Public Business. - An Bille um an Tríú Leasú ar an mBunreacht, 1958—An Coiste (Atogáil). Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1958—Committee Stage (Resumed). – Seanad Éireann (9th Seanad) – Thursday, 5 Mar 1959

Mr. Donegan

Last night I was trying to describe in a homely way what would happen in Ireland if this measure were passed. I expressed the view that what happened in England and various other places has no great relation to what would happen here. Such practised politicians as the Taoiseach and others who have had experience over the same period are capable of assessing what the results will be here. But the people on the Taoiseach's side have chosen, as Senator Mullins did last night, to concentrate, not on what they know will happen here, but on what happened elsewhere in different conditions and, indeed, in most cases, in a completely different set-up.

I contend that the issue here has been confused by the creation 12 or 15 years ago of a great number of three seat constituencies. When that happened, the really fair results which P.R. should give did not materialise. I want to pose the question that if a man secures over 100,000 votes—a normal number for a five seat constituency under P.R.—which may be triple the number of votes necessary to elect him, is he not entitled to the seat? But, in fact, if you restrict the voting to a small constituency in which there is, perhaps, a valid poll of 9,000 in one election, that man may be defeated by the hack type of politician who attends all the funerals and does all the messenger boy operations. For instance, if a man of the calibre of Major-General Costello chose to enter politics on any political side or as an Independent, would anybody take the view that he should not be elected? Or, if a man with the experience of Senator McGuire, who is managing director of a fine firm in Dublin, chose to stand for the Dáil, would anyone say that such a man, with his experience, education and ability, should not be a member of the Dáil and could not on any side of the House do good work for the Irish nation and his constituents? Both those men should command a seat in Dáil Éireann if they wished it or had the time to devote to it.

Would it not be true to say that in many constituencies with a valid poll of 9,000—which will be the sort of thing one can expect in a constituency representing 20,000—the local political boss would beat either of those two men hollow? If the election were held in a constituency of over 100,000 persons, in other words, a five seat constituency, is it not a fact that without a shadow of doubt either of these two men would be elected to Dáil Éireann and would serve the country well? Why, then, do we exclude the people who should represent us and who have proved by their actions, life and ability that they are worthy to represent the people? Why do we confine the selection always to the local politician?

It is wise to give practical examples. The first thing is to take somebody who is a good legislator, well worthy of his seat in Dáil Éireann and who cannot, therefore, consider himself insulted when one discusses his normal practice and way of life. All the Deputies from North County Dublin are known to me, with the exception of the Minister for Defence whom I met only once. I think Deputy Rooney and Deputy P.J. Burke are excellent legislators and good members of Dáil Éireann. I would not grudge either of them a place in Dáil Éireann even if the number of seats there was restricted to 50 or 60. However, if this Bill goes through, North County Dublin will be divided into four or five constituencies. A man of the very excellent habits and way of life of Deputy P.J. Burke could not be defeated in a particular area in that constituency. Any man who attends every funeral in the constituency, any man who is reported in the Evening Mail as getting a bus shelter for the residents of Ballyfermot, for example, any man who is constantly in the news doing these small jobs, will be elected.

I chose Deputy Burke because I think he is a good legislator. My point is that a man who does all that work and all these things might not be a good legislator. He might be a rotten legislator. He might be prepared to do all these messenger boy jobs and attend all these funerals and be present at all public occasions, know everybody, meet everybody and see everybody just to be in Dáil Éireann and to draw his Dáil allowance. The reason why I took Deputy P.J. Burke as an example is that he is a good legislator.

Mr. Tunney

On a point of order. It is very insulting for any member of the Seanad to call any member of the other House a messenger boy. I object to Senator Donegan saying that Deputy P.J. Burke went around as a messenger boy.

Mr. Donegan

Did I say that? Certainly, I did not mean it in that sense. I did not intend that. I had in mind his way of life. I went out of my way not to offend him. I wanted to point out how such a man can be elected to Dáil Éireann when, in fact, he might not be a good legislator.

There is the question of the needle vote. If there is a valid poll of 9,000 votes, in many constituencies a Party would know they would get 4,000 or 5,000 of those votes. If the Party were sure of getting 5,000, assessing politics as most of us have to do, they would be elected. Where they get 4,000 votes there is, as one would expect, a certain disappointment that just because they could not swing another 501 votes, the representative of that Party was not elected. Does not that make for skullduggery and all sorts of local efforts to gain that odd 500 votes?

It is very relevant to give examples of public boards where one vote will swing the day and when, three or four days before an important vote, it is known to all that a certain number of people would vote one way and a certain number of people would vote another way—because they had declared their intention of so doing— and that one member was holding the casting vote. I have seen the greatest efforts made in such a situation, at times dishonest efforts, to sway that man to vote a particular way. I have seen the other thing happen. I have seen that member try to exert pressure on Parties on each side of the public board in order to get something for his vote. I do not refer to money or anything like that.

For instance, suppose in a particular case a village had the balance of power. If the number of votes in a village was sufficient to have a member elected or to have two members elected and if the village in question had not a water supply or a sewerage scheme, does not one think that a local development association or a local development committee in that village would exert the greatest pressure and say, in effect: "We will vote for the Party that will give us the amenity we require for our village?"

There might be a village some miles away which was just as entitled to similar amenities as the first village but, because of the pressure that could be exerted by the first village, the Parties would vie with one another in their promises to give that first village or that particular set of persons whatever they require.

Every Senator, without exception, is a member of a public board. They all know what happens when the needle vote comes up. It is either bought or sold—not with money but with allegiance, with things people want in the days to come. I have seen it happen. Thank God, I was never a party to it because it is most unfair that such a situation should obtain in a small constituency.

Here is another example. I will not mention the public board. A position was going for one year. The central figure in this affair would have cut off his right hand before giving anything to anybody for a vote. He is a man of the highest integrity and honesty. He is not of my Party. I will not mention his name. In this particular instance my office was rung up on the day before this vote was to take place. A gentleman said: "If two other gentlemen"—not I—"will change their votes on this measure you can elect anybody you like to-morrow to this position." I said that these gentlemen would not dream of changing their votes simply to gain a position for an individual. The following day the vote took place. The gentleman who rang me up voted in the way he was not expected to vote. A month later two gentlemen changed their votes on a particular thing which cost, in a certain rateable area, £350 in the rates for the next 30 years—£9,000. Can one imagine in a small constituency the pressure that would be exerted on a Party, on a candidate to do certain things and, if he did certain things, he would be voted for? I submit that the analogy is perfect. I have seen that happen. It will happen in the small 9,000 valid poll constituencies. It is unfair to place candidates in an invidious position like that. I want to emphasise that the central figure in the matter I have referred to was a man of the greatest integrity and honesty and had nothing to do with it but, nevertheless, it was done. It was not his fault if he found himself in the position for 12 months.

An Cathaoirleach

Perhaps the Senator would now come away from local government and come to the matter of the Bill.

Mr. Donegan

Great play has been made about England. I do not want to labour the matter. In passing, however, I should like to say that the single seat constituency there is entirely different from what is envisaged here. A person needs 30,000 votes to be elected there where here it would be possible to be elected with 5,000 votes. The opportunity for the candidate to make personal contact is obvious here but it would be completely impossible in England.

Last night I dealt with the opportunity of a political Party to see to it that an opponent would not be elected by the simple expedient of putting up a "man of straw". Senator Mullins said that people could co-operate to ensure defeat of somebody they did not like. In fact, what Deputy Mullins imagines could hurt his Party could not be done although it would be possible to see to it that a person was not elected by the simple expedient of putting up the right type of "man of straw" who would split the vote, if it was not a regimented vote such as that of Fianna Fáil, but what I would refer to as a fluid vote.

The provision in the section whereby the constituencies are measured out is specific. It says:—

"Having due regard to geographical features and established administrative and territorial divisions and, subject to those considerations, in such manner that the population of each constituency, as ascertained at the last preceding census, shall, so far as is practicable, be the same throughout the country."

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator is now anticipating another section.

Mr. Donegan

I am sorry. What I am doing is pointing out the town versus the country aspects and it is necessary to give the quotation but I will not labour it. In that context I submit the single member constituency must react so that even a town of 5,000 must exert a very great effect on the result of any election and if we are to depart from the ordinary political arguments and insist on the town versus country aspects we will have done a very bad day's work.

Great play has also been made on the fact that there was no opportunity to gerrymander but I submit that there is every opportunity in the single seat constituency to gerrymander and I do not imply that such an idea exists in the mind of anybody. When the suggestion is made by certain members on the opposite side of the House that there is no opportunity to gerrymander, it is only fair to say that there is every opportunity. The simple way would be to take the three seat constituency of Louth and to see how, if you were low enough to do so, you could gerrymander such a constituency. One could review the experience in that county and see that it is true that Cooley has a preponderance of Fianna Fáil votes, that Clogherhead has more Fianna Fáil votes than Fine Gael, that Togher has more Fine Gael votes than Fianna Fáil, that Reaghstown gave more votes to Fianna Fáil than usual at the last election.

