Before we take up consideration of the Second Stage of this Bill, I should like to say that I regret that I am unable to allow amendment No. 1 in the names of Senator Robinson and Senator Horgan to be moved. This amendment was received at 4 p.m. yesterday and consequently the ordinary requirement of two days notice prescribed by Standing Order 23 was not complied with. It remains for me to decide if I should exercise my discretion and allow the amendment to be moved on shorter notice. The amendment was circulated to Senators by post yesterday evening, but some Senators may regard this notice as too short to enable them to consider the important point of principle involved in the amendment. It is for this reason that I feel unable to exercise my discretion in favour of allowing the amendment to be moved on shorter notice.
Electoral (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, 1973: Second Stage.
I accept that in attempting to move this amendment I was beaten by a technicality and that I was late in submitting it. I thank you for the serious consideration that you gave it. I particularly regret that it has been ruled out of order. It would have given the Seanad an opportunity to vote on the principle of whether, not even necessarily this time but for the future drawing of constituencies, it be done by an impartial tribunal.
The Senator is experienced enough to know that while entitled to intervene on a point like this, she should be brief.
Yes. I suffer from a frustration for which I can blame nobody but myself. I wish that I had taken this in time to give the Seanad an opportunity to vote on the question of principle. Instead of that, I will be making the same points on Second Reading but in a less satisfactory form, because we will not in fact be isolating this principle which I think is fundamental to our position.
This Bill proposes to fix the total number of Members of Dáil Éireann and to revise the Dáil constituencies in order to take account of the increase in population and of the changes in the distribution of population recorded by the census taken in April, 1971.
The Constitution places on the Oireachtas an obligation to revise the constituencies at least once in every 12 years. It also provides that the ratio between the number of Members to be elected at any time for each constituency and the population of each constituency shall, so far as it is practicable, be the same throughout the country. It is generally accepted that these provisions mean that it is not sufficient to have equality of representation at the time of the 12-yearly review, that this equality must, as far as practicable, exist at all times and that a revision of constituencies must take place whenever a completed census shows a significant change in the distribution of population. This view is shared by the present and previous Governments. The Bill provides that the total number of Members after the next dissolution will be 148. This is an increase of four over present representation and is the maximum number permissible under the Constitution.
It has been the practice at previous revisions to provide for the maximum number of Dáil Deputies by having a population-Deputy ratio as close as possible to the minimum of 20,000 persons laid down by the Constitution. The Dáil Committee on the Constitution which reported in 1967 considered that the upper limit of 30,000 persons per Deputy specified by the Constitution had lost its significance and that a range of 20,500 to 17,500 would be more realistic. When this Bill was debated on Committee Stage in the Dáil an unusual situation arose. The Opposition speakers expressed themselves in favour of the maximum number of Dáil Deputies; nonetheless, they demanded a division on the relevant section and voted against the increase in membership. I am confident that Senators will take the view that it is important to have the maximum possible number of Deputies to deal with domestic policy and legislation as well as with developments in the European Communities.
A factor on which there is agreement on all sides is the question of what constitutes equality of representation, what variation from the national average population-Deputy ratio may be regarded as permissible. The courts have not laid down precise limits on this but the view has been taken from the constitutional provisions and the court decisions in the early 1960's that the maximum permissible variation is 1,000 above or below the national average. These limits were adhered to in the 1961 and 1969 revisions and have also been adhered to for the purpose of drawing up the present proposals. On the basis of 148 Deputies the national average number of persons per Deputy is 20,123 and the permitted tolerance range therefore extends from a minimum of 19,123 persons per Deputy to a maximum of 21,123 persons per Deputy.
Apart from the requirement in relation to equality of representation the only stipulation laid down by the Constitution is that no constituency may return fewer than three Members In theory therefore the Oireachtas could decide to have three-seat, four-seat, ten-seat or 20-seat constituencies or could make the whole State a single constituency. It is clear however that there is general satisfaction with the present size of constituency which varies from three to five seats and that there is no desire to return to the larger type of constituency which we had in the early days of the State. For this reason the present pattern of representation in three-seat, four-seat and five-seat constituencies is being continued.
The constitutional requirements, the courts' decisions and the interpretations of them provide the framework within which a revision of constituencies must take place. It is desirable that within these basic rules account should also be taken, as far as possible, of certain other matters such as local administrative boundaries, particularly county boundaries, physical features, community of interest and the existing scheme of Dáil constituencies. Even when account is taken of all these factors there are very many ways in which the constituencies could be revised. For this reason it is inevitable that there will be differences of opinion as to how the constituencies should be arranged and to draw up a scheme which would satisfy everybody would simply not be possible. I think Deputy Frank Carter put it very well. In the Dáil Official Report on 28th November, 1973, at columns 616 and 617 he said——
I have no objection whatever to the quotation from Deputy Carter which the Minister intends to produce, but I should like to point out that it has always been a rule of order in this House that the proceedings in the other House may not be discussed in the course of our debate. While ministerial speeches can certainly be quoted other speeches or events in the House should not be mentioned.
The position as I understand it has been that undue quotation from the proceedings in the other House, and certainly comment on proceedings in the other House has always been deprecated. It has been accepted that arguments in the other House can be quoted in this House for the purpose of answering the argument involved. I am not aware that this is limited to ministerial speeches in the other House.
If I wish to quote a Deputy's speech in the other House in the course of my contribution on this Bill, will I be allowed to quote it?
I have given my understanding of this position under Standing Orders and under the precedents of this House.
Would I be allowed to quote? I am asking a direct question, not surmising. If I begin to quote a Deputy's speech from the other House, in this debate, am I at liberty to quote?
I have already indicated that speeches in the other House may be quoted for the purpose of answering the argument contained in them.
This is not an argument. This is an original speech. It is not answering any argument; it is a Deputy who is being quoted by the Minister. If I wish to quote a Deputy, am I at liberty to quote? That is the only question I want answered.
I have already given the position as I see it and will rule on each instance as it arises.
Am I at liberty to quote the speech of a Deputy in the other House?
I have already given the position as I see it.
I do not see what the Cathaoirleach's position is and I do not understand his answer. If the Cathaoirleach can explain it to me in a specific way I shall probably be able to grasp it. I should like a specific answer.
I have ruled on the point of order raised by Senator Yeats and I have dealt with the supplementary point which was raised by Senator Garrett. I call on the Minister to resume.
My quotation will be very brief. Deputy Frank Carter put it very well in the Dáil Debates of 20th November, 1973. At columns 616 and 617 he said:
When we are faced with the revision of constituencies in order to comply with the relevant Article of the Constitution we know that we have on hands an emotional subject. We know that the Minister concerned must change the constituencies in such a way as to permit reasonable representation for each area and we know that arguments can be produced for and against any changes that may be proposed.
This raises an important question. Should a revision of constituencies be prepared by a Minister at all, or should the job be given to some kind of commission? Much has been said about this matter since the present revision got under way and, indeed, before that. It is possible to hold differing views on the advantages or disadvantages of having a commission to draw up proposals for future revisions of constituencies. If there were to be a commission for future revisions one essential condition would have to be fulfilled and that is that the idea of a commission would have to be accepted and supported by all parties.
In the past, the Opposition certainly did not support this idea. Five times the Fianna Fáil Party revised the constituencies, in 1935, 1947, 1959, 1961 and 1969 and on none of these occasions did they suggest a commission. Before going out of office, the last Fianna Fáil Minister for Local Government was preparing another revision and it is quite clear that he had no intention of handing the job over to a commission. In 1969 the then Opposition sought leave to introduce a Bill to set up a constituency commission. Fianna Fáil voted against the Bill in the Dáil and refused to allow a First Reading for it. It is a historical fact that the very first indication that the Fianna Fáil party might possibly consider a constituency commission, under the present proportional representation system, came from the leader of that party immediately after he had conceded defeat at the 1973 general election. During the debate in the Dáil on this Bill, the Opposition spokesman on Local Government indicated that his party were prepared to recommend that an independent commission should be established and invited the Government to arrange, through an all-party committee or through some other suitable method, to discuss the establishment of a commission. I think it only fair to point out that some other Opposition speakers expressed very different opinions on this matter. Deputy Carter, for instance, said on 28th November, at column 616:
There have been speeches from otherwise sensible Deputies asking for a commission to investigate the business before us. Can anyone tell me what commission whether composed of politicians or of legal luminaries or professionals of any kind are better fitted for the framing of a Bill than are the Members of this House?
Further on he said:
Funnily enough, beyond calling for powers for a commission unnamed, unspecified, and so on, people who call for such help never set out what the membership, or the qualifications, or the terms of reference of such a commission should be. This is where I call into question the motives of the people who are engaged in what I would call this baby-talk.
Deputies Lemass and Andrews also indicated that they were not in favour of a commission. Nonetheless, I accept that Deputy Molloy was speaking for his party on this matter and for my part I am prepared, once the present revision of constituencies has been implemented to consider any suggestions which the Opposition party may have to make on a commission.
The proposals in this Bill were debated at very great length in the Lower House but when one has sifted through the debates and through the comments made in newspapers and elsewhere one finds very few real criticisms of the Bill. The allegation most often made is that the Bill is in some way unfair to rural areas, particularly the western region, and favours the Dublin area. All kinds of selective statistics have been brought forward to support this contention but the fact is that the average population per Deputy in Dublin will be higher than the average per Deputy in the rest of the country. The figures are 20,142 per Deputy in Dublin as compared with 20,115 in the rest of the country. The Opposition argued that the constitutional rules should be bent as far as possible in order to give the maximum number of seats to one part of the country at the expense of another. A Minister for Local Government must weigh up the competing claims of all the areas and strike a balance which is fair to all. The whole spirit of the Constitution requires an even spread of seats over the whole country without favouring or penalising any area. This is what I have tried to do, to provide fair and reasonable representation for the people of every area.
As a rural Deputy I am naturally sympathetic to the claims of rural areas but this question has been settled by the Constitution, the courts and the people. The Constitution requires equality of representation throughout the country and makes no distinction whatever between rural and urban areas. The High Court in 1961 was quite explicit on this point. It declared that "there is no directive whatsoever contained in the Constitution that these matters of difficulties of communications, differing economic interests, differing modes of life or the convenience of constituents or the difficulties of Deputies or any of the other matters relied on by the defendant, should be taken into consideration when the Legislature is performing its functions in enacting the electoral laws".
Six years ago an attempt was made to change the Constitution so that matters other than population could be taken into account in distributing Dáil seats. The people rejected this proposal in the referendum of 1968. It is quite clear that Dáil seats must be where the people are and as Deputy Tunney and others pointed out, the need for adequate representation of the people in cities is just as pressing as in rural areas. There may be some disappointment that county boundaries have had to be breached in a number of cases. The difficulty is that only five counties can stand on their own for constituency purposes. These are Cork, Dublin, Kilkenny, Limerick and Waterford and even some of these must be affected by the position in neighbouring counties. Every other county is outside the tolerance range and must be involved in some way with another county or counties. West of the Shannon we have the counties of Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon, Galway and Clare. Not one of these counties can stand on its own for constituency purposes. In Munster the counties of Kerry, North Tipperary and South Tipperary are outside the tolerance range. In the South Leinster area Kilkenny is the only county that could possibly stand on its own; all the others are outside the tolerance range—Carlow, Laois, Offaly, Wexford and Wicklow. In the north Leinster and Ulster areas not a single county can stand on its own. This is true of Cavan, Monaghan, Louth, Meath, Kildare, Longford and Westmeath.
By combining two or more counties in a single constituency it is possible to draw up a scheme in which no county boundary would be breached. For example, Counties Donegal and Leitrim could be combined to form a seven-seat constituency; Counties Sligo and Mayo could form an eight-seater; Counties Clare and Galway could form an 11-seat constituency. The counties of Longford, Westmeath and Roscommon could be joined in a seven-seat constituency and Counties Kerry and Limerick in a constituency with 13 seats. If we are prepared to have constituencies returning seven, eight, 11 or 13 Deputies, no county boundary need be breached. I do not think that any of us seriously want constituencies of this size.
It is only fair to say that the position about county boundaries now will be much better than under the 1969 Act. All the County of Waterford will be in a single constituency, the division of the town of Athlone will be ended and the counties of Louth and Meath are getting back the areas they lost in 1969. Leitrim was divided into three parts in 1969; under the Bill there will be only one division and this will be along Lough Allen which practically splits the county geographically in two. Similarly the three-part division of Roscommon will be ended; the county will be contained in one constituency except a small part which must be added to Mayo. The bulk of this area was, in fact, in a Mayo constituency before the last revision.
The explanatory memorandum circulated with the Bill contains a summary of the provisions of the Bill and, in particular, of the provisions of the Schedule which sets out the description of the proposed new constituencies. In order to facilitate consideration of the Bill maps illustrating the new constituencies, prepared by the Ordnance Survey, are available for inspection in the Oireachtas Library. I also arranged to have copies of smaller scale maps circulated to each Member of the Oireachtas. The only change in the proposed constituencies since the Bill was introduced is a minor boundary adjustment between East and West Mayo.
In relation to the number and size of constituencies, it will be seen from the explanatory memorandum that the overall number of constituencies remains unchanged at 42, there are four extra five-seaters an four fewer four-seaters and the number of three-seaters remains the same. There have been suggestions that four-and five-seat constituencies, particularly in rural areas, are unwieldly and make it difficult for a Deputy to give people the service they are entitled to. There has been a good deal of exaggeration on this and the position under the Bill is, if anything, better than at the last revision. If we look at each of the new four- and five-seat constituencies we will see that this is so. Waterford, city and county, becomes a four-seater. Nobody can say that is a sprawling constituency. The county of Louth, with the very small addition from Monaghan necessary to meet the constitutional requirements, will be a four-seater. Louth is known as the "wee county" and I do not think it can fairly be described as large or unwieldy.
The county of Meath, which with a small addition from Kildare, will also have four seats is a very compact unit. The other new four-seaters are West and East Galway. West Galway, which will include part of Clare, is admittedly bigger than the present West Galway constituency but East Galway, which is wholly contained within the County Galway boundary, is a compact constituency by any standard. There are four new five-seat constituencies but it is clear that the total distance from one end of the constituency to the other has not been increased in any case except in Cavan-Monaghan. There is no increase in distance in either Mid-Cork or Cork City. The new Donegal constituency is, in fact, a more compact area than the present constituency of Donegal-Leitrim which stretches from Tory Island to Drumahaire. The new constituency of Cavan-Monaghan will be smaller than either Carlow-Kilkenny or Laois-Offaly and, in fact will be smaller in area than the county of Clare.
In drawing up the proposals contained in this Bill my objective was to ensure fair and reasonable representation for the people of every area. I endeavoured, as far as possible, to avoid breaching existing administrative boundaries and tried to ensure that natural communities were not split, unnecessarily, between different constituencies. I hope I have succeeded in these objectives and, judging from the comments of impartial observers, I feel that my efforts have, in fact, been successful and I am confident that Senators will take this view also.
The Minister has referred to impartial observers taking the view that this Bill is an acceptable one. It might have been useful if he had indicated who the impartial observers were.
They are not the Independents of this House anyway.
There are a number of people who do not agree with the Minister. Although they may not be completely impartial they represent a very large number of people in this country. The Minister said at some stage in the Dáil that he had the difficulty of drafting a Bill which would suit everybody. He said that if every TD in the Dáil drafted a Bill there would be 144 different Bills. This is probably true because each TD would have a particular interest and point of view and possibly a vested interest. Consequently the type of Bill he would want would vary. It must be realised that one of the TD's in the Dáil included in that 144 is the TD who has introduced this Bill. The Minister naturally has his own point of view as to the type of Bill and constituencies we should have. That point of view must inevitably be something less than completely objective. Because of this we have objections to this Bill.
I find it difficult to understand or accept that the Bill has been widely accepted by impartial observers. Because of the virtual impossibility of any Member of the Dáil who has a constituency affected by this Bill being completely objective, there is a great deal to be said for an independent commission which would not be handicapped by having a vested interest or particular reasons for having constituencies drafted in a certain way. These arguments were very cogently argued in this House and in the Dáil on the occasions of previous Electoral Bills and on many occasions since. Only a few months ago the Minister for Foreign Affairs wrote an article in which he strongly argued in favour of a commission of this kind. Although the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party argued on many occasions and put forward very cogent and convincing arguments in favour of an independent commission, when the time came that they could do something about it, they did nothing whatever. Instead, they introduced a Bill of their own.
