May I suggest to the Senator that there is nothing in the Constitution, in this Bill, or in the Statutes of the Oireachtas which binds us to conform to the Deputy's ideas of what is befitting for members of either House of the Oireachtas. When the Senator gets up and suggests a price it immediately suggests a certain class of accommodation. He then said that was just what it cost him for board and lodging. Again, I am not in the position of a Deputy coming from the country, but I say that while a Deputy, living in the country, may be able, possibly, to live there on less than 15/- a day, he has, of course, home comforts and the conveniences of his own household at home. When he comes up from the country I do not think those who sent him here to represent them are going to contend that he has simply to content himself with bare board and lodging; surely, at any rate, he is entitled to the accommodation and comfort he would have at home. It is not possible to get that in the City of Dublin in the sort of temporary and irregular way that Deputies have to attend here, unless a reasonable price is paid, certainly, in my view, not unless you are prepared to pay a great deal more than the Senator mentioned. These figures are not intended for this House, but are held up to the country as the figures for which country Deputies might secure accommodation in Dublin.
I did deal with one item in the Senator's estimate, an item with which I personally have good reason to be very familiar. I say that during the period when I was in opposition the amount which I had to spend on secretarial assistance was certainly very much more than £1 a week, and I was not by any means an exception in that regard. I am perfectly certain there are many Deputies who do not do a great deal of front bench work who would have to spend just as much, because I was rather fortunately situated in regard to my constituency, and I did not then have anything like the same heavy correspondence as other Deputies might have. I have been appalled at the amount of work which Deputies have to do, the amount of correspondence which Deputies representing certain country districts have to undertake, and they have no remedy in that regard.
The people who elect Deputies are not going to be guided either by my ideas or Senator MacDermot's, or Senator Hogan's ideas as to what a Deputy should do for them when they elect him, as to the amount of correspondence which he ought to be prepared to undertake, and the amount of personal representation he is prepared to make on their behalf. They are going to be the judges of that, and in many constituencies they certainly set the standard very high, and expect a great deal from Deputies. Therefore, it is quite wrong for the Senator, because he has been able to do his work as a Deputy, and only had to spend £50 a year on secretarial assistance, to assume that that applies to every other Deputy.
The point as to whether, even in allowing 100 days for attendance in Dublin, the Senator was fair to Deputies was also raised. While I was waiting for the Seanad to come to these items on its agenda, I happened to be in the library, and I saw there a number of Deputies from the country working away, even though the Dáil was adjourned over a week ago. It is quite obvious, therefore, that you cannot simply estimate the number of days upon which Deputies have to attend in Dublin by the number of days on which the Dáil sits.
In my view, and it is the view of the Government, and I am certain it is the view of responsible members of the principal Opposition Party in the Dáil, and of many members of the Labour Party, the Senator's estimate was entirely too low, even for the expenses, not of the average Deputy, but of a great number of Deputies who live in remote constituencies, or in large, sparsely-populated constituencies, or in constituencies in which political rivalry is keen, because it is the keenness of the political rivalry that very often determines the amount of work which a Deputy will have to do. All these factors have had to be taken into consideration by us and, so far as the Senator's estimate of what a Deputy's expenses may be is concerned, I think it should be thrown over, because it is, in relation to certain significant items, an under-estimate. As a Senator here says, it is too low in regard to accommodation. I think the general consensus of opinion in the Seanad in regard to that particular item which Senator Hawkins has challenged is that it is much too low. From the point of view of discussing this matter, if it can be discussed at all, on the basis of an estimate prepared by somebody, then Senator MacDermot's estimate is not a fair one, and is not one that should be accepted.
There is another aspect, and it has relation to what the Shanley Committee has said on the question of "consequential loss". In paragraph 26 of the report the Committee make this statement:—
"We wish to make it quite clear, however, that in our view no element of salary is included in the present allowance and that there is no provision for what is termed consequential loss."
I am making no reflection on the Shanley Committee. I think the direction they got as to how they should deal with this question of a Deputy's allowance was not precise enough, in so far as it was altogether too exclusive. It quite obviously was taken by the Shanley Committee as excluding from consideration any question of consequential loss.