These are the things that ordinary everyday politicians know. It is their business to know them and, if that is the position, is not the opportunity there to gerrymander? I do not say that anybody has the idea of doing so and I would never have raised the point but for the fact that it was raised on the opposite side by various Senators. If a person was in command of the division of a constituency there is not the slightest doubt that he could gerrymander to his heart's content.

Finally, I would say that the section dealing with the single seat constituency is catastrophic. The constituency is too small. It will make for the sort of election which there was in days gone by when the constituency was bigger. Why do we raise the "ante" in this poker game? Would it not be far better that a man would have to be elected in a wider section of the populace and that a man should be elected on his legislative ability rather than on the basis of his personal contacts? Would it not be far better, if it were possible, to get the type of person who could legislate rather than the type of person who knows everybody in a certain area?

Mr. Carter

Senator Donegan is like the character in Oscar Wilde's play who said: "I can only understand what I am saying when I listen to myself attentively." That quotation would aptly describe Senator Donegan's speech, which was liberally interspersed with the usual priggish notions which we hear expressed by people who are either afraid or ashamed to enter politics. Senator Donegan being already an established politician in his own right, one is surprised to hear such sentiments from him. He stands in the market place like the pharisee, striking his breast at intervals and saying. "Thanks be to God I am not like the other politicians". Senator Donegan asked us when was a vote so valuable. I could tell Senator Donegan when a vote was valuable to them—when they brought in a man on a stretcher into this House to decide a vote. Was that man's vote not valuable? We are all of us, I hope, politicians and we should not be ashamed of that fact.

Senator Quinlan set out last night to deprecate the politicians who took part in the affairs of the country for the past 37 years.

Professor Quinlan

Mr. O'Leary

It is well known.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

The empty canister can only rattle. Do not mind him.

Mr. Carter

Exactly. When seeking election, we were always concerned, first of all, with our policy and how it was presented to the people. It seems to me that the Fine Gael Party can be described as the Party of no hope. They and their fellow travellers have all got on the band wagon of no hope or no return. They seem to think that if the system of P.R. is changed in favour of the straight vote they have no future. In thinking that, they tie up with this issue all those outside issues which are not at all applicable to us in our present circumstance.

I am not at all clear, listening to the members of the Opposition, that the Fine Gael Party are of one mind in this matter. There is a division running through the Party, from top to bottom, regarding the question we are discussing to-day. There is a number of people, solid supporters, in the Fine Gael Party and in the country who believe that the straight vote system would give us relative stability.

Do the Senators opposite argue that a series of ramshackle Governments, lasting, on the average, for two years and seven months, is calculated to give the country stability? Senator Quinlan seems to think that politics is a huge joke. He seems to be of the opinion that it is advisable that Ministers should be away from their offices now and again to engage in electioneering in the country, and described it as the equivalent of a holiday. I have some experience of politics and I can assure the Senator that politicians do not regard electioneering as a holiday and I can further assure the Senator that, when he takes it so flippantly, he has no idea of our political system, even though when he arrived back from the Cameroons he started to lecture us on what we should do in the political Parties here.

Any record of the elections down the years will show that most of the small Parties disappeared under P.R. It has been argued that this change would mean the disappearance of the smaller Parties. No one can deny the fact, for instance, that in 1923 the Farmers started off with 15 seats and to-day they have three seats in the Dáil. Clann na Poblachta started out with ten seats in 1948 and to-day they have only one. What happened in that case? Was it the system of election we had then which was responsible for eliminating them or was it their policy or lack of policy? Did P.R. not rid the country of small Parties?

Professor Hayes

That is the whole argument.

Mr. Carter

It is argued by the Opposition that the straight vote will rid the country of minorities. It has been argued from every platform on which they have stood since this question was mooted that we were making this change to fasten Fianna Fáil on the country for the future. It has been argued that Fine Gael would disappear as a political Party. I want the people who are putting forward these arguments to support them with facts. We have had various examples given by politicians who seem to know all the answers and all the shady tactics but who say that they themselves would not become entangled in these tactics. I wonder how they know so much about them if they are not entangled in them already.

When we come to discuss an important matter like this we should bring sober judgment to it. We have been dragged into the byways; we have been brought to the parish pump, to the Cameroons in Africa, around America and the world and back home, after the fashion of a modern sputnik.

Quite a number of voluntary organisations have chimed in on this chant that Fine Gael will disappear. We heard speeches here yesterday evening which were reminiscent of a funeral oration. I could almost feel myself standing at the graveside presiding at the obsequies of the Fine Gael Party, hearing some of the Senators patting down the last sods on the grave and the hollow sound made by the stones before the dispersal. What grounds has Senator Quinlan or any other Senator for these sentiments? I think it is merely sentiment.

The people have the final say in this matter and we have no right in a discussion on this Bill to cloud the issue or to introduce extraneous matters unconnected with the Bill. For want of a better argument, the Opposition have tried to put it across on every conceivable occasion that certain Parties will disappear if this change is brought about. There is no substance in those arguments; they will not hold water. The intentions of political Parties should not be taken into account in regard to this Bill because all political Parties have the same right as we have to put their views before the people. If they put their policy before the people and if the policy is ratified, then there is nothing to prevent their putting it into effect.

He says he holds all the truth—and he has not risen from the dead to prove it. We were attacked as being Messiahs because we wanted to engage in objective and factual arguments here. We will continue, no matter what form of attack is used against us, to put the facts before the people.

I spent a considerable amount of time during the past month or two in reading about these matters when I could have been better employed in the vocation I have in the country in minding my own business rather than in reading up about forms of Government. I recall to mind what Alexander Pope said about forms of Government. He said that they are the things for which fools contest. We are wasting the time of this nation when everybody knows, and when the men at the corner who have not jobs know, that our problems are economic rather than political or academic. Our time is being wasted on this. People who should be doing otherwise, who have the taste, maybe, and the experience and whatever little ability we have in doing our job, are not allowed to do it. We are taken away from it. We are the spearhead.

I have a book here by a man who has had some experience of politics but whose taste is rather literary. His name is Christopher Hollis, M.P., and the name of his book is Can Parliament Survive? He wrote this book some years ago. I bought it in September, 1949, before there was any talk about the question which we are now discussing in this House. I want to quote briefly from that book because this is a problem that confronted him. He spent a considerable amount of time in wondering about what change should be made.

Both the Taoiseach and his Party here can decide these things. They must be decided without discussion. They must be decided without having a commission sitting to consider them. They must be decided within the halls of the Party. What sort of super brains trust, what sort of Messianic mission is bestowed on that Party? They are adopting that doctrinaire approach to this matter. Let us have facts rather than attack people because they happen to have M.Sc. degrees or something like that and sneer at them because they have a——

Mr. Carter

That is not fair. No one——

Mr. Burke

Senator Quinlan has been referred to in a sneering way as a scientist. It was done here, any amount of times, and that tone has been introduced here.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

He has never stopped talking about himself as a scientist.

Mr. Burke

The old saying is that if you have no defence you must attack.

Dr. O'Donovan

The Minister for External Affairs told him to keep to his trade.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

What is wrong with his trade? Is Senator Dr. O'Donovan ashamed of the word "trade" or "tradesman"?

Dr. O'Donovan

I do not like the word used in that fashion.

An Cathaoirleach

Senators must address the Chair.

Mr. Burke

There has been a great deal of sneering about the Cameroons. With the permission of the Chair, I will quote briefly what Christopher Hollis said in his book. In the second paragraph of Chapter II, he says:—

"We live in Britain under a Parliamentary Government, worked on a predominantly two-party system. Since it exists, some Englishmen think of the two-party system as a self-evident truth—think that it somehow stands to reason that on every matter there should be two opinions and neither one nor three and that those who think alike on A, B and C must also, if they are honest men, think alike on D, E and F. This is obviously hardly so. A two-party system, whatever else we may think of it, is certainly an artificial oddity and it is worth while considering how it came to be and why and whether the benefits of it outweigh its evils and absurdities."

He said that when examining the system in 1948 and 1949, the system we are to be given, the system that the intellectual people in the British Parliament, who have the training to examine these things, say that maybe they would need to consider in regard to the running of their own Parliament. We are now being told that a system that the thinking members of the British Parliament are not satisfied with should be imposed on us. Another second best will be handed to us—not something that will be a solution. Mr. Hollis continues:—

Do you think the people are not capable of deciding?

