I think it has been indicated already that we intend to accept the proposal that the Seanad's amendments be accepted. I do not think it is necessary for me to deal with them, unless there are questions.
Public Business. - Agriculture (An Foras Talúntais) Bill, 1957 (Originally Agricultural Institute Bill, 1957)—From the Seanad.
The Dáil went into Committee to consider amendments from the Seanad.
I understand that at this time these amendments are in Committee. I agree with the Taoiseach that the amendments made in the Seanad are really not substantial, but I would like to find out from him one or two details. Where did Section 21, which he has now deleted, come from?
I think the Deputy ought to know more than I about where it came from. I think it was in the Bill as published originally. As to where it originated, I made efforts to find out when I began to realise the nature of it. I made inquiries and I could not find out. I believe there is a similar provision in another Statute, but it seemed to me to be so wide that it was altogether inadvisable to put it in. I was hoping the Deputy might be able to clear up that mystery.
Let us take the Bill regularly. Let us take amendment No. 1 first.
I move that the Committee agree with the Seanad in amendment No. 1:—
SECTION 7.
1. Sub-section (9) deleted and the following new sub-section substituted:—
( ) The Council may, with the consent of the Government, at any time, remove the Director from office.
Perhaps the Taoiseach would give us some indication as to how he came to change his mind with regard to that matter?
The trouble arose in relation to the question of removal on grounds of incapacity. That has a narrow legal meaning and would not cover at all the question of complete unsuitability or inability to do his work, inefficiency, and so on. So, trying to get out of that difficulty, I came to the conclusion that a remark that was made many years ago in this House would supply, more or less, the solution. At one time, there was a question of removing—I do not know was it a judge, judges or the Comptroller and Auditor-General—and the case was made by somebody in Opposition at the time that a two-thirds majority is not an effective way of dealing with a matter of that sort and that it would be very much better if two independent bodies, such as the Seanad and Dáil, had separately to come to judgment upon the matter and that the concurrence of two such independent views would be more satisfactory than any artificial majority that you might suggest for, say, the Dáil.
You have, on the one hand, to make provision for the removal of an inefficient or otherwise unsuitable person and, on the other hand, you want to give the assurance of reasonable security in order to get a good man. The amendment seeks to meet these two viewpoints. If, on the one hand, you have the council saying: "This is a man who has proved to be unsuitable; he is really not doing the work it was thought he would do", they would have to take the initiative, to take action. Then, the Government would be a sort of second line. They would examine the matter. They would have to be satisfied that the view taken by the council was, in fact, justified.
Therefore, on the one hand, it gives the council the opportunity of taking action while, on the other hand, it provides a certain sort of reserve which would be a sort of assurance that, if these two independent bodies were to come to a common opinion about the suitability, efficiency, or otherwise of a particular person, it was fairly to be assumed that there was a just case for action.
In the case of the first director, formerly, he could be removed by the Government. The Government had appointed and could remove him. Now power is given to the council to take the initiative in the case even of the first director, but the Government have to be an assenting party. Previously, for the second or subsequent directors, it was the council alone that could remove the director on grounds such as incapacity. Now, you are substituting a provision that the council would take the initiative again, but with the Government assenting. I think, on the whole, it would be a good arrangement.
I think the Taoiseach is slightly mistaken in respect of the second and subsequent directors. The council was obliged to consult the Minister for Agriculture——
But they need not act on his advice.
——which, in substance, is the same as consulting the Government. In regard to the subsequent directors, the council, after consultation with the Minister, may at any time remove a director, other than the first director, from office, for misconduct or incapacity. But I know that, under the provenance of this section— and it was the fruit of protracted reflection and consideration—we deliberately proposed that only the Government could remove the first director and that they would only remove him for stated misconduct or incapacity. We put that in for this reason. We believed, as I think the Taoiseach now believes, that the success or failure of the whole project would largely depend on the quality of the first director and that, therefore, when you went to look for a director of sufficient stature to command confidence at the launching of this institute, you would almost certainly be asking a man of considerable position to give up his existing tenure of office in some responsible post to accept the position of first director here.
