Deputy Dillon reported progress on the entry relating to East Mayo.
Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1968: Committee Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: "That the entry relating to the constituency of East Mayo stand part of the Schedule."
I have nothing to add.
Coming from the constituency of East Mayo, it is only right that I should make a few remarks on this entry. Everyone now knows that the Minister had the power and the opportunity to divide the constituencies as he saw fit. Even though Mayo as a whole remains an electoral entity, there has been a remarkable change in the manner in which the boundaries between the two constituencies that exist there have been aligned as against the division that existed heretofore.
As the House knows, in the past there were the constituency of North Mayo and the constituency of South Mayo, and the boundary line was drawn horizontally across the county. Due to factors of population which we will not go into now, a portion of the county of Roscommon was taken in, in order to give a four-seat constituency in South Mayo. In the county as a whole, Fine Gael had four seats as against three for Fianna Fáil after the last election. Due to the factors mentioned earlier in all these discussions—the decision of Mr. Justice Budd, and so on—it was found necessary to reduce the representation by one seat for the county as a whole, and to have two three-seaters instead of a four-seater and a three-seater as it was heretofore.
In the division and alignment of the new constituencies, if they followed the old pattern two Government Ministers would be contesting the constituency which I have the honour to represent. I suppose the Minister who is responsible for this talked to the individual Ministers concerned, and decided that it would be far better for the Party not to have two Ministers contesting in the same constituency and he decided, willy-nilly, to divide the county vertically instead of horizontally. The line is now drawn from north to south instead of from east to west. If that line were drawn straight through the county I would see some reason for it and some sense in it. If anyone takes the trouble to look at a map of the constituencies of East and West Mayo, and tries to imagine what they resemble he will see that the eastern part, which is the constituency I hope to stand for, with the help of God, resembles a kangaroo with the pouch empty, and the other part resembles a star fish. A fish which is sometimes portrayed on television resembles the outline of the western constituency.
The Minister used to tell us—and this was talked about for hours and hours on every platform when we were discussing the referendum—that he wanted to ensure that an elector was within reasonable distance of the Deputy elected to Dáil Éireann. Anyone who looks at a map of the two constituencies of Mayo with the division we are to have if this Bill goes through, as presumably it will, and suggests that anyone will be brought nearer to his Deputy, as a result of that alignment, should have his glasses changed.
However, the alignment has been made and it was made for a particular purpose: in order to ensure that in each constituency Fianna Fáil would get two seats. Possibly I should not blame the Minister for that if he said: "Gentlemen, I am dividing the constituencies so that we can get an overall majority whether the electors like us or not." The fact remains that this alignment was made for a particular purpose and the people in the area, as well as the Deputies in the area, have to accept that fact. I know that the Minister for Health, Deputy Seán Flanagan, and I will be fighting in the same area. We have fought elections in the past without any recriminations and I have lost in many elections but we have never had any recriminations. They were fought toe-to-toe on the filed without the help of any dividing line that the Minister could put across a constituency.
Perhaps, on this occasion, the line that the Minister has drawn may do as much damage to the Minister I have mentioned as to anybody else. The people who supported me in the past have been put on the other side of the dividing line so that we must continue from there and attempt to make good as best we can. We must also attempt to beat Fianna Fáil at the Minister's game. That means that we must seek the support of people who we did not know before and people who do not, in the west at any rate, readily accept a new man. We will not be able to give the best representation to these people because we will not know them as well as we knew our constituents in the past and this Bill is supposed to give people better representation and better contact with the Deputies they elect to Dáil Éireann.
In the northern end of Mayo we have what, in the past, was North Mayo. We have people in this constituency who are dissatisfied because the southern end of the constituency has been foisted on them and we have people in the southern end who are dissatisfied because the people in the north have been foisted on them. They must accept the situation in which Deputies they do not know will represent them.
Earlier in this debate I asked the Minister if it was within the powers of Dáil Éireann to amend the Constitution in order to give representation to the west or to the rural areas and to ensure that the boundaries of constituencies as they were heretofore could be maintained, but nobody answered the question. Looking at the whole picture now from our side and from the point of view of the people— indeed, from the point of view of many Fianna Fáil people—it would appear that, if the Minister had been wise and if he had not attempted to change the electoral system to the one seat constituency, if he had asked the people to adopt what was his Third Amendment and give the tolerance without having the other thing involved, we would be able to have in Mayo the same alignment, the same amount of representation and the same constituency lines as we had in the past.
I wish to say only a few words on this, partly of course, because I must say goodbye to more than 50 per cent of the people of Mayo whom I have represented now for almost 18 years. My principal reason for speaking on this today is because of the curious attitude adopted by Deputy Dillon at the end of the debate last week.
Nobody appreciates Deputy Dillon's attachment to Mayo more than I, and he is to be commended for it, but how he could equate the present changes in Mayo with vindictiveness towards the area of Ballaghaderreen is something which I cannot fathom. Indeed, I would go further and say that, in so far as I am concerned, it is with the greatest regret that that part of the constituency of South Mayo as it now exists is to go back into Roscommon.
It is true that this town in the vicinity was traditionally part of the County Mayo until the 1898 Local Government Act. Incidentally, part of the deal at the time was that Árd na Ríogh came into Ballina while Ballaghaderreen came out of the county. Down through the years there certainly has been a sort of tension among the people of the area that it was ever thought necessary for administrative purposes to change the county boundaries at all. However, it was changed and we must accept that this is so. When the Minister for Local Government came to examine the matter, he discovered that the population of Mayo was now over 115,000 people and this was enough within the straitjacket enforced on him by the people as a result of their decision in the referendum to sustain six Deputies with a tiny margin of a few hundred votes left over.
This, therefore, precluded the possibility of Ballaghaderreen remaining in either constituency of my county. This, as I say, is something which I personally regret very much and with which I share the regard of Deputy Dillon. As I say, it simply mystifies me that he should regard this action on the part of the Minister for Local Government — an action which, in fact, is inevitable—as evidence of vindictiveness on the Minister's part in trying to frame suitable constituencies for the future.
The other matter on which I wish to speak arises from the remarks by Deputy Lyons. But before I do so I should like to say that I agree with him when he says that we have contested many elections without rancour and without recrimination and, as far as I am concerned, I will continue to conduct elections without any rancour or recrimination whatsoever. I should like to point out to Deputy Lyons that here in Mayo we have a situation where at the moment there are seven representatives returned to this House, whereas after the next election this number must be reduced to six. The seven are divided as to four in South Mayo and three in North Mayo.
If the Minister were to keep to his terms of reference, so as not to exceed the national average unduly on either side of whatever boundary he ultimately settles, then it is obvious that there would have been far too many of a population in the constituency of South Mayo and far too few in the constituency of North Mayo. In fact, North Mayo would not sustain three Deputies and, therefore, assuming that the Minister was right in keeping the county as an entity when this could be readily done, the question of shifting what is traditionally called the boundary line of east and west had to arise. It was merely a question of what way that line would be shifted so as to give some reasonable parity as between east and west or north and south, whichever it turned out to be. But the roughly horizontal line of the past twenty years or so simply had to accommodate the fact that the number of Deputies had been reduced from six to five and also accommodate the necessity of keeping within the terms of reference of the Budd judgment.
Deputy Lyons asked why the Minister for Local Government did not simply draw a line straight down from North to South once he had decided that this was the direction in which he was aiming. The answer to that seems to me to be quite simple. If Deputy Lyons looks at the map of his own county he will see that this would give a very compact constituency of East Mayo and an enormously large constituency of West Mayo. It did not seem to the Minister for Local Government equitable that he should ask the representatives of West Mayo to undertake roughly four times as much travelling as their counterparts in the east. It therefore seemed to the Minister that the line which, in any event, had to be swung either north or south, east or west, should be so adjusted as to try to make two constituencies roughly comparable.
As I said at the beginning, this Bill involves all of us who previously represented North Mayo in having to make very substantial adjustments and in having to undertake responsibility for vast areas of the county which we have not previously represented, but this was rendered inevitable by the Constitution. I think the Minister has done the best he could in the circumstances and I entirely repudiate the suggestion that there was anything Minister in what he did.
In conclusion—and I say this quite bluntly lest there be any doubt about it—I would say that no matter which way the Minister for Local Government redrew the lines of the two new constituencies in Mayo the Minister for Justice and myself would not have contested the same constituency in any event.
I do not know that there is any need for me to say much more after what the Minister for Health has said. I repudiate the suggestions that were made, and I know that the Deputies who made them did so knowing them to be incorrect or else out of pure ignorance of the distribution of population as between the two present constituencies in Mayo. It is a fact, as the Minister for Health has pointed out, that Mayo, which at present returns seven Deputies can, because of the decision made by the people at the behest of Deputy Lyons and his colleagues, now return a maximum of six Deputies. This could be done either by having one six-seat constituency or two three-seat constituencies, and I note that, although some members of the Fine Gael Party have been quite industrious in this matter and have been drawing up different schemes of constituencies, alternatives to the proposals that are before us, none of them has attempted to indicate how they would divide County Mayo up into two three-seat constituencies.
It is alleged that this should have been done by a movement of the present lines running east and west in a southwards direction. Deputies know that could not be done practically. I am sure that at least the Mayo Deputies in Fine Gael must know that the present line practically skirts the town of Castlebar and that at least 7,000 people have to be moved from the present constituency of South Mayo to the present constituency of North Mayo in order to form two three-seat constituencies in compliance with the requirements of the Constitution, and that, therefore, if this was to be done in the manner that Deputies opposite pretend to think it could be done, that line would have to run probably right through the centre of the town of Castlebar.
If we are to try to maintain the two constituencies, one called North Mayo and one called South Mayo, the only practical thing to do is to turn down the two ends of the present line, roughly around the town of Castlebar, at the eastern and western extremities. What has been done is that the line has been turned down at the east and turned upwards at the west. I think this is the only practical way of doing this thing which we tried to avoid doing, that is, reducing the representation of Mayo and creating two three-seat constituencies.
Anybody trying to do this in a practical way would appreciate the desirability, if at all possible, of leaving the natural hinterlands of towns associated with these towns in the new constituencies, and that is largely why it is not possible to have the line running almost directly north and south, because such a line would cut off the whole of the area that is naturally associated with the town of Ballina from that town. It is because of these practical difficulties which have shown up that none of these people, neither Deputy Hogan nor Senator FitzGerald, who have been so industrious in the Fine Gael Party, have attempted to show that what they say could be done could, in fact, be done.
Deputy Lyons says I could divide County Mayo as I saw fit. Of course, he must know that I could not. I had to divide it in accordance with the requirements of the Constitution. I had to comply with very strict rules and, from the practical point of view, I had to take account of considerations such as I have mentioned, of leaving as much as possible of the natural hinterland of the various towns in association with those towns.
Deputy Lyons suggests that the people should not have to accept the necessity of accustoming themselves to new Deputies instead of those to whom they have been accustomed. That is not my fault. That is because of the decision that was made in the referendum. Fianna Fáil did not want to have to perform this operation at all. We did not think it was called for by any democratic requirement. It was required by a legalistic interpretation of the words in the Constitution, and Deputy Lyons and the other Fine Gael Deputies insisted on retaining that straitjacket in regard to the delineation of the Constitution.
I invite Deputy Lyons to draft a division of Mayo on the lines of north and south into two three-seat constituencies. He asked me: "Is it not within the province of Dáil Éireann to amend the Constitution?" He also referred to the fact that he had asked me this on the Second Stage of this Bill and that he did not get a reply. Of course, the reason why he did not get a reply was that the Whips arranged that I would not be allowed to reply to Deputy Lyons. They artificially restricted my right of reply and I was able to deal with only some of the many misrepresentations that were made, and Deputy Lyons's question, which was really a silly question, did not make the required order of priority to be dealt with in the limited time that was available.
Surely, after having a long debate here on the proposal to amend the Constitution and having a referendum on it, Deputy Lyons must know it is not within the province of Dáil Éireann to amend the Constitution. The proposal to take this requirement out of the Constitution or to amend it must be decided by the people by referendum. Deputy Lyons must know that as lately at October, 1968, such a proposal has been before the people to amend the Constitution in order to enable counties like Mayo to be dealt with in a more rational way and the proposal has been decisively rejected by the people. It is ridiculous for Deputy Lyons to say if we had had this proposal separately it would have been accepted by the people. We proposed originally to put the two together. At the request of the Opposition Party we separated them into two proposals. We naturally assumed when this request for a separation of a comparatively simple proposal into two component parts was made that the Opposition would have been prepared to accept one of them. Deputy Lyons and his Party opposed a proposal which would have made this distortion of the traditional situation in Mayo unnecessary.
The responsibility for this is Deputy Lyon's and not mine. He and his Party voted against a proposal that would have made this unnecessary and campaigned against it. The result is that this has to be done. Even now does Deputy Lyons speak for the Fine Gael Party? Is there in fact anybody that can speak for the Fine Gael Party on any subject under the sun? In this particular Bill every Deputy who has put forward a proposal from the Fine Gael benches has emphasised that he is speaking for himself and himself only. He did not need to because he was contradicted by counter-proposals from his own colleagues. So far as I can see Fine Gael have already decided which of the seven Mayo Deputies will not be coming back here as a Mayo Deputy. Deputy Lindsay has already transferred himself to the city of Dublin. It was seen that the Mayo seat would be lost and that it would in future be a Dublin seat. The Fine Gael Deputy has taken the step of transferring himself here.
Speaking for Fine Gael, I would like to reply to some of the misrepresentations of the Minister for Local Government. I want to deny and to state that, so far as Deputy Lindsay is concerned, he has not transferred to any Dublin constituency. He has not left County Mayo. The Minister asked does Deputy Lyons speak for the Fine Gael Party. Certainly, so far as he is concerned, he spoke for the Fine Gael Party. He spoke as far as Mayo and the constituencies of Mayo are concerned. We are entitled to come in here and, if the Minister has put forward a vindictive plan to gerrymander and butcher the constituencies in a worse form than the Unionists of Northern Ireland would or could attempt, we are at liberty to come in here as public representatives, representing the Irish people and put one, two, three or four plans before this House and to say any of them would be fair to the people of this country.
It is a well-known fact that the Minister was interested in only one thing, and that was to gerrymander the constituencies of this country and to return to Leinster House the maximum number of Fianna Fáil Deputies. When the Minister for Local Government gets up here and makes allegations, we are entitled to speak. Deputy Michael Carty, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach, is a decent respectable man and he is not here today to defend himself. He is a gentleman, a thing I could not say for the present Minister for Local Government. So far as I am concerned, I am prepared to come in here and defend him. Any agreement that was made with the Opposition or that was agreed between the Whips to curtail the Minister for Local Government was made with the full authority of the Taoiseach of this country and of the Cabinet. When it is put to us, it is our duty to come in here and tell the truth to the Irish people. The Minister deliberately held up this House. He spoke for seven hours, for five hours on two occasions, and for four hours.
This is extraneous matter.
This is the third time this accusation has been made. As Whip of the Fine Gael Party, I am entitled to put it down on the record of this House.
The Deputy has made his point.
I will speak for only two minutes more, but I am entitled to make my point in full. The country is entitled to know that on this particular occasion the Minister refused to sit down for two Fianna Fáil Ministers.
This has nothing to do with the debate and the Chair must call on the Deputy——
The Minister spoke at length and stated he was not given time to reply. I want to place on the records of this House that it was discussed between the Taoiseach and the Cabinet.
I would ask the Deputy to come back to the section of the Bill we are dealing with.
Instructions were sent to the Minister himself——
The Deputy is again contravening what the Chair is asking him to do. I am asking the Deputy to come back to the section of the Bill.
I want this on the records of the House. The Minister has got away with misrepresentation on at least three occasions in this House. I want to say that this is a typical example of Fianna Fáil butchery. When the Minister tells us in this House that Mayo can no longer return seven seats but a maximum of six because of the Budd judgment and the judgment of the High Court, who does the Minister think he is fooling in the country or in this House? Let him tell the truth to the Irish people. The fact that Mayo is reduced from a seven-seater to a six-seater is due to the fact that the Minister and the Government sitting there on those benches, the dead hand of Fianna Fáil, have reduced the population of Mayo from 152,052 in 1956 to 115,547 in 1966. In ten years they have emulated the feat of Cromwell and driven 17,505 people, boys and girls, the cream of the west of Ireland, from the homes of their birth to London, Birmingham, or some other city abroad. It is on the Minister's shoulders and on the shoulders of the Minister for Health, that the responsibility lies for what has happened in Mayo. If we had a reasonable Government——
We are not discussing Government policy.
I am certainly entitled to make the point that, if we had good government, we could still have 133,000 people in Mayo as we had 12 years ago and Mayo could have been left a seven-seater constituency. The horizontal line could still be there instead of the vertical line we have now, trying to keep two Ministers apart. Does the Minister deny the reason for this vertical line is to keep Deputy Moran and Deputy Flanagan apart? Is it not true that he has done the same everywhere else? He has kept "Charlie the Greatest" away from Deputy Colley who talks about low standards in high places——
The Deputy must refer to Members of this House by the title to which they are entitled.
He has done similar things in other constituencies. The reason is quite obvious. The Minister thinks that by having a Minister in West Mayo and another in East Mayo he will be able to get sufficient votes to bring in a second Fianna Fáil Deputy with him but I remember the arrogance of Deputy Boland, Minister for Local Government, before the referendum. I remember him coming in here day after day and shouting at the Members of this House: "We will humiliate you. We will defeat you. Wait until 16th October." The 16th October came and we know what happened. The Minister's Party was defeated by 234,000 votes. I want to tell him that, despite his vindictive butchering and gerrymandering of Mayo, when this election is over, because the people of Ireland have found them out and are not prepared to trust this Government any longer, in West Mayo we will have two Fine Gael Deputies and in East Mayo we will have two Fine Gael Deputies.
The Minister talks about Castlebar and says that he wanted to put some of the hinterland of the town in association with the town. Who does he think he is codding when, having done that, he has taken part of Athlone and the whole of the hinterland and put it into Roscommon? Does he remember what they did in 1961 to make certain that I would not come into Leinster House? They certainly defeated me at that time. They took Killucan and came to the bridge going into Mullingar, where there are 7,000 or 8,000 people, and they cut across the northern side of it, the eastern side of it and the southern side of it. They went around the town of Mullingar and put the whole lot into Kildare which did not even border County Westmeath. Does the Minister think there is anybody going to believe him now when he says that it was necessary to put Castlebar and its hinterland together into the one constituency, that the hinterland could not be separated from the town? The Minister fooled the Irish people long enough. The Minister even fooled his Taoiseach, but he is finding you out at the present time.
I have to point out that my reference to the machinations of the Opposition Whips prior to the Recess was in reply to Deputy Lyons's complaint that I had not replied to the case that he made on the Second Reading of the Bill.
You made the same lying accusations before.
I had not sufficient time to do this because of the fact that the Opposition Whips arranged that I would not. At that time they were in such a hurry to get home for Christmas. Now Deputy L'Estrange is at his wits' end to find ways of prolonging the debate on the Committee Stage of the Bill. We saw him last week sending in his Deputies in relays to prolong this. It is quite obvious that the sole purpose of Deputy L'Estrange's operations now, after he has had his Christmas holidays, is to delay the passage of this Bill so as to put off as far as possible a situation in which the new constituencies will be available for the forthcoming general election in order to give Fine Gael some time to try to get some semblance of unity into the Party.
Deputy L'Estrange now tells me, when I asked if Deputy Lyons was speaking for the Fine Gael Party when he said that if the Third Amendment was presented on its own it would be accepted, that Deputy Lyons speaks for Fine Gael in so far as the part of County Mayo he represents is concerned. I do not know what that means, but it certainly does not seem to me to be an unequivocal statement that the Fine Gael Party have now changed their minds, as Deputy Lyons would appear to indicate, and that they would accept the proposals in the Third Amendment if they got the chance. He says that they would have been accepted if they were separated. But they were separated and they were not accepted.
Who is being equivocal now?
They ensured that one of the present seats in Mayo would be transferred, unjustifiably according to any democratic principles, to Dublin city.
Will the Minister answer the question about driving 20,000 people out of Mayo in the last ten years?
The Leas-Cheann Comhairle ruled that that was irrelevant. At a relevant time I will certainly be prepared to discuss it with the Deputy, but I do not want to enter into a competition in disorder with Deputy L'Estrange. I do not think I would be fit to do it.
The Minister can incite disorder as well as anybody in the House.
Deputy L'Estrange gets up and repeats the allegation that, in introducing this Bill, we are only interested in gerrymandering. In fact, we made every effort to have the Constitution amended so that there would be a requirement on the Government, in drafting constituencies, to adhere to county boundaries which were not drafted by the Fianna Fáil Government. In fact, the Fine Gael spokesman —or at least the Deputy who appeared to be last week the official Fine Gael spokesman as far as we could make out owing to the many people who occupied the Front Bench last week— Deputy Harte, described them as having been designed by God.
Does Deputy Corry speak for the Fianna Fáil Party?
(Cavan): The Minister's Deputies have disowned him. They would not come in to listen to him.
This effort to adhere to county boundaries was frustrated by the Opposition Parties and it is because of that that this type of change is inevitable.
I do not know if it is in order for me to reply to Deputy L'Estrange's allegations in regard to the town of Athlone but if Deputy L'Estrange knows anything at all about Athlone he knows that the Athlone West urban area and its hinterland in fact lie in the County Roscommon and that it is, in fact, being associated electorally with its natural hinterland and he must also know that it is west of the River Shannon.
(Cavan): I wish to deny the charges made by the Minister for Local Government that the Fine Gael Party have decided to delay this Bill for the sake of delay only. That is not correct. It is our duty to come in here and go through the Schedule to this Bill, constituency by constituency, and expose it for what it is, an attempt to gerrymander the country as a whole to the unfair advantage of Fianna Fáil.
