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.