Mr. Burke

I am not saying whether or not the people are capable of deciding. What I said was—Senator Ryan was probably listening to me when I started—that we will give the people the fullest opportunity of judging the implications of this measure. We shall see to it here, at the crossroads and outside the Church doors that the people will be told all the arguments and will get all the publicity and all the information we can provide. It is our duty. The late Pope, in 1953, speaking on adult education, said:—

"The right to vote, in particular, which gives to everyone an equal possibility of influencing public life, requires in the one who exercises it at least an elementary notion of political principles and their application within the national and international sphere of politics.'

If we are going to change our system we should give the people more than an elementary notion of what will happen or what the changes will be. Apparently there are many people on the opposite side of the House who object to the fact that we are going to give them that opportunity. I think of the centuries we spent looking for the opportunity to run our own affairs and I am saddened when I remember that most of this half century has been wasted in futile discussion. We should be able to find the necessary common agreement. But when we are beginning to get more agreement on economic affairs this diversion, this disturbing influence is thrown into the melting pot of Irish politics, to divide us.

Anyone who studies politics knows that the nearer to equilibrium that you can bring the pendulum, the better, and that if you agitate the pendulum violently you will do harm. If you have a Conservative Government on one occasion and a Communist or Socialist Government on the next, you cannot survive. There has been a lot of talk about Britain and America. The reason why they were so successful with the two-Party Government was that there was no violent change when the Conservatives and the Liberals changed in Britain, and when the Republicans and the Democrats changed in America. It is like changing a board of directors, working according to a memorandum and articles of association. They are changed because they may be too old or ineffective, because they cease to have the drive, or cease to have the necessary qualities. In a democracy they may fail to attract the people, who are the electorate. That is the aim that we should have here but the aim of this Bill is to agitate the pendulum violently, to get extremes in Irish politics so that there will be a swing in the electorate, so that you will have, say, nationalisation at one time and denationalisation at another time.

I was impressed when I heard Senator Quinlan saying that we had a philosophy of life which was held by all the people, that we were all Christians and that we should have a more common approach, rather than something that was going to divide us. I said on a previous occasion that the first decade of our opportunity was lost here. I want to see us given another opportunity and that is why I am opposed to this Bill so vigorously. I believe it will drive a wedge in Irish life, that it will drive a wedge under the foundation stones of this State and shake the whole edifice.

There has been a lot of talk about the fact that perhaps Fine Gael will be driven into the wilderness. It is quite possible that Fine Gael will be driven into the wilderness for a time. As a Party we are not as politically minded as our political opponents. Most of the people in this Party seem to have been brought into politics one way or another through their vocations and they would prefer to be doing something else, as Dr. Johnson said when asked about matters of that kind. We are not quite so good, as Senator Donegan said, for going to all the funerals; we have not got the taste for it. We do not want to do it. If anybody objects to what I am saying, there was a letter written by Commandant Brennan Whitmore——

Mr. Ryan

On a point of order. I submit that this is a Second Stage speech and not a speech on the section. The Senator is talking about the Bill, about the principles, and making a speech exactly the same as on the Second Stage. He has not referred to the section yet.

An Cathaoirleach

The Chair agrees that the Senator is going very wide of the section and hopes that the Senator will return to the section.

Mr. Ryan

We would love to hear him on the section.

Mr. O'Quigley

On a point of order, Sir. Is it in order for Senators on the opposite benches to be usurping the rights of the Chair and directing the Chair's attention?

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator was quite in order in drawing the attention of the Chair to a matter to which he thinks the attention of the Chair should be drawn. That applies to either side of the House.

Mr. Burke

The section is:—

Dáil Éireann shall be composed of members who represent constituencies, and one member only shall be returned for each constituency."

I have tried to keep as near to that section as I could but I found it necessary to answer a number of points which have been raised by Senators on the other side. One of the things said yesterday, and again to-day, was that it must be left to the people to decide but this man whom I quote, from Monday's Irish Independent, W.R. Brennan Whitmore, attacks both Fine Gael and the Labour Party for their lack of political organisation. He says that the reason why Fianna Fáil are so successful is that they have good political organisation. I shall not burden the House by reading the letter. Will the matter be left to the electorate or will it be put across in a high powered canvass? Will the people be allowed to decide calmly on how they will change this Bill, or how they will elect these members to represent them in the single seat constituencies? I doubt it.

Another thing which ran through my mind when I heard these speeches and this recommendation for changing the Constitution is what old Oliver Cromwell said, namely, that nobody goes as far as the man who does not know where he is going. In this Bill I fear that we are being driven a great deal further than we realise. No single member can tell us what the benefits will be. They tell us that we will get a better member but I wonder will the Party give us the better member. That is the danger which I see.

In conclusion, I want to say that the Government should devote a greater part of its time in going into the economic issues rather than bringing this into Irish political life as a solvent and a disturbance, as a waste of our time and a waste of our efforts. As far as I am concerned, I must indict the Government with wasting our time when we could be better concerned with solving unemployment and the other matters on which we should work together regardless of Party. But we are not allowed, because our co-operation is not sought and is not wanted.

Professor Stanford

May I comment very briefly on what the Minister and Senator Mullins said about me yesterday? First I should like to say, quite emphatically, that I agree with much of what they say. I agree that the religious minority has no justification to fear political injustice and has no immediate reason to expect any ill-treatment in the future. I entirely agree with that. The plain fact is that they have been generously and sympathetically treated. May I in self-defence say that I have said that continuously for over 20 years in places where it was not at all a popular thing to say, and that can be proved? I have always told my co-religionists that they have been treated generously and are likely to be treated generously. I agree with the Minister and Senator Mullins on that.

But we are legislating here for the future—not for the past and not even for the present. Everyone in this House knows that history is unpredictable. Who, in the spacious days of 1910 or even the early 1930's, could have imagined what was going to happen in the civilised countries of Italy and Germany? But it did happen. No matter how strong our confidence in the community of the majority in the Republic is, we cannot be certain of it to-morrow. That is why I believe I would be failing in my duty to one-fourteenth of our population in the Republic—and, I emphasise this, almost a quarter of the population in the whole country— if I did not point out emphatically that a constitutional safeguard against even a remote possible danger of this kind would be removed by the change proposed in this Bill.

That is the fact upon which I stand. It has not been refuted. The Minister very reasonably wondered why, when I dislike the denominational approach to politics, I introduced it yesterday. The answer, I think, is clear to every thinking man. Sometimes one greatly dislikes doing one's duty. It can be an extremely unpleasant thing to do. I personally found it unpleasant to raise that matter yesterday but it had to be done.

The fact is that several Protestants asked me straight, as they are entitled to ask me, what would be the effects of this change on them as a minority. I answered them in the terms in which I spoke to the Seanad yesterday, that it would have this particular effect, that they would need a much larger percentage of the electorate in any constituency than they need at present if they wanted to return some one as a Protestant for Protestants. Let me say something very definitely here. I said that with the greatest effort not to arouse any feelings of bigotry or fanaticism. I made no attempt, and I will make no attempt, to beat any kind of Protestant drum and say that Protestants must, as Protestants, vote against this proposed change. I believe that the Minister would be entitled to condemn that, as would every right-thinking person.

I would be failing in my duty, when there is a clear mathematical state of affairs before us, if I did not make that clear to them and to this House. What is more, though I do not care to incur the opprobrium of the Minister and Senator Mullins, I would very much prefer their opprobrium than to be told at the bar of history in 50 years' time that this was the consequence of that measure and that I said nothing about it and neither did any other of our representatives.

In our small way in this House we are making history. We are making good laws or bad laws. Every one of us should speak with that in mind. It is not just what people are saying to-day. It is what people will say in 20 or 30 years' time. Sir, I bow my head when Senator Mullins and the Minister speak of things being disgraceful, but I would prefer to bow to it now than that I or my descendants should have to do it 50 years hence. That is what could happen if we have a change such as could happen here. It might be disgraceful for me not to point out the risk.

Obviously, however, the Minister and Senator Mullins dislike what I have done. They are entitled to that dislike but sometimes we simply must hurt. I was surprised, however, when the Minister used the phrase "a scrap of paper being no guarantee". It is a curious phrase to use. As well as I can remember, it was first used when the Germans invaded Belgium. They had a treaty with the Belgians not to invade them. They did invade them. The Kaiser said it was ridiculous; what did a piece of paper matter; he would invade them. He invaded Belgium but the tide turned against him. It aroused the moral indignation of the world, not simply because of the invasion but because of the specific contempt for treaty guarantees. I do not think the Minister meant that.

Mr. Aiken

I did not use the phrase. It was used by Senator Mullins but not in the sense the Senator is talking about.

