They have us absolutely where they want us. The two propositions must be taken together. Clearly, this proposal to increase the severity of the penalties will be used in relation to questions and the third will ensure that there will be no non-conformist point of view put forward. The attempt to abolish proportional representation having failed, a most outrageous gerrymandering of our constituencies having failed, we are now in Parliament, in spite of every effort made by the biggest Party in this House. That Party is now attempting to suppress the minority point of view in this House altogether.
You people are the keepers of our freedoms. We have no control over the decisions of this Dáil. We have no power of defending—we are help-less. I am surprised at Deputy Dillon, of all people, talking the attitude he has taken; he has often said here how glad he was to see those with a left wing point of view coming into this House, going to the street corners, getting support at election time and coming in here to state their point of view, even though it was a minority point of view. His attitude always was: "I disagree with your point of view, but I shall do everything in my power to defend your right to express it".
That is the kernel of the proposi-tions in Motions Nos. 2 and 3. We will discuss No. 3 at a later date, but the two motions are necessarily inter-woven. Deputy Dillon puts the theoretical case, the independence of the Chair. With all due respect to the Chair, whether he means it or not, we know that he appears to defer to the most powerful group and the second most powerful group in this Dáil. I do not wish to bring the per-sonality of the Chair into this. We find at times that we are refused the right to discuss matters we think important in the public interest because we have not access to the time of the House. Perhaps that is understandable. There is a strong Party on one side. There is a minority group on the other and we cannot, I suppose, be allowed to trespass on public business.
Private Members' Time was a very useful amenity to Deputies in relation to Question Time, which is the other aspect of it. We have found on a number of occasions that not only have we difficulty as far as the ruling of the Chair is concerned but that our Questions are not allowed to reach the House at all.
We have found a greater restriction in the Questions which may be asked in this House. In the time which is now ahead of us, a very difficult time for the Government in relation to the Common Market, very difficult problems will have to be decided upon by this House and by the people. I feel we must have as much freedom as possible to come, as a minority, to ask the unpopular questions, to take the unpopular stand, to put the other point of view. Otherwise, it seems to me that you negative the whole conception of this very unwiedly and inefficient machine for which we all have so much admiration, namely, parliamentary democracy.
It is you who are attenuating the quality, the fineness, the whole idea of parliamentary democracy, by penalising your minority, by restricting the freedom of the minority. Forty years have gone by and our Parliament has acted reasonably efficiently with the Standing Orders as they are at the moment. The introduction of the other attitude, penal attempts to limit minority activity, is particularly suspicious at this time.
As to Deputy Dillon's point and the motion on the Ceann Comhairle, it might be interesting if the Taoiseach would tell us the position of the Ceann Comhairle. We had a motion of censure on the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. We did not get priority for discussion of that censureship motion.
We oppose this motion, simply because we believe it is a further intrusion on the rights of a minority in our Parliament. We believe, for that reason, it must be opposed. We are particularly surprised that the Opposition should lend themselves to this further limitation of the minority position in Parliament.