Assuming that an Opposition Party wanted to delay a Bill, I cannot think of any simpler operation to achieve that than to allow the Minister for Local Government to talk, because he simply talks and talks and talks for the sake of talking. He has talked here for hours on end and in the Seanad he set up a record by talking for seven or eight hours on the referendum. God only knows, he should have learned by now that his talking does not get him anywhere. I am saying this to the Minister's face. If talking were any good he would have won the referendum by a quarter of a million votes, but notwithstanding that, despite the fact that he talked ad nauseam, setting up a record in the Seanad, the people gave an answer he did not expect. So much for the Minister and obstruction and talking. It is very doubtful if we are in order in discussing the referendum at this stage but the Minister saw fit to do so and I wish briefly to put the record straight. The Minister sought to suggest that Deputy Lyons and other Fine Gael Members misled the people.
At this stage, though the Minister made reference to it, it is not in order to discuss the result of the referendum.
(Cavan): I do not intend to delay too long on this, but the Minister said——
I did not say he misled the people.
(Cavan): The records will show. The Minister undertook in this House during the referendum debate that he and his Party would go into every humble homestead and explain to the honest, decent people of the country what was at stake. The Minister did so but the people did not accept what the Minister said because the people did not trust the Minister, the Taoiseach and the Cabinet.
I wish to point out again that to continue along these lines would be completely out of order.
(Cavan): I bow to your ruling and, with respect, I agree. I shall just say that the referendum had a mighty airing. It was explained to the people fully from those Benches, from these Benches, through the Press and the other means of communication. The people have spoken and I ask the Minister to be man enough to accept the decision of the people. After the referendum he should have done what the people had directed him to do—to go back to his office to prepare a Bill and to bring into the House a measure which would operate the system of proportional representation in three-Member constituencies.
The Minister said several times today that he did what he has done in this Bill because the Constitution and the decision of Mr. Justice Budd had placed him in a straitjacket. He said the decision of Mr. Justice Budd was brought about by an action brought by the Fine Gael Party. Deputy John A. Costello has denied that emphatically. The plaintiff in that action was Mr. John O'Donovan, a former Member of the Seanad.
At this stage the Chair is at pains to understand what relevance this has.
(Cavan): I have been at pains throughout the debate to understand what the Minister has been saying. I am sick listening to the Minister talking about this and I just want to put the records right. The plaintiff was Mr. John O'Donovan, a former Member of the Seanad. He had not the support of Fine Gael. Shortly afterwards he ceased to be a member of Fine Gael and is not now a member. It is correct that he retained certain members of the legal profession who were members of Fine Gael but, my God, one sees members of the Bar in the Fine Gael Party acting for very queer people, including members of the Government and institutions like the Irish Press from time to time. I wish to say, further, that the judgment of Mr. Justice Budd, on which the Minister relies for the constituencies in the Schedule to this Bill, including Mayo——
He must rely on it.
(Cavan):——is not the law of the land.
He must rely on it.
(Cavan): It is not the final interpretation of the Constitution. That judgment was not appealed by the Fianna Fáil Government to the Supreme Court. All that judgment decided was that a 17 per cent variance between one area in the country and another is constitutional. The Government of the day did not appeal that decision to the Supreme Court. They introduced another Electoral Bill following the rejection of the first one by Mr. Justice Budd. They accepted his decision, though some members of the Fianna Fáil Party were probably guilty of contempt of court by their reference to it in the meantime.
However, they introduced another measure and that Electoral Bill was sent to the Supreme Court under the provisions of the Constitution. I wish to put it on the records of the House that the law on electoral reform and the law on the number of people in one area who qualify for a TD as compared with another area is covered by the judgment of the Supreme Court on the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1961, delivered by the Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Conor Maguire, in which he said that the ratio between the number of TDs in one part of the country and another should be the same as far as practicable.
I refer the Minister to that judgment in which the Chief Justice went on to say that what is practicable is a matter for the Oireachtas who are much better qualified to come to a decision on the matter than the court. He went on to say that the court would intervene to set aside a decision of the Oireachtas on the amount of tolerance permissible only if the Oireachtas obviously went mad— obviously had shown a complete disregard for the Constitution. The Chief Justice said that in arriving at a decision on what is practicable, the Oireachtas are entitled to take into consideration such things as lakes, mountains, county boundaries, the remoteness of areas.
We know that Mr. Justice Budd decided that a tolerance, as the Minister for Local Government would be pleased to call it, of 17 per cent was not acceptable to him and that five per cent was held to be acceptable to the Supreme Court. We know that the Chief Justice, in delivering the judgment of the court, said that the Supreme Court would accept what is reasonable. Therefore, what is reasonable may lie at some point between five per cent and 17 per cent.
You could have another High Court case on that.
(Cavan): Yes, and would it not be a good thing?
For the Fine Gael lawyers.
There are as many lawyers in the Government——
They do not make as much money on this sort of thing.
Some of them were briefless before they became members of the Government.
(Cavan): The lawyers who argued this case in the Supreme Court would not have been Fine Gael lawyers because they would have been appointed by the present Government, by the Attorney General. What was wrong with introducing some sort of reasonable tolerance, having regard to boundaries, mountains, lakes and so forth, as suggested by the Chief Justice, and then bringing in a Bill that would be acceptable to the House and the people, with some sort of in between tolerance, and leaving it to the Supreme Court, as the Bill defining the constituencies in 1961 was referred to the courts? That Bill would go quickly through this House, if it were a reasonable one, and the Minister could then, under the provisions of the Constitution, refer it to the Supreme Court if he had any doubt as to the legality of an election held under such a measure. If the Minister had any fear that, in doing so, he might enrich Fine Gael lawyers he could do what he has done quite frequently in the past; he could direct the Attorney General to nominate Fianna Fáil lawyers. Irrespective of Party affiliations, lawyers would argue to the best of their ability and they would present the case fairly. I am led to believe that the Minister's sole ambition in this Bill, and this is particularly true of the west, is to chop off seats where he thinks that would be to his own advantage and to add seats where he thinks such an addition would be to his advantage. Mayo had seven seats. Four of those were Fine Gael. If there is to be any loss of seats in the west, then bang goes Mayo. Galway had eight seats. The Minister believes, apparently, that Galway is worth preserving —he may get a rude awakening—and so he has preserved Galway with eight seats. Not alone that, but he gives it nine.
Hear, hear. One more.
(Cavan): Roscommon does not measure up. It cannot be relied upon. The Galway pattern is not followed; chop goes a seat in Roscommon. It is reduced to three seats. Clare, despite the mighty men who represented it, could never be relied upon to give Fianna Fáil more than two out of four; there is one Fine Gael and one Labour. The decision is to chop it down to three. Bang goes Labour. If that does not come within the definition of gerrymandering, I do not know what does.
What is the discrepancy in the number of votes in each case?
(Cavan): I am just drawing——
On your imagination.
(Cavan): I am talking practical politics.
Fine Gael politics, which are never practical.
(Cavan): I am pointing out to Deputy Booth how extraordinary it is that, despite the decline in population in the west, one constituency can suddenly be promoted from eight to nine seats.
There is no nineseat constituency.
(Cavan): There are three threes and three threes make nine.
It is not one constituency.
(Cavan): The cheeseparing shows the shallowness of the mentality behind this. Prior to this Bill there were eight seats in Galway. We are told the population in the west is declining. Despite that, the county will have nine seats under this Bill.
It will not.
(Cavan): It has got an injection. I really think the Minister does not like this. He does not like me to point out that the antiGovernment constituency of Roscommon has been reduced from four to three seats and that Clare has likewise been reduced from four to three seats, obviously in order to get rid of Labour.
And Leitrim is wiped off the map.
Deputy Fitzpatrick ought to take over Monaghan.
(Cavan): We will be in Monaghan and I will repeat publicly in Monaghan, and at some length, anything I have ever said about Monaghan. We are talking about people from Kells being driven into Cavan, a place they never visit except for a football match, maybe.
It is not right to take over part of a county, but it is right to take over the whole county.
(Cavan): It might be no harm for me to remind Deputy Cunningham what exactly I mean by gerrymandering. According to the Imperial Dictionary of the English Language, New Edition, Volume 2, the word “gerrymander” comes from the Governor of Massachusetts, named Gerry and it means to arrange the political divisions of a state so that in an election one party may obtain an advantage over its opponents.
We seem to be departing from the Schedule to the Bill before the House.
(Cavan): I will bow to your ruling but, remembering what Deputy Lyons and others have said, it is quite clear the Minister is gerrymandering in Mayo. He set out to gerrymander. The purpose of gerrymandering is, as I have pointed out, to arrange the political divisions of a state so that in an election one party may obtain an advantage over its opponents even though the latter may possess a majority of votes in the state. It is clear beyond doubt, then, what is happening here.
Not the slightest bit because the gerrymandering to which the Deputy refers is an arrangement whereby a certain number of votes are adjusted to correspond with a greater number of votes in another area.
(Cavan): And what does the Deputy think is the object of reducing a Fine Gael constituency from seven to six, building up a neighbouring allegedly Fianna Fáil constituency from eight to nine, reducing a hostile area——
There is provision for that in the Constitution. This is constitutional.
It is changing the name. One cannot change the population.
(Cavan): Deputy Booth poses as a fairminded man and as an educated person and, in his heart, he is heartily ashamed of this.
Not the slightest bit, but I can add and subtract and get the right answers.
(Cavan): Deputy Booth can also blind himself to what is going on. He can convince himself that anything a Fianna Fáil Minister does, even if it is repugnant to the Deputy's own nature, is all right.
It is not repugnant to the Constitution.
(Cavan): I have known Deputy Booth to defend the most extraordinary performances, something that must have been repugnant to him.
Deputy Booth is not under discussion in this. We are not discussing Deputy Booth's reputation.
(Cavan): He asked for it.
Perhaps we can pursue this at a later date.
(Cavan): If somebody wrote a thesis on Deputy Booth it would be very interesting. As I have said before, I do not know why the Minister, who is committed to this sort of dishonesty which he is now attempting to perpetrate on the country, did not rid himself of that and seek the advice of an independent body, and call it a constitutional commission. If he says that is not possible, why not have an informal commission? Deputy Booth could represent the Fianna Fáil side on it and I am sure he would argue on their behalf what was fair; we would have three and three and an independent chairman and we would at least have an impartial recommendation to the Minister. I wonder if Deputy Booth would see anything wrong with that.
That would not suit Fianna Fáil.
At this stage we cannot have a discussion on a commission, or any kind of commission, because such is not contained in the Electoral Bill before us or in the Schedule thereto.
(Cavan): I bow to the Chair's ruling. What I am trying to say is that if we had an informal advisory body, such as I suggest, it would not be possible for Deputy Lyons to come in here and say that there was a constituency cut up to look like a kangaroo without a pouch in order to injure him and help separate the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Health. You would not have the Minister for Health in the position of being able to come in here and say another thing. We would not be able to attribute malpractices or mal-intentions if the Minister for Local Government were an honest man.
Is the Deputy suggesting that the Minister is dishonest?
(Cavan): I am posing the question. God knows, anything the Minister has not said about me is not worth saying. If he had honest intentions or if he had wanted to appear fully honest, he would have handed this over to an impartial advisory body to advise him.
I do not agree with the last speaker at all. What the Minister is doing is constitutional. There is provision in the Constitution for three-, four- or five-seat constituencies. Gerrymandering is something quite different. Gerrymandering does not create the situation which Deputy Fitzpatrick is talking about. It creates the type of situation which exists in Derry City where the greater number of people can elect only eight candidates and the lesser number of people can elect 11. Gerrymandering is where the votes of a minority can elect the majority of the members of the corporation, as is the case in Derry. Here, no matter what boundaries are fixed, no matter whether the constituencies are three-, four- or five-seat, the number of people to be represented by a Deputy is almost, or as nearly as possible, exactly the same in each constituency. So that this question of gerrymandering is a red herring. It was this same red herring which was used during the referendum, in the context of what was happening in Derry City. This is what made people afraid of the proposal in the referendum, and this red herring is being used again here quite dishonestly.
First of all, I should welcome back Deputy Fitzpatrick. I hope he has recovered from whatever kept him away from the House last week.
He was here at six o'clock last week.
(Cavan): I was engaged in constituency business.
At least his presence has had the effect of making Deputy L'Estrange more relaxed. He has more confidence in the ability of Deputy Fitzpatrick to delay the Bill than he had in the six or seven people he dragooned to come in for that purpose last week.
There was no need to dragoon them.
I did notice Deputy L'Estrange's failure a short while ago to attract another recruit into the Chamber but Deputy Fitzpatrick's return has had that effect on Deputy L'Estrange.
The Minister is wrong, as usual.
Deputy Fitzpatrick did go away to collect his equipment.
Deputy Fitzpatrick was at another meeting in Room 106.
He did not come when he was called. He had to go away to get the tools of his trade. With regard to the question of gerrymandering even if interpreted in the way Deputy Fitzpatrick wants to interpret it, gerrymandering in that context, which would not comply with the definition which Deputy Fitzpatrick read out, surely implies the selecting of areas to go into different constituencies. We on this side of the House have made every effort to get a position in which the Constitution would require the exact opposite, in which there would be a stipulation in the Constitution requiring the Government to adhere, as far as possible, to existing county boundaries. These boundaries were established, not by Fianna Fáil but, we are told on the authority of no less a person than Senator Professor Dooge, by the illustrious King John, between 700 or 800 years ago. This was a position which we tried to get into, whereby there would be a requirement written into the Constitution to adhere to the county boundaries as far as possible, and even to operate a maximum divergence of one-sixth in order to do that.
I cannot understand Deputy Fitzpatrick when he accuses the Government—now that we are complying with the requirements of the Constitution — of refusing to accept the decision of the people. This is exactly what the people decided and it was not I who complained about the position. Deputy Lyons complaining that this seat was being lost to County Mayo although he was one of those who ensured that this would have to be done. Deputy Fitzpatrick went on to argue—even now that the issue in the referendum has been decided—that the Budd decision on this matter is not, in fact, the law of the land.
(Cavan): I argued that during the debate here.
The Deputy spent some time trying to get away from the fact that it was as a result of a Fine Gael manoeuvre in the courts that this decision was extracted from the courts. He tried to get away from the fact that it was a Fine Gael Senator who brought the action; a Fine Gael Deputy who was his solicitor; a Fine Gael Deputy who was his Senior Counsel and a Fine Gael Senator who was his Junior Counsel. If Deputy Fitzpatrick thinks he can get away with trying to pretend that this was not an official Fine Gael manoeuvre let him try, but nothing could be more obvious.
(Cavan): You could say that it was a Fine Gael judgment.
It is true that the Government did not appeal the Budd decision. They accepted it. For one thing, I do not think there was time. The Constitution required that the constituencies be revised and it was coming up towards the time for statutory holding of the next general election. There was barely time to make a new revision of the constituencies——
(Cavan): And send it to the Supreme Court.
——and have it decided by the Supreme Court. There certainly was not time to go through all the process of appealing the decision Fine Gael extracted from the High Court, with the possibility that the appeal might not be successful, and then having to go through the whole operation even after that.
Why was it not appealed later?
Deputy Fitzpatrick contended that the only thing decided by Mr. Justice Budd was that a deviation from the national average of population per Deputy of 17 per cent was too high. In fact, Deputy Fitzpatrick is well aware—and argued it here in the House—that Mr. Justice Budd gave an indication that the maximum divergence permissible in his opinion was of the order of 5 per cent. The 1961 Bill was brought in on that basis, and the only clear-cut decision the Supreme Court gave was that that Bill, the Electoral Bill of 1961, complied with the requirements of the Constitution. They did say that the Constitution specified that the ratio of population per Deputy should so far as practicable be the same throughout the country, and that this was a matter for the Oireachtas to decide—Deputy Fitzpatrick left out the words—"in the first instance". The Supreme Court went on to say that the courts were fully entitled to adjudicate on the matter.
(Cavan): I said that.
What Deputy Fitzpatrick is advocating now in February, 1969, is different from what he advocated when we were discussing the matter in May and June, 1968. What he is arguing now is that instead of accepting the only firm indication we have of what deviation from the national average would be acceptable, we should bring in electoral Bills on the basis of trial and error, that we should start off with 17 per cent since he says that is the only thing we know is out—we do not even know that; it was not appealed to the High Court—or that we should start off with whatever deviation we saw fit, and refer it to the Supreme Court or, better still, I suppose, bring in a Bill and go through the same process as before of letting Fine Gael bring it to the courts as they did before, and if it is thrown out come back and try again —have a continuous process of trial and error.
(Cavan): Why not make a genuine effort?
Mr. Justice Budd indicated that there should be a maximum deviation of five per cent. If five per cent was not established by the courts, surely it was established by the decision of the people in October of last year. The whole debate on the proposal to amend the Constitution was conducted on the basis that this was the maximum amount of deviation permissible. It was conducted on the basis of for or against the amount indicated by Mr. Justice Budd. The people decided as definitely as they possibly could that that was the maximum amount we were entitled to operate. That was the only guideline available since the High Court action of 1961, and it has now been endorsed by the people. So, I think it is quite clear that it is the maximum we could operate.
After arguing against any tolerance whatever—as they call it—being permissible, Deputy Fitzpatrick now comes here and says we could have 17 per cent if we liked. Deputy Lyons tried to say the same thing after getting the people to refuse to allow a maximum deviation of one-sixth from the national average in order to take account of what we considered to be practical considerations but which the people have decided are not.
The most amazing allegation which Deputy Fitzpatrick made and which convinces me that his sole purpose is, as I have said, to delay the passage of the Bill, was the allegation that we are deliberately chopping off seats from the west and transferring them to Dublin although that is not necessary. Deputy Fitzpatrick knows that is not true. The Fine Gael argument in the referendum was that we wanted to retain seats in the west because it was to the advantage of Fianna Fáil.
(Cavan): I said that the Minister was switching them within the west.
He now says we want to take them from the west and transfer them to Dublin for our own advantage.
(Cavan): I said no such thing.
The peculiar thing is that Deputy Fitzpatrick purports to speak for the Fine Gael Party, and only last week the Belton cousins were arguing that we had not taken enough seats from the west and should have taken another and given it to Dublin.
They never mentioned it.
It is on the record. They said last Thursday that another seat should be allocated to Dublin. The maximum number of seats in accordance with the Constitution is 144 so if you allocate another seat to Dublin you take it from somewhere else and the only place it could be taken from is the west. In fact, it was advocated specifically that we should take it from Donegal.
Deputy Fitzpatrick raised the question of a commission, and I understand it is out of order. I agree that it is out of order because a commission cannot be established without a constitutional referendum. The Constitution requires the Oireachtas to revise the constituencies and, even with an informal committee to advise, no one knows better than Deputy Fitzpatrick that if we had more than one Fine Gael representative on such a committee we could not get any advice from it, because Deputy Fitzpatrick and Deputy L'Estrange have failed to get any two Fine Gael Deputies, so far, to agree on a recommendation on any one of the sections of the Schedule.
(Cavan): I rise to say I think it is a pity that a responsible Minister of the Government should behave in such a way in this House as to cast a reflection on the superior courts of the country. Several times during this debate the Minister has seen fit to refer to the judgment of the High Court, delivered by Mr. Justice Budd after a long and attentive hearing, as the decision extracted from the High Court by Fine Gael. I want to go on record as saying that I consider that to be a reflection on the High Court. That reference has been trotted out here time and time again since the debate on the Electoral Bill began. I, for one, want to go on record as dissociating myself completely from it. It shows a very irresponsible attitude on the part of a Minister of State so to refer to a judgment given by a judge of the High Court.
Could we get back to Mayo or would that be too far for the Deputy?
(Cavan): Rush into the defence. Create a smokescreen.
I want to try to blow the smokescreen away.
(Cavan): Deputy Cunningham said there could not be any gerrymandering in this Bill and there was not any gerrymandering, but the Taoiseach believes that under these circumstances you could have gerrymandering because in his referendum document, “The Reasons Why”, he advocated ways and means of arranging the constituencies by an independent commission presided over by a judge, and here are the important words, “so that gerrymandering will be impossible”. Those are the words of the Taoiseach.
I was wondering about Mayo.
(Cavan): We have dealt with Mayo.
Would the Deputy sit down then or are we on something else?
(Cavan): I am replying to some uncalled for remarks made by the Minister in his effort to escape from Mayo and to refrain from answering the charges levelled against him by Deputy Lyons from Mayo.
On a point of order. Is there any relevance in the intervention by Deputy Fitzpatrick to the entry in the Schedule for Mayo which is before the House?
(Cavan): I must say, Sir, that the entry in the Schedule if the Deputy wishes to have it again——
I do not wish the Deputy to repeat himself.
(Cavan): The Deputy should behave himself. If he rises on a point of order, I am quite prepared to be guided by the ruling on that point of order but I am not prepared to accept suggestions or directions from Deputy Booth across the floor of the House.
The case has been made by Deputy Lyons that the carving up of the constituencies of East Mayo and West Mayo is unfair and has been made for unfair purposes, that is, to separate two Ministers and to injure Deputy Lyons. I wish to go on record as saying that one could expect nothing less than a job like this because the Minister for Local Government set out to do that. He set out to make PR look absurd. He threatened to do it during the debate on the referendum and the Taoiseach backed him up. That is the reason why we have a situation in Mayo which is in keeping with the position in the remainder of the west of Ireland.
I apparently, embarrassed Deputy Booth, through you, Sir, when I rose in a Committee discussion on this matter to deal with two points. One was the ignorant reference made by the Minister to a Judge of the High Court and the second was a reference by Deputy Cunningham to gerrymandering. I rose to deal with those two points raised by those two Deputies who had spoken since I spoke. I wish to say that I was perfectly within order in doing that and no amount of oily interjection by Deputy Booth would put me off what I got up to do and I consider that I have done it.