Professor Stanford

I beg the Minister's pardon. I withdraw that statement and I will deflect my remarks in the direction of Senator Mullins. I apologise to the Minister. I was unavoidably absent during his speech. I understood he used that phrase. However, the fact remains that the minority at the moment have the goodwill of the majority. I am happy to say we have it. At the same time, why should we scrap this scrap of paper? I welcome the generosity of the people who put it into the Constitution of 1922 and the Constitution of 1937. Why should it be taken out now?

Let me once again safeguard myself from misunderstanding. I do not pretend to suggest that there is any intention on the part of the present Government to infringe upon the rights of the minority in this matter. This is a consequential matter. It is the result of a decision that has been taken on completely different grounds. I have complete confidence in the present Government and previous Governments. They are not aiming legislation against the minority but it is a consequential effect which the religious minority should face up to.

Many of my co-religionists, as the Minister rightly suggests, would say: "We do not want any special treatment. We are not interested in that; we will disregard it". But they should know what the choice is and what its implications are. That is what I have offered. The Minister, from what I read of the report of his speech and from what I heard and from what Senator Mullins has said, did not try to refute my facts or figures. They said it was unjust or wrong to raise the matter but I stand on the facts and figures I gave yesterday. It will be almost impossible for members of the religious minority, if they want to elect their own members by themselves, to voice their opinions in the Dáil, if this change is approved. If the Government supporters can refute my figures I will withdraw, but not otherwise.

There is one other matter. A curiously misleading phrase has been used by both sides of the House—I venture to employ that phrase in the geographical sense. It is "the straight vote". It is a ludicrous phrase. This proposed change is neither more straight nor more crooked than any other kind of voting. Senator Quinlan suggested a rather drastic alternative—"the illiterate vote". That perhaps is a reflection on many people in our country. It is not "the illiterate vote" but I do suggest it is the wasting vote, and I suggest it with very great emphasis for the following reasons.

It is possible under the proposed system that 66 per cent. of the electorate will find their votes absolutely useless. Does that encourage people to go and vote? Does it encourage them to take an interest in the elections? That is what we very much want in this country, more interest in these matters, but I do not think we shall get that. The people will realise that it is possible for a candidate with 34 per cent. of the votes to be elected and nothing whatever will come of the other 66 per cent. We did press for the transferable vote which would ensure that the most that could be lost would be 50 per cent. but we did not get that.

I shall not press this point but I suggest that anyone who uses the phrase "the straight vote" is using a misleading phrase and any person who prefers to use the phrase "the wasting vote" or "the wasteful vote" is using a clearly descriptive phrase.

Minister for External Affairs (Mr. Aiken)

I am very glad that Senator Stanford has come into the House. I was sorry he was not here yesterday when I was dealing with his speech. As he pointed out, under the system we have if any minority, identifiable as a minority, wants to be sure of getting a candidate returned it must have at least 16? per cent., that is in a five-member constituency, of which there are only a few. In a four-member constituency they must have 20 per cent.—plus one, in all cases—and in a three-member constituency they must have 25 per cent. Of all the constituencies we have, in what constituency has the Protestant minority 16? per cent.?

Professor Stanford

I suggest they have it in Dún Laoghaire, in some of Dublin constituencies and in Donegal.

Mr. Aiken

No, definitely not, and the reason that there are Protestant representatives in the Dáil is that they do not go up as Protestants and they must get the support of non-Protestants to be elected.

Professor Stanford

If one looks at the population statistics for these boroughs, one will see they have over 20 per cent. Unless the Minister can produce some evidence for the statements he is making now——

A Senator

The Senator has not produced it either.

Professor Stanford

I shall go down and get the population statistics.

Mr. Aiken

We shall get somebody else to go down and get them. The Senator can speak after me and it would be as well for him to sit here until we have this out.

Professor Stanford

I can assure the Minister I have not the slightest intention of leaving the House while he is speaking.

Mr. Aiken

I am delighted to hear that. There is not a constituency in the Twenty-Six Counties in which Protestants have 16? per cent. or 25 per cent. They could not be elected on their own as Protestants to speak merely for Protestants, and for purely selfish or exclusively Protestant interests. I put this challenge to the Senator in the debate in the Dáil, and to people who are of the same mind as he is, that if they wanted to make certain that tiny minorities were represented, they would have to change the system we have and make the country all one constituency. That is not unusual under P.R. It was operated in two or three places in Europe. Senator Stanford and the others do not demand strict proportionality. They want to mouth a lot about minorities and scare people into voting against this measure not because of their religious convictions but because they have a prejudice against it, and because of their political immaturity. They want to get people to vote against this on the plea that it will affect adversely religious minorities or some other type of minority that would be entitled to be represented as such.

In the Twenty-Six Counties you have a non-Catholic minority of 7 per cent. If that voting strength were distributed over the whole country it could not, under the present system, get a candidate returned without help, and in all cases I know of where candidates of the religious minorities were elected, they got help from their neighbours of a different religious persuasion.

The one thing that this debate has brought out is that, in spite of all the chat that went on about minorities, all the Senators on that side of the House are agreed that they do not want minorities any smaller than are represented at present in the Dáil. I put it up to them that if they wanted to protect a minority that had only one-150th of the votes in the country, they should really do something about it, but they turned their back on that. They do not want any minority smaller than the present minorities.

I can understand the Labour Party, Fine Gael, Clann na Talmhan and Clann na Poblachta that was, having that point of view. As political Parties go they are very lazy. They do not like thinking out new ideas or taking the trouble to convert sufficient people to vote for them. They are lazy politicians. They want to have little Parties that can coalesce and have a leader or two at the top who are inevitably given a seat or two in the Cabinet and a Ministry to run for a while. They do not want to expand any further than they have. They are doing nicely as it is.

Senator Quinlan wanted a continuation of the present system and wanted Fianna Fáil never to coalesce, so that the alternative to Fianna Fáil would be inevitably a Coalition. If Fianna Fáil had been prepared to coalesce with other Parties in the past we might have had, long before now, the situation that was reached in certain countries on the Continent and elsewhere whereby the representatives of the people were divided into a number of small and equal Parties and that there would be always a Coalition because no Party could ever have the opportunity of forming a Government on its own. That is a delightful system for Parties that have really no belief in what they stand for, that have a policy of attack merely to attract sufficient votes to get sufficient seats to be able to demand a seat or two in the Cabinet, with no further responsibility than that. Fianna Fáil have different ideas. We go to the people to get their support for a policy we believe in. If the people do not give us sufficient support for that policy we will not play the Coalition game as the various Coalition groups are prepared to play it.

Senator Dr. Sheehy Skeffington denied yesterday that in this Second Reading speech he stood for minorities smaller than are possible to be elected under the present system. I would call his attention to column 452, Volume 50, of the Official Report in which he said:—

"By the single transferable vote, in my contention, P.R. offers a system which ensures that political Parties and political ideas will be represented in Parliament, in this House and in the other House, in proportion to the voting strength they command among the electorate. Such a system is eminently just..."

Does Senator Sheehy Skeffington deny that the ordinary clear meaning of that is that he is advocating a system of P.R. which ensures that political Parties and political ideas will be represented in the Dáil according to their voting strength among the electorate?

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

As I am asked the question, I went on in the following two paragraphs of the same speech to make it quite clear that our present system, which I accept, favours only the big Parties but that that slight disproportion was acceptable; I offered to quote percentage figures, though I said that I did not want to weary the House by quoting percentage figures, but offered to quote them, if anybody asked for them, to show that the two big Parties alone regularly and uniformly benefited disproportionately under this system.

Mr. Aiken

What I am trying to find out is precisely and clearly what Senators have in mind about P.R. so that there will be no codding the people down the country that they were in favour of complete proportionality which would give the minorities of one-one hundred and fiftieth of the country the right to be certain that they could get a seat. Senator Professor Stanford cannot go down the country and say that he was all out to get the 7 per cent minority a guarantee that in all circumstances they would be able to get elected as a minority interest. If that was what was in their minds I challenged them to put down a motion which would in all circumstances guarantee that anyone who had one vote out of every 150 could get a Dáil seat; but they did not do it. They oppose the change to this straight vote system on the plea that it will adversely affect minorities, although the present proportional system which they want to hold on to does not guarantee a minority of less than 15? or 16? per cent. this right to be certain of a seat.

Senator Dr. Sheehy Skeffington went on a little further, and I will add to what I have already quoted. Having said that a system which ensures that political Parties and political ideas will be represented in Parliament in proportion to the voting strength they command among the electorate would be eminently just—he did not, however, whether it was just or not, put in any amendment to secure that end —he went on:—

"...to desire any other system, even for Party benefit, seems to me to desire to derive Party benefit from electoral injustice and disproportionate representation."

I want to make it clear that no one in the Seanad or the Dáil was so much in favour of minority representation that they were impelled to put down an amendment which would secure representation for the smallest minorities, and yet they will go around the country, as many of them will, saying that when Fianna Fáil passed this Bill through the Oireachtas, or asked the people to adopt it, they were doing so in order to crush minorities and to deprive them of their just rights.

