The Taoiseach knows this is going on as well as anyone else. That work was well done and was so much to the liking of the Taoiseach that he nominated the Chairman of the Clare County Council to this Seanad on every occasion. He has said: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant; because thou hast been faithful over few things, I will place thee over many." He brings him in here into the Seanad. There is no denying that the Taoiseach knows it is going on. He has been putting his ear to the ground and he is not as sanctimonious as he may look or as he lets on to be.
All this is altogether wrong. It shows what Fianna Fáil can do and will do. That is the reason we in this House have such fear. If they went before the Irish people and if everything were done in a straight fashion and above board, we would have no fear; but the people who are past masters of this kind of thing can make sure, when they get a majority, that they will kill — or try to kill — Fine Gael, Labour or any other Party which tries to raise its head.
The abolition of P.R. and the adoption of the British system will also make more difficult the ending of Partition. Again and again, here and outside, the Taoiseach has said that Partition is our outstanding problem. He told us on numerous occasions that it is the one problem nearest and dearest to his heart. He had a plan to end Partition in 1932 and I think he had a plan to end it at every election since then. If he were serious about it, the last move in the world that he would make would be to give even the appearance of seeking one-Party domination in a united Ireland. The representatives of the Northern Government themselves know how it has worked there. They know what they have been able to do with majorities. The Unionists in Northern Ireland, who know so much about the straight vote, who know exactly how the straight vote works, who know how to keep down minorities, are not going to come in here as a minority themselves under this system, because they know that there can be one-Party domination and that they would never get a chance.
We were all very glad to hear the views of Senator Stanford, Senator Sheehy Skeffington, Senator Fearon and other Senators who can be looked upon definitely as independent Senators. We admire them for the stand they have taken on this Bill. I can do no better than quote the words of Deputy Dockrell, a member of the minority in this country, as spoken in the Dáil on the 13th January, 1959, and reported in Volume 172, column 412, of the Official Debates:—
"The Taoiseach touched lightly on the question of the North. The abolition of P.R. can by no stretch of the imagination be deemed to be a help towards the solution of Partition. The fact that the North did away with P.R. in 1929, or whatever year it was, is no excuse for the South trying to do away with it in 1959. Some day when Partition will have gone — it may not be in my lifetime, but some day it will have gone — the bringing together of our people will be made all the easier, I believe, if we have a system here which readily accepts minorities, a system which will have become so accustomed to the handling of minorities that, out of that handling, there will have developed a very fine instrument of parliamentary democracy. Such a system will make the united Ireland to which we all look forward that much easier."
I could not put this point better than he has put it. The really important words are those in which he points out that, if we have a system here which readily accepts minorities, a united Ireland will be made easier than under a system where minorities may be trampled upon.
I said in my opening remarks that this Bill has not been demanded by public opinion. There was a general election last year; there were other general elections in 1954, 1951, 1948, 1944, 1943 and in other years. We heard no reference to P.R., to the abolition of P.R., in any of those elections. It was never put before the people of this country. The Government were elected "to get cracking", to end emigration and unemployment and not to put up the cost of living or reduce the food subsidies. They never mentioned P.R. in any of their election speeches and they were not elected to abolish P.R.
All the time, the Taoiseach has been telling us that people should come together and let their policies be known before elections so that the electorate will know what they are going to do. He has told us that Parties should not come together afterwards, but should place their policy before the people so that they can vote on it. Surely he cannot come in here and tell us that the people of Ireland, in the last election, voted for the abolition of P.R., or gave the Government any mandate to abolish it?
They never said they were going to do it; yet the Taoiseach, at column 996 of the Official Report for 26th November, 1958, when he seemingly referred to the demand for this measure which was evident to him, stated:—
"It has been suggested that there has been no public opinion, no voice asking for this. All I can say to the Leader of the Opposition is that, if he thinks that, he must have had cotton wool in his ears from 1948 to 1951 and from 1954 to 1957, because everywhere I went through the country, everyone I met wanted to know when were we going to get rid of that system which was going to ruin the country."