I wish to say that no matter how Deputy Cunningham or the Minister for Local Government may try to wriggle out of this, this is gerrymandering and Bolandmandering at its worst. We know that the present Minister for Local Government is steeped in politics and political intrigue and this is only what we would expect from the Minister after his speeches prior to the referendum. Deputy Cunningham stated that what the Minister is doing is quite constitutional. The Minister may be keeping within the Constitution but Deputy Tom Fitzpatrick made an excellent argument here pointing out that this was gerrymandering and gerrymandering at its worst.
He pointed out that Galway, in which in the past, there were two constituencies, a three-seater and a fiveseater, making eight seats, was supposed to be a Fianna Fáil county. We now have a situation where, instead of a Deputy being taken from the Fianna Fáil area, other areas have been brought in from adjoining counties and borders and county borders ruthlessly butchered so as to add a seat to this constituency which, in the past, was a Fianna Fáil stronghold. It is now being divided into three three-seater constituencies and Fianna Fáil are hoping by the grace of God to be able to get two out of the three seats in each constituency. This will misfire just as the referendum misfired.
Is it a coincidence that Mayo, which could be gained only by the nose by the Fianna Fáil Party in the past, where there were seven seats of which four were held by Fine Gael Deputies, is losing a seat and is being reduced to two three-seat constituencies? Is it also a coincidence that Roscommon, which never toed the Party line and in which, indeed, at one time out of four seats, there was only one Fianna Fáil Deputy, is to lose a seat? Is it not also a coincidence that lovely Leitrim which never at any time in the past toed the Party line, is to be wiped off the political map? The people of Leitrim are a proud people and they have never been misled by Fianna Fáil. In fact, they saw through Fianna Fáil before many other people did. Now they are to be wiped off the political map. Their name was not even mentioned in this Bill until a deputation of Leitrim county councillors came up to this House and the best thing that the Minister could then do in order to give them representation was to make constituencies with names like Roscommon-Leitrim, Sligo-Leitrim and West Donegal-Leitrim.
The Minister for Local Government said, "This is what the people decided in the referendum". The people decided no such thing. They decided to keep proportional representation.
The Chair does not want a discussion on the referendum again.
I do not intend having a discussion on the referendum but I wish to say that in East Mayo and in the three Galway constituencies the Minister is flying in the faces of the people and their decision in the referendum, which was, to retain PR. Anybody who knows anything about PR knows that the system works best in large constituencies, in four-, five-, six,- or even seven-seat constituencies. It is very unfair of the Minister to throw the blame on the people.
I should like to agree with Deputy Fitzpatrick regarding our courts. During the past year, attacks have been made by the Minister for Local Government on the courts of this country. It behoves the Minister or any other Minister at the present time, when we may be at a critical juncture in the history of our country, to stand by the judges and by the laws of the country. It is very wrong for the Minister for Local Government to talk about a Fine Gael manoeuvre in the courts. A judgment was given by a High Court judge and if the Minister has not respect for the judgment——
At this stage we cannot go on to discuss judgments of the High Court. A reference to the judgment has been made but we cannot discuss the judgment of the court now.
We are at least entitled, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle to reply to the statements made by the Minister. He stated that at that particular time they had not got time to appeal against the decision of the High Court judge but surely it is only fair to ask the Minister, as Fianna Fáil have been in power since then, what was to stop him from going to the courts during the last ten years and getting a decision from the courts if, as he claims, the decision at that time was a Fine Gael manoeuvre?
I do not think the Minister should make these statements here. It is also wrong that he should accuse Deputy Fitzpatrick of not speaking for the Fine Gael Party and say we are a divided Party. We all know who is divided in this country at the present time, and we all know that the Taoiseach, the Minister for Local Government and the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries are not united——
The Chair cannot permit this kind of discussion.
The less the Minister has to say about unity the better. We are united on this side of the House.
Would the Deputy come to the Schedule of the Bill before the House.
The Minister for Local Government said that if Fianna Fáil did not come back to the principle of abolishing the Border——
This has nothing to do with the Schedule to the Bill.
But it has something to do with the unity of the Fianna Fáil Party.
I had no intention of intervening again at this stage, but I would criticise the manner in which the Minister tries to shoot down backbenchers on this side of the House. He attributes ignorance to somebody in an effort to shake him and not allow him to make his point as well as he could. It is not the proper attitude for a Minister or for anyone else in the House. The Rules of Order can best be kept by Deputies speaking in a gentlemanly manner and answering points and reasonable amendments.
The Minister implied that I was ignorant of the state of affairs in the county of Mayo. I was born and reared in Mayo and I have lived there more years than I would like to say. I am well aware of the situation in the country, as to whether the dividing line runs this way or that way. Mayo is roughly, very roughly, a square, but there are many ways in which the dividing line could be drawn in order to give the representation necessary according to the decision given by Mr. Justice Budd. There are many ways in which it could be drawn to give a fair assessment of the political situation in a ballot box, but the Minister, designedly, draws a vertical rather than a horizontal line in order to separate two Ministers in the constituency, and they can talk about it until Doomsday and that fact will not be altered.
The Minister said I was ignorant of certain facts when I said that an amendment to give a tolerance to the west would be voted on and would be won on a ballot. He says: "Your Party and yourself went out to oppose the tolerance in the Third Amendment Bill." We did, certainly, because the Minister had tied another amendment with it, and the people spoke on that. But had the Minister held a referendum on a tolerance amendment without having it tied to anything else——
I am sure the Deputy will appreciate that is not relevant.
I shall speak only one second on this. I would ask you to allow me to reply, because the Minister implied this in his reply to me; otherwise I would not be contravening the Rules of Order. Had there been a referendum to the people purely on the tolerance issue without an effort to change the electoral system, I have no doubt the people would have passed that.
The Minister refused to accept the amendments that Deputy Hogan, after long study and careful preparation, put before this House. Deputy Hogan deserves credit, and I am sure he is esteemed by many people throughout the country for the work he put into it. He proved beyond yea or nay that there was another way of doing it, a far better way than the Minister's. I shall not go to the lengths Deputy Fitzpatrick went on gerrymandering to estimate whether Deputy Hogan's proposals would be gerrymandering, but there is no doubt in my own mind that the proposals of the Minister with regard to East Mayo were gerrymandering in the strongest sense.
I am quite satisfied that the Official Reports both of the debate on this Bill and of the debate on the Amendment to the Constitution Bills last year will show that no statement of mine could reasonably be interpreted as casting any reflection on the courts. I said that the decision of the High Court in regard to the interpretation of this phrase in the Constitution was extracted by Fine Gael and that the matter was brought to the Court by Fine Gael. Mr. Justice Budd did not come of his own accord to give his decision in regard to the manner in which a particular phrase of the Constitution should be interpreted. He did it at the behest of the Fine Gael Party.
Was he not right in law?
It was a Fine Gael manoeuvre.
It was not.
That is a quite accurate description of what happened.
It was taken by an individual.
It is no reflection whatever; it expressed no opinion whatever as to whether or not the decision was right, and I have never at any time cast any doubts on the correctness or otherwise of the judgment delivered by Mr. Justice Budd.
If not, what has the Minister been complaining about during the last year?
I have merely said that, after agreeing to the proposals in the Electoral Bill of 1959 brought into this House, Fine Gael then brought this matter before the courts and obtained a reversal of that decision.
Are the courts not there to protect the people?
In other words, a correct description of what happened was the extraction by Fine Gael of this legalistic interpretation of the Constitution from the courts. The question was not at issue until it was brought before the courts by the Fine Gael Party. On the question of gerrymandering which the Opposition continue to repeat here, it is quite true we said that if gerrymandering is possible, if political Parties know how the people in individual areas, small areas, voted in the past and how they will vote in the future, if that type of information is available, then a situation which requires a continuing chopping and changing of constituencies, which requires the Government to revise constituencies, to take areas out of one county and put them into another, is the type of situation that makes gerrymandering more feasible than the situation we were trying to have established, where there would be a provision written into the Constitution requiring the Government to adhere as closely as possible to existing county boundaries in revising constituencies. That is the position we tried to establish. The Opposition Parties took the opposite view and they succeeded in getting the people to take the same view; and because of the decision that was taken in October last year this Bill has to be brought in and this type of operation must be carried out.
It is incorrect for Deputy Lyons or Deputy Fitzpatrick or Deputy L'Estrange to say that it is not necessary to reduce the representation of County Mayo from seven seats to six seats. This does not result from any desire on the part of the Fianna Fáil Party to take seats from the west of Ireland and transfer them to Dublin. It resulted from the population figures for Mayo in the Census Report of 1966. The population was 115,547 and if, as Fine Gael say should be done, Mayo should retain its present representation of seven seats that would give a population of 16,507 per Deputy but the minimum allowable per Deputy is 19,027. On the basis of six seats in County Mayo the population per Deputy is 19,268. Deputy L'Estrange knows he is quite wrong in saying that all that the people decided in the referendum in October last was to retain the system of election by proportional representation. They also decided, in a completely separate decision, to perpetuate the decision of the High Court in regard to the interpretation of the Constitution, which was obtained from the court by the Fine Gael Party. The decision was that there must be strict equality of population per Deputy irrespective of such considerations as we believed to be practical considerations, such as the existence of county boundaries. Deputy Lyons says if there had been a proposal to get rid of this requirement to ignore the existence of county boundaries in order to have strict equality as between one constituency and another per Deputy and if that had been put to the people as a separate issue they would have supported and accepted it. There was a separate proposal put before the people and the people decided, at the behest of the Opposition Parties, for the type of change which we are proposing to have made. I have admitted on a number of occasions that there is, practically, an infinite number of ways in which this operation could be carried out. Deputy Hogan and Deputy Fitzgerald have put forward some not quite complete alternatives that differ from one another and from the proposal we have before the House at the present time. There are many other alternatives. Deputies have suggested different arrangements for different areas of the country. There is not any limit to the number of possible alternatives. We believe our proposals are the fairest and, taking everything into account, that they make the least disturbance of the existing constituency arrangements in the country.
I must take up the Minister on his last words. There are many alternatives, we all agree. The Minister says his proposals are the fairest. I want to say that it is the unfairest system of all that could be devised. The Minister says it makes the least possible disturbance. Does he understand the meaning of the words in the English language? We do not need the Oxford Dictionary on this occasion. The Minister's proposals envisage chopping and changing 13 county boundaries, involving the displacement of 120,000 people. Other proposals have been made by Deputy Hogan and his proposals require only the changing of something like six constituencies and the displacement of only 20,000 people. Deputy Garret FitzGerald has submitted other proposals.
There is no such Deputy in the Dáil.
Senator Garret FitzGerald. He will be here before long. Coming events cast their shadows.
Did he get a constituency?
If the Minister had his way, no Fine Gael man would get a constituency. We will be the next Government, despite this Bill. The Minister is as far out as he was before the referendum when he was forecasting victory by a large majority.
Did we not win the three by-elections?
Senator Garret FitzGerald has submitted a scheme which envisages only nine changes of boundaries and the displacement of about 50,000 to 60,000 people. How can the Minister for Local Government have the effrontery and the arrogance to come in here and tell us that, while there are many alternatives, his is the fairest and will make the least disturbance of people? Have words lost their meaning? Who does the Minister think he is trying to fool in this country? The Irish people have found him out. That has been proved in the referendum and will be proved again at the next general election when he has to face the people.
The Minister for Local Government stated that Fine Gael stated that there should be seven seats in Mayo. I gave the population of Mayo at the present time as 115,547. The Minister stated that we were looking for something that could not happen and that it would require another 19,000 or 20,000 of population. The Minister forgot to get the number of people that were there ten years ago. There were 113,152 people in Mayo ten years ago. Since then, the dead hand of the Government has driven 17,505 out of Mayo. Five years earlier the population of Mayo was almost 140,000. There could still be seven Deputies representing the people of County Mayo if it were not for the maladministration and bad government which have driven the people out of Mayo and out of the west of Ireland despite the promises made to the people in the past.
The Minister also stated that the people, at the behest of the Opposition Parties, defeated the Government's proposal. In a free democracy, the people have the right to vote on any Government proposal. So far as we on this side of the House are concerned we are proud to say that we were in the vanguard in defeating the Government's proposal and we would be proud at any time in the future to stand up for the rights and freedom of the Irish people and to prevent them being walked upon by an arrogant, dictatorial Government or an arrogant dictator.
The question of what actually constitutes a disturbance of population electorally is one that can be argued. What I said was that taking into account all the practical considerations of convenient areas, of representation et cetera I believed the proposals I put forward were the fairest ones and the ones that involved the least disturbance of the existing constituency arrangement. Whether when some of the population have to be transferred from one constituency to another that should be minimised or not is a question that has been raised before. The Opposition, after arguing earlier that these things were of no importance whatsoever, now apparently argue that where such a transfer has to take place the objective should be to transfer the absolute minimum number of people. There is the other point of view, that if that is done the transferred community will form an insignificant part of the constituency into which they are transferred whereas, on the other hand, if a substantial number are incorporated in the new constituency they will form a significant proportion of the electorate and will therefore command the attention of all candidates in the constituency. That, of course, is a matter of opinion.
There is also the question as to whether it would, in fact, be complying with the Constitution merely to aim at reaching the minimum population per Deputy that is permissible in individual constituencies which require a transfer of population in order to make them up to the number required for a certain number of Deputies. The requirement in the Constitution is in fact, to aim at equality of population per Deputy. The Fine Gael argument now appears to be that it would be permissible, in making an adjustment as between two counties, to aim at having the minimum population per Deputy in one even if that resulted in having the maximum population per Deputy in the adjoining one.
I thoroughly agree that the people have the right to decide on these matters and that is just what the people have done. The people have decided that it is not permissible to take account of the existence of county boundaries except to the extent of the five per cent which is assumed to be permissible under the Budd judgment and just as the people had the right to do this the Government are right, and are, in fact, required, to accept this decision when it is made. It is because that decision has been made that this Bill has to come before the House and that it has to do these many objectionable things in many different parts of the country.
(South Tipperary): The Minister has stated that he is doing just what the people under our guidance, under our propaganda, under our advice, decided. I submit that he is not exactly doing that. The people voted for two things—to perpetuate PR under one amendment and in the other amendment I think they were largely guided by the fact that they wanted to abolish any danger of gross gerrymander.
We cannot have a further discussion on this point which has been debated and resolved by the Dáil. We are discussing the constituencies of Mayo.
(South Tipperary): In this constituency the Minister is not doing what the people wanted. He is only doing half of what the people wanted. PR is being retained but the principle of gerrymandering, in so far as the Budd judgment will allow, is being followed by the Minister. He is gerrymandering up to the limit allowed.
I would put a simple question to the Minister: conceding his point that Mayo, which we are now discussing, would not be entitled to seven seats, particularly when the question of Ballaghaderreen had to be considered— and I readily concede that point to him—Mayo up to now had a constituency of North Mayo and a constituency of South Mayo and the boundary line was from east to west. I would ask him why is that boundary line altered now to from north to south. What is a complete reversal of the arrangement of the two constituencies in Mayo being determined on?
I have not been here for the full debate on the question of Mayo but as far as I know the Minister has given no reason why the initial method of dividing Mayo into north and south has been departed from. He has given an adequate reason as to why the number of seats was reduced from seven to six but why was it necessary to carry that further and alter the arrangement so that instead of there being a North Mayo and a South Mayo constituency there will be an East Mayo and a West Mayo constituency? It has been argued from this side of the House that the reason is to separate two Ministers so that they would not be fighting against each other and drawing from the same votes. Is there any other geographical reason or any special reason why this departure was decided on by the Minister? Perhaps he would like to answer that question?
Deputy Hogan alleges that this is gerrymandering in so far as the Budd decision allowed it to be done. The result of the proposal that I am putting before the House is that the total population in East Mayo will be 57,997, giving a population per Deputy of 19,332, while the total population of West Mayo will be 57,550, giving a total population per Deputy of 19,183. I think those two figures of 19,332 and 19,183 would be described by any reasonable person as being as nearly equal as is practicable in the circumstances. How Deputy Hogan can allege that this constitutes gerrymandering to the maximum possible extent I just do not know.
I have, of course, already explained why it was that the present distribution of population in Mayo seemed to me, at any rate, to require an alteration of the boundary somewhat similar to what is, in fact, proposed. The fact that Deputy Hogan was not in the House when this was explained does not require me to repeat the explanation every time a new Fine Gael Deputy comes into the House. They come and go here every half hour and we could go on for ever if we had to repeat the arguments over and again for each Deputy according as he came into the House. I can only suggest to Deputy Hogan that he should read in the Official Report the reason why it appeared to me that this was the only practical way to do what he failed to do despite all his industry in drawing up alternative schemes of constituencies, that is, to divide Mayo into two three-seat constituencies. Deputy Hogan did not attempt that task and I invite him to do so.
Question put and declared carried.
WEST MAYO.
Question, "That the entry relating to the constituency of West Mayo stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
MEATH.
During the discussion on the entry relating to the proposed constituency of Kildare, I indicated that I was prepared to accept amendments Nos. 22, 24 and 25 in the name of Deputy Sweetman. These amendments propose to transfer parts of Cloncurry and Donadea District Electoral Divisions and all of Lullymore District Electoral Division from the proposed Meath constituency to Kildare constituency. An anomaly arises in relation to amendment No. 24. If the amendment were pased as it stands, the townland of Kilnamoragh North would remain part of the proposed Meath constituency but would be isolated from the rest of that constituency. If the Deputy were prepared to include the townland of Kilnamoragh North, which has a population of nine, with the other townlands mentioned in amendment No. 24 and which he proposed should be transferred from the proposed constituency of Meath to Kildare, I could accept the amendment as so amended, in addition to amendments Nos. 22 and 25.
We must come to the amendment before we seek to amend it.
These amendments have been agreed to and now they need only to be moved formally.
There is the question of the anomaly in relation to amendment No. 24.
(South Tipperary): I move amendment No. 22:
In page 12, in the second column of the entry relating to Meath, after "Cloncurry" to insert "(excluding the townlands of Ballycannon, Ballycahan, Killickaweeny and Pitchfordstown)".
Amendment agreed to.
Amendment No. 23 not moved.
(South Tipperary): I move amendment No. 24:
In page 12, in the second column of the entry relating to Meath, after "Donadea" to insert "(other than the townlands of Kilnamoragh South, Kilmurry, Donadea, Donadea Demesne and Dumurraghill)".
I am proposing that the townlands of Kilnamoragh North be added.
May the Minister do that now or should he do it on the next Stage?
He may move an amendment to the amendment at this Stage and point out where the amendment occurs.
I propose:
Before the words "Kilnamoragh South" to insert "Kilnamoragh North".
Amendment, as amended, agreed to:
(South Tipperary): I move amendment No. 25.
In page 12, in the second column of the entry relating to Meath, to delete "Lullymore".
Amendment agreed to.
Amendment No. 25A; which I shall be moving at a later stage, reads:
In page 12, in the second column of the entry relating to Monaghan, to delete:—"Castletown, Rathkenny, in the former Rural District of Navan”.
This relates to two electoral divisions in the electoral area of Navan. It is proposed to put portion of the electoral area of Kells into Cavan and portion into Monaghan together with part of the Slane area. They are the only two areas to be disturbed in the Navan district. The people there live fairly centrally in County Meath. Some of them live as near as four miles to Navan and some of them live eight miles from Navan. It is their town, it is the centre where they meet their representatives as a rule. The Minister for Defence lives there as well as Deputy James Tully and I. It is the shopping centre for these people. They meet us there and tell us if they have difficulties or grievances with Departments of State and they ask us to deal with them for them. These people should not be deprived of the service of their public representatives who live so close to them.
The people I am speaking about are far removed from Monaghan. As we all know, the representatives in Monaghan live far to the north of the county and are 40 miles removed from the people concerned. It would be very strange if a neighbour of the Minister for Defence met him in the streets of Navan and asked him to help in some grievance with the Department of Agriculture or the Department of Local Government or any other Department and that the Minister for Defence should say: "You should bring that matter to the notice of the Deputy for your constituency, who is the Deputy for Monaghan." These people will be very pleased and thankful to the Minister for Local Government if they are left in the constituency in which they have been residing.
The Minister has agreed to slight adjustments on the other side of the constituency of Meath with regard to that portion of Kildare which was being brought in. The number of people moved back into Kildare is very small. The number of people I am asking the Minister to leave in Meath is also very small. It would not interfere very much with the national average of either the constituency of Monaghan or the constituency of Meath. It is only fair that I, as a public representative, should table this amendment and ask the Minister to agree to leaving these people in the heart of County Meath where they feel they belong.
Is the Minister accepting the amendment?
I should like, first of all, just to say what is involved. The population it is proposed to move from the proposed constituency of Monaghan to the proposed constituency of Meath is 1,295. The present population of the proposed constituency of Meath, as reduced by Deputy Sweetman's amendment, is 60,282; that is 20,094 per Deputy. It has been reduced from that to 59,883, which is 19,661 per Deputy. This will increase it again to 61,187, which is 20,393 per Deputy. That will make it more comparable with the populations of Kildare and Louth, which are 61,762 and 61,926 respectively, but it will have the opposite effect in so far as Monaghan is concerned. The population there will be reduced from 59,761—19,917 per Deputy—to 58,456, which is 19,485 per Deputy. The only argument that applies is the argument applicable in the case of Kildare and Meath. The overall result will be to increase the disparity of population per Deputy as between these five counties. The result of the change will be that in Monaghan you will have 19,485 per Deputy, in Cavan 19,893, both of which are below the national average, in Meath you will have 20,393, Louth 20,642 and Kildare 20,587, all of which are above the national average of population per Deputy. That will be the result. If, however, Deputies think it is acceptable to have some constituencies lower than the national average and others higher than the national average, I have no reason to object. I would be prepared to accept these amendments.
