I have not heard at any time what the Taoiseach's attitude is to these four amendments which we have been discussion. There has been a long discussion and it has been put very strongly from this side of the House that this type of legislation, this imposing of very severe penalties, is more likely to be ineffective than otherwise. As I said in an earlier part of the discussion on this matter, where you have emergency legislation such as this it derives a certain character from the fact that it is subscribed to fairly generously by the House. It is not legislation which has been regarded in this House as coming from a Party. But there is a departure in the type of legislation we have here and for the first time, so far as I am aware, the Government are taking power to increase by Order the penalties attaching to quite a number of offences. That is all I propose to say about it. I think a case has been made either for dropping the section altogether or, at any rate, for acceding to these recommendations that are made. I do not want the Taoiseach to be under any misunderstanding about this. I propose to divide on the amendments. I am not saying that provocatively. I also propose, even if we get the amendments, to divide on the section.
Emergency Powers (Continuance and Amendment) Bill, 1942—Committee. (Resumed).
It would, I submit, be more orderly if the amendments to reduce the fines were disposed of now. There might be further discussion on the section.
I pointed out last night that what is in this Bill is a setting out of certain maxima and certain minima leaving to the Order the settlement within these of fines of so much per unit or certain minimum fines if necessary. The nature of the offences is so varied and the possible offenders are of such different characters that if you want to meet a case where perhaps a wealthy individual or a wealthy corporation for the sake of making profit will commit such an offence, then you must obviously make the maximum high. If you want to make sure, you cannot leave the maximum low. You want a high maximum therefore. With regard to the minimum, there is no suggestion in this of a minimum except from the point of view that the minimum must be less than a certain figure. Therefore, what are here are maximum penalties, and so far as these are concerned we cannot reduce any of the figures. There is no need for me to repeat that in regard to every particular one of them. After consideration of the various types of offences, it was found that the original maxima would not be sufficiently high to be a deterrent, apart from the question of the right to set out in a special Order definite minima. With regard to these amendments proposing reductions, I am not accepting any of them.
Yesterday, during the debate on this matter, the Minister for Supplies stated that he would welcome any suggestion from this side of the House that might contribute to a solution of the difficulties with which the Government were faced. In connection with this matter, I have a suggestion to make. I have been thinking over what was said yesterday, and it seems to me that the difficulty that exists is that the Government feel that the penalties as they stand at present and in their present form are not sufficient to meet either the situation that has existed in the past or a situation that may exist in the future. I realise that these penalties apply to every form of unlawful activity or breach of the law in connection with emergency Orders. But, as illustrations have been taken from the tillage Order, I propose to suggest one or two cases which might come before a district justice and which, if they do come and are ruled on with a compulsory minimum, will create a very great injustice not only to the particular person concerned, but to the public generally.
I will take, for instance, the case of a farmer who has run his farm entirely on his own or perhaps with some of his younger children, who has been ill most of the winter and is unable for that reason to meet the tillage requirements. That is one case. I take the second case of a very extensive farmer who has always been used to tilling a very large quantity of land and who, under the Emergency Order, has to increase that tillage and would be short on the calculation by half an acre or two acres. That is the second case. Then I take the third case, that of a man who made every endeavour to comply with the tillage Order and bona fide believed that portion of his land was non-arable. The inspector goes to court with the contrary view and the justice decides that the cultivation of the arable land, so far as that particular farm is concerned, is not in accordance with the statutory regulations. He decides that the inspector's view is correct, with the result that again an offence has been committed. In the normal course of events the district justice, as the law stands, would use his discretion and impose only a nominal fine, but if the law is amended in the manner now proposed, the position will be that he will have to impose the minimum penalty.
In this discussion we have been thinking in terms of tilling a quarter of the arable land. We do not know what views the Government may have on this matter in the future. They might feel it necessary to increase the amount of tillage to such an extent that in many cases it will reach saturation point. Very many difficulties will then arise which, if brought to the proper quarter, may be appreciated as genuine difficulties. My suggestion is that this should bear some analogy to the intoxicating liquor code. We should have some sort of sliding scale. The law as it stands should be applied with regard to a first offence, but, where there is a serious case, the district justice should have full power to impose a very large penalty. I am not questioning maximum penalties at all. There are cases where the justice could use his discretion and impose a minimum penalty, or dismiss the case under the Probation of Offenders Act.
A person who has been brought to court and dealt with there as a malefactor, as a breaker of the law, would be given a definite indication of what the position is, and all his neighbours will have a general notice of what the position is, with the result that everybody will know their obligations and they will realise that the law has to be obeyed to the very letter. If it so happens that that man is again brought to court then, if necessary, the minimum penalty clause would apply. It seems to me that the results which the Government wish to obtain would be got in that way, and no great harm would be done to anybody.
I must say that Deputy Esmonde's suggestion appears to me to be very much better than the proposal put forward by Deputy McGilligan. I think that Deputy McGilligan's idea of reducing the minimum fine is a very poor pis aller. I think Deputy Esmonde's proposal is a pis aller in that I think the whole principle of the minimum fine is bad. Certainly Deputy Esmonde's suggestion for the mitigation of the evil of this provision is a very much better one than that put forward by Deputy McGilligan. It would, at any rate, go much further to meet the difficulties raised by Deputies who have criticised the Bill.
Yesterday, when I tried to direct the attention of the Taoiseach to cases where it was manifest that the district justice should maintain his discretion, he got impatient and said that people could think up these theoretical situations ad infinitum. I suppose we could, but, of course, one of the jobs we are sent to do here is to tell the Oireachtas what our experience in the country has taught us, so that we may try to impart that wisdom to our colleagues who are responsible for making the law. One of the difficulties is in regard to prices. We hear a lot of talk about the repercussions of this Bill on the tillage Order, but I think the price aspect is also important. When the inspector is sent out by the Department to find persons who are charging excessive prices, human nature being what it is, these inspectors go out to get their men and, on repeated occasions, cases have come under my notice where an inspector went into a shop and, instead of going to the responsible assistant or the manager, seeking to make his purchase, he has deliberately gone to the youngest junior behind the counter and has made a purchase from him and, without any remonstrance to the manager of the department or the proprietor of the shop, he has stolen softly and silently away and the proprietor of that shop discovers for the first time that an overcharge has been made when he receives a summons to court to answer for it.
I think a prudent man would forbear to summon any respectable trader unless he first had been overcharged, and had then satisfied himself that he had been deliberately overcharged by the proprietor or by any other responsible person on the premises. I say that to leave every citizen liable to the minimum penalty that is suitable for a black market racketeer, simply because the most junior employee in his house has made a mistake, is unjust and undesirable. I know a case in which the offence alleged is that an inspector went in and bought a tin of condensed cream for which he was charged one penny over the statutory fixed price, and since the purchase was made the Department of Supplies has increased the fixed price for cream to a point higher than was charged on the occasion when the offence was alleged to have been committed. In those circumstances the prosecution that issued against the shopkeeper, although the shopkeeper was not next or near that inspector when he purchased the article in the shop, would render the shopkeeper liable to the minimum penalty with which the Minister for Supplies desires to punish a deliberate malefide black market racketeer. That is manifestly unfair. Surely there is an obligation on us to legislate, in so far as we can, in accordance with the canons of justice. We have no prescriptive right, simply because we are T.D.s, to run amok. There are certain obligations in justice. Is it just to impose on a person who has no evil intent at all, who can demonstrate to the satisfaction of any impartial judge that he has no criminal purpose, the same penalty that you would reserve for a person who you are satisfied is engaged deliberately and malignantly and for his own private profit in the sabotage of the State? Surely that is not justice.
It cannot be too frequently reiterated that there is nobody in this House who objects to the maximum penalty. Let the penalties be fixed as high as anyone wants them fixed, leaving to the judge the discretion to apply the full maximum or any part of it in accordance with the degree of guilt visible in the offender. But let us not say to the judges that we are going to fix a minimum which, in our judgment, will wreak adequate vengeance on behalf of the community on a person guilty of a very serious crime, and we are going to impose that penalty on someone who they are satisfied is not guilty of any crime at all, but has committed himself or through his servant a purely technical breach of the law. How many Deputies in this House—and they are all legislators—at the present moment know the conditions under which they can buy a quarter of a pound of cocoa? If I were to go through the Legislature —and most of the members are men of family responsibilities—and ask them what conditions apply under statutory Order when you contemplate purchasing a quarter of a pound of cocoa, how many legislators could tell me? Not one amongst them, I believe, and the Taoiseach included.
I am not selling cocoa.
No, but you are buying it.
If I were selling it I would know the conditions.
But you are buying it. I will not pursue that in any greater detail but, in any case, he is liable to go in and break the law. The Taoiseach says eloquently that if he were dealing in cocoa he would be familiar with all the laws and conditions. We will never be able to call that bluff, because if he becomes guilty of some breach of the regulations, steps will be taken to cover it up at the earliest possible moment. I am thinking of the small shopkeeper on the side of the country road in Ireland who, the Taoiseach says, ought to know the terms of these regulations. How are they going to get to know? Where are they going to get the information the Taoiseach thinks they ought to have? That is the very point that we are making. If the district justice who has the defendant before him makes up his mind that the person does know or had every reasonable facility for finding out what the law was and just did not bother to find out or, knowing the law, broke it, then let him be penalised, but if he satisfies himself that the defendant did not know the law and could not in right reason be expected to know the law, then the district justice should have the discretion to mitigate the penalty to a nominal one. It is for that reason that Deputy Esmonde's proposal commends itself to me, because if a person was up the second time for the same offence he is fixed with notice of the law, he has the opportunity of conforming to the law, with full knowledge, and, if he breaks the law a second time he breaks it in the full knowledge that he is breaking it and let him pay the penalty.
I regret the decision of the Leader of the Opposition to divide on all these amendments because I think these amendments are barely worth the paper they are written on because they do not go to the root of the principle here involved. So long as minimum penalties remain in the section there is an essential defeat of justice and we should not be taken even tacitly to agree with that principle. I have no interest in Deputy McGilligan's amendments because they do not go to the root of the principle. Of course, the House will divide on the section and, on that, it will be worth walking into the Lobby. So far as Deputy McGilligan's amendments are concerned, I do not think it matters which way we walk but I would be glad to know if the Taoiseach would consider the via media suggested by Deputy Esmonde.
I could not accept that.
You will not accept that?
This section does not command the approval of anybody who looks at both sides of the case. The position is that the Taoiseach looks at only one side of the case. On that side of the case there is no difference of view in this House. Everybody sympathises with the object the Taoiseach has in view. Everybody wants to see the law observed. They want to see the object he has in view achieved. The question is as to the means by which that object will be achieved. The Taoiseach takes up the attitude that any means are justifiable but this House cannot agree that any means are justifiable. There is no use in adopting extraordinary means in cases where there is merely a technical offence. The district justice will have all the facts before him and will have regard to all those facts and will exercise the discretion that justices have always had in this country and in every country where the liberty of the people and justice are respected. The judges are the people best qualified to judge. Anybody who takes the power to impose a minimum penalty simply censures the justices of this country and implies that they are not fit to administer the law. There ought to be some other way out of the difficulty.
The Taoiseach, knowing that everybody in this House wishes to co-operate with him and to offer suggestions to find a solution of this difficulty, should not stand up against all the amendments and all the suggestions that have been offered. He should try to meet what is reasonable and just. It is easy to find instances in history of over-zealous people who, in order to stamp out evils, were prepared to introduce other evils. For instance, who is it that does not remember the over-zeal of the Pharisees? They found difficulty in catching people who were guilty of sin, but whoever was caught had to pay the extreme penalty—they were stoned to death. The Master, the Author of justice, did not go to such extreme measures and He has reformed more than all the extremists who wanted to use the most rigorous methods against whoever happened to be caught, although they might be very much less guilty than those who got away with it. It is the same way with the justices. As some Deputies pointed out yesterday, if a justice administers the law according to the facts and takes into consideration mitigating circumstances, the people will co-operate with him and they are more likely to comply with the law when they see that the law is administered in a Christian spirit and administered justly.
It is easy enough to point to different categories of offences that might be committed by individuals and that would be all treated in the same way and with the same extreme harshness, but would it be fair that the farmer who found it impossible to comply with the law and in whose case it was inevitable that he would commit a technical offence should be fined to the same extent as a person who had profited to the extent of £300 or £400 a week on the black market and who had persisted in that offence week after week? Would that be fair or right? Could the Taoiseach stand over that?
The Bill does not say anything of the kind. The Deputies are not reading the Bill. They are talking to something they imagine is in it. Of course, a difference can be made.
A minimum penalty is fixed for all these cases.
Is not there a maximum? We have been talking about a maximum and about making it high.
We do not object to the maximum at all. It is to the minimum the objection is raised and I think the Taoiseach should accept the amendment or, at least, some of the suggestions that have been put up. In the long run, if he does that, he will be more likely to achieve the object in view. Everybody is anxious to see the thing done but it should be done in the proper way.
I might give another instance. Suppose a person was entitled to get a certain ration of tea but could not procure it because his retailer had not it for him. The Department of Supplies is well aware that there are hundreds of cases of that kind. That man in order to get a little tea for his family may have to go to the black market and give something over the fixed price, or the retailer who cannot get supplies from the ordinary sources, may have to go to the black market and charge his customer a little extra. In that case there is a choice of two evils because it is an evil that a person cannot get the supply of tea to which he is entitled. If the trader cannot provide it from legitimate sources, and goes somewhere else to get it and pays a little extra for it, doing that for a good purpose, he becomes liable to this minimum penalty. I think if the whole matter were examined, the Taoiseach will find that the justices have been right in imposing only small penalties in some cases. The justices have been appointed to administer justice and the law as passed by this House, and that function should not be taken from them because it implies a censure on the justices of this country which I do not think they deserve.
I am really interested only in the abstract justice of this question.
That is the reduction of the fine?
Yes, the justice involved in that. First of all I should like to say that I have no fault to find with the maximum penalty. It is for the question of a minimum fine and the proposal to remove the discretion hitherto allowed to justices that we have to find justification. Presumably this £100 minimum can only be justified when there are absolutely no extenuating circumstances in any respect. If the Government have been too lax in the past, they ought to see that they are not too severe in the future. One of the greatest safeguards that the community has is the feeling that the laws are just and should be upheld. I should like to suggest that the public, and certainly the members of the Dáil, should be convinced of the justice of the Government's contention. Last night we were given some flagrant instances of small penalties imposed by district justices. As the crowning instance, I think the Minister for Supplies gave the case of a miller who was making some hundreds of pounds a week and was fined £3. I asked the question, was the trifling matter not omitted that in that case it would be within the Minister's power to order that the miller should be put out of business? If that is added to the £3 fine, I think it is a very substantial penalty and presumably the district justice took that into account. I do not think the Taoiseach even answered that question. If we are to have instances put up to prove a case for the Government, then when one puts a query that appears to arise out of that and no answer is given, one will find no difficulty in deciding in what way to vote on this matter.
For the past two days the case has been made that there should not be a minimum penalty in these cases. I think that people who carry out the laws of the country, especially people who carry out the prescribed amount of tillage, have a grievance in this matter. The farmers for the past couple of years have been ordered by the Government to carry out a certain minimum amount of tillage, and the big majority of them have complied with these orders. A minority have failed to do so, and I hold that the majority who have carried out the orders of the Government to the full extent have a grievance in this respect, because it has affected fairly seriously a big number of farmers in the country. Because they have had to till a certain percentage of their land, they definitely have a grievance, as their neighbours have not carried out the law in that respect also. Next year or the year after, these farmers who have been tilling beyond the minimum acreage laid down by the Government may be forced by the Government to till a higher percentage of their land, and they would not need to till that higher percentage if the small minority to which I have referred had carried out the law as laid down by the Government and tilled 25 per cent. of their land. I think the majority of farmers have a big grievance in this respect. Many farmers throughout the country are not slow to voice that grievance, as Deputies who live in rural areas are aware. They will point out that neighbours of theirs were not tilling the minimum percentage, and were getting away with it.
Are they prosecuted?
Yes, a number of them are prosecuted every day of the week.
A number of them are not.
Why?
They get away with it.
Why are they allowed get away with it? The Minister has said that he could not get evidence, but surely these aggrieved farmers will give evidence if they are so aggrieved?
That would mean that you would want to make every farmer a policeman to watch his neighbour. What I have described is happening every day of the week, and hundreds of farmers inside the last year have pointed it out to me. They believe that they are being penalised by the Government in being forced to till 25 per cent. of their land, while next-door neighbours of theirs are allowed to get away with five or ten acres or even no tillage at all in some cases. That is the case for the minimum penalty.
It is not the case that has been made here.
That is the case from the point of view of the man who is carrying out the law, that his next-door neighbour should be allowed to get away with it and that when a defaulter is brought to court he should be fined only 2/6 or 5/-. That is why these people feel that they have a very definite grievance and it is something that the Opposition has not very fully considered. I can see, of course, that there is another point of view, the point of view of the legal profession who have carried on the main opposition to these minimum penalties. They hold, of course, to the old tradition of the law, that a judge when appointed has a right within the law to decide as he wishes and that there are minimum penalties only in the case of revenue offences. Certainly these minimum penalties for revenue offences are a definite deterrent.
Now, now! There are more revenue offences at the moment than ever before.
Deputy McGilligan knows quite well that if he were going into a foreign country he would not attempt to take in goods that are revenue goods without paying the duty on them. You have it going on of course in some cases.
Despite the minimum penalty?
It is only in a very limited number of cases it is tried on. Everybody knows that every visitor from any other country would come in loaded down with revenue-bearing goods but for this minimum penalty of £100 or £200 or whatever it may be. The minimum penalty in those cases is a definite deterrent. I believe that the minimum penalty in regard to evasions of the tillage Order is in the interest of the big majority of our farmers. I hope that the Government will not reduce in any way their demands on the Dáil in that respect, and that the Dáil will give full authority to the district justices to impose minimum penalties. I should like to point out also that the district justices have discretion as to finding whether the facts have been proved or not. I think that will be admitted even by Deputy McGilligan. They need not impose any penalty; they can find that the facts have not been proved. That discretion is not being taken from them.
The Bill does not affect that?
It does not.
