I should like to refer to some of the Bills that are listed here in the guillotine motion to be passed by 10.30 p.m. today, by 11.30 a.m. tomorrow and by 10.00 p.m. on Thursday, and to draw the attention of the House to the significance of what will have to happen under a guillotine motion of this kind with Bills of that type.
The first one I will refer to is the Courts Bill, 1981, the Committee, Fourth and Fifth Stages of which will have to be passed tonight whether they are debated or not. One would assume that any Bill contained in a guillotine motion would be one of urgency. It is highly improper of any Government to attempt to guillotine legislation not of urgency. This Bill has one provision of substance, to appoint two more High Court judges. At the moment there are 12 High Court judges and it is proposed to have 14.
At the moment only 11 High Court judges can sit at any given time because there is accommodation for only 11. That was the position even before a fire in the Four Courts recently reduced the accommodation still further by the destruction of Court No. 4, which awaits refurbishment by the Board of Works who are sometimes not the quickest at repairing things after fires, as some Members of the House know. We are therefore in a position that a Bill providing for three surplus High Court judges is being guillotined through tonight. What urgency is there in that?
Deputy Collins has an amendment down for the Committee Stage of that Bill which very probably will never be taken. His amendment is an attempt to get at least two judges stationed outside Dublin where there is accommodation available for them and where there are arrears that could be overcome by a judge being more or less permanently stationed in Cork, Limerick, Galway and so on, commuting between those cities. That amendment, unhappily, will never be moved or considered by the House. The Bill provides for three surplus High Court judges for whom there is no accommodation. This comes about at a time when the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court is about to be increased dramatically from £2,000 to £15,000, thereby diminishing the work of the High Court very considerably, yet we are still asked to guillotine through this Bill which, if it is desirable from any point of view, is not necessary from the point of view of urgency. It is neither necessary nor urgent.
I should like to refer also to the Housing (Private Rented Dwellings) Bill, 1981 of which the Committee, Fourth and Fifth Stages would have to be passed by 10.30 tonight. That is the final one of the six items of business, four of them Bills, listed in the guillotine motion. That Bill is an effort to get round the unconstitutionality of two parts of the Rent Restrictions Act, 1960. It has been conceded in advance by the Government, as it should have been, that as soon as it has been passed this Bill will be referred to the Supreme Court, and the reason we were prepared to have that Bill taken this week and finished, but in circumstances in which we would be able to debate it, is that it cannot be referred to the Supreme Court until it has been passed by both Houses.
The predominant legal opinion in relation to the Bill is that it is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court will have to examine it in a month or two, whenever the time comes, and one of the remarkable things the court will have to advert to, inevitably, is the fact that Dáil Éireann never debated a complex Bill of that kind on the Committee, Fourth or Fifth Stage, a Bill whose possible unconstitutionality is admitted by all in advance. The fact that such a Bill had not been debated would help to make it unconstitutional, or make the Supreme Court take a more jaundiced view of it. However, the situation we are asked to accept today is that not only will it not be debated but it will not be debated at all on Committee Stage, though it is very much a Committee Stage Bill. Anybody who knows anything about rent restrictions knows how complex it is, the importance and significance of the individual words and phrases, and what a huge corpus of law has been built up in relation to rent restrictions over the years.
It is vital that that Bill would be fully debated on Committee and Report Stages, but by virtue of its position at the end of this list of six items, none of which has been started yet, it will be guillotined through, and whatever chance the Courts Bill might have of some discussion, this Housing Bill has no chance at all. Do the Government seriously think that that will improve the prospects in the Supreme Court of it being found to be constitutional, when the major House of the Oireachtas did not have an opportunity to debate it on Committee or Report Stage? It seems to me to be most unwise, to say the least of it, to guillotine a Bill of that nature, because it will almost certainly lead or contribute to its constitutional demise, and the whole affair to a great extent will have been a waste of time.
The next Bill on this motion is the Insurance Bill 1981. Assuming this motion is accepted, it is listed to be taken at 10.30 a.m. tomorrow and to be concluded not later than 11.30 a.m. The House will sit at 10.30, and it may be, because of the depth of feelings that exists, understandably, in the House, that the whole question of the Order of Business will take more than a minute or two. Today, it took half an hour or more and, because of the anger felt by some Members at a motion of this kind and at the general rather arrogant conduct of the Government, tomorrow the whole question of the Order of Business and so on may well take the best part of half an hour. If that is to be the case, little more than half an hour will be allowed for the Second, Committee, Fourth and Final Stages of the Insurance Bill. Even if only the Minister and I spoke and he replied, I could not see the Second Stage taking less than an hour. Although it is a short Bill, it is complicated and has many important principles involved in it. It has had a long history with which I am familiar. I would have a good deal to say about it in the normal way if I were allowed time in the House. Even assuming that we are able to complete the Second Stage —and that seems unlikely—we will not be able to have any Committee, Report or Final stages by 11.30 a.m. tomorrow.
