, if he wished to even things out, could eliminate, if he wanted to do so, the members of the Gaelic League, on the ground that the particular activity is covered already by the organisation of the Fáinne. I am taking these examples because I think they were on the list put forward by Deputy McGilligan, but the real point is that we cannot have this on the basis of the counting of heads, and there is no scheme you could put forward which would do what Deputy Norton suggests without destroying the whole basis of this, and we cannot weight it in the way suggested or give it weight in regard to numbers. It would be much too complicated to attempt to do so. You could not meet all the possible types of activities that would come up for consideration. That must be left finally for the returning officer to decide, and it must be remembered that there is provision for an appeal.

Mr. Norton

Would the President quote where there is provision for an appeal?

The President

It is provided for in amendment No. 28. There is a provision there for appeals by nominating bodies, whose application for registration has been disallowed, to the appeal committee. There is provision for an appeal as to whether or not a particular organisation is on the register of nominating bodies. Let us say, for instance, that you had a large organisation such as a Labour organisation, and that, side by side with that large organisations, there was a small one; there would be a right of appeal from the larger organisation to the committee of 21 on the ground that it is not right that the smaller body, whose activities are covered by the larger organisation, should be allowed to have as large a representation as they have. In other words, there would be a basis of appeal in their case.

Mr. Norton

Yes, it is quite clear in that case; but suppose that, in fact, the smaller body were somewhat distinct from the larger body?

The President

Well, as I said, I take an extreme case such as that of the Fáinne and the medical profession. Clearly, you could not appeal against the registration of a medical body on the ground that it was covered already by the activities of the people who belonged to the Fáinne, and the excuse for giving the medical body the right of nomination in that case is that it represents a totally different type of activity. Take, for instance, the scheme put forward by the Opposition. They had one Senator for this, one Senator for that, and one Senator for something else, and so on. All these things, again, are based similarly on a different conception: namely, the conception that you are putting people in the Second House, not because the numbers correspond to the representation they would get, but because there is a certain activity which it would be desirable to have represented and because the knowledge and information that might be expected to be gained by pursuing that activity would be represented there. I cannot make the principle any clearer, and I am afraid, as there is a fundamental difference of opinion, there is no way we can decide it.

Professor O'Sullivan

First, I start off by thanking the President for the very cogent argument in favour of our scheme—not merely for the cogent argument providing our scheme, but the references he made to our scheme. It cuts the feet largely from everything he put forward on behalf of his own scheme. I had not intended taking part in the discussion, but the President's method of reasoning is irresistible—I do not mean cogent, but that he irresistibly brings anybody to his feet who has any respect for reason. Deputy Norton need not have gone back to 1935 to prove inconsistency or what to the ordinary man might seem inconsistency, shall I put it that way? The President is blowing hot and cold right through this Bill on the vocational bodies. It all depends on what particular scheme he has to attack. For instance, if he wants to attack our scheme, then the vocational bodies are not sufficiently advanced. Then, in defending his own scheme, he practically gives the election into the hands of these vocational bodies as the amendment stands. This, remember, was carefully thought out —the best of all possible schemes that the Government could think of. He gave the electorate the choice of five out of six in the case put forward. Vocational bodies are good enough for that, because it happens to be the President's scheme.

As I argued again and again, every word that the President has said in refutation of Deputy Norton's argument is proof positive in favour of our scheme and a condemnation of his objections to our scheme. There is no reason, if you can do so, why you should not proceed now fully to your vocational Seanad which you profess to desire. He blows hot and cold right through the Bill from the start on the vocational organisations—he blows whither he listeth. He is consistent the whole time because, whatever happens, whether he is walking forward or backward, he is always walking on the same road. Unless you take that as the fundamental action, I defy anybody to follow his reasoning. See the position we are in. Deputy Norton puts up a case, into the merits of which I am not going to go. The President once more referred to the passage from the commission's report. There is a body representing 100,000, and there is a body representing 10,000, and the only choice is either equal representation for both or the exclusion of one —no medium thing. The President has clearly indicated that. He says either you put it on and give them equal weighting, or else you wipe it out. That is the only alternative in the Bill as it stands.

Again, I put it to the President that he should let us know where we are as to the nominating bodies and the number that each should nominate. After all, a thing must be attempted by trial and failure to some extent. It is the straight way of doing things. He should let us know the bodies he has in mind and he should indicate in the Bill what he intends each in this case to nominate—in our case to elect. That was the straight and obvious way of doing it. Now we are handing over not merely the nomination, say, of five people to the Seanad to bodies who are not named in the Bill, of whom we have only the vaguest indication from the President, but practically handing over the election. He has not committed himself to any one body, except the one I mentioned the day before yesterday. Whenever he was asked to mention other bodies, he took shelter either behind the report of the commission, part of which he accepts and part of which he rejects, or to be quite accurate, part of which he accepts and rejects and part of which he rejects and accepts—it all depends on what his purpose is at the moment—or behind the scheme of the Opposition. But there is no indication of his own mind. You are not merely handing over the nomination of these candidates to the Seanad to these bodies but, as the numbers prove, you are practically handing over the election, because five out of the six that can be nominated by these bodies must be elected by the electorate.

We had two different arguments. One was, and it was the first mentioned by the President, that you would get possibly a less desirable type of candidate if you had 12 or 18 candidates. Again, that is a pure ipse dixit of the President. Why is that so? Anything is possible with his electorate, but I did not say that against the electorate —that they are so unintelligent that, if they have a choice of candidates, they will not select the proper ones. I admit that he may be right in his implied criticism. The only objection is that you really destroy the power of these vocational bodies really to elect, because that is what it comes to. If they have to elect five out of six nominated that means in practice a power of election on the part of the nominating bodies. Yet, when we come to deal with our scheme, he is against the idea that these bodies should elect. One day he has so many of these bodies that he will have a choice as to what he will put on and gives them practically the right of election. The next day, or even the same afternoon, or even in the same amendment, if it is required, he will find out that, on the contrary, our vocational system is so badly organised that they cannot be given the right of election. Such a mixum-gatherum of nonsense as is in this Bill, when you get all the arguments in favour of it, I have rarely listened to.

The President

If we were not limited in time, it would be interesting to follow the mixum-gatherum of arguments that we have got from the Deputy to see where they will lead. But we have a good deal of work to do and I am not going to do that. The main point is that I promised one Deputy who spoke that, if it were considered finally advisable, we might extend the number so as to give a greater choice—say, two or three more. But it is not easy to do with different numbers. With the number that may be on the panel, that may be registered, it is not easy to fix a rigid number. You have to do it with reference to the number of bodies who will be on the panel and the number of members to be elected. We can aim, I think, at having a greater choice for the electorate than the number provided here. I think we should at least have two in addition to the number to be elected. It will generally work out at more, because once you come down to half the number, say, between the whole number and the total number that can be nominated, and when you double that and give two apiece, you will probably get more than two ahead of the number, if we work in the first instance on two more. We will try to work for a minimum of two extra being put before the electorate— two more than they can select. When you think of that, in the case of five, there will be at least seven; in the case of four, there will be at least six; and in the case of three, there will be at least five. I will try so to arrange the numbers that they will be the lowest you can get from the point of view of selection. That will be the most limited form you will have.

Mr. Norton

So that you are giving the electorate a big choice?

The President

A reasonably big choice. The Deputy is talking about a principle that it is quite impossible to put into the Bill and he knows that. He knows that any practical scheme that is put before the House could be objected to. There is not a Deputy who could not find objection to it from one point or the other. All you have got to do is to take a fair balance.

Mr. Linehan

Far as the President thinks he has gone, I still find great objection to the multiplication table in the section. I do not think the President has improved the situation by offering to add one or two more. In his last few sentences he made he said that there should be reference to the number of nominating bodies on the panel, to justify this multiplication table. I suggest there is reference to the number of nominating bodies on the panel, because if you go down through the multiplication table governing any one panel you will find that the smaller the number of bodies, the more power they have to nominate. I think that is a terrific objection to the section. We are establishing a Seanad in what is supposed to be a democratic State. We are establishing a Seanad under what is supposed to be a democratic institution and the way we are going about it is to limit the right of nomination to this Seanad in every possible form. You are going to set up an electorate, and you are going to have a farcical election. You are going to set up an electorate and ask them to elect five people out of six. The President has answered every objection made by criticising every scheme put up in this House. The President first of all introduced the Bill, and now he has introduced amendments, but he has not advanced any adequate reason why there should be a limitation on nominations. If the President could advance one sound reason why the nominations by these bodies should be limited, people might find themselves in agreement with him He has not advanced any such reason but he has given as an excuse that he wants to have the nominations to this Seanad as near to vocational lines as possible.

Is there any provision to guard against a coup d'état in this case?

Mr. Brennan

Would the President think there was an attempt made by the bodies to frustrate his efforts to set up an electoral college if there were five to be elected and the bodies nominated only five?

The President

There are some provisions; the Deputy will see them later. I may have to cover one aspect of that in another amendment, but there is partial covering of it here in any case.

Question put: "That such new section be there inserted."

The Committee divided: Tá: 50; Níl, 39.

Tá

Aiken, Frank.
Allen, Denis.
Bartley, Gerald.
Beegan, Patrick.
Boland, Gerald.
Bourke, Dan.
Brady, Brian.
Brady, Seán.
Breathnach, Cormac.
Breslin, Cormac.
Carty, Frank.
Colbert, Michael.
Davis, Matt.
De Valera, Eamon.
Dowdall, Thomas P.
Flynn, John.
Flynn, Stephen.
Fogarty, Patrick J.
Friel, John.
Gorry, Patrick J.
Hannigan, Joseph.
Humphreys, Francis.
Kelly, James P.
Kelly, Thomas.
Kennedy, Michael J.
Lemass, Seán F.
Little, Patrick J.
McEllistrim, Thomas.
MacEntee, Seán.
Maguire, Ben.
Meaney, Cornelius.
Moane, Edward.
Moore, Séamus.
Moylan, Seán.
Munnelly, John.
O Briain, Donnchadh.
O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
O'Grady, Seán.
O'Reilly, Matthew.
O'Rourke, Daniel.
Ruttledge, Patrick J.
Ryan, James.
Ryan, Robert.
Sheridan, Michael.
Smith, Patrick.
Traynor, Oscar.
Tubridy, Seán.
Walsh, Laurence J.
Walsh, Richard.
Ward, Conn.

Níl

Bennett, George C.
Benson, Ernest E.
Brasier, Brooke.
Brennan, Michael.
Brodrick, Seán.
Browne, Patrick.
Burke, Patrick.
Byrne, Alfred (Junior).
Cole, John J.
Cosgrave, William T.
Dillon, James M.
Lawlor, Thomas.
Linehan, Timothy.
McFadden, Michael Og.
McGovern, Patrick.
McMenamin, Daniel.
Mongan, Joseph W.
Morrissey, Daniel.
Norton, William.
O'Brien, William.
Dockrell, Henry M.
Esmonde, John L.
Everett, James.
Fagan, Charles.
Giles, Patrick.
Gorey, Denis J.
Heron, Archie.
Hogan, Patrick.
Hurley, Jeremiah.
Keating, John.
Keogh, Myles.
O'Donovan, Timothy J.
O'Leary, Daniel.
O'Neill, Eamonn.
O'Sullivan, John M.
Pattison, James P.
Redmond, Bridget M.
Reynolds, Mary.
Rogers, Patrick J.

Tellers: Tá: Deputies Little and Smith; Níl: Deputies Everett and Heron.

Question declared carried.

Amendment No. 54 not moved.

The President

I move amendment No. 55:—

In page 7, lines 39 and 40, Section 13 (1) (a), to delete the words "Government has made the first nominating bodies order" and substitute the words "publication of the register of nominating bodies in the Iris Oifigiúil” and in line 43, after the word “body” to insert the words “registered in the register of nominating bodies”.

Something to give the necessary notice. There are various stages in the fixing up of these panels and the necessary notification to the bodies indicated is provided for.

Amendment agreed to.

The President

I move amendment No. 56:—

In page 7, line 59, Section 13 (2) (c), after the word "therein" to insert in brackets the words "(including a statement of the qualifications of every person thereby nominated for the panel to which he is nominated)".

The returning officer has a duty imposed upon him to set out a statement of qualifications in connection with each name. On that, there is a right of appeal to the judicial officers. Such a statement could be held not to be quite accurate.

Amendment agreed to.

The President

I move amendment No. 57.

In page 8, line 22, Section 13 (5) before the word "more" to insert the word "either" and before the word "to" to insert "or less persons."

The point is that if the nominations of the nominating bodies are to be valid they must nominate all they are entitled to nominate. If they are given three nominations, they must nominate three persons—no more and no less.

Mr. Brennan

That is the point I raised a short time ago.

The President

Yes. It enters into the question raised on a previous amendment by Deputy Linehan. He asked why we should limit the nominations. The list would be already long and, if you did not put in some limitations, the ballot paper would be a very long one. An alternative which occurred to me was to limit nominations by requiring a deposit which would be liable to be forfeited, but I do not know that that course would be satisfactory from other points of view. If I could extend it to meet the Deputy's point, I think it would be better than to demand a deposit. The whole scheme is built up on the basis that these bodies will give us persons of a certain type. If they do not, other provision will have to be made. We must give them some inducement to provide the number they are entitled to nominate and the inducement is that, if they do not, their paper will be invalid.

Mr. Benson

Is there provision for replacing that invalid paper?

The President

Yes. Those places which are short will be filled up by the Dáil. If the Dáil nominations are short, they will be filled up from outside, and if the outside nominations are short, they will be filled up by the Dáil. Another provision may have to be introduced to cover a case in which the nominations of both the Dáil and the outside bodies would be short.

Mr. D. Morrissey

There is no fear of that.

Amendment agreed to.

The President

I move amendment No. 58:—

I do not know whether the time provided would permit of that. There is a period of three months allowed from the dissolution. Whether we would be able to do the necessary work after the election or not, I do not know, but I shall keep that point in mind.

Amendment agreed to.

Section 13, as amended, agreed to.

SECTION 14.

(1) Nomination papers nominating persons to a panel by a nominating body shall be delivered or sent by post to the Seanad returning officer.

(2) Immediately after the expiration of the time for general panel nominations, the Seanad returning officer shall prepare, in respect of each panel, a provisional panel containing the names of all persons in respect of whom he has received, before the expiration of the said time, valid nominations to such panel by nominating bodies.

Amendment No. 59 not moved.

The President

I move amendment No. 60:—

In page 8, line 40, Section 14 (2) to delete the word "ballot".

The reason for this amendment is that the Seanad returning officer must now include all nominations, whether valid or not, in the provision of the panels and the validity of a nomination is to be determined in accordance with amendments Nos. 68 and 69. There are certain nominations which he excludes on a certain basis. There are others he must leave in and these have to be determined in accordance with amendments Nos. 68 and 69.

Mr. D. Morrissey

I understand the President to say that the returning officer has to give a return of the full number of nominations received.

The President

Certain nominations will be void on their face and these have to be knocked out. There are others the validity of which is a matter for determination according to certain principles. These have to be retained so that if there is any objection to his ruling on a particular matter, there will be an opportunity of appeal against his judgment. In the case of persons, the judicial referee will be sitting at the same time as the returning officer. When he is ruling on the various nominations, all except those clearly invalid must be presented. He goes through them and examines them and, the moment one is declared invalid, the person himself or those interested can raise the issue before the judicial referee and object to the declaration of invalidity.

Amendment agreed to.

Section, as amended, agreed to.

SECTION 15.

(1) Every nomination of a person to a panel by members of Dáil Eireann shall be made in accordance with the following provisions, that is to say:—

(a) such nomination shall be made in writing on a nomination paper in the prescribed form;

(b) every such nomination paper shall contain the particulars required by the prescribed form of nomination paper to be stated therein;

(d) every such nomination paper shall be delivered or sent by post to the Clerk of Dáil Eireann.

(2) Every question as to the validity of a nomination of a person to a panel by members of Dáil Eireann shall be decided by the Clerk of Dáil Eireann whose decision shall be final.

(3) Immediately after the expiration of the time for Dáil panel nominations, the Clerk of Dáil Eireann shall send to the Seanad returning officer a statement of the names, addresses, and descriptions of the persons who have been nominated to each panel by members of Dáil Eireann before the expiration of the said time.

(4) Where a person has been nominated more than once to a particular panel by members of Dáil Eireann, the name of such person shall be stated once only in the statement mentioned in the next preceding sub-section of this section in relation to such panel.

(5) When the Seanad returning officer has received from the Clerk of Dáil Eireann the statement mentioned in the preceding sub-sections of this section, the Seanad returning officer shall complete the provisional panels by inserting in the appropriate places in each such provisional panel the names, addresses, and descriptions of the persons (if any) who are stated in such statement to have been nominated by members of Dáil Eireann to the panel to which such provisional panel relates and are not already included in such provisional panel.

Amendment No. 61 not moved.

The President

I move amendment No. 62:—

In page 8, line 61, Section 15 (1) (b), to add at the end of the paragraph the words "and in particular a statement of the qualifications of the person thereby nominated for the panel to which he is so nominated."

This provides, in the case of Dáil nominees, for inclusion in every nomination paper of a statement of the qualifications of persons nominated for the panel to which he is nominated. A similar provision in regard to nominating bodies is contained in amendment No. 56. It is a parallel in the case of the Dáil of what we have in the case of nominating bodies.

Amendment agreed to.

The President

I move amendment No. 63:—

In page 9, line 5, section 15 (1) (d), to delete the words "Clerk of Dáil Eireann" and substitute the words "Seanad returning officer."

The Clerk of Dáil Eireann had certain functions in connection with this Bill as it was introduced. These are now largely being transferred to the Seanad returning officer.

Amendment agreed to.

The President

I move amendment No. 64:—

In page 9, to delete sub-sections (2) and (3) of Section 15.

The sub-sections relate to the determination of the validity of Dáil nominations by the Clerk of Dáil Eireann, and the sending by the Clerk to the Seanad returning officer of a statement of the names, addresses, etc. It is not now proposed that the Clerk should receive nominations. It is consequential on the previous amendment.

Professor O'Sullivan

The Clerk of the Dáil goes out altogether except in regard to receiving papers?

The President

Yes.

Amendment agreed to.

