The Minister was going to bring out the skeleton from the cupboard.
Electoral (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, 1973: Committee Stage (Resumed).
SCHEDULE.
Debate resumed on amendment No. 3:
In page 4, to delete the entry relating to the constituency of Clare and substitute the following:
"
|
Name |
Area |
Number of Members |
|
Clare |
The administrative County of Clare and in the administrative County of Galway the following electoral divisions: Drummin, Coos, in the former Rural District of Portumna: |
Four |
|
Woodford, Loughatorick, Ballinagar and Derrylaur in the former Rural District of Loughrea. |
"
—(Senator Lenihan).
The Senator seems to be very anxious to have that. If he really wants it I will read it out. It is a matter for the House to decide.
Provided it contains the full facts, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
They are in fact recommendations which were made by the former Minister and which were instructions given by him to civil servants and which I instructed my civil servants to put down in writing because of the fact that somebody might be inclined to say that this was not done. It is on the file for Deputy Molloy to see. I have offered it to him in the other House on a number of occasions. If the House wants it I shall read it out.
What I want to make clear is that the point I made, which precipitated this, was that there must have been numerous drafts of possible ways in which the constituencies could be arranged. The Minister has hinted that he had particular arrangements in draft form which would be very embarrassing to Fianna Fáil. I said that he had mentioned it so often that he should really produce them and get this thing out of the way. I should like the Minister to produce these drafts provided he produces all the drafts and not a selective one which might be, from his point of view, interesting and perhaps embarrassing. There must have been numerous drafts. He either produces all the drafts or he does not produce any of them but he cannot produce one which might create a bit of a furore.
The instruction I gave was that I wanted all the proposals which had been made and put down in writing, as they were put down, whether they are for or against my arguments. They are here. I give my word that those are correct, as given to me by the civil servants, who simply did what they were told. I would be only too glad, because of the fact that there have been so many charges, if they were not in existence. I would be glad of the opportunity to put them on the record of this House and I am quite prepared to do so.
You, a Chathaoirleach, were not in the Chair when this argument began.
There is no need to recapitulate. I think the Senator will find that the Chair is sufficiently informed.
The Minister attempted to read the document without giving dates, reference numbers or indeed anything to tell us where this document originated. It would be very easy for me to come in here with a document, to say that I picked it up from the floor of Leinster House and that in that document was contained the Minister's original plans for County Limerick or County Donegal before certain Deputies persuaded him to change it.
It would be very easy for anyone to bring in a document that contains no signature, no reference number, no dates or anything else, and claim it was something that it was not. Therefore, the threat by the Minister to expose a plan is cutting no ice with us. However, I suppose he believes that if he can repeat it often enough, and if the newspapers pick it up and publish what he is saying, sufficient people will believe him.
I should like to give a reference which may help Senator McGinchey. It is: "The Electoral (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, 1973: notes for inclusion in Committee Stage brief re previous Government proposals." I should like to talk about the entry for Clare-Galway. That is exactly as it is stated. I explained how it was drawn up; there are pros and cons in it, but there are a number of points which would answer the charge which has been made against me, that is, that according to Opposition speakers, there should be a four-seater in Clare. I want to show that this was never the idea of the party to which they belong up to as recently as before the last election. Either they want it or they do not want it. I should like to read it into the records of the House but there appears to be a strong objection to doing that. We could waste a lot of time discussing it, without reading it in. In case somebody would accuse me of wasting time, I should prefer to do either one thing or the other.
If I may intervene to discuss this matter, the Minister now raises a very important principle. This matter was put forward by the Minister in the other House as well as here, on the basis that there were certain proposals for legislation available in his Department which were drawn up by the former Minister. Now it appears that he proposes to read something quite different. As I understand what he says now, there are a number of proposals.
I did not say that.
May I finish? The Minister can then correct me, if he wishes. This is an important matter of principle that we should clear up. As I understand the Minister, he says that there are no proposals in the sense of written——
When the Senator talks of a question of principle, is he talking of a matter of order in the House?
No, I am not raising a point of order: I am speaking on Committee Stage on amendment No. 3, and in particular on the Minister's document that he wishes to read relating to amendment No. 3. There is a matter of principle involved, not a matter regarding the procedure of this House.
The Senator is not suggesting that the Minister is not entitled to quote?
Yes, I am. If it is a point of order, then let it be a point of order. If the Chair wishes, I shall address myself to a point of order. The point of principle involved——
Again, to be clear, we are either discussing amendment No. 3, or we are discussing a point of order as to whether the Minister is entitled to quote from some document.
The Chair has, very rightly, complained about Senators, on occasions, making speeches in the guise of points of order. If this is about a point of order, I shall raise it as such. The point I wish to make is that, as I understand it, the Minister does not propose now to read written proposals made by a former Minister, but a sort of reconstruction of what may be in these proposals, made by some anonymous member of his Department—a civil servant.
This seems to me to be a very dangerous precedent that the Minister is trying to create. Confidential memoranda prepared by members of his Department—for the Minister himself in this case—are to be read in a House of Parliament. In other words, the Minister has asked a civil servant: "What went on between you and the former Minister?" The civil servant has said: "I will get this in writing." Now the Minister proposes to read this out. This seems to me to be an appalling breach of the confidentiality of the Civil Service. We are rightly not allowed to discuss in this House any individual civil servant. Here is a document prepared by a civil servant, at the Minister's request, on his memories of a previous Administration, and they are to be read out in this House. It is an appalling breach of principle.
The only appalling thing here is——
At the request of the Chair, I have raised this matter as a point of order. I would suggest, with respect, that it is a matter for the Chair.
The Chair is prepared to rule on the point of order. If at any time a Minister quotes from official documents he must be prepared to make the documents available to the House on formal request made by a Member of the House for him to do so. There is nothing in the rules of order to prevent the Minister from quoting. If any Senator thinks, having heard the quotation and having examined the nature of the document from which the quotation was made, that the Minister in any way offended against a principle of proper action, he can then by way of censure motion make his opinion known in regard to this, and seek appropriate action.
The only thing that is appalling is the fact that the Opposition, having challenged me to produce certain documents have, by various ruses, prevented me from reading them on to the record of the House.
This is nonsense.
(Interruptions.)
If you do not mind, I shall finish, then Senator Lenihan may——
The Minister interrupted 300 times during the Dáil debate.
The fellow who made that up cannot count too well. I am stating categorically that there were proposals made by my predecessor to deal with constituencies and, in particular, to deal with the one we are discussing. There were maps drawn but the original maps and the original documents were not in the Custom House when I arrived there. They were given into the custody of my predecessor. They were carbon copies and there were two copies of maps. There was no breach of privilege and Senator Yeats will not get away on that horse. There is no breach of privilege involved in this because I was entitled to find out what my predecessor proposed when I was drawing up a Constituencies Bill, and I have done so. I was entitled to find out what he proposed. He wasted Civil Service time if he did not propose it, but perhaps he was doodling then.
The Minister has been doodling for the past nine months.
I am producing the goods here. The goods are here now. If the Senator does not like it then I am afraid he will have to lump it.
(Interruptions.)
I am prepared either to read this into the records of the House or not. If the Fianna Fáil Party want it, I shall read it to the House, because they have asked for it. They have only to say they do not want it, which seems obvious to me now. In that case, I suggest we go on with the discussion of this Bill.
First, let the whole atmosphere subside and let the Minister behave as a Minister.
I have always behaved as a Minister.
Let us get this matter into perspective. A Chathaoirligh, you were not present before lunch: the Leas-Chathaoirleach was in the Chair, but I presume you have been fully informed about the nature of the document that has been mentioned by the Minister. Apparently this is a document based on the recollection of officials in the Department of Local Government. It was prepared after the Minister's advent to office by them on the basis of their recollection of ideas that the previous Minister was exchanging with them on the various options that he would incorporate in proposals—after he had come to a decision—to the Government in the form of a memorandum. On the basis of this the Government would be quite free to change, amend or reject, and the final product could go back to the Department of Local Government for incorporation, on foot of the Government decision, in a Bill for the Oireachtas.
This type of confidential exchange of views lies at the very root of the whole Government system in any democracy. A Minister teases matters out with his officials. They get any number of options from him as to what can be done and what should be done. There is total confidentiality and, indeed, the whole basis of the relationship between the Civil Service and a Minister in a democracy is founded on this total mutual trust and confidentiality. The whole basis of preparing confidential memoranda for a Government is on the very secure foundation, well-established over the years, that the Minister and his relevant officials can have a completely candid exchange of views. All sorts of views and all sorts of options are tossed about and exchanged from the point of view of debate and discussion takes place between the Minister and his officials before any memorandum is presented to the Government.
