On that question, I desire to submit to the House some considerations why we should not complete the Report Stage to-day. I do so not with any obstructive idea but from what I consider to be in the true interests of the Bill. In reply to the question which I put to him a moment ago, the President indicated that the Aliens Bill will be coming before the Dáil on its re-assembly. The relation between that Bill and the one we are discussing is very close. In fact, I think it might be said that the Aliens Bill is really supplementary to this Bill. It is surely of the first importance that there should be no discordance between the provisions of the two Bills. It is not improbable, I suggest, that when the Aliens Bill has made some progress in the Dáil we may discover some anomalies in this Bill which it would be desirable to correct for the purpose of establishing harmony between the two measures. But, if we completed the Report Stage of this Bill to-day and if flaws or defects were discovered in it subsequently, then it would not be possible to rectify them except by means of the introduction of another Bill and that, I submit, would not be the best way to deal with such a contingency.
That may be considered a somewhat speculative or theoretical consideration. Still, I think it is one which is well worth weighing before it is dismissed from the minds of the members of the Executive Council. But there is another and more practical reason for the suggestion I am making, one which has come to my notice by a further examination of the Bill since we dealt with it in Committee. When I disclose it I think it will indicate that there is some reason for asking the House not to complete the Report Stage of the Bill to-day and the Government not to press for the completion of the Report Stage to-day. I ask Senators to turn to Section 2, paragraphs (c) and (d). It will be noticed that amongst those who are to be claimed as natural-born citizens are the following:—
(c) every person who was born on or after the 6th day of December, 1922, and before the date of the passing of this Act in a ship registered in Saorstát Eireann, and
(d) every person who is born on or after the date of the passing of this Act in a ship registered in Saorstát Eireann.
Very good. But there is nothing in this Bill to implement these provisions. Here is the importance of the point I am making: that in Section 24 or 25 provision is made for securing the necessary information for the registration of natural-born citizens who are born abroad or born in Northern Ireland, but there is no provision whatever in this Bill for securing statistics or information relevant to the class I am referring to, namely, natural-born citizens born on a ship registered in Saorstát Eireann. I think it would be essential, in order to make these two paragraphs operative, that there should be inserted a section imposing "on the master of every such ship the duty of entering the fact of such birth in the log and furnishing the Registrar-General with particulars of such in due form." It would be then duly registered, and the name might be entered in one of the registers proposed to be established by this Bill, if that was thought desirable. But in this Bill as it stands there is no such provision.
How does the Government propose to secure the statistics and information necessary for this purpose—that is, relating to natural-born citizens born on a ship registered in Saorstát Eireann? If these paragraphs that I have quoted are not to become largely —I will not say entirely—a dead letter that information must be secured. I take it that this could not be entirely an oversight on the part of the draftsman. It would seem to me that for the procuring of such information the Government are relying upon old British statute law for the source of such information. That statute law is to be found in Section 27 of the Births and Deaths Act, 1874, and Section 254 of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894. Briefly, the procedure provided by this British statute law is that when a child is born on a British ship, the master of that ship must record that event in his log book and when the ship arrives at any port in the United Kingdom—this is the wording of the statutory source from which this information can be derived—the master must make a return of the facts to the Registrar-General of Shipping and Seamen in London. A further sub-section states that if the child's father is an Irish subject of His Majesty, the Registrar-General of Shipping and Seamen must send a certified copy of the return showing the birth of such a child to the Registrar-General of Births and Deaths in Dublin. Any lawyer who is conversant with these Acts knows that the facts are as I have stated.
Two important facts are disclosed by this. Firstly, under these two paragraphs which I have quoted, we are claiming as natural-born citizens all children born on a ship registered in Saorstát Eireann, but from this source —and it is the only source from which we can at present secure the information—there is no return made to the Registrar-General in Dublin unless the father of that child is Irish or with the exception of the case in which the mother of an illegitimate child happens to be Irish. Apart from that, there is no return made of such birth from such source. The position is, therefore, that such information as is procurable is incomplete for the purpose of this Bill and, secondly, for a certain very important provision in this Bill, we are relying upon the officials of a British Department to supply statistics and information and these, when supplied, are, as I have indicated, very incomplete in their nature for the purpose of this Bill.
That is not exactly in accord with the status which we have been claiming and which this Bill ostensibly aims at securing, and I think that from what I have said it will be clear that it would be unwise to complete the Report Stage of this Bill to-day until the obvious hiatus or flaw in this provision is rectified. For that definite and practical reason, and for the reason that I mentioned in the beginning, that in the light of the other Bill which relates to the provisions and purposes of this measure, other anomalies may be discovered, it would be desirable to rectify them before this Bill passes from this House, as this will be the last opportunity for amending the Bill. I suggest that it is a sound line of action to pursue to allow this Bill to remain in the Seanad until the other Bill has made some practical progress in the other House. We can then see how far the Bill, as it will stand when the matter I have drawn attention to has been amended, will be efficient and workable.