Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 20 Mar 1968

Vol. 233 No. 6

Private Members' Business. - An Bille Um An Tríú Leasú Ar An mBunreacht, 1968: An Dara Céim (Atógáil). Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1968: Second Stage (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following amendment:

Go scriosfar na focail go léir i ndiaidh "Go" agus go gcuirfear ina n-ionad:—

"ndiúltaíonn Dáil Éireann an Dara Léamh a thabhairt don Bhille ar an bhforas gur togra atá neamh-dhaonlathach go bunúsach an togra sa Bhille suas le 40 faoin gcéad de bhreis ionadaíochta sa Dáil a thabhairt do roinnt saorá-nach thar mar a thabharfaí do shaoránaigh eile."

To delete all words after "That" and substitute:—

"Dáil Éireann declines to give a Second Stage Reading to the Bill on the grounds that the proposal in the Bill to provide some citizens with up to 40 per cent greater representation in the Dáil than other citizens is fundamentally undemocratic."

—(Deputy Cosgrave).

Mr. Coughlan

As I pointed out, the duplicity of the Fianna Fáil Party in their approach to this question of the abolition of PR, the confusion that exists within their minds and within their Party, the two-faced approach of some of their Cabinet Members, the denial by the Taoiseach of the statement made by the Minister for Justice on RTE, are now apparent to the ordinary man in the street for whom I speak, and whose views I try to put here before this House on this matter. It is evident and plain to be seen now that this is realised, and we must congratulate the local press and the national press, with one exception, for putting the case plainly and simply before the people. We have to congratulate our daily papers on that. Fianna Fáil now see that they are in an invidious position. Some of their Cabinet Members want to retract, to circumvent the situation which was thrown at their feet by the Minister for Local Government and from which, on his statement last week, he is refusing to withdraw. They are now so confused that it is freely stated throughout the country that the referendum which they had prepared for June is being postponed until October, and from then on, God only knows what will happen.

I want to assure the Fianna Fáil people here and now that we in the Labour Party and in the trade union movement are prepared to fight them on this issue in garden, field or bog, as we did in the past. We know the outcome of this referendum. We know the chastising and the defeat Fianna Fáil will get on this referendum. There will be complete annihilation and fragmentation of the Party as a result. Thoughtful members of that Party are now throwing their minds back on how this happened and why it was placed before them and the people as a fait accompli. It is extraordinary how these things keep recurring like a dúchas dúchas in a family which goes on from father to son.

If we throw our minds back to the middle and late 40s, we will find that a similar situation arose within the Fianna Fáil Party when the then Minister for Justice defied his own Cabinet colleagues with regard to the treatment of political prisoners. The executions and hunger strikes of that time brought defeat to the then Fianna Fáil Government. We have a recurrence of that now in the person of his own son who is ignoring and despising the advice of his own Party. He has persistently said—and he repeated last week, despite the efforts and promptings to "soft-peddle and break a hole in the wall and give us a way out", that he has nailed this referendum to the mast and will not give in one iota on this issue. That is the position. The Minister for Local Government is not prepared to withdraw one iota from that statement of his.

Let us imagine in our wildest dreams that his ambition will be realised. What then will happen? We all know what will happen. The first party for the axe will be the trade union movement. We had a sample of that not so very long ago with the ESB Bill. We will have it repeated again and again, and dare anyone organise themselves into a trade union movement and, having failed in all other approaches, take unto themselves strike action. We know what will happen. Let us here and now advise and remind and warn the people of this land that that mind, which, as I have said, has been bred out of dictatorship and ruthlessness and inhumanity, is now operating or trying to operate again to introduce in this country legislation of a tyrannical type, and we will find the jails and internment camps filled over and over again as they never were before, not by people with political views but by the ordinary organised trade unionists. These people will be wiped out by legislation if this should ever come to pass. Knowing the people throughout the length and breadth of this land as I know them, not as he knows them, I know there is one thing which is repellent to the Irish nature, that is, coercion. It will be fought on all fronts.

That is what Fianna Fáil are aiming at in these Bills. We will oppose it, as I have said, in garden, field or bog. We will oppose it as bitterly as they are introducing it. I can see, and the workers of the country can see, that this is a move by people who have jumped into opulence and who would be unknown had we a fair government and equal treatment for all citizens. These people would be unheard of, but they are here now with us. They bought their way in and the wings of Fianna Fáil were spread over them. These people are now attached to them and their interests must be looked after from now until the end of the Fianna Fáil régime. I can see, and I repeat, what the man in the street is thinking: this is the last will and testament of Fianna Fáil. We shall make sure of it and there will be no codicil. They will be banished and whatever we do, we shall see that there will be no beginning again to the dictatorial powers which these people are trying to take unto themselves.

They talk about tolerance—no member of that Front Bench knows the meaning of the word. Their tolerance depends on one thing only: how deep their supporters can put their hands in their pockets at election and other times when the clarion call goes out for funds. The unfortunate man going to the labour exchange or the widow to the post office for the widow's pension and the turf voucher for one shilling for a hundredweight of turf to keep her going for a week—where is the tolerance there? Intolerance would be more appropriate.

Coming back to today's newspapers and the Irish Times, in particular, we find it quoting Captain O'Neill in the North. He has given all his support and praised this action of Fianna Fáil: it is a great system. This is what they want —to gerrymander the constituencies. They tried that in the local elections in certain boroughs and it kicked back in their faces. We saw to that in Limerick city. We softened their cough for them in that local election. Never before in the history of Fianna Fáil were they without an alderman. We can and we will do more when the referendum comes and the sooner it comes the better.

We in the Labour Party want justice and fair play for all with equal rights for everyone. They talk about cherishing all our people equally. Was there ever since Templemore or since Paul Singer such hypocrisy and deceit practised on the people? Equal rights and equal opportunities, how are you! We know where the rights are. So does anybody who has any association or connection with the building trades in the last year or two. This is what they will continue if they get away with this measure but—the fools—they have forgotten the intelligence of the ordinary man in the street. They cannot see the wood for the trees because they are too engrossed with the semi-millionaires and mini-millionaires now fluttering about them. But the day of reckoning is at hand. Like all dictators, they can go too far and too far east is west.

I believe that we shall rejoice as never before when we see once and for all the annihilation of the Fianna Fáil gang. The man in the street is thinking as I am thinking and speaking. I meet him and live with him and I know how he lives and works. That cannot be said for some of the Front Bench Members of Fianna Fáil or even some of their backbenchers. We know how they feel about the referendum and what they will do about it. If the truth were known and stated, we know what they would say. They cannot go back now. They are nailed to this first past the post idea. We will nail them to it and no matter how they try or what excuses they produce to circumvent or sidestep this issue, we shall bring it before the electorate, the honest people of the land.

The Taoiseach, poor old genial Jack, makes the excuse of the delay and the dragging out of counts but does he forget that a similar tactic was tried in Wicklow last week when the Minister for Local Government demanded that the votes should be here instead of there, or he thought they should—anything to hold up the count? If there was any holdup in any count, which was of no importance—and the delay was of no importance—it was because of the inefficiency of the counting staff. The late Deputy O'Malley, Minister for Education, commented on it at the count in Limerick during the last general election. So did all of us, and we complained to the returning officer of his dilly-dallying way and the manner in which he handled the count. The count would have been over 12 hours earlier, had it been efficiently handled, but it was not. That is on record. All candidates, successful and unsuccessful, commented on it and the returning officer's approach to it. There was a similar position in many other places.

This is the reason given by the Taoiseach for the abolition of PR, with no consideration for what the people want and would like to have. It is to be done because of a whim, a vicious whim from a vicious man, a man of malice who came and put the gun to the Cabinet and said: "This is it." Whether that inspiration came from elsewhere or not, going back to what happened in 1959, I do not know but we have our views. In 1959, with all the glamour and all the colour they then introduced and the camouflage which was also part and parcel of the issue, it was defeated, but it was nothing to the ignominious defeat it will suffer when this referendum is held.

Mr. Ryan

We were interested to hear Deputy Healy say this afternoon that he saw virtue in referring this matter to the people for decision by referendum. At least we now have evidence that the Fianna Fáil Party have come one step forward. There was a day when they ascertained the will of the people by looking into the heart of one individual.

Perhaps this change of heart on their part has come about because they fear that in this day in which man has succeeded in transplanting the heart of a dead person into a live person, we might have some contorted vision of the will of the Irish people if somebody in the future were to look into whatever heart was in him in order to ascertain the will of the people.

We doubt very much if the Fianna Fáil Party are genuine in wishing to consult the people. What they would prefer to do is to bring in this Amendment without consultation with the people. This is a new anxiety on their part to consult the people on matters important and unimportant. To many sensible people, this is one of the least important matters this House could be engaged in discussing at this time. But, if there is now in the Fianna Fáil Party an anxiety to consult the people, we trust they will go a little further and will amend the Constitution so as to provide a genuine form of plebiscite to enable the people to have their opinion directly ascertained on Bills which are submitted by the Government or by others in this House from time to time.

As you are aware, Article 27 of the Constitution allows the reference of Bills to the people other than a Bill which is called a Referendum Bill only where a majority of the Members of Seanad Éireann and one-third of the Members of Dáil Éireann jointly petition the President to decline to sign and promulgate a law on the grounds that it contains a proposal of such national importance that the will of the people thereon ought to be ascertained.

In the present system in which the Government of the day can effectively secure a majority in the Seanad by appointing 11 nominees of the Taoiseach, that so-called provision for a plebiscite is, in practice worthless. Now that we are on such an unimportant matter as this, to delay development of the economy and the social requirements of this country for six months to hold a referendum, we would prefer that the Government would do what they now profess to believe in, that is, consult the people directly on important matters such as social and economic reform.

It may be that men may forget this outrageous behaviour of the Government. In 1959, the Government were defeated in what they are now proposing. In 1961, the electorate, unfortunately, were prepared to forget the Government's misdeeds of 1959 and it is because the people did not remember them in 1961 and did not put out of power the Government that tried this on in 1959 that we have the same Fianna Fáil Government trying this on in 1968. If it be that the Government are now doing it, it is the people who elected Fianna Fáil in 1961 and 1965 who are to blame.