On many memoranda presented to the Government the officials and the Minister concerned might think up four or five different ways in which the Government could act either in regard to one constituency, in regard to a group of constituencies, in regard to the whole of the country, or in regard to any other legislative matter being brought before the Houses of the Oireachtas. This applies in the preparation. This is the way legislation is prepared and the officials here present from the Department of Local Government, if the Minister is not aware of it, are well aware of it.
Every Bill is processed in this way, starting on the foundation of either the Minister or the officials in his Department proposing that a certain course of action should be taken or that something should be done, whether it is in regard to constituencies, budgetary matters, a reform, an amendment, an improvement or a new policy development, whatever it is. Right across the whole range of administration ideas start in that way by an exchange of views between the Minister and officials, either initiated in some cases by the Minister or, in other cases, initiated by the officials. After an exchange of views between them various options are often thrown up by both the Minister and his officials and often totally opposite points of view are expressed. This happens in confidential discussion between the Minister and his officials. Views which are poles apart may be expressed and perhaps the Minister may depart from a particular attitude at first adopted. The Minister may take the reverse attitude to what he initially thought was the correct one. Perhaps officials may take similarly reverse attitudes from a discussion with the Minister and with other officials and depart from their original stance.
This is the way it works. The whole system works on the basis of this free exchange of views. There is certainly a very serious, damaging erosion of that principle if a new Minister comes in and extracts from his civil servants a post hoc, retrospective, recollection of what took place in a confidential exchange of views between the particular official and a previous Minister. That applies even among Ministers of the same Government. That would apply in regard to some successor of the Fine Gael Party, representing the Labour Party, who might want to have a look at what the previous Minister for Local Government was doing. If you start on this sort of slippery slope you are entering a very dangerous area.
I want to say, finally, just to reject totally what the Minister has just stated that we in any way do not want this document revealed that I welcome the revelation of this document. The Minister has offered to reveal it and be it on the Minister's own head. If he wants to reveal it let him do so. I want to put the matter totally in perspective. The perspective of the matter is that the Minister is revealing a hearsay document written down by an official as to his recollection of what took place. It was one of many options and many discussions that I am certain took place between the relevant official and his Minister. It is, on the Minister's own admission, undated with no reference number and no signature to it. Other than being a recollection by an official of the Department of Local Government as to a conversation that took place between that official and his Minister, I am sure it was one of a hundred such discussions and conversations that took place between officials and the Minister at that time as, indeed, take place prior to the preparation of every piece of legislation.
In conclusion, I should like to say that the Minister is well aware now that any such proposal, after full discussion between Minister and officials, would come before the Government of the day in the form of a memorandum. The Government would consider that memorandum and then send the Minister back to his Department having told him to prepare a Bill along the lines on which the Government had decided. Such a memorandum never came before the previous Government. What the Minister is talking about now has nothing to do with the Minister's decision. It has nothing to do with the Government's decision. What the Minister is talking about is a recollection by an official of a discussion that he had with his then Minister. That is what the Minister is quoting from at this stage. It is unsigned, undated, and has no reference number whatever. The Minister is welcome to parade that type of document. Be it on his own head for starting a very dangerous and a very serious precedent.
May I point out that there is no question of a dangerous precedent being involved? I am talking about document which were not the recollection of any particular civil servant. I resent the suggestion that the Civil Service in some peculiar way were a party to something——
They may be corrupted by you.
I take a very poor view of that. I think the Senator should not be allowed to make an allegation like that against civil servants in this or the other House.
I would ask Senator Lenihan to recollect what he said, which was to make a charge against the Minister of corrupting civil servants.
When I say corrupting, I mean corrupting in the moral sense. I do not mean in any financial sense. Certainly it is corruption in my view in the moral and political sense if an incoming Minister of whichever party seeks to extract from officials in his Department a recollection of confidential discussions that took place between those officials and the previous Minister. That is moral and political corruption.
This was not a confidential discussion. These are maps and written documents which were prepared on the instructions of the then Minister for Local Government.
Let us have them.
I have offered to let you have the contents of what was in those documents. What I am trying to prove is that the proposal was, right from 1972 up until the Minister left office, that there would be four three-seaters in the west. These four three-seaters would include Clare. To come in here and attempt to try to put it across that, in fact, it was always the intention to undo what was done in the last carve-up by Fianna Fáil and give a four-seater to Clare and a five-seater to East Galway is entirely untrue. Four three-seaters——
Who signed the documents?
Deputy Bobby Molloy prepared this. I have got the map. I have got the documents and there is nothing wrong with producing evidence which is there and was left there. Let me tell Senator Lenihan that when I leave the office, whether my stay there is short or long, anyone lucky enough to go into the Custom House to succeed me will be welcome to look at any files that are left by me, because I will leave no phoney ones. I will leave none over which I would bow my head in shame.
Cut out the bluster.
(Interruptions.)
The previous Minister took them with him but there was a copy kept.
I have here a very important document that I propose to read from. It states that the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs has advised the Minister for Local Government that the best way to screw Deputy Coughlan in Limerick city is to make East Limerick a three-seater——
Amendment No. 3.
——and West Limerick a four-seater. It is a very important document.
It is not relevant. There has been sufficient discussion, in my opinion, as to the nature and the value of the document or documents under discussion and as to the propriety of them being revealed. If the Minister wishes to quote from these documents and to place them in the Library for the information of Members he is entitled to do so. If the Minister wishes to quote I suggest that he should quote now without further general discussion and arrange to table the document. If the Minister does not wish to quote, then the discussion should be resumed on amendment No. 3, or a decision on it taken.
On a point of order, do I understand you Sir to say that the Minister may not quote it unless he is prepared to put the document on the table of the House?
If he is so requested. I take it the Senators request that if the quotation is made the document is to be tabled.
On another point of order, if the Minister is going to quote or produce a document here, would he assure us that he is not just going to select documents and quotations——
It is quite clear that when a quotation is made from a document the complete document must be tabled.
If the Minister is to select a document and if there is another document which says otherwise or suggests otherwise, is the Minister prepared to include that as well?
The situation is that there must be a tabling of the document quoted from. One cannot extend that to say that one must table all related documents which have not been quoted from.
I think that it would be utterly unfair and would distort the picture if the Minister were to produce one document and leave out another document in relation to the same thing.
It is quite obvious that Fianna Fáil do not want this to go on the record of the House. If they do not, I will not take it any further.
Surely the Minister is not going to hide the matter that way? We have repeatedly said that we want these documents.
Will I be allowed to read?
I suggest that the Minister make the point now.
This is the Electoral (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, 1973; notes for inclusion in Committee Stage brief re previous Government proposals. The reference is to Clare-Galway. It is the only document relating to this and it contains both pros and cons.
The counties of Clare and Galway (together with parts of County Roscommon) are divided presently into four three-seat constituencies namely West Galway, North-East Galway, Clare-South Galway and Clare. Three different approaches were considered in this area, each involving the continuance of the existing position viz., four three-seat constituencies.
It was proposed (in August, 1972) that 2,960 persons from the Liscannor, Kilshanny, and Kilfenora districts of Clare be transferred from the existing constituency of Clare to Clare-South Galway. To offset this, Clare-South Galway was to part with 2,000 persons from the Ballydangan, Cloonfad areas of County Roscommon who were to be transferred to Roscommon-Leitrim. North-East Galway was to receive 2,733 persons from the Oranmore, Claregalway, Annaghadown areas of Galway from West Galway and lose the district electoral divisions of Donamon, Athleague East and Lacken—total population 1,070—from County Roscommon to Roscommon-Leitrim.
The Minister indicated in relation to the initial scheme submitted for the West that he did not want to have the Oranmore, Annaghadown areas removed from the West Galway constituency and that if possible the part of Oranmore town which is not contained in the district electoral division of Oranmore—the new Kilraine estate— should be added to the constituency. This new approach necessitated changes in most of the other constituencies in the West.
In a revised scheme submitted in September, 1972 the townlands of Moneyduff and Oranhill—population 36—which include the Kilraine estate, from the district electoral division of Clarenbridge, were taken from Clare-South Galway and added to West Galway.
