It is proposed to take business in the following order: No. 2, Vote 46; Nos. 7, 10, 9 and 6. Private Deputies' business will be taken at nine o'clock.
Order of Business.
Vote No. 46.
Before we take the Order of Business, might I ask whether the Chair has received a complaint with reference to Deputy MacEntee's conduct in this House last night and whether it is proposed to ask Deputy MacEntee to apologise.
The only person from whom the Chair will take information of that character is from the occupant of the Chair. The Chair will take information from no one else. It is the Chair who controls matters and he is the judge of order; and it rests with the occupant of the Chair whether or not to report to the Chair.
Am I to understand that a Deputy may insult the Chair——
I said the Chair is the sole judge of order. Deputy Flanagan is not.
Deputy Flanagan wants to be an informer as well as something else.
As reference has been made to this incident, I think it is just as well I should set out the facts.
Shortly before the termination of last night's sitting of Dáil Éireann I found it necessary to point out to Deputy MacEntee, who was speaking on a Vote for primary education, that he was transgressing the rules of the House by repetition.
You stated, Sir——
The occupant of the Chair is reporting to the Chair.
Is that the correct procedure?
That is the ordinary procedure.
To report in the House?
Certainly. It is always done.
It never happened before.
Indeed, it did.
Without notice?
Without notice. This is the first opportunity the Leas-Cheann Comhairle has got of reporting.
Is it not a fact and has it not been the practice——
Sit down.
On a point of order. Has it not been the practice of this House that, when a Deputy is transgressing the Rules of Order in the opinion of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, he immediately, if unable to deal with the situation himself, sends for the Ceann Comhairle and reports the incident there and then?
An Leas-Cheann Comhairle.
Deputy MacEntee refused to accept my ruling and described my action as that of a partisan chairman. He then left the House. If the Deputy had remained in the Chamber I would have called on him to withdraw the expression, failing which I would have ordered him to leave the House for the remainder of the day's sitting.
In the circumstances that he had left the House, the exercise of such action on my part was impossible and as his expulsion from the House for the remainder of yesterday's sitting would constitute the immediate penalty in respect of the transgression, I refrained from reporting the incident to you.
In my judgment, a Chinn Comhairle, it is not desirable to reopen the matter.
The Chair agrees with that.
Is Deputy Flanagan satisfied?
Public informers get a fee of three guineas. Go and collect it now.
Did Deputy MacEntee make a reference to informers? The Deputy probably knows more about informers than anybody else in this House.