This is one of those cases in which people do not look into their own backyards before they start criticising their neighbours. We have two by-elections today. These are being fought on a system, which is not really perhaps proportional representation but which may be called proportional representation. The main point is that the people are entitled to vote No. 1 for a candidate and, if that candidate is not elected, they are entitled, if they so desire, to vote No. 2 and they are entitled to have a say in the person who is elected. That is important, in my opinion, and I hope the people of Clare and Wicklow realise that this may be the last opportunity anyone will get in this country of a choice such as we have now because, if the Government get their way, that choice will no longer exist.
The Committee on the Constitution was referred to last night by the Minister for Local Government. As I said before, like some of his Party speakers outside, he has tried in a somewhat peculiar way to give the impression that the Committee on the Constitution are responsible for the introduction of this proposal. It cannot be repeated often enough that there was no suggestion of any kind by the Committee on the Constitution—good, bad or indifferent—that the so-called straight vote should be introduced. They reported that, because they were advised by the senior members of the Committee that it would not be possible to have this type of thing put before the Dáil and the country, if they were interested in a change, then the change would have to be the single seat with the transferable vote. It is interesting to note that the case built up by the Fianna Fáil members of that Committee, was in favour, though not all were in favour of a change, of the single seat with the transferable vote and the other members were in favour of the retention of the present system. It is ludicrous for the Minister for Local Government —I am sure he has access to the documents which were available to the Committee—to come in here now and try to argue that this proposal was brought; about because the Committee felt a change should take place.
The Minister also referred to unused votes and to the fact that, under the present system, there are people who do not get a say in the election of somebody. The average over the number of elections held is, I think, 15 per cent. In other words, only 15 per cent are affected because a candidate remains in the field until the last moment and is then eliminated. The Taoiseach took a constituency of 12,000 voters. I do not know if he was a bit mixed up between the number of people represented and the number of voters, but he came down eventually on a figure of 12,000 voters. In such a constituency, one candidate, under the proposed change, could get 4,001 votes, a second, 4,000 votes and the third, 3,999. That would not be the 15 per cent unrepresented about whom the Minister was complaining last night; it would be 66 per cent exactly of the people who voted in that constituency unrepresented, and the person who got the bare 33? would be elected. I do not think any of us want to see a situation where so many people would be disfranchised. If we go ahead with this, we will be ensuring in most constituencies that the majority of the people will not have representation, that a minority of the people will be represented by the Member.
This system has been referred to as the British system and Britain has been using it for many years. Perhaps it might be better if we referred to it as the Northern Ireland system where something like 27 constituencies are never contested because the Orange Tories in the North have got a majority there and nobody dare challenge them. The result is that the minorities are never represented. The Green Tories in the South apparently are anxious to create the same position here, so that they will be able to hold on to the seats and do what they like.
That brings me to another point to which the Taoiseach referred. He said the single-seater would produce a better type of Member, and referred to the many calls that are made on Members to get things for people— things to which they are entitled, let me add. It shows how much the Taoiseach is out of touch with the ordinary people. If we are to take the Taoiseach seriously, he was saying to this House and to the country, and perhaps more important still, to his own Party: "We are no longer going to have a situation where the constituencies will select their representatives, because we do not think they are selecting the right people. We will get the intelligentsia to do it"—people who are attached to Fianna Fáil under various guises, the up and going young men, people with money who are anxious to get places and who do not want to work too hard for it, who have become attached to Fianna Fáil because they happen to be the Party in power and would be quite happy to be attached to any other Party if they were in power. We have seen many of this type at the by-elections in Wicklow and Clare.
The Taoiseach was suggesting that these would be the people who would be selected to represent constituencies, and he warned the constituencies that they should not expect these supermen to go and find out what happened that Mrs. So-and-So did not get her widow's pension to which she is entitled but which she cannot get unless somebody who knows how to go about it makes the necessary representations; or why somebody who is due a grant from the Department of Local Government or the Department of Agriculture, or whatever type of grant it might be, did not get it. These representatives will have no time for that. These are intelligent people who are not to be bothered with these things; it will be their job to carry out the law-making of the country.
