I do not think the Minister grasps that these are people who come in from an area of one or two miles round the town. They are the regulars, not bona fide travellers. They went illegally into both types of houses and therefore it was tolerated. Nobody was at a disadvantage. Now, we have resolved to tolerate that no more for the six-day licensee while the seven-day man may open from 12.30 to 2 p.m. and from 5 to 9 p.m.
The situation hereafter will be that the seven-day man may now open his door legally after that last Mass and after the football match, or whatever else is going on in town, whereas the six-day man may not open at all and will be strictly supervised to see that he does not. If I were arguing only the loss of 52 days' trade to the small publican, I would be arguing a very good case, but that is not the case I am making. The case I am making is that the man who wants to park his horse and cart, the young man or woman who wants to park a bicycle, the elderly woman who wants to leave in her basket or reticule or umbrella while going to Mass, the people who want a house of call where they can leave a message or call for one now find that on Sunday they cannot go into the house where they habitually went. So she goes to one of the houses that are available, the seven-day licence house. The loss of trade involved in that isolated transaction to the six-day licence owner is insignificant but what is disastrous to him is that if a person gets into the habit of availing of the facilities of a seven-day licence house on a Sunday in a country town, he cannot do that. The gradual build up of that will be that the six-day man will see a high proportion of his very limited group of customers frequenting more and more his rivals' houses.
I am speaking mainly on behalf of a group of publicans in county Mayo and county Monaghan. The Minister for Lands must know that a very large number of these six-day houses, certainly in Mayo, if he does not know Monaghan, are small family businesses. They are very near the border line between survival and collapse. I doubt if the bulk of these publicans are getting an agricultural labourer's wage out of their establishments.
They must pay the licence duty. They must keep the houses in a reasonable state of repair to cater for their customers. They must work very long hours and at the end of all that, they have very little left, but they do manage to rear families. If you took the licence away from them and made it impossible for them to do the little bit of trade they do, not only would they lose the business but they would lose their homes. They would not be able to live in their houses if they had not a bit of income coming in.
What I am apprehensive of is that this House will inadvertently do something that is irrevocable to 1,424 families or, let me put it, 1,000 families. Say that 424 of the six-day houses will get on in any case. I know some six-day licence houses to which this legislation would not do any injury at all. There are 1,000 small families represented by nobody because they are not influential. They cannot give a subscription to any political Party because they have not got it to give. They are not of very great concern to an organised body whose membership is, in fact, 12,000. Of those 12,000, I am now speaking for 1,000 of the poorest. Practically every one of them is a family house supporting a family. I often marvel myself — and I know whereof I speak because I represent one county mentioned and I do business in the other—how they do survive, but they do. I say with the fullest sense of responsibility that unless their case is met, the great majority of the 1,000 families on whose behalf I now speak will be driven out of business. They will not only lose their business but they will also lose their homes because they cannot maintain their homes if they have no other source of income.
They are mostly people who are not versatile in the matter of earning their living. They are not the kind of people who are at the time of life when they can readily go out and look for alternative work. They are used to that business and for most of them to turn their hands to something else is just not possible.
I observe that the Minister has some proposal here to suggest that if a six-day licence holder purchases another six-day licence, by suppressing the two six-day licences, he can have for himself a seven-day licence. It just leaves me speechless to imagine that such a proposal is conceived to be a remedy for these 1,000 people. I ask the Minister for Lands—he must know many of them—how many of these licensees could conceivably assemble the money to purchase another six-day licence?
There are only 1,424 six-day licences in the whole country. Picture a town in county Mayo where 418 licences of this character are at present established. Picture a small town in county Mayo where there are 8, 10 or 12 licences and this Sword of Damocles is suddenly hanging over the heads of them all. The poorest widow-woman amongst them is concerned to preserve her trade. She is told that the way to do so is to buy another six-day licence. As certainly as I am standing here, I am convinced that the only neighbour whose licence she can buy out is a neighbour who intends to emigrate or clear out because the surrender of the six-day licence will render the continued maintenance of his home impossible.
Furthermore, take the case of eight licencees in that small town. It becomes a matter of desperately hanging on to see who will pay the highest price. The best they can hope to do is that the better off of them will succeed in buying out the smaller ones as they collapse. They will hang on in the hope of survival but the free access to the seven-day licence on Sunday and the absolute prohibition of the six-day licence on Sunday will gradually operate to grind some of them to the point where they will no longer be able to pay the licence fee and will be forced to sell out to some relatively well-to-do neighbour at some very small figure. I do not believe that there will be any six day licence people in the district in a financial position to pay any substantial sum for it.