In relation to North-East Galway it was proposed that that constituency would take a total of 2,286 persons from the Kilconnell area of Galway from the constituency of Clare-South Galway and give 617 persons—the district electoral division of Fuerty in Roscommon—to Roscommon-Leitrim. It was proposed that Clare-South Galway to compensate it for the population being transferred to West Galway and North-East Galway would receive 3,204 persons from the Liscannor, Kilfenora area of Clare and the district electoral division of Dysart and Templemaley in Clare. The remainder of the constituency of Clare would form the final constituency.
Further proposals (in December 1972) envisaged Clare as outlined above but proposed changes in relation to the other constituencies in the area. Clare-South Galway was again to receive 3,204 persons from Clare and to give 2,286 persons to North-East Galway and 36 to West Galway. In addition it was to give a further 170 persons from the district electoral division of Stradbally to North-East Galway. North-East Galway it was proposed was to cede the district electoral division of Liscananaun—population 687—to West Galway. West Galway it was proposed would give 2,184 persons from the Letter-brickaun, Cong and Cloonbur areas of Galway, to West Mayo.
That is the end of the quotation.
Would the Senators who have been arguing here for so many hours that they wanted a four-seater——
On a point of order, the Minister has now finished quoting this document. I would like him to put on the record the name of the civil servant who prepared it for him.
No, Sir, I do not propose to do that.
He has quoted, not a ministerial document, but a document prepared for him by some unnamed person and he has chosen to read it out in the Seanad. It is necessary, therefore, that, having decided to make it public, surely the name of the person who prepared it ought to be given.
I am the person responsible for it. As Minister, I take full responsibility for it.
The Minister is not the person responsible for it. The Minister said that this is a document that was in his Department before he became Minister.
No. I did not. I said it was one which was prepared on my instructions, and I take full responsibility for it. It was prepared from the documents which were left in the Department.
The position is that the Minister has quoted from the document. As it has been requested that this document be made available in the Library to Members of the House, this will be done. It will be ultimately my responsibility to ensure that it is done, but there is nothing in the rules of order which requires any information to be given other than the document itself.
Arising out of your decision, I think it is important that we should be quite clear in the House as to the nature of the document which the Minister has read out. Am I right in defining it as a typewritten document, prepared by an official of the Department of Local Government on the Minister's instructions? Am I right in saying that this typewritten document, without any file number or serial number or date is the recollection, by an official, of confidential discussions and proposals that were going back and forth between the previous Minister and that official or other officials in the Department? Is this the nature of the document?
No. This is a document which was prepared on my instructions from the documents which were left, including reference to maps which were prepared.
In that case surely what we should be given is not this secondhand thing but we should be given the original documents on which this is alleged to be based.
I have read the document and that is what you are getting. You asked for it and you were entitled to get it. Now you have got it and if you do not like it do not try to find another way out of this.
The Minister kept insisting that this was a document prepared by his predecessor. He now comes along and tells us under crossexamination that it is not.
This is not a court of law.
This is a document which was produced from a number of documents.
Let us be quite clear. The Chair has no control over any document other than the document from which the Minister has quoted. I have already indicated that when this document is tabled it is open to any Senator to put down a motion in regard to the document—in regard to the circumstances surrounding its preparation and its tabling in the Library. That is something which should be done after the tabling of the document.
I am glad for the elucidation of the position by the Cathaoirleach because we propose to put down such a motion on it. We think there is an important public issue involved in this matter in putting forward a secondhand document of this kind without any signature, date or reference number based on some anonymous compilation of what is alleged to be an original document or a recollection on the part of that official. Certainly, it is a highly undesirable development. If that sort of matter can be paraded here in the House by a Minister or anybody with access to Civil Service files, then the whole basis of the confidentiality on which rests the whole relationship between the administration and the Government of the day is completely undermined. That motion will be lodged with the Seanad.
I would like to go back again to the matter under discussion. Nothing that has emerged in this bit of paper in any way takes from the best logic in our point because, as a Member of a Government that brought in two of these Bills, I know that Bills of this kind concerning constituency rearrangements undoubtedly attract the interest of all Ministers in a particular Government. Basically the ultimate Bill that has emerged and that we are discussing now was the subject of considerable discussion, I am sure, by Members of the present Government. I am sure that there were many proposals put forward within the Minister's Department by himself and by his officials. The proposals may have been rejected out of hand or amended, or adjusted by the present Government prior to the publication of the Bill.
This shows the futility of the Minister's whole exercise in producing a document of this kind and in the futile pursuit of scoring a petty point he has sought to erode the very sensitive relationship that exists between any Minister and his Civil Service. This has happened in the pursuit of a totally unnecessary point. Of course, there are bound to be documents expressing contradictory views—as I said earlier on— in every Government Department prior to the preparation of every Bill.
The Senator has given notice that this matter will be dealt with by way of relevant motion and I think it would in the interest of the debate if he confined himself to the amendments.
I am just coming to the point. The point that I am going to make is that this particular typescript takes nothing from our fundamental point that is based on what would a judicial commission or commissioner or tribunal or some impartial body of that kind do faced with the situation in regard to Clare and East Galway.
I will confine myself to those two amendments that are basic and fundamental to our position here. These two amendments are part of the group that we are here discussing. I would like to emphasise these amendments—amendments Nos. 9 and 10. I would take amendment No. 3 out of the group. I do not propose now at this stage to delay the House by discussing the matter which we have criticised already in regard to the adjustments that have been made in Mayo, Sligo, Donegal, Leitrim, Roscommon.
I will concentrate on Galway and Clare and in particular on West Galway and Clare. I would like to put myself, this House and the Minister in the position of an impartial tribunal that would look at that situation. The situation in quite net and clear terms is that County Clare is a natural four-seat constituency. We propose in our very sensible amendment here that it should be a four-seat constituency with the addition of a few small townlands adjacent to it in South County Galway. There the territorial identity is preserved.
Why did you not do it in 1969?
I am certain that since 1969 the population of Clare rose substantially and that the population of County Clare as such by this year had reached the situation where the county itself practically merits a four-seat constituency. In fact, County Louth and County Clare are practically identical in regard to population and the rise in population. In Louth and Clare there has been a substantial rise in population over the past three or four years, thanks be to God. It is agreed that there has been a bigger rise in Louth than in Clare, but here are two counties with such an increase in poulation as to warrant on any mature consideration of this Bill in 1974 four seats for Louth and four seats for Clare but, while Louth has been given four seats, Clare has not.
I am going to use these two counties as a real test of the Minister's bona fides and sincerity. We will fight this out on Report Stage as well, if necessary on the principle enshrined in the adjustments made by the Minister and the Government in regard to the two counties. By reason of a rise in population, due to our industrial development policy in the Shannon area which has led to an increase in jobs, County Clare now merits four seats just as County Louth merits four seats by reason of similar development and increased populations in Drogheda, Dundalk, Dunleer and Ardee.
That argument was just as valid in 1969.
Senator Halligan can check the figures. They are there in the book of population statistics. He can check on the figures in regard to Louth and Clare. There is an identical parallel development. There is a greater population rise in Louth. There is a population rise in Clare as well which almost brings it to four seats. The population rise in Louth brings it to four seats.
These two counties have received totally different treatment. It would not be tolerated by any impartial commissioner who, looking at these two counties, would say: "These are counties that constitutionally merit four seats by reason of the rise in population. They fulfil the constitutional criterion of 20,000 people per representative with a tolerance of 1,000 either way." As I said earlier what is implicit in the judgement of Mr. Justice Budd, taking constitutional criteria into consideration is that county boundaries should not be breached, but they can be breached if it is in accordance with the Constitution. In other words, the Judge based his judgment on the fact that there should be observance of the constitutional criteria but as far as possible county boundaries should be observed.
Clare gets totally different treatment from Louth. Louth has got a four-seater but Clare did not get a four-seater. In spite of the overwhelming evidence that Clare should be a four-seater, there is added to West Galway from Clare over a third of the townlands set out in the Schedule right down to the town of Ennis itself. That is more than halfway down in County Clare and is logically the capital and county town. There is taken out of County Clare the whole of north-west Clare down to the town of Ennis, over to Ennistymon, up to Lisdoonvarna and Ballyvaughan, and back into a West Galway constituency that stretches as far as Clifden.
Inishbofin.