The Government, I suppose, are entitled—if you have no high moral standards you are entitled—to try a thing on if the people are not going to express their opposition to the Government by putting them out of power. One can only hope that on this occasion, when the people once again defeat this proposal in the referendum, they will carry through their opposition to Fianna Fáil in the next general election and destroy them once and for all because we have received an assurance here from several Fianna Fáil speakers, and the last one in particular, Deputy Healy, that if they do not get their way in June of this year, or whenever the referendum will be held, they will try it again so long as they are in office. In other words, we are to have a series of referenda on this proposal, wasting hundreds of thousands of Irish taxpayers' money, wasting the time, energies, skills and experience of Deputies and Senators and public administrators until Fianna Fáil get their way with the corrupt and wasteful and ridiculous system of first past the post, which may be suitable for horse racing and dog racing but is certainly not in the political race or in the governmental race or the parliamentary race, the system we know as the democratic system. It may be all right to determine which animal is in best physical shape but it is no test of the expression of the people's will; it is no test or, shall I say, it is no fair or genuine test, of the support which any political group may genuinely have from the electorate.

I take the Bills in the order in which they have been introduced and express my horror that the democratic and fundamental principle of one man, one vote is to be swept aside in favour of a system which, contrary to several Articles of the Constitution, is going to introduce gross inequality in political power in this country.

I was sorry to hear Deputy Norton say earlier today that there was a duty, as he conceived it, on Members of this House to see that rural areas are not outvoted by vast hordes building up in the cities. What are these vast hordes? Are they of trees, of mountains, of rivers, of stones, of blocks, of animals, of foreigners? They are not. They are of Irish people. They are of Irish people who have, under this Constitution, if it is anything more than a sham, under every conception of decency and democracy ever voiced in this country, the right to go to the polls convinced that their vote has the same power—no more and no less—as the vote of any other Irish man or woman in determining the destinies of this country.

Why is it important that people, whether they live in Dublin or Donegal, in Kerry or Carrickmines, should have that right? It is important for this reason, that at the moment 100,000 families in this country, representing nearly half a million people, are living in hovels, in overcrowded dwellings, and they have a right to use the ballot box to protest against the Government who consider that their needs, their human and fundamental needs, must take second place while they monopolise the energies, the public institutions of this country, in an effort to foist upon the people an electoral system the people do not want or which, even if they did want, is of far less importance than the provision of decent housing for our people.

Why is it important that people should have equality of political power? It is because at the moment in this land in which a Government smugly boast of providing free education and of treating all the children of the nation equally, there are hundreds of thousands of families unable to educate their children because the economic circumstances of the home will not permit the parents to leave the children at school after 14 years of age and these parents and the children who are denied this education because of the deplorable economic standards and deplorably low income of the homes have a right to protest, whether they are crowded into the cities or sparsely distributed in the valleys and mountains of this country. They have a right to protest with equal voice, irrespective of their geographical location.

Why is it important that every man's vote should be equal? It is important because in this land we have, under the traditional way of ascertaining the number of unemployed as distinct from the statistical device introduced 18 months ago, 78,000 unemployed, most of whom are in the cities and most of whom are from the vast horde which Deputy Norton and others consider are not entitled to an equal voice. It is important because we believe that the unemployed are entitled to the same voice in determining the country's future as are the wealthy or the well-to-do. This effort to destroy the principle of one man, one vote must be defeated. Why is an effort being made to justify the destruction of this priceless right of equality of political power? It is because we have had so many years of Fianna Fáil government during which the rural parts have been denuded of their population. The population has gone into the cities and towns and where it has not been stopped there, it has gone further, through our ports and airports, to Britain, America, Australia and across the world.

This country is bleeding to death and rural Ireland, in particular, is bleeding to death. It is because of that, because of the failure of Fianna Fáil, that we are now asked to confer a benefit on those who have bled the country, to confer a benefit on those who have sent the people away and are still sending them away at the rate of 40,000 to 50,000 a year. We are asked to make it comfortable for them so that the areas in which the population has dwindled may give preferential representation to Fianna Fáil. Moving this particular Amendment at this time, under the pretence of loving the people and wishing to know what is in their hearts, is a fraud when our social standards and the poor and under-privileged, are so neglected, when we have a situation in which the old age pensioners are expected to survive on 57/6 per week and when those people are told, as they were told recently by the Deputy Leader of the Government, An Tánaiste, the Minister for External Affairs, the man from outer space, in a nice quiet, select suburb of Greystones, that the old age pensioner could improve his lot to 77/6 a week, by having two schoolgoing children, when we have in power a Government who believe the answer to our social needs, to the distress of the old age pensioners, is to breed again in their sixties so as to have children going to school in their seventies. When you have such a Government proposing an electoral trick like this, it is terribly important that the people give their answer and that we preserve a situation in which the old age pensioner's vote, be he living in Dublin or Donegal, Castlegregory or Carrickmines, is of equal strength so that he may protest with equal vehemence against the Government.

Mr. Norton

Did Deputy Cosgrave——

Mr. Ryan

We believe that 70 per cent of our people who are obliged under archaic, Victorian laws to contribute to medical services from which they are totally excluded, unless they are so ill as to be in hospital, have a right to protest against a Government who again and again have promised to change the system and as often as they have promised have broken their promises. The masses of the people in this city, and in every other city and town, who are suffering under that system have the right to protest, particularly when in the towns and cities, there is no difficulty in finding medical aid as long as you are in a position to pay for it, and when there is no justification for delaying the introduction of a proper, comprehensive health service such as every country in Europe has, with the exception of Ireland and the Eskimos in Greenland.

The Government stand condemned that at a time like this, when all Europe is concerned with the threat of serious curtailments in international trade, when we should be gearing ourselves to the needs which will descend upon us, whether we are or are not members of the European Economic Community, we are fiddling with the fortunes of this nation, wasting time and wasting talent for which our people now and hereafter will never forgive us, in asking the people to concentrate all their thoughts and energies on deciding in an unwanted referendum on an electoral system which, despite all the Government's efforts, is going to remain.

We believe the Government deserve to be condemned because at a time when they should be doing something to reflate our economy, to increase employment—which for several weeks past has been decreasing at the rate of 1,500 to 2,000 a week—they are instead wasting time, energy and public money on this unwanted referendum. Every member of the Fine Gael Party, including our leader, Deputy Cosgrave —if Deputy Norton had the courtesy to listen to him—believes that every man's vote should be equal and that every woman's vote should be equal and that every Irish pen when put to paper on election day should have the same influence in determining what policies this country is to implement, the same influence in deciding who is to represent the people, and the same influence in deciding who is to be the Government.

It is because the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill seeks to destroy this principle that we are vehemently opposed to this proposal. We are certain that notwithstanding all the efforts of the Fianna Fáil Government to play down the weaknesses of rural bias, notwithstanding their efforts to try to stir up what should never be stirred up, animosity between town and country, when this referendum is over and the votes counted, the ordinary people will secure what has been fought for down the years, an equal say and an equal right for all Irishmen in the determination of the destinies of this country.

We are led to believe that there is some difficulty in achieving equality of political representation and the arguments which have been advanced since this very tiresome debate began are quite similar to the arguments advanced in 1959 in this Assembly, and in the other House, and similar to the arguments advanced by the then Minister for Local Government and his colleagues who gave sworn testimony in the High Court which was found to be unacceptable to the judge and two years after that what they said was impracticable was found to be quite practicable; and we have, since 1961, been operating under an electoral system which gives us, as far as practicable, equal representation, equal voting strength, equal political power, equal political influence irrespective of whether or not we live in the city or in the country—that is assuming that the Government were right in 1961 in drawing up the Act of that year on the basis of the 1956 Census.

It is important, I think, that the people should know that in 1961 the Fianna Fáil Government deliberately took away staff from the Central Statistics Office working on the Census and gave definite instructions to the Central Statistics Office to take all steps necessary to ensure that the 1961 Census results would not be published before the 1961 Electoral Bill became an Act of the Oireachtas and had been approved by the Supreme Court. They did that knowing that, in 1961, the population had drifted from several parts of rural Ireland and the population had increased in several towns and cities. The result was that, in fact, on the true figures of 1961 we even have an imbalance under the present Electoral Act in favour of some parts of Ireland and against others.

We were told by the Minister for Local Government that there are 14 constituencies out of 38 which maintain a correct ratio between the population and the number of Deputies. There are 18 which have a population lower than the correct national average. There are six which are too high; that is allowing for a variation of 1,000 from the national average. Efforts have been made to justify this situation on the ground that you have in Dublin a higher population of children than you have in rural Ireland. But the figures which the Minister himself has given indicate that there is not any significant difference and there is certainly no difference, taking one area and comparing it with another, which would not be or could not be balanced out in a 12-year cycle, the period within which we are obliged by law to amend the arrangement of constituencies.

In Dublin the electorate represents 56 per cent of the population. In rural Ireland it represents 61 per cent. The difference is, therefore, five per cent. What the Government are seeking to do in the Bill we are discussing is to provide a variation of 40 per cent for certain parts of the country and one can clearly see that it is a worthless argument to suggest that the justification for having a 40 per cent differential is a five per cent difference in the proportion of the electorate compared with population. What the Government seek to do now is what they did in 1959, something the courts subsequently condemned as being unconstitutional. When the High Court condemned it as being unconstitutional, the Government did not take the course, which was open to them, of appealing that decision to the Supreme Court because the Government saw clearly, and had to accept, that they were wrong in what they were then proposing.

I should like now to compare a number of constituencies as arranged under the 1959 Electoral Bill so that Deputies will appreciate precisely what is now proposed. First of all I should like to give a comparison of three-member constituencies. The constituency of Galway South under the 1959 Act had a population of 49,726. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown had a population of 69,071. The difference in population, with the disadvantage being against Dún Laoghaire, was 19,345. Now each of these constituencies was returning the same number of members to Dáil Éireann although the difference was 19,345. On the basis of the figures in the 1956 Census Dún Laoghaire ought to have had four members and Galway South three. What the Government are now asking the people to do is to approve of a system which will once again reintroduce this grossly unfair imbalance giving to one part of the country three representatives and to a population in another part of the country, which is entitled to four representatives, only three representatives. Again, another sample of the 1959 Act. Galway North had a population of 50,724 and Dublin North-Central a population of 67,978, a difference of 17,254. Both areas were to return exactly the same number of Deputies, although, on the figures, Dublin North-Central should have had an additional Deputy.

