This is a section that is brought in here nominally for the purpose of making it possible to pay compensation to certain persons who are not provided for in the Acts previously passed by this House dealing with the Shannon electricity undertaking and the fisheries affected thereby. I suppose the Castleconnell fishermen would come under this. In any case a number of parties who are aggrieved might get compensation under this section. The categories into which these aggrieved parties fall are so many and so divergent in character that an omnibus clause of this kind is considered to be the most effective way of providing for them. In so far as that is true, this clause has a great deal to be said for it; but when we come to examine who is to determine which of these various categories of aggrieved persons are to get compensation, and how much they are to get, we discover that the person who is to determine who will get compensation and how much they are to get is the person who will have to pay the compensation.
The Minister argues that that is the only way of doing it, and if he did not do it that way it would mean shutting out these people from getting any compensation. I submit that argument is nonsense. When any aggrieved party applies for compensation, for one of the heterogeneous reasons that may be advanced under Clause 10, somebody must decide whether, in fact, he has been injured and how much he is entitled to receive. The Bill says that the Electricity Supply Board shall decide those matters. There is no conceivable difficulty about providing that, instead of allowing the Electricity Supply Board to determine these matters, they shall be determined by an independent arbitrator. It is usual, if you provide an arbitrator, to give him pretty close terms of reference. The difficulty here is that the heterogeneous quality of claims likely to be made render the creation of close terms of reference a virtual impossibility. But at least the arbitrator will be in no greater difficulty in determining these claims than will the Electricity Supply Board, and before the Electricity Supply Board pay the claims they have to determine each one of them.
Now, if on this occasion, on the excuses made by the Minister, we admit the principle that where a citizen of the State is injured in his property or rights that person's claim for compensation shall be determined as to its validity and amount by a Government Department, by the Minister or, worse still, by an autonomous corporation like the Electricity Supply Board, that precedent will be relied upon in subsequent Acts of Parliament and the very essence of genuine compensation is that Parliament will erect between the party aggrieved and the party offending an independent arbitrator to determine their respective rights and the amount of the damages due. If you depart from that fundamental principle, that the question of damage must be determined by a party independent of both aggrieved persons, then there is no end to where you may go.
All Deputies will have seen the growing tendency in all Government legislation to make the responsible Minister a final court of appeal in determining appeals made by citizens against decisions taken under legislation. That is a wrong principle. We go a step further here in Section 10 and, where a grievance is admitted, where damage is known to have occurred, we leave it to the autonomous Electricity Supply Board to determine whether they will pay and, if so, how much they will pay to the aggrieved party. That principle is rotten, so rotten, so dangerous, that on that single issue we voted against the Bill on the Second Reading and on that single issue now we shall have no hesitation in dividing the House. We welcome the opportunity afforded by Clause 10 of getting compensation for aggrieved parties not provided for in the Principal Acts, but we reject absolutely the proposal that the person who is to be mulcted in damages shall himself be the judge of whether he is to be so mulcted and, if so, in how great a sum.