Indeed, Inishbofin, as I have been reminded by Senator Killilea, which is beyond Clifden again. Here, again, not alone has violence been done to the County Clare when its natural administrative county merited four seats but also violence has been done to an area that can almost be regarded as a county because it is such a natural unit—the present constituency of West Galway. It has been a constituency, give or take a few townlands, for a number of years. In fact, as long as West Galway has been a constituency it has always been based on a very simple balance of representation, population and geography in the sense that Galway city and its hinterland represented about half the constituency, Connemara representing the other half. It was a completely natural three-seat constituency. You could not devise a more model three-seat constituency, with Galway city as the capital, its immediate hinterland representing one type of area and Connemara representing another.
There is a natural community of interest, a natural association, a natural loyalty, and a natural unit in every sense of the word. Violence has been done to this constituency on this occasion as well by importing into it a third of a county that has been raped in the process and relegated to a three-seat status. Can the Minister answer the logic of this case—I have asked him to do so.
There are seven seats in that area. We intend on Report Stage to put down an amendment that will bring this even clearer home to the Minister, his officials and this House. A lot of trouble would be ended and the Minister——
My officials do not come into this at all, good, bad or indifferent.
(Interruptions.)
It must be quite clear that the Minister is responsible for all proposals that come before the House.
Intimidation is starting here and you will not get away with that with my officials as long as I am Minister. You will not intimidate us.
(Interruptions.)
Senator Lenihan, without intervention from either side.
We propose to put down an amendment on Report Stage, if the one that is down here is rejected, in relation to the County Clare area the administrative county area, and the natural unit area of Galway-West, as it now stands—Galway city and Connemara. You have a population that justifies seven seats. The Minister has, in his endeavour to secure a distortion of the representation of that seven seats, raped the county of Clare and made three seats out of it and four seats out of a new West-Galway, NorthWest Clare constituency.
That could be done far more logically, rationally, judicially and indeed, more in consonance, with public morality, by having East-Galway as a three-seater and Clare as a four-seater instead of the Minister's abortion of East-Galway as a four-seater and Clare as a three-seater. There is no answer to that. Any impartial commissioner called on to adjudicate on how these constituencies should be rearranged would have to agree with my submission. I suggest that the reason for this change is not so much in the relationship between West-Galway and Clare, because they represent two natural entities, but the purpose of this exercise is to deprive the East-Galway constituency of five seats to which it is entitled.
They will make a TD out of you yet.
The purpose of this exercise is to make East-Galway a four-seat constituency, reducing it from its entitlement to five seats and thereby depriving a quota of people of their representation in the Dáil. The Minister is well aware from the election figures that in any rational distribution of an East-Galway constituency based on the towns of Gort, Loughrea, Athenry, Tuam, Dunmore, Mountbellew, Ballinasloe, Eyrecourt, Kilimer and Portumna and the rural hinterlands adjacent to them, that particular area is entitled to five seats. However, because of its loyalty to the Fianna Fáil organisation, that particular area would return three Fianna Fáil TDs to Dáil Éireann out of five.
That is the purpose of all this convoluted reasoning in regard to East Galway and Clare. I have refrained from saying it heretofore, and I have spoken a number of times on this Bill—I was seeking to get from the Minister some rational reason why he reversed the natural order of things and made an abortion of East-Galway and Clare in order to create a four-seat constituency in Galway and a three-seat constituency in Clare when it should be the exact reverse, on all the accepted norms of any impartial approach towards the adjustment—that I am driven to the conclusion that this was politically motivated in the interests of depriving East-Galway of the extra seat to which it was entitled and in particular of an extra seat which in all probability would be a Fianna Fáil seat. The natural five-seat constituency of Galway based on towns I have mentioned, all of which have a similar character and form, with additions from County Roscommon—I can tell the Minister these additions are very similar in type and character to the parts of County Galway to which they are adjacent—being deprived of its entitlement to five seats has resulted, in the absence of any rational explanation, in the rape of East-Galway and Clare by the Minister for the purpose of depriving 20,000 electors of their legitimate representation.
The next election will prove my point, that if the Minister gets away through his steam-rolling majority with having four seats in East Galway, we in the Fianna Fáil organisation will get practically three quotas and will get only two seats out of four. If that is not gerrymandering with a capital "G" on a large and massive scale, I do not know what it is. The Minister knows from the election figures in that particular part of the country, not just in the last election or the previous election but since the formation of this State, that that part of the country has always been strongly loyal to our organisation. That is not a crime yet in this country, despite the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and other people who might try to propagandise the people into the view that it is.
These are very ordinary decent people living in the heart of a very decent county. These people, who are representative of rural Ireland, are being deprived in their right to send three Deputies of their choice into the Dáil. They are being gerrymandered out of the exercise of their rights in having a Deputy for practically 20,000 of their people. They are being condemned, having practically three quotas, to have only two seats out of four—only 50 per cent of the representation when they are entitled to a clear majority of the representation. In the next election, in that constituency, mark my words, as sure as night follows day, that will happen. We will get practically three quotas. We might get the three seats out of four, too, even though it is a highly difficult operation. In all justice we are entitled to be in a position to represent those people properly on behalf of our organisation.
That is the purpose of the whole shabby exercise in regard to Clare and West-Galway. That shabby exercise is the most blatant piece of gerrymandering ever engaged in and you will find nothing like it in the North of Ireland—nothing like what has been done in regard to West-Galway and Clare.
You will find it in the 1969 Act, and you know it.
It is being done quite blatantly for the purpose of depriving 20,000 people of their legitimate representation through our organisation in Dáil Éireann.
I should like to comment on this again because I must remind the Opposition, and particularly Senator Lenihan, of a couple of points. First of all apparently the only thing that makes Fianna Fáil change their mind is losing an election. They changed their mind on the question of having a commission immediately after they lost the election. Now they have changed their mind on the number of seats which we should have in various areas.
You changed your mind.
There never was a suggestion from anybody in Fianna Fáil that there would be anything but three seats in Clare until the amendment came in. The proof of that is there for anybody to see. Secondly, who took the seat from Clare in the first place? Did Fianna Fáil not take a seat away from us? The reason they took it—blatant gerrymandering says Senator Lenihan. Do not forget the fourth seat in Clare at that time was a Labour seat. Senator Lenihan is now terribly anxious to give Senator Killilea a seat in East-Galway. He would present him with five seats although all the documents which Fianna Fáil produced up until they left office was for three seats for East-Galway. Would you have a bit of sense, Senator Killilea, and not let them be codding you like that. You are outside and they are trying to keep you outside.
Poor Justice Budd, he has been misquoted and words have been put into his mouth by Senator Lenihan. He misquoted him four times today. It is only fair to the good man that I should put the facts straight. At page 146, Irish Reports, 1961, this is a quotation which Senator Lenihan has not given. He has been misquoting all morning and for a period last night. This is what he said:
Here let me observe straightaway that although a system in the main based on counties has in fact been adopted, there is nothing in the the Constitution about constituencies being based on counties. The Constitution does not say that in forming the constituencies according to the required ratio, that shall be done so far as is practicable having regard to county boundaries. Even if it did, the Oireachtas or the appropriate Minister could alter county boundaries. No doubt it is convenient in many ways to use the existing administrative machinery: and there is nothing objectionable in a certain degree of adherence to the county basis of division provided that the dictates of the Constitution are observed. But it should be understood that it is quite open to the Legislature to disregard county boundaries altogether and to formulate a scheme of constituencies on an entirely different basis if that be necessary to achieve the required ratio.
Senator Lenihan has been misquoting the poor man all day. This is exactly what he said. I will give him the quotation and let him look it up if he feels like it, and not let us have another point of order. We have had about 100 today. I should be allowed to make a few comments without another one.
Not East Galway.
This debate has been based on the question of having a four-seater in Clare, a five-seater in East Galway and a three seater in West Galway. Fianna Fáil want this and have put down an amendment. The question did not arise other than a three-seater West Galway, a three-seater in East Galway, a three-seater in Clare——
We are talking about Clare-Galway.
The three constituencies we are talking about here were down as three-seaters. They are trying to cod Senator Killilea that if he succeeded in getting a nomination the next time he might possibly get the fifth seat. Senator Killilea suggested last week we might have a seven-seater or even an 11 - or 13-seater. He would not object to it, as he might get the thirteenth. He states it was proposed by amendment to give five seats to the area in which he hopes to stand while in all the thinking of Fianna Fáil it has always been a two-seater.