The President

I move amendment No. 65:—

In page 9, to delete Section 15 (5) and substitute a new sub-section as follows:—

(5) Immediately after the expiration of the time for Dáil panel nominations, the Seanad returning officer shall insert in the appropriate places in each provisional panel the names, addresses, and descriptions of the persons (if any) who have been nominated by members of Dáil Eireann before the expiration of the said time to the panel to which such provisional panel relates.

This is also of a consequential character. The amendment deals with the existing sub-section (5) of Section 15, which relates to the action to be taken by the Seanad returning officer on receipt by him of a statement regarding nominations from the Clerk of the Dáil. The amendment substitutes a new sub-section (5) providing for insertion by the Seanad returning officer, in the provisional panel, of the names, addresses and descriptions of the Dáil nominees. This action must be taken by the Seanad returning officer immediately after the expiration of the time for Dáil panel nominations, which, in accordance with the existing Section 5 (1) (b), as amended, will be determined by order of the Minister for Local Government.

Professor O'Sullivan

The phrase "if any" refers to the persons and not to the descriptions?

The President

Yes.

Amendment agreed to.

Section 15, as amended, agreed to.

SECTION 16.

An Ceann Comhairle

On Friday last amendment No. 10 was being discussed and it was desired by all Parties that Nos. 10 and 66 should be discussed together. They were. I do not want unnecessarily to curtail discussion, but I suggest that it was agreed with the Chair that the discussion would be then taken on No. 10, whereas the Chair suggested it should be taken on No. 66.

Professor O'Sullivan

That was the general principle.

An Ceann Comhairle

That the principle of amendments Nos. 10 and 66 should be taken together.

The President

I move amendment No. 66:—

In page 9, before Section 16, to insert a new section as follows:—

(1) At every Seanad election—

(a) the Taoiseach shall be entitled to nominate to the administrative panel such number of persons, not exceeding two, as he shall think fit, and

(b) any person who has held office as Taoiseach or as President of the Executive Council of Saorstát Eireann shall be entitled to nominate to the administrative panel such number of persons, not exceeding two, as he shall think fit.

(2) Every nomination made under this section shall be made in accordance with the following provisions, that is to say:—

(a) such nomination shall be made in writing on a nomination paper in the prescribed form;

(b) any person who nominates two persons under this section shall nominate both such persons by one and the same nomination paper;

(c) every nomination paper shall contain the particulars required by the prescribed form of nomination paper to be stated therein (including a statement of the qualifications of every person thereby nominated for the panel to which he is so nominated) and shall be signed by the person making a nomination thereby;

(d) the nomination paper shall be delivered or sent by post to the Seanad returning officer.

(3) Where a person purports to nominate by a nomination paper under this section more than two persons, such nomination paper shall be wholly void.

(4) Immediately after the expiration of the time for ex-officio nominations, the Seanad returning officer shall insert in the provisional panel relating to the administrative panel the names, addresses, and descriptions of the persons who have been nominated under this section to that panel before the expiration of the said time.

(5) At any time after the expiration of the time for Dáil panel nominations and before the expiration of the time for ex-officio nominations, any person entitled to make a nomination under this section to the administrative panel shall be entitled to inspect all or any of the provisional panels.

(6) Nominations under this section to the administrative panel are in this Act referred to as ex-officio nominations.

There was a point raised by Deputy McGilligan as to whether a Taoiseach who was also an ex-Taoiseach, or an ex-President of the Executive Council, would have the right to nominate. If there is any doubt about it, I will see that it will not be possible for it to happen, because that was not the intention.

Professor O'Sullivan

Suppose there are two ex-Presidents. They are members of the Dáil and they can nominate to the administrative panel. Can they also, in their capacity as members of the Dáil, nominate another candidate?

The President

I think so.

Professor O'Sullivan

Suppose an ex-President is not a member of the Dáil. Can he nominate too?

The President

He can.

Amendment agreed to.

The President

I move amendment No. 67:—

In pages 9 and 10, to delete Section 16.

The existing Section 16 relates to nominations by the Government and, therefore, does not fit in under the new scheme.

Amendment agreed to.

SECTION 17.

(2) Where, before the expiration of the time for Dáil panel nominations, the Clerk of Dáil Eireann is satisfied that a person nominated to a panel by members of Dáil Eireann has died or become disqualified for membership of Seanad Eireann, the Clerk of Dáil Eireann shall forthwith cancel such nomination and thereupon such nomination shall be deemed never to have been made.

(3) Where, before the day for the completion of the panels, the Government is satisfied that a person stated in a provisional panel to have been nominated to the relevant panel has died or become disqualified for membership of Seanad Eireann, the Government, if they so think proper before the day for completion of the panels, may direct the Seanad returning officer to remove the name of such person from such provisional panel and may nominate to the relevant panel some other person in the place of the person who has so died or become disqualified.

(4) Where, before the day for completion of the panels, the Government is satisfied that a person nominated by the Government to a panel has died or become disqualified for membership of Seanad Eireann, it shall be lawful for the Government before the day for completion of the panels, if they think proper so to do, to withdraw the nomination of the person who has so died or become disqualified and to nominate some other person to such panel in his place.

The President

I move amendments Nos. 68 to 72 inclusive:—

68. In page 10 before Section 17 to insert a new section as follows:—

(1) At 12 o'clock noon on the day for the completion of the panels the Seanad returning officer shall attend at the appointed place and there hold a sitting (in this Act referred to as the completion of the panels) at which he shall do all such things as he is required by the subsequent provisions of this Act to do at such sitting.

(2) When preparing the provisional panels in pursuance of the foregoing provisions of this Act, the Seanad returning officer shall not insert in any provisional panel the name of any person purported to be nominated by a nomination paper which is declared by this Act to be wholly void or which is received by him after the expiration of the relevant time for receiving nominations, but, with those exceptions, the Seanad returning officer shall prepare the provisional panels without considering or inquiring into the validity of any nomination paper or the nomination purported to be made thereby and without regard to any duplication of entries which may occur by reason of a person being nominated by more than one nomination paper, whether to the same or to different panels.

(3) At the completion of the panels, the Seanad returning officer shall take the several provisional panels successively one by one and shall, in respect of each provisional panel,—

(a) examine each nomination paper in pursuance of which a person was entered in such provisional panel and shall rule upon the validity or invalidity of each such nomination paper and delete from such provisional panel every entry made therein in pursuance of a nomination paper which he decides to be invalid, and

(b) shall then examine the qualifications of each person whose name remains on such provisional panel after the said deletions aforesaid and shall determine in respect of each such person whether he is or is not qualified under sub-section 1º of Section 7 of Article 18 of the Constitution to be on the panel to which such provisional panel relates and shall delete from such provisional panel the name of every person whom he determines not to be qualified to be on such panel, and

(c) shall, in respect of every person whom he determines to be qualified to be on such panel, enter in the provisional panel relating to such panel a statement, in such form as he thinks proper, of the qualifications which he determines to be in fact the qualifications of such person to be on such panel, and

(d) shall then delete all duplicate entries remaining on such provisional panel and shall for that purpose give preference to a nomination by a nominating body as against any other nomination and, in the case of the administrative panel, give preference to a nomination by members of Dáil Eireann as against an ex-officio nomination.

(4) In carrying out the provisions of the next preceding sub-section of this section the Seanad returning officer shall have due regard to all decisions of the judicial referee on questions referred to him under this Act by the Seanad returning officer.

(5) All decisions by the Seanad returning officer at the completion of the panels shall be final and conclusive subject only to such reference to the judicial referee as is provided for by this Act.

69. In page 10 before Section 17 to insert a new section as follows:—

(1) The President of the High Court or some other judge of the High Court nominated by him shall attend at the completion of the panels and there sit and act as judicial referee for the purposes specified in this Act.

(2) The Seanad returning officer may, on his own motion, and shall, if so requested by any person whose name is on the provisional panel for the time being under consideration or by the agent of any such person, refer to the judicial referee any questions arising during the completion of the panels in relation to any nomination paper, the nomination of any person to a panel, the qualifications of any person for a panel, the statement by the Seanad returning officer of such qualifications, or any other matter connected with the provisional panels.

(3) The judicial referee shall there and then decide and announce his decision on every question referred to him under this section by the Seanad returning officer.

(4) The decision of the judicial referee on any question referred to him under this section by the Seanad returning officer shall be final and conclusive, and shall not be open to review by any court.

(5) A question may be referred to the judicial referee under this section whether the Seanad returning officer has or has not himself given a decision thereon.

70. In page 10, before Section 17, to insert a new section as follows:—

(1) At the completion of the panels every question relevant to the nomination of a person to a panel, including the validity of nomination papers, the sufficiency or the correctness of any statement in a nomination paper, and the qualifications of any person for any panel, may be raised by the Seanad returning officer or by any person whose name is on the provisional panel for the time being under consideration or by the agent of any such person.

(2) Where the identity of the person purported to be nominated by a nomination paper is free from doubt, such nomination paper shall not be rejected or declared invalid merely because of an error in, or the incompleteness of, the statement therein of the name, address, or description of such person.

(3) The Seanad returning officer and the judicial referee may each, for the purpose of deciding any question at issue during the completion of the panels, receive and act upon evidence, whether oral or written, tendered to him by or on behalf of any person affected by such question, and may, if he so thinks proper, require such evidence to be given on oath, and may for that purpose administer an oath.

71. In page 10, before Section 17, to insert a new section as follows:—

The following and no other persons shall be present at the completion of the panels, that is to say:—

(a) the Seanad returning officer and his assistants;

(b) the judicial referee and one person brought by him to attend on him;

(d) one agent of each person whose name is on a provisional panel;

(e) witnesses giving oral evidence, but only while giving such evidence;

(f) such other persons as the Seanad returning officer shall think proper to admit.

72. In page 10 before Section 17 to insert a new section as follows:—

(1) The proceedings at the completion of the panels shall, so far as practicable, be proceeded with continuously, but may at any time be suspended by the Seanad returning officer, with the consent of the judicial referee, for such period as the Seanad returning officer thinks proper for refreshment, night-time, or other reason appearing to him to be sufficient.

That brings us back to a point we have already discussed. If a man is nominated on a couple of panels, or nominated by different people to the same panel, that might cut down the number of nominations on the paper from nominating bodies.

The President

In page 10, to delete sub-sections (3) and (4) of Section 17.

This amendment deletes the sub-sections referred to, which relate to action to be taken by the Government on the death or disqualification of candidates. The existing provisions gave the Government power to nominate candidates other than the candidates who were disqualified. The Government no longer has such power. This amendment was put down by Deputy Norton also.

Amendment agreed to.

Section 17, as amended, agreed to.

SECTION 18.

(1) On the day for the completion of the panels, the Seanad returning officer shall prepare the five panels, each of which shall consist of a list of the persons nominated thereto by nominating bodies or by members of Dáil Eireann (as stated in the provisional panel relating to such panel) together with the persons (if any) nominated to such panel by the Government.

(2) The persons named in a panel shall be described therein by their names, addresses, and descriptions as stated in their nomination papers or in the communication from the Government (as the case may be), and shall be arranged therein in the alphabetical order of their surnames and, in the case of identity of surnames, of their other names.

Amendment No. 77 not moved.

The President

I move amendment No. 78:—

In pages 10 and 11, to delete sub-sections (1) and (2) and substitute four new sub-sections as follows:—

(1) When, at the completion of the panels, the proceedings provided for in the foregoing sections of this Act have been completed, the Seanad returning officer shall prepare the five panels, each of which shall consist of a list (arranged in accordance with the subsequent provisions of this section) of the persons who have been found to be validly nominated thereto.

(2) Each of the panels shall be divided into two parts, one of which shall consist of a list of the persons nominated thereto by nominating bodies and the other of which shall consist of a list of the persons nominated thereto by members of Dáil Eireann or, in the case of the administrative panel, either by such members or by ex-officio nominations.

(3) The persons named in a panel shall be described therein by their names, addresses and descriptions as stated in their respective nomination papers, and there shall be added to the description of every such person a statement of his qualifications for such panel as entered in the relevant provisional panel in pursuance of the foregoing provisions of this Act.

(4) The persons named in a part of a panel shall be arranged in such part in the alphabetical order of their surnames and, in the case of identity of surnames, of their other names.

The amendment provides for the deletion of sub-sections (1) and (2), and to substitute four new sub-sections dealing with the following points: (1) Final preparation of the returning officer's panels; (2) the division of each panel into two parts consisting, respectively, of the nominating bodies' nominees and the Dáil nominees, including, in the case of the administrative panel, ex-officio nominees; (3) particulars in each panel of the nominees, including the Seanad returning officer's statement of each candidate's qualifications; (4) the arrangement of each part of the panel in alphabetical order.

Amendment agreed to.

Section 18, as amended, agreed to.

SECTION 19.

The President

I move to delete the section. The amendment is necessary by reason of the new proposals for the electorate.

Amendment agreed to.

SECTION 20.

The President

I move to delete the section. This amendment is consequential on the new proposals regarding the electorate.

Amendment agreed to.

SECTION 21.

The President

I move amendment No. 90.

In page 13, before Section 21, to insert a new section as follows, making this new section and the two following new sections the beginning of a Part to be entitled "Part IV— the Poll";—

At every Seanad election the electorate shall consist of—

(a) in the case of the first Seanad election, the members of Dáil Eireann mentioned in Article 54 of the Constitution or, in the case of every subsequent Seanad election, the members of Dáil Eireann elected at the Dáil election consequent on the dissolution of Dáil Eireann which occasioned such Seanad election; and

(b) the persons elected for the purpose by the councils of counties or county boroughs or the former members of such councils in pursuance of the provisions in that behalf of this Act.

I do not think it is necessary to explain the position as regards this amendment. I have already spoken on it two or three times. It is a widening of the Dáil electorate. It has been suggested that we are doing this in order to get some immediate Party advantage from it. On the figures available, I think that suggestion can be disproved absolutely. As the Dáil stands, we would have 50 per cent., but if you add this electorate, it weakens the strength of our Party.

Mr. Norton

Why then is this method being decided on?

The President

The Deputy, of course, will not believe me, but I can tell him that the truth of the matter is that when getting that electorate I was not thinking of the existing position of the Parties, and of maintaining what is the relative strength. I do not think any Deputy could say straight off what the relative strength of Parties is. It is correct, I think, to say that we have 50 per cent. If the intention was to increase the electorate, then you would get figures to see whether, by adding another electorate, you were going to have more than 50 per cent. when finished. As a matter of fact, if we were to act from that point of view we would be acting contrary to our own interests. The figures given to me do not show that we have 50 per cent. of the county councillors, so that with the combined electorate I do not think we would have a 50 per cent. representation. From the Party point of view, if we were working from that basis, what is proposed here would not be an advantage over the Dáil.

I want to be quite honest about this. This system has been adopted because I think it is better than the Dáil by itself. It is a widening of the electorate. Those who claim that it is done for the purpose of Party advantage will have to show that, on the county councils, we have more than a 50 per cent. representation at the present time. The figures that I have do not show that.

Mr. Norton

There was an understanding that I would be permitted to move an amendment to this Government amendment to decide the issue whether the electorate should be the Dáil or the Dáil plus the county councils. I move as an amendment:—

To delete paragraph (b) in amendment No. 90.

The Title of this Bill is the "Seanad Electoral (Panel Members) Bill, 1937." That was its title when it was submitted to this House for a First Reading, and recommended as being, in the view of the Government, the best method of electing a Seanad, and the best method of providing machinery for the election of a Seanad. The procedure for electing the new Seanad was to be the existing Dáil plus the unsuccessful candidates at the last election who secured a minimum of 500 votes. There was to be a scheme of plural voting in which Deputies would be given votes in this new electoral college consisting of members of the Dáil and of the unsuccessful candidates at the previous general election in proportion to the number of votes which they obtained at that election. In any case, whatever the scheme was, the clear intention was that the electorate should consist of those who were members of the Dáil and those who, but for the accident of the people's will, would also have been members of the Dáil. The clear idea at any rate was that the Dáil as actually elected, or as it might have been elected, was to be constituted the electorate for the purpose of selecting candidates for the new Seanad. That clearly represented the philosophy of the Government in respect of the manner in which the new Seanad should be elected.

When that Bill came before the Dáil there was quite a considerable amount of criticism in regard to the proposal to bring in the unsuccessful candidates on the grounds that they were not entitled to be given such a standing in this matter; that it was a new, a novel and, in fact, a freakish proposal to bring into the election of a new Seanad persons who, under our existing electoral legislation, are regarded as a kind of political nuisance because we fine them £100 if they fail to get one-third of the quota in the general election at which they stand. That proposal, as I have said, was strongly criticised when the Bill came before the House on Second Reading and, again, before the Special Committee set up to consider the Bill. That Committee disagreed on many points in connection with this Bill, and on many schemes. There were times at the Committee when almost every group there had a viewpoint entirely different from the other groups, but there were times when there was some measure of agreement between the Parties, and whatever their differences were on one aspect of their scheme or another, the point on which they converged most closely and upon which there was the maximum measure of agreement was the proposal that the electorate, for the purpose of electing the Seanad, should be constituted of Dáil Eireann. I think the President will agree with me when I say that there was probably a greater measure of agreement on the proposal to confine the electorate to the Dáil than on any other proposal that was put before the Committee. In fact, even the Government nominees on the Committee were of opinion that the Dáil electorate was much preferable to an electorate composed of the Dáil plus unsuccessful candidates in the last election. To prove that, it is only necessary to refer to the report of the Seanad Committee, where it will be found, on page 19 of that report, that there is a scheme submitted by the Minister for Industry and Commerce for the election of Senators. I need not go into that scheme in any detail, but when we come to the portion of the scheme which refers to the electorate, we find that the Minister for Industry and Commerce submitted a definite scheme to provide that the electorate should be as provided for in the Draft Bill—that is, Dáil Deputies and certain unsuccessful candidates at the previous election, or members of the Dáil only; and, in explaining the merits of the scheme to the Committee, it was quite clear that the Minister for Industry and Commerce did not mind which way the Dáil decided. It was quite clear that he was prepared to offer either the electorate which was in the Bill or an electorate consisting entirely of members of the Dáil, and when that scheme was discussed in the Committee the Government members on the Committee actually voted in favour of the Minister's scheme. In other words, they voted in favour of a scheme to have the new Seanad elected on the basis of a Dáil electorate.