What was the state of mind of Fine Gael and the Labour parties when they made these arguments in the past? Were they completely insincere in 1969 when they argued so strongly in favour of an independent commission? Did they mean what they said or were they merely using the argument as a means of criticising Fianna Fáil and of trying to change the Bill to something they would like themselves? Perhaps they did mean it to some extent at the time but some other pressures or considerations intervened when the time came for them to introduce an Electoral Bill.
Some members of the Government parties have defended the situation by saying that if the situation was reasonably satisfactory at the moment they would be quite willing to hand over to an independent commission. But, they say, because the 1969 Act has given such an unfair position, they have to bring in their own Bill to undo the harm that was done by the Fianna Fáil 1969 Act. This argument does not really hold water. If an independent commission were appointed, if they examined the situation which exists at the present time and if they found that there was any unfairness or any bias in the 1969 Act in the way in which the constituencies are organised then undoubtedly the commission would alter that and bring it into conformity with what would appear to be objective and fair.
It must be realised that the Government are not merely content to alter the situation in a way which they think would remove the alleged unfairness or bias of the 1969 Act but they want to go much further and bring in an Act which will not only undo this bias but will introduce bias in favour of the Labour Party and the Fine Gael Party. That seems to be quite clearly what they are doing in this Bill and why they will not now act on their own arguments by introducing an independent commission. The Government apparently think that the Bill which is before us will be to the advantage of the Labour and Fine Gael Parties. If they think so, well and good. I do not criticise them unduly if that is their objective provided they admit that that is their objective and that the arguments which they made in 1969, and on many occasions in the past, were insincere and provided that they agree that looking back on these arguments now they must be seen to be hypocritical. The Minister has, at some stage in the Dáil, defended his reluctance to provide for an independent commission on the basis that a Fianna Fáil Minister for Local Government at some time in the past put forward the argument that an independent commission would be unconstitutional and would not comply with the Articles of the Constitution. I think this may have been misinterpreted or misunderstood. It would be true to say that it would be unconstitutional to hand over the situation entirely to an independent commission but provided the commission were asked to draft a system of constituencies and provided that was approved of by the Oireachtas, there would be nothing unconstitutional about it. This is the way in which it could be done and if the arguments in favour of an independent commission are believed by those who made them, then this is the way it should be done.
It is a pity the Government did not have the courage of their apparent convictions in regard to this question of an independent commission. It is a pity the Government have added to the credibility gap which is appearing more and more as this Government remain in power. This is not by any means the first time that the Government's actions have varied very widely from what they said should be done and from what they said they would do. This is certainly another glaring example of the credibility gap between what they said should be done and what they are, in fact doing.
The Minister has stated that his objectives in this Bill are to avoid breaching administrative boundaries, to ensure that natural communities are not split unnecessarily and to take account of physical features. These objectives are not objectionable but some of them at least are somewhat vague. It is simple enough to talk about administrative boundaries and county boundaries. These are things we can understand and define and we can test the Bill against whether or not administrative boundaries are, in fact, being breached unnecessarily. However, when the Minister talks about his objective of not splitting natural communities, then he is speaking about something which is very vague indeed and something which nobody can define accurately. It has the disadvantage that this argument of trying to maintain natural communities can be used to do anything one wants to do because the Minister's opinion about what is a natural community is no better and no worse than that of anybody else. Consequently, if he says he is making a particular arrangement in a constituency, putting a county in with another, or splitting it or doing anything else, it is very easy for him to talk of natural communities and to argue that people in a certain part of a county and the adjoining community are a natural community. I am sure he can make a very good argument for it. It is something about which somebody else could make just as good an argument by saying that there was no validity whatever in the kind of natural community that he is envisaging.
Consequently it is rather dangerous to talk about constituencies he has drawn up being justified on the basis of their being natural communities. There is a danger because it is not precise, it is too vague. It is too easy to say: "I am arranging the constituency in this way because there is a natural community." It may mean something or it may mean nothing.
The same can be said, to a certain extent, about the question of physical features. This country is full of physical features; it is full of mountains, rivers, lakes, and seashores. Again, one can make a very good case for almost any arrangement of constituencies on the basis that there are physical features which would induce one to arrange the constituencies in a particular way. It is a dangerous argument. It is not one which can justify a particular constituency because the arguments can be made the other way just the same. When this argument is made to carve up a constituency, to put one part of a county in which another county, to increase certain constituencies up to five seats or reduce them to three, just as seems to be suitable, it is a very dangerous and illusory argument. It may be used to justify something which possibly could not be justified on any other argument.
There are more fundamental considerations which should be taken into account which are easier to appreciate, to understand, and to define. These are the considerations which should have weighed much more than they did with the Minister in introducing this Bill and in allocating the constituencies as he did. The Minister should have regard to the fact that rural areas should have the maximum number of TD's permissible under the Constitution. Where you have a tolerance, where it is possible and permissible to allow a few extra TD's in certain areas within that tolerance, the extra TD's should be given to those areas which are sparsely populated. There is a very strong argument for saying that because of the difficulties of distance, and of communication it is much more onerous for a TD to see his constituents in a sparsely-populated constituency and much more difficult for a constituent to see his TD. This is a problem which everybody who has experience of these areas knows and recognises. This is a very real problem which, within the tolerance permissible, the Minister should have had regard to. He should have given to the west a few extra TD's if that were possible.
The opposite argument applies to the city areas. It is much simpler for the Deputy and his constituents to keep in touch in a city area. There is probably no constituent who lives more than two or three miles from his TD and consequently the difficulties that exist in rural areas, particularly in the sparsely-populated rural areas, do not exist in cities. There is not only an argument for having the few extra TD's that are possible in the western areas and in underdeveloped areas, but it is possible to provide for this by having marginally fewer TD's in the urban areas where it is not necessary to have so many because of the ease of maintaining communication with constituents.
This argument has been made many times in the past. It was argued in the High Court, in the case of O'Donovan and the Attorney General, the case which laid down that it was not permissible to depart very far from the average for the whole country. Although the judge in that case held that he was bound by the Constitution, nevertheless this argument was given very careful consideration by him and was argued very cogently and very convincingly. The Supreme Court, which later considered the subsequent Bill, by implication permitted a variation of 1,000 plus or minus over the national average and one of the reasons why this was permitted was the argument which I have mentioned.
The Minister, in my view, should have availed of this tolerance, this permissible variation. He should also avail of this variation to keep within county boundaries. He has argued that the arrangement which he has made is an improvement on the situation which existed before. It is certainly a change, but it is not necessarily an improvement. In some cases there may be a slight improvement but in certain other cases there is a disimprovement. Overall it cannot be said in regard to the objective which he had of remaining within administrative boundaries, of remaining within county boundaries, that he has succeeded or made any real effort to meet that situation.
Another argument which I think should be made and can be made in regard to the rural areas and the urban areas is that, where possible, rural areas should be three-seaters and urban areas should be four- or five-seaters. This argument is on the same basis as the basis I mentioned earlier on. If you have small constituencies, small in the sense of three-seaters, they will be at least as compact as is possible in sparsely populated areas. It will cut down as far as possible the distances which TDs have to travel to see their constituents and vice versa. Consequently, where possible, the rural areas should be three-seaters.
On the other hand, there are good reasons why the cities should have bigger constituencies. These reasons are particularly relevant for those who are enthusiasts for proportional representation because, if you have large constituencies, which you could have without any difficulty in urban areas, then they will be more democratic and will give a greater chance to the smaller parties and smaller points of view to have a voice and to obtain a seat. I have never been a great enthusiast for proportional representation. I have spoken against it on occasions in the past, but those who have advocated proportional representation, those who have defended it, those who have spoken of its merits and pointed out that the bigger a constituency is the more democratic it is and the better chance it gives to small communities and small parties to have a say, should be in favour of big constituencies in the cities where they can be provided without interfering with the ease of communication between Deputies and the constituents. It is a strong argument and it is remarkable that those who have spoken in favour of proportional representation so often in the past did not do something to implement it more fully when they had the opportunity on this occasion.
The Minister, as I have said, has not done either of the things which I suggest he should have done. He has not given the benefit of the doubt to the rural areas, to the sparsely populated areas in the west. He has not provided for small constituencies in these areas and large constituencies in the urban areas, where no harm would be done and no difficulties would arise from having large constituencies. The ratio of Deputies to voters is lower in fact in the western areas and the underdeveloped areas than it is in the city areas.
It is rather remarkable that the present Government, who have been talking a good deal about the underdeveloped areas, who have been pressing very strongly the European Community to implement a regional policy to give every possible help to underdeveloped areas, in spite of this effort by the Government to give every consideration to underdeveloped areas, should at the same time have introduced a Bill, introduced an electoral arrangement, which gives the smallest possible representation to exactly the kind of people they advocate should receive assistance by way of a regional policy. The Government seem to be entirely inconsistent in, on the one hand, stressing the need for a regional policy and help for the people in these areas and, on the other hand, doing their utmost from the electoral point of view to see that they get the lowest possible representation within the limits of the Constitution.
One is consequently forced to the conclusion, since the Minister and the Government are introducing a Bill of this kind, which gives the minimum of representation to the western areas and the maximum to the cities, that other considerations are playing a part, that the motives of the Minister have nothing to do with the constituents in these areas or even the convenience of Deputies, but they are entirely based on the advantage which the Minister hopes will accrue to Fine Gael and Labour by reason of the particular arrangement of constituencies introduced by this Bill. I do not think the Bill can be justified on any other grounds. Nothing the Minister has said in this House, or in any of his speeches which I have read, seems to justify the particular arrangement which he has introduced. If the Minister has other reasons, or can justify it on grounds which he has not already mentioned then, I am sure, the Seanad will be very glad to hear them.
On the argument which I have made in regard to inconsistency, without going very deeply into figures I should like to mention a few which illustrate quite clearly this inconsistency. The Minister said in the course of his opening speech that the ratio in Dublin and in the rest of the country is much the same. This was a very carefully chosen example. The rest of the country of course includes Cork, Limerick, Waterford and many other large towns, densely populated, which are in the category of Dublin city and not within the description I have mentioned of sparsely-populated areas. It may be true that there is not much difference between Dublin and the rest of the country but there is a great deal of difference between Dublin and some of the western counties, particularly between Dublin and some of the underdeveloped counties in other parts of the country.
The national average is 20,123 in which there is a permissible variation up and down of 1,000. The west which has been defined for purposes of this Bill as including Donegal, Clare and Connacht, could have 30 Deputies in accordance with the population at the present time. One would have thought that the Minister would have been more than anxious and very glad to give this area its full allocation entitlement of Deputies. Nevertheless the Minister gave that area only 28 Deputies. On the other hand this created a situation where it took 20,509 voters to elect a Deputy in the west. If you take the entire area of Dublin, it was possible to give 44 seats but the Minister could have gone as low as 41. Nevertheless, the Minister gave 43 seats out of this possible 44 and created the situation that a Deputy could be elected with 20,142 as opposed to the 20,509 necessary to elect a Deputy in the west. That is merely taking the whole of Dublin. If you look through the various constituencies in Dublin you will find that many of these constituencies can elect a Deputy with 19,000: Dublin North County, 19,838; Dublin (Cabra), 19,771; Clontarf, 19,330; North Central, 19,451; and South-East, 19,291.
There is a quite remarkable bias in favour of Dublin, a quite remarkable Dublin to elect a Deputy with a very generosity in allowing the voters of much smaller number of voters than is possible in the west. For instance, if you take five Dublin constituencies with a total of 293,652 voters, they can elect 15 Deputies. If you take five of the western counties you will find that it takes 315,073 to elect 15 Deputies. This can be shown to be a clear bias in favour of Dublin. It is a bias which cannot be justified on the basis of administrative difficulties, because when you are dealing with Dublin you are dealing with an area which can be split up almost at will. Certainly there would be no difficulty at all in dividing Dublin in a different way, even into three-seaters. For some reason the Minister felt that that was justified in spite of the very strong arguments against having three-seaters in Dublin. Whether he stuck to three-seaters, four-seaters or five-seaters, the kind of area existing in Dublin would have made it quite simple to divide it up in any way that seemed to be suitable and to bring the ratio between Deputies and constituents into line with those necessary to elect a Deputy in the west, which, in my submission, should have received all the consideration and tolerance possible.
We have that situation as between the west and Dublin which is glaringly biased and which makes nonsense certainly of the broad statement by the Minister that there is no real difference between the ratio in Dublin and the rest of the country. There is not much significant difference between them on that basis. But, as I have said, the rest of the country includes Cork, Limerick, Waterford and many other large towns. This of course, takes all the validity out of the argument put forward by the Minister. Consequently in my submission there is no justification for the way in which the Dublin constituencies have been arranged; no justification for the bias of the ratio of constituents to Deputies; no justification for anybody who is a convinced advocate of proportional representation, which necessarily includes having large constituencies where that is possible. There is no reason why Dublin should not have large constituencies rather than small ones. If there is a reason, as I have said, the Minister has not given the reason so far. I think he should give it to the Seanad now if there is anything else that he wishes to add.
In reading previous debates, both in the Dáil and outside the Dáil in previous years, one is struck again and again by the credibility gap which I mentioned earlier on. All the arguments which have been made in the past about proportional representation, about doing everything that was possible for the underdeveloped areas, all the arguments which have been made in the past in favour of an independent commission—all these seem to have disappeared into thin air. When the opportunity was given to implement the ideas advocated, it was not availed of. The credibility gap between what the Labour Party and the Fine Gael Party advocated and what in fact they are doing becomes wider and wider. Even in this instance of the particular arguments made about constituencies in the past—and I am not going to go into all of them —there was the apparent outrage at constituencies being carved up. The carving up of Leitrim was something almost enlarged into a national scandal in 1969, but Leitrim is still carved up. It is very little consolation to the people of Leitrim to be told that whereas they were split in three last time, they are now split in two only. It would be very little consolation to anybody to find that he was no longer cut in three but cut in half only. The same kind of argument, the same outrage was expressed about the situation in Clare, the mutilation of Clare, and yet Clare is still in a mutilated state in this Bill.
These are only two of the many constituencies which were criticised bitterly in the past and about which, when an opportunity was given to the parties who criticised the arrangement in the past, the parties concerned did little or nothing to improve the situation and, in some respects, made the situation even worse.
I would suggest, despite what the Minister has said, that no serious effort has been made in this Bill to restore county boundaries. No effort has been made to apply a proper, fair and equitable division of Deputies between the rural and the urban areas. There is no discernible pattern of revision in the Bill. It is impossible to discern, in spite of the objectives the Minister mentioned, any particular policy, any particular pattern, anything that would make the various arrangements hang together as a whole, so that one could say that the same principle ran through the Bill.
Take, for instance, the size of the constituencies in the urban area. For some unjustifiable reason it has been decided that all the constituencies, with one exception in Dublin, should be three-seaters. If this is—for reasons I cannot understand and do not accept—valid for an urban area one would have expected that the same would apply in Cork but, peculiarly enough, Cork, which is an urban area where the same considerations should apply as in Dublin, which did have two three-seaters, has been changed into a bigger constituency. What is the justification? Why is one thing right for Dublin and another thing right for Cork? What is the policy, or pattern, or principle which applies and makes three-seaters right for Dublin but not right for Cork? One is forced to the conclusion that the only motive that exists is the motive of giving the maximum advantage to the Labour Party and the Fine Gael Party and to ensure that this Bill will help them as against the other party.
On the last occasion in 1969, if one went through the speeches made by the Opposition then, I am sure that the number of times that gerrymander was mentioned would be in the region of hundreds. All I will say about gerrymandering is that, if the 1969 Bill was a gerrymander, then it is quite clear that this Bill is even more so. If, on the other hand, the Labour Party, the Fine Gael Party and the Minister, having experienced the difficulties of drafting a Bill which would be acceptable to everybody, maintain that this Bill is not a gerrymander, but is merely a Bill they introduced in good faith, then I think the very least they should do, having seen things in a new light, is have the good grace to withdraw the allegations they made about the 1969 Bill and apologise for the excesses of criticism they made against it.
What is clear to anybody who is in any way objective, to any of the people whom the Minister mentioned in his speech as being impartial, is that they would look at this Bill and then look back at the attitude of Fine Gael and Labour on the last occasion and immediately they would see that the Coalition Government cannot have it both ways. If 1969 was a gerrymander, this is really the greatest gerrymander of all time. If, on the other hand, they want to have it the other way and say this is a fair effort, then they should have the good grace to withdraw what they said about the 1969 Bill.