Senator Professor Quinlan was very anxious to know what various eminent gentlemen, statesmen, in other countries, thought about P.R. I invited him to read the Dáil debates, when he would see quoted there by various members of Fianna Fáil the opinions of very eminent statesmen in Europe who saw their countries collapse because of P.R., but Senator Professor Quinlan did not seem to take that trouble. He wants to get a commission employed to go into this whole business of P.R. and see what the commission would recommend. I believe, as I said here before, that the best type of commission to inquire into this matter are the people of Ireland, who have had experience of politics and government over the last 30 or 40 years.

Senator Hayes wants to continue the system of three seat constituencies and to persuade the Seanad to vote for them, even though we are offering the alternative which he said was better—the single non-transferable vote constituency.

There are others who had similar views to Senator Hayes's on this matter. We cannot call on the foreign statesmen who saw Germany and Italy collapse through the weaknesses of P.R., but we can call to witness people who had experience of Government here and who know the weaknesses of P.R. During one of the elections of 1927 Cumann na nGaedheal published an advertisement about the idea of Coalition Governments.

Professor Hayes

Thirty-two years ago.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Minister ought to be permitted to continue.

Mr. Aiken

Thirty-two years ago. Not so very long ago the Leader of the Fine Gael Party said that one of the weaknesses of P.R. was its tendency to create a multiplicity of Parties.

Dr. O'Donovan

That is 22 years ago.

Mr. Aiken

At column 1345, Volume 67 of the Dáil Debates, Deputy Costello said:—

"Under the system of the single transferable vote we are bound to have a large number of Parties returned."

He went on:—

"We always understood that the real defect under any system of P.R., and particularly the system of the single transferable vote, was that it led in circumstances where there are no big economic issues before the country, to a large number of small Parties being returned, making for instability in Government."

He said that that was inherent in the system of P.R. and the single transferable vote. I do not have to ask M. Robert Schumann what he thinks of P.R. We have it on the authority of Deputy Costello, who has had experience of Government since 1922 on several occasions and who had the experience in recent years of running a Coalition, that P.R. leads to a multiplicity of Parties and that that, in turn, leads to instability in Government.

At that time, in 1947, there were others on the Fine Gael side who had experience of the Dáil and of Government whose ideas coincided with those of Deputy Costello and Senator Hayes. Mr. McGilligan said: "It was always held with regard to P.R., which this country adopted, that we had adopted the worst possible system." But Senator Hayes wants us to keep "the worst possible system"—the system which Deputy Costello indicates leads to a multiplicity of Parties—a large number of small Parties making for instability in Government. I think Deputy Dillon exaggerated slightly when he turned his tongue on P.R., because he said: "I think P.R. is a fraud and a cod and that it ought to be abolished." But Senator Hayes wants it not to be abolished. He wants to keep what Deputy Dillon described as "a fraud and a cod and the brainchild of all the cranks in creation."

Having the authority of these gentlemen on this commission we are in the process of holding in the Seanad at present and having secured the evidence of what they really think about P.R. when they stagger into disclosing their real minds on the matter, let us go back to the men who ran the country up to 1927. In 1927 an advertisement was issued by the Cumann na nGaedheal Party, in the course of which they said to the electors: "Your fight in this election is a fight for Government." The word "Government" was underlined. They said there were only three possible types of Government. They went on to point out what they were—a Cumann na nGaedheal Government, a Republican Government or a Coalition Government. They described what would happen under a Coalition Government. They said:—

"Coalition means bargaining for place and power between irresponsible minority groups."

I am used—if I may put it this way—to not being accepted in some statements. I did not say everybody in the country knew I was not a member of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. The Minister said everybody in the country thought I was. That is a different thing and it is not true.

The Minister, as a matter of fact, is departing from the subject of P.R. in order to work off an old spleen against me. I do not begrudge it to him but he will not get away with it so long as I am here. It is to do——

Mr. Aiken

I am delighted to hear Senator Hayes say, after all these years, what he has just said. In 1932, he was a member of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party.

Professor Hayes

I was, yes—after March.

Mr. Aiken

After March. Professor Hayes walked from the Ceann Comhairle's Chair to sit on the Opposition Benches.

Professor Hayes

My successor did the same thing, the Lord have mercy on him. He did the identical same thing the day he walked in.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

All that is not material to this discussion. I hope the Minister will appreciate that fact.

Professor Hayes

It is quite irrelevant.

Mr. Aiken

Mr. O'Leary

Go back to China.

Mr. Aiken

I was challenged as to whether, in fact, P.R. turned out as badly an was anticipated by Cumann na nGaedheal in 1927, when this bargaining for place and power between irresponsible groups, in fact, occurred. I want to judge the irresponsibility of the groups who formed the Coalition by what they said to the electorate, whether they behaved as responsible people who had undertaken to serve the electorate in a certain way. Deputy Blowick, who became a member of this Coalition, said on the 3rd of June, 1948, a few months before he became a Minister:—

"When we went in there——"

that is into the Dáil

"——as a Farmers' Party, the only real farmers' organisation at present in the Dáil, we had to overcome a nasty odour as three other previous Parties had joined with Fine Gael and many people thought it would only be a matter of time until we had lost our identity as Independents. I can tell you that the strict attitude of independence which was adopted at the beginning still stands, that there will be no merging with any Party. We have no right to sell that independence. We never asked your authority to do so and we are not asking you now for that authority."

If we do not want complete proportionality according to the electoral strength among the people, what do we want from an electoral system? I submit that what we want is what has been put forward by Fianna Fáil on many occasions and by very eminent statesmen from a great number of other countries, that is, a Government that can be changed peacefully, that can be held responsible by the people for its acts or inaction.

In our opinion the best way of getting a Government that can be held responsible is the straight vote system. We believe, with Senator Hayes, with Cumann na nGaedheal of the old days, with Deputy Costello, that P.R. leads to a multiplicity of small Parties, that it creates all these difficulties that were so eloquently and accurately described by many people who had responsibility for Government here and in other countries. We want the co-operation of the people in the referendum to get rid of that system and to adopt a system that has proved itself to be effective and worthwhile in countries that adopted it a couple of hundred years ago.

——and they will give the answer that Fianna Fáil want. The reason Fine Gael slid down from 60 members in the Dáil to 30 was because they had contempt for the people's intelligence, and it was only when they were through their penance that the people let them up again to 40. If they continue the way they are going they will have very much less than 40. We are going to make certain that the people will understand exactly the issues involved, and I have every expectation that just as the people in the last election gave Fianna Fáil the greatest majority they ever gave any Party in order to get rid of the Coalition, they are going to vote "yes" in this referendum by the greatest possible majority so that that type of Coalition is not going to return in Ireland.

Professor Hayes

I wonder what Senator Stanford thinks of the Minister's speech. I am sure he must have a certain feeling of guilt, because it was apparently in reply to Senator Stanford that the Minister rose. I thought that the Minister was going to give us some kind of thoughtful and reasoned reply to the speech of Senator Stanford, which has importance in view of the nature of his rerepresentation here. I would have expected the Minister to make an effort to meet that speech which was reasonably and lucidly made. There may have been flaws in Senator Stanford's arguments. None of us is perfect and all of us may make mistakes when we speak. At any rate the Minister got up and said that he hoped that Senator Stanford would not go away. The Minister's tall figure almost threatened Senator Stanford, and I thought that Senator Stanford was going to get a desperate dressing-down and that we would hear a great deal about minorities and be shown how absurdly illogical and unfounded all Senator Stanford's arguments were. Alas and alack, it was poor Senator Michael Hayes who came in for all the abuse and there was hardly a word about Senator Stanford.

Whether Senator Stanford rejoices in that or not I do not know, but I was very interested in the Minister's attitude. The Minister is obsessed by Fine Gael. He cannot get away from it. He can make no speech without drawing in Fine Gael and it is apparently Fine Gael and Senator Hayes that are really on his mind. His whole attitude to this very genuine problem is absurd, and he gives me the feeling of being very glad that I am not any small minority in this country subject to the Minister. We in Fine Gael have had to face the Minister in a great many ways and we have defeated him before, more than once.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

You were lucky one way.

Professor Hayes

The Minister need not be so cocky about what is going to happen on the referendum or on anything else. He has shown to-day not only an insulting attitude but also an attitude of intolerance, of truculence, and of menace to the people who have spoken against him. He simply refused to discuss this question of P.R. After all, what is it all about? Here we have a system which has been working for the last 40 years, recommended to us by the present Government in 1937 in the most unmistakable language after having had experience of quite a number of elections. We are proposing to destroy that and to adopt the British system with the single non-transferable vote in small constituencies but, strange as it may seem, whatever the Minister appeared to be talking about he never said a word about that. That is the matter being discussed now.

