I am one of the survivors of the last debate on proportional representation in this House. It is interesting to note that about 70 Deputies who were here on that occasion are no longer with us; some have retired; some lost their seats; some have gone to the Seanad. Although I have not the long experience of the Deputy who has just spoken, I am satisfied that an overall majority does not necessarily make for good government and does not necessarily make for stable government either. During my period here, Fianna Fáil have had an overall majority twice. In 1959 we had a referendum in an effort to achieve what they are trying to achieve now and they had then, too, an overall majority. It was a significant fact that when they had that overall majority, instead of utilising it for the benefit of good government, or the stable government they talked about, they spent months trying to change the electoral system and put the country to the expense of a referendum in which they were defeated, although at that time it was confused and complicated by a Presidential election on the same day.
Now we find ourselves in the same position in this small Parliament of ours, when they have an overall majority; not the overall majority they won the last time but an overall majority which they gained by fortuitous circumstances. They gained it under the electoral system which they are trying to refute, in that there were four by-elections which were fortuitous by-elections, because they were constituencies in which Fianna Fáil were strong. They won these four by-elections and got an overall majority. In other words, by a narrow majority, they had the will of the people that they should govern the country and govern it in the best interests of the country.
What have they done? They have done exactly the same thing. When they get into the same position as they were in in 1959, they start to play about with the Constitution. I accept the fact that in a democratic country and in a democratic parliament such as this which must conform to the wishes of the people as a whole, had there been any great demand for them to do what they were doing, they might have been justified in doing it. I am unaware of any local authority or any other organised body passing a resolution suggesting to the Government that the present electoral system was not a desirable one and that they should make these changes.
I have read the speech the Taoiseach made last week and it is perhaps the weakest and most unconvincing speech ever made by the leader of any parliament or assembly in the history of a parliamentary democracy. He tried to argue the case that it was necessary and it was the wish and desire of the people to change the electoral system. I may not be able to read into his mind as well as some of his own colleagues, but I could only adduce two arguments from his speech, the first of which was that we wanted stability of government, and that is a queer remark for a Leader of a Party to make when he has an overall majority and when his Party have been in power and have not been defeated within the Parliament itself since 1957.
The other argument produced was the old worn out argument that was used ad lib in the 1959 debate which went on here over an extensive period, the one about the instability of government in France. I stated during that debate in 1959 that France has not had PR in the true sense of the term since 1945, nor was the instability that arose in France prior to the advent of General de Gaulle attributable to the electoral system; nor has there been any great electoral change as between the Fourth and Fifth Republics.
There has only been this change in France. After the many variations of government they had there, the multiple disagreements between political leaders and even between members of the same party, General de Gaulle attracted a great many people to the policies he represented and was able to form a stable government. Prior to that, the reason why the French Government fell frequently after being two or three months in existence—very often they had a caretaker Government—was that under the Constitution that then existed the dissolution of Parliament was practically impossible. Therefore, there was no incentive to stability, for one of the great incentives to stability within Parliament is the risk of a general election, the risk representatives have to face in going before the public in a general election, the expense they have to meet and the knowledge that they will create a disruption or a hiatus in the political life of a country. As I say, those risks did not apply to the Fourth Republic of France, and that in effect was the major cause of instability, added to the fact that France had been occupied during the War and that there was a great deal of disaffection internally among the political ranks in France. These ranks were united under General de Gaulle, but that did not mean there was a major change in the electoral system.
The Minister for Justice interrupted here last night, and I am sorry he is not here this morning as I would like to educate him in the political systems that prevail in Europe and in other parts of the world. In one of his interruptions last night—perhaps he got a little heated at the time, as happens, I notice, to some of my friends when arguments are telling against them— the Minister said there was no such thing as proportional representation in Europe, that they had all gone over to the straight vote. I take a poor view of a remark like that coming from a member of the Government, a Government who are introducing a Constitution Amendment Bill here that is being widely discussed and in respect of which there is a large measure of disagreement, although disagreement is more likely to produce a wider and more comprehensive discussion. There is no use in members of a government coming in here absolutely unversed in the facts. They should know the fundamentals of what they are introducing.