I should like now to compare three-seat and four-seat constituencies. The constituency of Donegal West had a population in 1956 of 50,101. It had three representatives. The constituency of Dublin South-East had a population of 91,833. The difference was 41,732 and, for that difference, the 41,732 were to be represented by only one additional Deputy. There you had a situation in which the national average was about 20,000 and yet one Dublin constituency could get only one additional Deputy for an additional population of 41,732.

I should like to compare three-seat and five-seat constituencies under the 1959 Act. Dublin South-West, which I have the honour to represent for many years, had a population of 115,641; it was to have five Deputies. The constituency of Monaghan with 52,064 was to have three Deputies. For a difference of 63,577 Dublin was to receive only two additional Deputies. You will recall my mentioning earlier that the rural constituency with 49,726 was to receive three Deputies; because 63,577 Irish people happened to live in Dublin they were to receive for that number only two representatives.

Again, Dublin North-East, with a population of 113,812, was to have only five members and Kerry South, with a population of 50,144, was to receive three members. For a difference of 63,668, Dublin again was to receive only two Deputies, although, on the figures, Dublin was entitled to three additional members. It will be seen therefore that there is a difference of more than 30,000 per seat in each of these cases.

Let us take now a comparison under the 1959 Act, which was deemed unconstitutional and which the Government now seek to enshrine in the Constitution here as our electoral system. A comparison of four-seat constituencies: Kerry North, with a population of 71,928, was to receive four members; Dublin South-East, with a population of 91,833, 19,905 more than Kerry North, was to have the same number of Deputies, although on the figures it was entitled to receive one more. Donegal East, with a population of 71,958 and Dublin South-East, with a population of 91,833, a difference of 19,875, were, notwithstanding that difference, both to be represented by the same number of Deputies.

Let us compare—my last comparison under the 1959 Bill—four and five-seat constituencies. Donegal East, with a population of 71,958, was to have four members; Dublin South-West, with a population of 115,641, a difference of 43,683, was to have only one additional member, five seats— meaning that that 43,683 were to get only one Deputy at a time when the national average was a little above 20,000. Kerry North, with a population of 71,928, had four members; Dublin North-East, with a population of 113,812, received five members. A difference of 41,884 conferred on Dublin only one more seat at a time when the national average was just about 20,000 and Dublin North-East was entitled to two more.

That is what we are asked now to get the Irish people to accept, a system which is going to give 40 per cent more representation to one part of the country over another. It is interesting to read the remarks of the then Fianna Fáil Minister for Local Government, Deputy Blaney, when he was on oath in the High Court, and I quote from the Irish Press, page 4, Thursday, 12th January, 1961. Under the caption of “One man, one vote”:

Mr. Blaney, replying to Mr. MacBride, said he agreed with the principle of one man, one vote...

You would not think that if you listened to the debate here over the past few weeks. The Minister continued:

and that that principle would become meaningless if any larger group of citizens were given votes which would count for one-and-a-half votes. He would also agree that it would minimise the impact of that principle if some groups were given one-and-a-quarter votes.

One-and-a-quarter votes would mean that one part of the country would have 25 per cent greater representation than another, but we are now being asked to approve a scheme which will give 40 per cent greater representation to one part of the country. If 25 per cent would mean that the principle of one man, one vote would have its impact minimised, I wonder what nicety of the English language would the same Minister use now to describe a system under which 40 per cent additional representation would be given to one part of the country.

We were again led to believe from the comments of the Minister for Local Government, Deputy Boland, that he was obliged to follow electoral districts, electoral boundaries and electoral divisions and that these could not be tampered with, that any electoral system which we were to introduce or any division of constituencies would be carried out under existing electoral divisions. Let us again refer to the sworn testimony of the then Fianna Fáil Minister for Local Government. I quote from the same source. The Minister said:

He thought there was some provision whereby district electoral divisions could be made or altered by an order from the Minister.

I want to confirm that the Minister is right. All this thing we hear about administrative difficulties in fairly distributing population and Deputies is so much tripe, because a Ministerial Order can be made to make any new arrangement fit in with what is fair and proper. On the same occasion, the Minister was asked if he had not expressed the view:

There should be a bias of representation in favour of the rural as opposed to the urban community. Mr. Blaney said that was not so, and added that the fact that the end product should appear to be biassed in favour of the rural community did not mean that that was one of the matters which had been taken into consideration.

If the end product was not taken into consideration and if the consequences of what was done were not taken into consideration, and if they have not now been taken into consideration, they should have been and they should now be. It is the duty of the Members of this House and of Seanad Éireann and of the Irish people to understand the end product of anything they do, and the end product of what is now proposed is to disqualify a large section of the Irish people from having equal political strength with their neighbours and with their fellow citizens, and that is what we have to consider.

The Constitution is an interesting document, and apart from the Articles which it is now sought to amend, there are other Articles which would require amendment if the Constitution is not to be a more contradictory document than it in many respects already is. Article 16.1. 2º reads:

Every citizen without distinction of sex who has reached the age of twenty-one years who is not disqualified by law and complies with the provisions of the law relating to the election of members of Dáil Éireann, shall have the right to vote at an election for members of Dáil Éireann.

Section 1.3º of the same article reads:

No law shall be enacted placing any citizen under disability or incapacity for membership of Dáil Éireann on the ground of sex or disqualifying any citizen from voting at an election for members of Dáil Éireann on that ground.

I suppose it is very proper that the Constitution should exclude sex as a qualification for voting, but I think the whole tenor of the article in question is that there should be equality in voting for all Irish citizens, irrespective of sex or any other consideration. The disqualifications which are allowed by law are applicable to criminals and lunatics, and it is difficult to argue that either of those should be qualified, although indeed some amendment was made in it in recent times which might be an explanation for the continuance of Fianna Fáil in office. However, the whole tenor of the Constitution is to give equality of say in the nation's affairs.

It is our argument that to introduce a geographical qualification is to revert to the nineteenth century when only the 40/- freeholders had a vote, to revert to the eighteenth century when only members of a particular religious minority had a vote, to revert to the dim, bad old days when everybody was not equal under the law and when the equality of people in legal and political matters was not accepted. We are now to insert into our Constitution that the geographical basis is to be determined on whether we are to have a full value for our vote or a diminished value for our vote. We consider this a wholly unworthy principle, one which must be rejected and we will fight the Government vigorously in the country and in the cities and towns on this issue.

We are led to believe that we should have single-seat constituencies because of convenience but it is not clearly stated whether it is the convenience of the existing Members of this House or the public we have in mind. One would think from all this that this was a vast continent over which one had to travel thousands of miles to our constituencies, one in which you had to carry with you a couple of bodyguards going into the wilderness to the far-flung outposts of a vast empire. One would think that Deputies had to travel days and nights in extremely arduous conditions to reach their constituencies. We are one of the smallest states in the world, one of the puniest of states from the geographical point of view. There must be few countries in the world in which Deputies are so accessible to their constituents and in which they can reach their constituents with so little inconvenience.

In case my remarks are challenged, I would like to quote from a table used in evidence in the High Court case challenging, before we could accept that such distances were valid reasons to alter the size of constituencies, the 1959 Act which was subsequently condemned and which will show the vast distances, the tremendous journeys that have to be undertaken by the members of this House in the discharge of their public duties. It will be seen how it is that these journeys are beyond the capacity of Deputies to endure and why we are now asking the Irish people to relieve them of these tremendous journeys. The greatest distance by road miles in any of the constituencies arranged under the 1959 Bill were as follows: Carlow-Kilkenny, 65; Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, 12; Dublin, 36; Kildare, 49; Laoighis-Offaly, 64; Longford-Westmeath, 52; Louth, 40; Meath, 53; Wexford, 61; Wicklow, 49; Clare, 79; West Cork, 76; East Cork, 47; Mid-Cork, 71; North Kerry, 68; South Kerry, 65; West Limerick, 44; East Limerick 43; North Tipperary, 47; South Tipperary, 49; Waterford, 59; West Galway, 63; South Galway, 50; North Galway, 47; South Mayo, 66; North Mayo, 72; Roscommon 66; Sligo-Leitrim, 79; Cavan, 67; West Donegal, 78; East Donegal, 77; Monaghan, 42.

The distribution of constituencies under the 1961 Act under which we are now operating is very similar, except that in some instances they have been reduced rather than extended. There is the factual situation. The longest distance in any constituency is 79 miles and that is in Clare. Maybe this is why Fianna Fáil are so strong in Clare, that people there do not know what poor Deputies they have, and that if they were nearer to their Deputies, they might see their deficiencies. Is that the true situation? Even taking those distances, we would have to assume that the public representatives in all cases live at the extremity of their constituencies and were obliged daily to traverse the whole constituency to the furthermost point away.

The fact is that this suggestion is the utmost tripe and the sooner the people realise what a fraud it is to suggest that Deputies have to travel these impossible distances the better. The fact is that in most cases one or more of the public representatives will be situated in the middle of the constituency so that on an average, the longest distance these representatives have to travel is 30 or 40 miles. There is no obligation on Dáil Éireann to meet in Dublin, and the Constitution provides that in certain circumstances it may meet in other places. If some Deputies find it inconvenient to journey to Dublin and that these journeys impose impossible obligations on them for which they are not adequately remunerated, the remedy is not to go traversing the country in a referendum but to see that the Dáil meets in other places. I am sure that the Deputies from Dublin would have no great objection to the Dáil meeting in Cork or Galway, if Deputies so resolved. There is no justification for interfering with the whole national set-up in order to suit the convenience of Deputies who are too lazy to travel around their own constituencies.

One would think from what has been said here that all Deputies outside Dublin reside in their constituencies. The truth is the contrary. Apart from members of the Government who may be obliged to be in Dublin for three or four days every week, and that is as long as many of them spend in Dublin, there are 20 other Deputies who do not live in their constituencies. This does not appear to make them inaccessible to their constituents and does not prevent their constituents from re-electing them. Of all the ráiméis that has been spoken in this debate the most unworthy is that which speaks of inconvenience to electors or the inaccessibility of Deputies because they are so remote from their constituents.