I propose to vote against this Bill. I regard it as a Bill which has shattered many hopes and struck a blow against democracy in this country, if one regards one of the attributes of democracy as respect for our institutions. This Bill would appear to cement the idea that it is the party, or parties, in power who usurp the total authority to redraft constituencies for electoral purposes. The sole limit on that is the constitutional ratio of Deputies per head of population. That is not acceptable to me as a citizen of this country. I think it is not acceptable to many people who voted for the Coalition Government on the basis both of statements made and even activity in trying to change the law before they came to power. I propose to deal with that at greater length later.
Like Senator Ryan, I too, should like to know who the impartial observers were who commented favourably on the Bill, given that it has not made any effort to place the drawing of constituencies in what are seen to be fair and impartial hands. I think this is a crucial point. I do not intend to go into the details of the particular constituencies; neither do I intend to make allegations that the Minister has in particular areas gerrymandered, or drew constituencies in a particular way biased in favour of either his party or the Fine Gael Party. I do not have either the expertise, or any particular mandate, to do that sort of examination. My concern is that he has failed to implement what was implicit in the attitude of the Coalition Parties towards this question of how constituencies should be drawn up and has failed to implement his own precise position, when in Opposition, on this question.
I should like to sound a warning to the Coalition Government. If they fail to act on their own commitments and promises when they were in Opposition, they may find themselves back in that position in a shorter time than they think in order to re-assess the strength of their commitments to our institutions.
It is, perhaps, appropriate to begin an examination of the general principles of this Bill by looking at the Twenty-six Counties as a unit of the geographical area of the British Isles and to realise that our unit, the unit for which we have responsibility and present control, the unit which concerns the citizens of the Republic, is the only unit which does not have an impartial tribunal to re-distribute constituencies on the basis of population trends. This is significant. This is the only unit in the British Isles without a boundary commission, without some impartial way of drawing up constituencies on the basis of population trends.
I should like now to make a brief reference to the position in the other units of this geographical area. In Britain, the changes in the law are made by the House of Commons Redistribution of Seats Act, 1949, as amended by the 1958 Act. This provides that for the purpose of continuous review of the distribution of seats there would be four permanent boundary commissions, one each for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I particularly want to draw attention to that because of the existence of a boundary commission for Northern Ireland and because of any attempts that may be made and should be made to see this problem both in a context which includes reference to Northern Ireland and also in a context of membership of the European Communities.
I am aware that you, a Chathaoirleach, will not allow me to dwell at length on the system which operates in those other units but there is there an institutional arrangement, a boundary commission, to keep under review representation in the House of Commons of the particular part of the United Kingdom with which the boundary commission is concerned and to report at intervals of not less than ten or more than 15 years on which changes, if any, it recommends in the division of that part of the United Kingdom and its constituencies in accordance with general principles which are set out in the Schedule of the Act. This is an immediately relevant context. There is another interesting context because we are inclined, as a small country, to look outside our own boundaries and make what are sometimes rather glib and facile criticisms of other countries. There are strong reasons to criticise the two countries that I will look at but it is interesting that they have what we so markedly failed to have created in our own little unit, a system of a commission to redraw boundaries. The two countries are Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. May we examine our conscience in saying that in these two countries they have boundary commissions?
In the case of Southern Rhodesia, section 3 of the Electoral Act, 1969, provides for the limitation of constituencies and the establishment of what they call a delimitation commission. This may be established from time to time as may be required for the purpose of the Constitution by the President. Their composition is interesting. They shall consist of a chairman, a chief justice or one other judge of the High Court appointed with the approval of the chief justice, and three other members appointed with the approval of the chief justice. It provides that a person will not be eligible for appointment to the delimitation commission if that person is a member either of the Senate or of the House of Assembly.
Similarly, section 42 (1) of the Constitution Act of the Republic of South Africa provides for intervals of not less than five years and not more than 10 years commencing from the last delimitation of electoral divisions under the South Africa Act, 1959 and states that the State President shall appoint a delimitation commission consisting of three judges of the Supreme Court of South Africa which shall divide into provinces so many electoral divisions that their number bears as nearly as possible the same ratio, 250 as in terms of the current voters' lists, duly corrected up to the lastest possible date, the number of white voters in that province bears to the total number of white voters in the Republic.
Most of us would take very strong exception to other matters in relation to the voting procedures and the electoral lists in those two countries but it is for that precise reason that I want to draw attention to the fact that those countries, too have delimitation commissions, have an impartial method of deciding what the constituency areas will be. Returning to our own immediate context, it is particularly important that we accept as a people the necessity for some impartial tribunal to rule on this matter precisely because the constitutional provisions are so minimal. The Minister has made reference to the fact both in this House and in the other House that there are no substantial guidelines in the Constitution as to how the constituencies will be drawn up. The minimal requirement is for three-seater constituencies but there could be much larger constituencies. The Constitution itself does not make reference to any other criteria except the ratio between members elected and the general population.
For this reason, especially, we ought to have an impartial method of redrawing the constituencies on the basis of redistribution of population because the Constitution gives such a broad discretion in the matter. This discretion would allow for abuse by the particular Government in power at the particular time through the Minister who at present has jurisdiction and total jurisdiction. This is particularly necessary if we want to promote respect for the institutions of State, if we want to persuade the citizens of the country that the criteria really are those that have been mentioned by the Minister, to give fair representation, not to disturb in so far as possible the existing constituency units and to be thinking in a demonstrably fair manner about the citizens of the country and not in a selfish way about the party interests of the particular party or parties in power at a certain period of time.
Therefore, I would argue that because of our constitutional arrangements it is essential that we have this impartial method of reviewing the population trends and drawing up the constituency boundaries from time to time. I would approach this from another angle and say that it is particularly important at this point in time that we would introduce such an impartial mechanism into our system because, make no mistake about it, parliamentary democracy is under challenge not only here but in other countries in Europe and elsewhere throughout the world. There is a cynicism, a lack of conviction that a parliament is coping either adequately or satisfactorily with the demands of modern government. When we are talking about a parliamentary democracy, then an Electoral Bill is essential and crucial to the whole institution of parliament and to respect for that institution.
I do not know who the impartial observers are who spoke favourably about this Bill to the Minister but I can assure him that the various persons I spoke to, in particular the younger people who are the growing citizens of this country, are full of an incredible cynicism and incredible disappointment at this Bill not even in so much that it was seized upon by the Coalition as their first opportunity to use the office to draw up the constituencies but because they did not even build into this Bill that in the future, after the Coalition have had their term, we might have an impartial tribunal to delineate the constitutional boundaries.
This is the particular reason for a total cynicism and a very deep disappointment among a number of what I would call impartial observers of the text of this Bill. It was for this reason that Senator Horgan and myself wished to table a specific motion asking the Seanad to refuse to give a Second Reading to this Bill on the grounds that there is not built into it provision for an impartial tribunal to do this work in the future. That, we would have felt, was the utter minimal for any Minister of a Coalition Government and of a former Opposition Party which had argued so forcibly—I shall quote from the contributions in that respect—for the introduction of this institutional arrangement which would be seen to be acting in a fair manner and would not be open, as the Minister is open and as any future Minister is open, to the allegation of gerrymandering. I am not saying that the present Minister, in this Bill, gerrymandered constituencies or acted in a biased or unfair manner but I am saying that he is open to that allegation, that allegations have been forcibly made by the present Opposition party and that certain articles have been put forward to justify that allegation.
To me it is wrong that the Minister has allowed himself to be left open to that allegation, that he would allow himself to carry on a system which is open to that allegation and that he does not see the absolute priority that this should be for a Government to put this activity one step away from bias and party advantage and create among the citizens of this country more faith in our institutional process. I have said—and I think it is a very important factor—that in various countries and in our own country there is a real questioning of the whole system of parliamentary democracy. Part of this is because the parliament has not adapted as well as the executive organ of government to the complexity of modern needs and of the modern machinery of government.
In this context it is necessary that the representation of the people in Parliament be seen to be a representation devised in an impartial way, conforming with the constitutional provisos in that respect and filling in where the Constitution itself is silent. Representation should not be at the backdoor of the particular Minister at that time or in rooms where particular Members may wish to approach him about their problems. Whispers may be made in the background but in a visible and impartial manner the delineation of the constituencies should be seen to produce the fairest representation of the people; a respect for the institution itself—that is the Oireachtas—and also an ability to take into account other considerations on which I intend to speak in a moment, such as the fact that the flow of population to the city is causing a very real tension between the urban and rural areas in the community.
On this question of imbalance in favour of the city of Dublin in particular and of the east coast in general, I think that it is not sufficient to argue merely on the narrow basis of the ratio of elected Members of the Dáil per head of population. We must approach in a very serious way the question of how we compensate for the trend in population lull in the country and how we give a sense of fair representation to the people of the less populated areas. Under the present wording of the Constitution I accept that, in a sense, the Constitution is a straitjacket and once the minimum population cannot be argued for in a particular area adjustments must be made.
I think we ought to be minimising the degree to which this will cause a diminution in the number of public representatives from the worse-off areas. We should also examine very critically and immediately other ways in which we can build in representation for the particular regions involved and what we think would be the possibility of giving representation on a regional basis through the use of the Seanad. The disadvantage of allowing this whole question of representation to be the total discussion of the Minister for the particular time is that these arguments do not even get off the ground. At present this is very evident in the debates in the Dáil—not just this time but in debates on the last few Electoral Bills. The debate is entirely concentrated on the selfish interest of particular Deputies and in an expression of resentment that the particular party in power can call the true and have all the aces. This is a very serious defect in the system. The particular basic subject matter is hardly touched on—the subject matter being the giving of fair representation to the citizens of the country, the ensuring that their interests are permanent in this particular question and not the self-interest of Deputies and in particular the collective self-interest of the party in power. It is impossible under the present system for the balance to be right. It is impossible to persuade the party in power not to give up this enormous possibility of perpetuating their office by using the wide discretion in the Constitution to their advantage. It is impossible to persuade the citizens of this country that this is not being done; call it gerrymandering, call it a legitimate redress of an earlier balance during a number of years. Whichever way it may be described you cannot under the present system persuade citizens that this is not happening.
Therefore, you cannot persuade them that the system is acting clearly and impartially no matter which government are in office or whatever the change-over may bring. These may sound like abstract propositions. They are the most serious condemnations of this system. Would the Minister for Local Government like, in the Council of Ministers of the European Community, to justify the way in which we take account of distribution of population in Ireland and the redrawing of the constituency boundaries? Would he like to look at eight colleagues around the table and say this is the way we have done it and which we are continuing to do and which the Government now that they are in power are continuing to do, despite the eloquence with which we protested against the system down through the years?
It was for this reason that Senator Horgan and I as Independent Senators with no political interest in the present system, wished to have the Seanad vote on the principle. There are a number of silent Members on the opposite side of the House who are not happy with the fact that the Government have brought in another Bill under the party advantage system seeking to build in an advantage to the Coalition Parties in the drawing up of the electoral constituencies—doing so nominally to redress what had been described as years of Fianna Fáil's drawing of the constituencies and using their discretion for their advantage but not even building in an institutional apparatus to prevent this happening in the future. In a sense it is incredible that one can make this accusation, and I mean it as an accusation. Because if it is true that Fianna Fáil had been abusing a discretion while in power during the years and in each electoral Bill had been drawing constituencies with a bias in their favour, then surely an independent tribunal would have been the best way in which to make this clear? Surely an independent tribunal would have re-established a balance and would have ensured, therefore, on that argument an advantage to the Coalition parties? At the same time, it would have convinced the citizens that this selfish gain of seeking party advantage was at an end and that the electoral constituencies would be seen to be drawn fairly and impartially.
If the argument is made, and it has been made very forcibly that party advantage has been taken of the present situation down through the years by Fianna Fáil, it is beyond my understanding why it was not corrected in the appropriate way by introducing an institutional system to prevent party advantage being taken in the future. Instead of that—and this is the crucial disappointment in this Bill— this Bill would seem to cement for an indefinite future, perhaps forever, this particular way of redrawing the constituencies and the devising of so-called fair representation of the citizens in the Lower House of the Oireachtas.
I have said that I will make reference to previous "statements and activities" in this area. In particular, I should like to draw attention to an attempt to bring in what I am talking about—a boundary commission or a fair method of assessing trends in population and recommending how the constituencies should be altered. I am referring to the attempt made by Deputy Fitzpatrick, now Minister for Lands, on the 20th November, 1968, to introduce a Private Members' Bill on the subject, called the Constituency Commission Bill, 1968, which he moved as a Private Members' Bill. When this Bill was taken on First Stage, he made it clear that he was proposing it on behalf of the Fine Gael Party. He made clear he was not a rebel within the party doing something of which the party leader or the front bench did not approve. At column 1128 of the Official Report of the Dáil he said in a statement on First Stage, when that Bill was opposed:
Fine Gael introduced this Bill which proposes that Dáil constituencies should be arranged by an independent Commission, presided over by a High Court or Supreme Court judge, subject to the approval of the Oireachtas rather than directly by Dáil Éireann as at the present time because we believed that such a procedure would be desirable at any time and because we are convinced it would be fundamentally undemocratic and against natural justice to entrust to the present Minister for Local Government and the Fianna Fáil Party in the Dáil the task of arranging constituencies at this time.
He then goes on in his statement on First Stage of the Bill to refer to the contents of the Bill:
Briefly, the Bill proposes that a Constituency Commission shall be established from time to time but not less frequently than once every ten years. It further proposes that that Commission shall be composed of three Members of the Government side of the House nominated by the Taoiseach and three Members of the Opposition side of the House elected from among the Opposition as defined by law and that the Chairman of that Commission shall be a Judge of the High Court or of the Supreme Court appointed by the Dáil on the nomination of the Chief Justice.
He then goes on to establish that the commission would review the matter and report to the Dáil and that it would require a two-thirds of the Dáil voting to depart from the recommendation of the commission.
In recommending this particular institutional formula, Deputy Fitzpatrick made reference to earlier attempts by the Fianna Fáil Government to bring in a constituency commission of the sort mentioned in the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution Bill. He said this particular Bill which he was putting forward differed from that formula. He said:
The Commission in the Bill which I am introducing now differs to some extent from the Commission provided for in the Fourth Amendment of of the Constitution Bill. It differs slightly in one respect, in that it provides that the Chairman of the Commission must give the reasons for their report. It differs rather vitally by providing that the report can only be altered by a two-thirds majority of this House.
He goes on to say that he rejected entirely the contention that because the Constitutional (Amendment) Bill had been rejected by the people they were rejected in any sense the establishment of a constituency commission or a boundary Commission. This was not the crucial issue before the people and they did not have the possibility in voting to distinguish this particular matter from the full package, whether to change the system of proportional representation.
The Ceann Comhairle permitted a spokesman from the Labour Party to make a statement on First Stage. That spokesman was Deputy Tully, now the Minister before this House, and I should like to pin him to his words on that occasion. He said:
I believe the Bill introduced by Deputy T.J. Fitzpatrick (Cavan), which according to the Minister for Local Government would have been proposed if his previous proposal had been carried by the country, is the proper way to draw up the constituencies for the country. We believe also that if we do not do that we will have what both he and the Taoiseach described as the danger of gerrymandering. We want the danger of gerrymandering eliminated and, unless we have the Bill which Deputy T.J. Fitzpatrick (Cavan) now proposes carried by this House and accepted by the Government, as soon as the Fianna Fáil Government are put out of office the constituencies must be redrawn.
I should like the Minister to say in what way he is now not worried about the danger of gerrymandering, and in which way he can justify that statement, in spite of his admission that when Fianna Fáil were out of office the constituencies would have to be redrawn. I do not want to make it a party political allegation, but it seems to me that this is as close to a confession of being prepared to gerrymander as one can get. In the light of the fact that Deputy Tully—as he then was—was using it as an argument for the necessity not of doing anything more than eliminating the danger of gerrymandering, it is this particular institutional aspect to which I am drawing attention now.
There is no danger of a gerrymander.
This is a moot question as to why there was a total change of attitude between Deputy Tully, in Opposition, and now as Minister responsible for and in charge of this Bill.
I have quoted briefly from the Dáil Debates on the Private Members' Bill because it was an attempt by Deputy Fitzpatrick on behalf of the Fine Gael Party, and by Deputy Tully, speaking on behalf of the Labour Party, to change the law in precisely the way that they have so lamentably failed to do here today. I should like to make a very brief reference to the two Fianna Fáil attempts to bring in an impartial system, a tribunal, in this particular area. I am referring to the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1958, and to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution Bill which I have already referred to briefly. These Bills are better remembered as the two attempts to change the system of voting by proportional representation and although they passed through both Houses of the Oireachtas, they were rejected in a referendum and it was obvious that the people did not wish to change the system of voting. Written into these Bills was a provision for a Constituency Commission. It was provided in Part II of the 1958 Bill. Section 3, subsection (1) says:
A Constituency Commission shall be established from time to time when determined by the President, but not less frequently than once in every twelve years.