I wonder if the message has got through to the Fianna Fáil people, particularly the backbenchers, that this is what is going to happen, that if the straight vote goes through as in Britain or particularly as in Northern Ireland, the fellow who does not even know where the constituency is will be wished on them. I do not know whether or not the Taoiseach meant this when he made the statement, but listening to it and afterwards reading it, I got the impression that he was very definitely giving this warning that the choosing of potential representatives for Dáil Éireann would be more select and that the only way to achieve this would be to take it out of the hands of the constituency organisation. Do not say Fianna Fáil would not do this, because we know they have already done it on a number of occasions. They have rejected people selected at constituency level and picked other people, and they could do it again.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce made a number of interesting statements the other night. One of them, perhaps, was not quite understood by those in his own Party who listened to him, but I am sure when they read it afterwards, they began to wonder whose side he was on. He said that politics was a young man's game. I do not know whether or not he was looking at the Minister for External Affairs who happened to be present—it was rather embarrassing for him—but he seemed to imply that only young fellows like himself were entitled to be elected to Dáil Éireann and that when they got a little older, they should get out. Since they could not be removed under the proportional representation system, because the unreasonable constituency organisations considered they were entitled to select these people and let the electorate decide whether or not to return them, the system would have to be changed in order to get rid of them.
I do not know whether the Minister was really serious or whether he felt it was a popular thing to say. There are people who insist on remaining in politics until they have far outlived their usefulness. It seems to me a little ridiculous that, if a public official must retire at a certain age on the ground that he is not fit to continue to do his job properly, politicians should be allowed to continue until they are in their eighties or nineties. However, the suggestion by the Minister for Industry and Commerce that politics was simply a young man's game and that the early fifties was a time at which people should get out of politics to make room for young fellows like him, is one that many people in his own Party will have something to say about before this measure goes through the House. I have the feeling that at the back of his mind was the idea that certain older members of his own Party were ruling the roost and that he should publicly give warning that they were not going to be allowed to do this any longer.
I do not know whether the Taoiseach and the Minister for Industry and Commerce were speaking as individuals or were putting the Party line across, but it seemed to me extraordinary that this line should have been taken by them. As far as the constituencies are concerned, they have the right so far to select their own candidates. When a number of people are selected, the voters decide which of them they want to remain and which of them they want removed. As a person who was elected to Dáil Éireann and who subsequently lost my seat under PR, and then regained it, I feel it is the right system. The public should be entitled to remove a Member of this House if they find he is not doing his duty or if they think he is not doing his duty. Obviously, what the Government want to do is to tie down the representation to such a state that they will be able to confine the selection to whoever they want and, following that, that these people will be able to remain here for a very long time.
The other matter referred to in the Bills is this question of tolerance. If I were to find a word to describe it, I do not think it would be "tolerance". If there is anything more intolerant of the rights of the individual than this suggestion, I would like to know of it. The Taoiseach referred to the fact that some people were saying there should be a tolerance of 10,000 people and added: "Of course, we are not suggesting anything like that. The suggestion we are making is entirely different." Then he went on to talk about the 12,000 vote. According to the reckoning I and others have made, it does appear that on a 12,000 vote, there could be a 40 per cent change. It would appear on that basis that it would be impossible, as the Taoiseach said, to have a difference of 10,000; but I think you will find the percentage difference is very much greater than the 10,000 on the present 20,000 to 30,000. In fact, it looks as if the Government are prepared to allow—if I may be permitted to use the word again—a tolerance of about 40 per cent.
This again is something which has been very ill advised. We hear people on the Government Benches talking about one man, one vote. The issue is one man, one vote of equal value. The Minister for Lands is reported as having said in Wicklow that the Government were going to reverse the trend of the rush from the West by putting a number of civil servants—very much against their wills—down in Castlebar. If the single-seat constituency is introduced, we can see how useful 2,500 people would be in a place like Castlebar.
I do not know whether Deputy Corry was speaking from experience or just giving us what somebody else told him when he talked about the difficulty of contacting his various supporters throughout his constituency. He seemed to be overjoyed at the fact that he at least would be able to save himself—I think he said a night or two in a hotel—by having a small compact constituency which he could view from some height from his home. Having had the experience of listening to him in this House telling how he surveyed farms of land at night by shining the lights of his car on them and in Paul Goldin style, having an inspector down to divide the lands the next day, I would not be surprised at anything the Deputy might do.
Like the Minister for Defence at present sitting in the Government Front Bench, I have the honour to represent Meath. It is a big constituency. I live at the extreme eastern end. Somebody has said that my supporters can come from only three sides. They cannot come from the fourth because it is the sea. I think the Minister for Defence will agree with me that anybody who suggests in the year 1968 that it is not possible to contact people over a wide area like this, if those people want to see us and—more important—if we want to see them, is talking through his hat. Most of my work is done by letter and some of it by telephone. On occasions I travel, as the Minister does, from one end of the constituency to the other so that I can talk to people who may not be able to get to where I live or who would prefer to speak about a matter rather than write about it.