I want to ask the House this: In the name of common-sense, why are we doing it? If the Minister were confronted with a situation in which I was asking him to add 7,000 licensees to an already impossible number, I could understand his saying: "I simply cannot do it without disrupting the whole Garda Síochána and creating an impossible situation," but I am asking it on behalf of 1,424 licensees out of 12,000. Of those 1,424, I am prepared to concede that there will be about 400 mixed businesses with six-day licences who will not open on a Sunday, never did and do not want to, so that, in effect, what I am asking for is that 1,000 families in this country will be allowed to survive in the very modest circumstances which they at present enjoy. Does any Deputy seriously contend that would create any insuperable administrative problem or damage anybody?
I do not believe there is a single, decent seven-day licence man in the whole of Ireland who would wish to see his small six-day neighbour wiped out. I am certain that in the county of Monaghan, or Mayo, there are no such people. There may be some avaricious exceptions who say: "Oh, I have a seven-day licence and I object to anyone else getting that accommodation where I have a vested interest," but their number is insignificant. As opposed to that, we are in danger of wiping out of existence 1,000 mostly relatively poor families. Surely the sensible thing to do here would be to wipe out the distinction between the six-day and the seven-day licences and let these small people carry on. All that is involved is simply to say that on Sundays they will be entitled to open from 12.30 to 2 and from 5 to 9 and let their customers, if they want to, leave their baskets, their umbrellas, their horses and carts, or their bicycles, as they have been in the habit of doing.
The thing seems so clear to me, and I know there are Deputies on all sides of the House familiar with the conditions to which I refer and who feel with me in this. It is a source of astonishment to me why the Minister can be persuaded to this. I myself went on the deputation—which is a practice I do not ordinarily engage in—to the Minister for Justice and discussed this matter with him. The Minister, I must say, listened to the men who related their circumstances to him and that, I think, was the entire basis of their case. All we want to do is to give them the right to survive. I know a great many of them myself and I was in a position to certify from my own knowledge and considered judgment that if they were not given this facility, they would be wiped out.
What argument is there for refusing it to them? All they are asking is to be in the same position as the seven-day licence man in respect of their customers. I think there is a lot of confusion in the House about that. We took a policy decision, with the consent of the vast majority of the Deputies, to wipe out the bona fide trade and to put an end to this whole business of people travelling to drink, which was always illegal actually but which was done under the cloak of the bona fide which allowed people to drink to travel. We wiped that out, and considered that equity and expediency directed that should be done, and when we wiped that business out, then the seven-day men and the six-day men in rural Ireland were all on the same basis. They could not open their doors to anyone on a Sunday. Is that not so? But then for some utterly incomprehensible and mysterious reason, in the knowledge that there are 10,543 seven-day and 1,425 six-day licences we went on to say we shall let 10,543 publicans open from 12.30 to 2, and from 5 to 9 on Sundays, but will not allow 1,425 to open at all.
When we realise that the 1,425 for whom we are not providing the new facility—which we are giving to the 10,543—are the poorest of the publicans, the family houses that are just able to carry on and keep a family going, I simply cannot understand the mentality which would make such a proposal. I still cherish what is perhaps an illusion that if the Minister for Justice fully appreciated what he is being asked to do, he would resolve with me not to do it. I know of no argument that can be advanced which carries real weight for the course proposed in the Bill. I think every argument of justice, equity and charity— which after all still continue to bind us in this House—imposes on us the duty of giving these people the right to survive.
I am not asking for one jot or tittle more than we are proposing, by legislation, to give to the 10,543 seven-day men. I think people have lost sight of the fact that when we did away with the bona fide traffic, all these publicans were ex aequo on Sundays. Now we are making concessions to 10,500 of them which will operate to ruin 1,000 and I do not believe that the majority of Deputies want to do that. I would urge the Minister to create a dynamic precedent in this House by saying that in light of the arguments I have pressed upon him, he proposes to change his mind. Such a declaration on his part would do credit to himself and would redound to the usefulness of this House as a place where rational argument can still be made to prevail.