I propose to give the House a few facts in relation to the European election systems and after that we will return to the United Kingdom electoral system to which the Fianna Fáil Party appear to be so devoted at the moment; in fact, we have become, as far as I can gather, increasingly devoted to it over the years. There are only two countries in free Europe today that have not got the proportional representation electoral system, and those two countries have not got the British system, the straight vote. In other words, they have not got the first-past-the-post system which enables a minority to be elected. Those two countries are France and the Federal Republic of Germany. France has what they call the second vote. What happens in France is that there is a list of candidates who go forward and unless a candidate secures an overall majority or an absolute majority —which is the principle on which I personally stand, on which my Party stand and on which the majority of the Irish people stand, as will be evidenced after the referendum, if it ever takes place—if the candidate does not secure the first-past-the-post, there is a further election a week afterwards.
If that is not a transferable vote, what is? Further than that, any candidate who does not obtain five per cent of the votes is not eligible to go forward at a second vote which takes place a week afterwards for which the electors, the candidates themselves and the Parties have plenty of time to consider and cogitate on the subject. In this vote if one man polls 40 per cent, another 30 per cent and the remainder maybe 20 per cent and they are somewhat of the same affiliation to each other, it is quite obvious they will make a compromise of some sort so that they will endeavour to defeat the man at the head of the poll. If the man at the head of the poll is able to gather sufficient support in the second vote, he is going to get elected. If that is not a transferable vote, what is? But it is not the straight vote. There is no use in the Taoiseach trying to make out that France and Europe are moving away from proportional representation.
The second country that does not have the list system and proportional representation is the Federal Republic of Germany. We are told—I think the statement was made by the Taoiseach or perhaps outside the House by some other luminary of the Fianna Fáil Government—that the Federal Republic of Germany was moving away from proportional representation. I know from my frequent contacts with members of the Parliament of the Federal Republic to whom I have spoken on many occasions that a lot of them admire our system very much. I know they are considering the possibility of making a change in their own electoral system, which is somewhat complicated and which I shall endeavour to explain later, and that one of the things they are considering was whether the Irish system, which had been so conducive to political stability here, should be seriously considered by them.
In the 1957 election in Germany the system they operated—I believe it is still the same—was that half the House was elected by the straight vote. There is a membership of 605 Members, or Deputies as they are called there. They elected half by the straight vote: that is a qualified majority. But on top of that they have what they call die zweite Stimme, the second vote. The second vote is not for the individual; it is for the Party. Therefore a system prevails—this is only half the House they are electing—whereby a man can vote for a candidate belonging to the Social Democratic Party, which is the left-wing Party, and he can subsequently at the further vote vote for the Party itself or for the Christian Democratic Party, if he wishes. That is a form of alternative vote. But the other half of the Federal Republic elect their candidates by the list system under proportional representation, which is the system which prevails in practically every other free country in Europe.
There is of course the straight vote, which perhaps Fianna Fáil may be interested in, behind the Iron Curtain which is a straight vote. But there are no lists or, if there is a list, there is only one Party to be on it, that is, the Party nominated by the dictators in power in all those countries. That applies to Cuba and other countries. Most of the South American Republics, a lot of whom were on the straight vote at one time, have since transferred to the system of election appertaining to Europe, whereby they have proportional representation with the list system.
We have been told that the necessity for this change here is due to instability. I think we are perhaps one of the most stable Parliaments in the world. It is no harm to mention the fact, because the Taoiseach himself mentioned it, that the differences in Parliament here originated from the Civil War. It is to the great credit of the Irish Parliament and the Irish people that we have lived down the bitterness of those days. Although from time to time it is raked up in short skirmishes here in Parliament, that does not mean very much. We have lived that down and managed to have the stability we here enjoy.
