I move the motion standing in my name:—
"That the Seanad do not insist upon amendment No. 6 in its original form made by it to the Game Preservation Bill, 1929, but agrees to such amendment as amended by the Dáil, viz., by the deletion of sub-section (5) of the proposed new section."
I move that the Report of the Joint Committee be adopted. In fact, I might explain shortly to the House how the amendment arose and what the meaning of the Report is. It will be within the recollection of the House that a question between the two Houses arose out of an amendment which the Seanad put into this Bill. It was the amendment which empowered the Minister to appoint an Advisory Council or Board for the purpose of assisting him in the carrying out of the Bill. It inserted a new section and that section contained a sub-section, sub-section (5), which empowered the Minister to pay, or rather to repay, out of the moneys provided by the Oireachtas the expenses of the members of that Committee—that is, their travelling or out of pocket expenses. That went to the Dáil and they accepted the whole of that section with the exception of sub-section (5). It appears from the discussion in the Dáil that their reason for the rejection of that sub-section was a Constitutional one—namely, that this House had exceeded its Constitutional powers in inserting in a Bill that was not a Money Bill a money section—that is, a section which involved the raising and expenditure of public money. That being so, they sent a message back to this House to delete sub-section (5). That raised a very important Constitutional question between the two Houses and accordingly a Joint Conference was ordered by each House as to the best way of solving this difficulty or of getting out of it.
The Joint Conference was duly held, and it occurred to the members of the Conference that the sub-section in question, which gave the Minister this power, was after all, an unnecessary sub-section, because the Bill contained a definite section, Section 32, which gave the Minister power to pay all expenses incurred in carrying the Act into operation. I was myself very definitely of opinion that Section 32 rendered our sub-section (5), the new sub-section that we inserted, quite unnecessary, and that there was power given to the Minister under Section 32 to do exactly what we wanted by sub-section (5) to do. Accordingly, the members of the Joint Conference, being unanimously of that view, came to the conclusion that it would be an unwise thing to raise or even to discuss a Constitutional question in an unnecessary case like that. Therefore they reported unanimously:—
The Conference being of opinion that Section 32 of the Game Preservation Bill, 1929, renders the insertion of sub-section (5) of the proposed amendment No. 6 unnecessary, decided to recommend that the Seanad should not insist on the retention of the proposed sub-section.
The Conference desires to place on record that, in the foregoing circumstances, the Constitutional question did not arise.
Senators will see that so far as the Constitutional question is concerned it was not discussed. It did not arise, and nothing has been done by that Conference in any way to deprive us of our Constitutional right, on which we insist, of putting amendments of this kind in a Bill. I therefore beg to move the motion standing in my name.