A question arose here, in discussing another section of this Bill, as to whether the idea of a county council electorate was ever mentioned in the Committee. I think it was mentioned once, but I do not think there was anything in the nature of a serious effort made to put forward a county council electorate as a proposal which was likely to find any considerable measure of support before the Committee. In fact, I think it is a fair representation of the feelings of the Committee to say that, on the occasion upon which the county council scheme was suggested by Deputy Anthony, it was scouted by every member on the Committee and that there was no serious body of opinion on the Committee in favour of a county council electorate. In fact, I think it was suggested in the first instance—the only instance— by Deputy Anthony when the Committee was at a dead end as to what kind of scheme might be considered by the Committee in connection with an electorate.

It was, therefore, with feelings of amazement that I observed that the Government, which came to the House in the first instance and got a Second Reading for a Bill providing for an electorate consisting of the Dáil and certain unsuccessful Deputies, and which went before the Select Committee and there proposed a scheme providing for a Dáil electorate—it was with feelings of amazement, as I say, that I observed the Government coming to the House, on what is virtually the Report Stage of the Bill, and changing completely the entire character of the electorate as envisaged in the Bill when it was first introduced, or else contemplated by the Government at the proceedings of the Select Committee. I can only imagine, therefore, that there have been some good reasons on the part of the Government for changing over so suddenly and so dramatically from a scheme for providing an electorate composed of the Dáil, and certain unsuccessful candidates—thrown in when the Bill was submitted for Second Reading—to the crazy kind of scheme set out in this amendment now. I think it is probably without precedent, that on the Fourth Stage of a Bill we have ever had such a drastic amendment in a Bill of this character and such a complete reversal by the Government from one scheme, which they backed on the First Stage and on the Committee Stage, to a scheme of this kind, which, in my opinion, has no merit whatever in it.

Of course, the President says that this scheme was not devised in order to give the Government a majority— in fact, he never thought of it in that regard. He may assure himself and comfort himself as much as he likes in that respect, but I do not accept the statement that the Government have not a majority on the county councils, and I venture to say that if the membership of the various county councils were examined, it would be found that, while it is true that the Government might have less than 50 per cent., taking them all together, they have got such strength on a sufficiency of them as to enable them to elect the majority of members who will constitute the new electoral college. On county councils where the Government have a majority they will be able to plank in the entire number of members to constitute the electoral college. Of course, the President says that he never thought of this—in fact, he never thought it would be any advantage at all. It is amazing the way the President's mind moves. Setting out as a simple man to discover the best method of getting an electorate, he hits on a type of electorate which, not only appears to him to be a good electorate, but which, by accident—and only by accident—would be an immensely successful electorate from the point of view of his own political Party. He says that the Government Party have only 44 per cent. representation on the county councils and borough councils affected by this Bill, and says that, in fact, a Dáil electorate would be much more favourable to the Government. Well, I think that anybody who knows the President, and who knows the agile and astute political mind he possesses, will know perfectly well that if the President discovered that he could get 50 per cent. of the new Seanad elected by means of the Dáil and only 44 per cent. elected by means of the county councils, he would not be slow to discover the virtue of a Dáil electorate as against a county council electorate. The President's reputation may be built up largely on his wrapping himself up in a mantle of simplicity, but I think it would be most unusual for him to act in that way.

I do not believe that the Government Party have a minority representation on the county councils. I believe that they have a majority, and I believe that this scheme will operate to give them a majority on the new Seanad by means of the make-believe of a democratic method of electing a new Seanad. It is because of that that I am opposed to this new scheme, which, in my opinion, is definitely in favour of the Government, and which will give them a majority in the new Seanad, to which they are not entitled on their representation in this House.

As I said, this Bill was dealt with on the First Stage, on the Second Stage, and on the Committee Stage, and it was only on the Fourth Stage that the President could produce his county council method of election. When the Bill was first conceived, and when it was discussed on Second Reading, and again through the medium of the Select Committee, the scheme that was holding the field was a Dáil electorate, plus certain unsuccessful candidates. On the unsuccessful candidates' side the Government trimmed the proposal and said: "We do not mind if the electorate is a Dáil electorate." Now, after we had that manifestation of the Government's viewpoint in respect of the electorate, we find the Government on the Fourth Stage coming along with a scheme providing for a county council electorate.

The whole atmosphere of this matter clearly suggests that the Government have discovered considerable political value in the scheme of bringing in the county councils. In fact, one might suggest even now that, if the Bill had been dealt with in the Dáil, instead of by the Select Committee, and if it had been dealt with expeditiously in the Dáil, the scheme would probably have passed with the Dáil electorate, because it was, apparently, only after a week's cogitation that the President discovered that the county council method was the most satisfactory. He clearly had not that scheme in mind when the Committee sat to deal with the Bill, because we never heard a word of the proposal from the President or from any member of the President's Party on the Committee. The only proposal which we heard from the President's Party on the Committee in respect of the electorate was that submitted by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, in which he stated that, in his opinion, the electorate ought to be as in the Draft Bill, namely, Deputies and certain potential Deputies, or members of the Dáil alone. So that, if the Bill had been dealt with expeditiously by the Dáil in Committee, instead of through the medium of the Special Committee, we probably would have reached a stage where this Bill would have been passed with a Dáil electorate, or the Dáil plus certain unsuccessful candidates, because it is only in the last week or so that the President discovered this other method of constituting an electoral body.

I object to this whole method of bringing in the county councils, firstly, because, in my opinion, it is capable of political manipulation in the interests of the Government Party. All the assurances to the contrary have not in any way affected my viewpoint in that regard. Had we not statements from the Government organ in 1934 that the Government got a majority on the county councils? Had we not definite statements at that time and definite expressions of opinion that the menace to the municipal government which was, unfortunately, involved in the local authorities elections in that year had been defeated, and had been defeated, according to the Government Press organ, because the Government had secured a substantial majority on the county councils? We have the Government Press organ saying that, and then we have the President coming along, although there has been no election in the meantime, and saying: "Not at all, that is nonsense; we have not, in fact, got a majority on the county councils; in fact, we have got a minority on the county councils; we only represent 44 per cent. of the membership of the county councils." I am not going to enter into competition with the President on figures, because I think the President is capable of making figures prove almost anything. But, I am going to ask the President: did this Press organ tell the truth on that occasion or did it not? If it did, and I believe it did, then this scheme will definitely give the Government an advantage in the new Seanad which it is not entitled to get.

Although it may be possible that the President hit on this scheme just by accident, it happens that the scheme fits in nicely from the standpoint of achieving the Government's object of getting a majority in the Seanad. There is no doubt that it is clearly the Government's object to get a majority in the Seanad. I asked at the Special Committee that, in making the 11 nominations for the new Seanad, the President should be tied down at least to consult certain people. I did not care by what reference they were consulted. I did not care in what manner they were selected for consultation, but I wanted, at all events, to make sure that the President would be required to consult certain people, so that they would be able to say, if there was a scheme for putting 11 camp followers of the Government into the Seanad, that they dissented from that course. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said: "No, that cannot be done. It is necessary for the Taoiseach to have 11 nominations". I said that I was not objecting to his having 11 nominations, but that I required him to consult certain people before he actually made the nominations. I think it is the barest truth to say—and I think the members of the Committee will bear me out— that the Minister for Industry and Commerce stated that it was necessary for the Taoiseach to have those 11 nominations so as to make sure that the Government should get a sympathetic majority in the Seanad. They will get it now, even if the Taoiseach does not select 11 camp followers for nomination to the Seanad, because I believe that this scheme would give the Government a majority in the Seanad without resort to the other method of securing a majority there.

I object to the county council scheme as well on the ground that the county councils, particularly in existing circumstances, are not suitable bodies from which to constitute an electoral college. The present county councils are functioning outside their statutory period. There should have been a local election in June last, but it was not held. Now, apparently, we are going to allow the county councils, who ought to have rendered an account of their stewardship to the people last June, and who are now out of date under our normal electoral legislation, to constitute an electoral college for the purpose of electing a new Seanad. Whatever merit there might be in this scheme, the merit, I suggest, would be a little better if we had a recent county council election which might in some way claim to express the viewpoint of the people. I suggest that county councils, which are now functioning outside their statutory period, which were elected approximately three and a half years ago, are not suitable bodies in any circumstances from which to constitute an electoral college. The county councils have very definite functions in regard to municipal matters and I think that there is quite considerable scope for their activities in dealing with these matters. It was never contemplated in respect to the functions of county councils that they would also be constituted as part of an electoral college for the purpose of electing a Second House, and I think it is quite wrong to bring them in for that purpose. It can only be justified if you want to say definitely that a certain political result is desired and this is the best and most convenient way to get it.

The bringing in of the county councils will lead to all sorts of anomalies. Certain local authorities have been dissolved by the Minister for Local Government on the ground that they were not able to deal with their business satisfactorily, that they were not administering their affairs efficiently, and that, consequently, it was necessary to remove them and put in a commissioner instead. These county councils, according to the Minister for Local Government, have been adjudged incapable of administering municipal affairs; have been adjudged to be inefficient from a municipal point of view; they will not be allowed to repair a single labourer's cottage or to build a single cottage. But, for the purpose of this Bill, these county councils, declared to be inefficient and incapable of managing their own affairs by the Minister for Local Government, are to be reconstituted for the purpose of forming portion of the electoral college. I do not know on what grounds it is sought to justify an arrangement of that kind. These people are prevented from functioning as municipal authorities. They are prevented from exercising any jurisdiction in mere municipal matters but they are regarded as quite capable and competent to elect a Second House of the Oireachtas. I should like the President to explain and justify an arrangement of that kind.

The amendment which the Labour Party has moved to this Bill is one based on an electorate of the Dáil. On the Second Stage of the Bill we indicated that we desired the Seanad to be constituted by Dáil nominations and a Dáil electorate. At the meeting of the Select Committee we submitted a scheme providing for Dáil nominations and a Dáil electorate, and we are now, on the Committee Stage of the Bill, in favour of that scheme. All kinds of efforts, mainly motivated by political considerations, have been made to try to misrepresent the position of the Labour Party in that connection, but on this stage of the Bill we have come back and submitted here the same type of amendments that we submitted in Committee, and we are expressing the same points of view as were expressed on these benches on the Second Stage of the Bill. We prefer a scheme of nomination by the Dáil and a scheme of election by the Dáil. Our proposals in respect to Dáil nominations have been defeated. This amendment which I have moved now represents an effort by us to confine the electorate to the Dáil on the grounds that a Dáil electorate functioning under the principles of proportional representation will, in our opinion, give the country a much more satisfactory type of Seanad than can be got by this hotch-potch mess of an electoral college which is constituted by the new scheme of bringing in the county councils, and even of renewing dissolved county councils.

We would prefer a Dáil electorate, because I think you would have an electorate here which is more in touch with the people, and which is probably much more representative of the people's point of view than the county councils. The present Dáil is elected on the basis of universal adult suffrage. The county councils are not elected on the basis of universal suffrage as applicable to our adult population. The present county councils were elected on a property franchise, and faced with the choice of deciding whether to allow the Seanad electorate to be constituted of those elected to this House on the basis of adult suffrage, or of those elected on a property franchise to the county councils, the President banks on an electoral college based on property franchise. I think a Dáil electorate is a much more suitable electorate for the purpose of electing a new Seanad, firstly, because I think the Dáil is much more in touch with the people; secondly, because I think it is in touch with a greater number of people because of the manner in which it is elected; and, thirdly, because this Dáil has been elected much more recently than the county councils. In the scheme envisaged for electing Seanads of the future, the Dáil will be much more in touch with the people than county councils, because, in point of time, the elections to both Houses will almost agree, and the Dáil will be almost freshly selected by the people to represent them in this House of the Oireachtas.

We have been asked to consider a scheme now which was never thought of on any of the other stages of the Bill. We are being asked to consider a scheme which was never thought of by the Government and which was certainly never mentioned by the Government when the Select Committee was functioning. We are asked to consider this scheme now even though such an important Minister as the Minister for Industry and Commerce submitted to the Select Committee, a scheme contained in annex D. of the report, which provided that the electorate should be as either proposed in the Draft Bill or be members of the Dáil. I think the President will hardly deny that in discussing the merits of that proposal he indicated that he had no great feelings one way or the other. It was frequently stated by the Government representatives sitting on that Committee that there was general acknowledgement that a Dáil electorate was preferable to the Dáil plus certain unsuccessful candidates at the last election. The scheme by which the electorate will be confined to the Dáil would not be an unfair scheme to the Government Party, or to any other Party in this House, and I suggest therefore, that as the President's Bill was originally conceived on what was virtually a Dáil electorate, that as the Government's point of view before the Committee was based on a Dáil electorate and that as the whole point of view in connection with the election, as displayed at many periods, until the Government's amendments came to light, was in favour of a Dáil electorate, the President should now abandon this county council scheme and get back to the Dáil electorate envisaged in the main in his own Bill, particularly as the proposal was definitely supported by his own Party in the Select Committee. The county council scheme is an unfair scheme, a grossly unfair scheme from the point of view of the Labour Party. Its merits to the Government, in my opinion, are that it will give them a majority in the Seanad, a majority which they could not get by the operation of proportional representation in this House. We had letters in the Press from the Minister for Finance and other folk on this matter of paying obeisance to the virtues of proportional representation. This amendment is now an effort to have the electorate confined to the Dáil and to having the Seanad elected by the Dáil on the basis of proportional representation. If there is all this admiration that, at least, we read of in the Press for proportional representation what is the objection to accepting this amendment? If the Government will not accept the amendment, I for one can only come to the conclusion that this scheme has been designed to suit the political exigencies of the Government and that that is the reason that in their eyes it is preferable to a Dáil electorate.

Professor O'Sullivan

When the President speaks of the Seanad which we are now trying to form, I think I might represent him fairly when I say that he had two or three motives —to advance towards a vocational Seanad, to take a step advancing in that direction; to try to get a Seanad that is not a replica, not in the sense of being a non-political Seanad, but a Seanad that is not a replica of the political Parties in the Dáil. There was a third motive that the Seanad we should get should not be an obstacle in the way of the expression of the will of the people as represented in the Dáil. I think I am representing the President quite fairly. I see that he agrees. For the last mentioned of these purposes, he so drafted the Constitution, and then so drafted his Bill, as to secure that there would be that harmony of view, on the whole, between the Dáil and the Seanad. He did not expect a Seanad that would be "mum." He expected a Seanad that would give criticism, criticism from a rather different point of view to that from which you get it in the Dáil, but a Seanad anyhow that would on the whole be in harmony with the general purposes of the Dáil that had just been elected. For that purpose, he reserved to the Taoiseach the right of nominating 11 Senators, and he also did away with any hang-over. I think I am quite correct in stating the President's purposes. Is not that so? There was to be no hang-over? That is the reason why you have a rather difficult and complicated system, leading to all sorts of minor troubles, namely that the Seanad is to go out with the Dáil. I think the President has stated that reason again and again.

On more than one occasion I have endeavoured to point out here that, so far as purposes numbers one and two are concerned, the President has done nothing to implement what he professes he set out to do. He had the opportunity, even with the machinery that is at our disposal at the present moment, of getting a vocational Seanad, because he recognises—I think he has demonstrated or tried to demonstrate to Deputy Norton again and again that he recognises— that proportional representation of the country is not his end. As he said, it does not come in here; it comes in in the Dáil, in the popular Assembly, but that is not the main purpose of the Seanad. What he wanted to get were different points of view; he wanted not so much representation as to secure that there would be in the Seanad men of a somewhat different point of view, not definitely hostile to the Dáil majority, so that they would bring, so to speak, to the consideration of Bills which went to them from this House not a hostile spirit but an effort to view those Bills not in the Party atmosphere that he thinks obtains in the Dáil but rather from a different angle, and so be helpful. It seems to me that he could have secured a vocational Seanad even with the machinery that we have in this State. He could have secured a Seanad that was not a replica of the Dáil.

There is one other matter with which I want to deal, and it has not been mentioned up to the present. On several occasions the President stressed the abolition of the hang-over. He pointed out that if the Seanad were to continue in office longer than the Dáil there was a danger that you would have not a Seanad that would give you criticism but a Seanad that would be hostile in its general view and try to obstruct the newly-elected Dáil. That was the one plank which was standing before the present amendments. He had swept away the vocational platform as far as he could. He has swept away the idea of the Seanad non-duplicating Parties in the Dáil. Now, by this county council set of amendments, if I may so call them, he has swept away the other end which he professed to have, because remember there is no guarantee whatever—in fact we have to assume that it will not take place except by mere chance—that the county councils, who will form the bulk of the electorate, will go out of office with the Dáil, will not be of a different political persuasion from the new Dáil, or that they will not use their strength to do precisely what the President says they ought not to do, namely, elect a Seanad hostile to the Government. As I say, he had already trampled on the two first principles that I have mentioned. I hold that he does that in the Bill as it stands. He now sets out to trample on the third principle. Taking the three principles, therefore, which again and again he professed himself anxious to implement here in this House, we find that one after another he has scrapped them all— two of them in one Bill, I admit, and the third now. I will deal with that subsequently.

All the time, Deputy Norton has stood for a particular point of view. My colleagues and I have stood for a different point of view. We tried to get a vocational Seanad. I hold that seven-eights of the President's arguments—all the President's arguments against Deputy Norton to-day and other days—show that the system is possible. If his arguments against Deputy Norton to-day on amendment No. 53 are sound, there is no excuse for not giving to those bodies the appointment of the Seanad. If you do that, you will have a Seanad that is not a replica of the Dáil, and is not a creature of the political machine. We will have, as far as we can get it—ever so much more than you would get it by that method—a vocational Seanad. Yet the President deliberately turned his back on those methods. When it is pointed out to him that all his arguments really support that view his answer is "it is absurd." There was a time when the President tried to answer arguments. Now he is falling into the bad habit of the Vice-President, who never answers arguments in this House—and thus gets Government measures carried. Even to-day there is no excuse for stopping short of a vocational Seanad. It was pointed out to us that we were not ready; that it would take a certain amount of time. We proposed a stop-gap, merely transitional, but that was turned down. Even to-day you could get it. I put that view on the Committee. As can be seen from the report, the Minister for Industry and Commerce agreed with that view on the Committee.

