I beg to move:—"That the Report be adopted." As this is the first Report of this kind, perhaps I ought to explain that under the Standing Orders relative to Private Business the Oireachtas reserves to itself the power to dispense with any Standing Orders, with or without conditions, if they think fit, and all such Petitions are referred to the Joint Committee on Standing Orders. In this case, practically all the Urban Districts had already petitioned against the Bills. That enables them to appear when the Bills are in Committee and state any objections they may have either to the Bills or parts of them. The Blackrock Council, through inadvertence, failed to have their Petition in in time. They accordingly petitioned the Committee, who decided, after hearing the case, as the Bills had been postponed until October, to recommend that both Houses should dispense with the Standing Order in so far as was necessary to enable them to lodge a petition. It is purely a formal matter.
PRIVATE BUSINESS. - REPORT OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON STANDING ORDERS.
The Joint Committee on Standing Orders (Private Business) report that they have received Petitions from the Blackrock Urban District Council seeking liberty to deposit petitions against the Dublin Electricity Supply Bill, the East Leinster Electricity Supply Bill, and the Dublin and District Electricity Supply Bill, although the time specified by the Standing Orders for the depositing of such petitions has expired; that they have heard arguments in support of and against the petitions, and in view of the fact that the consideration of the Bills in question by Committee has been postponed to a date to be fixed in October, they recommend that compliance with Standing Order 62 be dispensed with so far as concerns the deposit of these petitions before the Second Reading of the respective Bills, on condition that the petitions shall be deposited on or before the 15th September next.
Sighnithe.
JAMES G. DOUGLAS,
Cathaoirleach.
25adh Iúl, 1924.
Question put and agreed to.