Before I deal with the remarks made by Deputy Allen, I want to point to the fallacy of the remarks that were made by Deputy Dillon on the question of the attitude of the Leader of the Opposition in dividing the House on those various amendments. We are discussing at the moment an amendment which proposes to reduce the minimum penalty from £100 to £25. That is not because we prefer a minimum of £25, or because we want a minimum of £25, but because we want no minimum, and a minimum of £25 is very much better than a minimum of £100. To use a phrase popular at the moment in military parlance, those amendments are put down to test the defences, to see what is the justification for the minimum penalty at all. In the Bill, £100 has been selected as the official figure for a minimum penalty; £25 was put down by Deputy McGilligan in order to test what was behind that figure of £100, in order to discover why £100 was selected rather than £25. That amendment and the other amendments of a similar character are put down for that purpose, and for the purpose of emphasising the fact that we are entirely against any minimum penalty.
As regards the point made by Deputy Allen that all this opposition to the minimum penalty has been carried by the legal profession, Deputy Cosgrave carried the entire opposition to this for hours yesterday, supported by farmers of this Party, and it was only towards the end of the discussion that the legal profession came in and gave their view. The opposition has been very largely by farmers of all Parties, and by Deputy Dockrell, representing the business community. We came in for the purpose of showing from our experience that minimum penalties, so far from achieving the purpose they have in view, really defeat the end aimed at. That has been the experience over centuries in reference to minimum penalties. Deputy Allen says that the farmers are not going to act as policemen. He said that hundreds of farmers have spoken to him about their grievances; that farmers who have carried out the law and done their duty feel a distinct grievance when other farmers who have not complied with the law are apparently getting away with it. He says that the remedy for that is not a maximum penalty, as we suggest, but a very serious minimum penalty. Our view is that a minimum penalty defeats its own purpose. As it stands at the moment, according to Deputy Allen, his friends who have this sense of grievance will not turn themselves into policemen and give evidence. I suggested last night, and I again suggest, that the effect of minimum penalties on public opinion in cases where they are working harshly —and they will be bound to work harshly in numerous cases—will be that public opinion will be behind the delinquents.
The Taoiseach last night asked for an alternative to this. I suggested last night, I think—if I did not, I suggest it now—that the alternative to imposing minimum penalties is to harness behind the efforts of the Government public opinion against black marketing and against abuses of the situation. By imposing those minimum penalties, there is a most serious danger that public opinion and public sympathy will range behind those who are breaking the law. That has been the history of the criminal code where it has worked harshly over the centuries. We are not going to change it now. There is at present very strong public opinion against black marketing and against abuses of the situation. If there are minimum penalties working harshly, you will find that public sympathy will range behind the offenders. No minimum penalty will then act as a deterrent; it will act as quite the opposite. If, when there is no minimum penalty at the moment, farmers will not come forward and give evidence—Deputy Allen says they will not act as policemen——
They need not.
Of course, not. Deputy Allen's argument is all nonsense.
What chance will there be that the farmers, or any other section of the community, will come forward and root out sufficient facts to enable a prosecution to be brought by or on behalf of the Government, if public opinion is outraged by the infliction of minimum penalties in cases where there should be no minimum penalties? I pointed out that our opposition to this is not as lawyers; it is not as members of the legal profession. It is because, from our experience of the working of criminal law, we know that minimum penalties have been a complete failure. They have never worked or never properly operated as a deterrent. The opposite has been the result. Members of the legal profession and the judiciary have been astute over the centuries—when criminal law worked harshly and there were penalties which shocked public opinion—to find technical ways, all sorts of ways, to get out of any sort of conviction. In so far as the legal profession are concerned, we are likely to have a harvest over the minimum penalties. We will be employed very much more often, and will be more astute to get people out on technical points. The judges, if the penalties are working harshly, will do the same thing. They have done it over the centuries in proper cases. Our opposition is an opposition in principle, as I think the Taoiseach himself admitted. We are in agreement with the Government that an evil exists which must be stamped out, but we think that the principle of minimum penalties, so far from stamping it out, will hinder the operations of anybody conducting prosecutions on this matter. That is the basis of our opposition.
The amendment we are speaking to at the moment is merely a token amendment put down to test the defences, to ask why £100 was fixed rather than any other sum. I presume the answer is that there was no reason for £100 rather than £1,000. The imposition of minimum penalties will not act as a deterrent, but will be more likely to produce the result that public sympathy will be got for black marketing by reason of the improper application of minimum penalties in cases where it should not be done. There is no use in saying that in a proper case the prerogative of mercy can be applied by the Department. This minimum penalty system is the child of the Government Departments so long as I know them. Since 1922 they have wanted it. They have been asking for it in every conceivable case, even when there was no emergency. I said last night, and I repeat, that nobody is a judge in his own case. This system is a bureaucratic system, wished for and devised and nursed since 1922 by the various Departments which wish for prosecutions and which conduct prosecutions. Whatever confidence we may have in any particular Minister, whether it be the Minister for Justice or anybody else, he must be guided by his officials, and those officials are not the proper persons to adjudicate on whether or not there are, in a particular case, mitigating circumstances. The proper person to adjudicate on whether or not there are mitigating circumstances is the judge who is selected by the Executive and put there under the Constitution to decide fairly, in accordance with his declaration of office, as between the State and the individual.
It is his duty and he is trained to decide whether or not a particular case requires, in the public interest, the imposition of the maximum penalty or lenient treatment. Ministers yesterday mentioned certain instances but were unable to give any facts connected with them. They recited a whole series of fines and from that deduced that the only way to remedy the situation was by the imposition of minimum penalties. At the close of the debate last night, I ascertained the facts regarding cases mentioned by the Minister in which a district justice had been fining to the extent of £5 an acre while another district justice had been fining only to the extent of 2/6 an acre. The fact is that the district justice who was fining 2/6 per acre got the maximum results, from the public point of view, by the method he adopted. Punishment is not the primary object of criminal legislation and it is certainly not the object of this class of legislation. The primary object of these food production Orders is not the punishment of offenders. That is hardly a secondary object. The primary object is to secure food for the people in the present emergency. Whoever achieves that in the best possible way is deserving of public thanks. In this case, the district justice, when a person was prosecuted, adjourned the case for a certain period to enable the offender to do the job. When he came before him again and when the district justice found that the work had been done, to the public benefit, the imposed the mitigated fine of 2/6. By means of that sound, commonsense and effective method, the object of the Legislature was achieved. The object of this minimum-penalty legislation is not to secure that anything will be done but rather that excessive punishment will be inflicted. If you want to achieve the primary object, the production of food for the people, you must have regard to human nature and, particularly, to Irish manifestations of human nature, so that the people will respond to the demand made upon them and so that public sympathy with the offenders will not be aroused by the imposition of these minimum penalties.
Deputy Costello said— I was glad to hear him say so—that the primary object of this class of legislation was to secure sufficient food for the people. Every Deputy is interested in that and, in their pronouncements from public platforms, they have expressed their anxiety on that score. If the maximum amount of food is to be obtained for the people, I believe it will be secured through the enforcement of the minimum penalties contained in this section. With all due respect, I disagree with Deputy Costello when he says that these minimum penalties should not be prescribed. Perhaps that would be true in normal times but this is a time of emergency and, if anything occasioned hardship to the officials and inspectors of the Department of Agriculture throughout the country, it was the non-existence of these minimum penalties since 1940. If anything prevented the farmers from acting the policemen on their neighbours, it was the very small fines and penalties imposed in the various courts throughout the country. Any practical farmer who would be selfish in his point of view would get it into his head that it would be better to pay a penalty of even £5 an acre than to put good land under tillage. He would be saving himself a considerable amount by doing so because, after all, a number of the farmers who have responded to the call have been put to a considerable amount of expense. They have had to hire extra labour and one labourer per year would cost between £70 and £80. If I were called upon to till six or ten acres of land, it would be cheaper for me to pay even a £50 fine than to take on a labourer. I could use that land for other purposes which would bring me in the £50. I believe that there is no sense at all in this attempt to cut out the minimum penalty. With the minimum penalty, there would be a better response on the part of the people in the way of reporting to the inspectors people who are "trying to get away with it" than there was when small fines were being imposed and when some people were actually let off under the First Offenders Act.
That can happen again.
It may happen again, but I am sure that there will be less of it. While I have sympathy with some of the defaulters, I must, like Deputy Allen, have sympathy with the people who, at great inconvenience to themselves, responded to the call because they realised the seriousness of the position. I remember when there was a Compulsory Tillage Order in the period 1914-18 and some of the people who now are failing to carry out the tillage regulations were quick to respond because it was an outside authority which then called upon them. I cannot understand how some of the men in opposition who helped—and helped very considerably—to bring about the changed state of affairs, can stand up to defend that type.
That is nonsense.
I resent the suggestion made by Deputy Allen that we are looking at this matter through the eyes of the legal profession. I resent the implication that we are being led by the nose by the legal profession. One thing we can boast of in this Party is individual freedom. Every individual is free to think for himself and to express his views here. We are not slaves in this Party and we are not mere "yes-men". I am not opposing this provision for minimum penalties because of the view which Deputy Costello and Deputy McGilligan hold. Both Deputies are an asset to this Party and to this House and, at times, they give us very wise advice. I have, however, looked on the question as an agriculturist. I am as much concerned as Deputy Allen or Deputy Beegan to see that our people do their duty in the way of food production. But I am also concerned to ensure that justice will be meted out to the farmers. I can visualise a set of circumstances in which people might be harshly treated under this proposal. Let us assume that the minimum penalty for tillage-default is £20 and that a man is liable to do 20 acres of tillage. He has done 18 or 19 acres, but has not complied with the terms of the tillage Order because he is short an acre or two. If he is brought before the court, the minimum penalty of £20 must be imposed.
Does the Deputy think that a man like that would be prosecuted?
Why should he not be prosecuted?
Is that the type of law the Deputy proposes to make?
Discrimination in prosecutions.
That is what has happened.
If that is what Deputy O Briain advocates, it is not what I advocate. I want to ensure that the individual will be protected in the administration of legislation of this type. The only way to protect him is to make sure that any individual appointed to act in a judicial capacity is capable of exercising authority as a judge. You must give him discrimination. Where there are mitigating circumstances to be taken into account, he must have power to take them into account. If a minimum fine is fixed, he is powerless to exercise his discretion. A man who has committed a technical offence will be liable in law to pay the minimum penalty, while the individual who has deliberately broken the law—as in the case of men opposed to tillage—will be treated in the same way. I would see that he was punished severely for failing to do his duty, but the Legislature must ensure that justice is meted out in all cases. If we are a party to the imposition of this kind of proposal, we will deeply regret it later on.
A number of cases was stated here by the Minister for Supplies last night. Take a man in the bacon industry, anxious to keep his industry going. There is a controlled price for bacon, and he goes out to buy pigs. While the price of pigs for bacon purposes is controlled, pork butchers are free to pay anything they like. Therefore, if that man complies with the law and offers to pay the controlled price, the pork butchers will get the pigs instead. In his effort to keep his industry going and his employees at work, that man may be at a loss. We know the prices that have been fixed.
Under the Emergency Powers Orders?
Does Deputy Allen suggest that the Emergency Powers Orders would not apply in that case, if we pass this legislation?
Why cite the case then?
Because it is a type of case that will come under this legislation. Make no mistake about that.
It can come under it. Why not?
Is the Deputy trying to fool himself?
Does it apply at present?
Were there any prosecutions recently?
Were they under the Emergency Powers Orders? There was no prosecution for paying a higher price for pigs, under the Emergency Powers Orders.
Applying that sort of legislation to a man who is trying to do his best under present difficulties is wrong. It does not protect him. If he wants to keep his industry going, he has to compete with the man who is free to pay any price, and at the same time he has to do his duty. If he pays more, in trying to keep on his employees, he has technically committed an offence. Deputy Allen suggests that that man should be made pay a minimum penalty of £200, £300 or £500.
I do not.
The Deputy is defending this proposal. I say it is a most unjust proposal, and I do not think the House should accept it. I am opposing it, on my own firm conviction that it cannot be administered in equity or in justice, and not because the legal Deputies in our Party have advocated that the House should not accept it. I am firmly convinced that it is bad legislation and should not be accepted.
The more it goes on the worse it gets. Two Deputies have intervened from the Government Benches—Deputy Allen thinks the farmers would not act as policemen; Deputy Beegan says there is no necessity for them to do so; and Deputy O Briain does not say anything. Of course, they need not act as policemen. Why can they not send a telephone message to the Gárdaí or ring up the inspector? There is no question of their appearing in court.
The Gárdaí know how to deal with that.
Deputy Allen's plea is that the farmers who do till will probably be asked to till more. That statement is rubbish. Yet he says they will not put an inspector on to the man who is disobeying the Order. It is the easiest thing possible to do that.
And the man would be fined 2/6.
They are not all fined 2/6. Remember that the Minister, in a bad case, has power to enter on the land. If he does not exercise that power, that is something for which he will have to answer. There were, I think, 106 cases—as given in answer to a question the other day. Deputy Allen says that people may have to till more because of those who do not obey the Order. He cannot have heard the figures quoted in this House, or he would not have made that statement. There are about 430 occupiers deemed to be committing a breach of the law, out of between 250,000 and 300,000 in total. Does Deputy Allen think that, if those 400 failed entirely to obey the Order, it would make a percentage difference to the tillage requirements? Remember that some of those cases were as low as seven and eight acres. I put that mathematical calculation to him. For two days we have heard that case put forward here. If the deficiency in the tillage were due to the people who were not complying with the Order, we would have been told that. Deputy Allen is the first man who hinted at it. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Agriculture said nothing about it.
About what?
That there was any possibility of the percentage required having to be increased because of this deficiency.
That surely does not need to be stated. It is so obvious.
Does the Taoiseach say 400 would make a difference?
Every 400 would make a difference.
There were only 400 in question.
And if the minimum fines were 2/6, there would be several four hundreds.
There were only 400 in question, of all the people fined, up to the maximum. It was not the half-crown lot alone, but included people who were given the maximum fine. I suggest that, if there had been any strength in the argument that the good farmers of the country would be penalised by having to till a greater percentage, that would not be so.
Is it not obvious that there would not be enough production?
If 400 people default to the extent of ten acres each?
It may be to the extent of 30 acres each.
We are not dealing with dreams and imaginations now. If 400 people had defaulted to the extent of 30 acres each, and the lack of tillage was considerable, we would have been told about it. We were not. We were told about two men with eight acres each. Those were the cases chosen. It is a nonsensical argument. Supposing the good farmers in the neighbourhood saw they would be required to till some extra percentage, because their colleagues in the neighbourhood did not do their duty, I think they would be most diligent about telling the inspector what had happened and seeing that cases were brought forward. In that event, there would be a bigger number of cases and a bigger number who could not plead mitigating circumstances; there would be heavier penalties and more land for the Minister for Agriculture to enter on. There is a record of 106 cases, or thereabouts, entered on in the course of a year, so it does not look as if there has been any real attempt to evade the Order. Where it is working, it is not a good thing to change the fabric of the law which has stood the test of years, unless there is an exceptional type of case or some exception to the rule.
Supposing we do not get enough food for the country?
That is not the reason. The shortage is due to the blundering of the Minister for Agriculture. For years we have had Deputies talking at frequent intervals about the deficiency of this, that and the other crop, but I have not heard yet urged in the House, in defence of the Minister, that people were not compelled to till. That argument is thrown in at the end as accounting for some small percentage.
It is a well-known fact.
For months we have argued about such things as the yield of wheat and the acreage under wheat, and we have had calculations about expectations, and they were all falsified, but never once was there said in defence of that, when the point was raised, that it was due to the fact that a certain number had failed to comply with the Order. That case has not been made here. It is only an afterthought put forward on the second day by a Back Bencher. I am not saying that in any insulting way to the Deputy. I believe that the people putting this case forward originally would have made that a big point, if it were a big point. I thought the Minister for Agriculture would have had sufficient touch with the countryside to know it, if it were a fact, but he did not state it to be a fact.
Deputy Beegan thinks that the deficiency in food production is to be set down to these people. Again, that was a bull point that could and should have been made by the Minister for Agriculture, but it was not made. I do not believe there is any truth in it. I do not believe it is accurate.
I say that the way they got away with it for the past two years has brought about the present position, and I stand by that.
The Deputy, however, weakened whatever strength was in that argument when he came forward with the old war-cry about people who obeyed a foreign authority in 1918 and who are now defaulting.
That is true.
That is true? Then not merely is that true, but you have to go further and say the district justices are favouring that type of fellow. If that type of fellow who is behaving in that way is not prosecuted, it is the fault of the Department. If he is prosecuted and fined, it is all right, but if he is prosecuted and only a small fine imposed on him, the district justices as a corps are under criticism in that they are favouring the 1914-18 enthusiast who is now a slacker. I do not believe that of the district justices, and I think Deputy Beegan destroyed any strength there was in his argument when he brought that forward. That is designed merely to get the applause. The Deputy at one time described himself as a living tombstone, and I suggest that he has some of the old scrolls written on himself which had to burst out. Again, there is no truth in it—no more truth or cogency in it than there is in what Deputy Allen said.
With regard to deficiency in food production, it would take a fair number of people defaulting in respect of the tillage Orders to make a difference. If the Department of Agriculture have schemed out their percentage, allowing for a certain lack of yield due to bad weather conditions, bad seed or bad anything else—if they have not something in reserve they are worse than I had previously thought— and if they have something in reserve it seems to me that it would take a very big proportion of default to make any difference. All the statements made here are to the effect that there is only a very small number of people defaulting. Deputy Esmonde urged in respect of what the Taoiseach said at one point that it was rather an insult to, and a criticism of, the whole community, and we had an angry outburst, with the statement that the farmers as a whole, 250,000 or 300,000 of them, were in the main doing their duty, but that 400 or so were not.
That is the whole extent of it and they are not all being let off with small fines like 1/-. Of the 400 odd prosecuted, all but two were fined, but the fines ranged from 1/- to a maximum of £100. I have asked to be told what percentage of the cases coming before the worst district justice, from the angle of fining, were decided on the basis of a minimum fine. We were given a statement by the Minister for Agriculture that there was one justice who deliberately—"of set purpose", I think he said—had gone out of his way to impose this fine of 2/6. When that case was examined, we found— Deputies may not believe that this is a fact but it is put here as a fact— that a certain district justice has this procedure, that, when a defaulter comes before him, he adjourns the case and asks that a special watch be kept on the man and a special report be made upon him and, when he meets him again in a month's time, if that man has complied with the Order, he says: "Technical offence—fine 2/6."