On a point of order——
Another of them.
The Minister is now talking about Fianna Fáil thinking. On numerous occasions the Minister talked about the documents he had in his Department which he was threatening to produce. This was Fianna Fáil thinking, he said. When we finally called his bluff and made him produce something, what he produced was a document prepared under his auspices and was nothing more than the recollection of officials in his Department. There was no document.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Senator, your point of order is really a speech.
It is a point of order that the Minister is talking about Fianna Fáil thinking. I am referring back to some document.
This is outrageous, that a Senator——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Minister should be allowed to continue. It is not a point of order.
It is outrageous that Senator Ryan should hector both the Chair and myself by suggesting that he knows what I was thinking of. I repeat what I have stated. There is no evidence anywhere that the idea of having anything except a three-seater for East Galway and a three-seater for Clare existed in anything produced by Fianna Fáil until now. They know they have not a snowball's chance in hell of having it passed so therefore they put it in and perhaps tried to persuade Senator Killilea they were doing something for him. They did not do it when they had the chance. I am satisfied that the constituencies drawn up in this area have been drawn up fairly. Nothing stated here today has convinced anybody otherwise. It is a waste of time debating them any further.
First of all, arising from this said document—I will call it that in order to be clear so that I will not be crossed by the Minister in any statement I make—I should like to make it crystal clear to this House that at this stage I wish to vindicate Deputy Molloy, ex-Minister for Local Government. According to what the Minister read in this House, Deputy Molloy proposed, according to this supposed document that we were to have, a three-seater in Clare, a three-seater in Clare-Galway, a three-seater in West Galway and a three-seater in North-East Galway. I am referring specifically to the amendment concerning Clare-Galway to which the Minister has brought this debate. Four threes are 12.
Very good, excellent.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Senator Killilea should be allowed to continue.
I certainly should. It is only now Senator Halligan and the Minister have clearly understood the principle of this alleged document. I accept the document in a way, because it clears Deputy Molloy of any gerrymandering, as he was giving 12 seats to Clare-Galway. The present Minister proposes to give them 11 seats. We on this side of the House are not in a position to do anything about the situation except to try to arrange the constituencies of Clare-Galway on the basis of the 11 seats. The Minister took that seat from us.
We ask in this amendment to have Galway and Clare re-arranged in a better way than at present. The Minister has admitted through his supposed document that Deputy Molloy had intended to give to Clare-Galway 12 Dáil seats. The Minister for Local Government now proposes under this Bill to give them 11. The Minister will state they were adding part of Clare to Clare-Galway. This is true but they were adding it on the basis of a three-seater. It was not towards Tipperary Deputy Molloy was going. He was remaining along the border of Clare and Galway in Liscannor. The Minister stated Liscannor was to be added to the Clare-Galway constituency in order to bring it up. For the Minister's information, Liscannor is about six miles from Galway city.
It was the accent——
The Minister does not know much about it. I ask him to pay some heed to us. He is in muddy water in the west of Ireland without a hope of clearing it. There is not a west of Ireland man to help him, even from his own side of the House. I have noticed throughout this debate how Senator John Mannion has not been sitting there for longer than ten minutes. He is not showing disrespect to me but to the Minister for Local Government, because the Minister is nailing him to the cross in order to put Senator Michael D. Higgins from Galway into the Dáil.
The Senator is sitting too near to Senator McGlinchey.
He ballyragged the previous Minister for Local Government about this Electoral Bill. He has vindicated him today. He is saying that Deputy Molloy was not depriving the west of Ireland of its proper representation but was giving to Counties Clare and Galway 12 Dáil seats. To add to that, Deputy Molloy was so kind to the west that he was giving back—correct me if I am wrong, Senator Lenihan—part of Roscommon to Roscommon-Leitrim. Am I not correct?
Correct.
Which Kevin Boland took away in the first place.
I will not cross-examine the Minister; I will tell him. He should get up and apologise to Deputy Molloy for all this hypocrisy. This is the lowest guttersnipe, parish-pump, political hypocrisy that I have ever heard in my life. The Minister had me afraid for a long time that Deputy Molloy had done something wrong. The Minister was so insistent about this document——
Wait until you read the Official Report.
The Minister should rise and read out more of those documents because the more of them he reads the better man Deputy Molloy becomes. When the Minister stands again within this House, within the other House or outside the House, he should apply public manners and take example from the former Minister for Local Government.
I would not learn any public manners from the Senator.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
I have asked the Senator to address his remarks to the Chair and not to individuals.
I have tried, a Leas-Chathaoirleach.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Senator should keep trying.
I will. Now we know exactly why Mr. Tully has tried this gerrymander. It becomes more and more obvious the longer we spend in this House that Mr. Tully has gerrymandered Galway and Clare.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Minister.
I beg your pardon. Mr. Tully, the Minister. This has become obvious from two points. The first point is that in defence of Senator Higgins, who he is trying to fix up, he turns to the Opposition side here and has the audacity to claim that the Fianna Fáil Party are fooling Senator Killilea. I informed the Minister for Local Government on Wednesday of Holy Week that people in glasshouses should not throw stones. After this "Securicor" job he has done for himself in Meath, where he got 14.1 per cent of the total vote of Meath, he still——
19.5 per cent.
If you like, a Leas-Chathaoirleach, while you have a chat with that man I shall sit down.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Senator should continue on the amendment. I would appeal to the House not to interrupt him.
The Minister cannot accept a fact. The fact cannot be denied. He had 14.1 per cent of the vote of Meath and I have or had 19.7 per cent of the vote of North-East Galway. If the Minister had 19.7 per cent of the vote of Meath he would not have to do the "Securicor" job that he did in Meath in order to maintain his seat. I know and he knows and this House knows and the people of Meath know that he is on the decline. The percentage to get in——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Senator Killilea should return to the amendment.
I was making the point because the Minister jumped from his chair. If the people of Galway elect me it will be their wish.
God help them.
If I stand before the people of Galway it will be my wish with the wish of the organisation that I represent, Fianna Fáil.
It was not, the last time.
Not at all. In fact, there are more culprits on that side of the House who had their names plastered across the walls of Longford and Westmeath who urged people to vote a man in with no political party at all behind them. I told you the story before. I had to go to the National Library to find out which party that man belonged to.
But not rejected by his own convention.
That is the very man now speaking. Do not throw stones, particularly when your defence is only glass because glass cracks very quickly.
You should stay your hand, then.
To move to this situation where the Minister has now left Galway and Clare with only 11 seats and still proceeded further to gerrymander in a way which suited his own party, even at the expense of the Fine Gael Party in this instance, I will try as a last effort to persuade the Minister, having heard what Senator Lenihan said and what I said earlier today, that there is a natural four-seater in Clare with the addition of 1,400 votes, approximately, from South Galway. There we have the natural, physical and cultural background of Galway city with Connemara for a three-seater, plus the agricultural situation that prevails in the other part of County Galway to make it a five-seater.
The Minister in his efforts to explain to this House—some people would take offence at the way in which he stooped so low as to implicate people who cannot defend themselves in this House —has made a farce of the whole situation. He has stated that Deputy Molloy, the previous Minister for Local Government, was giving to the counties of Galway and Clare 12 seats, giving back portion of Roscommon, and in addition was taking and adding to the original constituency of Clare-Galway another portion of Clare by and beside the Clare-Galway border, which is a natural progression. Deputy Molloy is quite free of all these scurrilous allegations made by Deputy Tully and members of the National Coalition. All those allegations are now finished. Deputy Molloy was not as bad a boy as Deputy Tully thought he was but Deputy Tully forgot how to make up the simple sum of multiplying four by three. It was the simplest of sums. He has forgotten so much that he forgot to do that simple sum. Deputy Molloy was giving to Clare-Galway 12 Dáil seats, was in fact giving back to Roscommon portion of the Roscommon constituency to Roscommon-Leitrim——
He was not giving you a chance.
——was giving North-East Galway three seats. He even quoted a place outside of Oranmore where there was a movement of only 35 people—the minimum movement of people, moving it into West Galway in order to maintain for the people of Connacht and particularly the people of Clare-Galway 12 Dáil seats. Now he has admitted, through this document that was used as ammunition or threatened ammunition for the last six months, both inside and outside the Houses of the Oireachtas, that Deputy Molloy's intention was to have three seats in North-East Galway, three seats in West Galway, three seats in Clare-Galway and three seats in Clare. That is exactly what Deputy Molloy proposed to do.