The Minister's organisation have rooted out all kinds of quotations which the Minister persistently distorts. Every quotation the Minister gives he gives partially and then he slips on to another matter, but he is not going to get away with that here, naturally enough, because none of us was born yesterday. He gave a very interesting example of the technique this evening in a quotation from Deputy Larkin. He did not say which Deputy Larkin and I do not know which. There were two at the particular moment.

They thought that they would smash the Treaty in 1922 by a Coalition, but it did not work out that way. They were in favour of a Coalition also in 1927. I do not think that Coalitions are relevant, but the Minister was reading a lot into the advertisement and making a very mean attempt to pin it on to me. I had nothing to do with it, any more than the Minister, and I am sure he had nothing to do with it. There has been no reference to the kind of coalition that the Minister and his leader wanted to make when they came into the Dáil in 1927. The proposal was to have a Government composed—it is interesting to remember this now—of the smaller Parties in the Dáil, a Government in which Fianna Fáil would not take any part, and from which the Cumann na nGaedheal Party would be shut out, so that you would have a Government in the Dáil supported by Fianna Fáil, who would not be in it, and the two main Parties would be excluded. Could any coalition, even at the Minister's worst and lowest form of argument, be more foolish than that? That is the kind of coalition they wanted. It was after the election they made all kinds of bargainings and promises. The story is well known.

It might be no harm if we did have a discussion on order in this House because it has become most disorderly.

Business suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.

Mr. O'Quigley

I have already spoken on the Committee Stage but like the Minister for External Affairs I would like to speak on the section. The Minister in his latest intervention again raises the question of making the whole country into one constituency. The Minister knows very well that nobody wants such a ridiculous system. I have already pointed out that in the 1922 Constitution all that we were bound to do was to have elections on the principle of P.R. and it was left open to the Oireachtas by electoral law to determine what form of P.R. we should have.

The Minister repeated this evening that P.R. was imposed on us by the British and was therefore inserted into the 1922 Constitution but, not satisfied with that, the present Government when they introduced the Constitution of 1937 went further than the British and tied us to one form of P.R., the form of the single transferable vote. When the Minister quotes from speeches of Deputies Costello, McGilligan and Dillon he does not tell the whole story. What they said in those speeches was that the system of P.R. that operated here was not perhaps the best system and that it should not be written into the Constitution as the particular form of P.R. that we should employ here.

The Minister knows, if he has studied the problem, that there are forms of P.R. that can be adopted to achieve the end which the Government allege they want to achieve by this amendment to the Constitution. The Minister has been challenged upon certain figures by Senator Stanford and I trust that Senator Stanford will produce figures which will place beyond yea or nay the theories advanced by him in relation to the religious minority in this country. But the Minister comes along and speaks of P.R. being employed in two or three countries in Europe on the basis of using the whole country as one constituency. I would like the Minister to name these countries because I do not know of any country in Europe employing the whole country as a single constituency unless the Minister is talking about the pocket States of Andorra or Liechtenstein or San Morena. If he wants to compare these with this country the proper basis for comparison would be urban or parish councils because that is what elections in these countries amount to.

There is only one country in the world, as far as I know, which employs the whole country as a single constituency for the purpose of election on the basis of P.R., and that is Uruguay; but I would point out to the Minister that that is not in relation to the representative assembly. It is in relation to the Government that the whole country is used as a single constituency. It is provided by the Constitution of Uruguay, which was ratified by the people in 1951, that the Chamber of Representatives should consist of 99 members, elected by the people. It goes on to provide that they should be elected to represent departments and that there should be not less than two representatives for each department. For the purpose of electing a Government, there is a different procedure used from that used at the present time in this country or Britain or the United States of America. It is provided by the Constitution of Uruguay that the executive authority of the State shall be exercised by the National Council of Government. The National Council of Government is to consist of nine members—and here we have the whole country employed as a constituency—elected directly by the people, together with a double number of alternates for a period of four years, in accordance with the rules of suffrage set forth in Section 3 of the Constitution. The Republic is to be considered as a single electoral district. When the National Council of Government is elected, it is provided that the Party receiving the most votes shall have six councillors and three council seats shall go to the Party with the next highest votes. That is not the whole picture because it is the National Council of Government in Uruguay which appoints the Ministers of State and it is provided that the Presidency of the Council is to rotate annually. That is an entirely different system from the one we have. If the Minister wants to talk about countries being turned into a single constituency for P.R., he might inform the House of the country he has in mind, instead of dealing with it in the skimpy fashion he has used in this debate.

The Minister has unearthed all that could be said against our particular form of P.R. by certain Deputies of the Fine Gael Party. He also gave us the benefit of an advertisement published by Cumann na nGaedheal in 1927; but the Minister's industry has not gone to the length of giving us quotations from various Ministers in the Fianna Fáil Government, from Fianna Fáil T.D.s and Senators and other leading members of the Fianna Fáil Party which show that all of those Ministers and T.D.s in Fianna Fáil— with the exception of the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health 12 years ago—had no doubts about the value of P.R. as a system of election for Ireland.

With the exception of the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health on one occasion, there was no word from Fianna Fáil criticising P.R. as a method of election—not a single word. We have had nothing but adulation and admiration for it in the 1937 Constitution, and I agree with that. I have a great admiration for the Constitution, for the manner in which it sets forth and regulates how the Government of the country is to be conducted and for the guarantees of personal rights which it contains. It is intended now to make inroads upon that Constitution.

The Taoiseach, in opening the Second Stage debate here, referred to a conversation he had with the King of Italy some time before the war. The King of Italy, mark you, is quoted in support of the case against P.R. This is what the King of Italy had to say, according to the Taoiseach, as reported in Volume 50, column 256 of the Seanad Debates:—

"The present system," said the King, "is better than the system we had."

That, mark you, was before the war; and "the present system" of which the King of Italy spoke was a system which led to the World War, which was such a scourge to humanity. It is that view which is brought into this House now and quoted in support of the case against P.R. In other words, dictatorship, according to the Taoiseach, the dictatorship which led to the formation of the Axis Powers, was better than the weaknesses of P.R.— and a world war, apparently, is better than the weaknesses of P.R. That certainly is a new line of argument and, indeed, an interesting sidelight upon the views of the Taoiseach in relation to parliamentary democracy —parliamentary democracy in the Italy of Mussolini, of unhappy memory.

The Minister for External Affairs, on the Second Reading of the Bill, was in a mood for asking questions of both Fine Gael and Labour. He posed a question here which he wished to have answered by Fine Gael and Labour, as to whether, in the event of the amendment to the Constitution being adopted, that amendment would, at some future time, be repealed by both of those Parties. I would like now to ask the Minister a simple and straightforward question, but before doing so I want to lay the base on which I think the question ought to be asked. The Constitution is the Constitution of the people and it expresses the will of the people as to the form of Government they have; and one section of the Constitution is just as important as any other section in expressing the will of the people. It is no thanks to the Government, as has been pointed out, that this amendment will be by way of referendum. That is what the people have decided they want. In our particular Constitution, as in parliamentary democracy generally, the Government is responsible to Dáil Éireann. The Constitution provides that "the Government shall meet and act as a collective authority, and shall be collectively responsible for the Departments of State administered by the members of the Government." Those are the provisions of the Constitution and they have as much weight and significance as any other provisions.

I would like to ask the Minister for External Affairs how—in the situation which Fianna Fáil hope this amendment will produce, where the Government of the day will have an overwhelming majority of the seats—the Government can be made answerable to Dáil Éireann with a diminished Opposition. I would like the Minister to explain how the Government can be made answerable to Dáil Éireann when it comes to examining, say, Estimates for the Departments of State. At the present time, on the Vote on Account, on the Estimates and at Budget time, the Government are made answerable for the administration of Government Departments and for their Financial and economic policy. But it requires a lot of time, thought and work, and quite a number of people to pool their energies, in order to make the Government answerable to it.

I want also to ask the Minister, through the Chair, how he expects, under the new dispensation as he would have it, the parliamentary question will work. The parliamentary question has always been regarded in Britain and in this country as one of the great safeguards of democracy. Its very existence prevents abuses arising and, when abuses do arise, it enables these to be investigated in the full light of debate and discussion in Parliament.

We had cases in this country, under our own Constitution, of inquiries into certain practices that were going on. We had a railway tribunal inquiry, a Locke Distillery inquiry, a Monaghan Bacon Curing Company inquiry, and others. I am not concerned with the results of these inquiries. The fact is that, once there was a semblance that things were not right, it was in the public interest that these matters should be probed in Parliament. I am wondering how that will happen if we have not sufficient Deputies in the Opposition to deal with matters of these kinds. If they are to deal with matters of that kind, they will not have any time for legislation, Estimates, and so on.