Subsection (2) states:
A Constituency Commission shall consist of seven members appointed by the President of whom one shall be appointed after consultation by the President with the Council of State, three shall be appointed from the Members of Dáil Éireann on the nomination of the Taoiseach and three shall be appointed from the members of Dáil Éireann on the nomination of the Chairman of Dáil Éireann.
It then goes on to the powers of the constituency commission.
The reason why I have put on record very briefly the proposals by all three parties for the establishment of a constituency commission is because I should like to use this information to refute the allegation in the Minister's Second Reading speech that any suggestions about a commission were vague and that homework was not done on them. What is very distressing about the present situation is that it is obvious that all three parties did homework on this at some point in time. The Fianna Fáil Party when in power did homework on this and wrote the possibility of a constituency commission into the Bill to amend the Constitution on the system of voting by proportional representation. The Opposition parties supported a Private Members' Bill which incorporated a method of establishing a commission. Homework was done by the political parties.
I should like to take issue with the way in which the proposal for a commission was framed. I would prefer that Members of the Oireachtas would not be members of such a commission, that they would be impartial and preferably chaired by a member of the judiciary with the sort of expertise that could be taken into account, not just the narrow constitutional criteria of political or elected members but also, in so far as possible, of their clearly debated criteria, not just being reckoned by the Minister when saying he took these matters into account. The great advantage of establishing an independent commission would be that we could in fact provide a criteria which would take into account other than the constitutional proviso in this area.
By setting out the criteria which the commission could take into account it would be still within the constitutional provision. It could be done by the Dáil, by the Oireachtas, because the recommendations of the commission would come before the Oireachtas for approval and for the passage of the Bill. I would hope that this system would allow a great deal of the selfish subjective interests of the Deputies on both sides of the House, which have been so evident in earlier debates, to be at least secondary to the primary consideration of getting a fair system of representation for citizens of the country and of establishing respect for this question of parliamentary representation and of trying to take away some of the reasons for the very wrong cynicisms of people, particularly younger people in the country, towards the whole concept of parliamentary democracy.
It seems to me that we are to be very seriously blamed as current Members of the Oireachtas in reviewing this Electoral (Amendment) Bill if we do not examine it in the context of what is happening in this country and in other countries, if we do not realise the tension underlying our society, if we do not realise the attraction of violence and of extra-parliamentary rule to younger people who want to get results. It is difficult sometimes to abide by parliamentary process, by the institutional process, when one is defeated by a technicality. I was defeated today in trying to move the motion to refuse the Second Reading of this Bill on the technicality of being late in putting down the proposal. I could have argued that it is unusual for the Seanad to meet in Holy Week. While I am arguing the particular emergency——
I do not think the Senator should try to argue along those lines.
I am not disputing the decision. I am not disputing that the Chair was quoting the rules of order or that he exercised them fairly. I am saying that our parliamentary process is technical and that it is a difficult process in which to debate the current issues of the day. It is difficult for those who support the parliamentary position to make it relevant to what is happening in the country, to be relevant to the tensions of the community, to the desires of the ordinary people for changes in the laws of the country or the way in which the national sufferage is distributed. If one combines with that a cynicism and distrust for the representation of the population, a criticism about the way in which a particular party or parties perpetuate their existence as a Government and to continue in office by a selective redrawing of the constituencies, then there will inevitably be a serious questioning of the whole system of parliamentary democracy. The result will be encouragement to those who say: "If you want to get results go outside the institutional process." Those who uphold the process, particularly the younger citizens of the country, are on the defensive because in our institutions there is so much that can be criticised.
It amazes me that those with the responsibility of office in this country are unaware of the danger of not reinforcing our institutions by ensuring that they are fair and impartial, that they are not open to what the Minister talked about, gerrymandering. I would go so far as to say that we would have an increasing disinterest in the parliamentary process in instituting this way of resolving disputes in our society unless we reform them, modify them, in certain cases fortify the impartial content of them and remove areas of discussion which can be used to party advantage by the Government of the day. It is for these very fundamental, very serious reasons and very urgent ones which exist in our society and which are unlikely to be contained unless the change improves the processes of Government that I intend to vote against this Bill on Second Reading.
I would ask the Minister at this late stage to consider the possibility of building anew for the next time a provision for an impartial tribunal or a constituency commission. I would ask him to do it in this Bill because of the necessity for this type of assessment to take place immediately. The present Bill stands on the figures in the 1971 census which were published in July, 1972. I think the Minister will concede these figures are already out of date. There has been a drift in the population and a change in the trend since that particular time and almost immediately we have passed this Bill and after the general election following it it will be necessary to have a new Electoral Bill. This is why it is of particular importance to have this Bill conceive within itself the provision and, therefore, guarantee that this is the last time our constituencies will be drawn up on a basis of potential party advantage and self-interest of the particular Government in power.
Ba mhaith liom cúpla focal a rá ar an mBille seo. Ar an gcéad dul síos, níl mé sásta leis an gcaoi inar deineadh é agus ní dóigh liom go bhfuil muintir na hÉireann sásta ach an oiread. Tá a lán lochtanna air, go mór-mhór ó thaobh riaradh na gceanntar de agus ón gcomhréir is gá chun Teachta a thoghadh in iarthar na hÉireann i gcomórtas leis an gcomhréir is gá chun Teachta a thoghadh i mBaile Átha Cliath.
Sílim go bhfuil an mheánuimhir róard ar fud na tíre agus go bhfuil sí ró-íseal i mBaile Átha Cliath. Ar an ábhar sin, ní dóigh liom go dtugann sé cothram do mhuintir na tíre. Tá an buntáiste go léir ag muintir na gcathracha.
This Bill seems necessary because there has been an increase in the population according to the 1971 census. We all welcome that trend. For many years the population had been declining and it is encouraging to learn from the 1971 census that for the first time probably since the Famine the population has shown an increase.
The people of Ireland from the time of the Famine had been conditioned to leave their native districts and go to foreign countries. That trend continued into the 1940's and the 1950's. At that time the Government made a serious effort to try to arrest the trend of emigration. To this end the Fianna Fáil Government did their best to establish industries to try to absorb the people who were fleeing from the land. The rate of migration has been slowed down and many industries have been established throughout the country. Unfortunately, there have not been enough industries and many of those which were established were set up in unsuitable areas.
Many of our large industries have been established along the east coast and in the southern part of the country. Because of this, these are the most thickly populated areas of the country. This has created many hazards and difficulties and more attention must now be given to the rural areas and in particular to the north western area which has suffered neglect for a long period, partly because our country is divided and much of the land lies along an unnatural border there. This has discouraged people from setting up industries in that area. Incentives have been given by the Government in the past but we feel these are not enough.
When Governments meet around a Cabinet table to decide on policy and on the allotment of grants to the various areas in the country, it is important to have good representation there from the western and northern areas. One feels that if those areas have not got good representation they will not get their fair share of the cake. So far as the western and north-western counties are concerned at present they do not seem to have that representation around the Cabinet table. There is no man, so far as I know, from west of the Shannon, who sits there. Consequently, it is only natural to expect that those areas would suffer a great deal. These are the areas we are trying to build up. In those areas we have roads and houses and people and any policy that will tend to push people out of those areas and to move them towards the east coast or towards the south is one that will be detrimental to the progress of the nation. While we have had an overall increase in population we will certainly suffer by having these areas depopulated. Anything that would tend to depress those areas in any way should be deplored.
I submit that the exercise we are carrying out in this House at present and that happened some weeks ago in the other House is an exercise in that direction. We are actually depressing the western and north-western areas because we are losing two seats in the west and two seats in Ulster. I cannot see how any Government could concede as a fair justification for redrawing constituencies that a province such as Ulster, which has been divided already by an unnatural border for the last 50 years, should have here two representatives fewer. This is something which could have been rectified. We all know the population has increased. Under the new figures we could have 148 Deputies and this number could be divided evenly over the entire population. By doing that we could arrive at what the Minister terms a national average. It could be done in another way. The population could have been divided by 144 and I feel this would mean that constituencies need not be interfered with to any great extent. You could have the same number of constituents and the same number of seats in Ulster.
So far as Cavan-Monaghan is concerned, it will take 19,443 people to elect a Deputy. In Donegal, it will take 21,101; in East Galway it will take 20,794; in East Mayo it will take 19,275 and in Roscommon-Leitrim, 21,010. All these areas are along the seaboard and all but one of them are far above the national average. In the drawing up of those constituencies some cognisance should have been taken of them and some more realistic attempt should have been made to ensure that if there was any loss of representation in any part of this country it should not have occurred in the north-western or in the western areas. That could be done by being democratic and by being fair to the rest of the country. It all depends on where you start to carve up the constituencies. If the whole State had been one constituency and you divided by 148 or 144 you could have obtained a number of constituencies in that fashion.
It is detrimental to the interests of those areas that they are losing representation in the Parliament of this country. They have not had much chance from the present Coalition Government of getting any top position in the Cabinet. They certainly have been left out in the cold. That void that was there has not been filled and I can assure the House that they are sadly disappointed. Now this Electoral Bill is piled on top of all the injustices they have suffered.
Reference has been made in this memorandum to respect for county boundaries, natural communities and so forth. I think that a lot of that is pure tommyrot. There have been breaks in county boundaries on many occasions before. It does not make much difference in the long run to a county whether you take the tail or the head off. They seem to be cutting parts off all over the map. Because of the distribution in our population I cannot see on the figures how you can keep those counties intact as single units. Consequently, all this talk about county boundaries does not make sense in many cases.
Also mentioned here are natural communities and various other reasons why it was necessary to draw the constituencies in that particular way. You can get many of the so-called physical divisions—lakes, rivers and mountains—in any part of the country and they do not constitute a very unnatural division. There is not such a great difference between the so-called different communities that we have to have regard to them. The principal thing that I should like to have seen happen in a Bill such as this is that rural Ireland would have better representation. The Minister already has said something about comparing rural Ireland with the city. It is a wrong comparison, in my submission, because parts of rural Ireland that he has included include the cities of Cork, Kilkenny, Waterford and Limerick. Those figures cannot be taken by the Minister when he makes a comparison. Rural Ireland to me is the smaller towns, villages and the countryside.
The Minister should have made an attempt to have as many three-seat constituencies as possible in the country areas. Under the Constitution you must have three-seat constituencies. I would prefer to see the single-member constituencies if it had been carried, but it was not. It would have been much better for the people. They would have an easier method of getting to their TD's. They would not have as far to travel and in every way it would have been a better method. However it was not accepted by the people and now we are faced with this dilemma. Three-seat constituencies would be the ideal thing for rural Ireland in the circumstances. Such a constituency would take about 60,000 people and it could be arranged in such a way that it would not be too unwieldy. This idea of creating four- and five-seat constituencies in the country is not the answer.
So far as my constituency, Cavan, is concerned, we are being put in with County Monaghan. It is only fair to say that both are Ulster counties and we have nothing against the County Monaghan people. We should like to see County Monaghan and County Cavan having three seats each irrespective of where you had to take off the other portion to attain that object. We know that we are handicapped in this way. You cannot take part of Fermanagh to put with County Cavan, neither can you take part of Armagh to top up Monaghan. The Minister and his advisers could have moved in another direction. After all, counties along the Border have a particular problem of their own and every effort should have been made to ensure that, no matter what happened in other areas, the three-seat constituencies be maintained in Monaghan and Cavan.
County Louth has been created a four-seater. I suppose that was near the average for it. County Louth is on the east coast, too. Counties Louth, Dublin and all down that area, have the weight of the industry of this country. They also have the population. I think the Minister should have started there and worked out in the rural direction. This is a matter for the Minister and his staff. He would have been able to divide the country up in another way. It is not for me to pick out the figures. If you take the overall population and divide by 148 or 144, whichever you choose, it is possible to do a fairly good job on it.
The representation of these underdeveloped areas, as they have been called, has been cut down. People talk about regional policy, about helping the depressed areas and all that nonsense. It seems to be only nonsense to me, because when the opportunity comes to do these things it is missed. The opportunity is let slip and these people find themselves in a much worse position than they were on previous occasions. I recall the old adage: "When the devil is sick a saint is he; when the devil is well no saint is he". It is strange that the present Government, comprised of two elements of the Coalition, have in the past advocated that this matter of manipulating the constituencies could be done in quite a different manner. They were the people who talked about being fair and impartial and ensuring that everything would be done above board and nothing would be done behind closed doors.
We had the extraordinary performance of a colleague of mine from my own constituency, who is now a Minister, who, as quoted in column 1128 of 20th November, 1968, introduced a Private Members' Bill. It was intended in that Bill to set up a commission that would redraw these constituencies in such a manner that it would be fair and impartial and, that they would get rid forever of the Fianna Fáil method of doing this job. It has already been stated in this House this evening that on that occasion he was ably supported by no less a person than the present Minister for Local Government, who was very eloquent and very able and I think he did very well on that occasion. I am not quoting him; he knows what the quotation is. At the same time one must take cognisance of the fact that that was the point of view they had then. They shed many crocodile tears then about the method of this division. Now, when they have this chance, they have divided the constituencies in a way which leaves many people suspicious and leads many people to say: "Are these the people who, when in Opposition, stated that an independent commission should have been set up to do this?" It makes a mockery out of what they were saying. Certainly you could not blame people for saying that it is difficult to take certain people's word when they say something and then act in a different manner.
That has happened without any shadow of doubt on this occasion. People will be forced to the conclusion, and rightly so, that these constituencies are not being drawn up for the sake of giving people adequate representation but for the simple purpose of ensuring to the best of their ability that the Coalition Government will remain in office. That is a difficult exercise to perform, but we have to be fair about it, and that seems to be the underlying thought behind it. The Coalition representatives, who shed crocodile tears in the past regarding rural Ireland and its depopulation, regarding the many hardships, trials and tribulations that beset the people of the west and of the country in general—the small farmers, fishermen and others—have at the first opportunity ensured that the rural representation would be cut down and that they would not have adequate representation in the Parliament of the country. That is a situation in which they should have shown themselves and could have shown themselves to be sincere in what they were doing and then to be fair and impartial as far as the people are concerned.
A performance such as this will only add to the faults which have already been enumerated and chronicled since the Coalition Government came into office. People have listened to all these banshee wails about prices when they were in Opposition. We know all the things they promised to do, but they do not seem to have made any attempt whatever to fulfil these promises. Let us not get away from the fact that it is the rural people of Ireland that they have deprived of representation—the people who have no footpath outside their door, the people who have no electric lamp put up by the county council in front of their residence, the people who have to travel the narrow, boreens in the various counties, the people who have to go to the bog to cut turf—the people who have had none of the amenities, and certainly until very recently had no opportunity whatever, especially in the north-western area, of giving their children any post-primary education because there were practically no schools in that whole area. Even yet, if we draw a line from Galway right across——
Acting Chairman
I should remind the Senator that this is the Electoral (Amendment) Bill. He is straying away from that.
I am trying to point out to the Minister and to others that the people of rural Ireland surely should feel aggrieved because, as I was saying, if you drew a line from Galway city right over to Dublin you would find that north of that line —the Minister knows the area very well himself, he has travelled most of these roads in his time—that there is no semblance of a university in that whole area. The facilities for post-primary education are certainly very limited, and now these very same people are again being victimised by having their representation cut down.
Acting Chairman
I pointed out to the Senator that this is the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1973, and not a discussion on education.
These things arise because I was referring to the way in which the constituencies were being divided, and, with respect, I was trying to point out that the very people who are now dividing those constituencies in this manner were the very people who criticised us for dividing constituencies. It is a rap to all democracy if people pretend when in Opposition that they will do these things and when they get the opportunity they do the very opposite.
It would be very hard for anybody to convince me and to convince many of the people in rural Ireland that these people are other than very insincere in what they are doing. I cannot see how anybody can believe them or how they can have any credibility whatsoever with the rural people. It may be different in the city. After all, in the city of Dublin the population is very dense. It is our capital city and we are proud of it, but it has advantages that we have not got in County Cavan, County Monaghan or County Leitrim. When people were speaking on former occasions the great cry, especially of the Opposition, was: "Poor Leitrim. What is going to happen?" It had been cut into three sections. This is the Coalition Government who were promising that they were going to restore Leitrim as a political unit. I cannot see any move in that direction and the people of Leitrim cannot see it either.