There has been a lot of talk about splinter Parties. The truth is this. In 1948, before I came into Dáil Éireann, the Fianna Fáil Government believed that they were in power ad infinitum. A lot of new Parties appeared in that election. They coalesced and formed the first inter-Party Government which, to my mind, gave this country good government. It also gave an alternative to Fianna Fáil. It made the people think democratically. Politically, it was probably one of the greatest services rendered to a young Parliament in the history of democratic institutions in any state. Fianna Fáil may not have liked it. It probably engendered in their minds the idea of getting over to the straight vote so that it could never happen again. They have never really recovered from the fact that they found themselves sitting in Opposition. They dread the day when that may happen again.
For that reason, they want to ensure —mark you, conditions are very different in this country politically from those across the water—that they will maintain themselves in the happy position they are in now and that they will have a majority after the next election. For that reason, some of the extremists within the ranks of the Government, possibly some of the extremists of the old brigade—one of them has just sat down having given us a tremendous discourse relating to everything but proportional representation—thought: "Now is the time to create a situation whereby we will be sure to be returned to power after the next election and to ensure, before the country wakes up to it and realises the injustice it will be to themselves in local conditions, that the Fianna Fáil Government are back in power." Hence all the work of the State is disrupted. Everything is held up. All the necessary things that should be done, that a Government are elected to do, are put into abeyance while the plans are formulated for the perpetuation of the Fianna Fáil Party in power.
We are told we should go over to the British system—the Northern Ireland system, if you like, the American system, the Canadian system. I am glad to see the Minister for Transport and Power here. He is one of these people who when he speaks, covers a wide area. He has travelled a good deal. I have no doubt that he will be using as a cogent argument the fact that the United States of America have it, and Canada and Britain also. The extraordinary thing is that no one else has it except certain parts of the British Commonwealth of Nations, or the ex-British Commonwealth of Nations, if you like. The developing countries have the system which was left to them as a heritage from the British Government.
Before I go on to deal with the British system, I should like to refer briefly to Australia. The electoral system there must be of particular interest to the hopes and aspirations of the Fianna Fáil Government in this referendum. Australia has got the same electoral system. She has had it for practically 100 years. She has the single transferable vote and the single member constituency. Of course, Australia is a very much larger territory. Deputy Corry complained about having to travel 100 miles, but every rural Deputy in Dáil Éireann has to do that and does not talk about it as he does. In Australia, under the multi-member constituency system, it would not be a question of travelling 100 miles. You might have to travel 1,000 miles. For that reason, Australia has the single transferable vote and the single member constituency.
A feature about the vote in Australia is that you have got to vote the list. You have to vote 1, 2, 3, 4, if there are four candidates, in the order of your choice. If you do not, your vote is null and void. That, to my mind, is a good system. I am reliably informed by an Australian parliamentarian with whom I had the opportunity of discussing their electoral system recently, that Australia will never surrender that system. They find it a good system. They are absolutely and totally opposed to the first-past-the-post system which the Fianna Fáil Government wish to impose on us. They have had their system for nearly 100 years. They have had four referenda to change the electoral system and all those referenda were heavily defeated.
One of the arguments used by the advocates of the first-past-the-post system was that the mother country had it and that Australia should have it as well, but the referenda were heavily defeated. This Australian parliamentarian I was talking to the other day asked me which side I was on in the attempt to change our electoral system. I told him I stood for maintaining PR because it had served us well. He said. "You need not worry. The Government may carry the vote all right, but the experience in Australia will prevail and the referendum will be heavily defeated." In my opinion, that will be the case. I am not in on the inner secrets of the Fianna Fáil Cabinet but I think that if they could see any way out of the invidious position in which they have placed themselves, they would be happy to escape from it, provided they could save face.
To return to the British electoral system, the Fianna Fáil Government have been hankering after it for years. That is a slight change of policy on that side of the House. At one time it used to be: "Burn everything British except their coal." Now they seem to have become so indoctrinated, shall I say, with everything British that they even say that the British electoral system would be good for the Irish people, that is, the first-past-the-post system. To my mind, that has not produced any great stability. It has not produced any greater stability than we have had in this country. I think it was Deputy Corry who quoted the many elections we have had here.