Is it better to get the land tilled and to fine a man 2/6, or to fine a man a minimum penalty and not get the tillage? I take it that the district justice who is moving around the countryside knows what he is doing. He is doing this in the proper season. A district justice has been defamed by being exposed to criticism as if in every case that came before him he simply imposed a fine of 2/6, and that was the end of it. When that was examined, we see that that is not the situation at all. That may not be the district justice referred to, although it seems peculiar that the particular type of fine coincides, but suppose he is the person referred to here. Is it not good procedure to attempt to get compliance with the Order and then impose a fine of 2/6? I suggest it is far better than the situation which will obtain under the Bill, in which people will be fined a minimum amount irrespective of the circumstances.
I notice that Deputy Beegan, strong as he is for the proposal, wound up by saying that there were some of these defaulters with whom he sympathised.
I sympathise much more with the people doing their duty.
The Deputy sympathised with some of the defaulters.
Yes.
That, presumably, is because there is some hardship about their case; but when these defaulters come along they will be fined £100, or whatever the amount is going to be. We prefer to leave that sympathy to find expression before the district justice, and to let the district justice decide. If Deputy Beegan were looking at this matter from the angle of not being a supporter of the Government in power, I do not know if he would like to think that justice was always certain to be done by slapping on a minimum fine and leaving it to the Department to decide whether or not there were extenuating circumstances. The Deputy must have been in court when inspectors of the Department went in to prove a case, and he must know that sometimes these men become much more enthusiastic about a case than the facts would permit, and that when the facts are analysed, in the cold light of day, before a district justice, and other contentions put up, there are cases in which the inspector has not had the facts, and the district justice rules on that basis. The Deputy knows very well that when the inspector comes to make a report, he is writing in a grieved way, in an angry way. He puts up a report to the Minister and, hereafter, if the man who has got off with a small fine under these circumstances is fined £100, and it is a question of a mitigation of that fine by the Department, the Minister for Justice who, of course, will do the mitigating, will consult the officials of the Department concerned.
Do Deputies think that he will get a good report which will give him a clear and impartial view of the case from the inspector who, under the circumstances I have described, has been turned down after his arguments have been heard in court? I asked the Taoiseach the other night—and this matter could have been settled by an examination of a certain number of cases—to get us a few typical cases, to get cases of flagrant breaches in the sense that the breach was a big breach, something that could not have been passed over, and then not to evade the issue about mitigating circumstances by saying that Deputies can imagine all sorts of mitigating circumstances.
I want to know what were the circumstances as put up in court. Before we condemn a district justice for being too lenient in respect of these Orders, we should surely get a typical case from one or two of the areas, so that we may know what are the facts as put up and what was it that made a district justice, in the case of a man who defaulted to the extent of 7½ acres, impose a fine of 10/-. There must have been something in that case. He might have been one of the men with whom Deputy Beegan would have sympathy, even though he had defaulted. What was there that aroused the district justice's sympathy? I think it is very unfair not merely that district justices should have no chance to defend themselves but cannot even know what the charge against them is because no facts have been given to the House.
The Minister for Agriculture thought he had proved his case conclusively by saying:—
"I have a list at the head of which is the case of a man who defaulted to the extent of 7½ acres and who was fined £100, and at the bottom of which is the case of a man who defaulted to the same extent and who was fined 10/-. There must be something wrong with that list."
If the Minister for Agriculture wants to go back to the records of the criminal courts he will find at the top of the page that in a particular year a person was tried for killing, and was sentenced to death, and then at the bottom of the page there is a record of another person who was charged with killing and that person received a suspensory sentence and was allowed to go free. Are we to have the death penalty in both cases irrespective of conditions? You could definitely prejudge, and inaccurately prejudge judges of the High Court presiding in particular courts during that year by taking such records. The Minister for Agriculture gave us the only other example, the question of the difference between two district justices, one of whom imposed a fine of £50 and another a fine of 2/6. Examination does not prove the case at all, if the facts are as represented to us. The Minister spoke of a miller who was making an income of about £200 a week.
He was not milling; he was engaged in "sifting" which is a different thing.
"Sifting" was not the word used, but it does not matter. Whatever word was used, he was making £200 weekly and was acting against the law. He was fined £3. He had a mill.
He had no machinery.
He had machinery of a milling type.
He could have been put out of business.
Was he put out of business? We do not know where the case occurred. The Minister would not tell us. I do not believe the case happened.
It did.
I asked for a record of it. Why did the district justice fine £3 in Dublin? What was the case made to him?
Because he was a very soft-hearted man.
Is that so?
I do not know the first thing about it.
And the House has not been told of it except what I said, that a man who was making £200 a week was let off with a fine of £3. Everyone knows that there is something more than that in the case. Is there a solitary soul believes that the whole case is as stated, that a man making £200 weekly was let off with a fine of £3? As a simple statement, that is completely and entirely inaccurate and inadequate. There is something more in the case than that.
Does the Deputy know where it occurred?
I do not know where it occurred. I know that the case was presented in a wrong perspective. There must have been something said to the district justice. As far as I understand it this case has changed considerably in the effort to make it. Originally I was told with regard to the minimum fine that district justices all over the country were equally at fault.
I did not say equally at fault.
All at fault.
I said the cases ranged all over the area.
When the Minister for Agriculture came he spoke of areas and not the whole community. It was clear that under the Act the areas where district justices were lenient were in cases in which they took into account the expense of bringing witnesses from a different area. The Minister simply seemed to indicate that there were a couple of areas. No hint was given that Dublin was one of the bad areas, but the gentleman making £200 profit weekly who was fined £3 I gathered was in Dublin.
Was it in a backyard?
Where?
I do not know.
I thought the Deputy said that it was in a backyard in Dublin.
I read of such a case in the newspapers.
If that is the case to be made, that it was before a Dublin district justice, I have not heard it criticised. The thing would nearly warrant the man being brought before a disciplinary group to know what he meant. If the facts were simply this, that a man was making £200 weekly and was fined £3 I did not grip it. There is something else in it. We have sought vainly since this debate started to get some statement about the few cases, the heinousness of the offence, the case made to the district justices and the district justices' reactions. Then we would have some basis to go on.
And then we would be asked if it was a verbatim report.
Let us advance to the first stage. Let us keep to the case made in court.
That is the reason I did not go over that.
There are other reasons; that the case did not stand examination. That is the obvious answer, and one, I think, that would commend itself to the common sense of most people. We are definitely criticising one group of the judicial authority for not having done their duty. We are definitely saying that they are lenient where leniency was not urged.
That was true, too.
And we are going to say that that is so much the case that we cannot trust the operation of fines; but we are not going to put on a minimum penalty until we know that people will be harshly treated. The answer is that we will abandon the judicial system and let the Departmental officials advise the Minister. That is a very big change. A big number of cases occurred in which too great leniency was shown, but by examination of a half-dozen typically bad cases we could be told what was the offence and what was the defence made. After that we could judge. If there was some such case made we could go somewhere towards making these people do their duty. We have not had such cases; we were told that the reason is that there would be interminable arguments about it. In any event, we could be told what was the record of the cases that appeared in the newspapers. Then we would have something to go on. I must say that I have come to the same conclusion as Deputy Costello. I had experience of Government for a number of years. This thing is known all over the world. It is not a thing peculiar to officialdom here. It is known that officials like a clear run in administration and prefer always things like minimum penalties to fixed penalties, rather than have discretion given to anybody else. They always prefer that and urged it with such success in France that they have a completely new code.
On the Continent they have got pretty nearly a new code; it is called the Administrative Law in which, where an official of the Government is involved, you do not go beyond the ordinary tribunals, but we have always prided ourselves that we have not given in to that. We are giving in to it now, however. If the whole thing is bad, and if a change is necessary, surely we ought to have a case made for such a change, so that people here could say: "Yes, we did vote for a definite change, but we voted for it for very good reasons. Cases were given to us, and we approved of the deduction that was made from these cases: that there had been over-leniency, that that over-leniency was going to spread and be the cause of default growing and, therefore, there was likely to be a big deficiency in the food supply of the country." But we are not within 1,000 leagues of a case of that type being made. We have had a few cases here and there, and the presumption is that the farmers will not do their job because minimum penalties are not involved and they think they may get away with small fines. That is what we are told, but the best case that can be shown is that there were 430 cases, in some of which certain penalties were imposed, and we are not told why they were imposed. Whatever may be said with regard to cases here and there, when it comes to condemning the district justices out of hand I refuse to do it.
I should like to point out to the Opposition that one defaulter in Meath or Westmeath—and Meath in particular—is a greater loss to the nation than, say, a defaulter in Cavan. A large number of farmers with very large holdings all over the Midlands got away with this thing for the last couple of years, and their neighbours have not been reluctant in either reporting them to the Department or to me. Whenever I received such reports, I sent them on to the Department, and the people concerned were prosecuted, but their neighbours say: "What is the good of it? We are doing our best, but when these people go into court they are fined half-a-crown." These people are men of wealth. One of them, I know, boasts that he has had an income of £1 a day since the last war, and he gets off with a fine of half-a-crown. Then you have cases beside the towns in the Midlands—beside Trim, Navan, Kells and Mullingar. Even in these rich districts, you have small farmers with uneconomic holdings, who are willing to go out and give big prices for conacre so as to grow oats, barley and wheat to supply their own requirements and also for cash, and these people say to us: "We are willing to take on land if the Department put it up." and they have taken land whenever the Department took action, but when the Department take action in the particular way that we are dealing with now, the offenders are fined half-a-crown. It is not this year that that has occurred, but last year also, and it is being repeated this year and, as a result, the law has been made a laughing-stock amongst the farming community in the Midlands. They ask what is the use of all these compulsory Orders?
And then there is very poor land being tilled wherever it can be got.
Yes, and some of these big farmers, in order to comply with the tillage regulations, will go down to the fens, and will not touch the good land. We who live in the midst of this and see it all around us, and who see the necessity for food, want to tell the Opposition, as Deputy Beegan told them, that they are defending a class of individuals who are not worth defending. I differ from Deputy Beegan in this, that these individuals got away with it in 1914 and 1918, and they are getting away with it to-day. It is even said about them in the Midlands that if the cattle have to be slaughtered to provide food for the people, these individuals are such adepts at trickery that their cattle will not be slaughtered. It is time that something should be done with them. They are the very same people, too, who will go into the black market and purchase all they want there, because they have the money, and, mind you, public opinion is against the black marketeers and has shown itself in my constituency. Men have gone into black market shops, purchased goods there and been overcharged, and they have brought the prosecutions themselves. I am making no complaint on this head, because when these cases came before the district justices they inflicted very heavy fines on the black marketeers, but I wish they would inflict the same fines on the people who should provide food for our people.
I do not want to prolong this discussion, but when this kind of thing is happening, one year after another, of fines of 2/6, 5/- and 10/- being imposed on people who can afford to till and to employ tractors, and who refuse to do so, what is to be the outcome? I see no alternative but this Bill. As I said before, there are dozens and scores of small farmers all around these defaulters who, if they had an economic holding, would be a credit to this State or any State. These small farmers are willing to give a good price for conacre and do their stuff on these farms, if they only got the chance.
This debate, in its latter turn, has been a very great disappointment to me. On several occasions I have appealed to the members of the Fianna Fáil Party, sitting behind their Ministers, to come into the House and give us a hand in the thorough discussion of matters of importance for the country because I felt that, close up against the situation in the country as are the country Deputies from our Party, they would have realities staring them in the face and would bring an intelligent, honest and open mind and opinion to bear on them. They have entered this debate, and it has been a healthy thing that they have entered it, but it is what we hear from them that disappoints and, in fact, dismays me. I do not think I am misrepresenting the Deputies who have spoken when I say that they see nothing but the terms of this Bill that will help to get the necessary tillage done in the country. Deputy Beegan said that it has been a hardship to the Department of Agriculture and its inspectors for the last two years that they have not had these powers of minimum fines. He says that it has been a hardship on the Department and has prevented the Department from getting the necessary tillage done. Deputy Kennedy says that he sees no other way of dealing with the situation except this. Now, I think it is a terrible tragedy that the ordinary members of the Fianna Fáil Party, when they come to discuss in this House the question of getting food supplies for the nation, should see no other way, in the present circumstances, of getting our food supply than to introduce a system of minimum fines in the way which is suggested in this Bill. Apart altogether from what Deputy Costello said in such a masterly way last night about the history of the effect of a system of minimum fines, I think we have enough ordinary intelligence and ordinary experience——
The Deputy is misrepresenting what was said by Deputies who have spoken.
Well, I am prepared to sit down and hear any member of the Fianna Fáil Party say that they do not approve of this system of fines and agree with the suggestions of Deputy Costello.
I have sat through all this debate and listened to the statements that were made. These statements were not as Deputy Mulcahy has suggested: that there is no other way of getting food for the people of this country. The statements made were that there is no way other than this of compelling a particular section of people in this country, who have got land, to do their duty.
At any rate, I am honestly giving Deputies the impression made on me. If, in the subsequent development of the debate, that impression can be corrected, I shall be perfectly satisfied. But that was the impression made on me. Those of us who take an interest in the serious situation which developed here in the city as a result of bread queues were charged last night by Deputy Corry with this: that by opposing this system of minimum fines we are condemning the city to bread queues. I need only turn to the discussion here this afternoon to feel justified in what I say with regard to the attitude of the Fianna Fáil Party here. If we add what was said last night to what was said this evening I do not see that any other interpretation can be placed on that. I would be glad if we could satisfactorily understand that I have misrepresented the case.
In another way I am much more disappointed. This Bill presents itself to me in two lights. First of all, I look on it as a lazy way for an incompetent person, who is strong enough to bully and to kick, to adopt to try and get his work done. In the second place I look on it as a measure cast in the dictatorial spirit by that type of person who, in order to cover over his mistakes and faults, looks for a scapegoat, and goes saboteur hunting. What was said by Deputy Kennedy in his last speech and by another Deputy who spoke before him, suggested that the people who are failing to do their tillage to-day are people who are refusing to do for a national Government what they freely and willingly did for a Government that was not national.
Deputy Kennedy did not say that. He said the opposite.
I said that one Deputy said that. What Deputy Kennedy seemed to suggest, in the pointed way he made his statement, was that it is the active supporters of the British Government in their time, when they were here, who are at present not doing their duty in this particular case. The suggestion is that the type of people this Bill is after are the old pro-British crowd that are still here and still trying to do damage to this country.
No.
Nobody ever said anything of the kind.
All this talk will not till one acre of ground.
I say that bears out one of the impressions that I gather about this Bill: that a scapegoat is being looked for, and that the excuse is being offered to all classes of people here, whether they are people in bread queues or farmers who feel a grievance in regard to somebody else, that there is a scapegoat, and that he is going to be sought out. But whether or not we have unnecessary and unlimited speech-making here, the hunting for the scapegoat is not going to get the work done.
We have had a lot of it on the opposite side in the last couple of days.
The Minister accepts it in the most charitable way— of the lazy incompetent person who is in a strong bullying position making amends by trying to cover up his mistakes. The Minister for Local Government yesterday pointed out how important, active and energetic local bodies can be during the emergency we are going through, how important it would be to have local bodies, closely connected with the country, energetic in dealing with the difficulties that are going to come before us. When the Government first approached this question of compulsory tillage I asked here that a system be introduced that would bring the county committees of agriculture into close co-operation with the scheme. That would mean that you would have competent bodies, with their technical experts, available in every county, that the Department could be the centralising machinery, and that by utilising it a clear impression could be obtained as to where a quota of this or a quota of that could be got. Under a system of that kind, it would be possible to say that the poor counties, like Cavan, might be treated in one way, and counties such as Meath in another. But the idea of utilising the county committees of agriculture in connection with the tillage scheme was scoffed at from the far benches. Two years passed before any importance was attached to them, and then they were assembled. For what? To be addressed by speeches and to be urged to do this, that and the other.
They were told in the first year about the compulsory tillage.
It was in the second year of the compulsory tillage that the speech-making campaign of addressing the county committees of agriculture was started by the Government. When there was a real thorough piece of work to be done—to force the situation where there was non-compliance—the county surveyors in certain counties were instructed to take possession of certain farms. That showed the Government, through the county surveyors and the machinery they had collected, how to work these farms. The county surveyors entered on a certain number of them. Can we be told in how many cases the owner asked the county surveyor to leave him alone and he would do the work? How many of these farms were actually given back to the owners before the ploughing was done, how many before the seeding was done, and how many before the harvesting took place? That piece of local machinery showed that you had there a powerful instrument for seeing that the real thing you wanted was there, namely, the means to get food. Even at the last moment, when there is a greater recognition of the importance of the local bodies in carrying out work during the emergency, the Government should realise the amount of assistance that they can get from them, both in seeing that there is a proper public spirit developed in relation to a compulsory tillage Order, and in getting an appreciation of the powers and resources that are at the disposal of our local government machinery in seeing that work is carried out. If that had been done there would, in my opinion, be very little need for this really disastrous type of weapon—the minimum penalty.
If Deputies on the far benches feel that I have misinterpreted their views in regard to the general position, I would like to hear them deal with that. Why were the county committees of agriculture not used from the beginning, and if they are being used now, how are they being used? The thing is that from a very narrow point of control in the Department of Agriculture the Government set out to do the whole of this big job and because they have not achieved the success they ought to have achieved they are looking now for somebody to blame.
That is not the case. Nobody has made that case.
I made that case in interpreting what I heard from the opposite benches. Now that we have got the ordinary members of the Fianna Fáil Party into this discussion, I would be glad to hear them on it. If my interpretation of the speeches is right, that they see no other way of getting, the tillage done than by these minimum fines, then it would be a very good thing for the House and the country to hear what they think as to the way in which we can get it.