We set forth a scheme here. We do not pretend it is perfect. I may say that the President may find a certain amount of difficulty in interpreting his own speeches, proving that black is white and white is black, but when he tries to interpret the speeches of others he is fully incapable, as when he talks about a perfect Seanad and tells us that he always said you could not get one, and implies that the Opposition said you could get a perfect Seanad although we protested from the very start when he was destroying the old Seanad that the biggest error a man in politics could make was to think you could get perfect institutions, and that therefore if they were not perfect they should be destroyed. We do not pretend that this scheme we are putting forward is perfect. We put forward a scheme for a vocational Seanad. It could be adopted now if the President's own scheme could be adopted. If in fact he hands over the election of half the Seanad to vocational bodies— I am dealing now not with the Bill but with the amended Bill; those are the actual provisions in the Bill as it now stands—why cannot he do it fully? Why cannot he take it as much as possible out of the realm of Party machinery? The Minister for Industry and Commerce said it could be done. The President can read the reports of that Committee of which he was chairman. That is there for everybody to see. I do not know what occurred during the following couple of days to convince him that it could not be done. We promised to help him in that, because we were anxious to get something on which we thought the Government and ourselves were in agreement, namely a vocational Seanad, and one which would be independent of Party machinery.

We put our suggestions there before the Committee. We know we ran certain risks by making suggestions. Up to the present, the President has made no suggestions about those bodies. He has always quoted someone else. He has sheltered either behind the skirts of the Special Commission or behind the proposals of this particular Party. Here at all events are proposals for the nomination and election of a Seanad. There is no reason why you should not hand over to certain bodies in the morning the election of the 43 Senators. He can do it quite as easily as he will hand over nomination, and in that way you will get a body which will be, I do not say non-political, but certainly will not be a creature of the Party machine. Perhaps the President will throw his mind back to what I said here last week. What I protested against in the case of the county councils' scheme is this, not as to who were or were not the majority Party, but that you were keeping the election within the control of the Party machine. I read out particularly the returns for Munster and Connacht, not to prove that one Party or another had the advantage, but to show that they were purely Party-elected bodies, elected as a result of the activities of the Party machinery. I pointed out that in Connacht Labour had not a single representative and that they had very few in Munster.

Leaving aside this dispute about numbers between the President and Deputy Norton, what is clear is the continual control by the Party machine over that election. How could it be otherwise? Do we not all remember the campaign of the President and his Ministers, pointing out not that they should elect so-and-so because they would make good local administrators, but because they could be relied upon to back up the general policy of the Government, what the President and his Ministers called the national policy. The great bulk of these, therefore, are elected precisely on the same grounds as the Dáil. As Deputy Norton said, whatever advantages they may pretend to have, they have at least this disadvantage, that the Dáil can claim to be a recent election while this county council election is an out-of-date election. If the President looks at the returns on the 4th July, 1934, he will find out that in every province the Party candidates were elected, and they were elected just as the Parties in the Dáil, and for the same motives, not because they would give better attention to local needs, but because they supported the Fianna Fáil, the Fine Gael or occasionally the Labour Party. There were a few others, very few, elected. The whole thing was carried out by the Party machinery.

That is what I object to in this and what I have objected to all along in the President's proposals. While he professes he wants a vocational Seanad, he deliberately turns his back on the opportunity of having it. Whilst he professes to want a Seanad not the result of control by the Party machine, he really makes a proposal that comes to this, that the more effective machine from the point of view of mere Party purposes will also be the more effective so far as the election itself is concerned. The more control they are able to exercise over the county councils elected on a Party ticket, the more successful they will be in their policy of electing their own people here. In that election not merely was it to the advantage of the Government but it was also to the advantage of the county—so the people were told. We had Ministers going around using carefully chosen language and saying "A half a million of money is to be spent here; let us see there are proper people elected to administer it". I quite admit that you could not bring the charge that "you are not going to get it if you do not elect a Fianna Fáil majority". but the "simple" but wide awake people of the South of Ireland could get no other reasoning out of it. The President may read the speech of the Minister for Finance to the people of Cork and see if that is not the hint conveyed. The President himself appears in the grand rally and there are special editions of the bulletin. These elections were carried out on a purely Party ticket.

The President says he is not legislating merely for the present Seanad, but for future Seanads as well. My objection is as strong against this electoral body for the future as now. Unless there is a complete change of heart and policy towards local elections on the part of Fianna Fáil, then these elections will continue to be fought, not in the local interests, not in the interests of the people of the district, but in what the President and his Ministers call national interests. In other words, that system of electing county councils on purely Party lines is to continue. We have no evidence to the contrary. We know that since the State was established they have insisted on fighting these elections on the narrowest Party issues. Therefore, the objections I make now hold true for future elections as well as this one. My objection is that you are handing this more completely than ever into the hands of the Party machine. And that is the way of honouring the idea that you want a Seanad, not a mere replica of the Parties, and not bound by the Party machinery that prevails in the Dáil. The thing is absurd.

Up to this amendment there was at least a plank standing to which the President professed to attach great importance. He mentioned it again and again. He gave it as the excuse for his 11 nominees and for the simultaneous dissolution of the Seanad and the Dáil. Where is that gone now? When the majority of the electors does not go with the Dáil, when the majority of the electors may be very different in its political outlook from the Dáil, everything that he stood for is gone; he has trampled on it.

He says he got a valuable idea from the Committee. I am not misquoting the President. That is what always happens—the more anybody points out to the President that he is wrong, the more he is convinced he is right. The Minister for Industry and Commerce might call that the hob-goblin of little minds. I thoroughly agree with Deputy Norton as to the dominating impression on the Committee. The President has referred to some things that are not in the report. He said that he got this idea from the Committee. It does not appear in the report. It was mentioned at the beginning, but it was not mentioned afterwards, because there seemed to be unanimous agreement that it would mean a purely political election. At the first session it was mentioned by one member of the Committee, but never afterwards was it referred to by the Government Party, the Labour Party, or by us. And that is the valuable idea! Because it met with universal condemnation, therefore, the President adopts it, even if it takes away the one remaining plank that he seemed to be standing on. But I suppose he likes standing on no plank at all; he finds as much pleasure in that as in proving that black is white or white is black.

We are told that there are certain things enshrined in the Constitution. The President knows that the Constitution is his and, let the House be under no delusion, if it is his he can do as he likes with it and if he runs across what he professes in this matter to be the spirit of the Constitution, that is no business of the House. He wants a vocational Seanad, but God help the Party or the individual who proposes it! He has been thinking over this matter for 12 months and the Minister for Industry and Commerce thinks it over for three or four days. The Minister for Industry and Commerce considers that if there is to be a different electorate from the Dáil, there should be a larger electorate rather than a smaller one. I think that he was the apostle of that view in the Committee. So he told us. I accept his word. He had some other fantastic suggestions. Accordingly, the Minister for Industry and Commerce—the strong-minded man—had his way. What was thought the best scheme by the Government for 12 months was scrapped and a scheme that was never thought of by them is to be forced through. There is no pretence that this is a carefully thought-out scheme. The one thing the Committee seemed to be unanimous about was on throwing that scheme aside with contempt. Yet, it is to be forced on this House, as a result, we are told, of the careful thought of the Government. The arguments against the scheme do not matter. The President had an open mind on the question—up to a certain point. Now, he has not, but the result, so far as the House is concerned, is the same. Neither on the Constitution nor in the course of implementing the Constitution, as we are supposed to be doing now, has he given way on a point of importance to the Opposition. We took seriously the statement that he wanted a Seanad which would not be a mere replica of the Dáil. We went to the trouble of suggesting various schemes by which that might be brought about. But how could we be right? The President had been trying to get a vocational Seanad for 12 months and he had failed. Therefore, we could not expect to be successful. That, according to the President, is an absolutely convincing argument. A new mind was, however, brought to bear upon the problem. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, coming along from his great enterprise, of a crowing hen laying industrial eggs, suggests this scheme and it is adopted.

I quite agree with the President in nine-tenths of what he said this afternoon on amendment No. 53. But what he said then cuts the ground from under his scheme. The main thing, he says, is to get people with certain qualifications, not people of a representative character. I say that you have in existence different vocational bodies. It has been consistently urged by Deputy Norton all along that they are not representative. The President points out that that is quite irrelevant to the purpose he has in view, that we are not counting heads, that what we really want is representation of certain points of view. We can get these to-day instead of waiting for a generation, as the Minister for Industry and Commerce suggested. The suggestion was that we should wait for the next generation before we should even start to realise the promise given in the Constitution. Yet, we are supposed to honour what is contained in that particular document. The President reserves to himself the interpretation of the Constitution. When we ask what it means or what any other Bill means we are told the meaning the President intends—not what our proposed legislation seeks to accomplish. He also claims the right to violate and ignore his own Constitution at discretion. This is the first big attempt we have made to implement the Constitution. The President stated the purpose of that Constitution. Nobody can pretend that he is making the slightest effort to honour the doctrine that he then laid down. When answering Deputy Norton on amendment No. 53 on the question of vocational bodies, to what does he appeal? To our amendments and to phrases by Deputy McGilligan which he quoted. Perfectly sound proposals were put forward by us but the President should, at least, have the courage to carry them out. They will give the President what he professes to want. Therefore, they are turned down.

I was as much surprised as Deputy Norton to find this amendment coming forward at the 11th hour as a Government proposal because the Committee never treated this as within the pale of discussion. It was mentioned on one occasion, and certain references were made later not to this but to another question, that of a larger electorate—a different matter. The President now springs this as a heaven-sent inspiration, as if anybody could not see that there were grave objections to these particular bodies and that this had all along been recognised. It was because the Government representatives on the Committee knew perfectly well what the objections were that the proposal was not entertained there. They knew that they would get a bad body to elect—a body completely under the control of the Party machine. The more effective that machine is, the more completely will that body be under it. At least some shred of clothes might have been left on the President's provisions. Two of the principal garments went and the third has now gone. Perhaps there is nothing like making a clean sweep, because we can see the plan in all its nakedness. Twelve months were occupied in thinking out the best scheme and what we got was the absurd electorate which was suggested. No justification was offered for that proposal. It was flung at the Dáil. What did it matter? "I got it out of the report of the commission and I thought we should put it in"—that was the attitude of the President. "You can take it if you like," the President said, "I do not know whether I am in favour of it or against it." And now he gets further inspiration from the Minister for Industry and Commerce. If possible, this proposal is worse than the other one. It is more capable of being machined by Party than the other. Let the President look at his figures for the county councils. Does he deny that the county council election as a whole was run quite as much on a Party basis as any general election we have had? I do not believe in election by the Dáil and I certainly do not believe in election by the Dáil plus the county councils. Of the two plans—and I object to both—the latter is the worse.

Mr. Moore

Because of the particular character of the present county councils.

Professor O'Sullivan

The Deputy was not listening. I said that my objection was completely independent of the present political character of the county councils. My objection is that they are politically-elected bodies under the control of the Party machine and that that is likely to continue. So far as the Government Party is concerned, we have had that political element in all the county council elections up to the present. Is there going to be a change of heart now? The Party opposite insisted on bringing these questions of what they call "national policy" into the local elections. We set our faces against that and, so long as we were a Government, we never contested county council elections as a Party. The Ministers supported by the Deputy's Party insisted on making that the main issue—I might say the sole issue—at the last county council election. It is to the system I object. The whole idea is bad, irrespective of what the present Party colouring of the county councils is. The idea is bad in itself. He got one or two useful ideas! Imagine all the time we wasted on that Committee, if this is the result, if this is the one idea the President got! We shall soon be beginning to think that the only chance of getting any reasonable idea through the House, with its present leader and his present majority, is to argue against it, and to show how absurd it is. Then, there is a chance of getting it through. That is the way the President gets ideas. This electoral college is to be elected on proportional representation, considering, not merely the present, but the future, but we were threatened—again, I apologise, we had prophesied to us— the possibility of the abolition of proportional representation. I can only repeat what I said before: the President's aspirations and hankerings, if they are good, never come true; his threats, which the ordinary man thinks are threats, but which he says are merely prophecies, generally come true.

What is his objection to proportional representation? That we may get a Parliament—he is crying out before he is hit—in which the Government has not a complete majority. You have that problem in other countries where you have no proportional representation. To abolish, or rather, to get rid of, the fear which the President has, there is only one way of acting—abolish your Parliament. You have had deadlocks of that kind in countries where proportional representation does not exist—in England, for example, some years ago. In that speech—and I recommend it to everybody as a typical piece of presidential reasoning and as illustrating many of the qualities we have to contend with and the country has to suffer from—he gave examples. He said that if we are to continue proportional representation we may have to face the situation like that in France. Since when has France a system of proportional representation? There are countries without proportional representation faced with precisely that problem. Is he going to lay down by law that there are to be only two Parties, that one of these must have the majority and that he must lead that one? That, at least, is logical, but if we are to have the political life of this country threatened with fundamental and radical changes whenever the President is not satisfied with the kind of Dáil the country sends up, it is time we realised that. It is stated now rather baldly for the first time, but I admit that it has continually been at the basis of the actions of the President.

He quoted a long passage—I do not intend to quote it—from the report of the commission against Deputy Norton, but it is fatal to the whole attitude that he has taken up on this Bill. He referred to it again this afternoon. One thing which the House ought never to do is to suggest that the President is thinking of any Party advantage. He abolished the Seanad, but he had no idea of Party advantage in doing so. It was not Party spleen which caused him to do that, we are told. He abolished university representation. Party considerations never entered into it. I suppose he did not know what the political views of the university representatives in this House were.

Mr. Norton

Forty-four per cent.

Professor O'Sullivan

They had to go, but he never thinks of the Party. He does not let the Party think for him, either—except the Minister for Industry and Commerce. If the President thinks he has given any ground for asking the House to support this amendment, he is mistaken. I admit that he has made many speeches and he has argued from ten and 11 different viewpoints. I admit also that that is a proof of consistency! In the case of a lesser man, it would not be, but he certainly has left the House terrifically confused as to what he wants. He will state again and again that he is in favour of a vocational Seanad, but every step he takes is in the opposite direction. In fact, what he is doing is looking one way and walking in another. That is a very uncomfortable thing to do, as he will probably find out if he carries out some of the threats—excuse me, prophecies—made by some of his Ministers in the last couple of weeks.

Mr. Costello

There is no use continuing the farce of waiting for the President to put forward any reasons in justification of the proposals contained in this amendment. Obviously, he can have no reasons to justify these outrageous proposals. They are wholly unsustainable. If he were in a position to put before the House and the country any cogent reasons for the putting forward at the last possible moment of this new type of electorate, he obviously would, long since, have given them to the House and to the country; but he prefers to take up the position of throwing upon those people who oppose this system of election the onus of putting forward their reasons against it, and then adopt the scheme of endeavouring to show the reasons we put forward against this system of elections are entirely erroneous and bad. We may take it that from beginning to end of this debate, we will never hear one single valid or cogent reason put forward by the President, or any member of his Party, to justify the astounding proposals for an electorate he has put forward at the last moment. We approached the solution of this problem with a completely open mind. We found that we were committed by the Constitution to a type of Seanad which we did not like, and which certainly I did not like. It was a pale and rather futile effort to get a vocational Seanad. We had a desire expressed on the part of the President for a vocational Seanad. He had not even the courage to go the whole way towards getting a vocational Seanad, but, such as it was, it was his professed intention to get such a Seanad. So anxious were we that any type of Seanad should be got that we were prepared to give such experience as we had and such knowledge as we possessed to an effort to get the best possible type of Seanad within the limits of the Constitution, and it was in that spirit we approached the task that was before us at the Select Committee. We had no political axe to grind in this respect. No member of the Fianna Fáil Party can, with any justification, say that any proposal put forward on behalf of this Party from this side of the House in any way tended to advance their political interests. The permanent scheme they put forward for the election of the Seanad was entirely against any idea that they were endeavouring to advance their political interests. Our whole effort was to take the election of Senators away from the Dáil, away from the possibility of anyone saying that it had a political tinge or was capable of being subject to any political pressure. The basis of our original proposal was that these vocational organisations which exist, even in an undeveloped state, should have the right to nominate, and particularly the right to elect the elected members of the Seanad. We took away from our own Party the power and the right to elect any of these elected Senators.

Neither of the schemes put forward, the transitional scheme or the permanent scheme, had for its object the advancement of the political interests of this Party. During the discussions that took place in the House, when the transitional scheme was put forward, the Minister for Industry and Commerce said that the whole basis of that scheme was to filch four seats from the Fianna Fáil Party. That is why he objected to the scheme because, to use his own words, it filched or tended to filch four seats from the Fianna Fáil Party. Obviously, to any one who considered the scheme calmly and impartially, that was not the object of it. Even if it was, these four seats were not going to the Fine Gael Party. We cannot be criticised in respect of that scheme having that idea. We were not going to get, by the system we put forward for a transitional Seanad, any seats in the new Seanad for nominees of our political Party. The scheme we put forward and discussed was tentative and was merely put forward because of the suggestion that, within the time limit of the Constitution, it would not be possible to get into working order the machinery necessary to get a permanent Seanad if we were to get it from vocational bodies. The basic scheme we put forward was election by vocational bodies that exist. No one can say that that was put forward in the political interests of this Party. In the amendments we set forth the vocational bodies that we suggest should elect. Can any member of the Fianna Fáil Party say that any one of the bodies suggested have any affiliations good, bad or indifferent, with the Fine Gael Party?

It must be admitted that whatever the merits of our proposals, at least we tried to implement the provisions of the Constitution, and tried to give effect to the desire that we thought existed, both inside and outside this House, that the new Seanad should not be merely a replica of the political Parties in the Dáil. We never heard of this scheme in the Select Committee. So far as my recollection goes, there was merely one passing reference to county councils. My only contribution was one expression, forcibly and cogently to give my objection to the scheme for county councils on the basis of political association. If there were any merits in that proposal why were they not brought before the Select Committee? The representatives of the Fine Gael Party on that Committee approached the question in the spirit that they were prepared to consider any proposal put forward that seemed to carry out the objects which we thought we all had in view. We had no political axe to grind. Our sole endeavour was to get away as far as we could from politics. If this proposal has merits, and we are assured it has—and assured only by implication—it is because it was put forward by the President and no other reason is given. If it has any merits at all, surely the proper place to have brought forward such a scheme was at the Select Committee. We could then have calmly considered, in the unheated atmosphere that existed in the Select Committee, the merits or demerits of this proposal. I do not think it probable, but possibly we might have convinced the President and his supporters on the Committee that there was nothing to be said for it. At least, we could have got some sort of calm discussion—not a discussion that must of necessity end in mere futility. It is quite obvious now that the President and the Government have brought forward this scheme as the last word and that, no matter how it might be demonstrated to them that it might be futile, unsustainable or a bad scheme, it would not be possible for them to admit that they were wrong in putting it forward at any time. They must stand over it now. Had this scheme been brought before the Select Committee possibly they might have been persuaded. I think not.

