I move:—
That the Bill do come up for consideration in six months' time.
I should like the House to read this motion in its literal sense and not to regard it as being any attempt to secure a rejection of the Bill in toto. The form in which the motion is put down is that prescribed by the Standing Orders. In proposing the motion I am actuated by two reasons; one is that if this Bill passes now it will be inoperative, and will remain so until a further Bill is passed setting up the machinery under which it is to be operated. The Bill, as Senators will observe, provides that the old system of election is to be substituted by an election at which the candidate shall be nominated in all respects as shall be prescribed by law. The final sentence of the section reads—"the place and conduct of such election shall be regulated by law." There is no enactment at present prescribing or regulating such things, and there is no enactment in sight. The result will be that if we pass this Bill now we shall be in the position in which we shall not be able to fill any casual vacancy that may arise in the Seanad until what I might call this further implementing Bill is passed. How long that situation will remain it is impossible to say. I have no doubt it will depend on other demands on Government time and on the time of the Houses. It does seem to me, and I hope the House will agree with me, that we should not be left in that undesirable position for an indefinite period, and that the proper course for the House to follow would be to suspend this Bill until such time as the other Bill is before us, and if it thinks fit pass both together. I confess I have another reason for the motion. I am sanguine enough to hope that possibly the interval provided by the postponement of the Bill may be availed of to secure a further consideration of the whole question of election to the Seanad. Personally, I have a strong dislike for the present system, and so I think have other Senators, unless their opinions have changed considerably since last year when the Bill for altering the system of triennial elections was before us.
At that time the House had really very little chance of discussing the measure in a deliberate way, and we had practicaly no opportunity of putting forward any alternative proposal to the present system, that is, with any chance of having the alternative fully considered and accepted. In the event of an alternative proposal passing the Seanad at that time it would then have to go back to the Dáil, and there would have been no chance of any change from the former system being made. The Bill came to us close up to the Summer Adjournment, and if the necessary preparations were to be made for the autumn election it was essential the Bill should be passed before the House adjourned. In these circumstances it was a question of the Seanad swallowing the Bill as it was or adhering to the old system of election, which had given so much dissatisfaction in 1925. Placed in that dilemma, the Seanad did swallow the Bill, although I doubt very much whether the majority of the Seanad were really in favour of it. I am encouraged in making this suggestion by some remarks that dropped from the President on the occasion of the introduction of these Bills. Some of us had suggested other methods of election. I know that for myself I favoured the system of the electoral college. Senator Jameson, if I remember rightly, favoured the system of a nominating college with subsequent election by the two Houses. Senator O'Hanlon was in favour of the old system of election, with smaller constituencies. So, too, I think, was Senator O'Farrell and some of his colleagues in the Labour Party. That showed, at any rate, there was a substantial section of the House which did not favour this new system. In reply to some of the speeches in these discussions, the President went a long way towards admitting that he did not regard this new system as an ideal one. He said, if I remember rightly, that it was to enable us to get over the election of last September and give us the opportunity of exploring the whole matter further before the election that is to come in 1931. I do not mean to suggest that there was a definite pledge by the President, but there was the implication that a later proposal to that effect would have consideration from him. I hope that he and this House, and the other House, will think that the interval provided by the postponement of this Bill will give such an opportunity.
This seems to be the time when further exploration of the subject should take place. If it is not done now what I fear will happen is that the whole question will be deferred and when we are coming close to the next triennial election we will be in the same position as we were last summer. If any decision is taken to try to draft an alternative system it will only be done at a late period when proper consideration cannot be given to it. Now that we have plenty of time is the time to face the problem. I make the assertion that the system of election as applied last December did not give general satisfaction, and I believe before that system becomes stereotyped we ought to examine it in the light of the experience of last December. We are not likely to get further information to enlighten us on the subject between now and two years hence, when the other election will be due.
One of the arguments put forward in favour of the new system introduced last year was that it would lessen the influence of party organisations in the elections. That did reconcile a number of Senators to the proposals, but I do not think that anyone can claim that that expectation has been fulfilled. On the contrary, I think it right to say that the party system operated in that election with more rigour than anyone ever conceived to be likely, or indeed, possible. Of course none of us is so unsophisticated as to imagine that you can do away with the party system in politics. It is essential to democratic government that there should be party polities, but this House is not intended to be a democratic House, and it is undesirable, in my judgment, that the party system should be allowed to operate as fully here as it would in the case of the Dáil. There should be some modification which would secure to a greater degree the independence of this House, and prevent it becoming what there is a danger of its becoming, a mere duplicate of the Dáil.
It might be foreign to go into any details of the last election, but any of us who know anything about it know that not only were members of parties directed to vote for candidates, which, of course, was quite right, but steps were taken of a really surprising kind, at least in one instance that I heard of, to ensure that the directions given were obeyed. I cannot speak from personal knowledge of the case referred to, but I have it from a very good source. It was that in the case of one Party some, at least, of the members never voted at all, that the voting was all done by an official. Of course if that be true, and if it developed, there would be no need to have an election at all. All that would be necessary would be to get the Party Whips to decide who were to be members of this House. I think that would be a very deplorable position. I do not think it would add to the prestige of the House. As I say, before the position becomes mixed, I hope the House and the Government will consider the advisability of again examining the whole problem. Whatever may be the view of the House on the larger aspect of the election my original point holds, and that is that this Bill, if it is passed, would leave the House in the position of being unable to fill a casual vacany until another Bill comes along, and for that reason I hope that my motion will be passed.