I should like to draw your attention, Sir, to the fact that the Bill contains a provision the result of which was not foreseen by the draftsman or by the Government when they approved of the Bill. Nor was it foreseen by the company concerned, the Irish Life Assurance Company. When I drew their attention to it, as I did recently, they were very perturbed at the consequences of it, and immediately talked in terms of amending the Bill. The company concerned accept that an amendment is necessary. How can I on the Opposition side or the Minister on the Government side put down an amendment? There is no conceivable way in which the Second Stage debate will be finished by 11.30 a.m. and I cannot put down an amendment, nor can the Minister, until the Second Stage has been passed.
The consequences are serious. They are not just technical, legal or legislative. It is proposed in this Bill to allow the Irish Life Assurance Company, 91 per cent owned by the State and regarded as a semi-State body, to take over any life or general insurance company in the State or outside the State or to form a subsidiary for the purpose of carrying on business inside the State or outside the State in life assurance or in general insurance.
One of the consequences of that very broad power being given to the Irish Life Assurance Company, which goes away beyond the immediate objective of allowing them to take over 60 per cent of the Church and General Insurance Company, is to establish them as legislatively capable of taking over any insurance company in the State and carrying on any insurance business in the State. Inside this House and outside it for many years demands have been articulated from time to time by large numbers of people for the State to take over motor insurance. The State had no vehicle through which to take over motor insurance up to now. At 11.30 a.m. tomorrow, if this is guillotined through, the State will have such a vehicle and the Irish Life Assurance Company will be that vehicle.
I do not need to tell you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, that motor insurance in Ireland is not an attractive proposition. If the Irish Life Assurance Company are forced into this situation—and the Bill as it stands unamended will certainly force them into it—they will be stuck with something that is not attractive and which prudent insurance companies try to keep out of to the greatest extent they reasonably can. The weakness of Irish Life is that they are subject to public control and Government direction. It is not impossible to envisage a situation in which the Irish Life Assurance Company might suddenly find themselves the unwilling recipients of a very high proportion of the motor insurance business presently written in this country.
It is fairly easy to envisage a situation in which that could suddenly arise. If it does arise, Irish Life will have taken on immediately a major loss-making operation and the losers by that—and Irish Life inevitably must be concerned about this — are the existing and future policy holders of the Irish Life Assurance Company. When they took out their policies with that company they did so on the basis that it was a well-run life company which did not dabble in a major way in other loss-making operations in insurance.
Is it fair to the policy holders to put them in that position? Is it fair to do so without any debate on that point in this House? It is not. Even Members of the Government, if they look at this objectively and calmly, will agree that it is not fair or proper. Deputy Moore`s amendment on this point provides for a discussion lasting nine hours on this Bill on Wednesday from 1.30 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. That is about the minimum needed to discuss the Bill effectively. Ideally it should be discussed on two separate days. The Second Stage debate should be on one day and the Committee Stage debate on another day to allow for the preparation of amendments arising out of the Second Stage debate and the reply to it. In the circumstances, in his amendment Deputy Moore has done the best that can be done in allowing nine hours for it.
I am aware that, if the Bill is not passed, the take-over of 60 per cent of the Church and General Insurance Company by Irish Life will be impeded, as it has to go through some time in January. There is no great dispute in principle between the Government and ourselves on the Bill. The Government simply did not advert to the sort of situation which now arises and causes concern to the company. The Government should be reasonable enough to accept amendments of the kind which must be made, and which even the company feel must be made. How are we to have any amendments tomorrow? The Second Stage debate will not have been completed by the time the Bill is guillotined through.
This is an abuse of the guillotine procedure. Many people would say the guillotine procedure is an abuse of parliamentary procedure. I will not go so far as to say that. There are times when it has to be used. I recall using it in 1972 after we had 165 hours of debate on one Bill. I tried to bring the discussion to a close after the former Deputy Conor Cruise-O'Brien stood there with a large dictionary in his hand for six-and-a-half hours talking about one word. That was the sort of debate we had. I remember I guillotined the end of that Bill after 165 hours of debate.