There is just one point on the general business to which I should like to refer. Various classes of offences have been suggested here. But take one recent type of happening. Recently the Army was not able to get the amount of bacon from its contractors that it wanted. There is an emergency Order by which if any person has a particular thing he can be ordered under a particular Order to sell that thing to another named person. Apparently, there is some delegation, under some parent Order of that particular kind, to the Pigs and Bacon Commission. Last month the Pigs and Bacon Commission issued orders to certain bacon curers to supply certain quantities of bacon to the Army. Take the case of one minor curer whose quota of pigs is down to one-third of what it was before the emergency. He has a retail establishment and also sells wholesale to a big lot of retailers. Within 50 miles there is one of the biggest bacon centres in the country. He gets an order to supply to the Army a quantity of bacon which will leave him in the position that he cannot supply his retailers with even one-third of their normal requirements.
I find it very hard to see what relation this has to the section.
I will tell the Taoiseach. This provides that the Government may, whenever and so often as they think fit, by Order under Section 2 of the Act, declare that certain punishments will be inflicted for certain offences and that they will have minimum penalties. Under one of these sub-emergency Orders the Pigs and Bacon Commission instruct a minor curer to deliver a certain amount of bacon to the Army. The effect of doing that will be to leave retailers, whom he has been in the habit of supplying and whose supply is already reduced, I suppose, to about one-third, because the curer is reduced to about one-third, without a substantial part of their ration. Fifty miles away there is the biggest bacon curing centre in the country. Instead of the Pigs and Bacon Commission going to the main bacon centre and getting some large curers to supply the Army, a minor local curer is ordered to do it. Having got that order, if he says to himself: "I am not going to queer my position with the retailers whom I supply. I am not going to allow them to suspect that I am withholding bacon from them in order to retail it through my own retail machinery," and if he clears out what bacon he has so as to supply the retailers and because of that is not able to provide the Army with the amount of bacon he has been ordered by the Pigs and Bacon Commission to supply them with, he comes under this Order.
Does that come under these amendments?
Yes, he is one of the thousands of people who can be affected by this.
By these amendments?
Here you have a minor curer who may be penalised under this Order because there comes into operation against him an incompetent Order issued by the Pigs and Bacon Commission, whose previous incompetence stretching over months and months has brought the pig and bacon position to what it is.
He may or he may not come under the Order, but these amendments deal with the penalties to be imposed.
Yes, we have down here exploratory amendments in the name of Deputy McGilligan——
They are very definite.
——trying to get the Taoiseach to justify this particular provision, that they may declare that the punishment which may be awarded in respect of the specified offences under this section on summary conviction thereof shall be a fine of not less than a specified amount, not less than £100, or more than £500. We are asking for justification for a fine of £100 on a person serving the country in that particular way. The emergency Order issued by a body that really ought to be subject to a whole series of emergency Orders itself——
There may never be a minimum fine of £100.
There may be. We are entitled to assume that there may be. That is what is in the Bill.
At any rate, we are entitled to assume that it will be more than £25 and might be imposed under a sub-section of an Order that might be issued under this section if it were operated as presented to the House. That is only one of the many types of people who may be affected by the operation of this. Deputy O'Sullivan suggested that we would keep the House here for weeks if we were to discuss the various types of cases which could be affected by this, but it would be well to have a general kind of picture. I should like to hear Deputies on the opposite side justify the issuing of an Order like this and having it hanging over the head of a minor curer such as I have mentioned when the machinery that is operating the bacon industry in the country orders a person like that to supply bacon to such an extent that it will clear him out of his supplies and not allow him to supply the people who retail the bacon, while the bigger curers in the neighbourhood are not asked to supply the Army with anything like the same quantity.
I have never listened to a debate more divorced from reality than the debate we have listened to during the past two days or a debate more out of step with what the ordinary people expect from this legislature. For the past two days we have been discussing objections to minimum fines. Whatever peace-time view we might have as to minimum fines for certain offences, it seems to me that some of the contributors to this debate do not, apparently, realise that we are a beleaguered nation, that we are living in a war situation, and that, with goods in short supply, and with a well-developed black market at home, it is obviously necessary for us to take steps to protect the interests of our people. We discussed yesterday evening, and to-day, the niceties of minimum fines. In normal peace times legal procedure of that kind might provide a very interesting source of discussion. But this is not peace time; this is a war situation, and we ought to try to attune our minds to the conditions under which we live to-day.
Yesterday evening the discussion ranged around giving the district justices discretion. I am prepared in normal times to give district justices reasonable discretion—at least, some of the district justices—but to say that we should be prepared to give all the district justices reasonable discretion is simply asking us to put our intelligence in cold storage. I am not prepared to give all the district justices the discretion which has been claimed for them from the Fine Gael Benches. I imagine that some of the greatest advocates, in this debate, of giving the district justices the wide discretion suggested, are the very people who, more than anybody else, know the idiosyncrasies to which the nation is sometimes treated by some of the district justices. We simply efface from our minds statements which have been made from time to time from the benches ornamented by some of our district justices. As a class I do not want to make any complaint against them, but everybody here knows that there are certain district justices who imagine they are the fount of wisdom, that pure equity starts to flow from their minds, and they proceed to lecture all and sundry, including the Legislature in legislative matters on their sins of omission and commission.
Possibly we could put up with these peculiarities in peace time; we could afford to smile at the comments which are made by district justices in ordinary inconsequential cases. But we cannot afford to smile and we cannot afford that kind of pontifical luxury from the judicial bench at a time when we know many of our people are being exploited in connection with the sale and distribution of essential commodities. We cannot afford in present circumstances to allow district justices to give their opinions on whether it is reasonable or unreasonable for a person who holds land to till or refuse to till that land. I am in favour of insisting that the person who has an obligation to till land shall be required to comply with national requirements in that matter and till the minimum quantity prescribed by the Legislature, and, in the matter of price charges for essential commodities, I think traders must be compelled to observe the price Orders issued from time to time by the Department of Supplies.
If people are not satisfied with the scope of these Orders, let them agitate constitutionally for a repeal or a modification, but, once the Order is issued, it must be rigidly observed. Nobody has yet said that the 25 per cent. tillage of arable land is unreasonable and no member of the consuming public has yet said that he wants to pay more than the maximum price fixed for commodities because he considered that maximum price too low.
If there is to be any complaint against these Orders, let us have a constitutional agitation to secure their repeal. But to suggest that farmers who will not till their land, or traders who want to charge more than the maximum price fixed by the Department, should be allowed to place themselves at the tender mercy of a district justice, who may hold angular views on these matters, is asking the people to swallow much more than I think in their present mood the people are prepared to swallow.
The most vital thing we have to do is to ensure that we exploit to the fullest the land which is capable of giving the goods which our people require. Equity demands that we should ensure that our people are protected against exploitation by any person who has control of goods in short supply. If the best way to ensure that there will be adequate tillage and that traders will charge a fair price for their commodities is by the institution of a scheme of minimum fines, then I am prepared to support that scheme, if it means adequate fines for transgressions against the nation or against citizens.
Quite obviously, with the well-developed black market and the known exploitation of consumers, this Legislature is bound to take steps to combat that exploitation, but it would seem for the past two days that there has been a much greater emphasis on the protection of potential offenders than there has been any safeguarding of the best interests of the consumers. It may be suggested that there are extenuating circumstances in respect of the non-cultivation of the area of land specified under the Compulsory Tillage Order. Over 95 per cent. of the farmers, realising the peril in which the nation stands, have gladly co-operated in cultivating the land in order to produce the food we require. The majority of the farmers have been patriotic and quite willing to develop their land to the utmost advantage. This Legislature and the judiciary ought not to give any encouragement or approbation to the type of farmer who to-day, as always, will find some excuse for not tilling his land, even though it is in the interests of the nation. In the main, the small farmers have responded very generously to the Government's appeal to produce more food for the people. The most fatal thing this Legislature could do in present circumstances is to appear to indicate that it has sympathy with the person who is always prepared to find an excuse for stepping out from the ranks.
Deputy Mulcahy appears to think that the Bill which gives the Government power to prescribe these penalties is most outrageous. I should like to draw his attention to one fact. We ought not to give the Government the powers enshrined in this Bill because of the way in which they abused the powers given them in the parent Act. We said, in respect of the parent Act, that the Government misused their powers and had utilised the Act for the purpose of depressing the standard of living of the workers. When we challenged a division on the Second Reading of this Bill, Deputy Mulcahy's Party went with the Government, thus indicating by their votes that the Government should have power to depress the standard of living of the workers. While it is quite all right to depress the standard of living of the workers and while the Deputy, judging by the votes of his Party, is not prepared to impede that movement, we now get an artificial stir on the Committee Stage of this Bill to try to protect potential offenders in and out of the blackmarket from the possibility that they may have minimum fines imposed on them.
I think I know as much about the feelings of the people of this city and of this country as anybody else in the city or in the country. Interpreting that feeling, I believe most of the people want to ensure that very substantial fines will be imposed on those who exploit the people's need in the present circumstances. If the only way of getting substantial fines and of curing that type of exploitation is the fixing of minimum fines, then so far as I am concerned, I welcome minimum fines.
From the speech delivered by Deputy Mulcahy a short time ago, one can come to only one conclusion, that is, that he feels in a rather awkward position because of his attitude and the attitude of members of the Fine Gael Front Bench in walking the rest of their Party into opposing this Bill. It struck me that the whole opposition was caused by two leading legal men in that front bench and that the opposition was merely because of some legal point of view. But what most of us have to take into consideration when we are faced with such a position as we are in at the moment is whether or not we should listen to legal quibbles while the people of this country may be left without food. It is very nice for Deputy Mulcahy and other Dublin Deputies to get up here in the House and ask questions day after day as to why the people of Dublin are short of bread and then, when the Government are making an attempt to see that bread will be procured for the people of this country and that the corn to make the bread will be grown in the country, to come along and attack the Government again. They cannot have it both ways.
I listened throughout most of this debate and I was rather surprised at Deputy Hughes yesterday evening. He made the point that most of the farmers who refused to till did so because they could not get a tractor. I have been watching the papers pretty carefully, and, in the cases I have observed, most of the fines that have been imposed were imposed because a man did not till six or eight or ten acres of land. I come from the West of Ireland, where tractors are very little known and where men take a number of acres of conacre at from £8 to £12. They have to till that and to plough it, not by machinery but by horses. There are plenty of horses in this country to do the work if we only have the mind and determination to do it.
Deputy Mulcahy, as I pointed out before, completely misrepresented the attitude of this Party as expressed in the speeches delivered by different Deputies. He says that the Deputies on this side of the House saw no way of getting food other than by this legislation. I did not hear any Deputy say any such thing. I did hear the Deputies on this side of the House say that there was no way of getting the people who had the land to till the land other than by some such legislation. As far as I am concerned, I do not think the Government are going far enough at all. I do not think they are making a real attempt to deal with this question.
This year I had to come up to the Minister for Agriculture and to report a number of people who had refused to do tillage and every one of those people whose names were given to me had anything from 60 to 200 acres of land. I did not get any complaints in respect of owners of 40 acres or less. All such farmers had complied with the Order. I do not believe any Deputy in this House got a complaint in regard to any farmer with 15 or 20 acres of land as not having done the required amount of tillage. If the Government and the people of this country want the farmers of Ireland to produce food for the people of Ireland, instead of fixing a minimum fine by legislation they should, in respect of people who have 60, 100 and 200 acres, or more, who refuse to till the land, take the land from them and give it to the people who are prepared to till it. In my opinion that is the way to deal with those people. People in the City of Dublin go out and try to till a garden or a little plot and there is a cry-out for more plots for them. The same thing applies in all towns in the country. It was certainly most painful to listen to Deputy Fagan last night. When Deputy Corry was making his speech, Deputy Fagan said the land in Cork is fit for nothing but tillage and the land in Meath is fit for nothing but bullocks. If the good land of this country is not chosen to produce food, it cannot be produced all the time from the bad land.
I know from my experience of the small farmers in the west of Ireland the effort they are making. I know they have been tilling the same land year after year and that it is worn out. They cannot afford to turn over three or four acres of lea-land this year and three or four acres of lea-land next year in order to carry on without manures. If those people had good land there would be no complaint about the people of Dublin being short either of oatmeal or flour. If they had the land they would produce wheat and the ships that are now employed in bringing in wheat could be used for bringing in other commodities, such as the tea about which all the Deputies have been asking questions. Let us face facts. Let the people on the opposite benches face facts. It is time the Government of this country did what the Government of any country when faced with a crisis would be prepared to do, that is, to get what we require from the one and only place that it can be got. If food is to be produced in this country, it must be got from the land and it can only be got through the people who have the land. Let the people on the opposite side of the House stop quibbling about this question and deal with the facts and let Deputy Mulcahy not be all the time playing the mean, tuppence-ha' penny politician, asking a question one day about the unfortunate people of Dublin who have no food and then, the next day when the Government are making an effort to get the food produced, condemning them for trying to do that or for taking the steps that they think are necessary in order to do that.
I may be as useful as the 2/6 justices who, apparently, were not so bad at all.
I am a farmer and I think I know as much about farming as Deputy Mulcahy. I meet as many people from rural Ireland as Deputy Mulcahy meets, and every time I meet them I am asked: "What are the Government doing in regard to this matter? Why are justices allowed to impose these small fines in cases where farmers have not tilled their quota? Why are they allowed to run amok while we are trying to produce food from land that is not fit to produce it?" If Deputy Mulcahy learned a little more about rural Ireland he might be able to help the people of Dublin better. Deputy McGilligan has attacked this Bill from no other point than that of a legal man, being careful about the legal men because he is one himself, and being careful about the district justices because he thinks: "If I do not stand up to defend them, they will say I am a naughty body." He says that civil servants are looking for legislation to do something. It is not the civil servants who are looking for legislation to do any of these things. It is the Government's job, as I said before, and it cannot be repeated too often, to see that the necessary legislation is passed to ensure that the food that is required will be produced. If we do not take the necessary steps now to see that food is produced for the coming year, I wonder what would be the attitude next year of Deputy McGilligan and other Deputies on the Front Bench opposite who know very little about conditions in the country and who are trying to play the cheap politician's game in this House, trying to fool the people by their questions.
If one were speaking for a month one could not say too much in favour of this legislation. The fact is that we are passing through a crisis and that every honest effort should be made by everybody in this House to ensure that, not alone during the emergency but in the years to come, the food requirements of our people will be produced within the country. When legislation is introduced for that purpose, all our efforts should be directed towards getting that legislation through this House as speedily as possible instead of howling out, as is being done on the opposite side, for mercy for people who are prepared to let the people of this country starve. I welcome this legislation and I am only sorry that it is not much more severe. On the Land Commission Vote, I stated that there is only one way of dealing with this question. Land is meant for the production of food and not at this particular stage, as Deputy Fagan thinks, for producing beef or something else for another country. We are sending out of this country good solid food and what are we getting in return? Pieces of paper that are not equal in value to the notes I have before me. Let us support this Bill and get on with the tillage policy. We have suffered too much from delay already. Unfortunately, the tillage policy has been held up for the last four years. I might say that it has been held up ever since this Government came into office, as Deputies on the opposite benches have seized every opportunity to criticise the efforts made by the Government to produce wheat and other foods essential for the maintenance of our people, not alone during an emergency such as this, but at all times.
Deputy Beegan says that people are losing money by doing it, that they are coining by not doing it.
The more, I have listened to this debate, the more I am inclined to congratulate Deputy McGilligan on having provided the House with an opportunity to have the interesting debate that we have had on this question of minimum penalties and on the attempt that is being made to eliminate that principle altogether. Every speech made by the Ministers concerned and by every Deputy who has spoken, either from this side of the House or the other, has confirmed me in my original view that a good case cannot be made for the principle of minimum penalties. I said when I spoke first on this matter that, as an agriculturist, I protested against the farmers of this country being looked upon as public enemy No. 1. Although this Bill has a general scope — it provides for the imposition of a minimum penalty in the case of offences by other sections of the community as well as by farmers — I regret to say that the debate, as a whole, centred on the farmer and the agriculturist. Every Deputy who has spoken has put the question of tillage in the forefront of his arguments. From the Taoiseach down, the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Supplies and the Leader of the Labour Party, Deputies on the Government Benches and on the Opposition Benches, all have got the same view as I hold, that this principle of minimum penalties in this Bill is levelled at the farmer — I cannot say only at the farmer, but I can certainly say mainly at the farmer.
Not at all.
The Taoiseach says "not at all" but the Taoiseach himself referred to a great extent to the tillage question as did the other two Ministers who have spoken. Practically all the Deputies who spoke devoted the greater part of their speeches to the question of tillage. I think it is fair to infer, when that loomed so largely in their minds, that the Bill is aimed at the enforcement of the tillage regulations of the Minister for Agriculture. What is it all about? If there was a real necessity for this Bill, if the object which the Government seeks to bring about could not be achieved by any other means, then there might be general support for the Bill. What is the case against the farmers generally? There is not one Deputy, or one Minister who has spoken, who has not agreed that 95 per cent. of the farmers of this country have fulfilled their obligations.
Not in Limerick.
Mr. Brennan
95 per cent. of the farmers of Limerick have fulfilled their duty.
No, not in Limerick.
Because the small proportion of 5 per cent. —and I make it out to be less than 5 per cent., if we take the figures given by the Minister for Agriculture showing the cases in which proceedings have been instituted; if they are any indication of the number of culprits then infinitely less than 5 per cent. are involved —failed to fulfil their obligations, legislation like this is introduced limiting the jurisdiction of the justices in administering the law of this country. What is the case made for it? I suggested when I spoke before that this legislation was primarily meant to get at the farmer; he is the villain of the piece.
I should like to say in regard to those Deputies on all sides who have spoken on this question that it is an ill bird that fouls its own nest, because if there is one section of the community that is to be congratulated for their efforts in this emergency it is the farmers. What is really behind this measure is that in their various emergency Orders and panicky legislation the Government have run amok, and have failed to catch the real villains of the piece. They have failed to catch the real culprits, the men who are profiteering at the expense of the general public. They have failed to catch them, and they will not catch them by this measure. We have had an admission by one Minister that "you do not catch them often, but when you do they must suffer the penalty". This penalty is designed to deal with the few who are caught. I suggest that the most easily caught are those unfortunate farmers who do not till their full proportion of land. They cannot escape.
Unless they tell a good story.
There is no question of not catching them; they cannot escape. Their offence is obvious to anybody who cares to look. One Deputy spoke about one farmer giving information against another — informing against his neighbour.
Is it not any man's duty to be an informer in those cases?
