(Cavan): Yes, Sir. One would not make much sense without the other. The two are so closely related that it would be desirable to take the two together.
I move amendment No. 3:
In page 3, line 37, before "system" to insert "proportional representation".
I regard amendments No. 3 and No. 4 together as very important amendments because what we are doing here is trying to explain to the people in simple language what the proposal is upon which they are being asked to vote. It would be far better to give them a misleading explanation than to give no explanation at all.
The heart of the matter, so to speak, in the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution Bill is the abolition of proportional representation and the substitution for the present system of proportional representation the system known as the relative majority system by means of the single non-transferable vote. If I am asked where I got that language or where I got that explanation, I refer the House to Part II of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1968, Part II of the Schedule, in short.
Subsection (1) of Part II states:
Dáil Éireann shall be composed of members who represent constituencies and one member only shall be returned for each constituency.
Subsection (2) says:
The members shall be elected on the relative majority system by means of the single non-transferable vote.
There is one thing that should be brought home to the electorate if we set out to instruct them, to clarify their minds and to tell them what the proposal is. The first and biggest proposal here is to abolish the system of election known as the proportional representation system, the system that has been in operation here since the foundation of the State. It is known as the proportional representation system, election by proportional representation. But there is not one word in the explanation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution Bill about proportional representation. One would think that these were nasty words. One can remember the newspapers of some time ago referring to "an illegal organisation". It was illegal to mention the name of the illegal organisation. The explanation reads as follows:
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1968, proposes — (1) To substitute for the present system of voting at Dáil elections the "straight vote" system in single member constituencies;
I say that is misleading for two reasons. I say it would be much clearer to the people if they were told "To substitue for the present proportional representation system"— proportional representation being the operative words, because that is what the Government are setting out to destroy and to replace. Those two words should be written in black and white — that we are abolishing the system of proportional representation. That is the only system under which the vast majority of the present electorate ever voted.
If you are going to execute a citizen he at least should be named. Here we are going to execute, or attempt to execute, and destroy a system. That system should not be led into the dock without a name. It should be led into the dock and put before the jury bearing its full and proper name, and that is the system of proportional representation. I cannot see any good reason why all these notices, which will go into the hands of every elector through the post, which will be posted up outside every polling booth and presumably posted up inside as well, and which will be advertised in the public press, should not bear the accurate and well-known description of the system we are proposing to abolish — the proportional representation system. That is the argument — I think the unanswerable argument — in support of amendment No. 3 which I am moving.
The explanation says we are to substitute for the present system of voting at Dáil elections the "straight vote" system. I want to ask the Minister seriously where he got that description for the system which is described in Part II of the Schedule as "the relative majority system by means of the single non-transferable vote"; and which is described at page 24, paragraph (q) of the Report of the Committee on the Constitution, December, 1967, as "the first-past-the-post system"; and which is described at page 115 of the same Report, paragraph (4), as "the spot system"? I cannot find anywhere in that Report this proposed system described as the straight vote.
We have here something fundamental. We have here a principle at stake. The Minister cannot deny that the system he proposes to the country is a highly controversial system, to say the least of it. It is so controversial that a similar proposal put forward by his Party when in Government in 1959 was rejected by the people as unacceptable to them, as an undesirable system, as a system which they did not regard as providing a fair system of election. The Minister seeks to describe that system, which as far as we know is not regarded by the people as fair or as acceptable to them, as the "straight vote". It is anything but straight. It is as crooked as a ram's horn. It is a system which does not regard majority rule. It is a system under which in certain circumstances as little as 30 per cent of the people voting at an election can claim to represent more than 50 per cent of the people who actually voted. It is a system under which a candidate who only gets something like 30 per cent of the votes cast in an election can claim to speak on behalf of the majority of the people who voted. That, to say the least of it, is a highly controversial system.
It cannot be described as a straight system especially when in Irish minds the word "straight" is synonymous with the word "fair" and with the word "honest". It cannot be denied that any honest-to-God Irishman frequently runs the words "straight" and "fair" and "straight" and "honest" together. It is not a mere accident that the Minister called this child of his, the relative majority non-transferable vote, the straight system. He may think that it is straight but that is not sufficient. It is a dishonest description of it, a description calculated to mislead. No doubt between now and the date of the Referendum the Minister will campaign on the basis that this system is a straight system but that does not entitle him to use the official literature provided by this House and by funds voted by this House as Party electioneering material. That is what he is doing if he does not accept this amendment.
I have not been able to find this description, "the straight vote system" used elsewhere for this first-past-the-post or spot vote system. The Minister officially concedes that he has taken over the British system and says it is a good British system. If that is so he should call it what the British call it, the spot vote. I do not know how anybody can describe a system as "straight" which can and probably will, if the people are foolish enough to accept it, hand over 65 per cent of the seats in this assembly to 35 per cent of the people voting. That is not straight or honest and above all, it is not fair. Irish people couple the words "straight" and "fair" and "straight" and "honest" together. For that reason I say that this description, which it is proposed to send by post at public expense to each elector, is calculated to deceive, mislead and confuse rather than to secure what it is supposed to seek to secure, clarification.
The Minister should accept this amendment so as to make clear that it is his intention to kill, abolish, do away with the proportional representation system and that he proposes to substitute for it the relative majority system by means of the single non-transferable vote because the words "relative majority" mean something other than an absolute majority. It will be clear to the people that they are departing from a system which requires a majority of votes to elect a person to a system which requires only a relative majority, less than a majority and, as will be more easily explained to them then, much less than a majority. Why does the Minister shun, in this explanation to the people, the words "on the one hand proportional representation and on the other relative majority" which are well known to the people, the first two, "proportional representation", having been household words at election times since 1922 and the second pair of words "relative majority" being solemnly written into the Constitution if the Minister gets his way? I await the Minister's comments on the arguments I have made.