If we had our way we would naturally try to keep the whole of Meath together. As I said on a previous section dealing with Cavan, there has been unnecessary butchering in the Meath constituency. Not alone did the Minister cut a piece off, but he cut pieces off and added pieces from one end of the county to the other. The Minister must realise there is great resentment in Meath because of his action. Deputy Farrelly said the people would be pleased if the Minister did what he suggests. I do not think anything the Minister does now will please them. As public representatives, naturally we would be pleased to see that portion of Meath at least put back into Meath constituency. With regard to disparity, we have no objection to Monaghan having a smaller number per Deputy than the national average. The Minister may not understand this, but Monaghan is a very scattered area compared with the compactness of Meath. In Meath we have good, level roads. The roads in Monaghan are not so good. A great many of the people there live off the road and, if they have a small advantage from the point of view of the number per Deputy, we would certainly not be opposed to that. It is of interest to note that some of the other counties have quite a substantial advantage.
There are seven of them below.
I can see no reason why the Minister should not allow this. Deputy Farrelly's argument was very sound. The two electoral divisions concerned are in Navan area. It is bad enough trying to explain to people when a whole electoral area is moved, but when you take a particular area, such as Navan, and move it on its own it makes the whole thing that much more difficult. I, as representative of Slane area, will still be servicing portion of Monaghan. Deputy Farrelly, as a representative for Kells area, will have his council area in Monaghan, in Cavan and in Meath. The Minister will agree that it is ridiculous to create that kind of situation. If, in addition to that, councillors from Navan area have portion of their area in Monaghan, it makes the thing even more ridiculous still. I suppose we must be thankful for small mercies. This is a very small mercy. I ask the Minister to accept the proposal. I believe there will be no complaint from the people in the area. Many of us, including the Minister for Defence, would like to see the whole area back again in Meath. The Minister for Local Government says that cannot be done. His voting majority here will sustain him in his opinion, but I would ask the Minister to accept this.
As I indicated, I am prepared to accept this, but I am not prepared to accept the allegations made by Deputy Tully that there is any unnecessary butchering. I would be very surprised if there was not some resentment on the part of the people in regard to what has to be done. It was because we believed people would resent this type of thing that we tried to avoid having to do it. We asked the people to give us permission to avoid doing this kind of thing by amending the Constitution. Deputy Tully now says he would like to keep County Meath as a unit. He knows this is not permissible. He knows that both he and his colleagues in Fine Gael campaigned here and throughout the county to ensure it would not be possible to keep County Meath as an entity, except by the addition of population from somewhere else. In so far as County Meath is concerned, it was inevitable that there would have to be a transfer of population either from Meath or to Meath or, as I demonstrated on Second Reading, a combination of a number of counties. These were the only ways in which Meath could be kept intact.
The considerations with regard to the scattered nature of County Monaghan which Deputy Tully now finds to be so relevant were ruled by the people in the referendum held on 16th October last year to be irrelevant considerations. In fact, I know that Deputy Fitzpatrick is only waiting for the opportunity to suggest that not alone is County Monaghan not too scattered a constituency but that it should be joined with County Cavan to form one single constituency and the mere addition of a small portion of County Meath to County Monaghan does not, I think, create such a scattered constituency as would the addition of County Cavan to it.
I agree with Deputy Tully that it is a ridiculous situation that he as the representative of the Slane electoral area has to service part of what will now be the Monaghan constituency and that Deputy Farrelly as the representative of the Kells electoral area will have to service what will now be part of the Cavan constituency but this is a situation which we on this side of the House tried to avoid and which the Opposition insisted upon.
Might I make a comment in reply to what the Minister has just said? The Minister thinks if he keeps repeating a lie often enough it will be believed.
A Ceann Comhairle, is it in order for Deputy Tully to allege this?
I withdraw the word "lie". The Minister thinks that if he keeps repeating a terminological inexactitude often enough the people will believe it. The Minister knows quite well that if what his Government and he himself wanted to get away with in the referenda had been carried through, not alone would they have butchered Meath and every other county as badly as is now proposed but would have butchered them even further because, as the Minister knows quite well, there are not an exact number in the constituencies. What would the Minister have done with the number that would be over in each constituency? I suggest that the Minister would have cut a little bit off here and there and the knife which he was sharpening would have been used all over the place.
It is utterly stupid for an intelligent man like the Minister for Local Government to keep repeating this story about the Government wanting to save the people from themselves, when a former Leader of the Fianna Fáil Party is on record as saying that the people of Ireland had no right to do wrong, that is, when they voted against them. That is one thing the Minister cannot get away with. If the Government had got away with what they were trying to do in the referenda the position would be much worse than it is now.
With regard to the servicing of Monaghan or any other constituency, would the Minister tell me what exactly he means by "trying to keep compact constituencies"? A constituency that it is easy to deal with is one where the representatives are easily available. When the Minister talks of Monaghan, for instance, where one of the representatives is living in Monaghan town, one in Highfield Road, Rathgar and one in Ballaghaderreen, County Roscommon, does he know what he is talking about? Will he take his own Front Bench and consider where they represent and where they live? Those representing Clare and Cork City live in Dublin. The whole situation has become rather ridiculous. We are prepared to talk reasonably to the Minister. He need not try to put it across on Members of the House who are too used to listening to the Minister making stupid comments. Perhaps they are not so stupid; he has method in making them. He may get away with it when talking to cumainn members outside the House who do not know the facts as well as we do. The plain fact is that Fianna Fáil attempted to cut the country into little bits but, as they did not get away with that, have now cut the country into big bits.
The Minister said that Deputy Fitzpatrick was only waiting for the opportunity to comment on the question of how Monaghan could be serviced. I do not know if the Minister realises that two of the present Cavan representatives live closer to the constituency of Monaghan than do two of the Monaghan representatives. Let him work that one out for himself. It would be the easiest thing in the world to put Cavan and Monaghan together and with the number added to the present number it would still be possible to service it because there are people who believe in living in Cavan and probably after the next election there will be people who will believe in living in Monaghan too.
We want to do the best we can to have the constituency of County Meath kept together. There are other proposals on foot at the present time which may follow the Minister's line to try to cut another slice off, but that is another day's work.
The point I made on Second Reading and that I should like to make again, with regard to Cavan, is that it would have been very easy for the Minister, if he had the goodwill, to take one piece off Meath and add it to Louth or to take one piece off Louth and add it to Meath. That is all he would have to do. The Minister would then have four counties without any change or break-up at all but, for reasons of his own, the Minister did not do that and he cannot expect us to swallow the story that it was in the interests of the people living there that he did the slicing up.
(Cavan): A Cheann Comhairle, are we on Meath or Monaghan?
We are discussing Deputy Farrelly's amendment No. 25a.
Deputy Tully had no reason for getting up except to make the accusation, which he later partially withdrew, that I was a liar. The Deputy knows that what I have said is a fact. He knows that there was before the people on 16th October a proposal which not only would make it unnecessary to do this but which would make it illegal to do this — a proposal that there be a requirement in the Constitution to adhere to county boundaries in so far as it was possible to do so within a limit of one-sixth deviation from the national average of population per Deputy. I accept that Deputy Tully paid very little attention to the actual content of the two constitutional Amendments that we were proposing but that is what was in the proposals. Deputy Tully helped to ensure that we would not be permitted to adhere to county boundaries if adhering to them involved anything more than a minimum deviation from the national average of population per Deputy.
No unsubstantiated accusation of my being a liar will change the fact that that was what we asked the Dáil to pass in the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill and that is what we asked the people to enact by their votes on 16th October. The decision of the people which was made—I think the Parties opposite will agree — on their advice, was to the effect that it would not be permissible to exercise anything more than a deviation of five per cent from the national average of population per Deputy in order to adhere to county boundaries. Therefore, when Deputy Tully states that he would like to do everything possible to keep County Meath together, he is saying what he knows is untrue because he has already ensured that it is not permissible under the Constitution to keep County Meath together, as he now says he would like to do. Deputy Tully says that all that was required was a simple transfer between County Meath and County Louth and the joining together of Counties Cavan and Monaghan.
That is quite true. It is one of the many possible solutions for those four counties. I do not think a solution that would involve joining those two scattered counties of Monaghan and Cavan together—and that was not my word; either Deputy Farrelly or Deputy Tully introduced the word "scattered"; I do not remember which—would be a desirable solution. Deputy Tully might consider that it would be desirable. He went on record as saying that such an arrangement would suit him down to the ground.
Down to the ground.
He is at least consistent in that on the proposal to amend the Constitution he advocated the transfer of an area of County Meath to County Louth.
I challenge the Minister to do it.
That is one possible solution to this. It is one of the many ways in which it could be dealt with, but what the Deputy forgets is that there are more than four counties involved. There are five counties involved, and the solution he is proposing now ignores the problem existing in County Kildare. The Government's proposal deals with the five counties of Cavan, Monaghan, Louth, Meath and Kildare.
One of the things which will prove the Minister wrong is that the national average is something around 12,000.
That just shows you.
It is 12,000.
It is not.
If there are 33,000 or 34,000 voters in Meath how would he get three constituencies into it no matter which way he used, whether he sliced a bit off from somewhere else or added a bit on. It was pure venom and spite which made the Minister take the action he took.
In case I might forget to contradict that last ridiculous statement, the national average is not 12,000. It is 20,028.
It is not.
Take the census. If Deputy Tully cannot divide the total population by 144, I am sure he will find someone in his Party who can.
We are not talking about the population. It is the national average of voters, not the population.
I do not know if the resources of the Labour Party extend to a copy of the Constitution. If they do, I advise Deputy Tully, before he comes in here and makes a fool of himself, to get a copy of the Constitution and read it. He will see that it is the population, not the voters. The voters are irrelevant. The proposal did not contain any reference to the voters. It referred to the present provisions of the Constitution and proposed that for these practical purposes it should be permissible to exercise a deviation from the national average of population per Deputy of one-sixth. I do not know what Deputy Tully is arguing about or whether he agrees. He does not seem to know.
I have been looking after myself for a good while across the floor from the Minister and will continue to do so. He should not worry about me. He will have enough worries after the next election.
I am prepared to accept Deputy Farrelly's amendment. I do not know if Deputy Tully is.
Question proposed: "That the entry, as amended, relating to the constituency of Meath stand part of the Schedule."
(South Tipperary): The position here is that the Minister proposes to establish Meath as a three-seat constituency, and he does this by means of a tremendous travesty of local authority boundaries. In this discussion it is impossible to discuss one constituency as a unit. One must take in a group of constituencies. The Minister, in dealing with this constituency and taking into consideration the neighbouring counties of Louth and Kildare, has given a total transfer of population from Meath to Cavan of 5,656 and from Meath to Monaghan of 6,426. It also involves him in a transfer from Louth to Monaghan of 7,532 and from Kildare to Meath of 5,041. That is a total transfer of population outside the local authority boundaries in these four counties of 24,655. That is a gross breach of county boundaries or local authority boundaries, whichever way you like to describe them.
I argue that Meath could be treated as a four-seater or a three-seater. That would involve a much smaller transfer of population than what the Minister is proposing to do. If Meath is treated as a four-seater, Louth and Kildare may become three-seaters by both giving some transfers to Louth. If Louth is treated as a four-seater, Meath becomes a three-seater by transfer to Louth and, then, Kildare being, so to speak, a three-and-a-half-seater, must be joined to Carlow to form a fiveseater, leaving Kilkenny as a three-seater. This gives a rather elongated constituency stretching from New Ross to Kilcock but it does allow the reintegration of 4,398 persons from Carlow-Kilkenny to Wexford. There was such a constituency at one time. The latter combination gives a better picture in terms of population transfer.
Louth has a population of 69,519. It takes 76,112 minimum to 84,112 maximum to form a four-seater. Thus Louth has a deficit of 6,593 minimum to 14,593 maximum as a four-seater. Meath has a population of 67,323. It takes from 57,084 minimum to 63,084 maximum to form a three-seater. So Meath has a surplus of 4,239 minimum to 10,239 maximum as a three-seater. Possible population transfers which I am suggesting to the Minister from Meath to Louth would be on the following lines: from Grangegeeth, Mellifont, St. Mary's, Julianstown and Stamullen, which would give a transfer of 6,644. Alternative transfers would be St. Mary's, Julianstown, Stamullen and Ardcath, which would give a transfer of 6,768. The result would be, in the first instance, 76,163 for Louth and, in the second instance, 76,286 for Louth and for Meath, in the first instance, 60,679 and, in the second instance, 60,556.
As a four-seater needs from 76,112 to 84,112 and a three-seater needs from 57,084 to 63,084, this arrangement would allow for Louth as a four-seater and Meath as a three-seater. With regard to Carlow-Kildare, Carlow has a population of 33,593 and Kildare has a population of 66,404. That gives a total of 99,997. The average for a five-seater is 100,140. This combination meets the requirements for a fiveseater and allows for the return of the sequestrated 4,398 persons to Wexford. Kilkenny with a population of 60,463 stands as a three-seater. That is one arrangement I suggest to the Minister leaving Meath as a three-seater and this would give a total population transfer outside the constituency boundaries of 6,640 as against his figure of 24,655.
Deputy after Deputy on the Opposition benches gets up now and complains about what Deputy Hogan refers to as local authority boundaries. I can only repeat that this is exactly what we tried to avoid. This is exactly what we regarded as objectionable. We regarded it as being objectionable ourselves and we believed from reading the contributions made by Opposition Deputies in 1961 on the Electoral Bill that they also regarded it as objectionable. However, that is where we made the mistake. We made the mistake of trying to interpret the minds of the Opposition when we should have appreciated that they make up their minds in regard to every matter purely on the basis of opposing anything suggested by Fianna Fáil. We tried to bring a position about where it would be permissible to avoid this breaching of administrative boundaries but Deputy Hogan does not agree. Neither does Deputy Tully and the Labour Party agree and the people do not agree.
Therefore, we are compelled to perform this sort of operation which we find just as objectionable as do any other Deputies. The only thing about it is that we are sincere and we have demonstrated our sincerity by asking the people to amend the Constitution so as to make this no longer necessary. Deputy Hogan maintains that the transfer of population involved in what is proposed is excessive. But in so far as the population per Deputy in the five counties is concerned, it is clear when that population is examined, that we could hardly have transferred any smaller numbers.
The resultant situation in Monaghan is that there will be a population of 19,485 per Deputy which is very close to the minimum permissible in accordance with the existing constitutional provision. In Cavan, the population per Deputy will be 19,893, in Meath it will be 20,393, which is above the national average but still within what we believe would be the permissible limits. In Louth it will be 20,642 and in Kildare it will be 20,587.
It is quite clear, therefore, that there has not been an excessive transfer of population in the cases of these five counties. I have never suggested that the alternative suggestions put forward by Deputy Hogan were not possible. What I have said is that I believe that they are more undesirable solutions of the problem than ours and I have admitted that this is purely a matter of opinion. Our opinion is that the proposal we put forward is the least objectionable. Deputy Hogan does not agree. He says that we could have solved this by making Meath a four-seat constituency with a transfer of population from Louth or by making Louth a four-seat constituency with a transfer of population from Meath, this involving the joining together of the counties of Kildare and Carlow and Counties Cavan and Monaghan. I have already said on a number of occasions that this is a possible solution to the problem, but I do not think that the formation of two constituencies like Carlow and Kildare and Cavan and Monaghan would be as desirable a solution as the one that we are putting forward.
I dispute Deputy Hogan's figures with regard to the population disrupted because, of course, he has conveniently ignored what is involved in uprooting the population of Carlow from the present constituency and creating a new constituency of Carlow-Kildare. He has ignored what is involved in the ridiculous suggestion of joining what either Deputy Tully or Deputy Farrelly referred to as the "scattered" constituencies of Monaghan and Cavan. The populations involved in those two operations would have to be considered in the same way as the disruptions that are involved in the proposals before the House.
(South Tipperary): The Minister ignores the fact of the tremendous difference in population transfers as regards the suggestion that I have put to him and the one that he has formulated. I mentioned that in his transfers he had a total population transfer of 24,655; but in the suggestion I made to have Meath a three-seater and to reconstitute Carlow-Kildare as a five-seater, there would also be the transfer of 4,398 persons back into Wexford and that, added to the 24,655, would give the figure that he is giving of 29,000. Those 29,000 people can be put back into their own counties for a displacement of 6,640. The Minister's figure is five times mine. If that is not gerrymandering then I do not understand the meaning of the word.
The Minister could also solve the matter, if he has objections to Carlow-Kildare, by making Meath a fourseater. Meath has a population of 67,323 and its requirement for a fourseater would be a minimum of 76,112 or 84,112 maximum. There is just a deficit of 8,487 minimum to 16,789 maximum. But Louth with a population of 69,519 must, if treated as a three-seater, transfer out either a minimum of 6,425 to a maximum of 12,435, while Kildare with a county population of 66,404 must, if treated as a three-seater, transfer out a minimum of 3,202 to a maximum of 9,320.
A suggested arrangement for the Minister would be from Louth to Meath the district electoral divisions of Clonkeen, 446; Tallanstown 723; Ardee rural 1,897; Ardee urban 2,919; and Collon 754, making a total of 6,739. From Kildare to Meath the district electoral divisions of Ballynadromnee, 383; Dunfirth, 321; Kilrainy, 360; Cloncurry, 716; Kilcock, 1,140; Droichead, 201; and Carrick, 228. That is a total of 3,349.
The total transfer there, and that is less successful from the point of view of population transfers than the other suggestion, would be 10,088 which is still very much lower than the figure of 24,655 envisaged by the Minister; or, if we have to add the population that might go back to Wexford, 29,053.
I have not ignored the transfer of any population in any figures I gave. Deputy Hogan, on the contrary, has ignored what is involved in the transfer of the population of County Carlow and County Monaghan. He is arguing in favour of a constituency comprised of a part of Louth, the County of Meath and part of the County of Kildare. This would be an even more objectionable solution to the problem than anything he has suggested so far and I am tempted to enquire whether in putting forward this arrangement he speaks with the authority of Deputy Sweetman and Deputy Donegan or is this another case similar to Deputy Lyons's suggestion in regard to County Mayo: when I asked if he spoke for the Fine Gael Party, the Fine Gael Whip said: "He speaks for the Fine Gael Party in so far as the constituency of South Mayo is concerned", presumably just as Deputy Belton spoke for Fine Gael only in so far as Dublin is concerned.
(Cavan): The Fianna Fáil Party are not allowed to speak at all.
Nobody else was prepared to take responsibility for their suggestion that there should be yet another seat taken from the rural part of the country and added to the Dublin area; so I am sure Deputy Hogan speaks for Fine Gael only in so far as the constituency of South Tipperary is concerned and possibly some time next week or some time in the future, depending on the success or failure of the attempt to delay the passage of the Bill by the Fine Gael Party, we may eventually come to discuss that constituency.
(Cavan): The Minister has protested loudly that he has been consistent about county boundaries and that he and his Party have been consistent about county boundaries in the referendum debate and in this debate. Neither Fine Gael nor the people of the country were prepared to risk democracy, as we understand it and have understood it for a considerable time, for county boundaries as such. I think that can be interpreted as the people's decision and the arguments put forward here amounted to that. However, one would have thought that having regard to the decision of the Chief Justice in 1961 and having regard to the arguments put forward by the Minister on the Electoral Bill and the advice of the Taoiseach to the people, the Minister would have been consistent and that when he set out to draft this Bill, he would, as far as possible, have preserved county boundaries and that, more important still, he would have amalgamated like with like, amalgamated one constituency with another on the basis of the association of those constituencies with each other in the past.
I want to make it perfectly clear that in anything I have to say on the constituency of Meath as it affects the constituency of Monaghan and the constituency of Cavan, I have no personal axe to grind. I represent Cavan here and I am quite happy with the constituency of Cavan as it stands. I will be quite happy to contest and represent the constituency of Cavan and Monaghan, and I welcome the portion of Meath that has been thrown into Cavan. I am prepared to contest that constituency, if the Minister, by his majority here, insists on it, and I shall do my best to represent the people of Cavan.
I have a feeling, however, that the people of Meath would prefer not to be sent into Cavan and that the other portion of Meath would prefer not to be sent into Monaghan. That is what I am objecting to in this Bill. On these constituencies I am protesting not as a Deputy who is getting an electorate he does not want or as a Deputy who says his constituency has been treated to his disadvantage—I am quite happy with it, as I have said; I would also be quite happy with Monaghan and Cavan or with Cavan alone—but as one who thinks it is unreasonable to put approximately 5,000 people out of Meath into Monaghan and to put another approximately 5,000 people out of Meath into Cavan.
Let us have a reasonable look at this situation. The people of Meath have nothing in common with the people of Cavan. Their business or social activities do not normally bring them into contact with Cavan. People from the Meath border, if they set out for a big town, or go out on social or sporting or, indeed, business activities, naturally gravitate towards Dublin, towards Dundalk, towards Drogheda, towards the sea. Yet, these people are being sent into Cavan. If there were no alternative to that and if the decision of the people in the referendum had decreed that the Minister must do that in order to arrange a constituency, then, of course, the Minister would be justified in what he is doing.