We thought it would be very unlikely that you would get anybody who had attained to eminence in agricultural research or the administration of research institutes to give up the security of his existing post to accept a new post, unless you gave him a very high degree of security. Therefore, it was felt that, after you made the initial choice, short of misconduct or incapacity, you had to bear with him. Otherwise, you robbed him of a very necessary degree of independence, without which he could not do full justice to the work that would devolve upon him as first director of the institute.
I do not think it is ever possible, when you are drafting a scheme of this kind, to make it perfect. You have to choose, as the late Tom Kettle so rightly stated, in public life, the least —very often—of two imperfections. It was very difficult to devise a means of constructing terms of office which would be attractive to the kind of person we wanted to get. But, if we delete sub-section (9) of Section 7, as is proposed in this amendment, and substitute simply
"( ) The council may, with the consent of the Government, at any time remove the director from office"—
it means we have to ask someone to give up his present occupation and accept the position of director of the Agricultural Institute, in the knowledge that, at any time, the council may go to the Government and say: "We want to get rid of this fellow," and, if the Government agree, out he goes.
Let us envisage what a man looking at this from abroad will say to himself. If he is an American, an Englishman, a Scotsman or a Welshman—if we do invite somebody from abroad to come in —he will say to himself: "I go in there and, inevitably, there will be certain persons who will look upon me as an interloper. I get at odds with the council and they propose to get rid of me. They go to the Government of the day and ask them to consent to dismiss me. Is it conceivable in any modern society that the Government could take up the position of saying to a body representative of every agricultural interest in the country: ‘We will not get rid of him; we will keep him'? Is it believable that any popularly-elected Government will set at defiance every agricultural interest in the country in order to keep me in my job? You may say it is possible that in an ideal world it might happen. However, the probabilities against its happening are so high that common prudence suggests to me that it would be much better to stay where I am and not take the risk of very temporary enployment in this place."
The tragedy in this section is that we are going too far. We may make the securing of a suitable director impossible. What it may very possibly mean is that we will get a "dud". Plenty of "duds" will be prepared to accept this or any other tenure to get into this job. There will be a queue. If we find ourselves stumbling into the dilemma that we cannot get a good director, I cannot doubt that we will end up by accepting a "dud". This institute idea is something to which all of us here attach great importance. I would advise the Taoiseach to stand on the original section. I do not know where this proposal came from for the alternative now tendered to us. I do not believe it came from him.
It did.
I believe it was pressed upon him.
——very closely.
Well, now I know where it came from—from the bench behind him. Was it? I think the Taoiseach's judgment in this matter was much better than the well-intentioned intervention of a man who is given too much to speculative contemplation in matters of this kind. We are concerned to get the best man for the job and I think he is concerned to defend lofty principles about sovereign authority and Mr. Austen's theory of ultimate authority reposing in somebody. These are very salutary philosophical exercises, but they very often do not work. These may be admirable expositions of the science of logic, but in man's affairs logic is very often not the wisest guiding rule to have.
I think the original proposal was best and I am sorry the Taoiseach did not stand over it. I think he would be quite well advised to go back to the original proposal, bearing in mind—if I can concentrate the problem in a nutshell—that our primary object here was to enable us to get the best man and to avoid the danger of having a "dud" thrust upon us. This is the Magna Carta of the "duds", this amendment, and as sure as there is an eye in a goat, if this amendment is carried and incorporated in the Bill, the best man will not take the job and the "duds" will be there in regiments and platoons.
I admit there is a great deal in what the Deputy has said about the danger of going too far in the other direction; but when you are appointing a man to a position for the first time, you must give the matter special consideration. You may get a person—perhaps from abroad—who in the conditions in which he has been judged up to the present, or would be judged by us, may have proved himself excellent. In the conditions in which he now finds himself, he might not; and you might be for a considerable period—I do not know how long —saddled with somebody who was going to make the whole idea and the whole work of the institute more or less a nullity.
