A few points were made during the discussion of this Bill to which, I suppose, irrespective of the conviction in the minds of those who made them, I should reply. Some Deputies, in addressing themselves to these proposals, saw nothing the matter with extending the life of local bodies from three to five years, were it not for the fact that members of local bodies had a contract with the electorate, that the contract was for a period of three years, and it was unfair to the councillors themselves and to the electorate that the period should be extended. Councillors who held office in 1923, when the elections were postponed for a period of two years, had a contract, too, and the Bills similar to that now before the House which were introduced on the ten occasions cited by me yesterday, affected, when they became law, the then councils in the same way as the proposals we are now considering.
It cannot be seriously contended that anyone ever believed, especially anyone who was a member of a local body, that a period of three years was a reasonable period or that elections should be held at intervals of three years. Deputies who agreed with that maintained that, while the law is as it is, it is unfair, at the end of the three-year period, to come forward with these proposals. The only occasion on which this House attempted to rectify that position was the occasion of the passage of the Local Government Act of 1947, introduced by the present Minister for Finance, a measure which contained a proposal to extend the life of county councils to five years and, in certain circumstances, to six years. That Bill passed through all its stages here and went to the Seanad. Two amendments were proposed in the Seanad and, in the meantime, an election intervened. That was an occasion when the Minister for Local Government recognised something which had been admitted in actual practice all down the years, that the period was far too short.
I noticed here last night—there is no reason why I should complain about it, and I am not in fact complaining about it—that most of the Deputies from the other side who contributed by way of criticism of the proposal were people who were not themselves members of local bodies. Some who are serving members did offer some criticism and opposition, but, in the main, the criticism came from people who were not elected members and who had during their lives very little experience of and little contact, if any, with local bodies. The request in this regard has been made to me by the municipal bodies and, over a period of years, by the General Council ofCounty Councils, and during the discussion here on a Bill introduced by one of my predecessors in this office, the late Mr. Murphy, to extend the life of the then county councils from 1948 to 1950 and making provision for holding elections in Kerry and in Dublin, Deputy O'Higgins, who had nothing in the way of praise to say of this measure, appealed to the then Minister to accede to the request being made to extend the life of councils beyond the period of three years which he said he regarded as entirely too short. On a previous occasion, Deputy Donnellan, speaking in the debate on the Vote for Local Government, at column 1104, Volume 106 of the Dáil Debates, said:—
"I wish to refer to another matter. I intended to put down a question but then I decided to wait for the Estimate. I refer to the election of local bodies which is, I think, under the Minister's jurisdiction. I cannot understand why local elections are held once every three years. I cannot see any sense or reason in it. I would ask the Minister to consider seriously that for the future the life of local bodies should be at least five years. At the moment, under the managerial system, they have a very little control. It is only nonsense to run these elections once every three years."
I could go on citing all sorts of arguments which have been advanced by every type of interest and class of organisation over an extended period in favour of something which, as I say, has been generally accepted.
Deputy Mulcahy dealt with the desirability of having contests, especially at a time when rates were soaring, but if one examines the position with regard to rates and compares what has happened in that regard with what has happened in regard to national taxation, one finds that the increase in rates falls very far short of the increase not only in national taxation but in many other directions. Having regard to the enormous extension of the services, one would have to conclude that it was surprising that theincrease in rates should amount to only 140 per cent. as against 216 per cent. in the case of national taxation. I agree that the matter of the rates and the size of the rates is a very important one, but the cost of an election, apart altogether from the cost to the individuals taking part in an election, the cost to the ratepayers who will have to provide the necessary machinery for the conduct of an election, runs to something in the neighbourhood of £100,000. Apart from the need to make a little bit of political capital out of an issue of this kind—and I have no objection in the world to that—I cannot see that any reasonable man with experience of local bodies would raise his voice against these proposals.
It is all right, of course, to taunt Deputies and the Government with the fear to face the electorate. I do not want to pursue that line. Some of us on both sides of the House have been here a long time and, as far as this Party is concerned, I do not think there is anything in our political history that would convey to the country, to the people at home or abroad that, even in times far worse and far more difficult than the present time, we were in any way hesitant to face the electorate. I will not bother now to cite the occasions.