In the referendum debate I said I did not regard—and I do not regard —county boundaries as sacrosanct or as being something that could not be breached in any circumstances. For example, as I said then, I would not hold on to county boundaries in exchange for democracy; I would not hold on to county boundaries at the expense of giving the Minister and his Party the right to create here an undemocratic, one-Party State. When the Minister came to this Bill he should not have proceeded in a fit of temper or in the mood of saying to the electorate: "I will show you. You will pay for your rejection of my proposals." He should have proceeded camly and in a reasonable manner and drawn up reasonable constituencies. I have shown that the people of Meath who are coming into Monaghan have nothing in common with the constituency of Monaghan for the simple reason that they are a different type of farmers. They are in the province of Leinster. They naturally move over towards the sea at Bettystown and to the towns of Dundalk and Drogheda if they are going on social outings. If they are going on business they are likely to come towards Dublin. The people of Meath who are coming into Cavan are in the very same position. They would never come down to Cavan except perhaps for a football match between the two counties. I can tell you that there would be keener rivalry between Meath and Cavan than between Cavan and Kerry or Cavan and Limerick, if Limerick had a football team.
They have. They beat Kerry once.
(Cavan): They have a very good hurling team. The position is that Louth and Meath as neighbouring counties come in contact with each other quite frequently. As a matter of fact, up around Drogheda one would have the greatest difficulty in deciding whether he was in Meath or in Louth. There is quite a thickly populated area extending practically into the port of Drogheda that is in County Meath. The seaside resorts of Bettystown and Laytown are in County Meath but Louth people regard them more or less as their own. This, I think, demonstrates quite clearly that there is a growing association between Meath and Louth, that the people there are, in fact, the same type of people, who associate in business, and whose recreation brings them into close contact with each other.
I am not advocating, for personal reasons, a joint constituency of Monaghan and Cavan but let us not have any secret about the fact that I am a Monaghan man. That goes a long way to proving my argument and seems to demonstrate that Monaghan and Cavan are associated closely enough and that Monaghan people are not regarded as strangers in Cavan. Monaghan and Cavan have operated a joint health board for much longer than I remember. That brings them into contact with each other. The people are, by and large, the same type of small farmers. Anybody knows that when potatoes were potatoes Monaghan and Cavan practically supplied the Dublin market with table potatoes. Both counties go in for pig rearing on a large scale. They have much more in common than either would have with Meath or Louth.
The Minister refers to the constituency of Monaghan and Cavan as a long, unwieldy, unmanageable constituency.
I said "monstrosity".
(Cavan): If the Minister thinks of any more objectionable term, it will probably be used. I am sure that the Minister appreciates that he does not represent all his constituents.
I certainly do.
(Cavan): I know the Minister does his best. I am sure Deputy Burke helps.
We work in harmony.
(Cavan): He would object to the Minister's objection more—if he said that Deputy Burke could look after some matter——
It is slander on my gracious colleague.
The Minister got away from him in case he would lead him in the poll.
(Cavan): I would be interested to know if the Taoiseach would pass something on to the Minister for Local Government or to his gracious colleague, Deputy Burke, or to Deputy Foley.
He would not pass it to the Minister for Local Government.
(Cavan): Somebody wrote to the Taoiseach about a little problem in Louth and today he referred it to the Minister for Lands. Presumably that was in the area of Louth within the jurisdiction of the Minister for Lands. Presumably if it were in Cooley he would have passed it on to the Tánaiste. That seems to me to give substance to my argument that you have in each constituency people who represent certain areas, by and large. I know constitutionally and electorally, that each Deputy elected for a constituency represents people from every limit and for every inch of the territory. As Deputy James Tully pointed out, at present Monaghan seems to be getting good representation from Highfield Road and from Ballaghaderreen.
The Minister might be surprised to hear that Monaghan and Cavan are one constituency at the moment and that the three Cavan Deputies are still in the Dáil. I live about eight miles from the Monaghan border. Deputy John Tully lives five or six miles from the Monaghan border and Deputy Paddy Smith lives within a mile of the Monaghan border. I am quite happy with the constituency of Cavan. I am not crying out for Monaghan and Cavan but I am protesting here on behalf of the people of Meath who are being quite unnecessarily driven out of their county and out of their province into another county and another province. I have good reason to believe that the deciding factor which influenced the Minister in arranging these constituencies was that he wanted to be absolutely certain he would deny a closely-knit Protestant community in Monaghan and Cavan of a quota.
The Minister has made the point on numerous occasions that when a group of people are being put out of one constituency into another a sizeable group should be put out. I say that when there are a goodly number of a Protestant community in a constituency of Monaghan and Cavan it would not be an unreasonable thing to leave a quota of their votes together if they chose to use them. Thinking within the Fianna Fáil Party would seem to agree with that at one level because they have honoured Senator John Copeland Cole by nominating him to Seanad Éireann. Why do they not go the whole way and leave this quota of Protestant votes in Monaghan and Cavan together if that community want to avail of it? I do not say they should avail of them or that they should not but if they want to avail of them it would be a reasonable thing to allow them to do so.
If the Minister had set out to be reasonable he could have avoided unnecessarily breaching the county boundary of Meath. He has parcelled it up in two directions into Monaghan and into Cavan. It is hard to understand that particularly, as I have tried to point out in a reasonable way, in view of the fact that normally either for local administration purposes or otherwise the counties of Meath and Louth are far more closely knit and that the counties of Monaghan and Cavan are more closely knit.
In this particular instance, as far as Cavan is concerned I do not think that the transfer will make a lot of difference. It is certain, of course, that if the Minister was absolutely certain that he had done the reasonable thing and joined like with like, joined Monaghan and Cavan, he could never hope to get two seats out of five. He knew that it was a foregone conclusion that he would not and that, with his effort to kill the Protestant quota, influenced him in this somewhat unnatural transfer of population from Leinster to Ulster, from Meath to Cavan and from Meath to Monaghan.
Having said that, again I say that as far as I or the Fine Gael organisation in Cavan are concerned, if I were to take it on that basis alone, there is not any real objection to what has been done. There are only about 2,000 votes drafted in. However, in so far as the people of Meath are concerned it is not their natural home, it is not their natural unit. The Minister has conceded at all stages of this discussion, and freely admits, that there are more ways of doing this than one. If there are, I would say that the method that he has adopted here is far less reasonable than that suggested by Deputy Hogan.
The constituency we are discussing now, the constituency of Meath, is a typical example of the length that the Fianna Fáil Government are prepared to go in a vindictive attitude to butcher and to gerrymander a constituency. Indeed it is on a par with, if not much worse than, anything that has ever been contemplated or done across the Border in Northern Ireland. There is one thing certainly that the Fianna Fáil Party have learned from the people across the Border and that is how to deny people their rights, how to gerrymander constituencies. We know that this is deliberately done in an attempt to suit the Fianna Fáil Party there and to harm Deputy Denis Farrelly. We know that there were many alternatives. For example, Cavan and Monaghan could have been connected and, as Deputy Fitzpatrick has stated, they have very much in common. Cavan and Monaghan could have been made a five-seat constituency. I want to say deliberately what I said here the last day, despite what we here in Ireland say about the ecumenical spirit, I know for a fact that Cavan and Monaghan originally was to be a five-seat constituency but the boys from the grass roots—and Fianna Fáil are inclined to listen to them at times, not always, they did not listen to them before the referendum but they listened to them on this occasion—came down from Cavan and Monaghan and said: "For God's sake, do not leave this a five-seat constituency. If you do, the Protestant community will get a seat here and we cannot trust them. We do not know what way they will vote. The danger is that we will only get two out of five seats and perhaps three will go to Fine Gael candidates".
Perhaps.
Those people are entitled to representation just the same as any other section of the community but Fianna Fáil, while paying lip service to them at times, have made certain in this Bill as they did in a previous Bill that they would not get representation either in Donegal or in a constituency of Cavan-Monaghan. If the two were put together there would have been no necessity for the Minister to interfere with county boundaries; or with any boundary. They would have made an ideal constituency and the number of population would have been within the limit laid down by the Constitution.
If Fianna Fáil or the Minister for Local Government, Mr. Boland, wanted it, he could have left Meath a threeseat constituency and he could have put, if necessary, 8,568 people from Meath into Louth and have made Louth a four-seat constituency but the Minister would not do that because he was afraid that if Louth were made a four-seat constituency Fianna Fáil would get only two out of the four seats and Fine Gael would get the other two or else Fine Gael would get one and Labour would get one. That would not suit the Minister and of course he had to make Louth a three-seater hoping to get two seats out of three and leave Monaghan, Cavan and Meath. As an indication of the type of butchery that had to be done in Meath, he had to uproot in one area in North Meath 3,829 people and in another area of Meath 1,827 people to be put into the constituency of Cavan. He had also to take from Meath 3,950-odd people and put them into the constituency of Monaghan. At the other end of the constituency we find that he had to take 5,041 people from Kildare and put them into Meath. There was a reason for that. The reason those 5,000 people from Kildare are being put into Meath is to suit Deputy Crinion. We know that the Minister for Defence kicked up a shindy, and that Deputy Crinion may not stand for Meath, but the original intention was to take the area in which Deputy Crinion lives and to put it into Meath to help to get him elected.
As I stated here on the last occasion, despite this gerrymander, despite this vindictive action in a vindictive Bill by a vindictive Minister against the wishes of the people expressed in the recent referendum, their plans for Meath will not succeed. When the next election has passed, there will be one Fine Gael, one Labour and one Fianna Fáil Deputy for the constituency, and Fianna Fáil will be lucky if they get one out of three. They certainly will not get two. When speaking about Castlebar, the Minister was at pains to tell us that the hinterland of Castlebar had to be left with Castlebar—he would not dream of separating the two. He is separating the hinterlands of Kells and Navan from the towns and he is putting them into the constituency of Monaghan. He is doing this to suit Fianna Fáil.
Deputy Fitzpatrick tried once again to misrepresent the proposals which were put before the people in the Third Amendment of the Constitution Referendum. The principal proposal was, as he knows, simply to allow a certain small amount of scope for the specific purpose of taking account of such practical considerations as county boundaries. I said "small scope" because the amount proposed was much less than that which is available and utilised in any known democracy. How this amendment could, as he alleged at such great length, result in the creation of a one-Party State I cannot understand.
Surely, Deputy Fitzpatrick appreciates that the administrative county boundaries in this country were set up many years ago, long before there was any thought of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or Labour. However, he gets up here and maintains that a requirement to adhere to these county boundaries would result in the creation of a one-Party State. I cannot understand it. It is quite clear that Deputy Fitzpatrick was talking for the sake of talking, to keep the debate going. After arguing for weeks here and for months throughout the country that these administrative boundaries were of no relevance and that the proposal to adhere to them was merely to create a one-Party State, today he says we should adhere to them as closely as possible—that we should minimise the breaching of county boundaries—after he has helped to ensure that this cannot be done. Just to show the inconsistency of Deputy Fitzpatrick, I will give one quotation from Volume 235, column 145 of the Official Report for 28th May, 1968 where he is reported:
The Minister seems to think that county boundaries are sacred and that the counties and constituencies should coincide identically. I do not think there is anything sacred about county boundaries.
Later on he continues:
Therefore, there is nothing sacred about county boundaries — there never has been—but if I understand the case the Minister is making correctly, he seems to be saying that constituencies should coincide with county boundaries and that each county should be a constituency.
It was a terrible undemocratic suggestion as recently at 28th May, 1968. Now I am accused of being undemocratic because I accept the decision of the people that the boundaries must be breached in order to have near equality of population per Deputy. I am ensuring here that the transfer of population is as small as is reasonably possible, bearing in mind the distribution of the comparatively small group of people who have to be transferred, not being so small as to be completely submerged in the new constituency to which they are transferred; and bearing in mind the matter of distribution and of having reasonable areas as constituencies—areas that would be reasonable to associate together.
Deputy Fitzpatrick now, contrary to what he said in May of last year, says he believes that Meath people would prefer not to go into Cavan or into Monaghan. I believe that now, just as I believed it in May, 1968; but Deputy Fitzpatrick claims he believes it now though in May, 1968, he was of the opposite point of view. He and every member of his Party went around the country and persuaded the people that the proposal to allow a small amount of scope in order to take cognisance of county boundaries was in some manner a breach of their democratic rights and would result in gerrymander and the creation of a one-Party State.
I agree with what Deputy Fitzpatrick says now. I am quite sure the Meath people who are affected would prefer not to be transferred into Cavan or Monaghan. I asked the people to give us permission not to do that. Senator Fitzpatrick asked them not to give us that permission and they acceded to his request and so this Bill has to be brought in. Deputy Fitzpatrick, arguing from the basis that he is a Monaghan man representing County Cavan, maintains that the people of Monaghan and Cavan are for all practical purposes the same. I suppose that the people of all Ireland are the same fundamentally but that is a long way from suggesting, as Deputy Fitzpatrick did, that the people of Carrickmacross and Glangevlin are more closely associated than those on the Meath-Cavan border. The Government's opinion is that the creation of a constituency from two counties, Monaghan and Cavan, straggling along the unnatural border of this State and the Six County State, if we can call it a State — the Six County area set up with the connivance of the Party opposite——
(Cavan): The letters that came out recently exploded that myth.
—— would look ridiculous and it would be ridiculous in practice. One of the most interesting arguments that Deputy Fitzpatrick put up, in view of the arguments he put up in the past, was when he suggested that proportional representation does not work at all here—that Deputies, for all practical purposes, represent certain areas of constituencies though they were elected to represent the whole of these constituencies. But, having spent months arguing against the idea of single seat constituencies, he says that in fact the system works as if it were a system of single seat constituencies. If that is so as far as the Fine Gael Party are concerned, I assure him that, as far as Fianna Fáil are concerned, it is not so. When a Fianna Fáil Deputy is elected to represent a constituency he represents that constituency in so far as it is possible for him to do so.
The most despicable argument raised by Deputy Fitzpatrick and Deputy L'Estrange was the argument that we should create a constituency of Cavan-Monaghan in order to create a Protestant seat. That is an indication of the depths to which Fine Gael are prepared to sink when they try to arouse sectarian bitterness for the sake of purely Party political advantage. It is, of course, consistent with the record of the Fine Gael Party. It is what one would expect. Having made all these allegations about gerrymandering Deputy Fitzpatrick winds up by saying that this will not make a great deal of political difference anyway. What is gerrymandering but an attempt to make a substantial political difference? Successful gerrymandering surely assumes that a substantial political difference has been made by the arrangement of the constituencies?
(Cavan): The Minister should quote me correctly. I said as far as Cavan is concerned.
The Deputy makes an allegation about gerrymandering in one part of his speech and he winds up by saying that the gerrymandering does not make any difference anyway.
(Cavan): As far as the constituency of Cavan is concerned. The Minister cannot even be accurate.
Deputy Fitzpatrick is followed by Deputy L'Estrange who says this is worse gerrymandering than the gerrymandering in Northern Ireland. Deputy Fitzpatrick says it will make no difference. Deputy L'Estrange obviously alleges that it will create two seats for Fianna Fáil in Cavan and retain two seats for Fianna Fáil in Monaghan and that this has been done by transferring part of County Meath into both these constituencies. If the result will be to create a second seat for Fianna Fáil in Cavan and retain the two seats in Monaghan then Deputy L'Estrange is, in fact, alleging that the people transferred are in the main Fianna Fáil supporters. But Deputy Farrelly claims they are his supporters and Deputy Tully claims they are his. Apparently these people support everybody.
(Cavan): They keep their minds to themselves.
That is exactly what most people do and the result is that no Party has available information on which to base a gerrymander. That is why Fine Gael keep on contradicting themselves at every turn. They know that I do not know how to gerrymander because I have not got available to me the information on which to base a successful gerrymander.
(Cavan): Would the Minister, if he had?
All I can do is try to comply with the requirements of the Constitution which the people on the opposite side of the House have tied around the Government's neck. Having said this is a gerrymander worse than in Northern Ireland, Deputy L'Estrange goes on to say: "but it will not succeed". Surely that is a contradiction. He alleges we are taking people from Meath to Monaghan, from Meath to Cavan and from Kildare to Meath in order to bolster up Fianna Fáil Deputies. All these people are apparently, according to the Deputy, Fianna Fáil supporters. In fact, these transfers are necessary because of the figures in the Census of Population for 1966 and because of the constitutional requirement, the requirements which Deputies on the opposite side advised the people not to change. This is what makes this, or some other solution, such as the much more undesirable solutions put forward by various Fine Gael Deputies, inevitable.
(Cavan): The Minister has successfully avoided explaining why it is more reasonable to transfer people from Meath into Monaghan and Cavan than it is to associate Louth and Meath together and Cavan and Monaghan together. I did not say, as the Minister suggests, that I do not believe in county boundaries. I said today what I have said before; I said that county boundaries should be disturbed as little as possible. That is all I am asking the Minister to do.
The Minister accused me of saying that the Third Amendment of the Constitution would have turned this country into a one-Party State. All I can do is to ask independent thought to look at the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1968, introduced by the Minister when, he says, his hands were tied by the Constitution and when he was bound to arrange constituencies on the same number of votes per Deputy throughout the country. Let independent thought then ask itself what might have been expected from the Minister had he been able to decree that approximately 16,000 people would qualify for a Deputy in one constituency whereas it would take approximately 23,000 to qualify in another constituency? I will leave the answer to the good sense of the people.
It will be no answer for the Minister to say he was giving us an infallible commission because the Minister was not giving us any such commission. He was giving us a bogus commission, subject to being overruled at every turn and twist by this House. This is what I meant when I said that the Third Amendment in the hands of the Minister and his Government would have led to the creation of a one-Party State. The Minister agrees with me that the people of Meath do not want to go into Monaghan and Cavan. He says he knew that last year and he knows it now. I want to ask him this simple question: if he knows they do not want to be in Monaghan and Cavan why does he send them there?
Where will he put them?
(Cavan): That is the way. When you hop in and out here you are inclined to put your foot in it. The Minister has already conceded in Deputy Geoghegan's absence that there are many other ways in which this could be done, and that he never said Deputy Hogan's suggestions were not workable. Deputy Hogan threw out a solution of associating Meath and Louth. If the Minister concedes, as I understand him to have fairly conceded, that it is an unnatural sort of association to drive part of Meath into Monaghan and part of Meath into Cavan, and he also admits that there are other ways of solving the problem, why does he take the less reasonable of the two? Why does he not accept what I suppose he would agree is a more reasonable solution?
The Minister threw across the floor of the House accusations and counteraccusations about our intentions. He accused me of wanting to create a constituency of Cavan and Monaghan in order to give what are popularly known as the religious minority a quota. The Minister has done something much worse than that because he was influenced in keeping these two counties apart in order to deprive those people of a say in Parliament. That is a different thing.
Hear, hear.
(Cavan): That was the thinking which influenced the Minister. I say it is he who is being sectarian and not I. Here was a natural association. Leave this out of it altogether. Leave the minority out of it. Forget about it. I stake my reputation on it, and I know what I am talking about, that Monaghan and Cavan would have been together, but the Minister's sectarian mind came into it and he kept them apart on those grounds. I would never have thought of it, were it not for the fact that I heard on very reliable authority that that was what caused the change of mind.
When the Taoiseach came down to Cavan to launch the referendum campaign he spoke on the basis of Monaghan and Cavan being joined together if his proposals were not carried. The Minister did the same. In this House Fianna Fáil Deputies were talking in terms of Monaghan and Cavan being together days before this Bill belatedly saw the public or the public saw it. It came out a fortnight after it was promised. I say that during the interval Monaghan and Cavan were being talked about as one constituency. I know on reliable authority that that was what influenced the Minister. I say that is reprehensible. It was not I who introduced religion into this discussion or into our electoral system, but the Minister. That is what influenced him. The Minister is a past master at misrepresenting people.
Hear, hear.
(Cavan): On a matter such as this there are many angles which one could discuss or criticise. When I spoke about this before, I concentrated my remarks on the inconvenience caused to the people of Meath by being driven into Monaghan and Cavan. I did not deal with the political effects of that in County Meath.
Deputy L'Estrange did.
(Cavan): I did not deal with the political effects of that in County Meath, because I did not deal with the remainder of the Meath constituency. If you take 10,000 people or 5,000 votes from the immediate vicinity of a sitting Deputy, irrespective of the political outlook of those people, unless they are very pronounced politicians any schoolboy knows—or anyone who has ever acted as a personation agent—that it is bound to affect the sitting Deputy. The Minister sought to misrepresent me because in concluding I said that so far as the constituency of Cavan was concerned it would not make much difference.
Of course it is bound to make a difference to Deputy Farrelly because not only are 10,000 people, approximately, being taken from him but they are also being sent in different directions. They are being sent to different constituencies. Normally a Deputy could follow such a volume of votes and hope to keep most of them together on a personal and political basis, just as my colleague Deputy Reynolds followed such a number of votes into Roscommon and, to the surprise of the Minister's predecessor, and I am sure of the Minister, kept them together; but Deputy Farrelly was not allowed to do that. Not only were those 10,000 people shifted out of Meath but they were cut in two and 5,000 told to go one way and 5,000 told to go another way. Does the Minister consider that reasonable? Does he consider it consistent with the argument he made here last week to the effect that, when people were being transferred in sizeable numbers, they should be transferred so that they could retain their identity and influence?
In effect, what the Minister is doing here is transferring something between 2,000 and 2,500 votes from Meath into Cavan and over 2,000 from Meath into Monaghan, having already packed another parcel from Louth into Monaghan. He is associating in the constituency of Monaghan three counties: Monaghan, Louth and Meath. He is associating in the constituency of Cavan two counties: Meath and Cavan. We all know this is quite unnecessary and the Minister concedes that it is quite unnecessary. He could have the two northern counties together and the two Leinster counties together.
The Minister accuses the Opposition of prolonging the debate and dragging out the discussion. He deserves to win any prize that is going for that sort of operation, because he insists on misrepresenting the Opposition and, so long as he does so, so long will I keep the record right.
Deputy Fitzpatrick apparently got up on that occasion to allege that I had avoided saying why I considered it undesirable to join Counties Cavan and Monaghan and Meath and Louth together. I have dealt with that, which I considered to be a ridiculous suggestion, already. I pointed out the difficulties involved in a Cavan-Monaghan constituency because of the configuration of the border with the Six County area and the obvious difficulty there would be for any Deputy representing the area.