Again, I think the Deputy exaggerated in his argument in saying that the representatives on the council should represent the whole agricultural community, and so on. They would be chosen to deal with research. If they were going to do something which was found to be wrong in this respect, unfair and unjust and not in the best interests of the institute, I do not think the Government would agree with them, in the first place; and, secondly, I do not think they would carry the agricultural community with them, or that the Government would be afraid that they would.
I must say I gave as much consideration as I thought possible and reasonable to both sides of this question and came down on the side of the amendment as it is. On the whole, I believe it is the best way to deal with the situation. If by any accident we should have a "dud" at the start, the "dud" could be fired by this system. He could not be fired by the other system. We can never be certain when we put a person into a post of this importance and responsibility, that he will prove equal to it, when he is given the actual responsibility for putting the work through.
I agree that, in order to get a good man, there will have to be reasonable security. I think that is provided. In the first place, the man will know that there will be no political incentives of any kind to interfere with a man who is doing his work well. If he does his work well, he has the security which good work will give him. I do not think the Government would agree to removal, if any sort of petty objections were made to the work of the director, or that they would necessarily assent to whatever propositions were put up by the council. In any case, in the first instance, the director would have been nominated by the Government and they would naturally have tried to get a good man. They would naturally have satisfied themselves at the start that he was a good man and they would be slow to think otherwise, until there was positive proof. That is the position in regard to the first director.
The council will have the choice of the next man and of subsequent directors. In that case, also, there would be the same natural tendency to be slow to act without positive proof. In fact, I think the danger we have to apprehend really is that people may be continued after the period in which they are giving fully satisfactory service. Therefore, although I see fully and give full weight to these points, in coming to a final decision on the arguments put forward, I must stand by the amendment.
I want to ask the Taoiseach to apply this test: Suppose he were the president of one of the constituent colleges, either of the National University or of a university in Great Britain and he were offered the position of director of the institute here to-morrow, on the terms proposed in the amendment, would he himself risk throwing up the security of the position in which he was, to take what is offered in the amendment? On the other hand, look at the original proposal.
If I were Minister for Agriculture and were approaching the Taoiseach as the head of a learned body and said to him: "I know I am asking you to give up the position you have here and asking you to give up the security you enjoy in your present position, but I am offering you a position of relative independence, where you know that you cannot be removed except by the Government, and that for stated misconduct or incapacity; a position of independence and wide authority; and, in fact, the success or failure of the project is being substantially committed into your hands", which terms would he more readily accept?
Does the Taoiseach not agree with me that the terms originally in the Bill were terms with which one might reasonably go to a distinguished man in a position of security in any academic field; whereas in offering him the terms we are now offering, could he have a higher degree of insecurity? He can be dismissed any day, without any reason stated at all, if the council and the Government can agree that he should be dismissed, and there is no provision that he should get any compensation. Honestly, if those two propositions were made to the Taoiseach, am I not right in saying that, in all common prudence and duty to his own family, he would be quite entitled to accept the one and almost bound to reject the other, in that he was exchanging a very substantial degree of security for nothing—except the possibility that in a very difficult position he might be dismissed any day without compensation, on the council and the Government agreeing? Would the Taoiseach accept it himself? I would not.
There is no use in continuing this argument, I am afraid, a Cheann Comhairle. I would say that, if I were head of one of the colleges, I would not be tempted to leave it——
My purpose would be to tempt you.
——except on one consideration, that is, that there was some particular work I badly wanted to do. If there was a particular work I wanted to do and could do, I would take the risks necessary to prove that I was not a "dud". The other side of this case is that you might be saddled with a "dud"; you might have a situation in which you had an unsatisfactory person who was the key to the whole situation and who could not be got rid of. I think the Government is the responsible body and it does not matter which side is in Government. The Government must be regarded as a very responsible body which is not likely to dismiss a person from a post if the person does his work in the way it should be done. Neither is it likely to assent to the dismissal of a person until the case against the person is proved to the hilt. This council can also be taken as a responsible body which would not try to get rid of a person if that person were doing his work properly.