I would like to return to some more remarks of the then Fianna Fáil Minister for Local Government in the High Court in 1961. I quote now from the Irish Press of Friday, January 13th, 1961. On that occasion it was put to the Minister for Local Government that the constituencies of Wexford and Longford-Westmeath had populations of roughly 87,000. The Minister was asked if there was any reason for one of the constituencies having five seats and the other having only four. The Minister said there was a reason. Wait until you hear the reason. He said:

When they came to the allocation for these constituencies

—we are not told who "they" are— there was one seat left, and it had to go to either one. Obviously, they could not be given a seat each because the ceiling had been reached. The population of Wexford was 87,259 and of Longford-Westmeath 87,071, which left the balance in favour of Wexford. Therefore it got the seat.

Therefore, Fianna Fáil got a seat which they would not have got if the seat had gone to Longford-Westmeath. One would have thought that on the ground of inaccessibility, Longford-Westmeath should have got it rather than Wexford, but apparently that was not to be.

The Minister was also asked on that occasion if it was a coincidence that a group of four counties—Donegal, Mayo, Kerry and Galway—in which a strong predominance of Government Party Deputies were returned, should be given a high ratio of representation. The Minister said:

It was difficult to say,

—I am sure it was difficult to say; he was on oath, you see—

because of the word coincidence but taking the question as it was put to him, he would say "Yes". The word coincidence would seem to raise in his mind that the question of the Act and the revision of the constituencies was something that happened out of the blue.

If ever a man was trying to get out of a tight corner, here was a perfect instance of it. The Minister was asked to explain why it was that Monaghan, with a ratio of 17,354 per Deputy, should be left as it was, while Louth, with a ratio of 23,064, which adjoined it, should be left as it was in the 1959 Bill and both counties have the same number of Deputies. This was the Minister's beautiful reply:

The great difference in the economics of the two counties was also a factor which had to be considered. He did not agree that the two counties could be taken together to form one constituency, because the way of life in the two counties was so different that a deputy would be almost ineffective because there was a conflict in the interests of the two counties in many matters which would arise, and it was an almost impossible barrier to the joining of the two counties.

Here we had this drama being enacted, this mosaic of a conflict of interests between the people of Monaghan and Louth. One can visualise these people out with their guns in bloody feuds. One can see the people of Louth and Monaghan so antagonistic to one another that they will not enter one another's counties, not even enter one another's homes, that people from Monaghan will never marry people from Louth and vice versa. Was there ever a more ridiculous fantasy painted then and now to justify a system which is to give advantageous representation to counties in which the Fianna Fáil Party happen to be strong?

The Minister gave another wonderful example of the bloody and irreconcilable feuds that exist between people in Ireland. He said there was a further instance in his own county of Donegal and went on:

If a Deputy were to represent the whole county of Donegal and a discussion on agricultural matters arose, he would find himself in an awkward position.

—that is good from the man who was to become Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries later on. He must have been in many an awkward spot—

He would be representing two different elements in the same county. East Donegal was, by and large, a crop-producing area, which sold to West Donegal, so that a Deputy would be in a position that he could not say anything one way or the other.

—I do not think I could ever accuse the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, the former Minister for Local Government, of being unable to say anything one way or the other—

While it was true, he said, that East Donegal was a crop producing area, there were many there who also bought, but the general mind was that what was good for the area as a whole was good for them also. They would be aware of the common good that would come to them from the general prosperity of the area.

Are we one nation or are we not? Do we not pride ourselves on the common bond of being Irish? Are we all proud of our Irish parentage? Do we all wish to see our Irish nation develop as a nation, or do we wish to separate it into warring clans? Do we wish to divide the people into the haves and the have-nots, into the crop producers and the crop buyers, into calf producers and beast fatteners, into the rural Irish and the city Irish, and do we wish to maintain those divisions? Apparently, the Fianna Fáil Party believe that this is a virtue, and not only a virtue but a necessity. They swore in court, although the evidence was not acceptable to the judge, that all this was necessary, that it would be impracticable to devise an electoral system which would not take cognisance of the lack of common purpose between the people of Monaghan and the people of Louth and which would not allow for the fact that the poor Deputy representing all Donegal would be impotent because he was called upon to represent the crop producers of the east and the crop purchasers of the west. I doubt very much if you, Sir, who have the privilege of representing Donegal, would go all the way with those remarks. I can certainly imagine there is a much greater difference of opinion on many matters between the people in the town of Lifford and the people up on the mountainside. I am sure the difference between those people on many matters is much greater than that of somebody who happens to live on the west side of the mountain and those who live on the east side of the mountain.

You may very well consider this trivial stuff unworthy of Parliament, and that it is not fundamental. I would consider that this is a valid viewpoint, but this is the reason which was given in 1959, in 1961 and which has been given here ever since this debate began—it was given in the sworn testimony of the then Minister for Local Government—that these were things which we should imagine to exist in this country and that it was all this fantasy which should be the basis of the electoral system.

When the Minister for Local Government was giving sworn testimony in court, he agreed that representation in Donegal West was worth approximately 38 per cent more than representation in Louth and that representation in Monaghan was worth approximately 34 per cent more than Louth. He agreed that County Kerry was entitled to six Deputies only, instead of the seven provided for in the Act. He agreed also that it was what he called theoretically possible to provide for a mathematical result by one of two methods: by making Kerry a single constituency, or transferring 16 district electoral divisions and a population of 10,622 from north to south Kerry. So we have a situation in which the Minister said in court that these things were impossible in 1961, and in the Bill which was subsequently introduced here later that year, and approved here and in the Seanad and in the Supreme Court, it was found possible to overcome these things and to devise an electoral system which would be fair and give equal say and equal representation to all sections of the Irish people.

We say that the previous contentions of the Government have been shown to be false and, on that account, we think it is wholly improper that they should now try to resurrect these unworthy arguments which were so clearly defeated before. We do not think the Irish people will approve of them.

The Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill in Cuid II says:

... regard shall be had at a determination of constituencies to the extent and accessibility of constituencies and the need for securing convenient areas of representation and, subject to those considerations, to the desirability of avoiding the overlapping by constituencies of the boundaries of administrative Counties (other than boundaries between those Counties and County Boroughs).

Why are the Government displaying such anxiety to maintain sacrosanct and secure the county boundaries for electoral purposes when, month in and month out, we hear from Government spokesmen that they have proposals to break down the county boundaries for administrative purposes? They have indicated that those county boundaries, which have their origin away back in our mystic past, have little relationship with present day requirements. If that be so in administrative matters, why is it sought now to maintain those county boundaries for electoral purposes? I respectfully submit this is an effort to pander to parochial jealousies and no more.

It is of some particular significance that the Commission to supervise the arrangement of the constituencies, consisting of three members from the Government side, three members from the Opposition side and a High Court judge, is provided for in the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution Bill. In other words, if it should happen by some peculiar stroke of luck that the Government should win the referendum on the Third Amendment and lose it on the Fourth Amendment, there will not be any Commission to arrange the boundaries which will give representation to parts of Ireland with 16,700 of a population against 23,300 in other parts. This gerrymandering is to be done by the Government themselves.

The figures I have quoted of what was done in the 1959 Bill are a clear indication of what they will do, because there will be no Commission to supervise it, and no independent assessment if there should be disagreement between Government and Opposition. What will happen under the Third Amendment, if they get away with disfranchising 40 per cent of the people in the urban areas? They will create new constituencies which will meet all the fantastic notions which the Minister for Local Government illustrated in his evidence in the High Court. This is a clear case of seeking a mandate from the people to gerrymander the country to their own advantage. If it were otherwise, why did the Government not provide for the Commission in the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill?

Is it that the Government, having considered the amount of public condemnation of their package deal, have decided that on the balance of probabilities they could carry the Third Amendment but could not carry the Fourth Amendment? In other words, they might get away with giving advantageous representation to certain constituencies without having a Commission to supervise the setting up of the constituencies, but they would not get away with the proposal to abolish PR. I think that is the truth. I think they have taken a calculated risk. They hope to carry the Third Amendment, and they have decided that they will be defeated on the Fourth Amendment to abolish PR. In defiance of the finding of the courts in 1961 that the 1959 Bill was grossly unjust, they hope to get around those findings by carrying this amendment which is, in fact, a blank cheque to gerrymander the country to suit their own convenience.

Who is ever to challenge this? Who is ever to question successfully in the courts or anywhere else, any arrangement of the constituencies which allows for consideration to be given to the extent and accessibility of constituencies, which is drawn up on the basis of securing convenient areas of representation, and which is drawn up having strict regard to the county boundaries? That is what they want. They want to do what they did in 1959 —to take from any Irish man and Irish woman who moves east, 40 per cent of the political power they previously had, and to do that without any interference by any section of the community, and without any High Court judge or any other impartial person saying they should not do it.

No judge will be called upon to decide whether or not the consideration is overdone as to the extent and accessibility of the constituencies. No judge will be called upon to say that too much attention was given to securing convenient areas of representation because it will be said that these matters come under the Constitution and as a result of the referendum were given to Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann to consider, that the people deliberately avoided setting up an independent Commission with a High Court judge to determine the fairness or otherwise of any such arrangement. I think this two Bill system which keeps away any independent Commission from the arrangement of the constituencies, if the Third Amendment Bill is carried, clearly indicates that this Government hope to carry that on the basis of developing in this country a war between the countryside and the cities, and on the basis of all this unnecessary disharmony, to create this system of gerrymandering to suit their own convenience.

It is interesting to note that the all-Party Committee which considered the Constitution did not make any recommendation on the issue of the system of election but did make a unanimous recommendation that any change—and I repeat the words "any change"— should involve a boundary commission. Here, in one of the few cases in which the all-Party Committee made a unanimous recommendation, that recommendation is being ignored. The Government are endeavouring to make a change and are trying clearly to avoid having a boundary commission. This seems to me to nullify all the professions of good faith on the part of the Taoiseach and his appointees.