I may say that at a very early stage of the deliberations of the committee, I came to the conclusion that we were wasting our time. We went into that Committee, honestly and sincerely anxious to do what we could to get the best Seanad, because we believed in the interests of State institutions, in the interests of having a proper Seanad, in the interests of having a Seanad that would command the confidence of the people, that that would justify a Seanad as one of the State institutions. We are not getting it. We could, possibly, reasonably devise one with our joint experience, effort and intelligence. We went there with goodwill, and with a desire to effect agreement, if possible. It was quite obvious from an early stage in the proceedings that every scheme was going to be knocked down. From start to finish we never heard a constructive suggestion put forward by a Government representative. We heard many destructive suggestions and destructive arguments from the Minister for Industry and Commerce. He fired the balls for his colleagues. From start to finish there was never a constructive suggestion put forward by the representatives of the Government on that Committee. Constructive proposals were put forward by the Fine Gael representatives in a reasonable and hopeful spirit of goodwill. The Labour Party also put forward proposals which we were ready to discuss and amend, if necessary, in order to secure agreement. It was apparent to me at an early stage of the Committee that I was wasting my time, that there was no possible chance of getting from that Committee any proposals other than the proposals contained in the original Bill that came to this House.

There was never a suggestion of the scheme now being put forward. We have examined this scheme, such as it is, and I feel again that we are here merely wasting time putting forward opposition to these proposals. The Government has committed itself to them after having stated, as Deputy O'Sullivan pointed out, here and elsewhere, that their original proposals were the result of calm and deliberate consideration over a period of 12 months, and that they were the best the representatives of the Government could think of. These proposals, I allege, are in the interests of their own political Party. Deputy O'Sullivan has made the position perfectly clear from the point of view of our objection to this electorate on political grounds. We do not oppose the proposal to give county councillors a voice in the selection of the elected Senators, because of the undoubted fact—however the President may endeavour to disguise his knowledge of it—that at the moment the Fianna Fáil Party has a majority on the county councils. So long as this procedure exists of electing county councils—we do not care what political Party will have a majority on these councils—it is going to make for a political Seanad, a worse political Seanad than could be got by the direct vote in the Dáil. We were anxious that there should not be an election on the direct vote of the Dáil. We would prefer Deputy Norton's proposals to the proposals in the Bill, and, if necessary, would vote for them against the present ones which, in my opinion, are going to lead to the gravest possible results, because we are going to have a political Seanad and perhaps worse.

The idea was to have a Seanad with specialised knowledge, independence of thought and action. How are you going to get that from county councillors, or the nominees of county councillors? Consider the outrageous farce that will take place in every county when this proposal is put into effect, if it is put into effect. You first of all get a scramble at each and every county council throughout the country for this particular job, because job it is, and nothing else. Seven members are to be elected from each county council, including the dissolved county councils. There is going to be a scramble, a horrible scramble, for position in that electorate of seven from each county council. You are going to have lobbying, canvassing and the usual paraphernalia that exist for election to a position that will bring power or, possibly, place, but certainly power. These seven men are going, for a short time, to be placed in the sun, and they are going to have very considerable power. Therefore, there will be a scramble for inclusion amongst the seven selected nominees of each county council.

What is going to happen after that? Those seven men themselves are going to be scrambled after by every candidate for Senatorial position. How are they going to exercise the power of franchise that is to be conferred upon them? Are they going to do it independently of their masters, the county councils that appointed them? Are you going to violate the principle of delegatus non delegare, that a person who has delegated powers, himself cannot delegate those powers. In other words, are those seven men, their nominees and their mouthpieces, going to be subject to the overriding authority of the county councils themselves? Are we going to have the scandal of these seven men being paraded before the county council and asked, “who are you going to vote for? If you will not vote for A, B and C, or for E, F and G, you will see what will happen to you at the next county council election; you will see how we will denounce you at the next meeting of the county council.” Are they going to be paraded and asked to give pledges in public as to who they are going to vote for, or how are these nominees of the county council going to be elected?

We are told in the Constitution there is to be a secret postal ballot vote. I hold that this is a violation of that constitutional provision. These seven members will certainly get a ballot paper. Is the pretence going to be made that they will vote secretly? Perhaps, they will. Perhaps they will have told A and B that they are going to vote for them; perhaps they will have told their masters, the county council, "we are going to vote for the men that you want us to vote for." But, when it comes to the secret postal ballot vote they will vote for somebody else. Then we will have the ensuing public scandal of these men being asked, "why did you not vote for the men that you were to vote for?" because it will be perfectly apparent, when the results of the election come out, whether these nominees of the county councils voted in a particular way or not. It will be easy to ascertain, when the results of the election are known, in what way each of these seven nominees or groups voted in the Seanad election. I say that this particular type of electorate, if not a direct breach of the constitutional provision in regard to the secret postal vote, is certainly a breach of the spirit of that constitutional provision.

Is the President going to stand for the scandal, first of all, of these seven members being subject to corrupt pressure, of being asked to vote for a particular person for a monetary consideration, because that is going to happen, and we had better face it. This position in the Seanad is going to be one of power, and one carrying, presumably, some remuneration. It is going to be one of power and place, and some prestige. The people who have the choice, who have the vote on the county councils, are going to be subject to enormous pressure and to corrupt pressure. Let us face that. I say that this type of electorate is going to increase enormously the scope for public corruption in this country, and that is one of the fundamental objections that I have to the bringing in of the county councils. The whole scheme of this electorate lends itself to corruption, either corruption of the monetary type or some other type of corruption perhaps equally as bad. We are going to have, as I say, the public scandal of these people being paraded and asked to give an undertaking, "will you vote for so and so, or who are you going to vote for?" You will have discussions at the public boards, and perhaps a public undertaking extracted from the seven nominees before they are selected as to whom they will vote for if elected. All this seems to me to be a direct violation of the constitutional provision about the secret postal ballot vote. It is contrary to the public interest, because it is going to lead to corruption of one kind or another, and the type of public scandal that I have referred to is going to take place in every part of the country.

These are very serious aspects of the case, and perhaps the President has not adverted to them. I am putting them forward seriously and sincerely as justifying my strong opposition to these proposals. Assuming for the moment that we get seven good men and true who will exercise their suffrage secretly and independently and with the utmost integrity— assuming that we get seven just men from each county council—let us see what the result will be. Let me pause here for a moment and bring the President's mind back to the first proposal that was put forward on behalf of the Fine Gael Party in reference to this Seanad. Our first proposal was "get six just men in the Irish Free State, men of integrity, ability and independence on whom you agree and whom you can trust, and give them the job of selecting and electing the members of the Seanad and we will take whatever Seanad they throw up". The answer to that proposal was "you cannot get six or seven just men for that kind of job". I ask the President how is he going to get seven just men from each county council to do the job in the way that it ought to be done? I say that it cannot be done.

The President

When was it said that you could not get six or seven just men?

Mr. Costello

In the Committee, and the proposal was turned down on that.

The President

Agreement was the difficulty. It was never said that you could not get six or seven just men. The question was whether agreement could be got on that.

Mr. McGilligan

Agreement because they were not of this type.

The President

Getting agreement was the difficulty, and that is a very different thing from saying that you could not get six or seven just men.

Mr. Costello

You would get agreement from this Party, but you would get no agreement from the Fianna Fáil Party on the six or seven just men unless they were just men of the type of the county councillors who would do the political job that you want them to do. The reason why we could not get any agreement for the proposal that we put forward was that neither the President nor any member of his Government is capable of conceiving that proposals put forward on this side of the House are not made with a Minister motive. Every proposal that is put forward from this side is regarded by the President and his Ministers as if it had a sinister aspect, and they are incapable of conceiving the fact that we could put forward any proposal in a disinterested fashion. That is the reason why our proposals are turned down.

Let us see how we can get seven just men from the county councils to do this particular job without pressure and without undertakings that ought not to be given—without getting handovers for their votes. Assuming that we get over that very great difficulty, what are you going to get from these seven men? You are going to get what ought not to be allowed in connection with the election of the Seanad—provincialism and parochialism. These seven men are going to be ordered by their own county councils; they are going to be subject to what we call local patriotism if you like to designate it with that term; they are going to be subject to pressure, direct or indirect, to elect men of their own counties irrespective of their merits, and irrespective of the qualifications that Senators ought to have. You are going to have people elected because they belong to the county Kerry, to North Tipperary or to South Tipperary or to anywhere else, and not because they have the qualifications that are necessary. In my view—and I hold the view very strongly—even if you get over the very grave objections on political grounds and grounds of public policy to these proposals, you are not going to get from this type of electorate a proper basis of selection from the panel of candidates that will be set up, nor the type of broad-minded opinion and unbiassed judgment that was envisaged. If this is accepted, it means that we are not going to get any sort of Seanad that will command the confidence of the people in this type of electorate that is going to be put forward.

I have been wondering why it was that this proposal was put forward so belatedly. The obvious reason, of course, is that the Government want to get their political nominees into the Seanad. I came to the conclusion that, perhaps, we were not sufficiently charitable towards the Government: that they did not want to have a political Seanad and that, perhaps, the President did not know or was not informed that his Party had a majority in the majority of the county councils; and the only conclusion—if I may give the President credit for that particular type of ignorance— that I could come to is that the Government want to get their revenge on the Labour Party. That is the only explanation of these proposals—that, apart from the desire of the President and his colleagues to get such political representation on the Seanad as would satisfy them, if these proposals are put into effect, it is quite obvious and clear that, certainly for some time to come, the Labour Party will not get their proper voice in the election of the Seanad. I think that the Government Party want that. I think that they want to teach the Labour Party a lesson on account of the criticism the Labour Party have been levelling at the Government for some time past. I think that, on account of that criticism, they want to bring the Labour Party to heel. I see no other explanation—being charitably disposed towards the Government—than that. Perhaps, however, they want to do both things. Perhaps they want to advance their own political interests and to find place for the numerous camp followers, as Deputy Norton calls them, belonging to the Fianna Fáil Party, in the Seanad—to reward the people who have stood by them in the last few years by means of subscriptions and in other ways in the various types of organisations that will nominate to the Seanad—and at the same time to give a dig to the Labour Party.

I think that the proposals here, certainly, have not been justified. No mere abuse by the Minister for Industry and Commerce of our proposals, such as he indulged in on the last occasion, will do anything to prove they are not justified. If the President or the Minister, or others of his colleagues, have any valid and cogent reasons to advance against our proposals or in favour of their own, let them give them. So far, however, they have been silent in justification of the proposals put forward here. The reasons that have been put forward by us in opposition to these proposals here are unanswerable, in my view. The arguments put forward by Deputy Anthony, by Deputy O'Sullivan, and the arguments I have reiterated now, are unanswerable, in my opinion. I hold that this proposal is entirely contrary to the public interest and to the interest of those who want to have a Seanad as part of the State institution, and I hold that this proposal is going to bring the institution of the Seanad into very great disrepute. We do not want that. We want to have a proper Seanad. No member of the opposite side can say that the proposals we put forward were intended in any way to advance our own interests. All our proposals were at the expense of our political interests, and, that being so, it should be taken as some evidence of our disinterestedness in this matter. We approached the President's proposals in the same spirit, and we dislike the President's proposals for the same reason, nor have we heard anything so far to support his proposals.

Mr. Brennan

As one deeply interested in local authorities, and particularly in county councils, Sir, let me make an appeal on behalf of county councils. County councils are elected for a particular purpose. Their function is one of administration, pure and simple, and does not go beyond that. Deputy Costello said that it would not be in the public interest to introduce a system like this for the purpose of the setting up of a Seanad. I entirely agree with Deputy Costello. Taking the main function of a county council to be administrative and nothing else, the Fianna Fáil Party, forgetting all that—or, at least, not forgetting it, but wiping it off entirely— said that they should have county councillors who would be "yes-men" to the Government, and on that account they introduced Party politics into the county councils. I am sure the Minister for Industry and Commerce will recollect that. They said they wanted county councils introduced in a particular way, and by doing so they introduced Party politics into the county councils. My experience of the county councils has been that, even during the number of years since the Fianna Fáil Party did introduce Party politics into the county councils, there has been a waning off in the last two or three years of Party colouring in the affairs of county councils. The reason for that is that, down the country, administration has to be carried on apart from Party lines, and, with the exception of a few little appointments such as warble-fly inspectors and so on, the ordinary administration of the county councils has been fairly well done and they have carried on their work apart from Party lines. That is as it should be.

Now, it does not matter what the President or anybody else in this House says about a non-political Seanad. Everybody knows that you cannot get a non-political Seanad. It is foolish to talk about it because, when all is said and done, unless you have people who are interested in politics on such bodies, they are no use. Everybody knows that; but here you have an attempt by the Government to introduce deliberately into this matter of nomination and election to the Seanad something that will be an inducement to county councillors to keep Party colouring always in the forefront. I have said that the tendency to work on Party lines in county councils has been disappearing. The cause of its disappearance is that there was no reason to keep it up, but now there is something very definite. If county councillors feel that they are being embodied in this way in a statute for the purpose of electing a Seanad, the Party lines must be kept up and, no matter what anybody says, the county councils will be forced to be political.

Deputy Moore was a member of the committee which sat and which reported to this House, and the report of which has been playing a considerable part in this discussion. At that committee, Deputy Moore did not advance the idea of chairmen of county councils being specially selected for nomination to a panel; much less did he put forward any suggestion that the members of county councils, or any percentage of them, should form the electorate, with or without any other body. Wherever this bright idea came from, it failed to emerge while the commission was meeting and when it presented the variety of reports that we have in this booklet; and it failed to emerge before the committee which recently sat. Even when, by repulsion, the members of the Government Party on that committee were forced to consider schemes for an electorate other than what was in the Bill, the only two proposals we got were those tabled by the Minister for Industry and Commerce and his colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance. The Minister for Industry and Commerce suggested that the electorate should be either as in the Draft Bill—that is, Dáil Eireann and the unsuccessful candidates—or the members of the Dáil only. His colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, put forward a proposal in writing that the Seanad should be elected by members of the Dáil by a system of proportional representation or, alternatively, through a committee elected by the members of the Dáil on the system of proportional representation; preferably the Dáil should elect directly. Out of the united intelligence of all these various people on these different commissions and committees, and the special vigilance of those people so drawn to schemes as to formulate them in a precise way, not a single mind in public discussion lit upon this idea of a joint electorate of the local councils, or some selection of them and the Dáil until it came forward at this stage here.

Deputy O'Sullivan has, I think, done a useful service in pointing out what the acceptance of this proposal means. I do not find amongst members of the public who are at all interested in these proposals about the Seanad any realisation of what is being proposed. We have spent a lot of time arguing about provisional Seanads, as opposed to permanent ones and about schemes for nomination. We are at the last portion of the measure now, and it is as completely out of proportion in its purpose as any other part of the scheme that has been discussed. If you have a limited system of nomination, which we have now in the proposals before us, if the electorate is based almost entirely, or primarily, on political divisions, then of course there is going to be no chance that the specialised experience and knowledge which is sought for in the Second Chamber will be found, because the members of our new assembly will no doubt pass judgment, with politics almost entirely as their view point. There is no acceptance of the idea, amongst the public interested in this matter, that the electorate will be a political body. There is confusion in the public mind, I find, owing to this talk about nominating panels, the confusion going to this point: that there is a belief prevalent in many sections amongst the public, that these panels are not merely to be allowed to nominate, but that they are to go further and be allowed to elect. I consider that it will come as a shock to many people, who are happy in their present consciousness of these proposals, when they do face the reality, the reality being that the Dáil shall elect or that we shall have an election based entirely on politics, an electorate composed of the Dáil and certain members of the local authorities.

We have gone very far from what was talked of as the ideal, on which we were to have a Seanad that would not have a completely political outlook. I did not realise that the political view was so definite in the minds of the Government until I read the speech delivered on the 2nd December by the Minister for Finance. In criticising certain suggestions contained in an amendment down to my name, with regard to special registers and special panels, he attempted to pour ridicule on the idea by questioning whether any request had been made to these bodies to find out whether or not they approved of their names being used. His comments on that are interesting. He thought of course that the consent of these people was not requested, and he thought that that was a deliberate evasion of a clear duty. He thought that they had not been asked, and that the reason they had not been asked was that it was recognised that they would refuse, and the reason that they would refuse is given by himself. He asks:—

"Does anybody mean to tell me that an Association such as the Architectural Association of Ireland or the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland—associations formed entirely for a professional purpose— want to be turned into a political cockpit? There is to be only one Senator elected by these two associations jointly, and does anyone imagine they will allow themselves to be turned into a political cockpit? Because that is what will happen if members have to take sides in this political affair."

So that the root idea of the Minister for Finance in this whole matter is that the election of the Seanad is a political affair, and that if you establish a panel of members of a body to vote at the Seanad election you are immediately introducing politics as between the members of that body. Of course, if people have that viewpoint, if that is the viewpoint that is prevalent, why pretend any longer that there is any scheme in the mind of the Government other than one that is based on politics? If it is believed that by asking anybody in the country, no matter what their professional foundation may be, to elect a Senator, you turn them into a political cockpit, because they are to be asked to pass judgment definitely on a political affair, if that is the view that prevails we need not pretend that the Government are trying to get a Seanad other than one that is based on the most definite political lines. That phrase of the Minister is very illuminating and shows that we have departed altogether from the idea of getting a Seanad of a vocational type. We have done so because the idea that prevails, or that should prevail according to the Minister, is politics. That being so, I think the Government should be at least frank in their attitude and say: "That is our point of view, and because we have that viewpoint we realise that there is no use in fumbling about with schemes. Let us approach the matter purely on a political basis because the matter is a political affair."

