(South Tipperary): As regards representatives, it is arguable—I think the Minister for Industry and Commerce dealt with that aspect of it—how much we should seek to elect representatives and how much we should seek to elect a Government. He made the valid point that in our electoral system we are trying to do two things —we are trying to elect a Parliament which would be, so to speak, a microcosm of the nation, representative of the people, and, at the same time, thereby and through that, we are trying to elect an Executive. He thought we were trying to do two rather opposite things through the same system. There may be something in that argument. I feel there is nothing incompatible in having Parliament representative of the electorate and also in having it adapted to elect a Government.
I shall give the figures for the last election here to show that proportional representation does give a very representative picture. In the 1965 general election, Fianna Fáil got 47.7 per cent of the votes and 72 seats, that is, 50 per cent. If they would like to split hairs and to say that one of the seats was a non-contested one, it would be slightly more than 50 per cent. Fine Gael got 47 seats, that is, 32.6 per cent, Labour got 15.4 per cent of the votes and 22 seats which gave them a percentage of 15.2. The others got 2.9 per cent of the votes and three seats, which works out at two per cent. It will be seen, therefore, that there is a complete parallel, percentage-wise, between the amount of votes cast in favour of each Party and the number of seats subsequently secured by that Party. From the point of view of getting adequate and accurate representation, I think it would be hard to obtain any system which could improve upon that. The two figures on both sides are practically identical.
On the obverse side of the coin, under the straight vote, a Party getting no more than 40 per cent of the votes could quite easily get 60 per cent or more of the seats in a national Assembly. A system like that can give an excessive and a disproportionate Government majority and it can lead to a powerless Opposition. It can lead, ultimately, to the establishment of a one-Party system. As I have already emphasised, that danger is particularly present in our society by virtue of the fact that we are traditional in our habits, particularly in our voting habits.
It is argued that one advantage of the proposed new system is that it would give greater stability. That seems an extraordinary claim. Whether or not it is due to proportional representation, we have had an amazing degree of stability here. Certainly, Fianna Fáil have no reason to complain because they have had 30 years of government in the past 36 years. Of the past 12 elections, they have succeeded in winning ten. Therefore, on first observation, one wonders why they have chosen to look for a change and why they have chosen this particular time.
Of course, as regards stability, we compare, in terms of Parliament, quite well with the British system. The last five British Governments have lasted, on an average, slightly less than three years and the last five Irish Governments have lasted, on an average, slightly more than three years. So, as regards length of parliamentary life, there does not seem to be much difference between the one and the other. In fact, I think our stability has got to the stage of almost verging on stagnation.
An advantage of the present system, which was mentioned by the previous speaker, is, I think, important because it concerns not the member of the House but the citizen. Under our present system, in practically every constituency, no matter what Party a man may support—I am referring to the three major Parties—he will usually succeed in his own constituency in being able to go to a Deputy of his own Party. There is no Fine Gael Deputy in North Kerry and the Fine Gael supporters there have no Fine Gael Deputy to go to. There are areas all over the west of Ireland where people who may be inclined towards Labour have not a Labour Deputy there to consult. But, by and large, in most constituencies, even in constituencies where the Opposition Parties are weak, there is a Deputy to whom people can go and for whom probably they have voted.
Under the system now proposed, there will be many areas where the people—particularly supporters of the Opposition, Fine Gael and Labour— will be constrained to go outside their constituency, may have to travel a good distance to find him, if they want to consult a Fine Gael or a Labour Deputy. They may even be constrained to go to a Fianna Fáil Deputy whom they have not supported and who, in all probability, knows they have not supported him. This is an embarrassing situation. A previous Deputy mentioned a development of that which had not occurred to me but which could possibly arise. He suggested that, in a single-seat constituency, a Deputy, entrenched in office, could exercise discrimination in his support of people coming to him and asking him for particular services. He would be the only Deputy in a particular area and if there is a conflict between two persons, he might be inclined to support the person he thinks will be more useful afterwards rather than be governed by strict impartiality.
I have mentioned already in respect of the straight vote system its lack of proportionality but there is also another factor in it which sometimes arises, that is, the question of unpredictability. Apart from its being non-representative, the voting result can be illogical and unpredictable. To give some examples: In 1945, the Socialists in the United Kingdom got 48.7 per cent of the votes; they secured 82.3 per cent of the seats and had a powerful Socialist Government. In 1950, the Liberals got 19.1 per cent of the votes but got only 1.4 per cent of the seats. The Socialists did better proportionalwise. They got 46.3 per cent of the votes and 50.4 per cent of the seats. In 1951, the Socialists got 48.6 per cent of the votes and got 47.4 per cent of the seats and there was a Conservative Government. An example mentioned here by Deputy Costello was Canada. Canada has been mentioned also by the Taoiseach, amongst others. In 1953, the Liberal Party got 48 per cent of the votes and got a two-to-one majority of the seats. These figures show not alone disproportion but a degree of unpredictability which is sometimes difficult to explain.
Probably the strongest point to be made in support of our present system and the point that has been made by all the speakers here at this time and eight and a half years ago is the question of minority rights. I recognise that perfect proportionality is not possible to attain. The nearest to it would be to have the whole country as one constituency and, of course, that is impractical. Proportionality is the inverse of the number of seats per constituency. Down through the years, there has been a cutting down of the seats in this country by various Electoral Acts to the Constitution minimum of three. I cannot say offhand how many three-seaters we have now but the majority of our constituencies are three-seaters, and it is only in special cases, I presume, that we have retained the four-seater and five-seater. This progressive lowering of the number of seats has given a bonus to Fianna Fáil electoral-wise, if I may express it that way, but it has also ill-favoured Labour and other minorities.
I presume that each time these Electoral Bills were introduced in the House, Labour must have resisted the cutting down of the number of constituency seats because they would be perfectly aware of the fact that each time the number of constituency seats was lowered, their position was being worsened as regards representation in this House. Now it is proposed to carry that further and to complete the step from three-, four- and five-seat constituencies we have to the single seat. There was a time here when we had eight-seat constituencies and I believe we had a nine-seat constituency on one occasion. These may have been too large and unwieldy but certain it is that multi-seat constituencies must be retained from the point of view of proportionality, from the point of view of the rights of minorities, if they are to get representation here proportionate to their numbers, or anything like proportionate. They have suffered down through the years by the reduction in the number of seats per constituency—not only Labour but Independents and all minorities—and Fianna Fáil have gained correspondingly. I could not give the actual figure of the gain but any mathematician would probably be able to work out statistically what the actual gain was.
As regards the questions, whether we want to elect an assembly here, whether we want to elect a representative assembly or merely want to elect a strong Government or whether our system is not suitable for the election of both, that is a matter open for debate but if the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the other members of the Fianna Fáil Party feel that the election of a strong Government or an Executive is the more important aspect to elections, then the obvious thing for them to do is to adopt something on the lines of the American system where there are two elections, one for an Executive, the President, and one for a House of Representatives. The Minister for Industry and Commerce was Chairman of the Committee on the Constitution and it was open to him, if he felt strongly on this matter, and to other Fianna Fáil members of that Committee, to suggest a departure on these lines if they thought that was the proper thing to do.