The Minister was talking about this terrible fellow, the former Minister for Local Government who, he said, did not even multiply 3 by 4, but now the Minister and his eastern Government have admitted publicly, for the first time, that they have deprived Galway and Clare of one Dáil seat. They have tried to gerrymander the remaining portion of the new proposed constituency of West Galway, in addition to the insult offered to the people of Clare by not naming them in that constituency. The Minister has called the people of Lahinch West Galway people and he now proposes to gerrymander the portion that is left in order to put his pals in the Labour Party in Dáil Éireann. During the weekend I ascertained in Galway that there will be two Labour Parties in Galway city. I am informed that Senator Noel Browne is going to contest a seat there.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
That is not relevant to the amendment.
It may not be, but it is a side effect.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Do not say it if it is not relevant to the amendment.
Through the gerrymander of the new West Galway constituency, we will have two Labour Parties. I do not yet know what their names are, but I hope they behave themselves better than they behaved themselves in Dublin South-West during the last by-election.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
It is not relevant to the amendment.
The Minister has been instructed by the Government: "Not an inch, not an inch, to the Opposition's proposals", to the amendments that we have suggested. The Minister has come in here and said "No, in no way will I tolerate any suggestion about Clare-Galway or any other constituency." The counties of Clare-Galway have been discussed here for so long that I am sure if the Minister would just cool down and clear the water around those islands, he would realise that so much has been made about Clare-Galway that the people there have such hard and ferocious feelings over this gerrymander——
I did not think there was a county called "Clare-Galway".
I said "the counties of Clare-Galway". It is bad enough that the Minister cannot multiply but now he does not seem to be able to hear properly. On numerous occasions I referred to "the counties of Clare and Galway". If the Minister thinks that we can continue to tolerate this situation, he is nailing his own coffin and nailing the coffin of the party of which he is a member and which are part of the National Coalition Government. He has come with a "not-an-inch" attitude and has been directed by the Government not to accept any amendment or recommendation of either House, which would help, in particular, the people of the counties of Clare and Galway, whom he has deprived of a Dáil seat, as now publicly stated.
I would ask the Minister for the second time today to reconsider this situation. There is now a glaring need for a reconsideration in view of the fact that he has publicly announced that there will be a seat less for those two counties. He has tried by every means to tantalise the Opposition. He has tried the old pro-British attitude of divide and conquer, but it has not worked. All he has done is to declare to the public, by the document he read here today, that Deputy Molloy was giving four three-seat constituencies to Galway and to Clare counties. The Minister has deprived them of one seat. I ask him again to reconsider the situation.
We know quite well that there is a vast difference between the cultures of the people of Connemara and those of Lahinch. There is also a complete difference between the culture of the people of Galway city and that of the people of Lahinch. Now that we have brought this whole situation out into the open, will he again consider changing to our proposal of having four seats for Clare, and making West Galway a three-seater and East Galway a five-seater, in view of the allegation that Deputy Molloy has purported to connive at a peculiar situation in the revision of the constituencies, when, in fact, after reading the supposed document produced by officials in the Department and the Minister, Deputy Tully, we find that Deputy Molloy proposed to give us 12 seats when the Minister is giving only 11?
While it does not appear that, as a result of this debate, we are going to be able to persuade the Minister to see some element of reason, and to accept at least some of our amendments, nonetheless I think that something has been accomplished, as a result of the debate.
During the discussions in the Dáil, in the course of a number of interjections and interventions, the Minister dealt with this claim of his that he could show to anybody who was interested a variety of proposals by the former Minister which were contained in the Department with regard to the proposed redistribution of the constituencies. Again last week the Minister came into this House on the 11th April with his somewhat aggressive opening speech. As I mentioned at the time, in the class of Second Reading speeches made by the Ministers it was unique because of the aggressive, highly political, contentious way in which it was put before us. But at column 995, Volume 77, of the Seanad Debates the Minister said:
Let me say something else. With all the caterwauling from the Fianna Fáil benches——
mark the pleasant, friendly, atmosphere that the Minister was generating even at that early stage.
——it is an extraordinary thing that for a couple of years both the right and the duty were there for Fianna Fáil to do this, but apart from the doodling which my predecessor did in the Custom House, and Senator Yeats was right, there was no Bill but there were reams of paper. There were umpteen proposals and maps which I offered to Deputy Molloy if he wished to see.
I offered to produce the physical evidence. Despite what was taken away before I assumed office, the copies are there, and if some of the Senators and Deputies in Fianna Fáil saw some of the ideas which my predecessor had stored up for them they would have a fit.
Here we have the Minister at the beginning of this debate talking about reams of paper and umpteen proposals which he said he would produce. He was asked to produce them.
I am sorry, I do not like interrupting the Senator. I produced them only with reference to Clare-Galway. I have got piles of documents. It is not in order to produce documents about the other constituencies.
I think I should make my point clear. What the Minister produced is in relation to Clare-Galway and I accept that on this amendment he would not be in order producing anything else. What he produced in regard to Clare-Galway was not a proposal, let alone umpteen proposals, nor was it any part of a ream of paper left behind by the former Minister. This, as I understand it, was a document prepared at the request of the present Minister during the period of office of the present Minister by some unnamed servant of the present Minister of his memories of what happened on a previous occasion. In other words, there was no proposal left behind by the former Minister. There was no copy of a proposal left behind by the former Minister. There was no part of any ream of paper left behind by the former Minister.
That is not so. I should like to contradict the Senator just now. It is copies of the documents which were left behind that I have got here. I made that clear. There is no point in trying to continue that. That is untrue.
If the Minister will read the report of this debate when it comes out he will find that he told us categorically that, in fact, there were no written proposals. He claimed they had all been taken away, that these were the memories of some——
"Carbon copies" are the words I used. "Carbon copies"— the Senator will find it in the debate.
Why did the Minister not produce them?
No, I did not.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
We are getting away from the amendment.
I shall not go on with this point, but the Minister certainly is now coming back to his original attack. He said quite clearly that there were no documents, that this was merely a memory. If there are documents he should have produced them. It was the thing to do, and he has not produced them.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Could I ask the Senator to continue on the amendment?
I assure the Chair that I am going to leave this point now. It seems to me a highly unsatisfactory situation, but nonetheless, the basic point I wish to make is with regard to the specific position of Clare. To be quite candid I do not care a hoot what the former Minister was going to do. The present Minister for Local Government is Deputy James Tully, who is coming before us with this item of legislation. It is his Bill. It is not Deputy Molloy's Bill. It is not Deputy Blaney's Bill. It is not Deputy Boland's Bill. It is the Bill brought before us by the Minister who is present here today. It is his responsibility. It is his duty to do what he believes to be right; and really what anybody else on any previous occasion in the course of reams of paper, or doodling, or umpteen proposals or whatever you may like to call them, may have done is of only very limited interest, at least as far as I am concerned.
I am interested, and I think we are all interested, in what the Minister himself is bringing before us. Therefore when I ask the Minister for the reasons which impelled him to make a truncated county of Clare into a three-seat constituency instead of into a four-seat constituency, I do so in the hope that the Minister, in the carrying out of his personal responsibilities as a member of the present Government, will tell me what his thinking was, what impelled him to do this, not what impelled any previous Minister on a previous occasion to think of doing it in a particular way. It is the Minister's responsibility. The Minister, I admit, had the political misfortune to be in Opposition for a considerable number of years. I think that now that he has been in office for something over a year it is time he realised that he is now in office, that he has responsibilities, that he cannot shift off his responsibilities by saying that somebody else would have done something different, or even done the same. It is his responsibility.
We all know that Clare originally had four seats. As a result of falling population—and if the Minister cares to examine the census report he will find that I am right—particularly a fall of several thousand in the years before 1961, it became necessary to reduce Clare to three seats from four. Now we have the position that as a result of the increasing population shown by the census of 1971 the population of Clare is such that an additional 1,400 or so of population added to the county would enable a four-seat constituency to be set up almost exactly coinciding with the ordinary boundary of Clare, with a marginal number, an addition of perhaps 2 per cent, to the existing population of Clare, an addition made from County Galway in order to enable them to be made a four-seat constituency.