We have dropped a few things other than the pretence that there is nothing of politics in this matter. We are going now to have a definitely political electorate. As between the two proposals, that of the Labour Party and that of the Government, I have a slight preference for the Dáil as the electorate. It will be more blatantly and openly political. There will be less camouflage about it. There will be no attempt at pretence; all the masks will have been dropped. That is the best way to get a political association. Let us divide according to Parties and we will decide what the respective strength of our Parties will be in the Seanad in due course. That is the honest way of dealing with the matter. It is dishonest to pretend that you are going to have anything but a political body by adding the county councils. I do not know whether any attempt has been made to discuss the effect of that proposal, but, as far as Fianna Fáil could achieve it, the county councils, at the last election, were definitely constituted on a political basis. I quoted a pamphlet here before which was issued by the Fianna Fáil Party in electoral area No. 5 in Dublin. The pamphlet may have been issued in other areas also. Under the heading of "No politics" there were two phrases used, with this as the culminating one: "In view of the extended franchise, a smashing majority for Fianna Fáil will be a vote of confidence in the Government and approval of the principle of a fair deal for every citizen."

The Minister for Industry and Commerce in June, 1936, was given the credit of opening the Fianna Fáil campaign, at the Red Bank Restaurant, in connection with the local elections in Dublin, and he there definitely was of opinion that it would be an undesirable thing that there should be any doubt at the present time about the solidarity of the people in supporting the policy of the Government. He thought it was ridiculous to think that attention to national and political considerations should have no place in municipal affairs. He thought it was undesirable to be exposed to the gave of foreigners in having Mr. Alfred Byrne as Lord Mayor of the City, because they might "mistake that political opinion as representative of the capital city of the Irish Free State." As far as the Minister could, he went out of his way to make the whole election a completely political one. He was not the only one, of course. There were a great many other phrases used at the time. The Vice-President told us that he was in favour of democratic Government and that if any Party in the county councils failed to do their duty, it was the duty of the Government to abolish them. He detailed in another speech how that duty must be done. He said that doing their duty meant supporting Fianna Fáil in its programme.

The Minister for Finance, speaking at Dun Laoghaire, said that it was useless for the Government to provide money for schemes if they had not representatives on their councils to spend the money. He went further in a statement which can only, I think, be characterised as an attempt at corruption, when he said at Arklow that the people of Arklow might elect a hostile council to look after their interests, but if they elected the right people the Government would see that a substantial amount of money would be available for public works in the town. In a variety of ways—I have a number of speeches here, all of which might be quoted—the present Government went out to make the local elections as completely a political matter as they could. The President spoke at four separate places and the whole tenor was support for the Central Government, co-operation with the Central Government, support for the Government in public and in private, and after it was all over, what Deputy Norton has quoted here at great length was undoubtedly the pass-word of the day, that the Government had won on the local councils. The President, who was brought out on to the platform on several occasions during that campaign, and who issued a note of victory after the election results had been declared, now comes here and tells us that he has no knowledge of the composition of the local councils; that he does not know what is the composition of the General Council of County Councils, and that he does not know what is going to be the result of selecting seven delegates from each of the county councils to join with the members of the Dáil here in electing a Seanad.

He has used this phrase about 44 per cent. Will he analyse that 44 per cent., which he says was the Party's representation on the Councils—it can hardly be crowed over as a large victory if that is the correct figure— and see whether it represents, as Deputy Costello said, the majority on a majority of the councils; whether it may not have been that the 44 per cent. figure is produced, because on certain councils the Party did very badly, but they are a majority on the local bodies? I do not think anybody will be taken in by this pretence on the part of the President that he does not know what the representation is, and I do not think anybody is going to listen to an argument which denies that this particular electorate has been added to the Dáil for the single purpose of trying to rectify what the President previously tried and failed to rectify by the gerrymandering of the constituencies.

Deputy Professor O'Sullivan points to one other important matter. When the Constitution had been introduced and was being discussed we were told that there was a new idea with regard to the Seanad; that there was this very valuable scheme in it, that a government on its election would not find itself faced, as might have been the case under other schemes, with a Seanad hostile to it; that there was going to be a complete cleavage. We are going to have a situation as they have in America, where they deliberately aim at having a lag; as far as one of their representative Houses is concerned, that body does not change its composition to any great extent until in the midway term of the Presidential office. We deliberately decided not to have that. We were deliberately having the other scheme, and that was that the Seanad would go out of being when the Dáil went out. Consequently, the phraseology used at the time of the passing of the Constitution and all the arguments on the measure were to the effect that, when the new Government came in, that new Government would get, through the nominees given to the President and through the scheme that was to be devised, a Seanad that would be in line with the Dáil.

If the Dáil is to be the electorate for certain Senators that aim can be achieved. But if the Dáil, numbering 138, is to be out-voted by the addition of a couple of hundred members of local authorities, and if those members of local authorities are hereafter on every occasion to be found as stale in their representation as the present people are, we have deliberately dropped what was alleged to be the aim of having a clean cut on each occasion; of taking the Seanad out of existence when the Dáil went out, and allowing a completely new Seanad to be modelled according to the new view of the new Government when the new Government came in. This scheme, in a fumbling way, will allow for something approaching the American system. If we are adopting the American system in a clean-cut way, and if the rest of your scheme is modelled to suit that, that is one thing. To aim at getting a clean-cut division between the old and the new Seanad at the moment when the division is being made between the old and the new Dáil would be a completely different scheme, and has its merits also. But in this slipshod way to allow a hangover to take place has no merits, and it has not been argued as if it were a deliberate aim. Of course, the President has said here that we must think of this in connection with Seanads to come in future years, and not in connection with the Seanad immediately before us. Everybody knows that the one preoccupation which the President has at the moment is the first Seanad. What happens after that does not matter to him. Everything had been carefully arranged in connection with the Constitution. The electorate had been gerrymandered for the last election, and the Seanad was to come into being after that. Everything was arranged with a view to getting the first Seanad to be in agreement with the President's viewpoint. What would happen after that would be left to the further manipulation in the interim that would elapse between the last general election and the next one.

At any rate, it is quite clear and has to be admitted that in a variety of ways we have got clean away from that scheme of the clean cut. There is to be a register of nominating bodies. That register, in each year, will be completed by some date in March of that year. If an election occurs in the June of that year, the new Dáil coming here will find itself faced with a panel of nominating bodies fixed by the Party strength of the Dáil that has gone out. In addition to that, the new Dáil, meeting in whatever its new Party strength is going to be, will find itself outvoted by a number of people selected from county councils who may have been elected four or five or possibly eight or nine years before. In two ways, firstly, by the restriction on the nominations and, secondly, by the addition of what may happen to be the state representation on county councils to the new membership of the Dáil, there is a definite attempt to tie the new Government coming into power with a new political Party behind it; there is an attempt to tie it both by the system of nominations and by the electoral device of their predecessors and possibly in support of their predecessors.

The President objected to the view which I expressed as to the gerrymandering of the constituencies. I can see the reason why those changes have taken place in the Seanad Bill. If the gerrymandering of the constituencies had given the President a majority over all Parties then, of course, there would be no necessity to go to any roundabout system in connection with the Seanad. He would simply have said: "Let the new Dáil elect them." The President was there with his 11 nominees in his first; he would get a majority when there was a majority in the Dáil, and he was aiming at that majority. He was aiming at it although, as I have said, the Seanad is going to have very little in the way of power. There is power in the Seanad to obstruct legislation for 90 days in the main, and 21 days in the case of a Money Bill. That power can be abridged through the use by the Government of a certain Article of the Constitution, but the extreme limit of delay which the Seanad has is 90 days in the case of ordinary legislation and 21 days in regard to money matters. The Government of the day has power which it can use to abridge that time. That period of 90 days and 21 days can be cut down to 24 hours.

Notwithstanding that that is the limitation of power put upon the Seanad, the President does not want to have the appearance of there being even a Second House in the country against him. That would be bad; the advertisement of that might lead to a further decline in the Party strength. Consequently, there was a very definite scheme, all dove-tailed together, for the last election. The Seanad was to come into being afterwards; the Constitution was to have been carried by a triumphant majority; a carefully selected, carefully gerrymandered system the aim of which was the keeping of the Presidential Party in power. I notice that on the occasion when I was not here, on the 2nd December, the President admitted what I had alleged against him in the way of gerrymandering. He said: "What has been called gerrymandering, and what has been criticised and abused as gerrymandering recently, was an attempt— and I will admit that I was one of the principal culprits, if one could speak of culprits in that matter—to try to face that fact"—that fact being that you might have a condition of stalemate—"and to try to have a reasonable amount of proportional representation which would give an opportunity to any group in a constituency, that can command one-fourth of the voters in that constituency, to get representation; but it seems that, sometimes, the inevitable result of having proportional representation is that we are brought up against some of the same sort of difficulties that have been found in countries on the Continent, such as France, Belgium and elsewhere."

We have now an acceptance by the President that some little bit of gerrymandering was necessary. Of course, this is a carefully thought-out phrase to pretend that all that was aimed at was to give better rights to minorities. If the whole scheme for the electorate had been worked out, having all the constituencies in the country so reduced in size that they would be three-member constituencies, then this scheme would have got a proper run through the country. We know definitely that that is not going to happen. We know that the constituencies in which the three-member idea was tried were carefully selected. The President talks about stalemate. Supposing he had not gerrymandered the constituencies, or tried this carefully devised scheme, the House would be sitting here in the proportion of 63 members supporting the Government and 75 as between all the other Parties. That would not have been stalemate. It would be much less of stalemate than what has happened on account of this successful scheme of gerrymandering. If there were only 63 members in the Government Party, with 75 Deputies facing them, it would be possible to achieve what that division of Party strength would have represented in the country.

Very well. There is then the situation in which we secured a gerrymandered House, but it was not sufficiently so and, not being satisfied with its constitution, we now require a change in the scheme for the election of a Seanad, and the change is to add on the stale councils to the present membership of the Dáil. There is the hope that if they were added on there would be a better return given. As between the Dáil and the county councils, both are political; one is more political than the other, but the Dáil, at any rate, has this advantage, that it is blatantly and openly so, and there is no question of hiding what is at the back of the scheme if we accept the Dáil, and for the reason of showing up the whole scheme of politics that is in this, I am in favour of the Dáil rather than a camouflaged scheme of the Dáil and the county councils. This cannot be correctly understood unless, even in a very brief way, one remembers what has passed. There is to be a system now of restricted nominations. The nominations are put under the control of a man who may, and probably will, be under the control of a member of the Government. On a particular panel there is to be special restriction. On one of the panels there is to be nomination by the President, and on that same panel there is to be nomination by the greatest political body in the country, the General Council of County Councils. In addition, the President has his eleven nominees in his hand. Remember that what is happening here now is that instead of allowing a fifty-fifty result in the numbers to be elected to the Seanad, we are to try to swing a little further to the Government side by throwing in these unrepresentative bodies. That is a completely political programme.

There is a departure entirely from the idea of trying to get a Seanad that is not political in its composition, and that is not divided on the lines of Party politics. If this scheme goes through, it will be successful in achieving that result, and there is the possibility that it will leave a Dáil and a Government that may not have the political complexion of the present Government, tied up with a group that will be completely unrepresentative in so far as the appeal to the country has resulted. Even though the county councils are very political bodies, there might be some balancing reason against their introduction at this moment if it could be said that the county councils are inherently the proper type of people to pass judgment on the men nominated by these nominating bodies, or the men who will be nominated through the Dáil.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce apparently thinks it is a strong and cogent argument to say that a scheme that I have, brought in the county councils. Let us consider that. I bring them in and I say they are only a secondary choice. I adopt them and I bring them in for one purpose. I say they might be entitled to elect, not to nominate, six members of the Seanad. There would be six members of the Seanad who would be supposed to be interested in, or have knowledge and practical experience of the interests of, agriculture. I think that is giving them a fairly useful function to perform, and if we gave them that we might be doing what Deputy Brennan pleaded for: we might be diverting them back to the viewpoint that they ought to have if they were properly elected. What are the local authorities, the county councils, in the main? They are supposed to be the representatives of the ratepayers, and I take it the ratepayers would cover the agriculturists in the country. They are supposed to be the people elected in the ordinary democratic way to represent the interests of the farming community.

We ask that those people—not seven selected by each of the county councils, which would give political Parties a better chance to show their hand—but that the whole group of them, every man, whether he be a person representing no Party or one of a group representing the largest Party in the State—that all those people, voting on the lines of proportional representation, should select six people, and these six people, to whom we direct their attention would be six representatives of agriculture. Surely that is a wholesome idea—to try to divert the thoughts of these men back from the divisions introduced by the President, the Vice-President and other Ministers and to get them concentrated on the representation of agriculture. Would not they be the proper people to pass judgment on men nominated by various groups or by the Dáil and to discriminate between these nominees as to who would be best entitled to sit in the Seanad as having knowledge and practical experience of agriculture? That is a limited field for them. It is the proper field for them. What is proposed here? We are to have a series of nominating bodies. Let us assume that the nominating bodies will have some relation to the people mentioned in the Oireachtas Commission Report or in the variety of reports from the committees. There are to be professional bodies and industrial bodies as nominators. There will be professional bodies of the legal type and of the medical type. There will be teachers and others, and we are asked to believe that seven men from each of the local authorities, selected, as they will be—I think this will not be denied—on the basis of Party strength on each council, are the proper authorities to pass judgment and say who are the men best fitted to represent the interests of industry, the interests of law, the interests of education, and the interests of medicine. Can anybody say there is any virtue in that proposal, leaving politics aside? If they were the proper people to pass judgment, then, even though they might be tinged with politics, there would be something to be said for them. A mere statement like that reveals clearly that these men play no proper function in that selection, that they have no proper standard with which to judge these matters. The proposal, judged in that way, must be condemned. The proposal to allow them to pass judgment on a certain limited group and elect six Senators to represent agriculture does bring them back to their proper moorings and allows them to pass judgment where they are entitled to do so and to play a function where it is proper for them to do so.

Only two schemes are being discussed at the moment. However, a different proposal has to be thought of. At the moment, we are thinking in terms of the relative weakness or strength of two political electorates—a blatantly political electorate, if we take the Dáil, or the more highly coloured political electorate which is here in a concealed way, if one takes the Dáil and the county councils. Opposed to those two, there is an entirely different scheme— a scheme of registers. I do not think that the public appreciate what is in the balance here on the question we are discussing. There is public confusion as between the nominating bodies and the electorate. Members of the public have got it into their heads that because nominating bodies are being spoken of in this connection these bodies are going to have the right not only to nominate but to elect. It should be clearly understood after this debate that, so far as election is concerned, all sorts of specialised groups of electors have gone. Perhaps I should make an exception. All have gone except the group which has specialised in politics. There is no longer any question of electoral bodies or a series of electoral colleges or a group of voters on special registers because of their special qualifications. That all goes. The scheme we now have is a peculiar one. Again, I have heard no argument as to its virtues. We have a restricted type of nomination and to a very limited group of nominees we have the application of a number of political minds. That is the beginning and end of the proposal before the Dáil, so that all the literature written in other countries and the viewpoints adopted from that literature—expressed here with a certain amount of approval —all the reports that have been couched in the strain of trying to get a Seanad based upon some scheme of profession, occupation, or vocation, have now gone. We have the simple proposition, as the Minister for Finance told us, that this is a political affair and had best, being such, be handed over to the politicians. There should no longer be any pretence about it.

Against that, there is the other scheme of registers. I went through that scheme at length before and I do not propose to go into it again. There are the registers I suggested. I asked that any one group should be taken as a test and discussed so that we should see whether it was insufficient or more than sufficient, whether it could be regarded as including the correct type of person to pass judgment on these men of specialised experience and knowledge. Not ten minutes' argument has been devoted to that point. We have the Minister for Finance stating that this is a political matter. In the committee, we had the Minister for Industry and Commerce stating that these registers could not be prepared. Then, he would have them. Then, again, he said they were impossible. Then the argument developed slowly down to this—that there was not a sufficiency of vocational organisations in the country and that we could not have schemes based upon them. At the end of the last night's debate, the President told us that the difficulty was not that there was a dearth of these organisations but that there were too many of them. Surely, we could test the matter out in the case of some one group. The Seanad will not have amazing powers. It will have very limited powers of delay, as I have explained. Is it not worth while to make an experiment, even if that experiment is confined to one panel? If the experiment cannot be enlarged so as to include the whole 43, why not take it with regard to the five to be elected as from the educational and cultural panel. There is a group of bodies set out here which can be called good bodies from that viewpoint—men who could pass judgment and be allowed to nominate as well as elect; men who could pass a good judgment on the attainments of people with knowledge and practical experience of education, culture, and so forth. These people could be used as a test as to whether the registers were a good scheme or not. We could have a practical test and see if the people selected in this way played a part in the discussion of legislation which would warrant the extension of the test to other panels. We could contrast these Senators with people elected through the Dáil. We could get a glaring contrast between the habits of mind and the attitude to legislation presented by the four or five given to us in that way, mainly operating away from Party politics, and the attitude of mind of those chosen on a political basis. I suggest that the only reason the experiment is not tried in the case of a limited group is that the President does not want that contrast made because it would be a glaring one and would prevent the people moving towards a political Seanad again. Perhaps that is not the right panel on which to test this matter out. Perhaps the administrative panel would be a better one, but I suggest the education panel as a good one for the purpose of test. I suggest that if we are not going to have the special-electorate or the special-register system tried out as a whole, it should be tried for one group.

And then he wishes the Labour Party to stop and learn as he has—that if they come in, they will not turn out the Seanad or do away with the idea of a Seanad. But we have gone a long way from the Abbé Siéyes down to that lecture to the Labour Party. "The fresh minds that make a revising Chamber worth having." Will he just go a little step further? How are you likely to get the fresh minds? By getting the people here to cast their eyes over a lot of people who will be given to them through a restricted nomination, to rule and measure them by the Party rule, and to ask a group of hide-bound politicians to move up into a Second Chamber, and to ask them then to remember from whence they sprang and to remember that they will be weighed in the balance and that their political fate will depend on how they operate in the Second House? Does the President tell me, when all this is going to happen, that you are going to get the impact of fresh minds on legislation and a revising Chamber that will be any good?