I know there are more widely spaced areas in constituencies in the country than in the one I represent, but to suggest that, because somebody feels he is being overworked by having to represent an area a bit far away from him, the whole electoral system should be changed is a lot of cod. Deputy Corry, or anybody else who feels like he does that the effort to try to represent those people and to travel around to where they can be met is too much, all have a very simple way of getting out of this. They do not have to go forward at the next election. Judging by the number of candidates who go into the ring whenever there is a general election, I am sure that under the present system there would be little difficulty in getting people to go forward and seek election to represent those whom some members of the Fianna Fáil Party feel it is too much of an effort to represent.
The suggestion made by the Taoiseach, by the Minister for Justice earlier, by the Minister for Industry and Commerce and particularly by the Minister for Local Government that areas where there is very little population at all are entitled to representation in this House will not hold water. All of us who come here know we are representing people. If by any chance under the system suggested here almost the entire population of a particular area moved out, if we were to follow the logic of the arguments being made by the Government we would have to change the Constitution again to ensure that those areas would be represented here, even though there was nothing in them except rabbits, hares and birds.
What I cannot understand is the sheer audacity of the Government in trying to put this over and to make a virtue out of something they know quite well is intended to be a blister. I was highly amused at some of the suggestions made, that the only reason the Government were introducing it was that they felt the Opposition should be given an opportunity to govern. I do not think anybody could accuse the Fianna Fáil Party of ever being anxious to hand over the reins of Government if they thought there was a possibility of holding on to them. When they tell us that they feel an opportunity should be given to the Opposition to govern, it is hard to know the reason why they are doing these things. However, I would suggest one thing.
What the Fianna Fáil Party have at the back of their mind in introducing this Bill is that they have realised there are a number of things which they just cannot do and which they would like to do. One of them is the very controversial Trade Union Bill. I would suggest that the reason that Bill was introduced nearly two years ago and has been shelved for a considerable time is that the Government feel they can at this stage attempt to get a strong enough majority in this House to enable them to bludgeon the workers of this country, because they know that the majority of the workers have turned against the Fianna Fáil Government. If they were honest about this, they would say that is one reason why they would like to pass this legislation.
The second reason is that I believe the Government feel they should be in a position to take stronger measures against certain sections of the farming community. I believe that what the farmers did last year so irritated the Government that the only thing they regretted was that they had not got a whopping big majority which would allow them to grind the farmers in the organisation concerned in the dust. I may be wronging the Government, but it appears to me that that is one reason they are trying to do this. I believe from the rumblings we have heard from certain people and comments behind closed doors which resulted in press releases and little things which would affect the result—and they are contradicted sometimes by the Deputy who is supposed to have made the comments— that down in the grass roots of the Fianna Fáil organisation, there is a feeling that they are losing their grip on the country, and particularly on the workers and farmers who are realising for the first time that they are getting a raw deal. In an attempt to grind them down, the Government want to get an overwhelming majority which they claim they could get with this change, and which would allow them to introduce legislation under which they could do what they liked.
It may be said that if they do this the people will, of course, turn on them at the first available opportunity. I want to pose this question. Supposing Fianna Fáil succeeded in getting 93 votes in this House out of a possible 144, and supposing they got five years in office with those 93 votes to back everything they did, I should like to know what chance people would have at the end of five years of raising their heads or attempting to fight back in those circumstances? Let no one tell me that the Fianna Fáil Government are not ruthless enough to do this. We have the evidence of it all over the place. There are some decent people in the Fianna Fáil Party as well as in the other Parties. My colleague, the Minister for Defence, is a person for whom I have the highest respect. He is a decent and honourable man. I would not like to say the same of all his Cabinet colleagues; I would not like to say the same of many of his colleagues in Meath. He knows as well as I do, that if they got the opportunity, some of them would grind not only my face but his also in the dust.
He knows quite well, and I know it, that if the Government succeeded in getting the control they hope to get under this Bill, they would make it impossible for any Opposition to go out openly and fight them at a general election. Those people who say that cannot happen should remember that we have been fighting elections for a long period and we know that you can go into the house of a poor old man or woman drawing the old age pension and find them extremely reticent about discussing anything with you, even though you know their sympathies are with your Party, and finally discover that they have been warned by supporters of the Government that if they do not vote for the Government, their pensions will either be reduced or taken from them altogether. If someone feels that this is not being done, the evidence is available to prove that it has been done. Further, if you find that these people have been told that the Party will know how they voted, that makes it look a little bit odd.