We had frequent elections in the 30s and in the early 40s, but they were all at the instigation of the then Leader of Fianna Fáil who loved elections and, at the least excuse, went to the Park and dissolved the Dáil to show that he could do what he wanted and be successfully returned in the election. Undoubtedly we had elections which were entirely unnecessary. The Government had not been defeated in the Dáil and there was no evidence that they would be defeated. Apart from that, we had comparative stability under PR. We had the Government from the institution of the State up to 1930. Then we had a Fianna Fáil Government from 1932 to 1948. We had a change of Government from 1948 to 1951. From 1951 to 1954, we had a Fianna Fáil Government. Perhaps there was a little instability because they depended on the votes of a few Independents. At that time it looked as if the Independents would turn their backs on the Fianna Fáil Government but, after some cajolery, and so on, some of them joined the Fianna Fáil Party and the Government were able to carry on. We had a change of Government again from 1954 to 1957.
In 1957 Fianna Fáil got an overall majority. As I pointed out, they utilised that overall majority not for the benefit of the people but for another politically futile exercise such as we are having at the moment, an attempt to change the electoral system. They were in office from 1957 to 1961. That was four years. The legitimate or legal span of the life of the Dáil is five years. From 1961 to 1965, they were there. That is four years again. They came in again in 1965 and by the fortuitous circumstances of winning by-elections, they secured an overall majority and they are there now. In ordinary conditions, and providing they were prepared to avoid the pitfalls of a referendum to try to disrupt the Constitution, they should be there until close on 1970, the year in which we understand from the Fianna Fáil Government we are getting into the Common Market. However, that is another matter.
The British system with regard to the calling of elections is the same as ours. It is the prerogative of the Prime Minister to go to the Queen and ask for a dissolution of Parliament, just as it is the prerogative of the Taoiseach here to go to the President and ask for a dissolution. They have the same system and their elections can be called when it suits the Party in power. The British have had innumerable elections. The Labour Government came into power in 1963 and the following year there was another general election. Perhaps the greatest argument in favour of the straight vote is what happened away back in 1926 or 1927, when the Conservative Government which had been a coalition before that —it was formed during the war— ceased to function very well and a Labour Government then got into power. After that, rightly or wrongly —it is not for us to decide since we are not citizens of Britain but of Ireland— the people turned against the Labour Government and they had a general election under the straight vote system. The result, from the point of view of the British parliamentary institution, was a disaster because the Conservatives swept into power with an enormous majority.
The Labour Party who constituted the principal Opposition in those days, since the Liberals had slowly died out having ceased to be fish or flesh or fowl, was decimated and reduced to 60 members, led by Sir George Lansbury. This with the addition of a few Liberals represented the Opposition against an overwhelming Conservative majority. There was no effective Opposition, no possibility of anybody coming in to produce cogent and constructive arguments. Most of those who had constituted the Opposition— which is just as important in Parliament as the Government—had disappeared and the Conservative Government went asleep and did nothing, with the result that there was mass unemployment and complete disruption of the economy. There was an ineffective Parliament. That, I suggest, is what could happen here. Although the Conservatives had this overwhelming majority in the British House of Commons, they were ineffective. Although the Labour Party Front Bench had been decimated and many of their members had disappeared from the scene, they had still polled a considerable proportion of the votes, 42 per cent or 43 per cent against the 57 per cent polled by the Conservatives and a few Liberals but they had practically no representation, only 60 members out of 500. Anybody who likes to work out the proportion will find they had a considerably lower percentage of seats than the percentage of votes they polled.
On another occasion in a British election in 1945-46, I think, the British Conservatives had a smaller percentage of votes than the Labour Party had got but they won the election. Is that a great electoral system to have? We are told that if the people vote they should vote for a Government. They want to be sure their vote is fully effective but it cannot be in that kind of case. Any Liberal who intervenes in the British electoral institution may be responsible for creating a minority seat. These are things which should be borne in mind. I should like to hear them answered on the other side. If the Government have taken the trouble, as I believe they have, to discuss this among themselves behind closed doors, I want to hear them argue against the minority vote putting a Government into power. Do they want a minority Government in power or do they want to see a fully democratic vote operated?