Such a constituency is all the more undesirable because of the many solutions that have been put forward. Deputy Fitzpatrick argues that there should be the least possible interference with the county boundaries. I can only repeat that when there was a possibility of doing something about this he took the opposite course and ensured that it would not be permissible to pay any attention to the existence of county boundaries.
I cannot follow how Deputy Fitzpatrick can allege that the situation that we tried to bring about whereby there would be a constitutional requirement to adhere as closely as possible to existing county boundaries would give more scope for what he describes as gerrymandering than the present situation which requires the exact opposite. It requires constituencies to have as nearly as possible the same population per Deputy, irrespective of county boundaries, and that makes it inevitable that there will be these transfers of population from one county to another. Surely, if the information on which to base a gerrymander is available to a political Party, it is a situation like this where this type of transfer must be done that scope is provided for gerrymandering. But, of course, having alleged all this, Deputy Fitzpatrick goes on to say that this type of information is not available. He says that the people keep their minds to themselves and that nobody can say how they voted in a particular area in the past and certainly he must agree that nobody can say how they will vote in the future. He invites independent thought, whatever that is, to imagine what might have been expected if the proposal to permit adherence to boundaries had been enacted by the people. The proposal was that the deviation would only be exercised for the purpose of taking into account prominent physical features and, of course, any arrangements could be adjudicated on by the courts to see if these conditions were complied with.
I maintain that it is obvious to independent thought and that it is obvious to Deputy Fitzpatrick that in these circumstances there would be no scope whatever for gerrymandering and no scope whatever for Fianna Fáil to attempt to create what he describes as a "one-Party State". I suppose Deputy Fitzpatrick can get up as often as he likes and ask me why these people from Meath have to be put into Louth. The reason is contained in the figures of the census of population. That is the only document that I can take into account.
The population in Cavan is 54,322 and that is not sufficient, in accordance with the constitutional requirements which the Fine Gael Party arranged to have defined by the High Court and which they succeeded in persuading the people to endorse, for the minimum number of seats that is permissible under the Constitution and, therefore, if one rejects the solution, as we have rejected it, of bringing Cavan and Monaghan together and we have decided instead to try and retain a Cavan constituency as there always has been, one must transfer population from somewhere and the population in this case is transferred from Meath because of the fact that the other counties bordering Cavan have not got any population to spare. Meath is the only place from which a transfer could be made and the only part of Meath from which it could be transferred is the part from which we are proposing that it should be transferred. The same situation applies in so far as Monaghan is concerned. Monaghan has already been adjusted with County Louth. There was not sufficient surplus population in the remaining part of Louth to bring Monaghan up to the minimum allowable under the present interpretation of the Constitution. Therefore, since Cavan cannot spare any population for this purpose, the only place from which Monaghan could be brought up to the required population is from County Meath.
All these transfers in this particular area arise from the population figures in the census report and from the decision extracted from the High Court by Fine Gael and endorsed by the people on 16th October, 1968. The population of Louth is 69,519. That is too many for three seats and too few for four seats. The population of Meath is 67,323. Again, this is too many for a three-seater and too few for a four-seater. The population of Kildare is 66,404. This is too many for three seats and too few for four seats and it has been adjusted with some other county. The population of Cavan is 54,322. In this case it is too low a population for three seats and has to be adjusted with another county. The population of Monaghan is 45,732 and it has to be adjusted with some other county and the only place from which it could be brought up to the required number was from Meath and this involves the transfer of the surplus population from Kildare to Meath.
Apparently Deputy Fitzpatrick considers the proposed joining of Cavan and Monaghan more reasonable than the small adjustment between Cavan and Monaghan and Meath. He asks me if I consider the adjustment with Meath reasonable. I do not think it is reasonable. That is why I asked the people not to compel me to do it, but now it is inevitable. However, it is certainly less objectionable, in my opinion, than the other suggestion of creating the ridiculous and unworkable constituency of Cavan-Monaghan, which is apparently the official Fine Gael policy.
If anybody will look at Cavan and Monaghan on the map they will see that what I say is correct. I again say that the introduction of sectarianism into this by Fine Gael is a despicable tactic which has been adopted for mean Party political advantage. To try to suggest that this compliance with the constitutional requirements is in any way directed against the members of the Protestant religion is typical of what we can expect from Fine Gael, particularly when we remember that one of the main reasons for the action that the Fine Gael Party took in the courts in 1961 was to take away from the Protestant section of the community in Donegal a seat that the Fianna Fáil Government proposed to leave with them.
That is despicable.
One of the main reasons for the Fine Gael action was to reduce representation in Donegal from seven seats to six, to require two three-seat constituencies instead of what we were proposing to leave there, a four-seat constituency and a three-seat constituency, there being a representative of the Protestant minority elected to the four-seat Donegal constituency. That is one of the main reasons for the Fine Gael action and one of the inevitable consequences of the action that the Fine Gael Party took in the courts at that time. It is typical of them, having taken that action deliberately in 1961——
It is typical of the Minister's misrepresentation.
——to seek their own political advantage now, as they hope. I am quite satisfied the people will see through this despicable tatic of theirs.
(Cavan): I wonder does the Minister appreciate that he is disfiguring the records of this House by recording in them insults to the High Court. Twice since he stood up there on the last occasion he referred to the decision of Mr. Justice Budd as a decision which Fine Gael arranged to get from the High Court, and later he repeated the ignorant assertion that he earlier made when he referred to that decision as a decision extracted from the High Court.
It may be that the Minister does not realise he is insulting the High Court and that, if he was outside and said that, he could be brought before the High Court for contempt of court. I wonder does the Taoiseach approve of this sort of thing? I shall not differentiate between one judge of the High Court and another because I believe every judge of the High Court upholds the Constitution and upholds the laws of this country. I would appeal to the Minister for Local Government to realise that he is doing no good service to himself or to the institutions of the State by trying to belittle the High Court. If law and order breaks down it will only be broken down if we succeed in taking away respect from the courts which stand between the people and the Executive——
That would be nothing new to Fianna Fáil.
(Cavan):——which stand between the people and the Government. The courts are respected in this country, and these attacks, knowingly or otherwise, which have been made by the Minister in this House today and which have been made by him several times in the course of these debates during the past month against a learned Judge of the High Court, who discharged his duties fearlessly after much consideration and who was not appealed against by the very Minister who is now insulting him, seek to lessen respect for the courts. I do not want to appear to be speaking as an elder statesman or anything like that, but I do say that it will be a very bad day for this country if the people are led to criticise the courts publicly just because the courts gave a decision they did not agree with; and it will be an extraordinarily bad day for this country when a Cabinet Minister, with the approval of the Taoiseach, leads an attack on a decision of the people of this country, because the next thing——
The Chair would point out that the remarks of the Deputy are not relevant to the Schedule.
(Cavan): I shall conclude by saying that the Minister's behaviour here today towards the judiciary is only one step removed from trying to get control of the judiciary and to dictate their decisions to them.
The Minister stated that political Parties do not know how the people voted in the past. The Minister, being a director of elections and closely associated with elections, knows quite well that the different political Parties know how the people vote in nearly every polling booth in Ireland.
This has got nothing to do with the Schedule to the Bill.
Yes, it has. The Minister stated that in transferring those areas from Meath into Monaghan he had no idea how the people voted in the past or how they would vote in the future.
The Minister was referring to a comment which had been made by Deputy Fitzpatrick.
If the Minister states something we believe is not correct, we are entitled to say so. Let me say, in any case, that as regards how people will vote in the future we have a fair idea what will happen. They certainly will not vote Fianna Fáil because the people have found them out. There is a large floating vote there today. The people will not be intimidated by Fianna Fáil. The Minister speaks about a surplus population in Monaghan and Cavan. Surely if he looked up the statistics he would see——
"Deficiency" I said.
Let us talk about the census of population in those counties. Since Fianna Fáil came to power in 1932 they have driven 28,030 people out of Cavan. If Fianna Fáil had not come into power there would be sufficient people in Cavan today to make Cavan a four-seat constituency. Since 1956 alone they have driven 7,700 people——
We are not discussing the effects of Government policy on the population. The Deputy may state figures of population in relation to the Schedule but he may not deal with the reasons for them.
The Minister has given his reasons and I want to point out the truth. Let me say also, without giving reasons, that if the population of Monaghan had not fallen by 16,000 from 61,000 to 45,000 since Fianna Fáil came to office, Monaghan, with a very slight injection of less than 4,000 from some other constituency, could have been a four-seat constituency. The Fianna Fáil Government since 1956, have driven 7,002 people out of the county of Monaghan. Therefore it is only right it should be put on the records of the House why fewer Deputies are going to rural Ireland.
The Minister has come in here with a spate of misrepresentation. I suppose he believes that if he says a thing often enough certain people will believe him. It is despicable for the Minister to misrepresent the action that was taken in the High Court in 1961 by an individual member of the Fine Gael Party, as that member was quite entitled to do. If the Government of the country errs, it is only right that any private individual or member of a Party or combination of Parties should have the right to take a particular case to a court and upset the Government. That is what happened in this particular case but it is wrong for the Minister to come in here and say that we did that deliberately to do the minority in Donegal out of a seat. We certainly did not, and if Fianna Fáil were sincere in their beliefs they could now rectify that by making Donegal a five-seater constituency.
We are not discussing Donegal at the moment.
The Minister made those charges against us. He made the charge that, because a Fine Gael Senator took an action in the High Court in 1960, he deliberately put a Protestant out of Leinster House. The Minister stated that Fianna Fáil intended to have a four-seater constituency in Donegal so that a Protestant could get the seat there. I want to point out that that was a deliberate misrepresentation and that in the last ten years, and even now, he could make Donegal a five-seater and Cavan a five-seater constituency and the Protestants would have representation in both. They would have two representatives here. The Minister is making certain they do not get this. That cannot be denied and I want to give full credit to the Minister for clever political tactics in this Bill. He is due 100 per cent marks for clever, well-done, but avaricious, politics in his Party which is bent on keeping themselves in power and getting the maximum number of Deputies returned to this House with the minimum number of votes——
This is a Second Reading speech which is irrelevant and which does not arise on the entry before the House.
I intend to show the gerrymandering of the Minister and how it is done. There were suggestions made here that, if Cavan and Monaghan were made a five-seater, Meath a three-seater and Louth a four-seater constituency, that would be 12 seats; but Fianna Fáil would not agree with that because they know that in Cavan-Monaghan Fianna Fáil would only get two seats out of five. That would be three anti-Government Deputies. The Protestant Association might get one seat but we call them anti-Government. In Meath there will be only one Fianna Fáil seat and two others. In all probability in Louth it would go two and two. Out of the 12 seats Fianna Fáil would have five only. They are not satisfied with that. They now change it in such a way that they make Cavan a three-seater, hoping to get two and one other. They make Monaghan three hoping to get two and one other. They make Meath three hoping to get two and one other and they make Louth three. They do this instead of adopting an alternative arrangement interfering with the minimum number of people. They are not prepared to adopt this but they bring in this vindictive butchering, and now they have the possibility of more seats, but the Minister may be as far out in this as he was in the referendum. The Minister is doing it in such a way that he has now the probability of getting eight seats instead of five, and that is the thinking he has indulged in. If it were left as has been suggested, and this could be easily done without disturbing any section of the population, the Protestants would have got a seat in Cavan-Monaghan, and let it be admitted that Protestants are entitled to a seat. Labour would have got a seat in Louth if it were a four-seater constituency. Through this gerrymandering proposal the Minister is trying to ensure that, instead of five seats, the Fianna Fáil Party could get the maximum number of eight from the minimum number of votes. If the Minister were serious about this and wanted to give fair play and to cherish all the people of the nation equally—as they are often inclined to speak about at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis—then he could have set up some type of impartial board or body to deal with this vexed question. Then we or any other Party could not hurl the term we are entitled to hurl across the House today—"gerrymandering".
The Minister claims that his hands are tied by the Constitution. He stated that Fine Gael made certain that the tolerance Bill was not passed. Knowing the Party that is in power we were quite right in doing that. We know what they would have done had the tolerance Bill been passed and had they been given the power to have a Deputy for from 16,000 votes to 23,000 votes. In a Fianna Fáil constituency of 69,000 people the Minister could have four and in a constituency that was anti-Government he could have three seats, using the maximum permitted of 23,000. In a pro-Fianna Fáil constituency he could have four Deputies for 64,000 votes. Surely there is no part of the country which could trust the Government and especially the present Minister, knowing the clever politician he is.
I want to agree with Deputy T.J. Fitzpatrick (Cavan) and to object to the attacks that are being made here tonight and throughout this country on the courts of this country. We should be jealous of them and respect the rights of our independent courts. If we are heading towards anarchy today it is because certain people have not respect for the institutions of this country. Any Minister of State should be in the vanguard and should lead not alone this House but this country in this respect. He should have respect for and uphold the rights of the courts of the country. It is degrading to hear a Minister bellyaching in this House about a judgement. Mr. Justice Budd was a conscientious man.
That cannot be discussed here. It does not arise.
The Minister dealt with this at some length. If the Minister is allowed to deal with it I will certainly reply to him and will not let him away with it.
I must refute the allegations made by Deputy T.J. Fitzpatrick (Cavan) and Deputy L'Estrange that I have on this Bill, or the Bill proposing to amend the Constitution, cast any reflection on the High Court or on any member of the High Court or that I have at any time insulted that institution in any way. I have, for brevity, referred to the decision of the High Court as being procured by the Fine Gael Party. I cannot see how that is in any way a reflection on the High Court, or how it is in any way even an expression of opinion as to the correctness or otherwise of the decision made by the High Court. Nobody can produce from the records of debates here or anywhere else any evidence that I have ever criticised the correctness of Mr. Justice Budd's decision.
What are you crying about so?
Nobody can whinge better than Deputy Reynolds. I am not crying about anything, Deputy Reynolds. You and your Party are making every effort to delay the passage of this Bill but making no real and no sustainable criticism of any of the proposals in it.
There is a hungry electorate waiting for you.
I referred to this decision as having been procured by Fine Gael, having been extracted by Fine Gael, but I made no reflection on the court and I expressed no opinion as to the correctness of the decision. It is a fact that the High Court did not automatically of its own accord give this interpretation of an Article in the Constitution that had been interpreted in a different way from 1922 right down to that time. They did it at the behest of the Fine Gael Party. They did it because the Fine Gael Party brought an action in the courts and asked the court to declare that the interpretation of the Constitution that had always obtained in this House was not a correct interpretation. That was done through a Fine Gael Senator taking an action with a Fine Gael Deputy as a solicitor, a Fine Gael Deputy as a senior counsel and a Fine Gael Senator as his junior counsel. Therefore, I think it is quite accurate to describe this decision as having been procured by the Fine Gael Party but it is not casting any reflection on Mr. Justice Budd or on any other member of the High Court and it is not in any way a criticism of the decision that the learned judge made. We accepted the decision.
Pity you did not.
We did not appeal against it and, if we did not appeal against it, is that not evidence that we accepted his decision?
The Minister has become a very law-abiding citizen.
In 1961 we drew up a scheme of constituencies conforming to the decision of Mr. Justice Budd and the two Opposition Parties at the time attacked us for not asking the people to remove, as a former Taoiseach, Deputy Costello, said, this "constitutional infirmity". We did not ask the people to do that in 1961 but when it became obvious that we would have to do something even more objectionable in the constituencies on this occasion we complied with the request that the Opposition Parties made in 1961 and asked the people to amend the Constitution so that it would have the meaning that the Members of this House had always understood it to have until Fine Gael obtained a legalistic interpretation of it by the High Court and arranged that it could not be interpreted in future in the way in which it had always been interpreted. So far from showing any disrespect for the decision of the court we have shown that we accepted it. But we did not think that the position that was then established in so far as the Constitution was concerned was a desirable position and we asked the people to amend the Constitution so that we would have permission to take account of such practical considerations as the existence of county boundaries. We accepted Justice Budd's decision and we accepted the people's decision that county boundaries are irrelevant and that county boundaries may not be taken into consideration. That is what the people decided at the request of Deputy Reynolds, Deputy L'Estrange, Deputy Hogan and all the members of the Opposition Parties and we accept the decision that they made.
They were afraid of you.
I am not surprised that Deputy L'Estrange should contradict Deputy Fitzpatrick on yet one more point. It was Deputy Fitzpatrick who was the first to say here today that the information as to how people had voted in the past and how they will vote in the future is just not available. Deputy L'Estrange disagrees with him and attacks me because I have committed the unforgivable sin of agreeing with Deputy Fitzpatrick. I agree that it is quite likely that there are more points on which I am in agreement with Deputy Fitzpatrick than there are points on which Deputy L'Estrange is in agreement with him.
The Minister is not in agreement with the Taoiseach. The Minister is not speaking to him. The Taoiseach will not speak to the Minister.
I cannot identify any two Fine Gael Deputies that agree on any subject under the sun. I wonder is there a Fine Gael Party at all? There is no evidence of it here.
Deputy L'Estrange went on to renew the Fine Gael attack on Deputy P. O'Donnell's seat in Donegal, to renew the demand that Donegal should be reduced to a five-seat constituency although he knows that this can only be done by the exporting of some of Deputy O'Donnell's constituents to the province of Connaught.
We are supposed, according to Deputy L'Estrange, to be doing this in order to obtain for Fianna Fáil the maximum number of seats out of this area. He has not told us where it will benefit us.
I have.
Will it benefit us in Cavan? Will we gain an extra seat in Cavan? Will it benefit us in Monaghan? It cannot benefit us in Monaghan because we have two seats there already. Louth is not being touched. We have two seats there already. Is it going to benefit us in Meath or in Kildare? In these five counties there are 15 seats and we will benefit in all these places according to Deputy L'Estrange. So Deputy L'Estrange, with his intimate knowledge of how people voted in the past and how they will vote in the future, claims that this is going to result in 10 Fianna Fáil seats out of these 15. I wonder, with all these new policies that Fine Gael are churning out, is it not conceivable that at some time in the future these five three-seat constituencies might return 10 Fine Gael Deputies?
They will this time.
It is going to benefit us in all these constituencies and it is also going to benefit Fine Gael and we are all going to get 10 seats out of 15.
You are found out.
I must say that, as far as I am concerned, I think it is inconceivable that Fine Gael will get a majority of the seats in these areas but I would have thought that Deputy L'Estrange would at least have pretended to think that there is some possibility that they would gain a majority in some of these areas. After all, if this is going to benefit us everywhere, then the people of the area as a whole must be in favour of Fianna Fáil.
In regard to this question of the establisment of an impartial commission I have explained time out of number that this is not permissible under the Constitution. I have also pointed out from the evidence that we have got from Fine Gael in the debate on this Bill alone that there could be no possibility, obviously, of getting any agreed recommendation from any commission on which there would be more than one Fine Gael Deputy because they cannot agree.
Deputy L'Estrange went on to repeat the argument which has already been disproved that, if the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill had been accepted by the people, what would have happened then would have been worse than what has happened now, though he knows the proposal in that Bill was to require the Government to adhere to county boundaries.
He must know there could be no question of operating the one-sixth divergence below the national average in areas where Fianna Fáil support was strongest and above the national average where opinion was against Fianna Fáil, because it was provided in the Bill that this could be operated only to take account of clearly specified circumstances, such as the existence of county boundaries.
Somehow I do not think Deputy L'Estrange was sincere in his tribute to me as being a clever politician, because he followed it up by alleging that the result of all this operation will be to reduce Fianna Fáil representation, having already said that I was attempting to increase it as a result of this. I do not think that would be any tribute to my cleverness as a politician. Deputy L'Estrange will admit that any degree of cleverness I may have I would not try to operate to the benefit of Fine Gael.
The Minister may try to misrepresent us in any way he can but anybody looking at the map and studying the constituencies and the different alternatives available knows well that the Minister did this in a vindictive manner—that he gerrymandered the constituencies to get the maximum number of Fianna Fáil Deputies elected in Meath and elsewhere with the minimum number of votes. One does not have to be a Member of this House to appreciate that, because even those who know nothing about politics can see it. However, this will misfire on the Minister as the referendum did.
In this House four months ago the Minister smiled across at us, thumped the bench and told us the referendum would be carried by 100,000 votes. He is as wrong tonight as he was then. He further tried to misrepresent us when he said that we had stated county boundaries should not be taken into consideration. We did not say any such thing. I do not wish to repeat what we have said about alternatives but, taking the country as a whole, we pointed out the alternatives under which there could be a disturbance of only 20,000 voters through six changes. That would be keeping within the Constitution but it might be giving fair play to other Parties in the House and Fianna Fáil do not want that.
Therefore, the Minister set out deliberately to gerrymander. It is well known that the boys were brought up to the Party rooms and that they argued and fought about this polling booth being put in here and that polling booth being put in there, and we know there were eight meetings of the Party before the Minister came to a final decision.
How many?
Something like eight different Fianna Fáil meetings. The Minister may shake his head. He told us when we were discussing the referendum that there was no division, that Fianna Fáil were unanimous. It is well known now that another Fianna Fáil Minister told them at a Cabinet meeting that the referendum would be defeated by 100,000 votes, and that they should have sense and withdraw the Bill.
Can we come to the question before the House?
Certainly, but the Minister wants to know is there a united Fine Gael Party. There certainly is and the Minister will know that shortly. The Minister also referred to the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill and to the commission that was to have been set up. As usual, he told only half the story. He did not tell us that the final say rested with the Deputies and that they could alter the constituencies. We know from their past record that, if Fianna Fáil are not able to get the civil servants to do beforehand what they want a commission to do, 90 per cent of the people on the commission are Party hacks, put there because of their affiliations and because of what they have done for Fianna Fáil. With the proposed constituencies commission, the Minister was trying to do the same—if he was not able to speak into the ears of the Civil Service, he would try to bulldoze the commission——
The question of a commission is not before the House.