I had a conversation at a function last Sunday at which the Minister attended with a number of other people and I was horrified to find that at an election held a few years ago, there was a row about the transfer of a vote. One person present was able to tell me not only the way the person voted No. 1 but also how the transfer went to the person who made the complaint. There was also the fact that the person had got a medical card a few weeks earlier and following the disclosure of how he voted, the medical card was taken from him. For goodness sake, let no one say that in circumstances like that it would not be possible for a Party with 90 odd seats in the House to bulldoze their way through the country and prevent any opposition being raised at the end of five years. The Government say that if they do wrong, they will be swept out of power at the next election. I am giving the answer to that. They will successfully crush any opposition which might arise.
In his Second Reading speech, the Taoiseach made a number of points and, as I pointed out last night and today, I consider his arguments extremely weak. If there were good points to be made for this legislation, the Taoiseach should have set them down and we would know what they were. Having listened to his speech, I am perfectly satisfied that there is no argument in favour of the straight vote, if you like to call it the straight vote. In addition, I am satisfied that the Taoiseach was not too happy about the whole situation. We know there was quite a to-do at the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis about the question of what change should take place. Walls have ears and we know also that there was quite a to-do at the Fianna Fáil Party meeting when a final recommendation had to be made.
The case being made that PR does not give stable government is all cod because we have had longer breaks between elections here than they had across the water, and we have had one election less here than they had in Britain over the same period. We have had minority governments elected and governing for periods of four or five years. I am well aware that the Government feel that at the next election they are likely to lose quite a number of seats and that some bright boy—the Minister for Local Government is the person who is being blamed for it and I am inclined to agree that that is probably right—got the idea that if they could push through this change in the Constitution to the straight vote, to the Northern Ireland system of election, they would be able to hold on for ever. I want to make it very clear that I believe from a number of people I met throughout the country that the Government are in for a rude shock.
I discussed this matter not only with supporters of my own Party and people in favour of retaining PR but also with quite a number of well-known Fianna Fáil supporters. I have yet to meet one of them outside this House who has said to me: "I am in favour of a change." Again and again the same phrase has been used: "We voted for the change in 1949; we shall not vote for it now." These are people who I am quite sure will vote Fianna Fáil in the next election but they feel, as we do, that the Government are attempting to take absolute power into their hands, attempting to take over the country. They feel they now own the country and can do anything they like with it. I described this before as similar to the child's game where the youngsters are playing football and when the boy who owns the ball is on the losing side, there is nothing to do but change the rules so that he will win. This country is like a football and Fianna Fáil think they own it, and as they do not appear to be going to win, the only thing to do is to change the rules and see if they can win under the new rules which they devise.
The Minister for Justice said there was only a small number of countries using PR. He seemed to suggest that the more intelligent countries were moving on to the straight vote system —somebody referred to it recently as the illiterate vote: you vote X. The Minister was not quite on the mark because from information I have got, it appears that a big number of countries use PR. Not all of them use the same system as we use but most of them use a system of transferable vote. As the House knows, the PR system falls into two categories, the single transferable vote and the list system. We use the single transferable vote and any candidate who is found on the first count to have received a quota of first preference votes gets his seat. But if he has obtained more first preference votes than the quota, then his surplus is distributed among the other candidates in proportion to the respective second preferences shown on all of his ballot papers. The votes so distributed then count as first preferences for the candidates benefiting from the transfer of the surplus. This may bring the total of votes cast for one or more of the other candidates above the quota. If so, then each such candidate gets a seat on this second count. The Taoiseach seemed to think that, as in the Seanad vote, you simply put the votes into parcels of 50 and that the returning officer at random picks out one of those parcels and then the transfer goes on according to the preferences.
Apparently, from a discussion I had with a Fianna Fáil Deputy before the proceedings opened here today, a number of members of the Fianna Fáil Party do not understand how our system of PR does, in fact, work. The next highest number of surplus papers is distributed according to the next preferences shown on the papers last transferred to him. Should no candidate's total have exceeded the quota, then the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and each of the papers then credited to that candidate is transferred to the candidate marked by the voter as his next preference among the candidates still remaining in the running. After each such distribution, the voters for each candidate are totalled and any candidate who attains the quota gets his seat. The process continues until all seats are filled.