The Government said that they were prompted to introduce this Bill because of the non-use of the system of proportional representation in recent times. They said that the members of the Fianna Fáil Party were not using the system of the transferable vote and that an increasing number of voters voting for Opposition candidates were not using PR. I hope they will read the results in both Clare and Wicklow last Thursday. The Clare result is even more significant than Wicklow so far as PR is concerned as it proves that Fianna Fáil voters are using PR. When the Fianna Fáil candidate's surplus was distributed, it was found that there were practically no plumpers in the Fianna Fáil vote and that the surplus was generously distributed between the Labour and Fine Gael candidates, clearly indicating that Fianna Fáil voters are using PR. Despite their alleged lack of intelligence and education, they are quite capable of understanding from one to three and, I suppose, counting up to ten, although they seldom have that number of candidates in Clare.

Again, in Wicklow, the voters clearly indicated that they were capable of using and wanted to use the PR system and it is because they used that system when it was put to them as an issue that Fine Gael won the Wicklow by-election. I admit the Government might well have been tempted by the inactivity of some electors in recent times, once they had plumped for their particular favourite, but I think that when this matter has been an issue, as it certainly was an issue in both these by-elections, the Government got their clear answer, and notwithstanding the protests of the Taoiseach and other members and spokesmen in Fianna Fáil, PR was one of the issues, if not the most important issue, in these elections, and particularly so in Wicklow.

I have no doubt that because of this and because of the trend which was clearly indicated as the canvassers of the various Parties went about their door-knocking missions during the campaign, the Fianna Fáil people have decided not to look into their own hearts in accordance with the old tradition because, apparently, the heart of Jack Lynch is not to be trusted or they would not be engaging the services of an independent market research agency. We could save them the bother and the cost. We think that Clare and Wicklow have given a clear indication and that there is no need for the Government to go any further. The people want to keep PR and they will keep PR and, that is why the Government are now convinced that the Fourth Amendment is going to be defeated. As a result of this market research operation, we shall probably find that the Irish people want the fair, full-value voting system and that the main effort in this referendum will be to stir up in rural Ireland the antipathy of people to their friends and neighbours, to their sons and daughters and their cousins in the cities and towns of the country. Next July, or when the referendum is held, I venture to say I shall be able to say: I told you so.

From time to time the Fianna Fáil Party have declared an anxiety to maintain for the Irish people a large number of public representatives. The present Taoiseach and members of the Government during this debate, the previous Taoiseach, Deputy Lemass, and before him, Eamonn de Valera, explained their difficulties in appointing Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries from their Party and they said that if the membership of Dáil Éireann were to be reduced, it would become increasingly difficult to create Governments. Let them speak for themselves. No doubt they have great difficulty in selecting members for their Government. Goodness knows, all one has to do is to look at the Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries we have. They are the most unfortunate excuses for Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries that could be devised in any country, be it democracy or dictatorship. But that is their concern. If they find that difficulty, let them resign and tomorrow morning there will be in office an able Government. There will be no difficulty in getting a well-qualified Government in the Fine Gael Party out of the 47 we have. We would not need to increase the number to the number which Fianna Fáil for the time being have.

If the anxiety is to have a large number of public representatives so that the people of Ireland will be able to know that there is there a public representative who will attend to their needs, I have a simple way of increasing the number of our public representatives by about 70 or 75 without adding one penny to public expenditure. At present some 70 or 75 Members of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann are members of local authorities and if we need more public representatives, which I doubt, if the people are starving for them, down on their knees weeping because they cannot find a TD or a councillor to represent them, there is a perfectly simple remedy available—provide in the Constitution or elsewhere that no Member of Dáil Éireann or Seanad Éireann may be a a member of a local authority. You will find that throughout the land the people will have 70 more public representatives overnight, without any additional cost to the Exchequer. It is true that the people would have much better service because you would have two people doing the same job and doing it at the same cost as is now being paid to the people who are doing it. I mean this perfectly seriously. It is high time that serious consideration was given to this matter and the steps necessary to bring this about were taken.

It is provided in our Constitution, at Article 15, section 14, that no person may be at the same time a member of both Houses of the Oireachtas and if any person who is already a member of either House becomes a member of the other House, he shall forthwith be deemed to have vacated his first seat. What we need now, perhaps is a Fifth Amendment of the Constitution Bill, although I do not think it is necessary to write it into the Constitution but, if it is necessary, let us consider it and I believe the Bill would be carried with an overwhelming, massive majority of the Irish people. The Bill would provide that no person may at the same time be a member of either House of the Oireachtas and a member of a local authority and if any person who is already a member of either House becomes a member of a local authority he shall forthwith be deemed to have vacated his first seat.

I have no doubt that if such provision is made in the Constitution, there will be no ambition on the part of any Member of this House or of Seanad Éireann to become an unpaid member of a local authority. There is a simple device, a simple scheme, to provide additional representation for all those far-flung regions of our Irish empire which are so inaccessible that we have to corrupt the whole basis of our parliamentary system in order to provide an accessible public representative for the people of those areas.

We are told that Members of the Dáil are grossly overworked in having to listen to representations and deal with them. I think it is true to say that members of local authorities have a similar burden of representations to process. Most members of this House who are also members of local authorities were members of local authorities before they became Members of the House. Most such representatives will testify that becoming a Member of Dáil Éireann only marginally increased the burden of ward heeling which they were expected to perform.

I did it in the reverse. I was a Member of Dáil Éireann before I became a member of a local authority and I found a negligible increase in the burden of representations which I had to make when I became a member of a local authority. Indeed, I could not attribute it to my becoming a member of a local authority. Rather could I attribute it, in all humility to the reputation I was getting for successfully processing representations. Suffice it to say that, year in, year out, the burden of this work continues to increase and I would expect it to diminish if I were to lose either of the public offices which I hold at the moment and another man were to occupy one of those posts.

Let us seriously consider, once and for all, the introduction of a prohibition on Members of Dáil Éireann or of Seanad Éireann being members of local authorities. I would be the first to acknowledge the advantages of allowing people to be members of both the local authority and of the Dáil or Seanad Éireann. It means that Members of this House and, indeed, of the Seanad, are constantly in touch with local affairs and with local needs and if they cannot be pursued at local level, as indeed many of them cannot because we have very little local government left, if we are to understand by local government a system under which local wishes would be met at local level, they can be pursued in the Oireachtas. I believe that the balance of advantage would lie with a system which would declare Members of the Dáil and Seanad to be ineligible for membership of local authorities. This would be one genuine way of building up a reserve of young people to replace Deputies and Senators and to replace Ministers because, if all the Members of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann were to withdraw from the local authorities their positions would have to be taken by other persons outside. I believe that their positions would in the main be undertaken by young people who would have a wonderful opportunity of acquiring skill and experience.

Mr. James Tully

They would be afraid that they would take their seats from them.

Mr. Ryan

As Deputy Tully says, it may well be that there are selfish reasons why Members of the Dáil and Seanad would not wish for such a system. We have had enough display of selfishness from the Government side in relation to these proposals to be thoroughly sick of selfish public representatives. If the Government are genuine in their desire to encourage young people to enter politics, then the system and scheme that I suggest is the one which ought to be introduced and applied.

A certain amount of make-believe was engaged in by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, when he said that the system which they seek to foist upon us, the British system, would encourage youth to enter politics. Is it not common knowledge that the House upstairs is the graveyard of old TDs who have been replaced in their own constituencies under the system of PR by young people from their own Parties standing against them and defeating them in their own constituencies? PR is a system which ought to appeal to the young people of Ireland because it is a system which enables youth to stand as candidates and to challenge in open, fair combat the old and hoary and, perhaps, lazy warriors who think they can sit comfortably on their quotas here until the Lord takes them into another constituency.

What will happen if you replace the multi-seat Constituency which allows young people to come forward and to stand against the elders of their own Party and other Parties? If we introduce the system of single-seat constituencies, nothing will ever move an old warrior of the popular Party in that constituency until he decides to resign or the Lord interferes to bring him, as I say, into another constituency. There will be no opportunity for the young people of the Party to challenge the incumbent on his home ground. There will be no opportunity for the young people of this country to stand in single-seat constituencies. The opportunity for youth will diminish rather than increase under a system which will facilitate the old warrior to remain unchallenged and supreme as long as the Party following in that constituency remains and, as we know, in any country which has the so-called straight system of voting there are some constituencies where no human influence can ever succeed in removing a Deputy of a particular political Party, for the simple reason that the traditional loyalties of that constituency will be behind a particular Party and, no matter who the standard bearer of the Party may be in that constituency, that person will remain.

That is the reality of the system which Deputy Colley is recommending to the youth of Ireland, a system which will deny to youth the opportunity which it has had all over the years of meeting the old warriors on an equal footing and presenting themselves to the electorate, on an equal footing, with an equal opportunity, to seek the support of the people. Not alone have we the rest home for defeated old TDs upstairs but, thank God, throughout the length and breadth of the country there are many cases of former Members of this House who had been defeated, not so much by their political opponents but by younger people from their own Party, because the present system of proportional representation facilitates young people.

I am not one to be so churlish as to lack appreciation for all that our elders have done, or one who argues that service should not be recognised by continuing support. In certain cases I believe it is merited and I believe a Parliament which failed to maintain a balance between youth and experience might well not be the best Parliament suited to the country's needs, particularly a country like ours which has such a relatively old population. What we in Fine Gael strongly believe in is a system which will allow youth and experience to meet on equal terms and allow them to go before the electorate with the same opportunity. If you do away with PR, that opportunity will be gone and this House will forever consist of old, experienced ones, the conservative ones who do not want a change, who are anxious to maintain the status quo, who are satisfied with things as they are, and resent the criticism, the energy and the ambition and the dissatisfaction of youth.

All that we have all tried to work for could be destroyed overnight if this Assembly of ours were to become populated, as it would under the single-seat constituency system, with safe seats for old men, old in their ways, old in their outlook and old in their memories. That is not the way in which we can build up this country into a progressive, dynamic force. There are a number of mis-descriptions of the electoral systems. We should consider the worth of votes under the proportional representation system and under the British system which the Government are suggesting. Proportional representation is a system which gives full value to every vote. The British system is a system which entirely destroys the value of a substantial number of votes and makes them absolutely worthless. It is a system which gives an enhanced value to a minority of votes. Under the British system, which the Government are suggesting we should introduce, you can have a situation in which 30 per cent of the electorate can have full value for their votes, and in fact they can have over treble value for their votes because those votes can control the entire representation in a particular constituency, and if a similar percentage vote is cast throughout the country, that 30 per cent will control 100 per cent of the representation, leaving the other 70 per cent votes cast absolutely worthless because they would be unable to elect one representative if less than 30 per cent of the votes were cast for any particular rival. That is why I say the British system is a system which makes the majority of votes absolutely worthless and gives an enhanced value to a privileged minority.