I do not think I am called upon to apologise to the House for this argument. I think Dáil Éireann is the place for argument. The Constitution provides that we are to discuss amendments returned from the Seanad in Committee. I am afraid we must agree to differ in this matter which we have argued heretofore. I am convinced, and I suspect the Taoiseach is convinced also but he does not want to go back.
That is not so.
He has withdrawn a very valuable element of security through this amendment. Had it not occurred to him to provide, at least in respect of the first director, that if he is liable to summary dismissal without cause stated he would be entitled to so many years' remuneration on being dismissed? It would be a monstrous thing if we took a man who was in enjoyment of a salary of £2,000 a year in the post of director of some institute, or some person who was the occupant of some responsible post, persuaded him to give up what he had and whatever pension rights attached to that position and then, for reasons known only to ourselves, summarily dismissed him without giving him any reasons. We should at least be able to say: "You will get five or ten years' salary in the event of your appointment with this institute being terminated for reasons other than misconduct or incapacity." Should there not be some substitute element of security to offset this new conception of summary dismissal? If the Minister for Agriculture is to go out looking for a good man he must have some consideration to offer. The amendment offers none at all.
Suppose the Taoiseach says: "Very well. We shall make a proviso undertaking to see that there is a provision made that a certain number of years' salary will be given in lieu of security should the director be dispensed with for stated misconduct," it would meet my point, but I think you must have some substitute for the security envisaged in the original section. If you adopt this amendment and if the Minister for Agriculture is to have any chance at all of getting a man of the stature I should like to see, you must have some substitute for the lack of security brought about by this amendment.
I think there is a provision for superannuation and so on. There will be a contract and I think this could be met in terms of contract. I do not think there is anything in the Bill that prevents that being done, but I do not know whether it would come under superannuation.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,
Does the Taoiseach think it could be indicated that it would be desirable to put something in the contract——
There is the question of the terms and conditions of employment which would be laid down. I think that, in the case of a person coming for the first time, there would be some form of agreement in which provision could be made for the possibility that has been indicated—a very unlikely possibility in my opinion. I should like it to be understood that there was no objection to the present argument. Of course two of us might argue a point, both of us believe implicitly in our own viewpoint and never manage to convince each other.
Question put and agreed to.
I move that the Committee agree with the Seanad in amendment No. 2:—
Section 21 deleted.
I believe I have convinced the Taoiseach. I should like to hear the story of Section 21. I am blowed if I know where Section 21 came from. If it is in another Act I think it ought to be taken out because I think it is probably unconstitutional.
I have tried to find a good reason for it and I have failed. I have even failed to find out how it got into the other Act.
Then we are agreed, mirabile dictu. I suggest to the Taoiseach that he would find out where this section came from.
The thought occurred to me but I did not think it was necessary to go as far as the Deputy suggested.
Question put and agreed to.
I move that the Committee agree with the Seanad in amendment No. 3:—
SECTION 23.
In page 8, line 37, "Agricultural Institute" deleted and "Agriculture (An Foras Talúntais)" substituted.
Would anyone be kind enough to tell me where did the word "talúntais" come from?
The idea was that when you have an Irish word it should, if possible, be a word easily understood and pronounced. "Talmhaíocht" is the alternative and I think the Deputy will admit that, for a person who does not know the language, it is not the easiest word to pronounce. There is an adjective "talúnta" and "talúntas" is an abstract noun formed from that adjective. It is an easy word to pronounce according to the way it is spelled. When I was in the Seanad I forgot to mention that that was the origin of it.
I am no purist but are we going to start inventing words? I do not believe any living creature has seen in print or heard from the lips of man the word "talúntas" before.
What about "sputnik"? That is only three months old.
There are two sputniks in the sky, one from each side of the hemisphere, but there is something new that had to be described. Here we are describing something as old as the world, agriculture. I had the honour to bear the title "Aire Talmhaíochta" and if the word "talmhaíochta" was adequate to describe me it ought to be adequate to describe the institute. I just do not know where the word came from and I do not believe anybody else knows.