There is also the question of trained political personnel. Many people have become cynical about our political institutions—perhaps not so many but one imagines there are more because they are the people who write letters to the paper suggesting that the entire Dáil should be cleared out and new blood brought in, and so on. The training of political personnel is necessary. Today in public life things have changed considerably from what they were when I first came here in 1951. The State is spending enormous sums of money and is by far the biggest employer. Anything that concerns the State concerns the elected representative who is the bulwark against the growing encroachment of bureaucracy on the rights and prerogatives of the individual. In saying that, I do not want to cast any aspersions on our very fine Civil Service but I want to stress that the system is growing whereby there is bureaucratic control under which decisions are being taken in the name of the Minister. A Minister cannot attend to everything himself and decisions are being made behind closed doors by some unknown persons who may be senior or even junior civil servants.
The defender of the rights of the people is the elected representative but to be a good and influential defender, able to state the case of the person with a problem, the Deputy—or will he be called a Member if the referendum succeeds? —must know the facts of his constituency and how to deal with each particular problem. He must know to whom to go and he must evaluate the problem from two points of view, that of the individual and that of the nation. To do that successfully, he must be a trained person. If we are going to create a situation in which the entire political personnel or a great number of them will be wiped out, it will be a very dangerous situation in Irish political life and will remove the greatest bulwark of democracy, indeed the only bulwark of democracy in the country today.
I may carry that a little further. The Minister will probably get up when I have finished and say that we are very despondent in Fine Gael, that we are afraid we shall be wiped out. Personally I have no fears and I hasten to assure the Minister on that point, but I am interested as it happens, perhaps because I belong to a political family, in the welfare and prosperity of the country as a whole. I should like to give two reasons why I consider this a dangerous situation. I want to take the Members of the House back to the period of the 1918 election. At that time, we had sitting for practically all constituencies, with the exception of a few that had been won by Sinn Féin, which was then the coming Party, the Irish Parliamentary Party, approximately 84 of them. They were trained political personnel and could have played a very vital part though quite obviously they would not be the Government in the new Parliament ultimately set up here. They had spent long hours in the British Parliament and in fact they had made the new British Parliamentary procedure. They had forced the British Government in 1884 to bring in the guillotine Act to close a debate, the weapon which Fianna Fáil used so effectively in the protracted discussions on the Live Stock Marts Bill. They were trained personnel.
We had the 1918 elections and we had the straight vote, the vote which the Government are so keen on, and the result was that these trained personnel, men who had dedicated their lives to the parliamentary institution were swept away overnight, with the exception of the late Johnny Redmond, who held Waterford, and one or two in Northern boundary constituencies. They were totally eliminated and a new Party came into power, Sinn Féin. They became the dominant Party and swept Ireland. If we had had proportional representation then, 24 to 30 of that Parliamentary Party would have survived. They would have been useful in that they would have formed an effective Opposition. Secondly, they would have helped in the establishment of parliamentary institutions here and they would have been of immeasurable value in helping their colleagues even of a different shade of opinion in advising them on what attitude to take in furthering the interests of their constituencies, both in private and in public.
They disappeared overnight and this enormous Sinn Féin Party came into power and controlled the whole country from north to south. Ultimately the Treaty came and when the Treaty came, we had the split. The reason we had the split was—and this was the sole reason—that we had no Opposition. We had the Sinn Féin Party and they split among themselves. It we had had proportional representation, we would have had 25 to 30 perhaps more Redmondites in the House here who would have constituted an Opposition, an Opposition which would have been responsible possibly for keeping the Sinn Féin Party knit as one instead of having the disastrous split we had, the Civil War and all the results that flowed from it. That is one strong, cogent argument against the straight vote. If, as some of the pessimists believe, the straight vote comes back here and it produces a dominant Fianna Fáil Party flowing from those benches right around here and there are only a few of us struggling to survive as the bulwark of democracy, is it not likely that we will have a further split? I can tell you this: if the Fianna Fáil Party split, if they get into that position, it will be some split.