On the other hand, the system of PR is a system of full value votes and the reason I say that is that if a person votes for a candidate who is unable to reach the quota, who is unable to be elected on his first preferences, that vote is not destroyed as it will be under the British system. Such a person gets an opportunity of expressing a second preference and so on, so that the vote never loses its value and it becomes effective when and only when it is cast in favour of somebody who is able to get a sufficient quota to have him elected, or is cast for somebody who although unable to reach the quota is higher than any other person who is unable to reach it. The Minister for Local Government endeavoured to make play of the system of PR which he alleged gave preferential treatment to people who voted for outsiders and gave them more say in the selection of TDs than people who voted for the most popular candidates. That is a complete fallacy and I am sure he knows it. The person who votes for an outsider under PR does not have that vote taken into account at all in determining the representation of the constituency until the vote is transferred to some person who is in the running.

That is why I call the PR system the full value system. It is a system which ensures that every vote cast, if proportional representation is used by all the electorate, will achieve its full value and have a say in the election of candidates. May I reverse the procedure for a moment? The Minister for Local Government did not deal with what occurs under the system of PR where the most popular candidate gets more than the quota of votes, where the most popular candidate may get, for instance, two quotas or nearly three quotas. This happened in Cork in the last general election when the Taoiseach, Deputy Jack Lynch, got a handsome number of votes, and happened in Dublin when Deputy Lemass was Taoiseach, and it also happened in Dublin when Deputy John A. Costello was Taoiseach, when he got practically two quotas. In such cases, it could be said there was a waste of votes, that more votes were cast for a man than he needed. But those votes did not go to waste under the PR system. They were transferred, in the main, to the candidates of the same Party as the most popular candidate, so that the electorate were able to use their votes to full advantage and to get two TDs into their constituency rather than elect only one.

Under the British system, you could have a situation in which a vast number of people could vote for a particular candidate and in so doing, would be wasting votes, in so doing, would be concentrating on one man, votes which could be used, if there was a multi-seat constituency, to elect somebody else to represent their interests and to reflect their wish to elect a particular Party. On that account the British system will be seen therefore to be a wasteful system, a system which gives preferential representation to a minority, which enhances the value of the votes of that minority and renders worthless the votes of the majority in many cases. On that account it is a system which is grossly unfair and which does not reflect the true mind of the people. The British system is a system which would devalue the vote. Our vote would become, like the British £, devalued and that would mean that many votes would be below full value.

It is utterly unnecessary to have that situation when we have a system here which has operated so successfully and which has given full value to every vote. The system of proportional representation is a system which cannot give advantageous value to any vote because it is impossible for any person to get elected until all the votes have been sorted out so that, in the final analysis, it can be determined who is the most popular. One of the difficulties which have arisen and one of the grounds which are being improperly used to criticise proportional representation stems from the undue concentration which has been given to first preference votes rather than to the final count. First preference votes under proportional representation are of far less significance than the final count when the system has been teased out and the true, effective will of the people ascertained.

I should like to see greater concentration in future, when proportional representation has been preserved, to the final counts because they are what really matter. Proportional representation is a system which allows us to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were, to sort out the people's minds into an orderly arrangement and that orderly arrangement has been built up here through many viscissitudes, political, military, economic and social; it has given us a stable Parliament and stable government in a much shorter period than that has taken in more sophisticated societies.

There are some remarks of Government spokesmen with which I should like to deal. The Minister, at column 397 of volume 233, said:

In 1959, a revision of constituencies was made in accordance with the Article of the Constitution which provides that such a revision must be made at least once in every 12 years...

In fact, the 1959 revision of constituencies was late. It was made outside the 12-year period and, as we know, it was subsequently condemned as being unconstitutional, unfair, unjust, improper and not achieving equality as far as practicable between all the people. There was a 14-year period between 1947 and the 1961 revision of the constituencies. The Minister reflected somewhat on the decision of Judge Budd at column 398 when he said:

Justice Budd's decision was, in effect, that the revision of constituencies was a purely statistical and administrative problem....

The interesting thing is, as I pointed out earlier, that the decision of Mr. Justice Budd was never challenged by the Government and, in a most comprehensive judgment, running to 58 pages, Mr. Justice Budd made it clear that he did not consider it was sufficient to be concerned only with statistical and administrative matters in the revision of constituencies. It is most unfortunate that the Minister for Local Government should endeavour to misinterpret the decision of Mr. Justice Budd in what is one of the most comprehensive judgments ever issued by our courts.

Again, at column 399, the Minister reiterated his improper and incorrect interpretation of what Mr. Justice Budd said in stating that mathematical accuracy was the only consideration according to the judicial interpretation of the Article of the Constitution. That is not what Mr. Justice Budd said and that is not what we are suggesting either.

It is very interesting—I will make the point without comment—to note that, despite the poor opinion the Minister for Local Government and other Government spokesmen have of High Court judges—they propose to appoint one of these as chairman of the Commission to establish the boundaries, if the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is carried. I suspect, as I said earlier, that the Government have given up all hope of carrying the Fourth Amendment and this is so much windowdressing. Perhaps I might comment to this extent: in ordinary, everyday judicial matters, we have every reason to be grateful for the services we receive from the judges and justices presiding over our courts. Their decisions have, in the main, been impartial.

An entirely different set of circumstances will arise, however, if a High Court judge is asked to adjudicate on the revision of constituencies because this is substantially a political matter and judges, unless they be totally ignorant of public affairs, will not be unaware of the associations between certain geographical locations and the Deputies who represented them or aspiring Deputies who may wish to represent them in the future. Our system of appointing judges is the most political ridden system operating in this country.

In most other sectors, other than the employment of unskilled workers, we have succeeded, thanks be to God, with the Civil Service Commission and the Local Appointments Commission in doing away with political patronage, but, for some strange reason, we have maintained a system of political patronage in the appointment of our judges. It is a system I have never been able to understand and it is one I cannot justify. If this system were used for the appointment of any other officers in the land, it would be called political corruption and I think that is the description to apply to our system of judicial appointments. We apparently consider it proper to use this corrupt system of political appointments in relation to our judges.

I do not say that, once they are appointed, they are politically corrupt. They are imbued with the high standards of the legal profession, which they serve for many years before their appointment, but the fact is that of all political persons, our judges are possibly the most politically conscious because they owe their appointment, in the first instance, to political allegiance. It looks like tempting Providence to ask such persons, so politically conscious in that they have the goodwill of the Government of the day in their appointment, to forget those to whom they owe their judicial appointments. It is, I think, fair to comment on that. It is not a reflection on our judiciary so to comment. We will be asking them to decide what will in the main be issues in which there will be conflicting Party interests and it would be difficult for even a Solomon, I think, to give an impartial judgment in such circumstances.

At column 410, the Minister says that the considerations to be taken into account in determining the boundaries of constituencies are limited to what he called administrative boundaries and geographical features. Now, geographical features are not explicitly mentioned in either of the Bills. There is mention of extent and accessibility. Accessibility may be governed by geographical features but the Minister has certainly gone further in column 410 than either of the Bills goes. In the same column, the Minister challenged what he called the attempt of the Opposition Parties to divide the country along the lines of rural areas versus urban areas. He called it a fraudulent argument. He said: "It is completely unnecessary and a completely undesirable thing to do." I agree with him. He says that for selfish and ill-conceived reasons, the Opposition Parties are deliberately trying to do this. Of course we are not but we consider that we have a duty to identify exactly what the Government are trying to do. As I pointed out in the earlier part of my speech from examples of what was done under the 1959 Act, that is exactly what the Government plan to do. They can dress it up anyway they want to. They have been clever enough to leave it without any geographical basis in the Bill itself but the reality of the situation, the end result, which the then Minister for Local Government spoke of in sworn testimony in 1961, is to establish a system which will put the rural areas in conflict with urban areas. If that is a fraudulent argument, then our understanding of what is fraud is not the same as that of the Minister for Local Government but that does not surprise us.

The Minister spoke of the disedifying experience of the long counts in the Longford-Westmeath and Dublin North-East constituencies in the last general election. I do not know what was disedifying about the counts in either of these places. I was personally present at the count in Dublin North-East and found nothing disedifying whatsoever. We did see that there was room for human error in the election system. I am not aware that human error has been excluded in any election system in which humans vote. It certainly cannot be excluded but the amount of error—if such one calls it— was so marginally small as to be utterly insignificant. It certainly was not statistically significant and was not politically significant. What I think is significant is that what is alleged by the Government to be a complicated system can work so well and that far less than one per cent of the votes cast are ever disqualified on the grounds of being bad votes.

I think that is not surprising. There is nobody under 71 years of age in this country who has voted under any system other than PR. It is not surprising that people with that long experience behind them, even if they have not received advanced education, know how the system works and are able to operate it very successfully. What I think is of significance is that all the authorities on electoral law and there are many such across the world, published by the United Nations, and there are many such text books written in America, Australia and elsewhere, written in the English language which I have read, all of which have long chapters on the types of mistakes that are made, on the types of spoiled votes, on the irregularities and departures from the regulations and agreed methods in various countries show that there is no difference in the number of spoiled votes irrespective of the type of system of election used. Therefore this allegation that proportional representation facilitates the making of mistakes is not justified by the facts. Under other systems there are the same number of mistakes. I do not think there is any way of avoiding it.