It came from the adjective.
I suspect it came out of the fertile mind of the Taoiseach himself. I know he likes to look upon himself as the father of his people and, in a sense, from time to time feel that he begot us all. I speak, of course, in a purely mystical or spiritual sense, but I must call a halt if he is now arrogating to himself the function of rewriting the whole Irish language. That is going further than his most ardent admirers would be prepared to concede, that if he gets a notion that he does not like the look of an Irish word, that the sound is not euphonious in his ear or that he feels some future generation may find it difficult to pronounce a word, there is conferred upon him a sovereign right to abstract out of the air a completely new word and say: "If you cannot sound the other one, sound that and it will do as well." That is going too far.
I would ask the Taoiseach to remember that, like the rest of men, he is human, and I have yet to find anyone who claims for him the right to rewrite the Irish language. I do not think it is a good thing to do because, if the Taoiseach starts doing it, some genius in the Translation Branch or somewhere else will start doing it too. We have a word which describes adequately and effectively what we seek to say here. It is in common use and we should not subsitute a new one. It is not enough to say the existing word "talmhaíochta" is too difficult for foreigners to pronounce, that they would find "talúntas" quite simple. They would find "bó" or "hoe" or "high" easier to pronounce but they would not be the appropriate words in the Irish language. Some people will say I am unduly pedantic in complaining of this. I do not think I am. It is not a good tendency and it is not a sufficient justification to this House for doing it simply to say that foreigners are not able to pronounce the word "talmhaíochta".
It is rather astonishing that we are not to have in the Bill a title in English for the Agricultural Institute. It should be remembered that in the Constitution we have the name "Ireland" for Ireland when we speak in English and "Éire" when we speak in Irish. It is a cause of common affront to us if certain people elect to refer to the Republic as "Éire" when they are speaking in English, and we are concerned to point out to them that the Constitution provides that in Irish the name of the State is "Éire" but that in English the name of the State is Ireland. I remember the circumstances in which the Taoiseach himself accepted that principle on an amendment which was argued in this House. Those who are concerned with the history of it will find that it is one of the few amendments to the Constitution which he accepted. Why has he changed his mind? If there is to be a name for the nation in English and a corresponding name in Irish, why is there not to be a name in English for the institute and a corresponding name in Irish. What is the logic of that? What was in the Taoiseach's mind when he produced this extraordinary proposal in the Seanad?
We have heard that type of argument so often that one gets tired refuting it. The fact is that there is an adjective in the language, "talúnta", which means "associated with the soil". You could not get a more appropriate word to describe the institute and it has the added advantage that it is easily pronounced. On the question as to why there is not an English title, my fear was that the English title would be used very much more than the Irish title and at least in official documents we want the Irish word to be used. That is why it is put in there as the short title of the Bill.
I did not, of course, invent the word. I asked if we could get a word that could be easily pronounced in accordance with the spelling. This was the word that was suggested and I accepted it. It is common in most languages to form abstract nouns from adjectives and that is what was done in this case. It seems to me there is a lot of nonsense talked about it.
It does not surprise me that when a Deputy's view differs from that of the Taoiseach, he describes it as nonsense. However, would the Taoiseach answer this question? If there is to be a name in Irish for the State of Éire and a name in English for the State of Ireland, why does he not think it acceptable that there should be a name in Irish for the institute and a name in English?
Because I do not think it is necessary.
That settles that.
Question put and agreed to.
I move that the Committee agree with the Seanad in amendment No. 4:—
SCHEDULE.
In paragraph 6 (2), line 13, "may" deleted, and "shall" substituted.
I do not think we shall have any difficulty about this one.
It simply makes it mandatory to hold a meeting on the requisition of the chairman or of five members.
I think it was in fact intended to have it mandatory in its original form.
Question put and agreed to.
Agreement with Seanad amendments reported.
Report agreed to.
Ordered: That a message be sent to the Seanad accordingly.