As we have already pointed out, the county of Clare has a larger population than that of the county of Louth. The Minister himself rightly told us that Louth had to be made a four-seater because it was so near to the constitutional margin that obviously you could do nothing else. He made his own constituency of Meath into a four-seater, although it had several thousand fewer population. These things are there on the record. I do think therefore that we are entitled to ask the Minister in the exercise of his personal responsibilities why, when he had the decision to make—and it was basically a decision to be made between West Galway and Clare, as to whether West Galway was to be a four-seater and Clare a three-seater, or Clare a four-seater and West Galway a three-seater—he did it in such a way that over 12,000 inhabitants of Clare were put into West Galway, whereas by taking it the other way he could have made West Galway into a three-seat constituency and Clare into a four by adding as a minimum 1,400 of the inhabitants of Galway in order to make Clare a relatively coherent county constituency of four seats.
As between these two choices—and I accept that these were basically the choices before the Minister—there are only two things that could be done. I think we are entitled to ask the Minister to tell us why he made the particular choice that he made, why he chose to put 12,000 people from Clare into Galway rather than a mere 1,500 or 2,000 from Galway into Clare. It is a simple question and I think we are entitled to a simple and honest answer.
The attitude taken by the Minister in Louth was correct; in Meath it may have been correct, but neither of these showed any consistent pattern with his decision with regard to Clare. He told us on several occasions that he had endeavoured, in carrying out this distribution, to avoid as far as possible the breaching of county boundaries. We all must accept that as a result of the entirely undesirable situation in which we are, with this extraordinarily narrow tolerance which, it is suggested the law required, which does not exist in any other country, it is impossible in many cases to avoid breaching county boundaries. Presumably, the action taken by any Minister in dealing with a matter of this kind should be, while breaching county boundaries on perhaps many occasions, to endeavour to breach them as little as is reasonably possible.
In Clare and West Galway there is this simple decision of a very small breach in boundaries with 1,500 or 2,000 taken in from Galway to Clare, or a very large scale one as the Minister has done. It is simply impossible in the absence of an explanation by the Minister to conceive why the Minister has decided to take this particular decision. Would he tell us why he did take this simple decision to make Clare a three-seater and Galway West a four-seater instead of the other way around which, from every possible viewpoint, seems a more coherent and sensible step?
We have been attempting and, I think, have succeeded in showing that we have complete and utter contempt for the manner in which the constituencies on the western seaboard have been drawn. I think it has been pointed out very clearly that our primary aim is to ensure that counties on the western seaboard and in the northern part of the country do not lose seats. It has been pointed out on many occasions that it has taken a greater number of people in rural Ireland and the western seaboard and in the northern provinces to elect a Deputy than it does in Dublin city. This, to us, is very unfair.
We were not at any time afraid of three-set constituencies in any part of Ireland. Indeed, in the so-called documents that the Minister has produced, second-hand, Deputy Molloy, the former Minister for Local Government, was, according to the Minister making three-seaters in Clare and Galway. The point I want to make, which could not be emphasised often enough, is that by doing that he was ensuring that between the counties of Galway and Clare there would be 12 seats. Our amendment is aimed at the same thing. We do not want to see that area losing a seat on that side of the Shannon.
We suggested a four-seater in Clare because it has been said that there was a reluctance to breach county boundaries. We also heard the Minister admit that in the case of County Louth, a county that was taken in the group belonging to my own constituency—Monaghan and Meath—it was entitled to four seats and that was the reason why he was taking a seat from Monaghan and Cavan and that he could not see his way to ensuring that there would be two three-seaters in that area because he was having a four-seater in County Louth. Then he made a four-seater in County Meath.
Can anyone explain why it would be right to do this in County Louth and wrong to do it as far as County Clare is concerned? County Clare has the greater population. It would need only a few thousand from Galway to bring it up to the required number of population as far as a four-seater is concerned. The amendment is a sensible one, and the suggestions made in it have not been refuted in any way so far by the Minister. I have no hesitation in saying that the only conclusion that people in the Cavan-Monaghan area can come to is that the Minister was making sure that there would be a four-seater in County Meath at our expense so as to ensure that he would be elected.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
We finished the debate on that yesterday.
I am only making a comparison. I know that the Minister would probably be elected himself, but I want to say that when he mentioned the former Minister and his predecessor regarding the division of constituencies, at least Kevin Boland went into a three-seater and got elected. He did not make a safe seat for himself in dividing the constituencies on those occasions. We certainly resent this division. We feel that Clare should be entitled to a four-seater if Louth is entitled to it. I should like to see these arguments refuted.
I do not want to hold up the House, but I think it is a little bit funny to find Senator Dolan coming in here to argue about Clare when he could not be found yesterday when the area he comes from was being debated.
I was here all day.
He did not say anything. The reason for this was that he could not possibly justify giving away a portion of County Cavan to County Monaghan.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
We finished with Meath, Cavan, Monaghan and Louth yesterday. I do not want any discussions on either side on it.
I accept that. Senator Yeats also dealt with Louth and Meath and compared it to Galway-Mayo. I have nothing to add to what I have said at least four times, and I do not propose to go in for repetition here. If one keeps repeating them and if Senator Yeats keeps getting up and saying his question was not answered and what one says is not right, what can one do with somebody like that? If Senator Yeats is not prepared to accept what has been said, then that is a matter between himself and his conscience; it has nothing to do with me.
In this amendment we have an opportunity of dealing with the Coalition Government rape of the west. Beginning down in County Clare we could accuse this Government of raping or attempting to rape the darling girl from Clare herself.
The Senator is a bit late. Kevin Boland did it years ago.
If he did it years ago, she did not bear fruit, other than a few good Fianna Fáil Deputies. In this morning's Cork Examiner I read where the Minister stated in this House yesterday that it was nonsense to suggest that this Government were arranging the constituencies on a geographical basis to keep themselves in power. It is nonsense for the Minister or for any supporter of this Government to claim that any other intention was in their minds when the Constituencies Bill was being drafted, because in this area it is quite obvious even to the impartial observers that the Government are taking from the west two seats that could and should have been left.
Government speakers, both in this House and in Dáil Éireann, have attempted to justify their actions by repeatedly claiming that this was necessary because of the constitutional demands and because of the High Court action of 1961. During the debate on Second Reading we proved conclusively that the 30 seats could have been retained in the west without any breach of the Constitution or the High Court ruling of 1961. I have repeatedly asked and failed to get an explanation from the Minister for the reason that the maximum population ratio per member was used in this area while the minimum was used in the east.
Most people will appreciate that along the western seaboard it is much more difficult for the electorate and Deputies to come in contact with each other. One would have imagined that if the Government had decided on any type of bias it should have been towards the western seaboard. It is obvious that this was not politically opportune. While Fianna Fáil on the last occasion admittedly lost two seats in this area this Government were not certain that this could be repeated on the next occasion. Even the strongest supporters of the Government would have to admit that it was an accident that these two seats were lost to Fianna Fáil in 1973 and that there was every reason to believe that they would be won back in the next general election. For that reason the Minister and his Government have deliberately gerrymandered the west and taken two seats from the west in the hope that this would be a contributory factor to their re-election next time around.
The Minister, in his enthusiasm to provide legislation which would protect his own Government, has produced legislation which to my mind could prove to be unconstitutional. The High Court ruling of 1961 suggested a population deviation of 1,000 people but it did not suggest that that deviation should be from census to census. I would submit that since the census was taken in 1971 there has been a population explosion in the town of Sligo. If one looks at the constituency of Sligo-Leitrim where the population ratio per Member is 21,013 people or 113 people less than what is allowed by the High Court directive, one finds that the population of Sligo has increased by 340 people since 1971, I am suggesting that the constituency of Sligo-Leitrim as outlined in this Schedule is unconstitutional.
In the constituency of Roscommon-Leitrim the population ratio per Member is 21,119 or four people less than the maximum allowed by the High Court ruling. The greatest number that could be allowed by the High Court in any constituency is 21,123. The Minister in order to perfect the greatest gerrymander adopted the figure of only four people fewer per Deputy so that if it can be established that since 1971, three years ago, the population of this constituency increased by 13 people, then I submit that the legislation before us, as far as the constituency of Roscommon-Leitrim is concerned, is unconstitutional.
I should like to take this opportunity of warning the Minister that he may be responsible for unconstitutional legislation. I might point out that history could repeat itself, in that some people might do what one of the Minister's colleagues did in 1960.
It was not the Minister who did that.