Let us take another point of view. I have said that Irish political life is a personal thing. The majority of us who come from rural constituencies and those who come from urban areas live in our constituencies. We understand the immediate problems of the people concerned. Although we are in political opposition in Wexford, we are a friendly sort of people and we agree with each other and we unite at all times—the four of us who represent the constituency—where we conceive it to be for the benefit of the public as a whole, pro bono publico. We do that and I have no doubt they do the same in other constituencies. We know and we understand the problems of our people. If I lived in Merrion Row or somewhere else in Dublin the whole year round, what could I expect to know about the immediate problems of agriculture unless I spent every second day going down to my constituency? What could I know about the problems of housing in my constituency? How could I be approached by the local people if they wished me to do something for them?
That brings me to another argument against this. We go back again to the British Parliament because that is what is on the minds of Fianna Fáil. It is inbred in them. They are looking at what the British are doing all the time. In the British Parliament it is the exception rather than the rule that a Member lives in his constituency. There are men representing Wales who come from the north of Scotland but the majority of the parliamentarians in Britain live in London itself. The imposition system exists there. It simply means that—and one reads about this in the papers—when a vacancy comes up in Parliament, it is not a question of the local alderman, the local mayor or some local influential person being chosen. It does happen in the odd instance, but in the majority of cases, there is what is known as a list. People are asked to apply. That is really what happens in Britain.
The Chairman of the Conservative Association and Transport House which functions on behalf of the Labour Party ask for a list of applications by candidates. Candidates apply. They have no local connection with the constituency whatsoever but perhaps they may have previously sat for some other constituency and may have been in the House of Commons for a time so that their names are well known. Beyond that, they have no real contact with the local people whatever. Then there is a short list and in 90 per cent of cases, none of those MPs—whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal—have ever had anything to do with the constituency before. Is it not possible here that we will approach the same idea? Is it not possible that you will find that the leaders of the Party whoever they may be will decide that so and so is a good man; he toes the line; he gives a good subscription. I shall not mention the famous organisation referred to here so often because it seems to engender such heat all round and I want to keep the debate as free of acrimony as possible. He gives a good subscription to the Party and he is imposed on an area in which he has absolutely no interest.
He could be a wealthy business tycoon probably living in Dublin. He is imposed on the rural constituency. He does not want the salary because he already has numerous directorships. He has probably placed his salary at the disposal of some local person to carry out the functions of the constituency. He will be able to call himself—I do not think it will be a TD then if the aims of the Government succeed—an MP. That is exactly what is likely to happen in this country. It is the system in countries in which the straight vote exists. That would be a disaster because even supposing the business tycoon, if he is given a constituency to enhance his reputation, his business acumen and business influence at the behest of Fianna Fáil, or even at the behest of any other Party, gives the salary which he does not want to some local person to look after the constituency, that local person will not have "TD" after his name. Therefore he will not have the influence with the Departments and will not be able to fight the issues as we can do today. Those are two reasons to which the Minister and his Government and his Party should give serious consideration.
The system in the United States of America has been quoted as the straight vote. I like to help the Government as much as possible because they have so little to argue. I like to assist them in every way I can by referring to all the countries in which they have this electoral system. Canada has the straight vote. I cannot recall at the moment any other country in the world that has it, except, I will concede, several of the South American countries. However, revolutions took place so frequently there—the only method of changing a Government there was by the overthrow by force of arms of the Government— that the majority of them have changed to the proportional representation system. The Taoiseach said it is a product of the nineteenth century that is passing away but actually it is a product of the twentieth century that is returning with all the force it can command to maintain and establish democracy in countries that have been dictatorships.