There is no necessity for any farmer to turn himself into an informer against his neighbour. If a man has 20 acres of land and he does not till five acres, or does not till any at all, everybody can see it. The inspectors whom the Department are paying must be blind if they do not see it. Of course they see it. There is no hidden crime; there is no concealment. One Deputy said here—I think it was Deputy Beegan—that if anything prevented the farmers from giving evidence it was the small penalty. Did anybody ever hear such trash? What is the necessity for giving evidence? The case is so obvious that there is no evidence wanted. In no case has a farmer pleaded that he did not commit the offence. No farmer that I heard of who has been prosecuted made the case that he had not committed the offence. Where is the need for evidence? Let us approach this matter with common sense, and not make statements to the effect that the small penalty prevents the farmers from giving evidence. Does the Deputy who made that suggestion think that making the penalty greater will induce more of the farmers to be informers?
Deputy Kennedy referred to it in one way and Deputy Beegan in another. Deputy Beegan said that there are farmers who are prepared to pay a penalty of £50 or £60 rather than till six or seven acres. I do not know where they are. Deputy Kennedy, on the other hand, argued that there are farmers who are prepared to give anything for land. Between the two of them it is hard to strike a happy medium. If Deputy Beegan is correct, there is something wrong with the policy of the Minister for Agriculture. There is something wrong with the speeches made to us in the last five or six years to the effect that there is a fortune in tillage. Perhaps there is; perhaps that is the reason why there are so few defaulters. Deputy Beegan's suggestion that farmers are prepared to pay £50 or £60 rather than till a few acres is not likely to be an inducement towards extra tillage. Speeches like that will certainly not have a favourable effect. Deputy Norton says that a person who has an obligation to till should be made to till. I agree; every one of us agrees with that. In this emergency, there is an obligation to provide food, and the farmers are the only people to provide it. I say that, in the main, they have provided it, and, in the few exceptional cases where they have not done so, legislation such as this is not necessary. The desired result could be brought about by other methods than this.
I think it was Deputy Costello who faced the challenge of the Minister that there was a 2/6 justice, and I think he proved conclusively that in that particular justice's area more tillage was done than in any other area. By a process of leniency he had achieved better results than others who had adopted more severe measures. I suggest that the imposition of minimum penalties will not achieve the end that is desired to achieve in regard to the question of tillage. It will not achieve the end that is desired to be achieved in regard to other matters which were not so largely referred to in this debate as they ought to have been. The farmer is not the great malefactor. There are other malefactors in this State besides the farmers. There are other sections of the community who commit much graver offences against the country than the agriculturists, and I am sorry that in this debate more reference was not made to them. In the minds of the Government and in the minds of the Government supporters the chief — perhaps the only — enemy of the country is the farmer. I resent that, and I repeat what I said a moment ago that it is an ill bird that fouls its own nest. We have an admission by the Taoiseach, by the Minister for Agriculture, by the Minister for Supplies and by the Leader of the Labour Party, that 95 per cent. of the farmers of this country have done their duty. Because the other 5 per cent. —if there are 5 per cent., and I do not believe it— have failed to do their duty, we have legislation such as this brought in.
I support the amendments for another reason, and perhaps a graver reason, and it is that I regard this as an attempt to coerce the justices of this country in whom, so far, the majority of the people have had faith, and to whom they have looked for an impartial administration of the law as between the accused and the State. It is an attempt to coerce the justices into having no regard for mitigating circumstances in any case; to coerce them into being instruments for inflicting the greatest penalties that they can inflict on accused persons, whether in regard to tillage or anything else. The quality of mercy is to be denied to justices above any other people. I protest against that. It is a principle that I did not believe would ever be advocated seriously in this House. It is something for which I believe there is no necessity. I believe that the necessity for it will never arise in this country. I hope that intelligent Deputies in this House will have pluck enough — because I know the will is there — to refuse to pass this section of the Bill.
The last reason given by Deputy Bennett for his opposition to this Order and his approval of the amendments is the worst — that it is taking out of the hands of district justices any discretion in cases of this kind. My impression is that district justices will welcome such an Order fixing a minimum penalty. It is not the first time that has been done. There are numerous other instances in peace time legislation where the Government have fixed minimum penalties, and have taken out of the hands of the district justices any discretion by way of mercy in the case of an offender. In the Illicit Distillation Act there are minimum penalties fixed, and very often there are heart-rending cases where the district justice might like to use his discretion but is not allowed. There is no protest by the Opposition because of that.
Even in the very simple matter of failing to take out a dog licence in time, a minimum penalty is fixed. Even though the licence may be only two days late in being issued, a minimum penalty is fixed, and the justice has to impose that penalty. There is no great outcry by Deputy McGilligan or the Opposition because of the fixing of that penalty. I should like Deputy Bennett, if he is anxious to see that food is produced for the people of Limerick City, and other Deputies who may be anxious that food be produced for the people of Mullingar, Kells, and other centres, to consider what the result will be if this amendment is carried. The 5 per cent. who have failed in their obligations to the State will, in that event, I venture to say, increase to 25 per cent. They will realise that this House has agreed not to fix any penalty for their neglect. They may make up a nice story which will impress the district justice and get the soft side of the court. It may be urged that the Legislature did not take too serious a view of the matter because, although they discussed the question of a minimum penalty, they decided not to impose it. The district justice may then impose a fine of 1/- on a man who has failed to till from 5 to 20 acres of his land.
There may be hardships on the 5 per cent. to whom Deputy Bennett referred if a minimum penalty be imposed but what of the thousands in the towns, and even in the country, who may have to face starvation if the amendment is carried? Which is the greater risk? After all, even if the minimum penalties are imposed, they are not the last word. In many cases where a minimum penalty is imposed, there is an appeal to the Minister. The facts are stated and, if it is found that the case is a hard one, the Minister reduces the penalty to a very small sum. I have known cases where penalties of £60 were reduced to £5 when the facts were stated to the Minister and borne out by the Gárda authorities. If there are cases of great hardship under these Orders and if the facts are stated to the Minister, as in the cases I mentioned, the Minister will have jurisdiction to reduce the fines to reasonable proportions, just as the district justice, if he were free to do so, might have imposed smaller penalties. We are up against a terrible crisis. We are not passing peace-time legislation. We are dealing with emergencies and I think the greater risk ‘would be involved' by the passing of the amendment.
I am surprised at the turn things have taken here. I have the great advantage of not having been attending this House regularly of late. I have read the speeches of the Opposition and their statements elsewhere and I should have thought that if any persons would introduce an amendment to fix minimum penalties for tillage defaulters and for people caught in the black market, it would be the members of the Opposition. That attitude would be consistent with the speeches they have made from time to time. I was surprised that I had not seen long ago an amendment from Deputy Cogan to fix minimum penalties. I was surprised that I had not seen from Deputy Mulcahy such an amendment, because these Deputies have been attacking the black market and have been attacking the Minister for not sending people to jail for engaging in the black market. When I come up here, I find them, to my amazement, attacking the Minister and the Government because they are fixing minimum penalties so as to bring people who are black marketing to heel. I cannot follow that. I cannot believe that they are adopting political tactics because these are bad tactics politically. On reconsideration, they might withdraw a lot of what they have said. A couple of weeks ago the Minister for Industry and Commerce was "the father and the mother" of the black market. Sponsorship is now being claimed by the Opposition. They are accepting parenthood of the black market by trying to defend those who are dealers in it and by trying to prevent minimum penalties from being imposed upon offenders in this respect.
The farmer who fails to fulfil his obligation as regards tillage is blackmarketing just as is the person who charges 25/- for a bicycle tyre. The farmer who neglects his duty in that way is a greater offender than the person who charges 25/- for the bicycle tyre, because the farming offenders are only a small section of that community. Surely Deputy Bennett knows that he is talking absolute nonsense when he says that the Government looks upon the farmers as enemies. I suppose this is said to satisfy somebody whom he wants to read his speech. He does not mean a single word of it. When he says that 95 per cent. of the farmers have carried out their obligations, that means that only 5 per cent. remain. Why not make the 5 per cent. comply with the law? Can the Deputy suggest a better way of securing that than this way?
I could.
The Deputy spoke with great frenzy, but he did not suggest any better way. I know a way but he might not think it a good way—entering on the farm.
It is being done.
That is being turned to naught. In some parts, where you had men who had swallowed Deputy Bennett's argument during the past ten years of "no tillage", when the Government did enter, what was the result? If I am informed aright, they found that, after going to the trouble of tilling the land, the man from whom they took it could buy back the crop at his own price.
He should not be allowed to do so.
That is because of the organisation by Deputy Bennett's friends or, at least, the people who adopt the policy which was preached for the past ten years——
The alleged no-tillage policy might be left out of this debate.
I am sorry, but that did happen. At one time, when I was defending tillage defaulters in court, I was given the history of the particular county, so far as tillage was concerned, by two inspectors of the Department. I was ashamed to see the abuse that was being made of land. Men who got land from the Land Commission in the past 25 years, and who had not up to 1938 even gone into residence on the land, who had never tilled a perch of it, even tried to evade their obligations when the tillage Order came into force. Hundreds of farmers all over the country, and scores of farmers in a particular county, men who fooled the Opposition and some of whom fooled this Government, and who got land on the pretence that they would work it and make it produce food, did not till a perch until they were forced to do so and prosecutions were brought against them. Then they made an effort to till. If more severe measures could be taken by the Government than this one, they would have a good effect.
I admit there are two difficulties to be overcome. The first is the atmosphere against tillage. Deputy Bennett and other Deputies of the Opposition — not all of them—have some responsibility in this regard, as they said tillage was out of the question. The tillage campaign of the Government for the past ten years was severely criticised and people got a bad taste in their mouths for that policy. Secondly, the system under which people were tilling in the past ten years, and for hundreds of years, has to be overcome. It will take more than fines — it will take imprisonment—before that atmosphere can be changed completely. At this stage, and particularly at this time of the year, the bringing in of this Order is very opportune. It gives plenty of warning — from now to next spring, if the emergency continues—and nobody can have any excuse. I heard people say in court last year that they did not know the Order was in force at all. Even this year, people made that claim. The amount of publicity that debates of this kind might get, by this Order being made now, means that there can be no such excuse next spring.
I believe very few cases will have to be brought into court next year. All the farmers will know what is going to happen, and that the excuses of not being able to get a tractor or horses, or to make fences, will not be made, as they will know that such excuses will not be accepted. They will not take the trouble to make such excuses, but will do the tilling instead, and so produce the food. This is the first determined effort being made to deal with the black market, and why that effort is not being supported by the Opposition is beyond my understanding.
Most of the speeches delivered from the opposite benches have been marked by a distinction — those on the Front Bench, to give them their due, have lately come to the view that it is better to try to deal with a case on its merits, while the back benchers take the line that it is better to deal in politics. It would be better if the Deputy who has just spoken read this Bill and paid attention to what transpired in the House before he came in. In the first place, according to the Parliamentary Question put to the Minister for Agriculture this week, there have been 540 cases, as far as agriculture is concerned, of defaulters in connection with the tillage Order. That is 540 out of approximately 300,000 farmers, or less than one defaulter in 500. It does not take any great mathematical genius to realise that that is under approximately .2 per cent. It leaves over 98 per cent.
It leaves over 99 per cent.
The defaulters are .2 per cent., so 99.8 per cent. would be the correct figure. Therefore, we are dealing with .2 per cent. of the persons concerned. The fines, including the miserable fines that have been criticised here, and the meek and merciful attitude adopted by district justices throughout the country have, nevertheless, provided us with 99.8 per cent. of the farmers — or 998 out of 1,000 — doing their job. It is now proposed, under this Bill, to alter the law and give the Government power to alter the law by Order, and to fix a penalty in respect of a number of offences or of any offence in connection with the emergency legislation. While one may say that minimum penalties are imposed in respect of illicit distillation or failure to take out a dog licence, that is in the law and we know it. Power never was given to a Government before, as far as I know, to fix a penalty on a precise day or night, that a district justice must impose in respect of an offence, whether it be technical or serious.
The discretion of the district justice has been, to a limited extent, admitted by the last speaker. Where, in these circumstances, is there a case for giving this new power, which permits the Government to fix a minimum fine of £100 for any offence in respect of a breach of the law in connection with emergency Orders? What does the amendment seek to effect? That the £100 be changed to £25. At the moment, a district justice can impose a fine of 1/-, and 998 farmers out of 1,000 do their job. We are asking now, when the Government wants to make that fine £100, that they make it £25. Two cases were referred to here last night—one where there were 25 acres and another where there were 26 acres—where the fine imposed in one case was 1/- and in the other £100. I have grave doubts as to whether any farmer with 26 acres of land can afford to pay a fine of £100. That is one of the compelling reasons we have for putting down this amendment, to limit the fine which the Government can impose to £25 instead of £100. That is not unreasonable.
Deputy Norton criticises us because we did not support the Labour motion to reject this measure on account of the abuses. I am prepared to admit that there was an abuse, on the part of the Government, in regard to the Standstill Order. We are now faced with a heavy responsibility in connection with the emergency. From the first day, we admitted—and still admit—that a Government, in time of emergency, must have power such as this. I concede at once the point that this power given to the Government has been abused. Notwithstanding that abuse, and notwithstanding that I am satisfied there will be still further abuses, I am faced with the responsibility of having to say that the Government, in an emergency, must have that power, despite all the unpopularity that may attach to the obligation we incur in saying that. If Deputy Norton had put down an amendment, saying that the powers conferred upon the Government in this respect are to be restricted in regard to the Standstill Order, so that wages may be at a fair level, I would back him on that.
That would not have prejudiced or endangered the powers which the Government must have in time of emergency — the powers which it ought to have and which we are prepared to give to it — and there is not much love lost between the Government and the Opposition, and I speak only for myself in that connection. This arbitary fixation of a fine which is to be imposed for a technical offence as well as for a major offence is bad law. It is not equity, and it does not help at all to refer to the fact that an appeal lies to the Minister. The Minister is not a judicial personage. He is responsible for administration, and he cannot be one of the body which directs officials to go out and look for prosecutions and help in bringing about prosecutions, and then sit in judgment on the decision given. That matter of review of the decision should be left to the courts.
The suggestion has been made by some back benchers that we are espousing the cause of the black marketer. Of course they knew as well as I know that, when they said that, they were talking rot, that they were merely making political speeches. What is the admission of the Minister for Supplies on this question? What was his admission to us here last night? It was that possibly they would prosecute one black marketeer out of 20, and he would probably have been more correct if he had said one out of 100. The futile plea is put forward that because one person is fined £100, the other 99 are going to tremble in their shoes. We recollect the story of the letter sent on one occasion to a landlord, threatening that if he did not alter his attitude to his tenants, they would shoot his agent. His reply was very significant. He said: "If they think they are going to frighten me by shooting my agent, they are making a very big mistake." Exactly the same reply would be received from the 99 black marketeers in relation to the one person who was unlucky enough to have incurred a fine of £100.
Surely when we get from a responsible Minister the admission that it is not likely that they will prosecute more than one out of 20, he is, on his own words, making little of the legislation he proposes to pass. There is nobody in this country more anxious to prosecute black marketers than the people on this side of the House, but this method of sounding the loud trumpet and having nothing behind it, is not to our minds the method which should be adopted in dealing with a matter of this sort. Get the results and the penalties that are there at present are sufficient to get the results, if the Ministers attended to that side of their responsibilities, rather than the imposition of enormous penalties which will be imposed in one case out of 20.
Who in the name of goodness spoke of the imposition of enormous penalties?
You are taking power to do it.
Yes, because there is a variety of enormous crimes and when there are enormous crimes to be dealt with, you cannot limit yourself to small penalties. What is the use of pretending that you are giving the principle of minimum fines when you tell us that, when enormous offences might require to be dealt with, we cannot go above a certain limit? That is what it amounts to. Some case could be made for trying to oppose this Bill on the principle that minimum fines are dangerous inasmuch as, in a particular case, an individual who would not be guilty to a great extent might be severely penalised, that there might be injustice done to that individual and that there might be extenuating circumstances in his case, but we have to look at the community as a whole also, and injustice is done to that community if, when goods are in short supply, people are making profits out of the situation and depriving the community which is entitled to get them of these goods, and if, when the nation is in need of food, there are people who will not do their duty and who, every one of them, is an encouragement to everybody round him not to do his duty.
There is no suggestion of going after anybody except those who are doing wrong, and it is ridiculous to talk of this as being aimed at farmers. The first cases I quoted were not all cases of farmers, and, in fact, the urge has come more from the other Department than from the Department which deals with farmers. When I speak of Departments, let it not be thought that it is officials who are doing this. The Ministers who have responsibility for seeing that the work is carried on are the people, if anybody is to be held responsible, who are to be held responsible, and not civil servants. They have to carry out a great deal of the detailed work, but ultimately, when questions have to be decided, it is the Ministers, and not civil servants, who have to decide them. It is nonsense to say that this is an extension of bureaucracy, and indicative of the mind of the civil servant, or to say that those who knew the civil servant mind for years past knew that they were pressing for this sort of thing.
Some case, as I say, could be made for the one point that this may work out to deprive the justice of his complete discretion, and that in certain cases individuals may be harshly treated who would not be harshly treated if, for instance, the Legislature passing this measure, or the body issuing the Order, had an opportunity of completely considering all the details of the case; but there is no way out of it, except the remedy I have suggested, that is, that the Minister for Justice, if a serious case is put to him of what would appear, so to speak, to be a miscarriage of justice, can examine it, and if there are really extenuating circumstances, can mitigate the fine.
The justice hearing the case, if it is one in which he thinks there should be mitigation of the minimum fine, can communicate privately with the Minister and suggest that, from his consideration of the case, it is one in which the Minister ought to exercise his prerogative and reduce the penalty. That can be done, but if we do not do this, you are going to have a situation in which you will have grumbling from everybody and nobody taking the situation seriously or realising how important and how difficult it is.
I have dozens and dozens of cases here — a whole list of them — and I said that, reading over them, every single one of them suggests prima facie that the penalty is ridiculously low for the offence committed — not merely in cases of failure to till the prescribed proportion but in a host of other cases. When I get these cases, numbering many dozens, as I have them here, am I not to conclude, am I not forced to the conclusion — it is not merely a question of opinion — that those who are responsible for the imposition of the penalties do not, in fact, realise the situation we are facing, that they do not see it with the eye with which those who are responsible for saving the community have to see it? We have looked here at the position with regard to food. Last year, when the tillage season was beginning. I went around to several places pointing out the country's requirements from the food point of view.
