When the Committee adjourned last night, we were discussing Section 59, which provides for payments by way of compensation to the directors of Córas Iompair Éireann and of the Grand Canal Company. The Minister when framing his Bill proposed that the directors of Córas Iompair Éireann should be granted compensation for loss of office on a fairly generous basis, a basis of payment of the equivalent of directors' fees for two years. Until the discussion of the section began yesterday, Deputies were entitled to assume that the Minister had given careful consideration to this provision of the Bill, had arrived at a decision as to what was equitable and desirable and that this decision was embodied in the section. When the section was moved from the Chair, however, Deputy Larkin spoke, as he had intimated he would speak, in opposition to it and the opposition expressed by him was supported by a number of other Deputies on the Government side of the House. Some six or seven Deputies on the Government side followed Deputy Larkin and expressed unanimous opposition to the section.
After they had expressed that opposition on varying grounds, some logical and some illogical, the Minister intervened in the debate. It was noticed that he made little effort to persuade the Deputies who were opposing the section that they should withdraw their opposition. He spoke at the conclusion of his remarks of leaving the question to a free vote of the House, but he did not even intimate how he himself would vote, if a division were challenged on the section.
I think that we should recognise that there is no obligation on us to vote compensation to these directors. I think that the Minister was overstating the case when he represented himself as being coerced by precedent to provide for compensation for these directors. There is no such precedent of which I am aware. It is true that the 1944 Act provided for the payment of compensation to such of the directors of the old Great Southern Railway and the Dublin United Tramways Company as did not seek or secure election as stockholders' directors on the C.I.E. Board. The position which arose then was that two companies were being amalgamated and the total number of their directors exceeded the number of directors which was to be appointed to the board. It was obvious that they could not all be elected as directors of the new undertaking and there was, in any event, a consideration of policy which appeared to me to make it desirable to give some of them an inducement not to seek reelection. The circumstances were entirely different. The concern of which these directors are in charge is being wound up. It is being transferred to the custody of a new board, the members of which will be appointed exclusively by the Government. I cannot feel, therefore, that there is in the provisions of the 1944 Act, any precedent which is so coercive that the Minister was compelled to put this section in the Bill against his will. We must assume, until the Minister tells us otherwise, that he put this section in the Bill because he thought it should be there.
The Bill took a long time in its preparation. It reached the Dáil some nine months after the Minister announced his intention of bringing it here. Its drafting was not rushed in any sense of the term. Every section of it was undoubtedly fully considered, including this section, and it is because he had fully considered it, giving due regard to every consideration of expediency and of equity, that the Minister came to the Dáil with a proposal that these retiring directors of Córas Iompair Éireann should be compensated generously. Whatever considerations obliged the Minister to insert the section in the Bill, surely operate to place an obligation on him now to defend it. He made no attempt to defend it. He did not even endeavour to explain to the Dáil the considerations which prompted him in the first instance to insert the section in the Bill. The House is now in the position that it is considering a section of the Bill which nobody is prepared to recommend. In so far as it is a matter at all for Deputies on this side of the House, I want to make it clear that we will not accept an obligation which is clearly the Minister's