The objection that has been made by some people to that type of election is that some votes can elect more than one candidate, but if it is remembered that only a quota of votes is required to elect a candidate, the statement that one vote carries more strength than others is not true. In fact, if what the Taoiseach said was correct, that it was part of the parcel, it would be a haphazard system of election. It is not so. Each vote is counted and the number of votes over the quota is what is counted in proportion to the number of No. 2 preferences given to other candidates. This is so simple that I cannot understand why people should make a mistake about it.
The suggestion has been made by the Taoiseach that the quality of members would be improved. W. J. M. MacKenzie in his book on "Free Elections" has adopted certain criteria for existing PR systems. He had eight main criteria—the quality of members, the member and his constituency, a collectively effective assembly, reflection of opinion, attitude of electors in voting, public confidence, by-elections and political possibility. He has given a statement on each of those and the arguments he makes in support of his theories, I think it will be agreed, are pretty sensible. I do not propose to go through them all but in regard to the quality of members, it is rather interesting to note that he says: "The tendency of the system is to give more opportunity to the voter to express an opinion about the merits of individual candidates. In a constituency in which a number of Party candidates stand for election, it can be made plain who the voters think would be best of the Party candidates and an `independent' party candidate rejected by the Party machine might stand without splitting the Party vote. The electorate gains freedom in the choice of members at the expense of the parties. Whether this means better members depends on the quality of the electorate...."
The whole point is that we believe the electorate should be entitled to select from a number of candidates and vote for them according to their merits. Apparently the Government have decided this should not be allowed and that the way to do it is to put one man forward and say: "He is our man; you must vote for him." I heard somebody say the other day that if somebody who does not know anything about the constituency is put forward, he will not get the votes of the Party. Even under the present system, I am afraid we have evidence that he will get the votes of the Party. I am sure the Minister for External Affairs will not think it amiss if I point out that despite the fact that he has been out of the country much longer than he has been in it, over the years he is elected in a fairly high place in County Louth, even though there is a second choice there. For this reason, I feel that if a Party say, in areas where they are strong, that they are putting up Mr. X, Mr. X will get the vote and it will be considered as untrue to the Party if they do not vote for him.
God forgive me, but I should hate to see some of the people I see knocking about at present hanging on to the coat-tails of Ministers and other highly placed people in the Fianna Fáil organisation, sent down to represent the constituency which I and the Minister for Defence represent at present. But knowing these people and knowing that they have sufficiently hard neck to push their case to have this done, I feel sure that if this passes in the House and in the country there is a dire danger that we will finish up with some leath-scéal representing the constituency we represent at the present time.
Another thing mentioned in Mr. Mackenzie's book is the reflection of opinion. It says:
The system undoubtedly reflects individual opinions as well as any system can, within the administrative limits set by modern electorates. A counter-argument can only be constructed on this point by insisting that in politics what counts is organised opinion, not the sort of opinion which expresses itself in answer to the questionnaires of the "gallup poll", but opinion shaped by party organisation into an effective political instrument associating known leaders, an alert body of party followers, coherent principles and an agreed programme of action. This is a crucial point in debate about mass democracy. The case for political parties is strong, but it is also possible to reverse the argument and to suggest that since party organisation is hostile to free speech within the party, it is as likely to block public opinion as to canalise it.
The argument is there, for what it is worth, and I suggest that what the Parties want is to try to have a select body who will do whatever the leader says and that constituency interests should not arise at all. All of us being Party men know, and I particularly as a Party Whip know, the responsibility to take a line when the Party decides to take a line. I know the responsibility and the necessity to do it but I also know, being intimately connected with my constituency and with my constituents, that I can make my case within the Party and this is something which cannot happen or will not happen if— and I am insisting that this is the whole idea—we have this set of safe people in safe seats which is apparently the idea the Government have at the present time. The intellectuals—a friend of mine recently referred to them as Woodhouse intellectuals—are likely to be hanging around and likely to find themselves representing respectable constituencies in this country if the Government have their way. I hope that sort of thing will never happen.
There are dozens of things which can be said here and I do not want to attempt to repeat the cases made by other members of my Party but I would like to try to cover as many as possible of the points which were raised by Government speakers in their arguments so far. However, I feel that in making arguments in this House, it is necessary to stress, and it cannot be stressed too often, that we in the Labour Party are fighting this on the principle that there should be only a system of election to Dáil Éireann which will (a) give the right of the electorate to choose between different candidates, even of the same Party, if they so desire, and (b) that they should be entitled to have the majority of the electors in a constituency represented by a Member. The system suggested by the Government is that we should have a minority of people elected as can happen simply because they have got one vote more than the next person on the list and despite the fact that there may be 10,000 or 12,000 votes against them and only 4,000 votes in their favour. I do not think that we can be expected to accept or that the Irish people will accept this sort of thing.