I pointed out that there were some 600,000 or 650,000 acres required, with an average crop, to give a yield using 100 per cent. of the wheat, for flour purposes. I pointed out how many thousand acres were required as a substitute for the maize formerly used for pig feeding. I gave estimated figures showing that we would need to have 2,800,000 acres under tillage if we were to meet our requirements and, of necessity, that was the figure that the Minister for Agriculture had to take if he was to produce supplies. The 2,800,000 acres is more than a quarter of the total arable land in this country. Therefore, if we asked that a quarter of the land should be tilled, we could not, from the point of view of food, have anybody short. Certainly we cannot afford to have this happen, that those guilty of having several acres untilled should be able to stand up and snap their fingers at neighbours who had to undergo great difficulties and trouble to do their duty. They should not be able to say: "You were blessed fools. Do as I did. Do not obey the law. You will only be fined 2/6 by the district justice." That is the sort of thing we have to try to settle. It has been said: "Why did you not go about that by getting a good public spirit." There is a good public spirit generally in the country, but there are individuals who did not do their duty. Where there are people in the black market trying to profit out of the present situation, principally big farmers who did not do their duty, and who sneer at neighbours for doing their duty—that is what spoiled the proper public spirit. We want to make sure that the honest people who are doing their duty will be supported by the Executive and by the judiciary. It is the duty of both to do that. What we are asking the House to do is to set a headline, and to enable Ministers to set a headline, as to what ought to be the penalty for certain offences.
I do not know whether the House wants them, but I could instance dozens of cases. I did not try to do what Deputy McGilligan asked, because I saw that, no matter how far I went, I would still be short of what he wanted ultimately, and that was to try a case in this House. We cannot do that. I could give a number of cases which, on the face of them, indicate that a big crime was committed in general, leaving out the possibility of extenuating circumstances. The fact is that the failure was a big loss to the community. I say that these cases justify the Minister responsible for trying to see that the interests of the community are safeguarded. That is justification for the House giving the Minister the powers sought. The figures set down are the only figures that matter as maxima. In view of the size of the offences that can be committed, and the variety of cases that may be dealt with, you cannot impose upon the Minister a low maximum. If you do, you defeat the whole object. What would happen then is that on a person being found guilty of a small offence, a big penalty might be imposed, while persons guilty of big offences could not be dealt with. We are trying to provide, apart from having a certain minimum, that there will be a big range from the minimum prescribed up to the maximum, and that the justice will have discretion.
Considering the variety of cases that may have to be dealt with, and the offences that it is possible to commit, for which a minimum fine is set out, if that is going to be effective it cannot be set down too low. Before any Order can be made it must be a Government Order. The Government as a whole must consider it. There will be a definite check and with that check no Department can run amok. I was prepared to read out a number of cases but the list is a long one, running into many dozen. I think Deputies would see from it that, in every one of them, if there were not extenuating circumstances that they did not know of, the penalty was inadequate. I could spend half an hour reading out these cases if the idea was to prolong the debate. Perhaps that would be the most useful way of prolonging it. They are definite cases which, to my mind, would carry conviction with anybody.
Having said that in favour of this measure, I want to admit, quite readily, that it is a disagreeable thing to have to take from the justices the discretion they have. Personally, I approach this matter more from the abstract or the academic point of view than most people. I am admitting that I agree with the lawyers that if we could have got results by another method it would be better. I am willing to concede that fully. That is why I said that it was with considerable reluctance we introduced this measure. We are now in the third year of the emergency. It is only the beginning of the serious part of the emergency. Every day that passes from now on is going to be more and more serious. We will have to rely more and more on what we can produce to maintain ourselves. The shortage of commodities is going to increase. The one thing we can make sure of is to have enough food if we go out to produce it. In this connection I want to compliment the farmers. There has not been so much wheat grown since 1849 as was grown this year. I think it is a great compliment to the farmers generally, the fact that the majority of the people realise the seriousness of the situation in which they find themselves. It is in order that that good morale should not be spoiled, by allowing a number of people who acted absolutely selfishly or who were not able to appreciate the situation to fail criminally in doing their duty, that we are bringing in this Bill. I agree that there is a point to be made against it, but only one point, and that is that if we could avoid it, it is undesirable that we should be taking away from the justices discretion they had up to the present. I am conceding that completely, and the fact that I realise that and concede it ought to be more reason for the House in believing that if we are going about this in this particular way, it is because we believe that it is necessary.
When I say that, I do not want for one moment to concede all the things that were said by the lawyers in trying to defend this principle. The validity of their arguments was based on a different thing altogether — not on minimum fines or things of that sort, but on the magnitude of the penalties which were inflicted for relatively trifling offences in the past. The discrepancy in the past — a century ago or more — between the gravity of the offence and the enormity of the punishment was the matter that really should be deduced from some of their arguments. What I disagree with is the attempt to turn that, to make what judicial history all agrees about, in regard to the discrepancy between the offence and the punishment in past days, apply here. I do not think their argument was addressed to the proper point at all. There is an argument that, by taking away the discretion of the justice, you are running the risk in individual cases, where there may be extenuating circumstances, of inflicting a great and grave hardship, but we are doing that in the interests of the community as a whole. As a matter of fact, in the case of murder, it is not left to the discretion of the judge on the bench, when a person has been found guilty of murder, to decide what penalty is to be inflicted.
You do, for manslaughter.
But the discretion is not left with the judge in the case of murder. In other words, there is an appreciation of the fact that in regard to the infliction of capital punishment individuals may differ so completely from each other that the Legislature and the law do not give that discretion to the judges. Perhaps I am wrong, but that is the way I understand it. I always understood that if a person is found guilty of murder, the judge must impose the penalty of death, and if there is any question of a change in the penalty, it must be by means of the prerogative of mercy. That is done because of the fact that individual judges would differ in regard to the whole matter, and for that reason the discretion is taken away. Discretion is taken away, as has been pointed out here, in certain other cases also, such as in connection with customs, and fisheries, as the Minister for Agriculture pointed out last night, and some other cases also. I am not anxious, nor are the Government anxious, to extend that, but we find that in dealing with this crisis these powers are necessary, and that is why I am asking the House to give us the powers in that section.
In all the heat that the Taoiseach saw fit to throw into this particular matter there was one element of humour — quite unconscious — when he spoke of there being somewhere a desiré to prolong the debate. I do not think there is any member of this House who is a more successful prolonger of debates than the Taoiseach. Even his own Party, I gather, would appreciate that. I do not know any measure sponsored by the Taoiseach that will not take at least three times as long as a measure sponsored by anybody else.
That is a compliment.
It may be, and we have had plenty of experiences recently, some of them quite interesting. The Taoiseach wondered why there was all this talk about farmers, and then devoted most of his speech to the farming situation. I have listened to this debate for a number of hours, and it was practically altogether taken up with the few farmers who have defaulted. I thought that the Taoiseach, at least, was going to break with the tradition set up by the back benchers and was really going to infuse into the discussion a little more of a sense of proportion, but, apparently, having discussed the matter in a fairly reasonable fashion up to the present, he gathered from the speeches of a number of the back benchers that there was something to be got by raising the pretence that the safety of the country, in the matter of food, depends on the passing of this minimum penalty. Surely, that is ridiculous. He has made no effort to show that. His colleague, who is sitting beside him, admitted, just before he came in, that the failures to till the required amount of land amounted to .2 per cent. A very unfair effort was made also, in the course of speeches from some of the Taoiseach's followers, to suggest that it is the big farmer who is failing to do his duty. That is not so. Even of the farms entered upon 53 was the average acreage and the two cases mentioned by the Minister for Agriculture were only 30 acres. There is a large number of cases, according to the Taoiseach — 540, I think, between cases brought into court and a number of other cases in which entry has been made on the farms. Roughly speaking, therefore, one farmer in every 550 or so has failed to do his duty, for one reason or another — possibly because he is not aware, as he ought to be, of the seriousness of the situation, and possibly because, as has been suggested, some people have contempt for the law. We have struggled for a long time to get rid of that idea, that people can contemn the law with impunity, but am I seriously to be told that because .2 per cent., or one out of every 500 farmers, did not till the amount of land that is required under the tillage Order, the country is faced with starvation? That was the burden of the speeches that I listened to here today. However these speeches may have been couched, that was the message that an attempt was made to get across, and with which, in more careful language, the Taoiseach has identified himself to a certain extent. That is ridiculous.
Let us take the realities of the case, at all events. The Taoiseach says that there is no possibility of dealing with serious crime unless these amendments are defeated. Mind you, the sub-section of this section which provides a maximum penalty, to start with, of £5,000, does suggest that measures are taken to deal with it. We have not objected to that. Then there is a further fine not exceeding £50, for every day on which the offence is continued. Does that suggest that there are no methods of dealing with offences of this kind? I suggest that there are. The Taoiseach made the point that unless he gets this minimum penalty there will be no way of distinguishing between the small crime and the big crime: what he said was that the small man would get a harsh punishment and that the great offender would get off lightly. This section does not provide a remedy for that; at least, the minimum penalty, which alone is under discussion, does not provide a remedy for it. It does not compel the district justice, for a very serious crime, to impose a limit of £5,000. There is nothing of the kind. For a big offence, a criminal offence of great magnitude, to which the Taoiseach referred, so far as compulsion on the district justice goes, £100 is all that you are compelling him to impose.
In fact, the section as it stands will make it exceedingly difficult for justice as represented by the courts to make the requisite distinction between the small offender and the big offender. But the very opposite is what the Taoiseach urged. Of course, for that we need not be surprised. I pay him the compliment that I know few better masters of completely turning the meaning of words into their opposite than the Taoiseach. Despite all the heat that he saw fit to throw into this matter, the fact remains that he has not justified the departure from a wise principle. It is not justifying a departure from a wise principle to acknowledge the principle and say, as he did towards the close of his speech, "Of course, I acknowledge that". That is an old trick. The Taoiseach has not made a case for taking a discretion out of the hands of the district justices unless — and mind you he did not state this in so many words—he is convinced that the district justices are more at fault than the farmers.
Now, if there was any lesson to be drawn out of the Taoiseach's speech, as I suppose he wishes some lessons to be drawn out of his speeches, though I am not always sure of that — sometimes I think he wishes several different lessons to be drawn — it is this: that the district justices have been sadly at fault in the administration of the law. He has not badly stated that, but the whole burden of the speeches of himself and his colleagues boils down to that. Is that the position? He mentioned farmers and others, though he protested at the beginning that the debate had been too much confined to farmers. Having just admitted that, he immediately got on to that and nothing else.
Does the Deputy want to hear more?
I know that the Taoiseach can prolong debates, and apparently, he enjoys it. As a matter of fact, I may tell the Taoiseach that I had no intention of intervening at this particular stage. I was going to wait for the section, but when I saw the Taoiseach enter the House once more I said: "Well, as I have to leave this town next week I had better get in now, because if the Taoiseach plays his usual rôle here we shall not get on to the section by the end of this week." I do not now ask him for any more information, but I do want to say — the debate has now lasted for some time — that the Taoiseach might long ago have brought forward some reasons that would convince any reasonable man that he has a case. He has not done that.
I do not think there is anybody in this House — the Taoiseach knows this as well as everybody else — who is anxious to prevent proper punishment being inflicted on those guilty of serious offences, nor is there anybody in the House who does not want to see the maximum effort made in every direction for the safety of this country. I think the Taoiseach has plenty of proof of that from every side of the House. I do not think he can deny that, in this time of emergency, he has got plenty of powers. Even though, as has been pointed out by the Leader of the Opposition, they have been abused, they are not being refused.
The Taoiseach is asking now for new powers, and what I am suggesting is that before he gets them he must put up a case for them. He must show that we are not merely in a time of emergency, which we are, but that in this particular matter we are dealing with a situation which demands a departure from the ordinary administration of justice. I think that is bad where it can be avoided. Very often, some of our laws are simply a continuation of the past. I think that that was so in the case of the fishery laws, to which the Minister for Supplies referred. The minimum fine, by the way, is only £5 or £10. That came down to us from the past. It is one of the few cases in which minimum fines were kept. As well as I can remember the debate on the Fisheries Act — it took place many years ago — we simply continued the principle of minimum fines in that measure.
But is it a proper thing that a case should, in fact, be tried, a case in which there are extenuating circumstances, not by the justice who has all the facts of it before him, but by a Minister? It may, indeed, be necessary, in some cases, to have a penalty, and that he should have the power to exercise the prerogative of mercy. That practice should not be pushed unless a very strong case demands it. That is one of the reasons why I am opposed to this. I am opposed to it as a matter of principle. A certain thing can be done in a time of crisis which, in the ordinary way, should not be done. If you want to extend that power you should, I think, make a case for it in reference to the particular matter you are dealing with. I think we should be very slow to take away from the court this power of determining whether they are extenuating circumstances or not.
I am putting that forward now as a matter of principle. I think it is a serious thing, unless it is absolutely necessary, to take that out of the hands of the judges and put it into the hands of the Government. See what happens. Is there a Deputy who does not know what will happen when a case of that kind occurs? In regard to one case I heard of recently, one of the charges made against the person was that she had sold matches at 2d. instead of 1½d. Suppose that in six months' time the position is that there must be a minimum fine in a case like that — let it be any sum you like, £20, £25 or £100 — what will happen when a case like that comes up? I do not want to misrepresent anything, but in a case like that the offence is there. What will the tendency in the Department be? I gathered from the Minister for Supplies when speaking last night that the tendency in the Department will be this: we only catch or hear of one case in 20. Very good, having that one in 20 — it may be some technical offence — we must prosecute. I think that was the burden of the Minister's speech last night. I would be very slow to misrepresent him in any way. Therefore, in big matters as in small matters, say in the case of selling goods, if there is a minimum fine, no matter how trivial the offence, the minimum fine must be imposed. Some of the cases will inevitably be graded in gravity.
But in all these cases there will be an appeal to the Minister and to every Deputy in this House who represents the particular constituency from which the offender comes. An appeal will be made to every Deputy quite irrespective of Party. I should say that if there are seven Deputies for Kerry they will all be approached in this particular case. As regards the approach there will be no differences of Party. You will have pressure of that kind. I know it may not affect the Minister, but it will be believed down the country that it will affect him. I am sure the Taoiseach has not reached his present stage of eminence or his age in life not to know that there are a number of people in this country who, if they are looking for a position of any kind for anybody for which he is in reality quite well fitted or want him to get through an examination which there is not the slightest possibility of his failing to get, will think it necessary to pull strings. Afterwards they are convinced that it was not the ability of the candidate that got him through but the fact that they used influence. That will be the feeling down the country. It is inevitable, if you take this out of the hands of the district justices, that you will have that continual approach to the Minister. What will be thought of his decision? "Influence"!
In any case, how is the Minister to decide? He will consult, as I think it was pointed out, his appropriate colleagues. What are we giving up to him? The report of the person in charge of the prosecution, namely, the inspector. If the district justice is asked for his view we do not know what attention will be paid to it — very little, to judge by the spirit behind this amendment. At the best the case will have to be retried again by the district justice.
Is there no other way than this minimum penalty? Let us take it for granted that we are all keen on having maximum production and on there being no black market. We are all keen on maximum production. Is there no method except this of bringing the district justices to a sense of their duty, in which they are alleged to be lacking? I do not know whether there is or not. I gather from the speeches of the Taoiseach and the Minister that apparently the district justices have fallen down badly. I think, even if the Taoiseach has a number of cases, it is a bad thing to assume you know all the facts. I cannot accept the conclusion that the Taoiseach drew, that there cannot be mitigating circumstances in all the cases. There must be, as is obvious even from the list, where you have a fine of £100 to start with and a fine of 2/6 at the end, for what is prima facie the same offence. I suggest that shows that this points to mitigating circumstances of which we know nothing and of which we cannot know anything.
The objections that came from this side of the House are on two grounds. My own objection is one on the question of principle; that I do not think it is wise, on the cases shown, to get into this too easy path — Deputy Mulcahy called it the lazy method. For a number of years I have felt that the more despotic forms of government are the lazy methods. They are the obvious and immediate methods of settling a situation. I often fear that in the long run they are not the healthier way. This seems to me to be a happy-go-lucky ready method. It is always the easier way to impose fines of that kind, but it is not the sounder way in the long run. That is one of my main objections to this particular power that is being taken by the Government. The other objection, of course, is that even Parliament itself does not attempt to say what the minimum penalty will be. It may be £5, £10, £15, £20, £25, £30. There is an objection to that on principle also. It is not a good thing for Parliament to pass legislation of that kind. I will admit that I can see some answer to my contention that, namely, there will be such a whole lot of matters that if you have minimum penalties it would be impossible to put them down at this particular moment. "We shall have to be governed by experience, and the penalty will have to be different in different cases." But even so, that is only an example, I suggest, of the objectionable by-ways into which this principle of minimum penalties has brought us.
I am perturbed by a sentence that I saw in this morning's papers as coming from the Minister for Supplies. I know how unsafe it is to judge a case by any abbreviated report. Anyone who has read law cases, no matter how well they are reported, sees the great danger of that. They are expecting one verdict from the jury and they get the opposite verdict. The jury have a fuller view of the case than the ordinary reader of newspapers. Having experience of the necessarily brief way in which speeches are reported, I asked my colleagues: Is it a fact that the Minister stated in this House that when a man was accused of a certain offence it must be borne in mind that the penalty must be determined by the fact that it is probable that he had committed a number of other similar offences before? I put it that that is a very serious way to look at the administration of justice. It appals me. Again, I say it is one of the difficulties into which this whole business is leading us. I put it seriously, leaving everything else aside: is what you will get out of the sub-section worth these dangers?
Surely there has never been the slightest objection from this side of the House to giving great powers. We have been twitted by the Labour Party and we have been twitted by our supporters in the country with giving the Government such extended powers. We never hesitated to give them these powers. We hesitate here because — I am speaking now for myself — there is a dangerous principle involved, and because we fear they will not help. I do not think the benefit you will get will compensate for running the risks you run in connection with the administration of justice. I put it to the Taoiseach that he really ought to consider if he is going to get the value on the balance as against the real dangers to the administration of justice.