This Bill is a blatant attempt to ensure that, by carving the constituencies up in a certain way, the Coalition Government will remain in office. I am not worried about their remaining in office if the people elect them in that fashion. I would not be too worried either who the representatives from Counties Cavan and Monaghan were if we had our six seats. In the election before last we had only two out of six, but we were satisfied at the same time because we were sending six people up to Dáil Éireann and that was representation for us. However, we are not in any way satisfied when we see a four-seater in County Louth and, I think, also in Meath, and we in Cavan and Monaghan are being cut down to a five-seater. A similar position exists in Donegal, our other neighbours from Ulster.
I may have something further to say on this later on, but at present I merely say I am very disappointed at it because, as I said at the beginning, the number required in the west is much above the national average you will get if you divide the total population by the number of Deputies. That should not happen in this country. If there was any number permitted above the 1,000 of a tolerance that is allowed, it should have happened in the built-up areas, particularly in the cities. If there was any justification whatever for making three-seat constituencies in Dublin city, the same justification existed in Cork city. I am not going to make the case for the people in the cities but, as a country man, I cannot but observe these things. I do respectfully submit that, as far as the west and the north-west are concerned, the Government have made a complete mess of the whole affair.
This debate reminds me—and I am sure many people will understand what I mean—of being at a wake without having any drink at it. People stand up occasionally and go out for a smoke; an odd wailing woman down at the back starts crying and saying the Rosary or a prayer. I have never seen such a display by a Government, the Government of consultation, which was the word used then, at the election—the Government of freedom of speech and consultation. They are here today few in numbers, listening with sleepy awareness and with no contribution to make; I do not know whether they have one to make or not. I believe some have but have just been closed up and cannot make their contribution. I compliment the Minister for being able to do this to the Fine Gael Opposition particularly, who are so strong in this House, while he himself is a member of the Labour Party.
When I watched the Senators coming into the House today it reminded me of when I could afford the time to go to the cinema to see the old Roman films when the Emperor walked in with all the Senators after him to see the gladiators fight. You know there are no gladiators on this side. I think the rest of the House will be very disappointed at not seeing a fight.
I was more than astonished at the document supplied to us and read to us by the Minister and what he thought we should listen to and be so gullible as to accept as nothing less than the truth. This being Holy Week I expect he will see to his religious duties before the end of the week because in the very first instance he has the brazen audacity, in my opinion, to attack the Opposition with references to what happened in the other House. I quote from him when he is referring to the view on equality. He said:
This view is shared by the present and previous Government. The Bill provides that the total number of Members after the next dissolution of the Dáil will be 148.
Then, further on he says:
The Opposition speakers expressed themselves in favour of the maximum number of Dáil Deputies. Nonetheless, they demanded a division on the relevant section and voted against the increase in membership.
From what I could gather from reading the national Press and parts of the Dáil reports, the Minister has twisted their intention in voting on that particular stage because they asked: why 148? If my memory serves me correctly, it is stated in section 2 of the Bill that "Dáil Éireann shall, after the dissolution thereof which next occurs after the passing of this Act, consist of one hundred and forty-eight members". What they questioned then and what we question now and what we will question and vote on again in order to clarify the position is—and I ask the Minister this question also—how does he arrive at the glorious figure of 148? Could it not have been 149, 150, 156, 144, 134 and so on? It is just a technical matter to which he applied his own pen, did his own substraction and came out with this figure of 148 seats, not to satisfy the public at large but in fact, to satisfy the Coalition Government. That is the simple answer to that question. He should not intentionally misquote or misrepresent. I think he should apologise for saying that the Opposition speakers expressed themselves in favour of the maximum number of Dáil Deputies but nonetheless demanded a division on the relevant section and voted against the increase in membership. That, of course, is not true.
Senator Robinson previously said, referring to what the Minister did on a previous occasion, when the revision of the constituencies was taking place in the other House, that he had voted for an amendment of the Bill because, he said, there was a danger of gerrymander. This was quite true. There was and there always is a danger of gerrymander. There was not a gerrymander at that stage because if there was the Minister would not be sitting in the seat he is in now. The Coalition Government could not be in power and, therefore, they would be sitting in their usual positions and in positions in which they will soon find themselves again, on the Opposition side of the House. Therefore, the Minister was quite right in saying there was a danger of gerrymander then but I say now that the danger has gone from the gerrymander. That word "danger" should now be deleted and the word gerrymander in its fullest form applied. Being a west of Ireland man I know that is where the gerrymander has occurred. It is absolutely clear to me that the principles of people who want to have representation in the House of Parliament have been put aside for reasons explicitly known and expressed but not politically known and expressed. It would be a great feather in the cap of the Labour Party if they could get a man elected as a Deputy in my county, Galway.
I attribute the complete gerrymander of the west to the aim of the Labour Party to get a man elected in West Galway. It is common knowledge that a candidate who is now a Member of this House was brought in by the ear here, for no other reason than to fight in West Galway in the next election. I am sorry to say he has left the Chamber at the moment because he could not disagree with me. Because he is a Clare man Clare, as far as Liscannor Bay, has been included in West Galway. Taking together the areas of East and West Galway you have a plus of 671 in one and a minus 542 in the other as shown on the chart of population, which has been circulated to both Houses with the Bill, giving the deviation from national average population per member of 20,123—the golden figure set by the Minister. That is a positive reason but that does not mean that it will lead to the desired conclusion. It is not as easy as that and the Minister should be aware of this and so should the Fine Gael and Labour parties. They just cannot put a man in Dáil Éireann by the process of gerrymander: it is not physically possible in this country. It has never been achieved and I do not think even the Minister with his widest or wildest deviations could do it. Hence, I am afraid we will lose Senator Michael D. O'Higgins from both Houses on the next occasion.
Senator Mannion, on the other hand, is worried about it I am sure. I do not know if he has fought as good a case as his father fought in times gone by when they kept the other House of the Oireachtas arguing for many days on amendments to the Constitution or on the electoral revision, bargaining over villages in West Galway. He got what he wanted but was not elected although he did get close to it. I do not think the present Minister will achieve his aim this time or ever because the people of Galway, and particularly that part of Clare which is concerned, are a very wise people, a very shrewd politically-minded people who know what is best for them and know now quite well that the Fianna Fáil Government was the best thing that they ever had, after getting a taste of two Coalitions and now of a third. They are obviously being particularly insulted by the Minister for Local Government in the revision of the constituencies in this case.
No case can be made for making East Galway and West Galway two four-seater constituencies. One cannot deny that it is 142 miles from Inishbofin to Lahinch but nobody seems to see that it is also well over 120 miles from Pinnaknock on Lough Corrib to the back of the Aughty mountains bordering Tipperary. I think that the Minister and the Coalition Government who have obviously agreed on this, have made a terrible mistake in expecting the people of Connacht and the people of Galway in particular to accept this. They have been insulted enough when one realises that no man west of the Shannon from Donegal to Kerry, had been included in the ministerial appointments previously. They were told that those people were not good enough to take up positions in our Government. That, in itself, was an insult to their integrity. Now a Minister from the eastern shores tells them that they will lose two seats on the western seaboard. Galway is to lose one and yet they expect to get a Labour man elected in West Galway. The people of Connacht will not accept this.
It would have been easy if the Minister had wanted to make County Clare a four-seater constituency and West Galway a three-seater—there would only be a small proportion of votes to go either way—and leave East Galway as a four-seater. Alternatively, he could have changed East Galway, West Galway and Clare and made them, with small deviations, a four-seater, a three-seater and a four-seater. That would have made them far more compact. People would not be forced to travel anything up to 143 miles, which will happen by this revision, to see their representative. The Minister would still have had four-seaters and could have had them on the basis of having compact areas where the maximum mileage would be no more than 70 or 80 miles.
We saw what happened in East Mayo. First came an announcement and then came the reversal of that announcement. Surely that was an admittance of a gerrymander in itself? We heard all the pious talk at the recent Donegal—Leitrim by-election from every platform assuring the electorate that Leitrim would become a viable unit. Now, by the guile of the Minister, instead of having Leitrim divided in three, he has taken one part of Roscommon away from Roscommon and divided Leitrim in two. He took part of Roscommon and gave it to Mayo and thinks that the people of Leitrim and Roscommon have not noticed. Good luck to him if he thinks that he can secure a Fine Gael seat in East Mayo by doing that but I am doubtful of his chances.
Donegal, as bad as it seems as a five-seater, is still not as ugly and not as controversial as West Galway is as a four-seater. From Muff in the tip of Donegal to Bundoran is still not as far as the journey from Inishbofin above the mouth of the Shannon in Clare, to Lahinch in Liscannor Bay. Donegal is a rugged county with rugged means of travel to and from it. It is ugly but not as ugly as West Galway. Even at this late stage I would ask the Minister to reconsider West Galway because his political aim of getting in a Labour Deputy there as one of the four will not succeed, particularly because of the way in which he has torn County Galway apart. I can assure him, if he wishes to listen to an assurance, that the people of West Galway are upset over this rigging. They do not want this vast narrow expanse of a constituency. It would be safe to say that the widest part of that constituency would be no wider than ten miles but its length is 140 miles. It is a cruel division to achieve a political aim which I can assure the Minister he will not achieve. Would it not have been a simple thing to have made Clare a four-seater and then have left West Galway a three-seater as it is or, indeed, they could have gone back to the way in which Fianna Fáil divided Connacht?
There was great talk about the way in which Fianna Fáil divided Connacht and there were great shouts from the then Opposition that we had gerrymandered Connacht but the results of the election showed that we had not. It is widely known that in Mayo Fine Gael had two out of three seats in one constituency and they had one out of three in the other. That is quite fair. The same thing can be said about Sligo. Was not Sligo as good to the Opposition in the last election as West Mayo? Can anybody claim that Roscommon was not good for them? Roscommon-Leitrim was also good for them. The Minister has torn apart the whole western system in order to achieve one more seat if at all possible. That is a fact without going into the points made clear by speakers in the other House and also by people in public life outside this House.
Surely the Senator is not serious?
I can assure the Senator that, taking his position as against mine, if I were to stand in the next election he would not stand half the chance that I stand.
That is more than Fianna Fáil did for you.
I got 19 per cent of the vote cast in my constituency. Did the Minister get 19 per cent of the vote cast in his constituency? No, he did not. He got 16.2 per cent. I watched it.
The Senator has done his homework.
Seeing that Senator O'Toole has come into the fray, I cannot see how he is going to make this golden seat in Mayo. When the gerrymander was on, and while we are talking about an absolute and positive gerrymander, the Minister should have taken Senator O'Toole into his office, as he took some other people, and said: "Would it be better if I gave you a bit of Sligo rather than a bit of Roscommon?" I can assure the Minister and Senator O'Toole that if the Senator wants to get into the other House he should have done so. That was his only hope of ever being elected to the other House. As it stands now he has not got a ghost of a chance because the Minister has endorsed a second seat for Fianna Fáil in East Mayo.
What is the Senator complaining about then?
I am complaining about what the Minister has done to East Galway, West Galway and Galway county. He has sacrificed all of Connacht. He has torn it apart and deprived it of two seats to which it is entitled, due to many factors. I am sure Senator J. Fitzgerald would agree with me. The Minister has torn all of Connacht and the western seaboard to try to facilitate one Labour seat in West Galway which he never will do. He has created a situation in West Galway in which 143 miles must be travelled from one point of the constituency to the other and in East Galway in which approximately 120 miles must be travelled from one point to the other in order to gerrymander one seat for the Labour Party—Senator J. Fitzgerald's own party of which he is the boss here.
I can assure Senator W. O'Brien that any time I ever want to speak in this House whether it be good, bad or indifferent I can with the freedom of my party make a speech. I ask any Senator on the other side of the House to stand up and make his contribution to this Electoral (Amendment) Bill now. I explained, for the Senator's information, that this debate reminded me of a wake without any drink, where lads got up and ran out for a smoke and came in again, and there were a few wailing banshees at the back. That is what has happened. No man from the National Coalition Government, which includes both Labour and Fine Gael, has taken it upon himself to rise from his soft seat to make one single contribution in favour or against the Minister. I go further and say that it reminds me of the emperor and the Senators in Rome long ago going to see the gladiators. The Minister walks in here with his chest out, sits down. All the Senators of the National Coalition walk in behind him and sit down as well. That is precisely what the Minister does.
You should not heckle me at all because you have no grounds for heckling.
It was like that in 1969.
Business suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 7.30 p.m.
I find it hard to recall exactly where I was before we adjourned. I dealt reasonably well with my protest regarding the way in which the Minister has taken two seats from Connacht and has divided Galway in a very awkward situation. I suggested and probably will put down later on, whenever the Committee Stage is taken —an amendment which will be far more acceptable to the people of Galway. If it is acceptable to them— because it is they only we have to suit —it will be acceptable to the rest of the people of Connacht. It is in that particular pocket of the western seaboard that there is the greatest growth of population, with the exception of North Mayo, around the Ballina-Killala area.
The population of Galway since the last census has been in a very favourable position. It is safe to say that at the last census the population generally was in a position never before equalled in the history of this nation under self-government. Taking the pluses with the minuses we had arrived at a stage where there was, in fact, no emigration. That achievement was due to good government but, no doubt, Senators opposite would say otherwise. However, it must have played some significant part in it.
Looking at the revision of the constituencies from the Minister's view, one would surely accept that his intention should be, in those parts of the land where there was still a fluctuating population due to emigration to try to stop that trend.
That was happening on the western seaboard. What did the Minister do? He took two Dáil seats—I hope not willingly—badly needed in a sparsely populated area and gave them to the eastern seaboard. Anybody who looks at the statistics of this Government since they took office can see that their investment of money on the eastern seaboard was at least 80 per cent greater than their investment of money on the western seaboard. It follows that the Minister is in line with Government thinking in depriving the west of two Dáil seats. In his statement he said:
A Minister for Local Government must weigh up the competing claims of all the areas and strike a balance which is fair to all.
I should like to ask the Minister: who does he mean by "all"? Does he mean the strongest section of our community or the weakest section? Ignoring this Electoral (Amendment) Bill and pretending that he never had any hand, act, or part in it, one would assume that the Minister is a compassionate man. I know it is not easy to be too compassionate when one is fighting for one's survival on a Bill like this but, being a fair-minded man as he always appears to have been, he should have applied this fairness in the distribution of those seats. It should be above party politics. As I explained earlier, I believe—and nobody has contradicted me—that the Minister is trying to achieve something that is impossible in the west of Ireland. In my opinion, he is trying to achieve a Labour seat in West Galway. I believe he is wrong. I firmly believe he is putting his own party politics above the National Coalition politics and above politics in general, to try to get a Member of this House, a member of the Minister's party into Dáil Éireann. To that fellow Senator I would say I am afraid he cannot achieve it. It is physically impossible.
The Senator's lack of faith in me does not disturb me.
Let the people make their own decision in their own time.
I should like to explain to the House a fact of which the Minister may not be aware concerning Senator Higgins.
Senator Killilea on the Bill.
With regard to this Bill and referring to an allegation made by Senator Higgins, I should like to inform the Minister of this fact. In the last election the Labour Party put up one candidate in West Galway, namely, Senator Higgins, and he did reasonably well. He got a great vote. The newspapers, including The Irish Times said: “Hail, hail, we are going to have a Labour TD in West Galway.” But the newspapers did not say that, in the previous general election, when Labour were going to take over the running of the country they put up two candidates in West Galway and did very badly, but together they received 200 votes more than Senator M.D. Higgins in the last general election—200 votes more than Senator Michael D. Higgins got in the last election on his own. He got 200 votes less than the total vote of the Labour Party when Councillor Tierney and himself stood for the previous election. The Minister should check up on that. If I can press the case home that there is no Labour seat in the West Galway constituency, even including part of the Senator's home county of Clare the Minister might say in compassion: “We will give the decent people of Galway an opportunity to have their proper number of elected representatives in Dáil Éireann.” We might even try to get Senator M.D. Higgins in here as a Senator in the next election so that they will be able to keep in touch with him too, and give him a fair crack of the whip. It is very sad when all the figures are totted.
The Minister said to me at the outset that he had got his figures mathematically. I am sure he did not count the Labour figures in Galway at the last and previous elections. Before he makes his reply he might have a look at them. Then I should think the Minister, as a very fair-minded man——
You are all wrong.