We know he was abroad most of the time from 1948 to 1951, and I do not believe he heard that clamouring at any time from Fine Gael supporters. He might have heard it from Fianna Fáil supporters who were dissatisfied because they were not in office. P.R. seems to be all right for this country when it elects Fianna Fáil to office, but it is completely wrong for this country when it elects any other Government to office. He heard those stories during the years the inter-Party Government were in office.
I have been in public life for 17 years. I am a member of a county council, of the General Council of County Councils and other bodies, and I have not heard in all these bodies during the past 17 years— even during the years 1948 to 1951, or the years 1951 to 1954 — one solitary whisper of a demand for the abolition of P.R. There is no doubt that if a young Fianna Fáil enthusiast in Westmeath County Council, or anywhere else, thinks the Taoiseach is thinking in a particular way, he loves to put down a motion at a council meeting and have his name in the paper. Fine Gael councillors do it and Fianna Fáil councillors love to do it also, but, as I said, during those 17 years, there was not even a single whisper to that effect. I do not know if even the most insignificant organisation in the country, at any time during the past 20 years, has called for the abolition of P.R. There was a resolution at the Fine Gael Árd-Fheis in 1933. That is a long number of years ago and there has not been a resolution, even at a Fianna Fáil Árd-Fheis, calling for the abolition of P.R. since then.
The Church in this country advises the different Governments, advises the people, if it sees things are wrong or going wrong in particular times, and never once, in my memory, has any churchman called for the abolition of P.R., or asked that it be changed and that we have the straight vote in order to lead to better Government and better Parliament. We have the brains of the country in our universities and I do not think any such call has ever come from any of them. As a matter of fact, I cannot find any evidence, even amongst Fianna Fáil supporters, to show that this Bill is wanted. I found nothing but praise for the old system of election but then suddenly this year the Taoiseach discovered that it is a freak. Senator Ó Maoláin tells us the foundation is wrong from the very beginning and that there are serious defects in it. Why were these serious defects not found in it in the past 20 years?
We are told by the Fianna Fáil Party that we will get a better type of Deputy and will have less "deadwood" in the Parties under the straight vote system. We were told to-day by Senator Lenihan that we will get a better type of Deputy, but I want to say that we will get the Deputy the Party bosses want us to get, and no other. That is the greatest disadvantage of the proposed change. It will lead to the growth of power of the Party. You will have the Party machine choice of candidate. The choice of the candidate will rest with the machine and not with the people.
I should like to quote the present Pope, as reported in the Irish Catholic of 23rd December, 1958. Pope John XXIII was calling on the faithful to participate actively in the political life of their country and carefully to select their parliamentary representatives. If this Bill goes through, the people cannot participate actively or select the best men. They will have only to vote for the men thrust upon them by the Party machine. The Pope stated:—
"Voters must choose their representatives with the greatest wisdom and knowledge because their choice is of particular importance in a democratic régime in which the representatives of the people have legislative power.
The moral rectitude, the practical capacity and the intellectual powers of parliamentary deputies are for the people of a democratic régime a matter of life and death, of prosperity or of decadence, of recovery or of perpetual ill condition."
If this Bill goes through, the people will have no choice, good, bad or indifferent. The Party conventions will be held and the Party bosses will rule.
It might be no harm to quote An tAthair Ó Heideain, O.P., M.A., who wrote in the Standard of the 15th December, 1958, as follows:—
"Under P.R., a Party supporter is given a choice between several candidates; in West Galway, for example, three were put forward by Fianna Fáil and two by Fine Gael. In a single member constituency, however, a Party would put forward only one candidate and electors who wanted to support the Party's general policy would have no choice but to vote for him."