I quoted before to the President the view expressed by a recent commentator on some of the newer political constitutions of Europe, that if you are always going to have a Second Chamber merely a replica of the First, then you are certainly dooming an institution to decay, because people will certainly reflect and say: "This is the same as whatever the representative House is; it is only a useless expense which encumbers the political situation and sweep it away." Those people who have commented on these constitutions in recent years have all said that unless you can get a new principle for a Seanad, some new basis of selection, something different from geographic democracy, something better than that, it is worse than useless to be setting up a Seanad, because you are only inviting people to look on it with odium, and you are giving it no chance to create in the minds of the people who look on it anything except odium. The wit of man had been good enough to devise other schemes and other ideas. They vary from place to place but, in the main, they are founded upon this, that you are trying to get a body of people who will bring to bear on legislative problems the impact of specialised experience and knowledge. How should you try to get that specialised experience and knowledge? Is it not clear that, provided always the organisations are there, you will get it better by having specialised organisations to make the choice, rather than by having a political Chamber to make the choice? I was always afraid of the argument, and I never could understand why it had such currency in the country: "We have not got these organisations." Up to the second last night on which we debated this, that was the argument that prevailed—that we have not got these or, at least, that we have not got them in a sufficiency to enable that scheme to be adopted. On the second last night, the President told us that the difficulty was not that we had not enough of these organisations, but that we had too many of them. That is what we have come to in the end. There is now no argument based on insufficiency. The only argument is that they would embarrass us by being too plentiful. Let us—and it could be done easily—choose some one panel where there will not be this embarrassment. Given that limited educational and cultural group, let the people who are to pass judgment on the nominees brought forward give us their Senators and let them stand in contrast to the people given by the political groups meeting here. If we could get that opportunity, that one demonstration made to the people, we will get a Seanad worth preserving and the impact of fresh minds. We will certainly not get it from the present scheme.

Mr. T. Linehan

I wonder if the President, when he introduced this amendment, gave any consideration at all to the feelings of the Minister for Local Government? The objection has been raised here that the bringing in of the county councils, or some members of them, as electors to the new Seanad has caused the continuance of very heated Party politics in the county councils. Anyone who has watched the operations of county councils during the last year must have noticed the number of letters sent from the Local Government Department to various county councils concerning the collection of rates. Complaints were made that the rates were not collected, inquiries were held and rate collectors suspended for not doing their duty. I do not think the Minister for Local Government would be pleased to see county councils coming once again into the political arena and forgetting their primary duties. The county councils might claim that they were representative in 1934. If they represent the ratepayers their primary duty is to look after the interests of the ratepayers, by handling the income they have as economically as possible. I do not believe anyone could contend, since party politics were introduced into county councils, that the efficiency of these bodies has been improving. I believe that since the introduction of party politics the efficiency of these bodies has been destroyed. The proof of that statement is this, that the Minister for Local Government has letters flying through the country, kicking up the deuce of a row about the non-collection of rates. I do not believe the Minister for Local Government, having regard to the responsibilities of his office, would approve of bringing county councils into the limelight of party politics and into the clash on the Seanad electoral panel.

I see another great objection to that proposal, and it is entirely on account of a former amendment, to limit strictly the right of nomination. The addition of county councillors to the electorate will not make a proper electorate, one to pass judgment on people who will be nominated by the various vocational bodies. I fail to see how seven county councillors from each county council could properly decide the merits of nominees put forward, say, by the Irish Medical Association or by some other bodies. The reason I say that is that I believe a man nominated for senatorship by a non-political outside organisation of that type would have no hope of getting into the Seanad if he was an independent and a non-politician. The only hope a man could have of getting into the Seanad on the electorate suggested here, on the nomination of a vocational body, would be if he was as hot a politician as it was possible to have. The ordinary person conceived as a proper person to be nominated, and regarded as an independent person, would not stand any chance against the party machine when it gets into action amongst an electorate composed of politically-minded county councillors and politically-minded Deputies. I believe a very bad day's work is being done for local government in this country by the introduction of county councils to the Seanad electoral panel. Politics were introduced into the county councils within the last ten years. For the last two or three years I believe politics have been fading out there. We are now to have a reopening of the political issues of the past and new political issues introduced into every county council in the Twenty-Six Counties, because the President chooses to put them in as part of the electoral college.

I want to reiterate my objection to county councils, as at present constituted, being electors at all. If they represent anyone they represent people who were on the old rate-paying register in 1934. They cannot claim to be truly representative of the people now. They certainly do not represent adult franchise. If we are to have county councils as electors, I prefer to see fresh county council elections on the new register before they would become electors for the Seanad. If the proposal is to have a democratic Seanad, and if county councils are chosen because they are representative of the people, I seriously suggest that the Government, in honesty and fairness, must hold the elections for local councils before this scheme is put into force. When in Opposition the Government Party spoke "loud and long" about the register that was then in force. As that register was amended local elections should be held on adult franchise. I believe in the present register. If county councils are to form part of the electoral college, and are to be representative of the people we must have the county council elections held on a new register. I believe the Government has not the slightest intention of doing that. For that reason I protest emphatically against county councillors being elected on a restricted register. The county councils are not in office by virtue of election, but because the Minister for Local Government chose to extend their life. I protest emphatically against these county councils being made an electorate for a scheme like this, seeing that they are not truly representative of the people. The amendment will do damage and is I believe entirely undemocratic, because it is going to introduce the worst type of party politics, the worst type of party manoeuvring and party machinery into local bodies. Whatever Minister for Local Government will be in office in three or four years time, if he finds that he has cause of complaint with local administration, he will only have to thank the proposal in this amendment for making local councils political cockpits, by taking them away from their primary duty, which was that of dealing with local administration and not political arguments.

The President

If adjectives and phrases were going to condemn a scheme there is no doubt that this scheme would be pretty well condemned. One could apply adjectives hoping that people would not examine whether they were properly applied or not. What we have to do here is to examine this scheme to see how far any of these criticisms are justified. The Opposition are talking with two voices. There was the voice of Deputy McGilligan and Deputy O'Sullivan strongly urging a vocational Seanad, and when an attempt is made to approach that, we have Deputy Brennan and Deputy Linehan coming along and criticising it from a completely opposite point of view; from a point of view that one would expect, for example, from the Labour Party. Fundamentally, there are three schemes before us, and there are two lines of approach. One is the line of approach of the Labour Party, which is frankly: "Whatever you are going to have, you are going to have a political Seanad. There will be politicians there, anyhow, no matter what they are at the start." Frankly facing that situation, they say that no Seanad is of any value as it will ultimately become political, which is the worst type of Seanad for those who care for a Seanad at all. On the opposite side you have the proposals of the Fine Gael Deputies who say: "All right, we would like to have a vocational Seanad. Let us have it now." Manifestly on their own showing the organisations for that are not there. In order to get a scheme they put on the Order Paper a proposal which means: "Have any sort of scheme you want for the present." They say they will give us full liberty to have any form of Seanad if I will only set up a committee to see what sort of scheme we are going to have for the future, and in the same breath, while they say: "Make it as political as you like," they come along and blame us because they say we are loading the dice in favour of our Party. Surely there is no consistency in that.

Mr. Brennan

But this is permanent.

The President

It is no more permanent than any other Act of Parliament is. Any Dáil can put forward a scheme for the amendment of this, which is only an Act of Parliament. It is not a part of the Constitution. It was deliberately kept out of the Constitution. If there was a case for a scheme for forming a Second House, which seemed to be thoroughly satisfactory, it would have been put into the Constitution, but what we have here is an Act of Parliament. Where are we in this matter? We have to make up our minds on the two views to which I was referring. It is quite possible that all Parties are divided on these views: that the Labour Party even, if they canvassed their members, would find that there is not unanimity in their viewpoint as regards the Seanad. I would say the same is true of the Fine Gael Party, and it is probably true of ourselves. If you were to go and examine each individual's opinion about it you would get some holding the view that there ought to be no Seanad at all, and others saying that we want a vocational Seanad so badly that we should go out now and have a whole series of general elections, for that is what Deputy McGilligan's proposal amounts to.

We are taking the middle course in this matter, and because we do that we are attacked from both sides. Taking the views that have been expressed on this side and the views that we had to-day from Deputy O'Sullivan and Deputy McGilligan as representing Fine Gael, let us see how far we are in agreement. I accept the statement made to-day by Deputy O'Sullivan as to the objectives which I said we had in view. He agrees with them. As between these spokesmen, representing the Fine Gael view, and ourselves there is this much in agreement, that if it were possible at the present time we would rather have a Seanad of a vocational character than the Seanad proposed by the Labour Party, or even the one that we are proposing ourselves. There is agreement then as to the advisability of going as far as possible on that course.

I take the view that, at the present time, we are not organised functionally in such a way that we could go to the functional bodies and say, "We will hand over to you the complete and direct election to the Seanad." Deputy McGilligan tried to make play with the fact that at one time we had not enough, and that at another time we had too much, but it is possible to have too much and too little at the one time in regard to functional organisations. Take the cultural panel that we are dealing with. Suppose that you had a definite cultural organisation, say the Gaelic League as it was long ago, representing one side of cultural activity, and a couple of other organisations, then you might say, "We need not go any further; we have here the material which can elect at once for the cultural panel, and we can give these bodies the opportunity of electing directly." That is what Deputy McGilligan wants us to do now as an experiment. I answer him in this way —that I do not think we could do that with the bodies he speaks of. First of all, you would have to allot so many to each. He talked loosely about the Fáinne, but does he know anything about the organisation of the Fáinne? Are the conditions for getting it recognised in every part of the country? I think it is true to say that you have a number of people wearing the Fáinne who do not get it in the ordinary way. They put it up simply because they speak Irish, and have not subjected themselves to any test to get into the organisation. You cannot talk loosely of an organisation like that and make it a statutory body.

There are other organisations. I say that the nature of all these would have to be examined very carefully before we could say to them that we were prepared to hand over to them the right to elect directly to the Seanad. Therefore, even in the case of the cultural panel, I do not think we have a situation in which we could say here and now, "We will allow you to elect direct to the Seanad," and do it as an experiment. Suppose we had a very large Seanad, we might possibly give to the Bar Association the opportunity of electing one Senator, and the same to the various organisations representing other professions. It is possible that, perhaps in the near future, you may get panels of functional organisations of such a character that you could hand over to them the complete election, but I do not think that we have arrived at that stage yet.

Deputy McGilligan suggests that his scheme should be taken as an experiment, but when you look at his list you see that it is not possible to do that at the moment. Take the case of agriculture. We would have to depend, in the main, on a secondary body in order to get a representative for agriculture. Therefore, I hold that we have not functional organisations sufficiently well defined here to hand over to them complete and direct election to the Seanad. I am sure Deputy Norton will say, "Now you are arguing in favour of my scheme. You are seeking to get something from your own which does not exist." I say that I may not be able to get this completely, but I am moving in that direction. Deputies may say that if we have bodies good enough to nominate, then they ought to be good enough to elect. I say that is nonsense. You can have bodies good enough to nominate, to bring to the surface people who could be regarded as suitable for nomination, but then you require to have some other body to pass judgment on them. You get in that way an assurance that better people will be shown, as available material, by vocational organisations by way of nomination if they know that they have to be submitted to the judgment of a fairly representative body. That is what is behind our scheme. We say that we are not sufficiently advanced to give over the direct and complete election of Senators to those bodies, but we say that these organisations ought to be sufficiently well advanced to give us the material for selecting at least one half. We give them the inducement to put forward such candidates by assuring them in advance that they would get 21. In order that the powers of the outside bodies will be as great as possible, we want to have a limitation so that the electorate would have to pass judgment on a very restricted number, and that we would be almost certain to get as near as we can to election by those bodies. But immediately the word "limitation" is mentioned, I am attacked on the one hand by Deputy Brennan and in a more extreme way by Deputy Linehan, who says that in setting up this electorate we are restricting their choice: that we are not giving them the opportunity of picking and choosing in the way that they ought to get.

Mr. Brennan

The President agrees with that.

The President

I am going part of the way. The question here is to give the impetus in the right direction. Deputy McGilligan says that we are not going far enough. I have to proceed with caution and care and try to make a fair balance between giving the electorate a choice which would make it important for the nominating bodies to put up good candidates, knowing that there would be other rivals against them, and the desire that I have of letting the nominating bodies be responsible, as far as possible, for those who will ultimately be their representatives in the Seanad. It is a question of seeing how far you can go.

To those who say that I am in favour of a political Seanad, I say that is all nonsense. Do Deputies think that if I were in favour of something different from this, from a vocational Seanad, that I would have faced all the difficulties that we have been confronted with in even trying to move in that direction? I certainly would not. Long before we set up the commission, indeed long before we came into office, it will be found, if the debates are looked up, that at that time I gave a clear indication that the kind of Seanad I would like was a Seanad of a vocational character. Why did we not press for that? The reason we did not press for it was that I recognised all the difficulties we would be faced with here in the Dáil in trying to get a scheme of that character through. I refer to the election of Senators on a vocational basis. I hope that such a Seanad will yet come, and this is intended to be an inducement to bring about such a body, but it is the farthest that I think we can go in a practical way at the moment, although I desire to see a real vocational body established. The real difference, therefore, between the attitude of Deputy McGilligan, Deputy O'Sullivan and myself in this matter is that, first of all, they have not the responsibility of putting the scheme through. They are in a position in which they can criticise anything that we may put up with regard to this, but we have got to put up a practical scheme, and therefore, as I say, the difference between us is as to what would be a really practical scheme. I have never said at any time that a completely practical scheme could be put up—although I desire it—but I hold that this scheme goes as far in that direction of a vocational Seanad as we can go at the moment.

A couple of other faults were found with the proposed scheme, such as that the proposed Seanad was going to be more political than the Dáil. It is quite clear that the adding of the county councillors and so on will lessen its political character. You may say, perhaps, that its political character will not be lessened as a result of this scheme, but certainly its political character will not be increased by it.

Mr. Gorey

I suggest that it could be balanced better.

The President

Which could be balanced better?

Mr. Gorey

The electoral college could be balanced better than the Dáil.

The President

Well, I do not know. I must confess that I do not know what the Deputy is trying to get at. In any case, the point is that this body is, frankly, a political body with well-defined political Parties in it. It is almost inevitable, therefore, that when voting takes place, the Parties here will vote on a political Party basis. I think that that is obvious, and I think we should not close our eyes to what I think is almost patent. Now, that is at least likely to happen, and this Second Chamber, which we are going to build on this basis, undoubtedly will be the creature, and not merely the reproduction, of this Dáil. I admit that the outside bodies would influence that state of affairs to some extent, but if we take the full scheme of the Labour Party, it would mean that the proposed Seanad would be a complete reproduction of this House, both in regard to its proportional composition and to the further fact that it would be the absolute creature of this House. Now, whatever could be said for the setting up of a Second House that would be a creature, so to speak, of this House, and composed as this House is, I do not think anybody in this country would care for it very much. Undoubtedly, if we had only this House to deal with, it would be a question of setting up some revising committee, and therefore the Labour Party would say that, since there was a revising committee, which would give us an opportunity for another run, so to speak, we can send it up to that committee, and, since the Dáil have exhausted themselves on the matter concerned, we can send it up to a House composed more or less in the same way and have another run on the matter.

The question is, however, whether a Seanad of that kind would be of any use at all. I do not know. On this question of the setting up of some committee for revising purposes, purely, I know that something of that kind could be done. The nearest example to it that I can think of is in the case of Norway, but I do not think we could get as valuable criticism and discussion in such a House as in the House that will emerge as a result of this Bill.

The next criticism that was made was in regard to inconsistency. I said at one time, in explaining the proposals for this measure in the Constitution, that it would be undesirable to have what you might call a hang-over or a carry-over. You know that the old Seanad did not dissolve when the Dáil dissolved, and that there was a different period of election for the two bodies. Therefore, you had a sort of guarantee of continuance when there was a change of public opinion resulting, for example, in a change in the strength of parties in the new Government, by the fact that the Seanad did not change at the same time. In certain circumstances that would be all right. But when it meant that you had a political bloc that strove to ham-string the new Government at the first period of its office, and to ham-string the new policy that had been approved by the people, a carry-over of that kind might be very damaging and might be of a very mischievous character. I indicated that in such a dilemma—a thing that has been very much bandied about here—if there were to be a political bloc that would be able to hamper and obstruct the majority in the other House, then such a thing would only lead to a crisis, and would be dangerous in such circumstances. To provide against that we have made a provision to the effect that, when the Dáil goes out of office, the Seanad goes out.

Now, however, are we not running in the opposite direction? If, when the Dáil goes out, the Seanad goes out, whatever checking effects certain Seanads were supposed to possess will be lost. I myself have shown that I would rather not risk that danger, but it has been suggested that, as county councils will not go out of office at the same time as the Dáil, there will be, in that case at least, a little carry-over, and it is possible that, merely because a sudden change of public opinion puts a new Party into power in the Dáil, that change may not be reflected in the members of the existing county councils. That is quite true, but we have the proportion—a reasonable proportion, I think. We have got, first of all the proportion of one-and-a-half to one—I think that is the proportion— or, say, three to two. In other words, for every two members in the Dáil there will be three added on from the county councils. Accordingly, that means that as regards two of them the change takes place, and as regards three of them the change may not take place. I do not see, however, any sudden change of that sort affecting the situation, because, first of all the strength of the new Party will be shown in the Dáil, and, secondly because the Taoiseach, if there is a political bloc definitely formed and definitely out to obstruct the Government, is given a certain number by which he can take notice of the possibility of that situation. He is not to make his nominations until the other bodies have been elected, and if there is that danger he is given—and this is one of the reasons why it was given—a certain number of nominations. With regard to the nominations, I should not go into that question at this stage, perhaps, but I repeat that the number given is less than that suggested in any section of the report of the Seanad Commission.

Now, one thing in connection with this matter that I more or less resent is the suggestion that this addition from outside was put in solely in order to gain Party advantage. That is suggested by those who say here: "Set up any kind of Seanad you like." If it is a question of Party advantage, why should they make an offer of that kind? The outside body was added on for the reasons I have already given. It is not anything new. As a matter of fact, there have been propositions made that the whole Seanad should be elected by local bodies. The French Seanad, for example, is largely made up through election from representatives of the Departments. I have a short note here on the composition of the French Seanad which may be interesting to Deputies. Perhaps, it is no harm to read it in order to show that there is nothing extraordinary about this. This is the short note I have on the French Seanad: There are 300 members; 275 are elected by the Departments—the Local Government units—and Colonies; 75 are elected by the National Assembly, that is, the two Houses voting together. The Departments and the Colonies elect five, four, three, two, one each, as fixed by law. The Senators of the Departments and Colonies are elected by absolute majority from a list by a college at the local capital and composed as follows: Deputies who are from the Departments, general councillors, district councillors, delegates elected, one by each municipal council, from among the voters of the commune. The Senators chosen by the Assembly are elected from a list by an absolute majority. Senators of the Departments and Colonies are elected for nine years and renewable by thirds for three years. The Senators elected by the Assembly are irremovable, and vacancies amongst them are filled by the Seanad itself.