Indeed, if some people find it inconvenient or disedifying to have long counts, I think it is fair to comment that we are now living in a day in which we perhaps could be voting with the assistance of machines. We certainly know that machines are in use in the US and in Australia and that the result of these systems is that you can have very speedy results and, we understand, very accurate results. I do not know what precautions are taken to ensure that the machines behave and that no irregularities occur on the day of an election in the operation of the machine. I have no idea what precautions are taken to provide some alternative way of voting if any particular machine should break down but I have no doubt these sophisticated societies which operate this system have provided safeguards against any of these happenings. I cannot imagine for one moment that it is impossible for us to introduce here machines which would facilitate the operation of our elections if some people find it inconvenient to have to attend for a number of days during the processing of votes after an election. Certainly the use of computers and other machinery would be justified if it is considered that the all-important thing is to get an expeditious decision after a vote is taken.

However, I do not know of any instance in our history in which the nation was in jeopardy, in which the institutions of this State were in jeopardy because of delay in the counting of votes. I can well imagine that in the days of civil war here, in the days of civil strife, in the days in which some sections of our community felt they were justified in using military force to secure their will, government was less stable and the authority of the people less respected than it is now. In those days there were seven and nine-seat constituencies, have at the moment. At one time in a Seanad election, the whole country was a single constituency. Notwithstanding the tremendous length of time it must have taken to complete such counts, I am not aware of any occasion when the institutions of this State were in peril because of delay. It may well have caused a certain amount of nervous disorder and perhaps indigestion among the candidates and their immediate cohorts to have to suffer the inconvenience of such long counts but that is the very most that can be said about the system of PR, and if in the end result, it achieves a system of fair representation, then I think it is a price well worth paying in order to maintain the system that we have at the present time.

We are told also by the Minister for Local Government at column 421 that the British system will confer benefit on the community in two ways—by more effective representation on local problems and by having a more efficient Dáil to deal with legislative problems. How can it be argued that we will have more effective representation on local problems under the single-seat constituency? One of the great drawbacks in local government is the competition which occurs between public representatives who represent different electoral areas. How often members of local authorities at borough corporation meetings and county council meetings have been thwarted in their desire to get a particular amenity provided in a particular local area because the majority of members of that authority came from another area and on that account would not provide the money for the area in respect of which the amenity was sought?

Now, if we are to localise our Deputies more than they are already localised, it means that local interests will suffer rather than be properly and adequately represented here. It means that each Deputy will confine himself to his own particular little cell of the community. He alone will represent that community against the other 143 Members of this House. That is not a system which will enhance the opportunities which a Deputy has to improve his local area. There is no constituency in the country which can afford to ignore local agitation because from every constituency the different political Parties in this House draw support. We all hope that in every constituency there is a pocket of votes which will succeed in getting a Deputy elected for our particular Party. If you take away that system and replace it with a system under which only one public representative will sit in any safe seat, no matter what the Government might or might not do, you can take it that these particular constituencies will get nothing from any Government.

It will be regarded by another Government as being so black as to be beyond redemption and beyond any hope of swinging support. Take, for instance, the constituency of West Limerick or the constituency of Clare. It would be hard to find two more neglected constituencies. It is because the Fianna Fáil Party have been assured of a majority in those areas over the years. It will only be when those areas are rejected by the Fianna Fáil Party that something worthwhile will be done for them. You can think of other parts of the country where the same operates. The surest way of getting any attention for local problems is to make it clear to the Government and to Dáil Éireann that there is a danger of losing political support. When that comes, attention will be given to it.

The system of PR will ensure that all Governments will be concerned with maintaining their support or increasing their support in nearly all constituencies. It does not happen in every case under PR, as in the constituencies of West Limerick or Clare. Fianna Fáil have been in power for over 30 years and they will be sure of getting in in those areas even if they leave them the way they are. If you do away with the system and introduce the British system, local problems will be ignored, certainly in the safe constituencies. You can take it that most constituencies will be safe for one Party or another much larger constituencies than we just as they are in Britain, Northern Ireland and in the United States of America. It will only be the minority constituencies which will be so volatile and so sensitive that attention will have to be given to local problems.

Again, we are told that we will have a more efficient Dáil to deal with legislative problems. We are told on the one hand that doing away with PR will make Deputies more accessible to their constituencies and that they will find their constituents more accessible to them. We are told that doing away with PR will mean that we will have more efficient ward heelers so that we will have Deputies so accessible that they can do a variety of work. We know that some Deputies at the moment do no ward heeling and leave it to others. Some of those are the best parliamentarians here and in the Seanad. They are the best legislators. They introduce Private Members' Bills, Private Members' motions, analyse every Bill which comes in, table amendments by the score and argue them on Committee Stage or on Report Stage. That is the kind of work which receives no special attention and is on the whole unrewarded, if you are to measure reward simply by public acclaim. Those are the Deputies at the moment who do not do ward heeling but who make this Assembly work.

There are some who are capable of doing both but they are so exceptional that their names occur to me and to all the Members present. If you introduce a system where every Deputy will have to be a ward heeler, you will have less legislative work done here. There is a great deal to be said for introducing into our parliamentary system a scheme of parliamentary Committees which would do a great deal of work which now must be done here on the floor of the House and which also could do a great deal of work which is not now being done. Those are some of the things which we should be concentrating on. We should be thinking of introducing a system whereby we would be working towards this rather than towards a system which is certainly not going to give this country the kind of really effective parliamentary representation which it needs to have if we are to go forward in the future.

The Minister for Local Government said at column 423:

There will obviously be more scope for young, able people to get into public life under the system we are proposing.

I think I have already dealt with that when I pointed out that you certainly will not have young people entering any Dáil in which the majority of the constituencies are occupied by people who have safe seats who cannot be disturbed because there is no competition from the popular Party within them. He also said at column 424:

This system is scrupulously fair. It does not discriminate between voters, as the present system does.

I think I have already pointed out that the present system does not discriminate between voters. Every vote is an effective vote because the process of elimination of outside candidates and the distribution of votes ensures this. It is only when PR is not properly used that discrimination applies. There is no discrimination against a voter under the PR system but there will be under the system in which you devalue the votes of a large number of electors and enhance those who happen to plump for the person at the top.

The Minister also referred to Deputy M. J. O'Higgins at column 430. Deputy O'Higgins had described the present system of PR as being fair. This is what the Minister had to say:

In fact it is grossly unfair; it discriminates between voters and in a close finish to an election, the system, as I said, is equivalent to drawing the name of the candidate to be elected by lot.

Where you have a tie, where you have an equality of votes, it is perhaps not unfair to draw the name by lot. It is done quite frequently in relation to the chairmen of local authorities, Lord Mayors and so on. It is certainly not an unfair system if there is an equality of votes to draw by lot. The alternative would be to have a re-election. The present system ensures that nobody will be elected until he or she is in such a position that his votes exceed the votes of all rivals. It is usually only in the last seat there can be any element of uncertainty or chance. Under a system such as the Government proposes, that element of chance will enter into every constituency from the word "go", and in the selection of the first past the post candidate. I should not say in every constituency because some constituencies will be completely satisfied to leave everybody else outside it other than the sitting incumbent: but you will have the constituencies in which you will have the element of luck entering into the filling of the first seat. It is quite clear, therefore, that the system is grossly unfair.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce spoke of the need for change. He said that if there was anything wrong with this country, it was that we were too static and that we needed to introduce a system which would allow for a more frequent change of Government. This is a pleasant theory when we examine the prospects in this country. It is not unfair to say that our political set-up, the number of votes cast for any particular Party, has not very significantly varied in the last decade or so. I do not think you will have any great change under the single-seat constituency with the nontransferable vote. But even though there has not been any massive swing one way or the other we have since 1948 had a number of changes of Government. The Fine Gael share of the vote has grown steadily however.

If you introduce a system under which one particular Party which can have 36 per cent of the votes with 90 per cent of the seats, you will have greater stagnation than in the past. That is the only change we will have. I cannot see how the Minister for Industry and Commerce can be talking otherwise than with his tongue in his cheek when he talks about a dynamic political system in which you will have changes of Government and you will give the people an opportunity of voicing their opinion on public affairs and on the policies which the State ought to be endeavouring to implement.

On a recent date the Irish Press published some comments by Father O'Connor, O.P., one of the lecturers in UCD, on the Government's proposals in relation to election under PR. Father O'Connor saw virtue in the Government's proposals and thought PR should be abolished, and there was a rather undiplomatic leader in the same Irish Press which was of greater significance than the theoretical expositions of Father O'Connor. What the Irish Press was lamenting in its second leading article was that in Lisnaskea, the Nationalist Party was not going to nominate any candidate to oppose the Unionist candidate for the vacancy created by the departure of Lord Brookeborough. It said that even though the Nationalist Party saw no prospect in the election, it had a duty to put up a candidate for the purpose of giving those who agreed with it an opportunity of expressing their views.

I think the position of the Nationalist Party in the area in question is understandable. It saw little point in wasting time in a quite obviously hopeless fight. That shows the British first past the post system is completely stagnating politically. If there is any social change in Northern Ireland, if there is any advance, it is because of their association with Great Britain and not because of any dynamic decisions taken by the people in the six north-eastern counties. Anything that has taken place there has been an overflow of what has taken place in Britain, without expression locally through the ballot box of parliamentary views to effect change in policy, change in outlook or change in social and political affairs. I do not think that even the most dyed-in-the wool Unionist would suggest otherwise. The British electoral system in Northern Ireland has brought about a stagnant political entity.

If we introduce a system which will favour the political Party which for the time being is marginally in ascendancy and in so doing, deprive the remainder of the community of fair representation, there is a real danger that the people will give up trying to change the Government.

I think the Government have decided on that as the reality of what will happen if they abolish the present system of election and it is on that account they have introduced their proposals. They want to see a stagnant society; they want to see a society in which the people will not use the ballot box to bring about change or protest against policies with which they disagree. We have had several speeches from them, all documents containing proposals which they want to implement. The proposed change is for the purpose of stifling and silencing protest against the political system, which will knock the heart and the wind out of those who are opposing them by depriving them of any chance of fair representation and of any chance of occupancy other than Fianna Fáil.

These are the realities and that second leading article in the Irish Press on the day that Father O'Connor's article was published is of far greater significance than any theoretical pronouncements by Father O'Connor.

I was interested in the rather sarcastic criticism by a member of the Government who said that people should not express their theories who never had to undergo the competition of the hustings and the uncertainties and sensitivities of the ballot box. I think his remarks may be applied to Father O'Connor, if you like, and I shall say no more.

