Before Senator O'Quigley speaks I should like to say that I made my position clear with regard to this motion this morning. I regard it as an unwarranted breach of the privileges of this House——
Adjournment Debate. - Use of Unemployed Persons' Names for Election Purposes.
On a point of order. Surely the Senator is not in order?
He is not entitled to intervene in this way.
In regard to this breach——
It is a breach of the privileges of this House to do this——
——I have no intention of co-operating.
The Chair has accepted the motion. Senator O'Quigley on the motion.
Is there any arrangement? I suggest the matter would be well——
Senator O'Reilly will resume his seat.
I have given notice to raise on the motion for the adjournment the propriety of supplying from official sources to Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas for election purposes the names and addresses of unemployed persons resident in the borough constituency of Dublin South (West). The immediate reason for raising this matter is a circular——
Face the music——
——issued by a Member of the Oireachtas and published in the Irish Independent on the 25th July, 1959. It is dated the 17th July, 1959, and it reads as follows:
A Chara—Having heard of a temporary job last week, I put your name in for it and I have been informed by the Parliamentary Secretary that, when he sent to the Employment Exchange for you, he found that you were not registered.
Is that because he was a member of a local authority?
The letter continues:
It is my sincere hope that you have found suitable employment and I have made the necessary entry in my files. If you feel I can be of any service to you in the future, please let me know.
Next Wednesday I trust you will vote No. 1 for Joe Dowling. He is a trade union executive and, as such, is familiar with all the problems of working people and he himself will be a first-class representative and worker.—Mise, le meas....
I am not reading the name of the member who signed it, as I understand that a convention of the House is not to refer to Deputies by name in this House.
There are a number of facts contained in that circular which gave rise to the motion. The first is that the member of the Oireachtas in question indicates to an elector in the Dublin South (West) constituency that he heard of a temporary job. The second is that he had put in the name of the person to whom he addressed the circular for that job. The third fact is that he was informed by the Parliamentary Secretary that when the Parliamentary Secretary sent to the Employment Exchange, the person to whom that circular was addressed was not registered. The clear implication from that circular is that the names and addresses of unemployed persons resident in the borough constituency of Dublin South (West) were available to the Deputy in question. My information is that the persons to whom this circular was addressed——
The Fianna Fáil Party have flown.
——had been formerly registered as unemployed but that they had for a number of years ceased to be unemployed. The clear inference to be drawn from that is that the member of the Oireachtas in question had access to the names of persons in the Dublin South (West) constituency who were formerly registered as unemployed, and who were no longer registered. The only way, as far as I could see, in which that information could be given would be through the Unemployment Exchange, and the Minister for Social Welfare is responsible, therefore, for disclosing that information to the Deputy in question.
It is my submission to the House that it is a most serious abuse of the administrative process to make available for election purposes the names of persons who were formerly unemployed, for the purposes of addressing a circular which contained, amongst other things, an exhortation to vote for the candidate of a particular Party. It is bad enough that citizens of the Dublin South (West) constituency should be unemployed, with all that that means,—hardship, suffering and bitter disappointment. That is all bad enough without having, as it were, the enticement held out to them that by voting in a particular way they would secure some temporary job through the agency of a Deputy from the Parliamentary Secretary. I consider that is most undesirable and is a serious abuse of the administrative process.
Beyond drawing attention to that matter I do not intend to take up the time of the House much further. It may well be that if the Parliamentary Secretary or the Minister for Social Welfare were here, they would say that information was not supplied. It must be regarded as a live issue to the unemployed, not alone in the Dublin South-West constituency but in Dublin generally and throughout the country, that the obtaining of employment should not depend on their knowing a particular Deputy and upon their names being in his personal file. It may well be that the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister for Social Welfare could be able to say that no such information was supplied. It may well be there never was a temporary job, and that there was no Parliamentary Secretary contacted on the question and no inquiry made at the employment exchanges as to whether or not the people in question were registered as unemployed, and the whole thing was merely a very cruel and callous hoax.
I did not intend to intervene in this matter at all but the remarks which the Leader of the House made before he left with all those who sit with him, impel me to say that, in the first instance, the terms under which Senator O'Quigley raised this matter have been agreed upon by you, Sir. We here are all obliged, if we want to raise something in the House, to give due notice. We are obliged under Standing Orders and by our own conventions to agree with the Chair with regard to the terms of a motion or the terms of a question such as this.
Therefore, Senator O'Quigley, it should be said, was in agreement with you entirely with regard to the terms on which his motion was accepted by you today. He was moderate in his remarks and this evening there has been a double discourtesy to this House for which I think there is no precedent or very few precedents indeed—refusal on the part of a Minister or a Parliamentary Secretary to attend here.