If the Minister for External Affairs is interested in the preservation of our parliamentary democracy, I should like him to give us his opinion of how it will function under the new system that would be involved if this amendment of the Constitution is enacted. Even at this stage, we have the Taoiseach preparing the way for a further change. He said, in reply to the debate on the Second Stage, that if the new system does not work the Constitution can be changed. I want to know what will happen if P.R. has failed and if the straight vote system, as it is called, fails. What will we have then? What change is in the mind of the Taoiseach? What will be possible then?

Will we have somebody coming back from the Irish equivalent of Colombey Les Deux Églises—another General de Gaulle returning from retirement to take over the dictatorship which the king of Italy so much admired and which the present Taoiseach quotes in support of the case against P.R. Is that the system the Taoiseach has in mind?

Machiavelli, in The Prince, says that one change prepares the way for another change. I wonder what will be the next change from the present change? We are getting away from P.R., from fair play to the people. We are getting now a system of two-Party Government. That is what the amendment seeks to achieve. Having had two-Party Government, will the next step be one-Party Government such as they have in Russia and in the other Communist dominated countries? Is that where we are going? We have one change preparing the way for another. Has the Taoiseach accepted the Fabian philosophy of the inevitability of gradualness by consolidating the particular type of P.R. that we have in the 1937 Constitution which has caused him to introduce this amendment which in time will lead to another?

The Taoiseach comes along and says that the present system is a bad system and that now we should adopt the two-Party system. The Taoiseach seems to be of opinion that that system may not work and that we can always change the Constitution. As reported at column 880, Volume 50, of the Official Report, the Taoiseach said:—

"We are not freezing this, as somebody said, into the Constitution. The Constitution can be amended. If at any time it was considered that there was a bette system than the straight vote, and we have succeeded in getting the straight vote into use, the people would have a far better chance of changing back than they would ever have of changing from the present system to the straight vote system, because in the one case the vested interests would be so numerous and so powerful that we would never have in the Dáil an opportunity of getting an overall majority."

It is clear from that quotation that the Taoiseach has some doubts again in his mind, as he had in 1937 when he put P.R. in the Constitution, about this particular change.

Of course, my view of the purpose of this section is that it is purely an alibi for the Government's failure to make progress by asking the country to give them another chance, that if they have another system of election, all will be well. I do not believe, and I do not believe anybody in the country believes, that the election of the same kind of people with the same kind of outlook will, by a different system of election, produce any better results. There is an old saying in Ireland that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It does not matter what kind of system of election you have if the quality of the people who will be returned is the same. You will not have any greater progress under a system which gives the Government an overall majority than you will have under the present system.

Senator Quinlan asked the Minister a question and the Minister shied away from it this afternoon. He asked the Minister what schemes of national importance the Government failed to put through by reason of the existence of the system of P.R. The Minister changed that question in some particular way and did not deal with the matter at all.

Senator Ó Maoláin dealt at great length with the British elections from early in the 1900's down to the present time. We all got these particulars and know how they work. I had always thought that what suited Britain did not suit this country and for very good reasons—that the type of economy in Britain is entirely different from our economy. Here, we are predominantly an agricultural community. In Britain the community is predominantly industrial. There, you have large areas of population. Here, we have very few areas with large populations. There you have a lot of workers in the cities. Apart altogether from that, you have a different kind of tradition there with the Crown and hereditary aristocracy and a tradition of great wealth among industrialists and the aristocracy. You have nothing like that in this country.

There is a statement on record by a very prominent person, whose name I shall not mention, that this country is one of the most egalitarian countries in Europe, not excluding Soviet Russia. It cannot be said that Britain is a very egalitarian country. At the same time, it is thought fit to suggest that a system of election that suits Britain suits this country.

I would point out to the Minister and to the House that the system in Britain that gives violent changes from right to left does not at all suit this country. We have made great efforts, through recent legislation and through bodies such as Coras Tráchtála and the visits of different Ministers to the U.S.A., to attract foreign capital here. They do not want any foreign capital in Britain. At some periods, I understand, they were suffering from over-investment. We are suffering from under-investment.

Now it is proposed, because the people have forgotten the bitterness of the civil war, to divide the people along different lines into right and left. Does anybody think that, in that situation, you will have American industrialists or Dutch or Swedish industrialists, or anybody else, coming into the country to invest their money, knowing that at some stage you may have in Government, if the forecasts of the Fianna Fáil members are right, a leftish kind of Government that would be disposed to nationalise industry and thereby ruin the investment which foreign investors had made in this country? Is that the way in which we will attract foreign capital into the country? I do not think it is. It does not, apparently, make any difference to the Government what the consequences of this election will be, provided they get their own way.

In that context it reminds me very much—since so much history has been quoted—of Diarmuid MacMorrough who was the cause of all our trouble. Because he could not get his way with the High King and with O'Rourke of Breffni he went to England and brought over the British, in order to vent his spleen and secure his own position. The Government now want to secure their own position and to vent their spleen on the electorate who, in 1948 and 1951, decided they did not want Fianna Fáil. Because of that we are now to amend the Constitution to entrench the Fianna Fáil Party in office if at all possible.

The Taoiseach is of the opinion that it is the Government that counts most, that it is the mainspring of action. He has stated that at column 871, Volume 50, of the Official Reports. That is not what the people have said in the Constitution. The Constitution was enacted by the people and they have not said that the Government counts most. They said that the Government shall be responsible to Dáil Éireann and the Government has not got the last say in every matter. It is not the Government that is entitled to declare war. It is provided in the Constitution, in Article 28, Section 3, that:—

"War shall not be declared and the State shall not participate in any war save with the consent of Dáil Éireann."

The people did not think that the Government counts most there, that it was the be all and the end all and the mainspring of action. The people in their Constitution said that that was a reserved function for the Dáil. We have a situation in this country where people have certain views about one of our great national problems. This particular amendment to the Constitution, if it were adopted, would facilitate a minority in gaining a majority of seats in Dáil Éireann and that seems to be the mentality of some of those who are in what, at the moment, is a very small minority. But we propose to facilitate that small minority, in certain circumstances, to employ this particular section of the Constitution for the purpose of declaring war.

I wonder if the Taoiseach and the Government have considered that aspect of the matter. It could become a very serious problem at some future date. Remember, it may not be in ten years' time, but it might be in 20 or 30 years' time. That is the kind of situation which we are providing for and which we are facilitating.

We had Senator Mullins quoting Mr. Ernest Blythe in the National Observer on P.R. I am happy to say that the National Observer is not in the same position as the paper with which Senator Mullins would be most familiar. It is not a controlled paper. There is freedom of expression in it and for the expression of a different point of view and it would never happen in the Irish Press, or any of its associated newspapers, that you would have such a strong dissenting view welcomed for the purpose of creating informed public opinion upon such an important subject as this.

Senator Mullins also objects to quotations from Pope Pius XII and from the present Pope. But I recall that on a very solemn occasion when we met here recently Senator Mullins, in spite of the solemnity of the occasion, could not refrain from quoting what the late Holy Father had to say in relation to our Constitution and I could not but think that that was done for a particular purpose. It ill becomes Senator Mullins to object to quotations from the Pope, or any other person, in relation to the Constitution.

Finally, I want to say that having got rid, to a great extent, of the bitterness engendered by the civil war, P.R. has had this effect, that where you had a number of Parties with several candidates going up in a particular constituency, the very fact that the number two, three, four and five votes would be useful to different Parties meant that there was less bitterness in elections than there would be in a straight fight. Under the system of P.R. Parties do not want to offend too much, if they can avoid it, the personal feelings of the other candidates and their supporters. That is because, if they do, they will alienate the support of their opponents and they will lose the preference votes. That has an integrating effect in constituencies and prevents the development of that personal spleen which is something we can all do without. It is a form of election that lends itself to the promotion of charity amongst people who have different or opposing political views.

Apparently, however, that is not what is wanted. What is wanted, apparently, is that people, having got over the bitterness of the civil war, should now be divided into right and left. That seems to me to be a very deplorable, unstatesmanlike and unworthy attitude for a Government to adopt.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

How does the Senator make that out?

Mr. O'Quigley

If the Senator had been here earlier—I am quite certain he was engaged on the business of the House—he would understand the line of my argument.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

I still do not understand the proposition about left and right.