That shows that the idea of getting a Seanad partly by the National Assembly and partly by local councils is not extraordinary at all. It is fairly sound. Doctors were referred to. You are not asked to pass judgment on doctors. You are asked to pass judgment on the representatives of, say, unorganised labour. You are asked to pass judgment on the representatives of farmers. You are asked to pass judgment upon those who come from the administrative panel. You are asked to pass judgment on those who come from industry. Surely, municipal bodies and local government bodies are in touch with public affairs and they ought to be able to form a fairly good judgment. For instance, say A is put forward from doctors, B from lawyers, and C by members of the Dáil to represent unorganised labour. They ought to be able to form a good judgment as to whether A or B will be better as a member of the Upper House. It is not absolute experts in each of the particular professions we want. It is not the most competent surgeon that we want.

Mr. Heron

Will the President say how a representative of unorganised labour could be discovered?

The President

I am certain that we will see nominations from this House. There are rural labourers who are not organised, for example, and it is quite possible that they will come from amongst the nominations of the Dáil.

Mr. Heron

There will be representatives of unorganised labour nominated by people who have no connection whatever with labour, organised or unorganised?

The President

I have not had a complete analysis of the Dáil made. It is quite possible that you will find, amongst other Parties beside the Labour Party, people who might be regarded as interested in labour.

The President won an election on a promise to abolish the Seanad.

The President

We abolished it as constituted. Before the election I made it quite clear what our policy was by way of the Constitution or otherwise. I pointed out that we proposed to try and build up a Constitution roughly on the lines that were indicated during the debates on the Constitution. There is no question of winning an election on false pretences on that matter—our attitude was clearly indicated.

Yes; he may not be a particularly good person to pass judgment on agriculture. Therefore, it is not specialists we are looking for. That is one of the values of having an electorate of this sort. We want the men who will be sent up by those bodies, with special knowledge in one branch and good common sense in regard to the others. This electorate would be a very useful check lest from those purely vocational bodies as they are arranged at present you should get nominated for the Second House what I might call purely specialists in their particular branch. I think that under this scheme we will get, at any rate, a reasonably well-balanced Seanad. I prefer it, therefore, to Deputy Norton's scheme, which is going in another direction, and to Deputy McGilligan's scheme, which I think cannot be met at the present stage. If it is at all possible to evolve so that after a little trial we would be able to take a portion of that panel and hand it over to some vocational body—if such a body is obviously there—then I certainly hope there will be some group in the Dáil which will put forward definitely a proposition that, to the Seanad after that, such a body be allowed to elect directly.

With regard to the administrative panel there was this criticism: "You have chosen the General Council of County Councils because you have a definite majority there." Those who say that close their eyes to the fact that we have put side by side with that a municipal organisation on which I do not believe we have a majority. Why were those bodies chosen? Because they were the two bodies there obviously capable of doing the work they were being asked to do. I would ask the Dáil to believe that this scheme is being proposed not for immediate Party advantage or anything of that sort. It is proposed as a scheme which can last, and be useful even if the development which I hope will take place does not take place. We can go on contentedly with our work, and if this development does take place we will feel, at any rate, that there is a Second House capable of revising legislation, of bringing special information to bear on it, and critically examining it. It is in that sense that I am standing by this as against the other schemes.

Mr. Esmonde

I rise to oppose this amendment upon the grounds that it strikes at the very root of local Government in this country. I oppose it also on the grounds that have been advanced by the speakers on this side of the House. I think there is an aspect of this matter to which attention should be drawn. In criticising the proposal, I do not deny that there are considerable difficulties in the way of bringing into being an appropriate electorate to elect a Second House in this country. In his remarks, the President has referred to Norway and to France. I have taken the trouble of examining the method of bringing into existence the Second Houses in those countries in Europe in which there is not a hereditary Second House, and in which parliamentary government is still cherished by the people. They are Holland, Denmark, Poland, Norway, Sweden and Czecho-Slovakia. In each of those countries there is a different method of getting a Second House and, therefore, in any criticism that I have to direct against the proposal before the House at the moment I wish to state most emphatically that I realise the difficulty which everybody must be in with regard to evolving an appropriate electorate. I say, however, that no matter how great that difficulty is it should not cause the sacrifice of the spirit which should guide our local administrators in the conduct of the local administration of this country. Up to the year 1898, with the exception of some few ancient boroughs, there was no such thing as local administration in this country. In that year there was set up a number of local bodies, amongst others the county council, but in the year 1925, with the experience that we have in this country, there was introduced a new Bill, with which everybody is familiar, co-ordinating and revising the system of local government in this country. I think it was the spirit behind the introduction of that Bill, which was accepted by the people of this country, that politics should be left to this Assembly, and that the administration of local affairs should be left to the local bodies.

There were a few things the President said that I do not agree with. He said that the fact of bringing in county councils would get us away from this—that the Seanad would not be a creature of this House. He laid special emphasis upon that. I do not at all hold that the Seanad, even if it were elected by this House, would be a creature of the House. If it was a creature of anything, it would be a creature of the political Parties that set up this House and of nothing else. What is the difference, except the difference in appearances and actualities—and I am afraid they are influencing the President—what is the difference of having the same political Parties influencing the voting for the Seanad in this House and in the county councils? Are you not going to have the same thing? Where is the use of the President pointing out to Deputy Esmonde that the county councils, having certain independent business people on them, are going to get any say in the election of the seven members to be selected for this purpose? How will they get it in face of the President's own political machine? Does he not know that? There is no use in having any pretence about this thing. The same political machine that would run an election for a Seanad, with the members of this House voting, is going to do it for the county councils.

I agree entirely with what Deputy Esmonde and Deputy Linehan said with regard to county councils being elected for a particular purpose. I think a grave wrong is being inflicted on the county councils. As I endeavoured to point out, although they have been, at the instigation of Fianna Fáil, elected on purely Party lines, they have had little or no political work to do. But now they have political work to do—to maintain their Party's interests. The President said that by having the county councils or their representatives on this electorate you would have some independent judgment brought to bear on candidates. That is all humbug, and the President knows that. He knows there is not a county council in Ireland that will not be machined by political Parties. There is no use in the President submitting that that will not happen, and there is no use in the President preferring appearances to actualities. It is better to be straight about this. If the county councils were elected on another basis, and we did not know their political colouring, there might be a lot to be said for the President's view. Suppose the Irish Press, when the elections were on, had to admit that they were beaten in the local elections, would we have them brought in to-day? We would not; there would not be the least fear of it. If we are going to have a political Seanad, a political machine seeing that the votes are cast in a particular way, better admit that. I certainly deplore that the President appears to be putting appearances before actualities.

Question put: "That the words proposed to be deleted stand."

The Committee divided: Tá, 54; Níl, 46.

Tá

Aiken, Frank.
Allen, Denis.
Bartley, Gerald.
Beegan, Patrick.
Boland, Gerald.
Bourke, Dan.
Brady, Brian.
Brady, Seán.
Breathnach, Cormac.
Breslin, Cormac.
Briscoe, Robert.
Carty, Frank.
Colbert, Michael.
Kelly, James P.
Kelly, Thomas.
Kennedy, Michael J.
Lemass, Seán F.
Little, Patrick J.
McEllistrim, Thomas.
MacEntee, Seán.
Maguire, Ben.
Meaney, Cornelius.
Moane, Edward.
Moore, Séamus.
Moylan, Seán.
Munnelly, John.
O Briain, Donnchadh.
Davis, Matt.
Derrig, Thomas.
De Valera, Eamon.
Dowdall, Thomas P.
Flinn, Hugo V.
Flynn, John.
Flynn, Stephen.
Fogarty, Patrick J.
Friel, John.
Gorry, Patrick J.
Hannigan, Joseph.
Harris, Thomas.
Humphreys, Francis.
O'Grady, Seán.
O'Reilly, Matthew.
O'Rourke, Daniel.
O'Sullivan, Ted.
Ruttledge, Patrick J.
Ryan, James.
Ryan, Robert.
Sheridan, Michael.
Smith, Patrick.
Traynor, Oscar.
Tubridy, Seán.
Walsh, Laurence J.
Walsh, Richard.
Ward, Conn.

Níl

Bennett, George C.
Benson, Ernest E.
Brasier, Brooke.
Brennan, Michael.
Brodrick, Seán.
Browne, Patrick.
Burke, Patrick.
Byrne, Alfred (Junior).
Cole, John J.
Cosgrave, William T.
Costello, John A.
Dillon, James M.
Dockrell, Henry M.
Esmonde, John L.
Everett, James.
Fagan, Charles.
Giles, Patrick.
Gorey, Denis J.
Heron, Archie.
Hurley, Jeremiah.
Keating, John.
Keogh, Myles.
Lavery, Cecil.
Lawlor, Thomas.
Linehan, Timothy.
McFadden, Michael Og.
McGilligan, Patrick.
McGovern, Patrick.
McGowan, Gerrard L.
McMenamin, Daniel.
Mongan, Joseph W.
Morrissey, Daniel.
Murphy, Timothy J.
Nally, Martin.
Norton, William.
O'Brien, William.
O'Donovan, Timothy J.
O'Higgins, Thomas F.
O'Leary, Daniel.
O'Neill, Eamon.
O'Shaughnessy, John J.
O'Sullivan, John M.
Pattison, James P.
Redmond, Bridget M.
Reynolds, Mary.
Rogers, Patrick J.

Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and Smith; Níl: Deputies Everett and Heron.

Question declared carried.

Main question put and declared carried.

Dr. Ryan

I move amendment No. 91:—

In page 13, before Section 21, to insert a new section as follows:—

"(1) Not later than, in the case of the first Seanad election, the 31st day of January, 1938, or, in the case of every subsequent Seanad election, one month after the dissolution of Dáil Eireann which occasions such Seanad election, every council of a county or a county borough shall hold a meeting at which such council shall elect in accordance with this section and regulations made thereunder seven persons (in this section referred to as electors) to the electorate for such Seanad election.

(2) The following provisions shall apply and have effect in relation to the election of electors in pursuance of this section, that is to say:—

(a) every candidate for election as an elector shall be nominated in writing by two members of the council (in this section referred to as the electing council) by which the election is being made;

(b) no person shall be eligible for election as an elector unless he is a member of the electing council;

(c) the electors shall be elected by the members of such council present at such meeting (or such of them as think proper to vote) voting by secret ballot on the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote;

(d) as soon as practicable after the said voting is closed, the secretary of such council shall send to the Seanad returning officer all the ballot papers by which votes were given at such election and the Seanad returning officer shall count such votes in his office or other convenient place and ascertain therefrom the result of such voting.

(3) In the case of every council of a county or a county borough which is for the time being dissolved under Section 72 of the Local Government Act, 1925 (No. 5 of 1925), the electors required by the foregoing provisions of this section to be elected by such council shall be elected from amongst themselves by the surviving persons who were members of such council immediately before it was so dissolved (or such of such persons as think fit to take part in such election) and for that purpose a meeting of such persons shall be summoned and the provisions of the next preceding sub-section of this section shall apply as if such meeting were a meeting of such council.

It is the same as any other county.

Mr. Cosgrave

How long are they in office?

Dr. Ryan

They cannot be more than four years.

Mr. McGilligan

If that is in the amendment, we might accept it.

Mr. Cosgrave

They are in office for seven years. There were no elections in four counties.

Dr. Ryan

Under the original Act, they could not be more than four years.

Mr. McGilligan

Can we get a guarantee that that is in the amendment?

Will they be answered sensibly?

Mr. Gorey

The provision in the amendment would be all right if it applied to a county council which was elected in 1934. If that county council was dissolved, then this amendment would bring it in and give it a legal status. But, because some county councils were not elected in 1934— they went out automatically—and because no legislation was introduced to prolong their life, this provision does not apply to them. I therefore warn the Minister that he may be putting into the Bill an illegal section that will invalidate the whole measure.

Mr. Dillon

I am listening to know when Deputy Costello's question will be answered, or is the population of Maryborough gaol going to rise up and elect the Seanad? We tried to explain this in many ways to the Minister, but he has found it impossible to get the wheel of his intelligence around the axle of our arguments. Therefore we must press that home. The situation is, if seven men, whom we shall call the electors, are duly chosen by the county council, their position as electors ceases to depend on the fact that they are members of the county council. Standing then in a dual capacity, they are county councillors first and, apart from that, they are electors for the Seanad. One of these men commits a criminal offence which involves his incarceration in Maryborough gaol. We admit that that offence immediately disqualifies him from continuing as a member of the county council. But all this time his position as an elector does not depend upon his being a member of the county council. Shall a person who, for a criminal misfeasance, is deemed to be unworthy to be a member of the county council be one of seven who is to elect the Seanad? That is a net question. Does the Minister take the view that, if the whole seven gentlemen find their way into Maryborough gaol, we are to conduct the Seanad election in Maryborough gaol? If so, will the Seanad sit in Maryborough gaol? That is a very simple question.

Mr. Lemass

If the Deputy promises not to go and make speeches there, I will join the Seanad myself under those circumstances.

Mr. Dillon

If we could get you inside Maryborough gaol this country would blossom.

Dr. Ryan

Deputy Dillon, in a lot of words, with his usual verbosity, asked the same question that Deputy Costello put in a few words. I said Deputy Costello had now come to the point that a man might commit an offence between the time he received the ballot paper and the time he signed it. Then, having been driven from that point, they come back to those county councils that were dissolved. I said to Deputy Costello in the beginning that the Corrupt Practices Act, or any of these Acts did not apply in this instance. It does not apply to these men.

Mr. Costello

We will have to send the ballot papers to Maryborough gaol.

Dr. Ryan

I think this thing is all "boloney." I do not believe there is a single member opposite who does not know more about some of these councillors than we do—a great deal more—and I do not believe they can name one in Maryborough gaol, bad as they are, even though they are affiliated to the Party opposite.

Mr. Costello

The Minister evaded the issue. I think the House is entitled to get a proper reply. At least, we should know from him whether the contention I have put forward, and which was reiterated by Deputy Dillon, is correct—that a person who is convicted of an offence, involving hard labour or even penal servitude, after his election by the county council, is entitled to have his ballot paper sent to him and facilities given to him by the governor of the gaol in which he is incarcerated to give him his choice of a Senator. The Minister, after half an hour's pressing, at least should give one clear answer. I want to correct the Minister's statement. He said I had now come down to the point of whether the offence was committed between the issue of the ballot paper and the election. That is not necessarily so. The offence may have been committed months or even years before, but his conviction may only date from the day after his election, or from the day of his election. We are carrying on the precedent set about bankruptcy.

Mr. Norton

I have a particular case in mind. Certain persons were elected to a county council in 1928. That county council would normally have functioned until 1934, when a new election was held. But, in fact, before 1934, its administrative record was so bad, in the view of the Minister for Local Government, that it was suppressed and a commissioner installed. Arising out of the mismanagement, two members of the county council were, in fact, prosecuted. They were actually before the criminal court and were sentenced in respect of certain misdemeanours arising out of the administration of the county council. They were members of a local authority which was suppressed in the period between 1928 and 1934, and there was no local authority elected in that case in 1934 because the commissioner continued to function. He was in office before 1934, carried on over 1934, and he is still administering the affairs of that county council. These two persons were members of the county council in 1928. They were, therefore, members of the county council before it was dissolved. They have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment for misfeasance. Are these two people entitled to vote for the election of the new Seanad? Can they elect seven, or can they be two of the seven? There is a specific case. I should like the Minister to tell us whether these two people can vote.

Mr. L.J. Walsh

No. Any public representative ceases to be such if convicted under the Corrupt Practices Act.

Mr. Dillon

Now, what will the Minister say?

Professor O'Sullivan

The Minister might answer Deputy Norton's question.

Mr. McGilligan

Is that the answer?

Dr. Ryan

What the Deputy says is true.

Mr. Esmonde

Deputy Gorey has made a point that should be answered, namely, that by a section of the Local Government Act of 1898, and regulations made thereunder, a county councillor or a member of a local body who has a contract with the county council, is disqualified from taking part in the proceedings of the county council. If he takes part in the proceedings he is liable to a penalty in a criminal court. A number of people, since these councils were dissolved, have entered into contracts with what would be the council, namely, the commissioner or other such persons. Does this section give a right to those people who have contracts with a local body, or the representative of the local body, to appear when the council is summoned to consider this matter, and to take part in the proceedings, or are they liable to be prosecuted for taking part in the proceedings, by reason of the fact that they had been disqualified from membership?

Dr. Ryan

I told Deputy Gorey that they are entitled to vote.

Exactly. We are almost compelling that person to constitute the electoral college. We are not compelling him to take his seat here. We are selecting that person and saying to him: "No matter what you do we will give you the right to vote for the election of the new Seanad."

Dr. Ryan

He has the right to vote for the Dáil, too.

Mr. Norton

We are not bringing him in here to be a member of the Dáil, as the Minister for Industry and Commerce indicates. Take the case of a person in those circumstances— and there are cases on record—who because of mismanagement was removed in 1932, because of misfeasance, was sentenced in 1933, and served a term of imprisonment. That person is entitled to vote in the election for the new Seanad on this vocational basis. But suppose the person is actually incarcerated at the moment, serving another term of imprisonment, is that person still entitled to vote? I take it that he is. I take it that, in that circumstance, what will happen is that the Seanad returning officer would tell that person that he ought to attend this meeting of the reconstituted county council, and there take part in the election of the seven, or, in fact, stand for election as one of the seven who will constitute the electoral college in respect of that county. That would happen under the Bill. I asked the Minister if he proposes to remedy that situation? He said it is very difficult to do it. Does the Minister not see the danger of getting back to ten year old county councils and constituting those people the electoral college for the purposes of the Seanad?

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until Friday, 10th December, at 10.30 a.m.

Dáil Éireann debate - Thursday, 9 Dec 1937

Seanad Electoral (Panel Members) Bill, 1937—Recommittal (Resumed).

Tá

Níl

Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 9 Dec 1937