I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time.
Local Government (Repeal of Enactments) Bill, 1949—Second Stage.
The purpose of the Bill is, as its long title states, to repeal certain enactments or portions of enactments relating to local authorities which may be regarded as spent or which have ceased to be in force otherwise than by express repeal or which have by lapse of time or otherwise become unnecessary. The Bill contains two sections only, but the material part is the Schedule which sets out the enactments concerned and the extent of the repeal in each case. It will be observed that the first enactment mentioned is the Grand Jury (Ireland) Act, 1816, whilst the last is the County Management (Amendment) Act, 1942. Thus the Bill covers a century and a quarter of local government law. During that period many changes have taken place. The Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, introduced a new system of local government by popularly elected councils in place of the old grand jury system. Between 1920 and 1925 the boards of guardians and rural district councils were abolished and replaced by boards of health and public assistance and, save in the case of joint districts, these boards in their turn have now been abolished.
These are some of the changes which have rendered many earlier statutory provisions obsolete but these provisions cannot be removed from the Statute Book until expressly repealed. In addition, various enactments down the years usually contained certain transitory provisions the force of which was spent in a short period following the enactment. Thus, for example, in the Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act, 1840, we find provisions (Sections 3 and 4) to safeguard the rights of persons living in 1835 and provisions for the payment of their existing liabilities (Section 109). There are also various Acts or portions of Acts regulating local elections for the time being which have served their purpose and are no longer of any effect.
These are instances of the types of legislation which it is proposed to repeal by this Bill. In all there are about 70 enactments which are being repealed in whole or in part and the reasons for repeal are set out briefly in the explanatory memorandum which has been circulated to Senators with this Bill.
It is, of course, to be understood that the Bill will make no change whatsoever in the law as it is at present administered. No provision which is not clearly spent, obsolete, or unnecessary has been included. The purpose of the Bill is merely to clear away a lot of obsolete enactments from the local government code. The retention on the Statute Book of these unnecessary Acts has made it difficult to acquire familiarity with the law dealing with local government or to produce a textbook of such law of reasonable dimensions and clarity.
There is a further and more farreaching purpose behind the Bill. When the dead wood of the old enactments has been pruned away, it is proposed to proceed with the revision and codification of the net corpus of enactments remaining in operation. This will be a large and complex job and it will be considerably facilitated by the prior enactment of this repeal measure. The first result of the work now proposed will be the preparation of a Statute Law Revision Bill; and, secondly, a Consolidation Bill. Already a textbook on the contents of the existing law, less the obsolete and spent enactments, has been prepared and is ready for publication. It is now proposed to engage experts on the contents of the general local government law and various specialist local government codes to proceed further with the revision and consolidation work which I have just mentioned.
I therefore commend this Bill, not only as a valuable aid in itself to clarification of the local government law but also as a valuable first step towards its future simplification and modernisation.
With those few remarks, I wish to commend the Bill to the Seanad. As it clearly expresses, its intention is to remove this dead wood from the existing code, to clarify it and make it more simple.
I do not know whether Senators desire to discuss this on the Second Reading or not. The Minister assures us—and the memorandum sets out clearly—that the Bill makes no new provisions. We thought, at the Committee of Procedure and Privileges, that the most appropriate thing to do would be to pass the Second Reading and refer the Bill to a special committee, which would have the assistance of the Minister and his officials and which could go through the Bill and the memorandum. I would move that, unless there are Senators who desire to intervene on the Second Stage.
I desire, on behalf of our side of the House, to express agreement with the suggestion made.
Question put and agreed to.