The purpose of this Bill is to extend for another 12 months the life of an Act which is due to expire on 8th July next. Under the principal Act, the Trade Union Act, 1941, bodies which secure a negotiation licence are compelled to make a certain deposit. In the principal Act, the minimum deposit prescribed is £1,000 and the maximum £10,000. We are not concerned, however, with the maximum. When the Act was brought into operation, it was found that certain unions might experience difficulty in providing the minimum deposit, and, entirely as an emergency measure, an Emergency Powers Order was made reducing the minimum deposit to, I think, 25 per cent. of the original amount. Though this reduction was effected by means of an Emergency Powers Order, when the Emergency Powers Act of 1939 expired, it was found necessary in 1947 to introduce a temporary Bill to continue the reduction which had been granted under the Order. That continuing Act has been renewed from time to time and the purpose of the measure before the House is to renew its life for another year.
Trade Union Bill, 1951—Second and Subsequent Stages.
This, I think, is an agreed measure, to which no exception is being taken.
I should like to say a word on the Trade Union Act itself and the reasons for this Bill to-day. I thought the Minister for Industry and Commerce might have been here, but I know that the Minister for Finance had some experience in putting through portion, if not all, of the Trade Union Act of 1941 and I think I recollect that he had a stormy time getting it through, but he survived it. As a result of a decision of the Courts, Part III of the Act has been annulled, and, as a trade union official, I put it to the Minister that, without that part, the advantages which were in the Act are practically all gone.
As the Minister has pointed out, this reduction of the deposit was designed to meet the difficulty in which unions might find themselves during the emergency period. The unions are not now in difficulties, but they are still being facilitated. The position should have been attended to and I thought the previous Government might have attended to it. The whole question of the 1941 Act requires to be overhauled and there are circumstances at present in the trade union movement which make its overhaul necessary. Some of the Irish unions accepted the original Bill because Part III was then in it, but at present what the deposit is doing is preventing quite a number of Irishmen who may be members of a British union and want to set up an Irish union from doing so, because there is a penal clause there as it is not always easy to get £250 together to start an Irish union. Irishmen who are anxious to set up house on their own are penalised to that extent. We accepted the position under the original Act because Part III was a means to this end and I believe that, if it had not been annulled, it would eventually have resulted in the elimination of British unions in this country. I ask the Minister to put it to his colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, that an overhaul of the whole 1941 Trade Union Act is overdue.
I shall certainly convery to the Minister for Industry and Commerce what Senator Colgan has said in relation to this Act. If I may express an opinion on a matter which is not strictly within the ambit of the Bill, I agree with him that it was very regrettable indeed that Part III of the 1941 Act was found to be unconstitutional. It is not my province to criticise the finding of the court and I do not propose to do so, but I say that, if that part of the Act had been found to be in accordance with the Constitution, a great many of the difficulties which have arisen in regard to the proper organisation and rationalisation of the trade union movement in Ireland would long ago have been overcome. However, in order to make Part III effective, it would now be necessary to introduce, and for the people to approve, an amendment of the Constitution and that, of course, would raise a very big issue on which it would not be possible for me to express an opinion on this rather unanticipated occasion.