The Leader of the House did not give any reason for the absence of the Parliamentary Secretary and indeed he made a vigorous protest today after you had given a ruling, and this evening he endeavoured to frustrate this debate by saying, before he left the House, that it was a breach of the privilege of the House. It is you, Sir, who are the judge of that and not the Leader of the House. I should like to say that if we are to conduct our debates in any reasonable way, it was an extraordinarily bad example for the Leader of the House to charge the Chair with allowing the privileges of the House to be abused. No such thing happened.
Senator O'Quigley has raised this matter in a very moderate way. I can only characterise as childish the absence, the arranged absence, of Government members and their sympathisers. I do not understand why they did it except in an endeavour to throw cold water upon this whole business. There is clear evidence in the letter itself which Senator O'Quigley read that the Parliamentary Secretary—if the letter is true—was in collusion with a member of the Fianna Fáil Party to perpetrate, as Senator O'Quigley said, a cruel hoax on certain unemployed persons in his constituency.
If the Parliamentary Secretary was not a party to it, then it was certainly his duty to come here tonight and say honestly that he was not a party to this transaction, but, of course, presumably his anxiety to defend his colleague prevents him from doing that. I am not particularly concerned with the matter itself but I am concerned with the way in which the rights of members have been dealt with. I think it is nothing short of disgraceful for the Leader of the House to attack the Chair in this very disorderly fashion, and the fact that members of the main Party absent themselves from a debate simply shows that they do not like what is being said. A fundamental thing in parliamentary procedure is that you have to sit and listen to people you do not agree with, and if you do not, you can be charged with having qualities of which nobody should be proud.
The withdrawal of the whole Government Party from this House this evening can be described if we may use such a term as unprecedented as it is quite unprecedented in my 11 years' experience in this House. I should like to join with Senator Hayes in his firm condemnation of the conduct of the Government Party in the House this afternoon.
The Senator will appreciate that members are free to come and go in the House as they choose.
There are times, I think you will agree, when coming and going are of a pointed nature.
They were ordered out.
I have never had the experience of sitting alone on one side of Seanad Eireann—I am sorry, sitting with one companion on one side of Seanad Eireann. This is an ugly thing; it is an ugly thing for this country and that is why I am saying it. It simply means that there are some people who believe in one-Party Government. At the moment they are conceding that if they cannot have their way, if they cannot have one-Party Government on the other side, they can have one Party debate.
The Senator will understand that question is not under debate. Perhaps he will come to the terms of the motion.
Well, Sir, in the terms of the motion on the Adjournment, I should like to support Senator O'Quigley. I believe that the essence of democratic Government is representative parliamentary debate, and responsibility to Parliament, and that is what is being shirked in the most flagrant way this evening. I have not investigated the circumstances one way or the other of the matter which Senator O'Quigley is discussing, but as corroborative evidence of a tendency in that direction, we have these empty benches now.
I think I should say one further word because I am not involved with any Party in this House. I admire both to some extent and I do not to another. I appeal to the leaders of the Fianna Fáil Party, in view of what has happened this evening, to reconsider this ugly-looking policy towards Seanad Éireann and towards democratic parliamentary discussion in this country.
I had no intention of intervening in this debate. I was not here at 3 o'clock and I do not know the circumstances of the acceptance of the motion. I sit here as an independent Senator who has a great interest in the dignity of the Seanad and the role which it has to play in Irish politics.
I take it that the motion is in order, Sir; otherwise you would not have allowed the discussion. I have not any views really myself on the subject matter of the motion because I have not gone into the matter and I agree that Senators are perfectly free to go in and out of the House, as they wish. At the risk of being called to order and told that I am exceeding the bounds of the motion, I join very strongly as an independent University member with my colleague, Senator Stanford, in expressing my shocked surprise at the attitude of the Government Party towards a House of the Oireachtas this evening. I really am for the first time in my life afraid for the future of Irish democracy.
The Senator having said that by way of protest should now come to the terms of the motion. The conduct of the members of the House is not properly under discussion.
With respect to the Chair, I should have thought as a mere humble member of the Seanad that the conduct of the members of the House was a matter of grave public concern. I am very sorry to have lived to see this House reduced to a poor copy of the Reichstag when a single Party Government are not prepared to listen to any criticism in this House. I am very sorry to have lived to see this day as an old Nationalist here in Ireland.
I should like to say one brief word in support of what my colleagues have said. We are saddened that this has happened and we are saddened by the lack of approach of the whole Government Party to constructive suggestions and we are especially saddened by the personal attack made by the Leader of the House.
I do not wish to detain the House, nor have I very much to say, but I should like to make one point having agreed with what was said by my colleagues, Senators Stanford and O'Brien and others. Surely we have to proceed on the basis that there are at least two sides to any question and when a question is properly debated here, we must make up our minds one way or the other. It was shocking and deplorable for the Government Party to deny us such an opportunity. I regard it, frankly, not only as an undesirable precedent but, like my colleague, Senator O'Brien, I think it is a most ugly precedent and I hope that the Party will take due notice of it.
The Seanad adjourned at 9.50 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, 30th July, 1959.