The Minister dealt with it at length and the Chair never said a word to him. The Minister continued his disparaging remarks about the decision of Mr. Justice Budd.
It does not arise on the question before the House.
Am I not entitled to speak about it? I have a full page of notes and the Minister spent eight minutes talking about it. He said there were a Fine Gael Senator, a Fine Gael solicitor and a Fine Gael counsel. He did not tell us there was a Fine Gael judge.
I would not criticise a judge.
The Minister has criticised——
I would not call a judge a professional lickspittle.
The Minister said this, and if it is not indirect criticism I do not know what is: "Fine Gael arranged for a legalistic interpretation of it by the High Court". Surely, the judge of the High Court ruled in law according to the Constitution which was introduced to this country by Fianna Fáil, and if the judge ruled according to law why should the Minister come in day after day to attack his judgment? If he did not agree with the judgment why has he not come in during the past ten years with another Bill or why has he not appealed to the Supreme Court? It is time that the bellyaching from you——
From the Minister.
——from the Minister about the Budd judgment stopped. The judge ruled according to the Constitution, to the law of the land. It is open to any person to take action in our courts and the courts are there to protect us from Ministers like you, thank God.
(South Tipperary): If I may coin a phrase, the Minister appears to be suffering from Budditis and I am afraid it is spreading to this side of the House.
What am I suffering from?
(South Tipperary): Budditis.
A disease you got from a decision of the High Court.
(South Tipperary): It is spreading all over the House. The Minister in one respect professes that he is merely doing what the people asked for. I contend that he is not— the fundamental decision of the people was that they wanted to support PR. The Minister has been very active in this respect. He has tried to introduce as many three-seat constituencies as he can in rural Ireland. PR is generally regarded as working better in larger constituencies, in fiveseaters and so on, but the Minister has followed strictly the three-by-four rule as far as rural Ireland is concerned. He has withdrawn county boundaries. He pretends—he deliberately misinterprets —to have decided, as a result of the referendum, that the people wanted to abolish county boundaries. That issue was never put to the people and they never voted on it. It is really a bit naïve of the Minister to pretend to interpret the results in that fashion.
I have already given the Minister a solution to his problem in regard to Meath. He is giving parts of Meath to Cavan and parts to Monaghan and then he is adding on part of Kildare to Meath. I have given the Minister samples of transfers which would give him Meath as a three-seat constituency, which is what he wants, leaving the other counties more intact than his proposals would leave them. I suggest Meath as a three seater, Carlow-Kildare a five seater and Kilkenny a five seater. That could be done by transferring from Meath to Louth 6,644 persons, or 6,772 persons, or 6,768 persons, depending on which district electoral division he may pick out. Any of these three transfers—I have already tabulated two for him—would suffice. If the Minister would get the returns from the Central Statistics Office for the townlands, plus a map of the area from the Ordnance Survey, he could work out other transfers on somewhat similar lines. Any of these transfers would be suitable. This would allow for the return of 4,395 persons back to County Wexford. The Minister has mutilated Louth, Meath and Kildare, with a total transfer of 24,655, in order to establish the kind of constituency he is seeking to establish. I suggest he leave Meath as a three-seat constituency, in which case the transfer would amount to only 6,644 persons. In doing that he would be compensated in so far as he would have 4,398 persons reintegrated into County Wexford. If you subtract that 4,000 odd figure from the 6,644 you get a net transfer of 2,246. That is an extraordinary figure compared with the Minister's transfer figure of 24,655.
Surely there is something here demanding explanation instead of the stereotyped reply the Minister has been giving for the last three or four hours about the referendum and the High Court judgment? These seem to have become obsessions with him. When the Minister is stuck he falls back on them, flogging away at them. He has given no real answer to the arguments I have put up. To say that making Cavan-Monaghan a five-seat constituency would be an impossible arrangement is not borne out by the facts. We have had bigger constituencies and they were managed. This would obviate the tremendous exodus of people from Louth northwards— from Louth to Cavan 5,656, from Meath to Monaghan 6,426, from Louth to Monaghan 7,532 and from Kildare to Meath 5,041. That gives a total population of 24,655. The transfer I suggest would give a total figure of 6,644 and, with the return of 4,398 back to Wexford, the net transfer would be 2,246 as against the Minister's 24,655. The Minister's transfer rate is more than ten times mine.
I do not know where logic begins or ends. There certainly does not seem to be much logic here when the Minister spends the time babbling away about the judgment of Mr. Justice Budd, the appalling behaviour of Fine Gael, their inconsistency, their lack of this, that and the other, their stupidity at one moment and their cleverness at another moment. I want a simple answer. I have given him an alternative. The final opinion on population transfer would come best from the people affected. I have given the Minister the alternative. I have given him the district electoral divisions he can transfer. He has his little red book. He can look up the possible transfers from Meath to Louth. I have given him five district electoral divisions— Grange, Mellifont, Saint Mary's, Julianstown and Stamullen. If he does not like that, he can take Mellifont, Saint Mary's, Julianstown, Stamullen and Ardcath. If he does not like these he can take the last four—Saint Mary's, Julianstown, Stamullen and Ardcath. Any of these could be transferred from Meath to Louth, leaving Louth a four-seater, Meath a three-seater, Cavan-Monaghan a five-seater, Carlow-Kildare a five-seater—it was a five-seater years ago—and then transfer back that area of Carlow-Kilkenny with 4,000 odd people to Wexford, giving a net transfer figure of 2,246 as against the Minister's 24,655.
The Minister is able to add and subtract. Nearly all the Ministers here are able to do that. I am sure the Minister will be able to do the sum. Can he give us any logical answer? Would he stop talking about Mr. Justice Budd for five minutes and the referendum for another five? If he would he might be able to spare five minutes giving us a logical answer.
If I refer to the decision of Mr. Justice Budd once again it is because Deputy L'Estrange has insisted on making the ridiculous allegation, an allegation he knows to be false, that I have in some way cast a reflection on the decision of this eminent judge of the High Court. If Deputy Hogan would sit in the House for even half an hour at a time rather than hopping in and out like a jack-in-thebox like every other Fine Gael Deputy, he would know that I have never referred to this matter except in reply to false allegations made by various Fine Gael Deputies coming in here in relays. I want once again to refute the allegations made by Deputy L'Estrange that I have in any way cast any reflection upon the decision of the learned judge, or the motives that prompted such a decision. They continue to raise it and I intend to refute it every time it is raised.
Deputy L'Estrange said these proposals are made in order to get the maximum number of Fianna Fáil Deputies elected and, in the next breath, he said the result will be that there will be fewer Fianna Fáil Deputies here.
I said the people are waking up.
Both things cannot happen. Both results cannot be produced. With regard to the question of county boundaries, I said that Fine Gael had helped to ensure that the county boundaries could not be respected. They, with other elements, encompassed the defeat of our proposal to permit this to be done. It cannot be done now because of the result of the referendum.
In so far as the Third Amendment of the Constitution is concerned, Deputy Hogan says that the people decided to retain PR. Deputy Hogan must surely know that two separate proposals were put before the people. We originally intended to put them as one single proposal but, at the specific request of the Opposition, we divided them into two separate proposals and, of the two decisions made by the people, one was to retain the system of PR. Now Deputy Hogan says that, in making that decision, the people opted for the full theory of PR, in other words, for the larger constituencies which are necessary in order that it could operate as its inventors intended it to operate.
It is reasonable to suggest that what the people intended was to vote for something approaching the system we have had here, where constituencies have varied between three and five seats, rather than to suggest that they opted for the full PR which would, as Deputy Hogan said, involve larger constituencies. In reply to the Second Reading I said that, in fact, I did consider dealing with the revision of the constituencies on the lines of larger constituencies, and I outlined a scheme of constituencies that would, in fact, avoid the breaching of any county boundaries. I said that the only way that could be done was by joining together a number of counties in multiseat constituencies ranging as far up, I think, as 15-seat areas. I agree this could be done. I agree that would be moving more towards what was in the minds of the inventors of PR.
The system has been operated here on the basis of areas returning a much smaller number of Deputies. I think the highest ever was a nine-seat constituency, but the system the people are accustomed to at present involves constituencies with from three to five Deputies. It is reasonable to assume that it is the retention of the status quo the people opted for in the referendum. Whatever room for doubt there might be in regard to that, there is no room for doubt as to the decision they made on the proposal contained in the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill. That was a clear-cut proposal to amend the Constitution so that in future it would say what all Parties in this House had assumed it said up to 1961, and give to the Oireachtas a certain amount of scope to take account of the practical considerations, such as the existence of county boundaries.
Again, contrary to what Deputy L'Estrange has alleged, there was no question of the commission proposed in the Constitution Amendment Bill being comprised entirely of Fianna Fáil supporters. In fact, it was proposed to be written into the Constitution that the commission would be comprised of three Members from the Government side of the House, and three from the Opposition side, presided over by a judge whom we on this side of the House would regard as being as nearly impartial as possible. We would regard the judge as being an impartial chairman. On the other hand, the Opposition described such a chairman as being a political lickspittle.
The Minister is talking through his hat.
That is typical of the manner in which the Opposition treat the judiciary.
Fianna Fáil had a majority in the House.
If I am permitted to go into that I will show again the inconsistency of the Opposition on that aspect. In 1959, when it was proposed that there should be a two-thirds majority, the Opposition wanted a simple majority and, when we agreed to their suggestion, they wanted a two-thirds majority. No one, least of all Fine Gael Deputies, knows what Fine Gael wants.
Talk to your own Taoiseach. Get on speaking terms with him.
I have explained to the House—if not to Deputy Hogan, because he goes out of the House after he speaks — on a number of occasions why I think his suggested solutions are more objectionable than the solution I put forward. I cannot help it if Fine Gael Deputies keep going in and out of the House like shuttle-cocks. I do not think I should be required to repeat everything I have said in reply to Deputy Hogan's contribution just because on this occasion he decides to condescend to remain in the House. If he wants to know why I regard his solutions as more objectionable than the proposal before the House he can read it in the Official Report.
Due to the fact that the Minister is saying so much about Deputy Hogan going in and out of the House, it is only fair that the Minister should have someone in the House with some confidence in him, so I will call for a quorum.
The Deputy must be at his wits' end to delay matters now. The only one he can keep in the House is Deputy Hogan, and I think I kept him here.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,
Obviously Deputy L'Estrange has failed to get any other Fine Gael Deputy to come in to delay the passage of this Bill further. I must admit that he has done his best to get them to come in one after another and he even managed to get Deputy Fitzpatrick, the so-called official spokesman on Local Government matters, to come in for two hours, but not two hours together. He was here for a total of about two hours in short spasms and he did manage to keep the thing going for a considerable time but now the only way in which Deputy L'Estrange can protract the debate, in the vain hope that some time he may succeed in getting sufficient of his Deputies to come to the House, is to call a division and inconvenience people like my distinguished friend, Deputy Burke here.
I do not know if it is that the Deputy wants to get his people up for a division or whether he wants to delay the passage of this Bill so as to delay the likelihood of their having to face the people in the present disruptive state of the Fine Gael Party. The funny thing is that I have not much more to say in regard to these last interventions of Deputy Hogan and Deputy L'Estrange. I have explained why I consider Deputy Hogan's various solutions much more objectionable than my own. He referred himself to the extraordinary figure he produced as to the total of people being transferred and I agree it is extraordinary. It is faked.
(South Tipperary): The Minister alleges that I am using fake figures. Personal figures may, of course, be wrong but they are not faked. Can the Minister tell me which one is faked?
The ones that are omitted.
He means the 100,000 who were driven abroad by Fianna Fáil in the last ten years, or is it the people who have voted with their feet?
I thought Deputy L'Estrange had gone up to Paisley.
The Deputy may have had more connections with him than ever I had.
(South Tipperary): To provide a solution for his three-seat constituencies in Meath, where he alleges I am producing faked figures, he proposes to transfer from Meath to Cavan a total of 5,656. Is that a faked figure? No answer from the Fianna Fáil benches. He proposes to transfer 6,426 from Meath to Monaghan. Is that a faked figure? No answer. He proposes to transfer 7,532 from Louth to Monaghan. Is that a faked figure? He proposes to transfer 5,041 from Kildare to Meath. Is that a faked figure? When these four figures are added the total is 24,655. Is that a faked figure?
I made a much more simple proposition to the Minister. I have given him three choices of district electoral divisions that he can transfer. I have given the districts to him and the population of each and he has his little red book there if he wishes to check. Leaving Meath a three-seater and transferring 6,644 he can end up with Meath as a three-seater, Louth as a four-seater and Carlow-Kildare as a five-seater. By that manoeuvre he can transfer back 4,398 persons from the Carlow-Kilkenny part of Wexford. These are Wexford people who are in the administrative area and who are under the administrative council of Wexford and they have now been put into Carlow-Kilkenny. If that figure of 4,398 is subtracted from the transfer from Meath to Louth, a net figure of 2,246 will be got and that is a net displacement of persons as against the Minister's figure of 24,655.
It is very easy for the Minister to get up and say these are all fake figures. I have given them to him now again and he is working there assiduously with his little pencil. By the time he has done these additions and small subtractions I presume that he will be able to stand up and give us some concrete proof of his allegations that these figures are faked and that he will depart for once from talking about Mr. Justice Budd, who is the only man he has been talking about since he came in here today. He has accused me of popping in and popping out. I have been out of this chamber on one occasion to meet the Minister for Finance's secretary and I have been out to have one meal. Yet he accuses me of popping in and out every five minutes. The Minister should have his stop watch here if he is making allegations like that so that he can take a note of the times I go in and out.
If we pop out we are doing the wrong thing and if we pop in we are giving fake figures, so I do not know how we are going to please the man. He will now have an opportunity of getting up and substantiating the allegations he has made about the fake figures. I have repeated to the House just what I said a short while ago and now we can hear his reply.
There are more ways than one in which Deputy Hogan can fake his figures. What he is doing is giving incomplete figures.
(South Tipperary): How are they faked?
The figure to which I referred and that the Deputy described as an extraordinary figure was his final figure. I say the figures are faked because they are incomplete. They are completely selective. First of all, the Deputy makes no reference to the disruption in Monaghan. There is no reference to disruption in Carlow-Kilkenny, although when his colleague, Deputy Esmonde, put forward the same suggestion that Deputy Hogan is putting forward now and I asked him if he had his colleagues' support in this, he very promptly said no, he had not; this was his suggestion. That is the thing that makes it difficult to argue with Fine Gael: Deputy Sir Anthony Esmonde has his solution; Deputy Hogan has about 20 different solutions. Deputy L'Estrange has his solution and the Deputies Belton have a solution which nobody else apparently agrees with — at least I could not get anybody else to agree with it—that is, to take away a seat from rural Ireland and transfer it to Dublin. I do not know whether Deputy Hogan agrees with that. When I ask is there anybody who can talk on behalf of Fine Gael, Deputy L'Estrange says yes, they can talk on behalf of Fine Gael in relation to their own constituencies. I do not know how many Deputies Fine Gael have at present— they will have fewer after the next general election—but apparently they all have different solutions.
You will certainly have fewer after the next election.
We could not comply with all these different solutions. I do not think there is anything more I can say unless Deputy Hogan really wants me to repeat what I have already said during his many absences from the House. I do not say that he went out every five minutes; every half hour, and he is due to go out now any time. There are different points of view about when a population has to be transferred. Deputy Hogan thinks the whole objective should be to minimise the number transferred so that the people transferred will form an insignificant part of the constituency into which they are transferred. There is another point of view that it is a better solution, a less objectionable solution, to transfer a sizeable portion of the people from one county to another when such a decision is inevitable so that they will form a significant part of the electorate in the constituency into which they are transferred and therefore be able to command reasonable attention from whatever Deputies are elected for the constituency.
I have admitted that there are innumerable ways in which this whole problem could be solved. There are obviously as many ways as there are Fine Gael Deputies; I think there are more than as many ways as there are Deputies in this House. It might be presumptuous to say that this is the best way. I do not know. I have not examined every possible way; I have not discovered every possible way; but I am satisfied that this is a less objectionable way than any of the innumerable ways that have been put forward by different Fine Gael Deputies.
I want to come to the defence of Deputy Hogan and to say he is a conscientious Deputy. If the Minister's Government were doing their duty and draining the land and rivers in South Tipperary, it would not be necessary for him to go on a deputation with people to the Minister for Finance. If he has to go on such a deputation it is completely wrong that the Minister for Local Government should blame Deputy Hogan for not being in the House. He certainly cannot be in two places at the one time. The Minister blames Deputies who come in and are popping up and delaying the business; then he blames them if they go out. What does the Minister want?
The Minister has talked a lot about faked figures. He talked about minimising the number of people transferred. If he has a pencil on him now he can take the following figures from me and tot them up. I will demonstrate to him how, by making only one transfer of 8,568 people, he can still have working constituencies and keep within the Budd judgment, which he seems to have on the brain all night, and keep within the constitutional limits laid down by that judgment. The Minister has stated there are two alternatives, but we believe that the Minister's scheme has been drawn up for one reason and one reason only, that is, to gerrymander the constituencies, to get the maximum number of Fianna Fáil Deputies for the minimum number of votes.
In the Minister's scheme he is transferring 5,041 from Kildare into Meath; he is transferring 3,829 from Meath to Cavan; he is transferring 1,827 from another portion of Meath to Cavan; he is transferring 3,950 from Meath to Monaghan; in another area he is transferring 5,700 from Louth to Monaghan; and in another area he is transferring 1,837 from Louth to Monaghan. That makes a total in the region of 22,000 people. That scheme interferes with and crosses the boundaries of four counties and makes six transfers of 22,000 people. By a very simple operation, leaving Cavan and Monaghan a five-seater and Meath a three-seater, and transferring part of Meath—one block of 8,568 votes— into Louth and making Louth a fourseater, he will still keep within the limits of the number of people that should be in each constituency laid down in the Budd judgment. There is one transfer of 8,000 people instead of the Minister's transfer of 22,000. If that is not a case of gerrymandering in order to try to get the maximum number of Deputies, I do not know what is.
I wish to protest against the constant repetition by the two Deputies over there. Since I came into this House a while ago I have heard the exact same speeches as I heard last Wednesday.
From the Minister.
From the Deputy. The only thing the Deputy did not bring in this time was the Protestant Association.
They did that half an hour ago. He said he would be back to it again. In about ten minutes he is due to go back to it.
I want to protest against the holding up of this House. I have seen what happened. Deputy L'Estrange has been running around for the last two hours searching every hole and corner of this House to see if he could get even ten Deputies of his own Party to agree with him, and he could not get them. Therefore, these two Deputies have adopted the tactic of deliberately wasting the time of the House. A Leas-Cheann Comhairle, what about putting a stop to it?
I should like to respectfully second what may esteemed colleague, Deputy Corry, has said. I should like to support him. We received here this evening a lecture from Deputy Dillon in connection with the dignity of Dáil Éireann. He made a histrionic and dangerous speech in the context of the present industrial situation. He asked us not to abuse the dignity of the House. We also received a lecture from the Leader of the Opposition in the same context—the uses to which Dáil Éireann should be put. As a comparatively young Deputy here I would like to respectfully suggest that the people who are bringing this House into disrepute—and I mention Deputy L'Estrange in particular because he is bringing this House into disrepute by these delaying tactics—should refrain. I do not know the reason for the delay. The Fianna Fáil Party have been accused in the past of holding up the working of this House. Surely this is a perfect example of the delaying tactics that are now being used by the Fine Gael Party? This Electoral (Amendment) Bill has been going on for a number of days. The Minister at all times has been willing to let this Bill go through straight away and up to the Seanad. There is no question of this at all.
During the course of this debate whatever Deputy L'Estrange thought he might gain by it he brought in the question of religious bigotry and said that the Minister was in some fashion gerrymandering the constituencies to suppress the Protestant citizens of the Republic of Ireland. I think it is an intolerable and disgraceful thing that this matter should be brought up here. Coming from a constituency with a predominantly Protestant community I should like to say that the Fianna Fáil Party stand for the whole community regardless of religious background. It is deplorable that this debate should be used to bring these matters to the attention, particularly, of those people who want to run down our nation. A comparison here between this part of the country and Northern Ireland is intolerable. What it has to do with this particular Bill defeats me. I would ask Deputy L'Estrange and any other member of the Fine Gael Party if they are serious about this Bill going through to let the talking stop.
I should like to support my esteemed colleague, Deputy Corry, in this matter. It is a deplorable abuse of this House. The sooner the Parties in this House come together to stop this abuse in the interests of the House and in the interests of the nation the better.
I want to point out to Deputy L'Estrange that, far from blaming Deputy Hogan for going out of this House, I am blaming him for coming back and demanding that I repeat everything I said while he was out. I do not think, as Deputy Andrews has said, that it is treating the House with proper respect to go out when he has concluded making his ridiculous charges and then come back later and ask me to repeat my replies to them. In regard to these figures of disruptions he has been quoting here, where we differ is that I maintain it is the total disruption of people in the traditional pattern of representation that is the most relevant factor. Two large straggling constituencies along the Six Counties border of Cavan and Monaghan have never been joined together. I do not believe such a joining together would produce anything like a homogeneous type of constituency.
Similarly the counties of Carlow and Kilkenny have been joined together for a considerable time. There is an obvious disruption of the traditional pattern of representation and of the constituency alignment of the people involved in what is suggested with regard to that area. What we are trying to do in this area is to retain five constituencies that have been there always, or practically always, in so far as it is possible to do so without breaching the Constitution and to retain a Cavan constituency, a Monaghan constituency, a Louth constituency, and a Kildare constituency. I am satisfied there is not any other reasonable way in which that can be done and still comply with the Constitution.