The Senator must address the chair.
I think I am doing fine until somebody passes a snide remark. Someone over there for the sake of conversation, slips a quick one at me and hides his head for fear the Minister would see him. Then the Cathaoirleach, with no disrespect, looks at me solemnly and says: Senator Killilea, please confine yourself to the Bill.
A Senator
Frank Hall.
No, it is not Frank Hall. There is not a man on that side of the House——
The Senator will have to be allowed to make his speech without interruption. The Senator should endeavour to ignore disorderly interruptions.
Now we are talking.
The Senator should endeavour to ignore disorderly interruptions.
It is so tempting. Please forgive me. People in glasshouses should not throw stones. It is a dangerous thing. The roof could fall down on top of them. It is obvious from the exit of certain people that the roof is falling down on top of some of them now. If the Cathaoirleach would permit me to deal with the rest of those people who are sniping at me, I could deal with them individually. When I was canvassing for the Seanad election in Longford I saw the name of a certain Senator printed on the road and on walls and, mind you, I did not know to what party that man belonged. You never saw: "Vote No. 1 Killilea" written on the walls of North-East Galway because——
It would have been rubbed out.
It would not. Forgive my ignorance but I had to go to the Library to find out who this man was. I also found out the party to which he belonged and it amazed me. I thought he was one of our party because there was a lot of talk about some of our party in those parts. Then I looked at the number of votes he received and I thought, "in comparison with myself, an innocent fellow from the west, he did only about half as good." That is another significant remark.
Not really, count them again. In the constituency of Limerick there were fantastic results too—compared with mine, which was only mediocre—a third of my vote for the total vote. Those people then can hide even though the Minister warned them not to open their mouths. They can hide, make snide remarks and duck so that one cannot recognise them. There you are, Emperor Minister, the Senators are behind you and there is an odd sound from them. Perhaps we will be able to draw a few words out of them.
If I continue talking in this strain it is going to draw some thoughts or remarks from some of the learned Senators who are sitting at this wake.
We come now to the eastern side of this great country of ours. I notice, in the Minister's summary of four-seater constituencies—for the not so odd reason now—the constituency of Meath is a four-seater with the constituency of West Galway. I know that Labour will get a far better result in the constituency of Meath as a four-seater than they will get in West Galway as a four-seater. It is not quite fair of the Minister to make the comparison that "you have an equal in your party". I do not think we have a man who can catch a vote as good as the Minister; we have not a man who will be a Labour TD from West Galway. It is sad that the Minister, in his wisdom, had to make his own constituency of Meath a four-seater for reasons, I suppose, better known to himself. One would suspect that he might have felt a little ground slipping. I am sure the Minister need have no worry. He has endorsed himself and, I would say, thrown into the bargain, possibly—with this little gerrymander probably—given a seat to Fianna Fáil out of the kindness of his heart. The reason why he has given a seat to Fianna Fáil is that he has endorsed, for all time, his own Labour seat in that constituency. One would make a sacrifice for one's self. If I was a vindictive person I suppose it is in the County of Meath that I would start when proceeding to attack this Electoral Bill; I want to ask why Galway and the west should not have been left as three-seaters. It is a simple comparison. Every fair-minded person will agree. It is much easier in this city or in its suburbs to meet your local TD.
If you travel from Blackrock right across this city you could not count on your fingers the number of constituencies you would pass through and it is easy, therefore, if one finds it hard to meet his own TD, to meet a TD representing a neighbouring constituency.
I agree with the Minister that there should be three-seaters in Dublin. Indeed, three-seaters should be the norm all over the country. It is grossly unfair—the Minister made the comparison here—to give three-seaters in some areas and not to do so in others. Donegal is bad and there is a Senator here from Donegal who will tell us just how bad it is. Take my neighbouring constituency in West Galway; one has to go from Inishboffin to Hag's Head near Lahinch to cover the constituency, a four-seater covering an area of 143 miles. Is that fair? Do the Government think the people on the western seaboard are stupid enough to accept this basis of distribution? Injury has been added to insult. We have been deprived of two seats and yet four-seaters have been introduced into Galway.
How can the Minister state?
A Minister for Local Government must weigh up the competing claims of all the areas and strike a balance which is fair to all.
Is West Galway, as it is now drawn up, a competing area with any of the constituencies in Dublin city or county? The Minister has given us the same statistical figure of approximately 20,000 votes to elect a representative when in fact, he could have used the lower figure of 19,000 and given back to us the number of TDs required.
Surely the Government should show some compassion to areas such as Connemara where people have to travel many miles to communicate with their TD. Now we have the position where people from Clare will have to come to Galway or, perhaps, they will go down into Clare and dissociate themselves from the TDs elected in Galway. I think it is an insult to call this constituency West Galway when it has a large number of Clare votes in it. The Minister has deliberately alienated two counties.
The Minister may have used some different kind of logic from that normally applied because not alone is he amalgamating two counties but he is amalgamating two provinces, Munster and Connacht, in one constituency. For a technical reason previously there was nothing else that could be done in the realignment of the constituencies where there were three three-seaters with a portion of Clare in; at that time a part of Clare was included which, in fact, was closer to County Galway than the portion the Minister has now taken in. We know Lisdoonvarna is in Munster; yet Lisdoonvarna by the stroke of the Minister's pen is now in West Galway. That is the name given to this constituency on the map supplied to me by the Department of Local Government and it has "four seats" written on it.
One could argue at length about this. Any argument that the Minister can put forward for this proposal can be completely refuted because there is no logical argument for it. To put Lisdoonvarna, which is in Munster and well-known throughout the world, into West Galway is illogical. It cannot be justified. In order to gain a seat in West Galway for a colleague in the Labour Party the Minister has included a part of Clare which is alien and, in doing so, he has gone to the wrong side of the line. He obviously took the advice of another Senator from West Galway who may have told him that that was the best thing to do because the Senator from the Minister's party comes from Clare, but I can assure the Minister that he has picked the wrong portion of Clare for the Senator and, if the Senator were allowed to speak, he would say exactly what I am saying.
The best judge of whether I put enough words on the record of this House on a sufficient number of issues is the Sunday Independent. The Sunday Independent is not the Senator's paper, but it is the one significant document that will tell me and tell the public that I have left Senator Michael Higgins, the Senator from Galway, way behind me. Perhaps people do not read what I say —some of them do—but from the only statistic known to me, issued annually by the Sunday Independent, Senator Michael D. Higgins was seventeenth or eighteenth; I happened to be in the unlucky place of thirteenth. Senator Higgins should withdraw that remark because it is incorrect.
I am afraid I must intervene. The Senator has followed temptation too far.
The temptation is coming my way. I have told the House before that people in glasshouses should not throw stones. One can see how silent they have become. The Minister has done a good job, he has bagged them all up, big smiling faces. It certainly is democracy at its best and no better man than the Minister to allow the National Coalition Senators to stand up here and say: "He's a jolly good fellow". I know well that is the song they will all be singing. If they cannot give the Minister advice he might pay heed to the advice I am giving him. My advice has not yet been contradicted by any one of the Government parties which on one issue give their Deputies a free vote and on another issue the Minister gags the whole lot of them. Fair play to the Minister.
As a rural Senator, I am naturally sympathetic to the claims of rural areas. This question has been settled by the Constitution. A fair statement, but note how that phrase came towards the middle of page 5 of the Minister's statement. On page 4 the Minister made the following statement:
The allegation most often made is that the Bill is in some way unfair to rural areas, particularly, the western region.
I suspect that the Minister knew I would be speaking on this Bill. Further in his speech the Minister said that it favours the Dublin area. I agree with the Minister. The Minister has said exactly what I have been saying all the time. The only difference between the Minister and me is that I know that what the Minister says he is not doing. All the Minister has to do now at this late stage is to go back, have another look at the Bill and right the wrong on page 5. He should look again at the west of Ireland but this time correctly, and do what he says in a paragraph on page 5:
The allegation most often made is that the Bill is in some way unfair to rural areas, particularly, the western region and favours the Dublin area.
That allegation is absolutely correct. I am glad to note that the Minister for Local Government has at last said so publicly in this House to this learned gathering of people.
On page 6 the Minister declares, contrary to his statement on page 5, the following:
By combining two or more counties in a single constituency it is possible to draw up a scheme in which no county boundary would be breached.
That is correct, and this is good:
For example Counties Donegal and Leitrim could be combined to form a seven-seat constituency.
It is a pity the Minister did not try to do that. The Minister is saying it there but doing nothing about it. Why then not leave Leitrim with possibly two seats and Donegal with five? That is what the Minister says, a seven-seat constituency—obviously one would say there are two in Leitrim and five in Donegal, and leave it a seven-seat constituency. The Minister should do something decent for a change seeing that when Fianna Fáil were in Government they were always supposed to be doing the wrong thing. The Minister should give the people of Donegal and Leitrim their seven seats and let us see the results.
To take it further, Counties Sligo and Mayo could form an eight-seater. Then comes the most beautiful statement of all, the Minister says the Counties Clare and Galway could form an 11-seat constituency. We would then be amalgamating parts of Munster and Connacht into one constituency. One would suspect that the Minister would be giving seven seats to Galway and four to Clare. I asked the Minister today to do this. He suggests it himself but he will not enact it. The Minister may be working on an old statistic.
At one time there were nine seats in County Galway and Fianna Fáil had eight seats out of the nine. At the same time there were four seats in Clare and Fianna Fáil had all four. Senator O'Brien ought to put pressure on the Minister to try having 11 seats again. We would risk the 11 seats in Galway and Clare or, alternatively, divide them properly and give us Galway county as one unit. I guarantee the Minister that the first man eliminated in a Galway election would be his pal, Senator Michael D. Higgins, out the door, on top of his head, guaranteed.
If Senator O'Brien and Senator Killilea wish to have a private conversation they should have it outside the House.
Counties Sligo and Mayo could form an eight-seater. Could the Minister not be daring and try Roscommon and Mayo instead of Sligo? After all Sligo is good home ground for the Coalition. If the Minister is prepared to have constituencies returning seven, eight, 11 or 13 Deputies he should, and must, and is by conscience bound, to return to the people of the west their proper proportion of representatives to Dáil Éireann. Without going into the details, the Minister actually says that himself, but then he makes a statement which is an assumption on his part.
I do not think any of us seriously wants constituencies of this size. Give the people of Connacht anything but what you are giving them. Anything in this world that you could give them is better than this evaporation of the cause of the people of the western seaboard. This Bill is an insult to their integrity. The Minister should, in conscience rearrange this area. It is just a matter of changing 148 to 150 and giving those two seats back to the areas that have been deprived of them and using the basis of 19,000 per TD. It is as simple as that.
The Government may think that, politically they are wise. Maybe they are. They are the best judges of their own political situation. But a second insult by the National Coalition is now being ballyragged around Connacht. The Minister says that the county of Meath, with a small addition from Kildare, will also have four seats and that it will be a very compact unit. I agree with the Minister on this. However, something was left out—it is a very compact seat for the Minister for Local Government, Deputy Tully. The comparison in the Minister's mind is the same as the comparison in my mind. He compares Meath with West Galway in trying to achieve what is possible in Meath but what is impossible in West Galway. The deviation from the national average is plus 671 in East Galway and in West Galway it is minus 542. That is the significant part of this deal in Galway.
I do not understand the geographical situation in Munster. I do not know it either in the north-eastern part, Cavan and Monaghan. But I have stated emphatically that I know the geographical situation in Connacht. The Minister is perpetrating a wrong in so far as Connacht is concerned and he must repent it.
We move now to another situation the Minister has mentioned. I refer to the setting up of a commission to draw up the constituencies in the future. The Minister played a major part in a Bill in another House on a previous occasion to ask for this commission. I do not know why he has not utilised this situation. He may say that Fianna Fáil did not vote or voted against that Bill at that time. They did vote against the Bill and they stood by that. What galls me is that those who proposed that Bill to amend the Act to draw up the constituencies are the people who are now allegedly utilising this situation to further their own political aims as they claimed Fianna Fáil were doing in those times. I hope the trickery will end here.
Now that the Minister is brave enough to take himself and his Government out in the open and say this is the way in which to approach this task, I trust that he will say this is the way we shall continue to do it. I am sure the Minister is well aware that his Government are on a downwards graph of late. I hope that when this Bill is passed he will not have any sore boils and say that as and from now, when we have this Act, at a future date we will have a commission. One team cannot win all the matches all the time. We must give the other team a certain credit, too. Therefore I would suggest that the Minister heed what I have said regarding Connacht. Be as brave hereafter as you are now and if we are playing political football let us play it under the rules of a political football match.
Which crowd?
The Government were told on the night of the election to hand back this State in the way they found it. I know it is becoming more difficult daily to do that. But do not keep it secret either, Minister. Let us know when you run out of steam and we will give you another chance again in 16 or 17 years time.
There is one other point in this Bill that I should like to refer to: that is a situation which I think is unfair to people who use their postal vote or, rather, who should use their postal vote. There are many people whose work necessitates their being away from home all week. A general election is held usually on either a Tuesday, a Wednesday or a Thursday. However, although mentioned in this Bill, it is not stated that this Bill will give more latitude to the people who are in the commercial trade and, consequently, away from home during the week, to allow them to use the postal vote system.
I thought we were supposed to be discussing what is in the Bill.
We are talking about the draft register of postal voters. There is a reference in the Bill to postal voters. Section 6 (2) states:
Where a constituency specified in the Schedule to this Act is identical in area with none of the constituencies existing at the passing of this Act, a postal voters' list or lists——
so it is in the Bill.
I thought the Senator was complaining that it was not.
——shall be prepared in respect of it by the registration authority or registration authorities concerned as soon as may be after such passing.
That does not specifically say that those people, sick people in hospitals, who are not able to go to vote are one category. The people in the commercial trade who are away from home mid-week or any time during the week must travel miles to come back to vote, and on most occasions cannot come back or do not come back. The Leader of the House comes in at this late stage to say "hear, hear." What he is saying in fact is that they are not entitled to cast their votes. That is what I would deduce from what the Leader of the House has said. I would like to have it on the record of the House that the Leader of the House has stated here publicly that as regards commercial travellers, the sick or the disabled, those in circumstances which keep them away from home during the week, or in the instance of illness cannot come out to vote, they are not entitled to vote.
That is what I would like the Official Report of this House to state. It has not been contradicted by anybody in the Government parties other than by Senator O'Brien who chirped something that I could not hear. I am aware that Senator O'Brien is under orders not to say anything and, therefore, what he says is in fact not audible to some people on this side of the House. I have persistently tried to hear some of the remarks. The Leader of the House, Senator O'Higgins, has said that the sick people, people in the commercial trade who unavoidably are absent from their place of work, cannot and should not be allowed to vote. The Minister should now also state that an electoral list of people, categorised in the sections I have mentioned and also in other spheres of which the Minister and his Department I am sure are aware, who cannot return to vote, should be included in a postal voters electoral list.
Hear, hear.
I feel confident that the Minister will pay heed to my few short remarks on this Electoral (Amendment) Bill, that he will change it when we deal with the next Stage —I suppose in a fortnight or three weeks time—that there will be a new unit, including the two TDs he has taken from Connacht, that he will have a new figure of 150 instead of 148 TDs, and that those two will be redistributed in a proper way on the western seaboard.
Before I conclude, may I make a remark concerning the map that the Minister has circulated to this House? This is just a technical point but I have always known Derry to be called County Derry and I have never seen it on inter-departmental documentation put down as it is in this map as "Londonderry."
I do not intend to delay the House——
I have drawn blood.
——but as a general rule I prefer to put my own thoughts on the record rather than to leave it to Senator Mark Killilea. I want to make it quite clear that I thoroughly approve of the appeal which he has made to allow a vote to sick people and people who are engaged in business of commercial travel which takes them away from their homes at election times. We are talking now some 50 years or more after the establishment of this State, when Fianna Fáil occupied the Government of this country for about 40 years of that period. It has never been done yet but I am glad to say that for the first time since the establishment of this State, notwithstanding all the years Fianna Fáil were in office, the present Minister as he has already publicly announced is making arrangements to allow votes to the people Senator Killilea was speaking about.
I do not know where Senator Killilea got the thought. He probably got it from reading some newspaper report of a speech made by the Minister for Local Government. I say "hear, hear," again to the work of the Minister for Local Government in remedying a situation which Fianna Fáil had umpteen years to remedy and did not remedy, and which in a little over 12 months this Government have already taken steps to remedy. Again I say "hear, hear" to that.