However, to return to the United States of America, the political situation in the United States is not exactly the same—although they have the straight vote—as the Government would have us believe. When they are electing Congressmen, when they are electing Senators, they are not electing the Government and the position is not quite the same as it is under the British system. In the United States of America, the President has almost unparalleled authority. In fact, he is the Government because he establishes the Government. It is not the Congress or Lower House in the United States, nor is it the Senate, it is the people of America who elect their President and by electing him, they give him full executive authority to do virtually whatever he wants to do. It is also possible in the United States for a President to govern without a majority in the Congress. That is a point which is worth bearing in mind because it has been argued from the Fianna Fáil benches that we must have this because we must have a Government, that we must copy America, that it is a powerful democracy and it has managed to maintain itself as a Republic since its inception 150 years ago.
With regard to Canada I do not believe the Minister for Transport and Power in the persuasive tones which he will use when he rises to speak after me will be able to show that there is any parallel between the situation in Canada and here. There are miles and miles of tracts of land where you will see very few people living. You can travel long distances in trains without seeing a human being. It seems to me that the system of proportional representation there would be unworkable and for that reason they just do not have it. They have the system they have at the moment, and in relation to local government as well.
To return to France for a moment, there is one point I forgot to mention, that is, that France seems to be the real reason in the mind of the Taoiseach who stated the case for the Government for abolishing proportional representation. The local elections in France are still held under the proportional representation system and France is also governed by committees. They have local committees as well which creates a very much different situation in that a great deal of power is taken out of the hands of parliament itself. I mention those facts to show that there is virtually no parallel whatever between France and this country.
I do not want to detain the House unnecessarily but I feel that the Government should consider this whole matter again. It seems to me that originally when they introduced this hare-brained scheme, they believed, having been defeated with everything in their favour nine years ago, that these two Bills would go through, first of all, as one, that they would put them together and confuse the issue, that the greater part of rural Ireland would vote for the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill to enable the parity of constituencies to be maintained in those areas particularly in the West. They also believed that the idea of wiping out the Labour Party or any small parties would appeal to the Fine Gael Party. They have read wrongly the mind of Fine Gael: let them make no mistake about that. The history of this Party, which is quite a long one if you dovetail it with the original Cumann na nGaedheal Party, which has very much the same personnel, has been one of defence of the rights of minorities and the defence of democracy. We are not likely to give that up lightly. Furthermore, no matter what we ourselves might decide in this Parliament, those who voted for and stood behind us over the years are not likely to surrender it lightly, nor would they have a high opinion of their public representatives were we prepared to do so, which we are not.
I want to warn the Government that this Party will put all we have into this fight and we are not alone in it. I want to warn the Government as well that the people of Ireland resent what the Government are doing. They resent the fact that with all the problems there are, and there are serious problems, which I do not want to mention here because you, Sir, might rule me out of order, facing this country and right well the Government know it, they still want to put this through. The Government must know the problems facing this country internally and also the problems facing us outside. If ever there was a time when all the forces and all that parliamentary debate can secure should be utilised in the best interests of the country, it is today, when by reason of the fact that this is a changing world, with numerous new countries coming into existence, when there is world-wide responsibility and communication, the Government have many problems on hands. Is there not something wrong, something almost despicable and petty in the fact when for the second time in less than 20 years the Fianna Fáil Government have a majority they come forward with the same proposals as were rejected by the electorate in 1959?
I want to warn the Government that not only will they be defeated by 34,000 votes, or whatever it was the last time, but they will be overwhelmingly defeated. The time of this Parliament will have been wasted talking about something nobody wants except the small clique facing us in the benches opposite and the result of it will be that when this Parliament comes to an end—and it is likely to continue until the 1970s, with the overall majority they have—the people will look back on it as a disastrous parliament like the 1957 to 1961 parliament when they had an overall majority and when there was so much they could have done which they did not do. They spent the time of the people and the time of the public representatives arguing something nobody but themselves wanted.
Let the Government take heed of what I have said. It is never too late to mend and any man who changes his mind when he finds that full public opinion is against him will not be thought any the less of. I am personally interested in seeing that those problems which are so paramount to our political life should be dealt with here in parliament and that we should not be asked to spend our time fighting something we know the country does not want. At the end of it, we will find that it is something that will besmirch the name of Ireland.