Deputy Corry has been complaining that he heard last week these speeches of the Opposition Deputies that are here at present. I have heard them numerous times—last Wednesday, last Thursday and today—repeating the same speeches over and over again. I have seen Deputy L'Estrange's frantic efforts to keep this debate going from a different angle than Deputy Corry. Deputy Corry has been able to see him during his absence from this House tearing round the nooks and crannies of the House and frantically trying to get the Fine Gael or Labour Deputies to come in here. I have seen him in operation here. So far as Deputy L'Estrange is concerned, I have only seen him relaxed at one period—when he thought he had at last nailed down Deputy Fitzpatrick safely in the House and that he could now relax in the confidence that Deputy Fitzpatrick would keep this going. Eventually he reverted to his previous frantic state when even Deputy Fitzpatrick rebelled against the Whip and decided he was having no more of it. Deputy Corry saw Deputy L'Estrange around the House making the Deputies come in here to delay things either until such time as he could get sufficient of his Deputies to attend the House so as to have some kind of respectable muster for a division on the Bill in order to lend some credence to this pretence that there is really serious discontent in the Fine Gael Party with regard to what is proposed, or for the other reason that I have suggested which is that the Fine Gael Party are in such a state of disruption themselves at present that they want to delay the passage of this Bill which is for the purpose of ensuring that the constituency arrangements for the next general election comply with the requirements of the Constitution.
I can assure the Minister that the Fine Gael Party are in no state of disruption. We would not like to be in the state of disruption of the Fianna Fáil Party where the Minister for Local Government is not talking to the Taoiseach and the Taoiseach is not speaking to the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries. I am sorry for Deputy Andrews because he was brought in from his tea or from having a stroll round. He was not in the House for long. He came in and gave us a lecture in this House. We on this side of the House since the foundation of the State have always stood for law and order.
Governor Wallace in America also stands for law and order.
At this stage we are talking about the Schedule to this Bill.
If Deputy Andrews is allowed to make a personal attack on me——
Deputy L'Estrange will have to relate his remarks to the entry in the Bill.
I was speaking on the gerrymandering that was taking place. I am not going to listen to a lecture from relatives of those who tried to tear down the democratic institutions of this State in the past.
The Deputy will confine his remarks to the constituency of Meath.
As an Opposition Party, when we see a Government continuing and carrying on gerrymandering — the vicious butchering of a constituency for political reasons and for nothing else—we are entitled to come in here and place before the House alternative proposals. Deputy Hogan has put alternative proposals before the Minister. There is no need for me to put the same proposals Deputy Hogan put. We are making proposals that would meet with the judgment of Mr. Justice Budd, which the Minister has got on the brain all day and not only today but on last Thursday, last Wednesday and during the whole debate on the referendum——
I would direct the Deputy's attention to the fact that his remarks must be addressed to the Chair.
The Minister for Local Government, who talks about delaying tactics, has spoken on one occasion for seven hours, on another for five hours and on another for four hours. It is a pity Deputy Andrews was not here today. He states that the Bill is being delayed. Deputy Boland came in here today and bitterly complained that he was not given enough time by the Whips to reply to the debate; that he wanted more time and was entitled to more time and that if he had got it he would have explained more fully what was at the back of Fianna Fáil's mind. We all know what is at the back of their minds.
The Deputy must relate his remarks to the constituency of Meath.
As far as Meath is concerned, we know that by swiping off a very small portion of Meath and transferring 8,000 votes into Louth, Louth could have been made a four-seat constituency. There was no necessity then to interfere with Meath. The remainder of Meath would have formed a three-seat constituency, Longford-Westmeath a four-seat constituency and Cavan-Monaghan a five-seat constituency.
In reply to Deputy Andrews, if he had been here he would have heard the Minister for Local Government accuse us, due to the judgment in 1960, of depriving the Protestants of representation in Donegal. From the foundation of this State we have cherished all the children of the nation equally. Never at any time in the history of this State did we try to take from them their legitimate rights.
The Deputy is out of order.
I may be but the Chair allowed Deputy Andrews to get up here and for ten minutes make a personal attack on me.
That is not true. I made no personal attack on the Deputy or anybody else.
The Deputy said I was bringing this House into disrepute.
That is not a personal attack.
I want to say that, as far as I am concerned, at any time I will come here as long as I am a Member of this House and, if there is gerrymandering taking place in Meath, Louth, Monaghan or any of these constituencies, I will point out to this House and to the people of the country what is happening.
The Deputy has now made his point.
(South Tipperary): The Minister has taken me to task on the point that I have come in here and asked him to repeat his reasons for making certain constituency arrangements. I was on a deputation after Question Time regarding flooding in South Tipperary and, when I came to the House immediately after the deputation was over, the House was discussing the question of Mayo. At that stage I asked the Minister why it was necessary to alter Mayo from being a constituency of North Mayo and a constituency of South Mayo as it traditionally was, to being a constituency of East Mayo and West Mayo. I accepted the fact that it was necessary by virtue of population shrinking and the question of Ballaghaderreen to make it a six-seat constituency because that was under some question here but I did not understand why it should be necessary to——
Am I to go back to Mayo, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle?
The Chair would hope that there would be no return to a constituency that has been disposed of.
The Chair will realise that I must reply to Deputy Hogan.
You will reply whether he realises it or not.
(South Tipperary): The Minister mentioned then that he had given some indication——
I take it that what the Deputy is doing at the moment is giving an explanation in regard to his absence from the House? The Chair would appeal to the Deputy to come to the question of Meath.
(South Tipperary): I am merely dealing with the matter because the Minister took me to task for asking him to repeat himself. That was the only occasion on which I mentioned something which apparently had been dealt with before so I think it was unfair of the Minister to say that I have been putting him to the trouble of repeating himself. As a matter of fact he has a penchant for repeating himself. It does not require any stimulus from me to get the poor man to repeat himself. He has been doing it continuously since three o'clock.
He accuses us on this side of the House for not having unanimity in our proposals and in the next breath he says that there are several alternative methods of doing this. He cannot have it both ways. I agree that there are several alternative methods. In regard to Meath, apart from the Minister's suggestion which I think is ridiculous, I gave him three different methods of doing it and one could multiply those three several times and any other Member on this side of the House could get up and with a slight modification of the three methods I have given could give several other methods. They would all be reasonable and superior to the methods suggested by the Minister. Therefore, I do not think he is making much of a point when he accuses us of offering different solutions as he calls them and not having unanimity of opposition. The very nature of this measure means that there are several alternatives.
143 to be exact.
Did the Deputy fail again? He got one Deputy the last time. That was his most successful trip in a long time.
I tried to wash the sleep out of my eyes.
He has only three Fine Gael Deputies in the whole House.
Deputy Hogan on Meath.
(South Tipperary): I am merely trying to point out to the House that there is more than one alternative. There are several and it is quite pointless for the Minister to make an issue of this matter that because each Deputy does not say exactly the same thing therefore they are all wrong. There are several good alternatives and any of the ones that have been mentioned are better than the Minister's.
I agree on a number of occasions with Deputy L'Estrange and Deputy Hogan that there are many different alternatives and, in my opinion, the proposals before the House are the best that we have heard so far. I think it is reasonable to expect that a group of people who describe themselves as a political Party should make a decision in regard to some definite proposal rather than that they should all have different proposals and expect me to deal in detail with each and every one.
(South Tipperary): I wonder would the Minister accept them though?
If you propose a better one, but the Deputies opposite have not done so and what is more they have not produced an agreed one. They have not produced one that they can agree upon themselves. I want to point out to Deputy Andrews, not to Deputy L'Estrange, that my reference to what Fine Gael did with regard to Donegal was purely in refutation of the previous attempts on the part of Fine Gael Deputies to introduce this despicable tactic of sectarianism into the debate.
The Minister was suckled on it.
Occasionally I have to refer to the constitutional position. Deputy Hogan now demands that I go back to deal with Mayo again. Since he cannot stay in the House, I should ask him to read the Official Report in connection with Mayo. Having regard to all he said about Mayo and to his industry, I am surprised that Deputy Hogan refrained from dividing the county into two three-seaters on the basis of east and west. That, however, was not the only occasion on which he asked me to repeat myself. He has been doing that in regard to all constituencies. I suggest that he reads my reply to his proposed solution in the Official Report.
There is little use in me putting up alternatives to the Minister. We have done so. We have given him figures. Deputy Hogan has given a figure but the Minister's solution would change ten times as many people as Deputy Hogan's. Fianna Fáil having a majority in the House, it does not matter how good our alternatives are, the Minister will bulldose his own proposals through. Though we admit this is unfair and unjust, there is little use in our discussing it further because the Minister is not willing to give way to commonsense, justice and fair play.
Because Deputy L'Estrange admits Fine Gael cannot agree on a proposal, it is just as well to stop talking about it.
I want to point out that, as far as the entry in regard to Meath is concerned, I have given figures. I asked the Minister if he had a pencil with which to write them down. I do not know whether he did so. The Minister's figures represent six changes and the switching of 22,084 people.
That is the fourteenth time the Deputy has said that.
We have given him an alternative which would mean switching only 8,000 people. Any of our alternatives is fairer and more just to the people concerned, but it is not suitable to Fianna Fáil. What is uppermost in the Minister's mind is to get for Fianna Fáil the maximum representation in Meath, Monaghan and Cavan. He is not interested in alternatives. The Minister could have chosen one which would avoid disruption and displacement of thousands of people; but all he is concerned with is to get maximum representation for Fianna Fáil by gerrymander, by the twisting around of constituencies and the crossing of county boundaries. Thanks be to God, the Irish people have become much more intelligent than they were. They have proved it in the Presidential election, in the local elections and in the referendum. Let the next election come when it may, it will prove that Fianna Fáil are in a minority in the people's regard. The people have lost confidence in them.
I have not denied that either Deputy L'Estrange or Deputy Hogan has given me a number of different solutions. One, at least, was a fairly complete one but I do not know if the others were. The others seem to be piecemeal but no doubt Deputy Hogan has ability to dovetail them into some composite arrangement. I will assume that, but I have continually stated that there is no limit to the number of possible arrangements. There are a great number of them but Fine Gael have not put forward any alternative solutions. The Party do not agree. There are only two of them in the House at the moment and even they cannot agree on a solution. Last Wednesday, Deputy L'Estrange achieved the incredible result of actually getting six Fine Gael Deputies together and they produced six different alternatives. How can we choose between them? We have come down in favour of the arrangement now before the House. There is as much dissatisfaction with it, from the personal point of view, among Deputies on this side as there is among Fine Gael Deputies.
Now is the Minister not contradicting himself?
Deputy Corry is displeased with his constituency, Deputy Dowling is displeased with his, Deputy Millar is displeased with his. Of the eight Fianna Fáil Deputies here, at least four are displeased.
Deputy Millar has announced he is not going forward. The Minister does not know what is happening in his Party.
Therefore, 50 per cent of the Fianna Fáil Deputies here at present are dissatisfied with their constituencies. We know from Deputy L'Estrange that he is personally dissatisfied with his. Of the Fine Gael Deputies present, therefore, there is a maximum of 50 per cent discontented with their constituencies. Indeed, there may be 100 per cent of them because Deputy Hogan has not said he himself is satisfied.
Deputy L'Estrange contends that the whole operation in so far as this area is concerned is to get the maximum Fianna Fáil representation in those five counties. Either there is majority support of Fianna Fáil or there is not. There are five counties concerned and we propose to have five three-seat constituencies, one in each county. I agree with Deputy L'Estrange it is inconceivable in the foreseeable future that these five counties or any other group of counties would ever return a Fine Gael majority. I confidently expect there will be a Fianna Fáil majority returned under this or any other scheme of constituencies. This scheme is the one which is least objectionable of the many presented to me so far.
If the Minister is not trying to gerrymander, will he tell us why it is that in Connacht and in Ulster wherein the referendum——
We are dealing with Meath.
I shall deal with Meath and we are entitled to discuss Monaghan and Cavan. Will the Minister say why in the places where in the referendum Fianna Fáil got from 43 per cent to 45 per cent of the votes they are having three-seat constituencies and in Dublin where they were annihilated, getting only 29 per cent of the poll, they have four-seat constituencies?
May I remind the Deputy again the result of the referendum is not relevant.
Is it not gerrymandering? I heard the confident Minister who sits over there before the referendum; he was as confident before the referendum about the result of the referendum as he is now about the next general election. He said they would win the referendum by 100,000 votes. He talks about the people on this side of the House. We have a Party meeting going on at the moment, a meeting we are quite entitled to have——
This is not relevant on the Schedule.
We are discussing Meath. For the last two hours, until the bells rang, there was not a single Fianna Fáil Deputy in the House, with the exception of the Minister, and the Minister could get nobody to take his place this evening because nobody was prepared to sit in there and do the Minister's dirty work,
That has nothing to do with the Schedule.
From three o'clock until ten the Minister was not able, despite being in touch with the Fianna Fáil Whip, to get another Minister, or even a Parliamentary Secretary, to take his place and do his dirty work.
The Minister is able to do his own job.
I have seen the Fianna Fáil Whip talking to him and the Minister has not been able to get anyone to come in here and sit here in his place. He is a one-man Party.
I dealt with the situation in Dublin when it was relevant. Apparently it did not penertrate as far as Deputy L'Estrange. That must have been during one of the occasions when Deputy L'Estrange was running around Lenister House trying to get Fine Gael Deputies to come in here and speak. I do not propose to convenience Deputy L'Estrange by dealing once more with the situation in Dublin. I should like to point out that the allegation that, because we got 43 per cent of the votes, in the referendum in certain areas, we decided to have three-seat constituencies is quite ridiculous. The referendum results were in relation to two specific proposals to amend the Constitution. Now, in case Deputy L'Estrange does not know it—maybe Deputy Hogan would explain it to him —43 per cent of the votes in a three-seat constituency would mean one seat, not two. If we have 43 per cent of the votes and if, as the Deputy and the Fine Gael Party say, the Labour Party have cut themselves off from support in such constituencies, then Fine Gael must get the remainder of the votes and, therefore, in these three five-seat constituencies Fine Gael will get ten seats.
With the help of God.
Surely Fine Gael does not expect to get more? What better arrangement could we make for Fine Gael than to provide them with the opportunity of getting this majority in that area? The fact of the matter is that a preponderance of three-seat constituencies makes it reasonably possible for some Party to get a majority and I agree with Deputy L'Estrange that that Party is most likely to be Fianna Fáil.
Why did Fianna Fáil not have that in 1961 when they had only 12?
(South Tipperary): I shall deal with just one point raised by the Minister——
The Minister said he would start a new Party if Fianna Fáil did not abolish the Bordere.
Order. Deputy Hogan is in possession.
(South Tipperary): The Minister stated that no alternative system has been proposed from this side of the House. For the benefit of those Deputies who have been so conspicuously absent from the other side of the House, I think it is only proper that I should contradict that allegation absolutley. The extraordinary thing is that most of the suggestions and the majority of the speeches have come from this side of the House. The Minister accused us of trotting in and out every half-hour. During my time here I have heard very few contributions to the debate from the far side of the House and I am not aware that a single Fianna Fáil Deputy has made any suggestion so far to the Minister. Certainly, if they did so, it has escaped me. There are Ministerial amendments and any suggestions in relation to these amendments have come from this side of the House.
That is not true.
(South Tipperary): I take the Minister to task on his allegations that no alternative propositions have come from this side of the House. Along the western seaboard, including Donegal and Clare, I suggested a transfer of population of 9,000.
May I remind the Deputy again that we are dealing with Meath?
(South Tipperary): I am refuting the Minister's suggestion that no alternative proposals were made. I am pointing out that we made detailed alternative proposals. We have given him a transfer of population. The Minister has transferred a population of 101,000. The proposals put forward by us show that we could do a better job here with a transfer of 21,000. That is our transfer figure over the entire country. It is one-fifth of what the Minister proposes. In my opinion the Minister's proposal is gerrymandering. There is no other interpretation.
With regard to the suggestion that Fianna Fáil Deputies were not here while we were discussing Meath, I say they were here and they heard everything the Opposition had to say about Meath in the first half hour of the debate. The did not have to stay here to listen to Deputy L'Estrange and Deputy Hogan and everyone else. Fianna Fáil Deputies heard all that Fine Gael had to say in the first half hour. There was no reason why they should stay here.
Deputy Hogan is not serious surely when he alleges that I said there was no alternative produced from that side of the House. If he looks back over the debate he will see that on every occasion on which I spoke I admitted there were many possible alternatives. Indeed, so far as the Fine Gael Party were concerned, there were obviously as many alternatives as there were Deputies. What I have been complaining about is that I cannot get a concrete alternative from Fine Gael.
Not only can Deputy L'Estrange not agree with Deputy Hogan, but Deputy Hogan cannot agree with himself, because he has put forward I do not know how many different alternatives. I have not counted them. I do not think he knows himself. He has a different one every time he gets up to speak. This is just typical of Fine Gael. They cannot agree on anything. No wonder they have to have all those Party meetings. Deputy Dowling has given us the sad news that there have been more threatened resignations. I appeal to Fine Gael not to break up because we like to have some kind of Opposition here, even if it is an Opposition that cannot agree on any subject under the sun.
Is the Minister speaking to the Taoiseach? Will he tell us?
I want to congratulate Deputy L'estrange on succeeding in getting another Fine Gael Deputy to come in.
It took the bell to bring in the Minister's supporters.
His efforts have been reasonably successful today. He has finished up today with a total of four. After all the running up and down the stairs and in and out of the House, he has acheived the reamrkable total of four. I can see Deputy Dillon preparing to move the adjournment again today as he did on the last occasion we were discussing this. Apparently that is his function——
No better man to do it.
——in these Fine Gael deliberate delaying tactics, this effort by the Fine Gael party to prevent the enactment of this legislation——
Have we not got great patience to listen to him?
——to prevent the way being prepared for a general election. I can quite understand that, with the state of disunity that exists in Fine Gael, they must face the prospect of the forthcoming general election with more than their usual trepidation, and that is saying something.
The Minister should not bother about Fine Gael. He should think of the disunity in his own Party. The Minister is not speaking to the Taoiseach. He spent the past ten minutes talking about fine Gael disunity. We are united. We are quite prepared to face the people at any time. We will accept the result, and we know what it will be. I advise the Minister what it will be. I advise with the Taoiseach. Speak to him sometime.
Agree on something.
Is it not true that not one single person would take the Minister's place there today? He sent out for someone, but no one would take his place.
I am too interested in this to let anyone else in.
Question put and agreed to.
MONAGHAN
I move amendment No. 25a:
In page 12, in the second column of the entry relating to Monaghan, to delete:—"Castletown, Rathkenny, in the former Rural District of Navan".
Amendment agreed to.
Question proposed: "That the entry, as amended, relating to the constituency of Monaghan stand part of the Schedule".
He could not get five. Deputy Dillion has gone home.
This again is, a typical example of the gerrymandering to which the government are prepared to stoop. Monaghan and Cavan could easily have been made a five-seat constituency and the only disruption of population that minght take place, if the Government intended to interefere with a minimum number of people, would be to put 8,568 people——
The Deputy will appreciate that Monaghan has already been discussed with Meath.
Why is he holding up the House?
I am not holding up the House. I do not agree with your ruling. There was an agreement between the Whips, and it was pointed out to the Chair that when a constituency was being discussed the constituencies bordering on it could also be discussed.
We took Monaghan with Meath.
Up to this we were making a case against the gerrymandering of Meath constituency. We are now making the case that the Minister has also gerrymandered Monaghan and Cavan and that there was no necessity to do that. Cavan and Monaghan could have been joined together and made into a five-seat constituency. By doing that there would be no necessity to interefere with the borders of either Cavan county or Monaghan county. Those two counties have much in common. There would be only a minimal disruption of the population by taking 8,000 people from Meath and putting them in Louth. It is quite obvious why fianna Fáil did not want to do that, because if they conceded——
I take it the Chair is changing his ruling and that we can discuss this again.
On a point of order. Is the Chair ruling that we cannot discuss other constituencies?
The Chair is pointing out that we have discussed Monaghan with Meath, that the entry in relation to Monaghan as amended by amendment No. 25a has been discussed already, but the Chair is awaiting any new material which the Deputy wishes to put forward and which he can discuss.
(South Tipperary): This ruling would be applicable also to Meath. Is the Chair ruling that because the amendment was carried discussion on Monaghan is out of order?
The Chair is pointing out that the entry in relation to Monaghan, as amended, is under discussion. We do not want to have repetition of the same arguments, but there may be some new material which Deputies have to offer.
(South Tipperary): There could be.
If you want new material——
Get a new man.
The Taoiseach could do with a Minister for Local Government he could speak to or direct to do something for him. We know that the Minister has refused to obey his direction on numerous occasions in the past. In any case, it might be no harm to point out to the Minister that since his Party came into office in 1932 the population of Monaghan has dropped from 61,000 to 45,000. The policy of Fianna Fáil, about which we hear so much, has driven 16,000 people out of the country. They voted with their feet because they had to emigrate to England.
That is not relevant to the entry we are discussing.
Surely if these people were driven out of Monaghan——
We cannot discuss the movement of people or why they moved. We can deal only with the figures in relation to the entry in the Schedule.
There are at least two or three alternatives to the Minister's proposition, if the Minister were not so vindictive and did not want to get this vindictive Bill enacted, to make the people in Monaghan and Meath suffer because they had the effrontery, according to the Minister, to vote against his recommendation, and refused to vote for the Third and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution. We have already given numerous figures. The Minister is disrupting 9,000 or 10,000 people in this area. I do not want to go over all that was said before.
Not until tomorrow. He is hoping to get Deputy Fitzpatrick back tomorrow.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 12th February, 1969.