On a point of information, could the Leader of the House explain to me where it is in this Bill?
We are not allowed cross-chat like this but when I was asked a question——
Is it in the Bill?
I could make an effort to explain. I do not know if Senator Killilea would be able to follow it because as I understood Senator Killilea at one time he complained that it was not in the Bill and then he complained that it was in the Bill.
Is it in the Bill? Are we getting this register? It is not in the Bill. I accept that it is not in the Bill and what the Leader of the House has said is not true.
Obviously it could not be in the Bill. You will have it and you have been told that.
You are saying one thing and meaning something else.
Having heard Senator Killilea speak so eloquently and for so long I feel that there is very little left for any of us to say on this Bill. I want to say that the west was really awake today. This piece of legislation was rendered necessary because of the result of the 1971 Census of Population. Whenever there is an increase in population it becomes necessary to redraw the constituencies in accordance with the shift of population. It is two years since that census was taken and we are only now debating this Bill. Another census of population is due to be taken in 1976 and are we to go through the same formalities again after 1976 as we have had to go through in 1974?
I am convinced that the next census will show a further increase in our population. That is something we all welcome. It is something we all should encourage and advocate. More legislation will then be necessary. Does the Minister expect that he will still be in Government to introduce the next piece of legislation after the 1976 census of population? Does the fact that our population is beginning to show an increase tend to make this exercise useless and worthless? I am convinced, in view of the fact that it is necessary to introduce a Bill after a census of population shows an increase, that we must now establish once and for all some type of constituency commission or electoral amendment committee who will redraw the constituencies in accordance with what they think best to coincide with increases in the population.
I was disappointed in the Bill. I expected the Minister to be a Minister for all the people and not to resort to political gimmickry. After all, he said he was a very human person when replying to the debate in the Dáil. He is a member of a Government that the people believed were full of new ideas and that was composed of men of superior intelligence. I am surprised that the Minister resorted to the old method of revising the constituencies similar to what we had in 1935, 1947, 1959, 1961 and 1969. I expected something more from the Minister on this occasion. I expected him to implement new ideas and to give us something which they have been advocating over the years. Unfortunately, they decided that they would copy Fianna Fáil and have a go at the efforts Fianna Fáil had been making over the years in revising the constituencies.
I cannot understand why the Minister decided on 148 seats. I wonder what will happen in 1976 if we have a further increase in population. According to the terms of our Constitution, 148 seats is the maximum. Therefore, I do not think there is any question of increasing the number of seats further. However, that is another day's work and has nothing to do with this Bill.
I am disappointed with the Bill and with the Minister's reasoning behind it because he comes from a rural constituency. I am surprised that he did not make some effort to exercise the tolerance clause in favour of the rural areas and thus ensure that the people of rural Ireland would secure maximum representation in Dáil Éireann. Those of us who live in rural constituencies and who are trying to nurse portions of our constituency—I am nursing County Westmeath until the next election comes along—will agree that the Minister should have exercised the tolerance clause in favour of the rural areas so that we can give the people of rural Ireland the best possible service.
As the Minister knows, it is in rural Ireland that a representative gets the real work. Any representative of rural Ireland—be he in local authority, in the Oireachtas or any other public body—gets more work than his counterpart in urban areas because of the number of problems associated with the day-to-day life in rural Ireland. There are innumerable problems connected with roads, housing, land reclamation and so forth which never become the lot of a city representative. Therefore, I am disappointed that the Minister did not use the tolerance clause to the fullest possible advantage in his redrawal of the constituencies.
It is extraordinary that the only place the Minister exercised the tolerance clause was in his own constituency of Meath, with portion of Kildare. There are a minimum number of people in that constituency, roughly 77,000. If he had applied that elsewhere throughout the country, I am sure he could have arranged for a few more seats throughout rural Ireland. If a Minister decides to draw up new constituencies, he should start at the capital and work his way out, but, unfortunately, the Minister did not do so. It is the first time for many years that the reverse is the situation. We have portion of Kildare now brought into a Dublin constituency. There is portion of Wicklow brought into another Dublin constituency. I believe the Minister should have worked in the opposite direction because as we all know and the Minister has admitted, Dublin is becoming top-heavy.
This Bill does nothing to alleviate that situation. Indeed, it helps to encourage the growth of Dublin to the detriment of rural Ireland. I do not intend to deal with the problems of the west because they have been amply dealt with by Senator Killilea already, but I am convinced that the Minister did a bad day's work when he exercised the tolerance clause against the rural population.
I would appeal to him, at this late stage, to consider giving greater representation to the rural areas, using his own constituency as a guideline. When I consider Westmeath and Longford with approximately 82,000 people for four seats, Meath with four seats and 77,000 population and Louth with a population of less than 80,000, I realise that the Minister could have carried out a better job in so far as all rural communities are concerned.
A Bill to redraw the constituencies is not the most popular piece of legislation for any Minister to introduce. That favours the argument that we should have a constituencies commission or some other method of revising the constituencies because nothing causes more unrest or discontent than the redrawing of constituencies. It is difficult to get people from two counties, coming from different environments and having different outlooks on life, to come together to agree to transfer their votes from one county to another. It has posed problems over the years and I believe it will continue to pose problems.
The only way to solve these problems is to take the authority for revision of constituencies away from the Oireachtas altogether. That might end all the allegations and controversies which crop up from time to time. There is inter-county rivalry—"He is a Meath man and I do not like him"; "He is a Louth man and I do not like him", and so on. We meet it frequently. We should all make a special effort to establish an independent commission to revise the constituencies. The fact that we must revise constituencies if there is an increase or a decrease in population strengthens the argument in favour of that commission.
After all, there is no good in saying Fianna Fáil never did it. You are the new Government with the new ideas and, therefore, there is no good in maintaining the practice which was operated by the Fianna Fáil Government for so many years when you people feel that the case should have been otherwise. Again, I believe that the Minister has given Dublin city more than its generous quota of Deputies. We all know how easy it can be to represent people in an urban area. We know that their problems are very few in comparison with the people who reside in inaccessible areas throughout the length and breadth of this country. Therefore, the Minister must know quite well that the amount of work which falls on any representative from the rural areas is far greater than that of the urban representative. I would ask the Minister to do a serious re-think and endeavour to give the rural areas a greater share of representation.
To get back to the tolerance clause, when one realises that Meath has 77,000 and Westmeath-Longford 82,000 I ask myself: "Should the portion of Athlone that was taken into Westmeath have been left with the west to enable them to maintain their seat?" Having said that, I am not disappointed. The portion of Athlone which has been taken into the constituency of Longford-Westmeath contains many relatives of mine and this will be, whether the Minister knows it or not to my advantage. He could have, without any fears, left that portion of our county in Connacht. It is regarded as Connacht because the great Shannon divides the area there. The people across the Shannon look on themselves as Connacht people. I have many relatives there. I am not going to argue against that very strongly. It is one case which I can use against Meath having 77,000 and Westmeath-Longford having 82,000. The tolerance clause was not used to the fullest possible extent there possibly because Fianna Fáil will never be able to recapture the fourth seat in Longford-Westmeath. I can tell you that you might have done us a good turn. Against your own better judgment and against you own wishes you may have given us a nice sizeable pocket of votes which will enable us to capture a second seat the next time round.
However, I am glad that the Leader of the House has mentioned the possibility of drawing up a register of postal votes for the sick and the disabled. That is a welcome development. It is something that I argued about quite often. It is something which is both desirable and welcome. I can see certain difficulties in drawing up such a register. First of all, if one decides that people who are in hospitals should have a postal vote, there is the question of the short duration patient and the long term patient. I believe that the place to start, if compiling such a register is with the chronically sick— the people who are invalided for the remainder of their lives, semi-invalids and so on. That could be done through the health boards who operate the home help scheme or it could be done through some other channel like that. It is something that is worthy of serious consideration. I know that all such people who are not on the register feel very aggrieved when polling day comes. That is something that should be considered. A member of the Garda should be assigned to go along and let people cast their votes in their homes, at the hospital bed, or elsewhere. It is something that can be done.
I should like, of course, to mention —there may not be reference to this matter in the Bill—electoral abuses which have taken place over the years. It came to my notice at the last general election. A man in the legal profession walked into a polling station. He was not registered as a voter but he demanded his right to vote under some section of the relevant legislation. I do not know what section it was. The presiding officer, being a countryman like myself did not know all that he should have known on that occasion. He tore out two ballot papers and allowed this solicitor and his wife to cast their votes, despite the fact that they were not registered as voters in the area. It was brought to the notice of the registrar and the returning officer. I do not know to what extent that electoral abuse was followed up. It was quashed in higher places.
However, I feel that something should be done. All presiding officers should be issued with clear instructions to allow nobody to vote unless his or her name is on the ballot paper. Provision should be made in the Electoral Abuses Act—there may be no such provision on this Bill—to limit the amount of money that some people can spend in order to secure election to Dáil Éireann. It was commonly known in my county the last time that £10 notes were floating around to induce people to cast votes for a particular candidate. Again, I say that is an infringement of people's rights. It is something that should be punishable in law. I would be glad if at some stage the Minister would revise the Electoral Abuses Act and ensure that people are allowed freedom of choice and that they cannot be induced to vote by a £10 note or a £5 note. It has nothing to do with this Bill but I feel it is worthy of serious consideration and is something that the Minister should deal with in his own good time.
This Bill does not in my opinion go far enough to satisfy the needs of all. I have yet to read a report in any newspaper of the Minister or the Minister's Bill having received favourable comment. The only comment was that the Minister, by this exercise has ensured the re-election of the National Coalition Government. That seemed to be the unanimous opinion of all the political commentators in all the newspapers throughout the country.
The people will be the final judges in the long run. While ten, 12 or 20 years ago it might have been possible to know the outcome of an election beforehand, it will not be possible any more. We are dealing with a younger generation. We are dealing with people who are highly educated and who will make up their own minds. The pattern of voting seemed to change with the introduction of free secondary education. All our people are well-educated now. They are thinking for themselves. I believe that it will never be possible again to count on areas as containing traditional Fianna Fáil voters, traditional Fine Gael voters or traditional Labour voters. That situation is changing. Therefore, I think we can never say: "This is a safe seat here taking into account the figures at the last general election" or anything else of the sort.
I would ask that the Minister should introduce smaller constituencies. He should have introduced them this time but he did not do so for various reasons and possibly for political advantage. The five-seater constituency can be unwieldy and difficult to manage, especially if you have underrepresentation. Because of the geographical position of the constituency, because of the huge areas of land involved and because of the fact that people live long distances away from social centres or from principal towns in any area, I believe a greater effort should have been made to satisfy the needs of the rural population. An injustice has been done. The Minister has an opportunity to right the wrong. I hope he will do so, because it is important that he should do so. If the people get an opportunity, they will punish him for his failure to recognise their needs. He is a Deputy from a rural area. He knows about all the travelling and no matter what he says about Meath being a compact county, it is a long journey from Bettystown to the borders of Westmeath and to the borders of Offaly. The Minister himself knows that.
Kevin Boland gave us a bit there, too.
If it was wrong for Boland to do it, surely you people with your superior brains and intelligence should have made an effort to put it right.
He had very superior brains too.
If it was wrong then, it must be wrong now and the census of population figures coming up will prove the system completely wrong. There is no doubt about that and what the Minister has in mind would tally with mine in that respect.
I will not delay the House any longer because there is nothing I could add to Senator Killilea's fine oration. The west was really awake today and let us hope it will stay awake. Let us hope that not only will there be words but that there will be actions to match the words. The Minister said that he tried to be as sympathetic as possible. However, sympathy is no good. The people want action and the Minister still has the opportunity to take it. I ask him to make the effort to be as big a man as he would like us to believe and amend the Bill to meet the real needs of the people.
I rise just to make a two-minute correction in relation to one particular section of one speech. I liked the last speech very much because it was an attempt to be responsible in relation to the Bill. However, concerning the speech made immediately before it I should like to give an example of the kind of irresponsible use of statistics which are likely to be used in this debate if it is continued as long as people might want. A suggestion was made that the Minister was trying to keep his pal, Michael D. Higgins, alive in Galway city. I want to read into the record of the House that it was further stated that between 1969 and 1973 the Labour vote had fallen by 200 votes.
Let me show the curious arithmetic of Senator Killilea and how it works. In 1969 one candidate for the Labour Party, myself, received 1,174 votes and my running partner, Alderman Tierney received 1,519, giving 2,693 No. 1 votes. In 1973, I received 3,346 No. 1 votes, namely, an increase of 653. That 653 became 200 in the course of an inaccurate contribution to the House. This House deserves better treatment than that. Reference was made to insulting the intelligence of the people of the west of Ireland and that of the ordinary people of Ireland. I suggest that to quote a misleading figure and to dodge the challenge of giving any source whatever is to insult the intelligence of the House.
That was done statistically with figures that are not really correct.
I am out of order but I will give the source—the official reports of the general elections of 1969 and 1973. Both are available in the Library.
What counts is the report of the people of County Galway.
I am surprised and, indeed, astounded that this is the only contribution which the talkative Senator Higgins intends to make on the Second Stage of the Electoral Bill. I am quite certain that the Senator must have strong views on the Bill and the only conclusion that I can draw from his silence and the obvious silence of the Fine Gael and Labour Members of the House is that in their heart of hearts they consider this legislation unjust. They are not prepared to stand up and defend legislation with which they disagree.
We will vote on it and see what we disagree with then.
The Senator is under the Whip.
We do not need any Whip to go through the division lobbies.
Senator Halligan, like Senator Higgins, is one of the Twelve Apostles. Senator Higgins gave figures for the general elections of 1969 and 1973. He did not say he contested the Seanad election in 1969 but that he did not contest it in 1973.
I oppose this Bill. I oppose every section, every line and practically every word of the Bill because I consider it unfair, unjust and, indeed, despicable legislation. A gentleman in the city of New York was once given the task of drawing up the electoral areas in that city. His Christian name was Gerry. One official likened his plan to a salamander because of the lizardlike way he had drawn up his boundaries. Another official quickly retorted: "Gerrymander would be more appropriate," using the first official's Christian name. When this Bill was presented to the country no one could blame us for describing it as either gerrymandering, "Jimmy-mandering" or "Tullymandering". It is quite obvious that the only purpose of this legislation is to perpetuate the Coalition Government in office.
I believe that the Fine Gael Party have not given themselves sufficient time to consider how this legislation might affect them at a later date, when the obvious split between them and the hindtit of the Coalition Government comes to an end, and when the Fine Gael Party may realise too late that they have allowed the Minister for Local Government to give a present to his party of 12 or 13 seats in the city of Dublin. In a way I cannot blame the Labour Party for protecting their interests in the city. They must realise that their future in rural Ireland is very much in question. It is true that there are Labour Deputies elected in rural Ireland, but even the Labour Party will admit that most of these men are elected not because of their allegiance to Labour but because they are in themselves decent, honourable and popular men who would be elected on any ticket, that is, on any ticket up to now. I believe that the farmers, after 12 months of this Coalition Government, will find it very difficult to cast their votes for a Labour Deputy no matter how decent or popular or honourable he might be. The Labour party are aware of this. That is the reason they have taken steps in this legislation to ensure that, even if Fine Gael in the future try to get rid of them and go it alone, they will have in Dublin city sufficient Deputies elected to remain the hindtit of the National Coalition.
We, in the past have listened to the pious platitudes of people sitting on this side of the House when we were over there. I can recall on one occasion a Senator speaking from this side of the House on the last Constituency Bill advocating that a commission should be established and that the system of dividing constituencies should be abolished. I would like to quote from the debate on the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1968, at column 473 of the Seanad Debates. It reads as follows:
Would the Senator please quote the volume No.?
Volume No. 66:
I wish to make one other point. That is in regard to the need for an electoral commission. I know that different views have been expressed by different people on this question at different times but I believe that it is vital that we have a commission. This may not have been so necessary before when the extent to which gerrymander could be carried out was minimal but now that this operation is on a scale without parallel, it is vital that we have this commission and a Fine Gael Government in office would introduce such a commission, thereby putting an end once and for all to the gerrymandering that this Bill entails.
Whom am I quoting? None other than that paragon of virtue, the illustrious Deputy Garret FitzGerald, now Minister for Foreign Affairs. "It is vital that we have this commission, and a Fine Gael Government in office would introduce such a commission." I realise that the Minister for Foreign Affairs may not have too much influence with the Taoiseach. He was described by the Taoiseach as a mongrel fox at Fine Gael's Ard-Fheis in Cork.