If you do away with the present system, you will negative the prospect of building up in this country Parties with dynamic views, Parties sufficiently strong to ensure that they can replace the present indifferent Government by something more dynamic. That is why I find it very hard to accept the remarks of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I do realise that he was speaking from a prepared brief, not prepared by him. It was prepared for him, but I do seriously believe that he was not expressing his own views because it is common knowledge that he was very much against the British system of voting. He was against the system which devalues the vote of so many of our people. He was strongly in favour of retaining PR which gives full representation.

Mr. Molloy

That is not true; it is absolute rubbish, and you know it.

Mr. Ryan

He was, of course, in an extremely embarrassing position and perhaps that is the explanation as to why he, being a conscientious man, has been out on a limb in so far as the Fianna Fáil Party are concerned. It must have been a matter of considerable embarrassment to him that he topped the poll for the Fianna Fáil National Executive at the last Ard-Fheis. Without his knowledge, some of his supporters stole 150 ballot papers and marked them in his favour in the toilet. I can understand why he has some misgivings about any electoral systems Fianna Fáil might produce.

Mr. Molloy

They would stoop to anything over there.

Mr. Ryan

It is common knowledge and nobody knows more about it than the Minister for Industry and Commerce himself. I have no doubt that he will try to see to it that the PR system will remain and, please God, with his help and that of Deputy Molloy and others who do not want to see a change from the present system, the Irish people, led by Fine Gael and others united with us, will see that the present Irish system of election will be maintained strongly.

I was very interested in the use of the word "tolerance". I did not get a chance of consulting all the dictionaries which we used to help us in showing that we were a republic when in fact we were something quite different, but Nuttall's Dictionary defines "tolerance" as "the amount by which an engineer's product is allowed to depart from its specified dimensions." As Deputy L'Estrange, who anticipated me, has said, this is a well-engineered scheme. What is the dimension as understood by the people? It is one person, one vote. It is as simple as that. The dimension which will be specified ultimately here will be something in the region of 20,000 of the population per Deputy, and what the Government want to do is to engineer a deviation from that and they have used what is an engineering term to describe one of the most intolerant, undemocratic, unscrupulous efforts to maintain themselves in power which any corrupt Government ever devised.

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,

Mr. Ryan

I was explaining that "tolerance" is defined as "the amount by which an engineer's product is permitted to depart from its specified dimensions" and as we know, the one-sixth provision in the Bill will allow a deviation of 40 per cent, or two-fifths, which is as we see a great deal more than one-sixth. You do not have to be a student of higher mathematics to see that the figures I give are the correct ones.

Mr. Booth

What is the deviation at the moment?

Mr. Ryan

Taking the figures of the 1966 census which we now know, the deviation is of that dimension but that is not taking account of what the Constitution obliges us to take account of—the numbers in population which we are supposed to take into account once every 12 years. There is the rearrangement of constituencies on the basis of the population as ascertained in the immediately preceding census. As I have pointed out, the 1961 Electoral Bill was arranged not on the 1961 census, though that could have been done, but the Government of the day deliberately cut down the staff of the Central Statistics Office to prevent the figures being known before they rearranged matters, and the present system of 1968 is based on the population as ascertained in 1956, 12 years ago.

That is the dreadful reality and that is why we have this deviation from this engineering product we are told about —this thing which in engineering terms is called tolerance but in any other language is called intolerance. It is because we have not allowed for the movement of population that we have imbalance and we have Deputies here representing trees, fields, mountains, lakes and bogs and other Deputies representing people. That is not what democracy is supposed to represent. It is supposed to be people we represent, not stones or other material substances. It is on that account that we are against those now seeking to change the system. We do not believe this farcical and unfair situation should be written into the Constitution.

I should like to give some figures which will illustrate what I have been saying. I can only go on the 1956 Census of Population because that is the basis for the existing system. It shows that in the urban constituencies the situation has become more inflated and more deflated in the rural areas. In Dublin South-west, there are 3,170 people per 100 acres. If you go to some of the constituencies where the system is supposed to be advantageous, giving 40 per cent additional representation, you will find that in North Mayo, the population on the same acreage is only 8.2. In Carlow-Kilkenny, it is 13.4; in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, 207.2; and in Dublin County, 40.9. However, since 1956 the urban area of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown has increased its density of population to something near to 2,000 per 100 acres, a vast increase because of the urban sprawl.

Similarly, the Dublin County area has vastly increased its population density in the lowlands but not in the mountainous areas of Glencree and the Dublin Mountains where the population is still rather rare and is likely to continue to be so if the town planning legislation continues in its present form. According to the 1956 Census of Population, the population density per 100 acres in Kildare is 15.7. In Laois-Offaly, it is 10.8. In Longford-Westmeath, it is 12.6. In Louth, it is 34.1. In Meath, it is 11.6. In Wexford, it is 15.0. In Wicklow, it is 12.1. In Clare, it is 9.8. In West Cork, it is 9.4. In East Cork, it is 14.9. In Mid-Cork, it is 13.0. In North Kerry, it is 14.4. In South Kerry, it is 7.6. In West Limerick, it is 13.2. In East Limerick, it is 35.1. In North Tipperary, it is 11.3. In South Tipperary, it is 13.2. In Waterford, it is 16.3. In West Galway, it is 11.2. In South Galway, it is 9.3. In North Galway, it is 11.6. In South Mayo, it is 11.8. In North Mayo, it is 8.2—as I mentioned. In Roscommon, it is 10.5. In Sligo-Leitrim, it is 11.4. In Cavan, it is 13.2. In West Donegal, it is 8.9. In East Donegal, it is 11.4, and in Monaghan, it is 16.3. Those figures relate to county constituencies based on the 1956 Census of Population.

That shows that the problem of the rural areas and the problem of representing the rural areas are clearly different from those of representing the urban areas. According to the 1956 population census, the relevant figures for the population density per 100 acres in respect of the borough constituencies are as follows:

Cork	796.5
Dublin North (East)	988.9
Dublin North (Central)	3,145.7
Dublin North (West)	1,498.5
Dublin South (East)*	1,323.4
Dublin South (Central)*	3,730.5
Dublin South (West)*	3,170.0

The figures for the area of the * constituencies are estimated.

I am sorry these figures bore Deputies. It is important to get away from the tribal feuds the Minister for Local Government spoke about in the High Court where he gave the idea that no Deputy could represent people with conflicting interests: he said the work of any Deputy representing people of different interests would be rendered impossible. I wonder how Deputy Foley feels about representing the sheep farmers of the Dublin Mountains as well as the people of Ballyfermot and the more well-to-do people in——

Mr. Foley

——Malahide.

Mr. Ryan

I was trying to think of the more well-to-do area in County Dublin. I am sure Deputy Foley does not take kindly to the accusation that, because he represents people of different political interests, his work is rendered impossible. We are led to believe we must have the single-seat constituency so that, for instance, Deputy Foley can become fertile politically, as it were, so that he can become an effective political force by representing one of these conflicting tribes which have nothing in common with one another.

The population density which I have listed has a number of interesting consequences—not entirely those of difficulty of meeting one's constituents or of the constituents meeting public representatives. I think any person who has lived in an urban area, any person who represents an urban area, knows that one of the loneliest places to live in is a big city. The bigger the city, the lonelier one can be, the less people know about their neighbours, whereas the lower the population density, the more the people know about each other in the area. With a sparse population, the people know far more about their neighbours in the same acre and in the thousand adjoining acres than people in the city or town would know about their neighbours living in the same road.

We are given to understand that rural Deputies have a tremendous difficulty. I recently tried out a simple test in a rural area and in an urban area. I asked the better part of 200 people in each of these areas if they knew the names of their local representatives. In the rural area, 99 per cent of the people were able to say who they were. They knew where they lived and the Party to which they belonged. In the urban area, less than 20 per cent knew the names of their public representatives, fewer knew where they lived and fewer again knew the Party politics of the persons concerned.

One of the tremendous advantages of the people in rural Ireland is the provincial press which is the greatest means of communication to the people of Ireland. It carries information about local affairs and local problems. It carries information about what the local representatives are doing—information that is not available to the people in urban areas.

Mr. Carty

What about the Evening Herald? Does it not contain information about meetings of Dublin Corporation and other reports?

Mr. Ryan

The provincial press contains information about the county councils. It is a boon to its readers. In the urban area, the ordinary voter knows little or nothing about what men in public affairs——

Donnchadh Ó Briain

They care less.

Mr. Ryan

That is what Deputy Ó Briain says but the fact is that in the urban areas only the national papers circulate and they have to feature the major international and national news. No local paper is available in the urban areas to focus attention on local matters. Deputy Booth is aware of that fact. He has been obliged to launch a paper of his own.

Mr. Booth

And very well, if I may say so.

Mr. Ryan

Deputy Booth knows the great disadvantage in the urban area and he realises the tremendous need for communication. The reason for ignorance on the part of public representatives about their constituents is that they do not see their affairs recited in the newspapers and, in a similar way, the constituents are unaware of the hard work their public representatives are doing because that work, too, is not featured in the public press. All this lack of communication is a feature of the urban areas. No electoral system will ever balance the advantages and disadvantages so far as the urban and the rural areas are concerned in this matter of communication. Deputies who represent rural areas are well aware of that fact. Any person who has ever looked at the provincial press realises the wide scope of information given about the area it caters for. Every town and townland it attended to. All that is necessary is a good local correspondent. News items of every description are included about all kinds of private and public activities covering all shades of public opinion, be it Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the ICA, GAA, Macra na Feirme, Macra na Tuaithe.

A Deputy

The NFA?

Mr. Ryan

The NFA and everything else will have its own little news item with the names and addresses of all the local men and women concerned. That type of information is of immense value to rural Deputies. They do not know how fortunate they are in having it.

Mr. Foley

Would Taca be in it?

Mr. Ryan

Even if they have to travel the greatest distance—which, in any one constituency, does not exceed 79 miles—rural Deputies are in closer contact with their constituents, and their constituents are in closer contact with them, than if they represented an area which, geographically speaking, may not exceed 11 miles across but, in reality, could well be a thousand miles across for all the public representative would know about the needs of thousands of people in his urban constituency.

Debate adjourned.