Mr. O'Quigley

That is what it is intended to create. We are told we have too many Parties. We are supposed to have Parties now divided, not on the basis of a political breach—the Taoiseach says that no longer exists— but we are to have them divided on the only other issues which exist, economic and social issues. If that is the case, it seems to me to involve a division of right and left, and the very words right and left have been used by the Taoiseach, but then the Taoiseach in his customary manner says: "Of course, I am only using these in order to indicate that there will be some kind of difference." But apparently that is what was at the back of the Taoiseach's mind. As a result of the system of P.R. in any constituency, there are people who are unwilling to offend their opponents because of the fact that to do so would alienate preference votes which might come to them and which might be useful to them. That is something which promotes a certain order, harmony, goodwill and a feeling of good fellowship among candidates. But that will not be the atmosphere which will prevail in the future under this new system.

We had from members of the Fianna Fáil Party what I can only describe as a hypocritical solicitude for the interests of the Labour Party. In the Dáil the Minister for Industry and Commerce said he regarded the Fine Gael Party as a surplus Party and he was not shedding any crocodile tears for that Party. The reason, of course, was that he felt Fine Gael constituted the greatest threat to Fianna Fáil. We have had, as I said, a great deal of hypocritical solicitude for the Labour Party. That is merely an attempt to comfort the Labour Party, but it will not deceive them.

We had the Minister for External Affairs giving us quotations from the speeches of Deputy Costello, Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Dillon on the question of P.R. The Minister was unable to produce any quotations from himself or any of his colleagues in the Government condemning P.R. since it was written into the Constitution in 1937.

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator has made that statement on a number of occasions already. The Senator appreciates repetition is not permissible in a debate like this.

Mr. O'Quigley

I am aware of that and I have no intention of repeating myself, but I do want to repeat, and with emphasis, what the Taoiseach had to say about P.R. in 1937. At column 1343 of Volume 67 of the Official Report he had this to say:—

"The system we have we know; the people know it."

We are told now that the new system is a simple system. There is no need for simplicity when the people have a system they know, and know very well. He goes on:—

"On the whole it has worked out pretty well. I think that we have a good deal to be thankful for in this country; we have to be very grateful that we have had the system of P.R. here."

Having had a system of P.R. for a longer period now one would imagine we should be even more grateful but, instead of that, we want to pitch P.R. out of the Constitution altogether.

"It gives a certain amount of stability."

I am aware of that and I have no intention of repeating myself. With every respect, I have not repeated myself in these quotations. The Taoiseach further said:—

". . . on the system of the single transferable vote you have fair representation of Parties."

These are the points we are trying to make in the course of this debate in support of P.R. We want fair representation of Parties and not the ridiculous kind of system the Minister for External Affairs has suggested under which 1/50th of the votes could command representation.

"I understood when I was in opposition that this whole principle of P.R. was being threatened, and I was rather anxious here that we would ensure in the Constitution a reasonable basis for P.R."

There, we must part company with the Taoiseach. He did not provide us with a reasonable basis for P.R. inasmuch as he tied us to a particular system. But I am quite prepared to vote for the system we have—the system we know! We know the amount of protection it gives us. I am prepared to vote for maintaining it as against adopting a system that has never been tried out here under native Government.

At column 1353 of the same volume the Taoiseach had this to say about P.R.:—

"I think we get, probably in this country more than in any other country, better balanced results from the system we have. If you take the countries where P.R. exists you get better balanced results than you get in other countries."

Apparently history has changed and you never did get better balanced results in the countries which had P.R. as against the countries which did not have it.

This reminds me of a book written by the late George Orwell, 1894 in which he forecast that the Communist would rewrite history in the light of subsequent events in order to correct any mistakes that had been made. We had that recently in Soviet Russia. In a publication similar to the Encyclopaedia Britannica published in Russia Stalin was given many pages, all devoted to praising him for his work for the Soviet Republic. After his death, when he was denounced by Khrushchev at the Twentieth Congress, they set about rewriting Stalin's biography. In 1937 P.R. had been abolished in Italy. Mussolini was in power. P.R. had been abolished in Germany. Hitler was in power. We have the Taoiseach agreeing apparently now that Fascist Italy was far better off than Italy under P.R. I do not think any sane person could agree that it was better to have Mussolini and World War II rather than the kind of Government there would have been in Italy had P.R. continued there.

Mr. Barry

In what I can only describe as a rather astounding performance, the Minister for External Affairs this evening said that the Party to which I belong, Fine Gael, have never been very receptive of new ideas. I hope he did not mean to infer that what is now being done is something new, because I think the general impression given to the House from the Fianna Fáil Benches is that we are taking a step backwards and that what we are doing is really retrograde. It is an old system of election which we are going back to and we are leaving behind us a system of election of which we have been proud for the past 40 years. We shall all be very sorry if this change is made.

The section we are discussing deals with reducing the size of the constituencies to afford representation by one elected candidate, and discharging the transferable vote to use the non-transferable vote. I wonder will that system produce a better Deputy in Dáil Éireann? Senator Lenihan said he thought under the new system we would get better types into Parliament. I do not think we will. You will get better electioneers, men who are able to catch votes more effectively. As everyone in this House knows, the best public representative is not the man who is the best vote-catcher. Vote-catching is a completely separate department but we have known all our lives that many men who are expert at it are completely tongue-tied and useless when they come to discuss legislation in this or the other House.

What is more, the people who are better than average—I have to go outside our own Parliament because it would be invidious to quote names here—men like Mr. Nicholson of Bournemouth and Mr. Montogomery Hyde in the North of Ireland—are men whom it is very unusual to find elected under the straight vote system. They always tend to be in the minority in their thinking and they are not any the less valuable for that.

As was said earlier this evening by one of the Government Senators, Senator Sheehy Skeffington has always been in a minority. In many ways, that was a very considerable tribute to Senator Sheehy Skeffington because, very often, such men are the salt of the society they live in.

One thing you are doing, when you confine the constituencies to one man and essentially to one Party candidate, is taking a choice from the electorate and, in taking that choice, you are taking something valuable, something which was making a contribution to the quality of the Oireachtas. You will provide the docile T.D., the docile man, the man who comes to heel, and these are not the most useful men to have in Parliament; but that, apparently, is what you want. You want a Party of docile men, a big Party with a very small group opposing them. You will not, of course, maintain the balance because eventually the pendulum will swing and when it swings the Party taking over will take over with a big group of docile men behind it. You are closing the door on the thoughtful man, on the slightly intransigent person, who does not belong to any Party but makes every Party produce in the end the best Government.

We have been talking a lot about minorities. The Government must admit that the minorities must do better under the old system, but it is just funny to think that a member of, say, a religious minority could get himself adopted by one of the large Parties in any of the constituencies where there is only one seat. It is cynical to talk about it. Even inside the Party itself, there is a kind of mental minority that you are going to discard and lose. It may not matter next year, or the year after, or even the year after, but it will make a difference in 20 years' time. You are establishing forever the power of the Party. Do Senators think that is a good thing to do? I disagree.

As I said on the Second Reading, I do not know what is wrong with the idea of Government by agreement, why different groups cannot agree to govern and adjust their points of view. You want to stop that. You want to do in public life what you cannot do in your private life. The result, of course, in the long run, will be what you have pretty well got now. As I said before, you can change the results of a game temporarily by changing the rules, but it is only a temporary gain and eventually you will lose. The Irish people will stand for it for a short time, perhaps for one or two elections, but after a short time you will find that you have taken an extremely dangerous step.

I am afraid I must say the whole thing is just a temporary solution for what I can only call imminent Fianna Fáil difficulties. If you make promises and fail to keep them, you do not want to face the electorate on the basis where they can punish you most effectively. It is a cynical diversion and it will not cure anything in this country. It will solve none of our problems and it will be spoken of very contemptuously by the man who walks up the gangway of the emigrant ship.

A humorous periodical is published in Dublin and, in this month's number, I see a cartoon of the Taoiseach imitating Rowan Hamilton writing on the wall: "Fianna Fáil - P.R. = Fianna Fáil +." I agree there is a great deal of truth in that. You are just naked and unashamed about what you are trying to do and I would have much more respect for the Taoiseach and the Government if they did not try to justify it as sound national policy, which it is not. It is a temporary advantage for Fianna Fáil but not for Ireland.

An American Minister some years ago had the same kind of idea. He thought what was good for General Motors was good for America. He was discarded, and Fianna Fáil will be discarded eventually, and discarded much more effectively because they have made the pendulum take too wide a swing. They are reducing the standard deliberately and they will pay for it because they are deliberately trying to suit their Party's imminent position. They should not be pious about it and, above all, they should not say that we are trying to stop people from expressing their views because we must have a referendum and Fianna Fáil should not try to make a virtue out of that.

Mr. Murphy

This section deals with the substitution of the multi-member constituency by the single member constituency. Senator Mullins gave us quite an interesting talk last night as to how the British system of election worked in Britain. He did not bring us a little nearer home and show us how this British system of election worked in a part of Ireland.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

The Senator knows that is a different case.

Seanad Éireann debate - Thursday, 5 Mar 1959