Acting Chairman
I would remind the Senator that this sort of reference to a Minister is not in order.
I am sorry if I gave the impression that I was describing the Minister for Foreign Affairs, a man for whom I have the highest respect, as a mongrel fox. I was merely saying that the Taoiseach described him as a mongrel fox. I am not standing here and saying that I agree with the Taoiseach's statement at the Ard-Fheis in Cork. That was the opinion of the Minister for Foreign Affairs when he was a Member of this House in 1968. He still held those views up to three months before the general election. On the 12th of November, 1972, the then Deputy Garret FitzGerald, now Minister for Foreign Affairs, wrote an article in the Sunday Independent. I should like to quote from that article. The then Deputy FitzGerald had this to say:
For 50 years Unionist control of local government in Northern Ireland was extended far beyond the areas where Unionists secured a majority of votes. This was done by gerrymandering, by rigging constituency boundaries in such a way as to convert a minority of votes into a majority of seats. One of the main targets of the civil rights campaign was a reform of the electoral system that would eliminate this practice and ensure a just and equitable drawing of constituency boundaries. This demand was conceded. Local authority electoral boundaries have since been redrawn by a Boundaries Commissioner, Mr. F.A.L. Harrison, Q.C. His adjudication is universally accepted as fair and only minor changes in this proposed scheme have been proposed by any party.
Later he said:
No one can fairly say that this electoral reform is not needed here for the flagrant abuse of the power of a Government majority to determine constituency boundaries in a manner designed to give the Government Party a share of seats disproportionate to its votes has been a striking feature of the political system in the Republic. If we were serious about creating in the Republic conditions that would encourage a decent Northern Protestant to look towards a prospect of eventual re-unification we should, of course, have implemented all relevant Northern Ireland reforms here and especially the electoral reform to abolish gerrymandering which Northerners know all too well could be used against them in a united Ireland, as it was used for so long in Northern Ireland to deprive the minority there of its just representation in parliament or in local authorities.
He continued:
Nothing has, in fact, been done to change our corrupt system of constituency manipulation. No Northern Protestant in his senses would commit himself to re-unification with a Tammany Hall state such as we have preserved here.
Later on in the article, in explaining how he feels gerrymandering is possible under the system of constituency revision or manipulation which is carried out here, he said:
What is important, what in fact determined the choice of Party in power in defiance of the wishes of the electorate in 1969 is the selection by the ruling Party of the sizes of constituencies in different parts of the country where it has different shares of the popular vote.
That article was written by the present Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Sunday Independent just three months before the last general election. It is natural that any fair-minded person who read the article believed that if Deputy FitzGerald, as he then was, and his party were elected to office, they would implement what to me was an obvious election promise.
It is easy in Opposition to be fair-minded. It is easy to preach that justice should be done but I believe that politicians of the stature of the Minister for Foreign Affairs should have made some effort to implement what to me was a definite commitment to the Irish people. If the Minister for Foreign Affairs believed what he wrote on 12th November, 1972, what do he and his party think of the legislation now before this House? Would he say still that no Northern Protestant in his senses would commit himself to re-unification with a Tammany Hall state such as we have preserved here?
I live 20 miles from the city of Doire Colmcille, the most Irish city in this entire land and even though the parties opposite may want to refer to that city as part of the United Kingdom, to me it will always remain the most Irish city in this country. In this legislation we should ponder for a while and we should take into consideration what effect gerrymandering had on that city, the effect that it had on the people, on their work, on their morale and on their future.
I would be more impressed if the Senator had made that speech in 1969, when we had a similar Bill before the House.
I have no doubt that the Senator who has just spoken will get an opportunity of giving his views and I will be interested to read what he had to say in 1969 but I just quoted a few minutes ago what the Minister for Foreign Affairs had to say in 1969. That was that a Fine Gael Government would introduce a commission.
Derry city had a 70 per cent Nationalist population and a 30 per cent Unionist population. It was divided into three wards. The South Ward, which embraced the Creggan and the Bogside elected eight Nationalist members despite the fact——
Acting Chairman
I think the Senator is going irrelevant detail.
I am going into the art of gerrymander and I feel that we should learn from the very bad example given by the infamous Sir Basil Brooke in this regard. When it comes to gerrymander, Sir Basil Brooke was only an alter boy in comparison with the Minister for Local Government. More than 50 per cent of the people of the Bogside——
Acting Chairman
The Senator must realise that we are not discussing the city of Doire Colmcille at the moment.
I know that your party care very little for the city of Doire Colmcille. Were it not for your party——
On a point of order, surely the Senator should realise that the occupant of the Chair is acting as Chairman of this Assembly and remarks of that kind should not be addressed to him?
I am sorry. I withdraw my remarks. I am sure that the Fine Gael Party care very little for the city of Doire Colmcille. Were it not for them my car would not have been stopped——
Acting Chairman
The Senator is out of order.
In what way?
Acting Chairman
In his discussion of the city of Derry. We are not discussing the city of Derry nor are we discussing the attitude of any party in this House to that city.
The Minister for Local Government is doing a Sir Basil Brooke as far as the constituencies of this country are concerned. Any Minister who will include in the constituency of Galway an area one mile from the town of Ennis is no different from Sir Basil Brooke who put the town of Eglinton into the constituency of Derry city.
At the moment there is a Clare-Galway constituency.
It was named Clare-Galway and now it is West-Galway, that is the difference.
We did not manufacture that constituency either.
The difference is that it is West-Galway now.
That constituency was there before this Bill.
Acting Chairman
Please allow Senator McGlinchey to continue.
I cannot understand how any part of this country cannot be used for comparative purposes. If I am allowed to refer to Donegal, Galway, Dublin or Cork for comparative purposes, why am I not allowed to refer to the electoral system in any other part of this country for comparative purposes?
Acting Chairman
The Bill applies to Galway and Cork but does not apply to Derry. I do not mind a brief reference for examples but I cannot accept a full explanation of the political system in any city that is outside the control of this Bill.
It is not my fault that this Bill does not apply to Derry.
Acting Chairman
We are not discussing that subject.
If I were not feeling charitable I would tell the House whose fault that is. I should like to quote from column 2004 volume 268 of the Dáil Debates:
For 50 years Unionist control of local government in Northern Ireland was extended far beyond the areas where Unionists secured a majority.
On a point of order, I understood the former Cathaoirleach of this House, Senator Yeats, to rule that it was not in order to quote in this House from the debates of the other House.
That is not correct. The Leader of the House is telling us that the Acting Chairman is not, in fact, doing his duty.
Whether I am in order to quote from the Dáil Debates or not——
Acting Chairman
It is in order to refer to arguments which were put forward in the other House.
Obviously, the Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil or whoever was in the Chair when Deputy Molloy was speaking, was more lenient than the Chairman appears to be, because he allowed this observation to be made by Deputy Molloy on the Second Stage of the Electoral Bill.
On a point of order, surely it is not in order for a Senator to criticise the conduct or proceedings of the other House?
Acting Chairman
It is not in order to refer to proceedings. This ruling was made here previously and has been accepted.
Is it in order for the Leader of the House to do the duty of the Chairman of this House?
I sat on the other side in this House for 12 years——
We have——
Acting Chairman
Please allow the Senator to continue.
——and listened to Members of the then Opposition quoting from the Dáil Debates, but I will not quote from them. I will simply quote from your favourite newspaper, the Sunday Independent, a speech made by the Minister——
Acting Chairman
Is the Senator referring to my favourite newspaper?
Well, it certainly is not my favourite newspaper.
It must be some-body's favourite newspaper.
In that article the Minister for Foreign Affairs said that one of the main targets of the civil rights campaign was a reform of the electoral system. I agree with what he said in that article three or four months before he became Minister. I am proud to say that I was the only Member of the Oireachtas who joined 17,000 people on Craigavon Bridge in the city of Derry in 1968 and marched with them across that——
Acting Chairman
The Senator is becoming irrelevant again.
I am merely commenting.
Acting Chairman
I must ask the Senator to discuss the Bill before the House, please.
I am merely commenting.
The Senator has nothing against the Bill.
I am merely commenting——
The Senator is writing his memoirs.
——on an article by the Minister for Foreign Affairs on the subject we have before us— electoral reform. I believe that a pattern could be shaped on this side of the Border similar to what happened on the other side. The Minister said that the main target of the civil rights campaign was a reform of the electoral system. I am simply advocating that the Minister for Local Government and the Coalition Government should reform the electoral system just as the Minister for Foreign Affairs advocated in that article. If they do not history might repeat itself on this side of the Border.
As a protest against that electoral system 17,000 people marched in the city of Derry and for the first time in 50 years, because of a bad electoral system, they held a public meeting in the Diamond in Derry.
Acting Chairman
I think this detail is unnecessary.
If I were to stand here and compare our electoral system with that of England, France, Germany, America, Japan, or any part of the world I believe I would be listened to. In the same way, I am entitled to compare our electoral system with that which exists in the city 20 miles from my home. The trouble in the Six Counties began because of a bad electoral system. The art of gerrymander was perfected by Sir Basil Brooke and his cronies. They divided the city of Derry into three wards. One ward elected eight Nationalists, another ward elected eight Unionists but the third ward elected four Unionists.
I would be glad if the Senator would indicate how this is related to the Bill before the House.
I am using this as an example of gerrymandering. I am basing my case on the experience of the puppet regimé in Belfast. I am suggesting that it was a bad electoral system that caused most of the trouble in the Six Counties and I am further suggesting that the day could come when a bad electoral system could take the people on to the streets in cities such as Dublin. We found in a city that has 70 per cent Nationalists and 30 per cent Unionists that those Nationalists could only elect eight members out of 20 and that the ward which they represented contained more than 50 per cent——
There is another prompt coming up behind the Senator.
——of the population of Derry city. For years that situation was allowed to continue and as a result Nationalists could get neither jobs nor houses and the Unionists controlled——
I must intervene again. The Senator cannot be allowed to discuss the situation in another place in detail with occasional references to what might happen here, whenever the Chair intervenes. The Senator must make his speech on the Bill before the House.
I am suggesting that there is no difference between what the Minister is doing as far as the Galway constituency is concerned—one mile from the town of Ennis is included in Galway——
This is repetition.
——and what Sir Basil Brooke did in the city of Derry when he extended the city of Derry to the town of Eglinton. The Minister for Foreign Affairs stated in his article on the 12th November, 1972 that the demand of the civil rights campaign for electoral reform was conceded. It is strange that the first injustice corrected in the Six Counties was electoral reform. It is strange that the first act of the British Government to bring justice to the Six Counties was to appoint a boundaries commission. I would join with the then Deputy Garret FitzGerald in saying——
The Senator has already joined with him two or three times.
——that if we were serious about creating in the Republic conditions that would encourage a decent Northern Protestant to look towards a prospect of eventual re-unification we should, of course, have implemented all relevant Northern Ireland reforms here. That was the then Deputy FitzGerald writing on 12th November. Four months later he got an opportunity of creating such conditions. I have no doubt that in the years to come this legislation before this House tonight will be used by the Paisleys, the Craigs and the Martin Smiths to justify the actions of Sir Basil Brooke and his followers over the past 50 years. We can say now that in one part of our country we have a fair system of dividing constituencies.
And in the other part we have the same system as under Fianna Fáil.
In this part of the country we have tonight before us the most blatant example of gerrymandering ever perpetrated by any Minister or by any Government. It is quite obvious that the only purpose of this legislation is to attempt to perpetuate in office the National Coalition Government. The Minister for Foreign Affairs is not the only member of the Fine Gael Party who is on record as supporting a commission. We had a Senator in this House on one occasion who delivered many many speeches and today it makes excellent reading to go to the Library and read his contributions again. That Senator's name was L'Estrange. He is now a respected Deputy in Dáil Éireann. I should like to quote from column 454, Volume 54 of the Official Report of the debate on the Electoral (Amendment) Bill on 25th May, 1961. The then Senator L'Estrange had this to say:
The arguments put in the Dáil and here were that rural Ireland was entitled to extra representation. I believe it would be in the general interest if we could devise some other method of revising constituencies. I believe something like an all-Party committee, or even a commission of civil servants, would be preferable for the purpose of redistributing seats when occasion warrants it. I believe such a system would give greater satisfaction. Certainly it would eliminate any suspicion of gerrymandering and would prevent Parties allocating seats to suit themselves. Counties could have boundary committees or commissions and alterations could be made in boundaries from time to time in accordance with population changes. Such a system would be infinitely preferable to the system by which political parties use a majority in the Dáil or Seanad to force their wishes down the throats of an unwilling people.
The system I suggest would be a desirable one if it could be achieved here. If it works in other countries —I have been informed that it does; possibly the Minister knows more about it than I do—I believe we, too, are sufficiently mature politically for such a system to work here. The Constitution lays down certain requirements. Subject to compliance with these requirements, it should be possible for a non-political body to allocate seats fairly and justly. That would put an end to some of the acrimonious discussions that take place in both the Dáil and Seanad. It is the duty of any Government to hold the scales as evenly as possible between all sections of the community and between all Parties, irrespective of class, creed, politics or whether the people live in the north, the south, the east or the west, in rural Ireland or in urban areas. I believe revision of constituencies could best be done by a non-political committee.
I described this Bill at the outset as a talented piece of gerrymandering. It is one of the cleverest pieces of political manoeuvring ever devised.
Is this still a quotation?
Yes.
Which Bill was that? I wonder what the Minister's reply was?
Read the Minister's reply.
I would not mind being interrupted if I could hear the interruptions.
Before the Senator resumes I would point out to him that long quotations are not in order. The present quotation has so far occupied four minutes.
I have just one more line. "This Government", said Senator L'Estrange, "have nothing to learn from the Quisling Government in Northern Ireland." I wonder what are his views today? I wonder does he still believe that an independent commission should be introduced in this country because Fine Gael, the party to which the then Senator L'Estrange belongs, had a golden opportunity of introducing such a commission. I am convinced that this Government had a mandate from the people to introduce such a commission because I believe that every Fine Gael voter and, indeed, every Labour voter is convinced that members of a party who were so dogmatic on this subject before an election would continue to be dogmatic after it.
I notice that Senator Quinlan is not in this House today. I certainly hope that he will be here tomorrow. I hope he will repeat at least part of a speech he delivered in this House on 5th March, 1969. At column 484, Volume 66, of the Official Report, he said:
It is rather disheartening, in a way, to have to resume the session with the present Bill because in it we find embodied the worst in legislation on the type of approach that is at present threatening to wreck the country outside of Dáil Éireann.
Here we find that approach being used in the same way. In other words, something which should clearly be above party considerations and party advantage is presented to us in a blatant party fashion. In the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1968, Senator Quinlan's opinion was that:
The question of setting up constituencies should most certainly have been decided by an independent commission.
I hope that Senator Quinlan will be available to repeat the claim he made in 1969 that an independent commission should be made available.
The present Government were in office for eight months before this Bill reached its Second Stage. We all remember that in the spring of 1973 the Minister for Local Government promised Dáil Éireann a long, hot summer discussing this legislation. But the long, hot summer had long gone and the cold winter's day had set in in November before the legislation was agreed. Even the media, the friends of the Government, for shame sake began to comment that there was no legislation coming from these people. Even though crisis after crisis had developed, even though prices had leap-frogged, the building societies were in trouble, the cost of living had jumped by 13.8 per cent, what were the Government doing? They were arguing about this legislation. We were told last summer about the two-day meeting of the Government in Iveagh House when they discussed the economic situation. But we were not told that on the table in that room lay the maps of the constituencies and that the Government wrangled for those two days over what should be done. I challenge any Member of this House who is prepared to speak across the floor, or indeed who is allowed to speak, to tell me why did Dáil Éireann not spend the long, hot summer debating this legislation?
We had a rather peculiar situation where the Minister for Local Government stated in the Dáil that he was not in touch with Deputy Dockrell when this Bill was being drawn up. Yet, only a few minutes before, at column 2095 of the Dáil Debates for 15th November, 1973, Deputy Dockrell said:
I welcome the Bill and the way in which the Minister has introduced it. He has been very fair minded about it and has been most helpful in the reception of criticism and proposals for alterations.
Deputy Dockrell believed that the Minister was fair minded in the reception of criticisms and proposals for alterations. I cannot understand this because we certainly did not get an opportunity of proposing alterations and that simply bears out what I have said: that that long hot summer that the Minister for Local Government promised Dáil Éireann and, I presume, it was meant too for the Fianna Fáil Party debating this legislation, was spent getting agreement from Fine Gael and Labour Deputies.