Senator MacDermot has laid down this as a general proposition: That it is not the business of the State to compensate for consequential loss. I agree with that general proposition in so far as it relates to consequential losses of profits or income which a Deputy or Senator may incur by reason of the fact that he is a member of the Oireachtas. I agree with that view if you are to consider this allowance merely as an allowance towards expenses; but it is quite clear that there are consequential losses of another kind, that there are some Deputies and Senators who may incur consequential losses of a capital nature. Senator Hawkins has pointed out how some of them may arise. If a man works on his own farm he cannot walk off and leave that farm look after itself. He may have to employ a person to look after his cattle and see that the ordinary operations of husbandry are done in due time. He may make no profit out of the employment of that man. The only thing he may do is to safeguard himself against capital loss of a consequential nature. He may be anxious to keep his farm from going out of good heart and keep his cattle from going dry. If he is a professional man, he has to have someone to meet his clients so as to avoid losing the goodwill of his business.
That involves consequential loss of a capital nature and that is the nature of consequential loss that I think a Deputy or a Senator is entitled to safeguard himself against out of his allowance. I hold it is a legitimate item of expense which some Senators or Deputies must meet and, therefore, I would join issue with the Shanley Committee on this ground. I say that the Report of the Shanley Committee, with the allowance at its present figure, includes nothing for consequential loss of what might be described as a capital nature. We know that these losses do undoubtedly occur and that there should be some token—I would not say that we can put it at much more than a token-allowance towards them. We know that these losses do arise and that Senators and Deputies are entitled to be recouped for them to such an extent as may be possible. It is not possible to do that in any general way and it is not being done on any large scale here, but it is a factor that has to be taken into consideration.
There are other questions of expense which Senator MacDermot left out of consideration altogether, and a consideration of them only goes to show what a very difficult matter this is The question may arise, for instance, as to the attire befitting a member of the Oireachtas and the residence in which he may have to live once he becomes a Deputy. He may be able to live quite comfortably as a private citizen in a house in which he has not a room to receive people who would come to talk upon confidential matters. I mean, as long as people are not coming to see him about their own private personal affairs but merely coming to pay him a social visit, his accommodation may be quite limited and he may be quite happy; but, the moment he becomes a Deputy, he has to be prepared to receive people in private and hear what they have to say to him in private and that may mean, in the case of some elected representatives of the people, that they may have to change their residence, that they may have to get a slightly larger house than that in which they reside. It may happen, too, that a person who is a manual worker and who wears ordinary, working, everyday clothes five days in the week and only puts on his good clothes, his society garb, on Saturday and Sunday, may have to spend something more even on clothing for himself. None of these things—neither the question of attire nor the question of residence—would be a matter of legitimate expense to a man in moderate or in good circumstances but, quite obviously, it might be a matter of very serious import, say, to an agricultural labourer elected to the Dáil or Seanad, or to an unskilled worker representing an urban constituency.
All those matters have to be taken into consideration and, in fixing this allowance, we have got to give regard to all of them. As Senator Johnston said, it is the person who necessarily incurs the greatest amount of expense to whose case you have to give the greatest consideration and whose position must exercise the greatest weight when you are determining a question of this sort, and not the case of the Deputy who can afford to do with very little because he has special facilities or because his constituency may be a comparatively convenient one, or for one reason or another, which is not a reason that is generally applicable to the whole body of the Assembly. Upon that basis, and in consideration of that fact, and after consideration of all these factors and bearing in mind, as I say, what the Shanley Committee left out of consideration and what they did not take into consideration at all, the question of consequential capital loss, the Government have felt that the Deputy's allowance ought, in the present circumstances, to be increased to £40 per month.
I would just like to deal with the point that was raised by Senator MacDermot in his opening statement, in which I felt that he had taken up the allegation that Senator McLoughlin made in his speech on the Second Reading of this Bill yesterday, namely, that the Government had been coerced to do this by pressure which had been put upon them by members of their own Party. I have here what I did say—and certainly I did not say anything which would warrant that gloss being put upon my words—that, "for some years, not merely recently but earlier—(and when I said that I had in mind experience going back to 1928 or 1929), there have been strong representations by many Deputies that the allowance at present paid to them was not sufficient to cover all the expense involved in the exercise of their responsibilities". Those representations have been made in open debate in the Dáil from time to time. They have been made privately when the question arose of getting people to stand as candidates at the election, and I know that those representations have not been confined merely to the leaders of our Party or the leaders of our organisation, but they have been fairly general and, therefore, it was in that sense that I used the words I did use on the Second Reading of this Bill.