Even taking Westmeath, where I have always seen 12 to 14 candidates at an election, the people can go out, select and vote for the candidate they think best, even irrespective of a Party. In a position like that, as Pope John XXIII said, the moral rectitude, the practical capacity and the intellectual powers of the candidate can be taken into consideration. A voter can weigh up the intellectual powers and the intellectual capacity of the 14 candidates. He can say: "These particular five candidates are the five best men. I judge them as such: I will vote for them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5." However, under the new system, he will become only a cog in the Party machine. The Party bosses will do the work. If he is a Fianna Fáil man they will select the candidate and he will toe the line. The other Parties will do the same. The people themselves will have very little power. The Party bosses will have all the power.
I want to read this quotation from the Irish Press of 29th January last. It is a report of the Taoiseach's speech when winding up the debate in the Dáil on the 28th January. He is reported as follows:—
"As he understood it, the whole purpose of representative democracy was to try to get into Parliament members who would represent the constituency that elected them. That was done far better, in his opinion, by the system of single-member constituency and the nontransferable vote than by the system they called proportional representation. Surely the best form of representation was that the people in a single constituency would vote for the person they thought best represented their views with regard to their own interests and the national interest. You got that by the single-member constituency."
Who, in the name of goodness, does the present Taoiseach think he is codding? The people have no choice. The Party select the man and the electors have only to go out and put their "X" before his name, if this measure is carried. They have no other say, good, bad or indifferent.
But, under P.R., the electors had the chance, as the Taoiseach said, of voting for people who represented their views. They have not that chance under the Taoiseach's proposed system, good, bad or indifferent. It is not right that certain Ministers should try to mislead the people. In Longford, on 18th January last, the Minister for Health, Deputy MacEntee, made a speech which was reported the following day in the Irish Independent. He was speaking about P.R. and he is reported as follows:—
"From the point of view of public interest it produces many undesirable, in fact, positively harmful situations. Chief among them was that it gave the Party bosses so much power that between them they had almost absolute control of Parliament."
Nobody ever heard anything farther from the truth than that. In a constituency such as Westmeath, the Party bosses would nominate five candidates in Fianna Fáil's case and perhaps five candidates in Fine Gael's case. The Party bosses could nominate five. The people went out and voted for their choice and elected two or three and the Party bosses had no power.
I am wondering now if the Minister for Health, Deputy MacEntee, is annoyed here with the power the present Taoiseach had and the Fianna Fáil bosses had over their candidates for a long number of years. I claim that Fianna Fáil and the Taoiseach have continually, over the years, dictated to the Party conventions as to those whom he wanted selected as candidates. As reported at column 2338 of Volume 171 of the Official Report of Dáil Éireann, the Taoiseach said:—
"There are the rivalries of various kinds that occur in multiple-member constituencies. They will not be there any longer. The rivalries that occur are very disedifying and tend to bring democratic representation into disrepute."
If they have had those things at Fianna Fáil conventions, it would be much better if the Taoiseach did not put them on record in Leinster House. I know that these things have happened and that the Taoiseach has had the last say.
We know that the Roscommon Fianna Fáil Convention in 1957 got instructions to select a certain candidate. He is in this House. I believe he would make a much better Deputy than some of the other candidates. The convention met. They did not select him. They sent three names. Headquarters refused to sanction the three selected and called another convention for the following week. They met again and the convention refused to select the particular candidate that headquarters wanted. They sent up the other names. Lo and behold, they were sanctioned with the addition of the other candidate, nominated by the Fianna Fáil National Council. That appeared in the local papers and there is no denying it.
In 1952, at the Wicklow by-election, a Fianna Fáil candidate was selected by the people. As the Taoiseach said a few months ago in his remarks which I quoted to the House, the people should have the say. The Fianna Fáil National Executive turned nominees down. They would not allow them to go forward, as their Party nominees, to the people.
The same happened in Carlow-Kilkenny when the daughter of a former Minister for Agriculture was selected. The Fianna Fáil Party bosses and the Party bosses of the organisation refused to ratify the selection of that candidate. The same happened in Sligo-Leitrim with a Fianna Fáil candidate and it also happened in Kerry. Therefore, instead of, as the Taoiseach stated, the people having the power under the new system, the reverse in fact is the case. The Party bosses will have more power now than they had in the past.