There is a complaint at the present moment — I pay little attention to many rumours, and therefore I am not guaranteeing that there is any foundation for it — that the small offender is caught and brought before the court and that some of the biggest offenders go free. You know the suspicions that prevail in this country. Once this Bill is passed, every fine, whether for a slight offence or a little more serious offence, will be a matter of political negotiation; at least it will start that way. You will not prevent that. You will not increase the respect for the administration of justice in that way. Emergency measures are necessary in certain crises. I think everybody will admit that. We have always admitted it. We insisted upon it when we were in Government, and we have admitted it in Opposition, openly and fully admitted it. But emergency measures should not be brought in unless they are necessary.
On the case put up to us the necessity for this section is not sufficiently demonstrated to justify it. The Taoiseach himself admits — I would expect nothing else — that the thing itself is objectionable. It is highly objectionable. It is not a question of putting an extra acre under tillage, as some people glibly suggested. That is not what is at issue in this debate. There are various methods of doing that. That is not what is at issue in this debate; it is the question of the administration of justice. Any course that weakens, that decreases the respect for the administration of justice, in this country particularly, is something that ought to be entered upon very carefully and with much trepidation.
I have given my own particular objections to this section. They are altogether on the question of the principle. I do not believe that with a maximum penalty of £5,000 provided for in the Bill and to which nobody has objected, increasing by £50 every day for the continuance of the offence, it can seriously be contended that the magnitude of these offences is not stressed. As the result of this debate — though how anybody is to know what is said in this debate puzzles me — the district justices, if they are, shall I say, lax, easy-going, tender-hearted, may be brought to a sense of what the Taoiseach would call the realities of the situation. If that can be done, I think it would be a much healthier way; I mean if it can be legally and constitutionally done. Again, I do not know whether it can be done. I am sure that a statement by the Taoiseach himself on that matter would have effect. I think it would be a much healthier way. As to this matter of taking the judgment on extenuating circumstances out of the hands of the district justices and putting it into the hands of a Minister — I am not now saying what Minister; I have great respect for the Minister for Justice and I think everybody in this House has — whoever the Minister is, even if it were myself in the morning, I do not think these powers should be lightly given to a Minister. I should also like the Taoiseach not to take too lightly the charge, or at least the suggestion, of the inherent, inescapable tendency of any bureaucracy to get more power. It will do that — it is inherent in the very system, and I think most countries are developing in that direction. I do not want to stress that point any further, but I think this measure will help that particular tendency.
It is not a question of a minimum penalty up to £100. We do not know whether it will be £5, £50 or £75. It is a question of the effectiveness of the remedy on the one hand, which I doubt very much as being likely to produce the desired results, and, on the other hand, the jettisoning of a very sound principle, to have as little fixing of minimum penalties as possible. I have discussed this matter without the slightest trace of heat, merely on what seemed to me the merits of the case. Putting it in the interests of tillage and of respect for justice, I will ask the Taoiseach to consider whether there is not another way of accomplishing what he has in view than the method prescribed in this section.
This discussion has puzzled me a good deal and I do not think that Deputy O'Sullivan helped to clear the air in any way. Deputy Cosgrave's statement indicated that a very small percentage of the farmers were defaulters and, consequently, only a very small number will be affected by this measure. Suppose it were in my power to get the Government to withdraw this particular section that lays that penalty on farmers, I wonder what Deputy O'Sullivan and the Labour Party would say with reference to the other section? Is there any Deputy here who will honestly say that he would object to any measure, no matter how strong or how forceful it might be, to prevent black marketing?
I think it is fairly obvious that this will affect only a very small proportion of farmers. It will be simply a preventive. It will simply be a sort of guarantee that in the coming season there will not be even the very small percentage of defaulters that now exist. But what of the other side? Has anybody a plea to put forward that we should be much more merciful to those engaged in the black market? Are there many farmers who would argue that plea and say that we should be much more lenient in the measures we take to prevent black marketing? I wonder how much they suffer through black marketing? That has puzzled me a good deal.
Deputy Cosgrave held forth eloquently on the immorality of this measure and the enormous penalty which was going to be put on the farmer if he did not comply with the regulations. He emphasised the penalty of £100. I do not think this measure is going to have such dire consequences in regard to the farmers as the Deputy indicated, but, if it is strong enough, it is certainly going to reduce the activities of the black market, and I do not think there is a Deputy who is sorry for that reason. I am sure every Deputy is extremely glad. Every one of us, no matter what Party we belong to, has been continuously reading letters and listening to complaints about the black market. The majority of the people who have spoken to me would, I feel sure, look on this penalty as being an extremely light one and would be of the opinion that we should adopt a much heavier penalty in order to curb black-market activities.
I should like to hear from the Opposition how far this measure is really going to affect farmers and how far it is going to affect respect for the principle of justice. So far as my knowledge of the country is concerned, and I go amongst the people a good deal, the small penalties have already done considerable harm and have seriously affected respect for the law, and I think every Deputy is aware of that. It might be that in certain cases there would be extenuating circumstances to which the justice would listen compassionately and he might feel inclined to impose a small fine. Of course, we do not all understand points of law, and it might be pretty hard to convince the public in relation to the extenuating circumstances.
It must be remembered that the principles of justice may have to be departed from in all wars. Many of the taxes from which the community suffers were really instituted during some periods of war. When these situations arise, Governments must be armed with all sorts of powers to overcome difficulties. So far as I can see, the main power that the Government want in this country is power to stop and exterminate, if possible, the black market. It is causing the greatest amount of irritation, the greatest amount of discontent, and an enormous amount of hardship. We have a black market in bicycle tyres. Men who have to use bicycles in order to earn their living cannot get a bicycle tyre at less than 32/- and very often they have to pay as much as £2. It is impossible to stop that by simply making pleas. There must be something else instituted. Strong measures must be taken and even these strong measures may not be sufficient.
So far as the farmers are concerned, this measure will affect only a small percentage of defaulters. I know that if these cases were sympathetically examined it would be found there was some good reason why the farmers were not able to comply with the regulations. The number of farmers who could be described as defaulters in relation to the production of food is extremely small. I want to know from the Opposition what is their view as regards the other side, which is the big side. I would like to hear an explanation from them on that aspect.
I have listened to this debate for the past few days and it is very gratifying to me as a farmer, as a representative of the farmers of North Cork, to learn that 998 farmers out of every 1,000 have done their duty by the people. The Taoiseach has a list of the farmers who were brought to the courts because they did not do their duty and he said he was prepared to read that list. In my part of the country some farms were entered by the Department and the land was taken over and ploughed. Some of the land was let to other people by auction. I know in these cases it was utterly impossible for the holder to do the tillage required and I am sure there are such cases in the list of persons the Taoiseach has. In my opinion, such cases should not be in that list with defaulters, people who deliberately did not do their duty. There should be a special list for them. I resent very much and I refute what Deputy Fagan said last night, that the County Cork was tired of growing wheat. That is not true. This year we had the best crop of wheat that we have had for the past five years in the County Cork, and the best crop of oats and barley and garden crops. I hope we will have a very good harvest. The County Cork is not tired of growing wheat, but it is very tired of the present Government.
Could you grow a new Government?
If we could we would. Deputy Killilea, I think it was, said that the land should be taken from the big farmers. I take off my hat to the big farmers of this country if he means the farmers of 100 acres to 200 acres. They are giving good employment and are doing their duty and doing it well, although some of them had never tilled up to four or five years ago. We in this House can stand up for the farmers of County Cork. I do not know if we could do the same for the farmers in other counties.
Particularly the small farmers.
Particularly the small farmers. Deputy O'Reilly mentioned bicycle tyres and black-marketers. I have no sympathy for people who deal in black markets. I am not so much concerned as the Taoiseach is about taking discretion from the district justices with regard to black-marketers. In my part of the country there are unfortunate men who have to use their bicycles for the purpose of earning their living and they cannot get tyres. I know men who have to walk six and seven miles to their work and if they go to the black market they will have to pay £2 for a tyre. I believe it is the duty of the Minister for Supplies to commandeer all the tyres and to give them out by permit to the men most deserving of them and not to allow the wholesalers or retailers of the country to treat unfortunate workers in that way. With regard to this Bill, I believe it is going too far, and I would appeal to the Taoiseach to accept the proposals put up to him by the Front Bench of this Party.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Dan.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Brennan, Martin.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Byrne, Alfred (Junior).
- Cleary, Mícheál.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corish, Richard.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Everett, James.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hickey, James.
- Hogan, Daniel.
- Humphreys, Francis.
- Keane, John J.
- Kelly, James P.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Loughman, Francis.
- Lynch, James B.
- McCann, John.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Moran, Michael.
- Morrissey, Michael.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Mullen, Thomas.
- Norton, William.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Loghlen, Peter J.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- O'Rourke, Daniel.
- O'Sullivan, Ted.
- Pattison, James P.
- Rice, Brigid M.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Walsh, Laurence J.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Conn.
Níl
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George C.
- Benson, Ernest E.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John A.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Dockrell, Henry M.
- Nally, Martin.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Sullivan, John M.
- Esmonde, John L.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Hughes, James.
- Lynch, Finian.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Rogers, Patrick J.
- Ryan, Jeromiah.
I move amendment No. 10:—
After line 30, page 4, to add a new paragraph as follows:—
"No order issued under this sub-section shall have retrospective effect".
This is simply a matter of ensuring that any of these Orders which are issued quoting minimum penalties can only apply forward, so to speak, and that no minimum penalty Order can have retrospective effect.
That has been met already by amendment No. 3, the amendment which has been inserted in the operative section with regard to penalties under paragraph (6) (a), on the previous page. The words "at the time the offence is committed" were there inserted.
It is intended to meet the point?
Yes.
I move amendment No. 11:—
In page 4 to delete paragraph (c), lines 33 to 35, and to substitute the following:—
"(c) by the substitution in sub-section (7) of the words and figure ‘to which such person is liable under sub-section (6)' for the words ‘provided by the foregoing sub-section'."
If Deputies read the section carefully they will find that it is under sub-section (6) the liability occurs.
Is this intended to relate to 6A?
It is under sub-section (6) that the liability occurs.
As things stand it is clear that a person is liable under sub-section (6) and it is proposed to substitute in sub-section (7) "sub-section (6)" for the words "the foregoing sub-section".
The point is that a liability occurs and this has definite reference to the sub-section under which the liability occurs. You will find that it is sub-section (6).
That means that forfeiture cannot be imposed in relation to 6A matters?
They can.
I take it the intention is that where a minimum penalty is concerned, there should not be forfeiture of the goods as well?
Yes. It is intended that there should.
That there should be forfeiture?
Yes.
On the section, the principle of a minimum penalty having been more or less accepted now, I should like to put this suggestion to the Taoiseach. Deputy Everett already made the suggestion that minimum penalties should only become applicable after the first or preliminary offence. I understand that that idea is not accepted. The position we have now, therefore, is that the Government by Order may associate the minimum penalty with a breach of any Emergency Powers Order, and after that, if there is to be a remission of penalty where there are—and undoubtedly there will be—extenuating circumstances, that has to be done by the Minister for Justice, who will get in touch with the officials of the Department concerned. I should like to suggest another procedure for which we already have a precedent. Under the Intoxicating Liquor Act of 1927, in relation to certain offences which are specified in a Schedule to that Act and referred to in a Part of that Act—they cover drunkenness on a licensed premises, disorderly conduct, giving drink to young people, taking money from young people for drink; they cover most of the offences that, I think, the Legislature wanted to deal with by a distinct penalty—once the district justice finds the case proven, he must endorse the licence. The only time at which he can refrain from endorsing the licence is if he finds the offence trivial and so states. Then he makes an order to the effect that the offence was of a trivial nature, and he will not endorse the licence. When he does make such an order, the person prosecuting, can take an appeal on that, and the Circuit Court may find that the offence is not trivial; then the endorsement follows.
Alternatively, if the endorsement is put on—and that is the point I am specially aiming at—the publican whose licence is endorsed is allowed an appeal to the circuit judge, and the circuit judge can then take into consideration extenuating circumstances. I am roughly quoting the provisions of two sections of the 1927 Act. When those have been interpreted by the court they come to this, that the District Courts are not entitled to consider any extenuating circumstances. They simply find the offence trivial or not. If they cannot say it is trivial they must automatically endorse the licence. Then the person whose licence is endorsed can go to the circuit judge and can plead extenuating circumstances. If he satisfies the higher court that there are extenuating circumstances, then the endorsement can be withdrawn, and, of course, a substantial penalty may be inflicted or a light penalty may be inflicted. I suggest to the Taoiseach that that procedure might be adopted here, as we have now come to the situation where the district justices will impose minimum fines and cannot consider mitigating circumstances. Those mitigating circumstances undoubtedly will arise in certain cases. Why not let them be tried by the court? Unless it is considered here that the Circuit Courts all over the country are going to be as bad on those offences as it is alleged some of the District Courts have been, there can be no objection to what I am suggesting. It still keeps the matter a judicial one, and does away, to my mind, with the worst effects that follow from this. I would suggest to the Taoiseach that he should get this matter considered before the next stage, and I propose to put down an amendment in order to get it considered in a better way.
The principle I am aiming at is still to keep the matter within the purview of the judges and keep it away from the control of the Departments. The result which the Taoiseach wants will follow to a great extent, because the person will have already, on the case being proved, suffered a minimum fine, and he, so to speak, goes up to the higher court with the onus on him to show such extenuating circumstances that the fine ought to be removed or ought at least to be lessened. The onus is on the prosecution to prove the case; once the penalty has been imposed, the onus is on the person who goes to the higher court to establish affirmatively to the satisfaction of the Circuit Court judge that there are extenuating circumstances. I do suggest that we might trust the Circuit Court to deal with the odd cases taken on appeal. If the Circuit Court judge finds that there are no extenuating circumstances the person has increased the penalty on himself because he has the original fine, the expenses of the lower court and the expenses of the higher court. That, in itself, will be a deterrent against any vexatious appeals.
As a farmer living in a district where over 60 per cent. of the arable land is cultivated, I have listened with disgust to the arguments which have been put forward in favour of those minimum penalties. If any case can be made for minimum penalties, I think it should be based upon such offences as are committed in respect of prices Orders or blackmarketing or activities of that kind. Offences of that nature are difficult to detect, and for that reason it is desirable that the penalty should be high. But I find that the main case in support of those high minimum fines is directed against the alleged failure of farmers to till the required acreage of land. We had figures produced here by the Minister to the effect that 99.2 per cent. of the farmers have complied with the tillage Order. Surely, on that basis no case can be made for those high minimum fines. It is an extraordinary thing that an attempt should be made to vilify the farmer and make him appear as a criminal.
Reference has been made by the Taoiseach, and by those who supported the penalties provided in the section, to the bread queues in the cities and towns. But the extraordinary position is that a farmer can fully comply with the tillage Order without growing one grain of wheat. That fact alone reveals the sham and humbug behind the entire case which has been made for those penalties. The bread queues and the shortage of bread in the cities and towns have nothing whatever to do with the enforcement of the tillage Order; as I say, a farmer can comply with the tillage Order without providing bread for the people. Surely, then, there is no point whatever in dragging the question of a food shortage into the arguments in support of this section.
It has also been stated by some Deputies that farmers evade their responsibilities by tilling the inferior portions of their land. There, again, it is not the justices who are at fault. It is not the penalties that are at fault. What is at fault is the Order itself or the administration of the Order. No case can be made for those minimum penalties upon that ground. When this State was established we set up a new type of courts in this State, something entirely new as far as this country was concerned, and, I think, new as far as the British Isles were concerned—the district courts. These district courts were regarded as models that should be followed in many other countries. Our system of district courts has been envied in other countries and yet we have an attempt to show by this section that the justices in the district courts are imbeciles. That is the only logical conclusion to be drawn from the contention put forward. If, for example, a landowner fails to till the required amount of his land, without any extenuating circumstances, and if he is let off with a nominal fine, surely there is something wrong with the court or with the justice. That is a question that should be inquired into. The mental capacity of the justice in such cases should be examined if such decisions are given. When we consider, however, that, in selecting our district justices, very great care has been taken to choose men of ability, education and high intellectual standards, and when we consider that the overwhelming majority of these men are still in their prime, so far as intellect is concerned, and could not be regarded as mentally defective, we must conclude that there is something very faulty in the arguments put forward in support of this section.
The whole position is quite clear. The tillage Order is being complied with by the overwhelming majority of the farming community—by 99 per cent. of the farmers. That is a very high percentage. If there is any shortage of food supplies, it is not due to failure to comply with the tillage Order. It is due to some failure on the part of the administration to calculate the amount of arable land and, in the second place, to calculate the amount of land requiring to be tilled to supply the nation's needs. So far as bread is concerned, the shortage is due to the fact that the farmer can comply with the tillage Order without providing any wheat or grain suitable for the production of bread. Therefore, is it not quite clear that it is not due to any default on the part of the farmers, but to failure on the part of the Executive Government and the administration, that there is a shortage of bread and of human food? It is altogether unjustifiable to attempt to unload the responsibility upon the shoulders of the justices in the courts who cannot make any reply or defend themselves. It is even more unjust to have the position which we have had to-day in which attempts have been made to blackguard the farming community and brand them as criminals, after 99 per cent. of them had, as stated by the Minister for Agriculture, complied with the tillage Order.
No statement was made here which would deserve that appellation or characterisation.
I am referring to statements made by Deputy Cleary and Deputy Killilea.
I heard nothing said by Deputy Killilea which would warrant that description.
I thought that, instead of a Bill of this kind, going further away from democratic government and further ignoring this House, there would be a move back to this House. There would be plenty of time to discuss all the emergency Orders that are being made if we functioned as the elected Parliament and these Orders were placed before us, instead of our getting them by post in the morning, signed by a civil servant and having the force of law. After all, the people are something more than pawns on a chess table. A lot of the discussion has ranged around the production of food. Deputy Cogan has made a statement which convicts the Government of failing to do its duty in this emergency. If there was not a loaf in the country, it would not be the farmers' fault but the Government's fault, because, in their tillage Order, they did not provide for the growing of one grain of wheat. The Taoiseach, in the early part of this year—still within the wheat-sowing period—found it necessary to go around the country and exhort the farmers to grow food. He pointed out that, to grow sufficient wheat and make good the deficiency caused by the non-importation of livestock food, we would require to crop 2,800,000 acres. Even though it was late in the day, I am glad the Taoiseach worked out the basis on which we should produce food.