When proportional representation was introduced here in 1923, I understand there was a similar system over the Border. Areas which have not been represented in Parliament since by a Nationalist or an Anti-Tory or Anti-Unionist member at that time had such representatives in Parliament. When they changed over to the straight vote system, it resulted in 40 years of Tory rule, particularly in places like Derry where with a little bit of gerrymandering—God knows the last occasion the present Government did a bit of shuffling around, they showed what they could do with regard to gerrymandering—those people were deprived of representation in Parliament. The Taoiseach was very eloquent when speaking here about the necessity to retain county boundaries. He knows just as well as I do that when the last changes were being made, county boundaries did not come into it at all. The only thing that did come in was how many extra voters would it be necessary to take from one area and put into another to ensure that there would be an extra safe seat for Fianna Fáil. We got it, indeed, where a portion was taken off and added to Kildare in order to do that and we had a repeat of this all over the country. As to preserving county boundaries and insisting that there would be only counties represented by a Deputy the fact that the Taoiseach proposes breaking up each county into at least three shows that what he says is not what he believes.
The Minister for Transport and Power was also very eloquent here about the necessity to have the areas properly represented. Monaghan is another area where we had a portion of County Louth dumped into it in order to ensure that the Government would hold on to their two seats there. The Minister for Transport and Power, a man for whom I have high regard, is the last person in the world who should talk on this because when it suited the Government he was put into Longford-Westmeath and dumped in there, and when it looked as if he was going to lose his seat there, he was picked out and dumped into Monaghan. For goodness sake, if these people start talking about the necessity to have single seats and the straight vote and talking about representation for ordinary people we all may give up.
The Minister for Local Government, when speaking here the other day, seemed to think that he could refer to the fact that there were what he called two Coalition Governments. I would call them inter-Party but when we come to coalition, I would remind the House that we have had numerous coalitions. I have proved here that practically every Government in this country over a long number of years was a coalition of Independents and Fianna Fáil. He seemed to think that the biggest argument he could make was what happened with the two Coalitions. Now, it is true that the Coalitions did not run their full course but it is also true that the Coalition or inter-Party Governments while in office, did things which Fianna Fáil had not the guts to do. The two breaks here, with alternative Governments, proved to Fianna Fáil that they would have to be on their toes. I believe the reason the Government now want to change is that they want to prevent any group from forming a coalition, an inter-Party Government or what have you.
I am not in favour of Coalition or inter-Party Government but I believe that the Government want to prevent such a danger and in order to do so, they would go to any extreme. The figures produced by experts of what will be the result in a general election if the straight vote comes in are interesting. While the Government talk about the necessity to ensure that we have a stable Government and that there should be a two Party system for their ideal, providing that they are the bigger one, and while the experts gave the Government 93 votes, something like 20 for Fine Gael and eight, I think, for Labour they also included 12 Independents. I am sure that gave solace to the Fianna Fáil Party because they were always particularly fond of Independents.
Queen Victoria is reputed to have asked on one occasion a Prime Minister what way her Parliament was made up. She was told it was made up of Whigs, Tories and Independents. She then said: "I know what Whigs and Tories are but what are Independents?" The answer given is as true now as it was then. It was: "Madam, an Independent is a gentleman whom nobody can trust". We have those people going around and some years ago they were very useful to Fianna Fáil. Now, apparently the only use Fianna Fáil have for them is kite flying. Deputy Lenihan flew a kite but apparently it dropped on him because he did not get the wind necessary to fly it for him. It appears that somebody else has got it now.
The Labour Party are opposed to any change from proportional representation to a single seat with a straight vote, a single seat with a transferable vote, a single seat with a non-transferable vote or what have you. We believe this country is satisfied with the present system. We believe that when the referendum takes place the people will vote not 30,000 against it, as they did the last time, but at least ten times that number against it to prove that they are not going to have any more of this meddling with the Constitution. I believe that the result will teach Fianna Fáil that what they want in this country is not what the country wants.
I hope that when the result is available they will accept this because Deputy Lemass said—I referred to this last night—at the Constitution Committee that the Government accepted the last one and that they could not have the hard neck—that is not what he said but that is what he meant— to get the country to vote on an issue which had been voted on nine years ago. The only way the Government can be prevented from trying this again and again is by a massive vote against the change and I feel confident that that massive vote against it will be given.
