The margin between a good Licensing Bill and an indifferent one is narrow. A certain amount of progress has been made in recent years in this very important matter. That is generally admitted. In my opinion, the time has come to take another step forward. Previous speakers have made repeated references to abuses in and around the City of Dublin. As the elected representatives of a people who are trying to build up as good institutions as can be established in any country in the world, we should ask ourselves why those abuses have arisen. Are we going to adopt the attitude that, because those abuses are there, we as the elected representatives of the people will not take the opportunity to remedy them? Is there anything in ourselves as a people that we have anything to be afraid or ashamed of? If we know that certain abuses are there, and that we as individuals and as a country have suffered from those abuses, we have an opportunity now of dealing with them in a trenchant manner befitting the Irish race. Are we going to avail of that opportunity? If abuses are there, in my opinion they are there because the laws were bad. The outstanding example of bad legislation in this regard was the fixing of the hours of two o'clock and five o'clock on Sundays. If a competition between the throat and the clock came into operation, whose is the fault? Is it the fault of the working man who works all the week and needs recreation on Sunday?
A man who does a reasonable week's work is entitled in a free country to freedom on Sunday within the restrictions imposed by laws enacted by free men. Is he at the behest of any vested interest to be put unwittingly in the situation in which he is forced into competition between the throat and the clock? That is one of the reasons for many of the abuses about which we hear so much. The hours two to five are unreasonable. I have heard the word "reasonable" used here time after time. I cannot picture any more unreasonable hours than two to five. The average Irishman would prefer to have public houses shut altogether rather than be compelled to drink at the behest of anyone. On Sunday a man who wants recreation and wants to have a drink, if he has the price of it, should be entitled to go into any part of this country and have his drink at reasonable hours, not alone in the city but outside it.
I think it was Deputy Hickey—I do not want to make any particular point about this—who spoke yesterday about home life on Sundays. Let us be reasonable about this. What is home life on Sundays? Everybody recognises that there are three matters involved in this question — firstly, recreation, secondly, home life on Sunday, and thirdly, no restriction on the individual. In the average home in this country, the woman of the house would definitely like to see her husband go out for a walk on a Sunday morning with the children to take them out of her way. If that man is a worker and wants to have a drink, why should he be prevented from having a drink on Sunday morning? The woman of the house wants him there during the evening. He may have a walk afterwards, but if he wants to have a drink at night, when it will do him good, I think he should be free to take it. Perhaps it is not so much drink he wants as some intercourse with his fellowman—a relaxation that is lacking in my opinion in this country. We have an opportunity now of facing up to this question in a way that will suit the conditions of our own country. Different laws may suit other people. If we have an inferiority complex, and are afraid to enact laws to suit ourselves, then many of the charges that were levelled against us by foreigners would appear to have some kind of justification. The hours two to five on Sunday are definitely and absolutely unreasonable. They do not suit the person who wants drink, they do not suit the publican, nor do they suit anybody else. My first suggestion then is—it should be fairly clear from what I have already said—that we should give the man who wants a drink in the morning on Sunday an opportunity of having it and that we should again give him an opportunity of having a drink when it will do him good and do no other person any harm, at a time later, definitely later, than the hours suggested in the Bill.
There is another point which has not yet been touched upon. We have done, and are doing, everything we can to attract tourists to this country. People who have gone to other countries— there are people present who have travelled much further afield than I have—appreciate that, in countries abroad, special facilities are provided for tourists, and even though these are availed of by people living in these countries there is no abuse. To go back to the question of human intercourse, and the interchange of ideas, that is a practice that appears to be very necessary for us, the more especially because this country is an island and there is a danger that we may become too insular in our outlook. Why should we spend money in an endeavour to attract tourists—and we know that after the war quite a number of people will be very pleased to visit this country to see how our people have been getting on—and at the same time show them, when they come here, that we are insular in our outlook? One, in travelling, meets people of different types and different nationalities. The interchange of ideas and the encouragement of intercourse between various classes of people are all to the good and definitely should be to the good of a country whose reputation has been built up, as ours has been, mainly as a missionary people— not this year, not last year, but all through our history.
The tourist centres should be scheduled, not by us, but by the body which has been charged with the administration of moneys voted by the people for tourist development. On them should lie the task of deciding what are scheduled tourist areas. That suggestion may appear to hit across the ideas of people who have made such a row about abuses. Where is there a city like Dublin with 500,000 population without the urge—a thing I should like to encourage—to leave their tenements and their rooms, to get out of the city on the one day in the week on which they can have recreation? In fact, I would put forward this idea—that the country people come into Dublin and after a few generations they fade out. Why? Because they are so glad to get into a city that they have not acquired the urge to keep out in the open air. Wherever that has happened, wherever you have a city of that type, there are bound to be abuses; but why should we, as the elected representatives of the people, allow ourselves to be influenced unduly by any section, no matter how right they may think they are in dealing with a problem of that type?
There is a future for this country if we can help that type of recreation onwards, to give the people confidence in themselves, to let them see that when they want a drink they can have it, but where it would not be good for them it will be denied them. Once we get that idea into the people, we will have blotted out one stain on our character. What do other people say about us—that we could not make licensing laws for ourselves, that we could not be trusted?
In the County of Dublin, where the bona fide problem has been the main concern of every person connected with this Bill, or connected with the life of the people in the county, it is well recognised that a problem exists, but why should that problem be allowed to hurt traders on the spot? Dublin is the highest valued county in the country, not even excepting the County Antrim. The valuation of the premises which these men bought was assessed on the conditions at the time they invested their money. In the ordinary course, the assessment, was high, but it was unduly high in their case, on account of the high valuation. Due, to a large extent, to conditions for which this House has no responsibility, and which we are trying to correct, these men find themselves now in a certain financial situation and must face it. The complete cutting out of the bona fide traffic will not do away with the abuses, but will result in financial ruin for some of these people. If we look at the situation in the broad way I have indicated, giving reasonably long hours and not being stingy about it, I think that all interests in the country would be united in accepting the Bill. As I stated last night, the Government and the Minister deserve credit on account of their courage. Having gone so far, why not go the whole way—why not pass an act of faith in the Irish people?