That has nothing at all to do with the section.
I am replying to a statement the Taoiseach made on the section. Thereby, he implied that there was justification for this section in order to enforce the growing of sufficient food.
Surely, the whole debate on this section has hinged on its use in connection with non-compliance with tillage Orders and with supply matters.
Deputy Belton was entering into a discussion on the percentage of wheat and the percentage of other crops which was to be grown.
Part of the argument was that the failure of the farmers to till sufficiently brought about a reduction in food production.
I am replying to what the Taoiseach said, and surely he cannot go out of order. If I follow him in a straight line, I cannot be out of order either. The Order made by the Government concerning food production was carried out by 99.2 per cent. I do not know if that applies to the number of landholders or to the area. No matter to which it applies, it shows that the Order was carried out practically 100 per cent. What is the need for the procedure outlined in Section 8? No matter how it is looked at, it must be taken as a vote of censure on the district justices. It cannot be read in any other light. This section is to supersede the district justices, to supersede the courts and try a backstairs move into the Ministry of Justice. Do we not know that, if the people affected are to have recourse to the Minister for Justice, his life will be rendered practically impossible? All of us who have been in court, whether as onlookers or as parties to a suit, know how nice a case looks until the other side attacks it. People think they have a case and that their opponents have no case until the arguments for and against are put. Instead of giving the defendants in this regard an opportunity to put up arguments in open court in a judicial manner, with a judge to adjudicate on them, these cases are to be tried, not by the Minister for Justice but by the civil servants, with the plaintiff there but the defendants absent.
So far as the production of food is concerned, no case has been made against the farmers at all. We get substantially 100 per cent. through the Orders made, so the Orders are being satisfied. The Taoiseach said that the really serious times are coming. They are. He and other speakers condemned the black market. So do I. The black market is the product of Government action. It has been said that the prices of cycle tyres are soaring to such and such a height. Is it not better that they be obtainable at a high price than not at all? To go further into that would be dealing with the Department of Supplies.
I fear that the Deputy has entered the door already.
I still have one leg outside the door.
It has been wide open on this section already.
It should now be closed.
When prices are being fixed which lead to black marketing, why are the parties concerned not consulted?
That is not relevant to the section, nor to the Bill.
The Taoiseach said that 2,800,000 acres must be tilled, but he is not going to get it by a star chamber. He has adopted a method of price-fixing. The black market has been condemned, but low price-fixing has produced the black market in agricultural produce, and low price-fixing has occurred because the Taoiseach and Ministers have not consulted all the people concerned, who took the opposite view. I agree with him that we have not felt the blow of the emergency really yet. We are now beginning to feel it, and it will take the combined efforts of everybody to minimise the effect. I hope that, if this legislation is put into operation, it will not have the effect of punishment but act as a preventative; and I am sure it is in that spirit that the Taoiseach and the Government would wish it to act.
In conclusion, I would say to the Taoiseach that, if he wants to face the real crisis that is now coming, now is the time to plan—not when the period of sowing is passing out. I must resent the statements made by Deputy Killilea and others about the defaults of farmers in the eastern counties. The figures given here show that there has been substantially no default, and the extenuating circumstances should be taken into account, such as dairy farmers and cases where widows are the owners of farms. If farms of that kind were eliminated, I think you have the entire 100 per cent. Whatever case can be made for this Section 8, a case cannot be made on the basis of default in food production by the owners of land.
The Taoiseach, in the last speech he made, when dealing with the amendments, stated he realised some persons would be adversely affected by this minimum penalty clause, but that in order to meet the demands of the common good, it is necessary that some persons should suffer. It is our duty, so far as we humanly can, to legislate for all, even for only a minority of one, if there is a possibility of obviating hardship to that minority. I made a suggestion before which I thought would meet the case, but it did not find favour with the Taoiseach. Deputy McGilligan has made another suggestion now, and I would like to support it. The Deputy overlooked a further safeguard in connection with it, in limiting the discretion of the court. In dealing with the Intoxicating Liquor Act, not only must the circuit judge find that extenuating circumstances exist, but he must also put in, as part of his order, if the endorsement is removed, the nature of the extenuating circumstances he has found. That puts a very heavy onus on him in a case of that kind.
The Taoiseach and everybody speaking in this debate admit that, no matter what happens, and with the greatest will in the world on the part of the whole population, there are individual citizens with rights, whose rights are bound to be interfered with, and they are bound to be treated harshly; but that is necessary for the common good. That is his view, having regard to his experience up to the present and to the Orders already made. This particular Bill and this particular section will relate to a number of future Orders—in other words, we are framing the punishments and procedure now, for offences which will be related by decree later on.
During the course of the debate, we have been borrowing illustrations from the compulsory tillage code, and I will continue to use that particular code as an illustration. It is quite conceivable that the Government would say that 25 per cent. is sufficient under present circumstances; but they may come along later and say it is not sufficient, and that it is necessary to increase the amount of arable land which is to be compulsorily cultivated. Speaking as a lawyer and also as a farmer, doing my duty, with 45 good acres of land growing good food at the moment, I say it is perfectly obvious that cultivation of land has reached saturation point.
That is right.
There is no doubt that it will reach a peak point, after which land will go back. It may be necessary to alter the form of compulsory tillage, by putting smaller burdens on one class of holding and heavier burdens on another class, or by increasing the percentage. That is bound to give rise to a very much larger number of persons to whom the point in respect of extenuating circumstances is bound to apply. If the Taoiseach feels that there is a good argument to be put up in respect of those whom our experience to date shows to be adversely affected, I say that future Orders are bound to create a greater number and there is all the more reason for our being careful and for our seeking some alternative method of dealing with this.
I have made the suggestion that it would be a good thing to have the law as it exists at present applied to a first offence for the purpose of putting the person involved and everyone else on notice as to the existence and the commission of the offence. That apparently does not find favour, but I do think—and this is what I had in mind when I mentioned the intoxicating liquor code—that something should be evolved on the basis of the procedure under that code as outlined by Deputy McGilligan. It stands to reason that so long as there is a loophole, so long as there is some way of seeing that the minimum of injustice is done, it is the duty of this body to safeguard the interests of those who, admittedly, will be harshly affected, if this section goes through in its present form. I believe there is a way out and it is that suggested by Deputy McGilligan and by myself, and so long as there is that way out, we should not pass this section in its present form. It should be easy to find some way whereby the authority of the law will be upheld and no harshness will operate against any particular individual.
I was very glad to see that this discussion produced a large number of speakers on the Fianna Fáil side whom we do not often hear in this House. It is a very good thing that people should come here and speak their minds, and contribute to these discussions, and particularly to a discussion of this nature, but I deprecate entirely the suggestions which came from many of the speakers on the other side that because we are putting forward a reasoned argument in relation to this matter, we are in any way trying to support the black market or the evasion of the law which is going on in the country at present. I am all in favour of the maximum penalties being imposed for these offences, but I am solely interested in seeing that, so far as lies in our power, we will frame our laws in accordance with the terms of the written Constitution, whereunder every man shall be treated equally before the law, and that the laws will go forth from this House in such a way that it cannot be said that one individual is treated harshly if there is a possibility of avoiding it. I believe that if the section passes in its present form, there will be individuals who will suffer. I believe the section can be amended to meet that difficulty and I think it should be amended.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Dan.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Byrne, Alfred (Junior).
- Cleary, Mícheál.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corish, Richard.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Davin, William.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hickey, James.
- Hogan, Daniel.
- Humphreys, Francis.
- Keane, John J.
- Kelly, James P.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Loughman, Francis.
- Lynch, James B.
- McCann, John.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Moran, Michael.
- Morrissey, Michael.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Mullen, Thomas.
- Norton, William.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Loghlen, Peter J.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- O'Rourke, Daniel.
- O'Sullivan, Ted.
- Pattison, James P.
- Rice, Brigid M.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Walsh, Laurence J.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Conn.
Níl
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George C.
- Benson, Ernest E.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John A.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Dockrell, Henry M.
- Esmonde, John L.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Hughes, James.
- Lynch, Finian.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Nally, Martin.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Sullivan, John M.
- Rogers, Patrick J.
- Ryan, Jeremiah.
On the Second Stage we asked for an example of the matters referred to in this section. It is quite clear that the section is not intended to apply to compulsory tillage. The only suggestion made had something to do with currency exchange matters. I should like to know if the Taoiseach has discovered the reason for the section.
I indicated that the words generally point to what is intended, where a person is required to perform a specified act within a specified period or before a specified date. When the date is past obviously he could not do the act before that date. What we want to provide for is that even when the date is past, if the thing is something that ought to be done failure to do it in any case will be regarded as a continuing offence. It was suggested that there was some currency question involved, that, for instance, if a person had to declare foreign currency to the Minister for Finance by a certain date it should be done by that date. When the date had passed, and if it still was not done, then such person "shall be adjudged to be guilty of a continuing offence and be liable accordingly".
Can he ever purge an offence of that kind?
He cannot, because he must do it by a certain date, and that date is past.
He is guilty of a continuing offence.
Even if he dies.
He was guilty of an offence on the date specified.
And he can never be guilty again because the date is past. The Taoiseach does not appreciate the effect of these words. If a certain thing had to be done by a certain date he is guilty of an offence.
Yes.
But he can never comply with the Order because the time is past. Even if he complies, or if he dies, he is still guilty of a continuing offence.
Until he has complied.
He cannot comply because the date is past.
That is why this section is there. If a person does not deliver the money to the Minister for Finance, as he was supposed to have done before a certain date, he is guilty of a continuing offence.
Even if he dies it is still a continuing offence because he did not comply before that date.
How does the section get out of that?
We will have to make certain that that is not so. As I understand the section it is not so. The section says: "Such person continues after such conviction to make default". Default is got after, and by reason of the default in rendering up the money he shall be guilty of a continuing offence.
Take the example of the case of a person who comes into the possession of securities and who must give notice of surrender to the Minister for Finance within a fortnight. Supposing a person with securities in his possession at the time the Order comes out gets rid of the securities by some devolution of property, he must give notice of surrender to the Minister. If he does not surrender inside the fortnight, he is guilty to an offence and could be convicted. If, in ten days after that, he gives notice of surrender, he is still guilty of an offence, the offence of not having surrendered them inside the ten days, and, until he dies, every day that passes he is guilty of a continuing offence in relation to that. This section, as drafted, does not get out of that difficulty.
My parsing of it is different, and leads me to believe that where a person has been convicted two things must happen: the first is that a person is convicted of an offence, and the second is that, after conviction, he continues to make default in performing an act, that is, the act of delivering up.
That is, by a certain date.
No.
"Default" is the word.
Yes.
And default means an offence against the previous Order. The previous Order demands that he pay or deliver up inside a certain time, and if he makes a breach in that he continues in that and can never remedy it.
I admit that.
Very well. That is one point.
There are two things here. There is, first, what I might call the material thing, apart from the date. The date was fixed in order to get the material thing done by that date. Now, the date passes and the person is convicted of not having done it before that date, but notwithstanding the conviction, the thing itself, the material thing, which should have been done before that date, is still not done, and if the material thing, apart from the date, is not done, he shall be guilty of not doing it after the date, seeing that it is a thing that can be done after the date—that if he does not do that material thing, he is guilty of an offence. The question is whether the words there bear my meaning or the meaning of the Deputy and Deputy Costello.
Would the Taoiseach not agree that if the phrase used in paragraph (b) were to read something like this: "if such person fails after such conviction to perform the said act," it would be better? That is clear. That would catch the non-performance of the act, but you have two words in this section, which tie it up to the offence. The first is the word "continues", and that means the projection into the future of something that has happened in the past, such as the failure to pass over securities within a certain time. The second word is "default".
That is the whole thing. There is what I call the material part, and then there is the time.
Well, if that ever came for interpretation before a court, the judge would be bound to ask: "Why did they not say ‘fails' if they wanted to achieve that purpose?"
Well, I shall look into it.
Very well; then the other point is that this section should not have been drafted without consideration of a variety of offences causing trouble in the State. For instance, is there anything that can be spoken of here except this vague matter of surrendering securities? I have not looked it up since I mentioned it in the debate before, but I think I said that most of the securities carried only as far as a certain date— that the thing was carried up to the end of the Order and that the Order was only terminated by the end of the annual Act, and I think I said that one of these currencies or securities Orders was immediately replaced by another one when the second Emergency Act came into being. I suggest that there must have been something in the minds of those who drafted this section other than just this matter of securities.
This would be quite sufficient, in view of the fact that there might be other cases.
Well, I will ask how many cases have occurred of people failing to surrender securities within a specified time and by a specified date, and in how many cases have people continued in that course of conduct afterwards, of failing to surrender? I do not think there are many. I do not think many could be alleged.
It is true that I am informed that this is mainly in connection with currency matters, but I think it would be wise, in view of the possibility of similar things happening in other cases, to make it in general terms, because obviously, if we have something which is an offence and something which is desirable to be done by a certain date, it has to be so worded that the offence is in the first term, that a certain thing should be done by a certain date. If the date has passed, as Deputies clearly see, then it cannot be done by that date, but the thing that had to be done by that date could be done subsequently, and what it is intended to provide here is to make sure that if a case of that kind should occur—any case whatsoever of the failure to do the thing, apart from the date—the continued failure to do it should be regarded as a continuing offence.
Take a case of overcharging: every over-charge would be a new offence, in that case. Take the case of giving, let us say, a smaller weight than what the purchaser thought he was getting: every time under-weight was given it would be a new offence. Accordingly, there is no necessity for this continuing matter here.
Not with regard to that kind of offence.
All right. Now, with regard to securities, I hope that the original Emergency Powers Act, Section 5 (7), has not been forgotten. That sub-section says that if a person is convicted of an offence the court may, in addition to, or in lieu of, the punishment provided by the preceding sub-section of that section, direct that any goods or chattels, in relation to, or by means of, which such offence was committed, shall be forfeited. Suppose there is a case of securities not having been surrendered inside a certain time. Those appearing for the State, according to that, are entitled to ask the district justice to order the forfeiture of the securities, and I think that that is as good as they could ask for.
If they were not able to enforce it, they would need new jurisdiction.
If they are not able to enforce it there, they cannot enforce this. All you are relying on is that you can parade this gentleman before the court again, but the court may not agree to that. It is regarded as a new offence, and if you have not such a case, where you can get a forfeiture of the goods concerned, you are not likely to get it here.
You can come along at any time and charge him during that interval. I see the Deputy's point, but I still do not see that there is any objection to this. If there is something, such as the delivering up of currency, which ought to be done by a certain date, then, clearly, when that date has passed, the thing, literally, cannot be done before that date, but the person can deliver up the securities then, and if he does not, what is wrong in saying: "Very well, every day that you fail to deliver up these securities you shall be considered to be guilty of a continuing offence over that time, for which a certain fine can be imposed"? I do not see any objection to it, in principle. I take the Deputy's point: that the word "default" here may be read in a sense as not merely to cover the material part of it, but to cover the date as well, the very thing we want to avoid. I should like to examine the matter further, but assuming that that is so, is there any objection to it?
None, except that we always style ourselves a deliberative Assembly.
Yes.
And we are supposed to deal with such matters in a deliberative way. Would the Taoiseach tell us who thought of this?
It came from Finance.
Yes. Well, I suggest that the securities Orders should be looked into. I have an idea that under these Orders the Minister for Finance can enlarge the time in which the thing can be done, and if he cannot enlarge the time under one Order, he can certainly enlarge it under another Order, and then, if the securities are not surrendered before the prescribed date, a prosecution can be brought. However, possibly, this could be better discussed on Report Stage, but I am taking it now as a statement from the Head of the Government that this is a financial matter, purely and simply, and the only thing on which it is grounded, so far as we know, is these Orders about securities and currency. I would like to examine the Order in connection with that.
It originated from Finance. There was no reason why we should not make it in general terms. It was something which had to be prescribed to be done by a certain date and which, in its nature, was such a thing that, apart from the date, it could be done later. I think it is wise to provide for that in general terms.
I move amendment No. 12:—
In line 6, page 5, to insert after the word "him" the words "by or under any statute".
This is an explanatory amendment. I want to find out what the section means, and in what way it differs from the original section which it is intended to replace.
Section 6 of the original Act provided:—
(1) A Minister, having obtained the consent of the Government, may by order delegate to a Minister or a parliamentary secretary any power or duty of such Minister under this or any other Act (whether passed before or after this Act) or under an Emergency Order or an Order made under an Emergency Order.
That does not cover an Order made under another Act and the enumeration of "an Emergency Order or an Order made under an Emergency Order" might be held to be a complete enumeration, and that anything that was excluded was deliberately excluded. The purpose of this amendment in the Bill is to make it wider so as to take in a case, which actually occurred, of a scheme which was to be delegated to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence. The question was whether a particular scheme of compensation could be delegated or not. The general terms that we use here are wide enough. I do not know whether if the words in the Deputy's amendment were put in without any further qualifying phrases, such as are in the original Act, they would do.
It comes to this that the Taoiseach has been advised that where a Minister gets power to delegate authority under a statute he can do that, but he cannot delegate the power which comes to him under a statutory Order. I take that to be the effect of what necessitates this change.
With the additional words that are here.
The Minister may delegate any duty given to him under this or any other Act but, apparently, that does not cover an Order or an Order made under this or any other Act. If that is the interpretation, it is a most timid one.
This is being proposed for safety, and there is no reason why you would not make it safe.
Has there ever been an application to the courts on this?
I do not think so.
It is not a question of a court decision?
No. It is a question of a certain delegation being made and of ensuring that there can be no question about it.
When is it proposed to take the Report Stage?
I would like to have it as soon as possible.
I would like to have time to see the text of the Bill as amended. I intend putting down an amendment on the matter I spoke of on Section 8.
When will the Deputy have his amendment ready?
If the Chair will take my amendment to the lining of the Bill as it stands, I can put it in to-morrow.
That can be arranged.
Then let us say Tuesday next for the Report Stage.
As long as it is not taken too early.
We can try to arrange that.