I said: "what the Minister's colleague did in 1960." The ruling was clear; there should not be a greater deviation than 1,000 from the national average. The national average was 21,123. I am convinced that in his anxiety to gerrymander constituencies in the west the Minister has constitutionally gone too far. I would be very interested to see a repeat performance in the High Court to test that theory.
It is difficult to accept the Minister's claim in this morning's Cork Examiner that this Government did not draw up the constituencies on a geographical basis in order to keep themselves in power. We have accused the Minister and the Government of gerrymandering and we have the evidence to back up this accusation. In two of the constituencies covered by this amendment, the deviation from the national average is at the maximum that could be used by the Minister in accordance with the 1971 census returns. I have asked many times, since this debate began two weeks ago, for an explanation which I have never received. I will repeat the question this evening. Why should it take 21,119 people in the constituency of Roscommon-Leitrim to elect a Deputy whereas in the constituency of Louth it takes only 19.149?
Gerrymandering.
In an effort to get a fourth seat in Louth and an extra seat for the Coalition Government, the Minister and this Government of the so-called talents—this Government that proclaimed their sense of justice so hysterically, are ensuring that it takes only 19,000 to elect a Deputy in that county whereas in Roscommon-Leitrim it takes 21,000 more. That is 2,000 people per Deputy so that one might say that 6,000 people in the constituency of Roscommon-Leitrim have been disfranchised.
In the same manner one could compare the constituency of Roscommon-Leitrim with Meath where for the same reasons a little over 19,000 people can elect a Deputy, but in Roscommon-Leitrim it takes 2,000 more voters. The same comparisons can be made with quite a number of the Dublin city constituencies and the same applies also to the constituency of Sligo-Leitrim, where it takes more than 21,000 people to elect a Deputy.
Yet the Minister, with his hand on his heart, proclaims to the world "We are not guilty of the charges made by these terrible people". It will be difficult for the Minister and his Government and their supporters to persuade the ordinary people that what has been done in the west is not a deliberate gerrymander in order to ensure their re-election the next time out. If the Minister had used the population per Member on the west coast in the same way as he did in County Meath, County Louth and Dublin South-East, Dublin (Clontarf), Dublin (Cabra), Dublin North-Central, North County Dublin, South-West Cork and South Kerry, it would not have been necessary to take two seats from this area.
We cannot repeat often enough the claim made by supporters of this Government that it was constitutionally necessary to do this. If the figures used in the counties and the constituencies I have just mentioned had been used in relation to the west coast, 30 Deputies could have been elected from that area. If the Minister had used the minimum national average laid down by the High Court ruling there would have been a surplus of 5,362 people in County Clare, a surplus of 6,684 in East Galway, a surplus of 1,832 in West Galway, a surplus of 2,941 in West Mayo, a surplus of 447 in East Mayo, a surplus of 5,661 in Sligo-Leitrim and a surplus of 5,989 in Roscommon-Leitrim. All these added together and added to the figure of 9,894 in Donegal, which is not included in this amendment, would come to a grand total of 38,810 persons. That is a surplus of 38,810 people on the west coast which is sufficient to elect two extra Deputies in this area. This means that the 30 Deputies could have been retained and should have been retained in the west.
It is sad that this Government, the vast majority of whom are based and live in Dublin city, have produced legislation that in the future the entire western coast will be represented by 28 people, whereas the city of Dublin and Dún Laoghaire between them will in the future elect 43 Deputies. Therefore, Dublin and Dún Laoghaire in the future will elect 15 more people than the entire western portion of the country.
The Taoiseach did not appoint one single Minister from this western area. One is forced to ask oneself the question: "Did this Government, with so much talent, believe that there was no talent at all in Fine Gael from Clare to Donegal?" As a result of the manipulation of the western seaboard we will in the future have a Parliament in this city of Dublin and a Government in this city of Dublin whose primary interest will be the city of Dublin. The western portion of our land has not been given the fair and just representation to which it is entitled.
What the Senator is now saying appears to be in the nature of a Second Stage speech rather than a speech on amendment No. 3 and related amendments.
I am saying, a Leas-Chathaoirleach, or a Chathaoirleach, I am sorry——
I do not mind what I am called provided the words addressed to me are relevant.
I was thinking of the next time.
The next time will probably be the same.
No, I was thinking of the next Seanad election. Before you came in, Sir, I gave statistics to justify the amendments that are before this House at the present time. I contend that the reason why the Minister will not accept this amendment, or indeed any amendment, is because only a few minutes ago he told us we could like it or lump it. He made it very clear that, as a Minister, he does not believe in accepting amendments. A few hours ago, in the Library, I was reading over some views expressed by him in other legislation and I noticed that he expressed very strong resentment, when he was an Opposition Deputy, that the then Minister was not kindly disposed towards accepting amendments. He expressed his criticism in very strong language.
I think, having watched his performance in this House in the last few days, that we too could express, as he expressed when in Opposition, our resentment at his failure to accept amendments in this legislation. I believe that if he were to accept the amendments before this House at present he possibly might save himself a trip to the Four Courts in the not-too-distant future to explain or to attempt to explain a case that could be made and that I believe is entitled to be made, namely, that the provisions in this legislation for the constituencies of Roscommon-Leitrim and Sligo-Leitrim are unconstitutional.
I did not intend to speak on this Bill but having listened to Senator McGlinchey for several hours, over and above the six hours and 20 minutes he gave us on the Second Stage, it is about time that some one of us said something about all the rubbish and repetition he has put across here. He said that the Minister was arranging the constituencies to keep the National Coalition in power. As a matter of fact, the Minister has no say whatsoever about the loss of the two seats in the west. Fianna Fáil failed during their 32 years in power to do anything to increase the population in that area. It has been laid down by our Constitution that we must have a specified number of people before we can return Deputies to Dáil Éireann. No Minister or no Government can do anything to keep those two seats in the west because of the decline in the population in that area. The Constitution was given to us by the Fianna Fáil Party and is there to prevent us from putting more seats in the west than are there at the present time. For that reason I think the Minister has been most careful that he will not go to the High Court or the Supreme Court, as was done in the past, to prove that what was done in the arrangement of constituencies was unconstitutional. That particular case was successful. For that reason I do not think that the present Minister for Local Government has any notion of going to the High Court because——
He has the figures.
I will tell the Senator about that later. The Minister is the type of man who will not make a laughing-stock of the people of Ireland. The word "gerrymander" has been used time and time again today. No person from the Fianna Fáil benches should ever use that word because if we go back to 1961—I will deal with my own constituency—I was selected as a candidate——
The Senator is talking on amendment No. 3 and he is only entitled to talk about that group of constituencies.
I am talking on amendment No. 3. I would not like to disobey the ruling of the Chair. In 1961 part of Westmeath was added to Meath and part was added to Kildare. If that was not gerrymandering, there is no such word. They talk about gerrymandering in Sligo-Leitrim. The Minister for Local Government has changed Sligo-Leitrim and Roscommon. They should be delighted with the change because it was Sligo-Leitrim and Roscommon that changed the Government. Senator McGlinchey said that the Roscommon and Leitrim constituencies were unconstitutional and that the Minister is responsible for unconstitutional legislation. It is up to Senator McGlinchey to go to the High Court to prove his point. Let the Bill go through in its present form, and go to the High Court and I assure Senator McGlinchey that "The Golden Grill" will not keep him out of the bankruptcy court.
I have the greatest respect for Senator McAuliffe but taking the 1971 population figures of the western counties and dividing that by the number permitted in the Constitution under the tolerance clause— that is 19,123—in simple long division that will give 30 seats to the western seaboard.
Question put: "That the amendment be made."
The Committee divided: Tá, 15; Níl, 25.
Tá
- Aylward, Bob.
- Brennan, John J.
- Brosnan, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick (Fad).
- Cowan, Bernard.
- Dolan, Seamus.
- Garrett, Jack.
- Keegan, Seán.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- McGlinchey, Bernard.
- McGowan, Patrick.
- Ryan, Eoin.
- Ryan, William.
- Yeats, Michael B.
Níl
- Barrett, Jack.
- Blennerhassett, John.
- Boland, John.
- Burton, Philip.
- Butler, Pierce.
- Deasy, Austin.
- Farrelly, Denis.
- Fitzgerald, Jack.
- Halligan, Brendan.
- Harte, John.
- Kennedy, Fintan.
- Kilbride, Thomas.
- Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
- McAuliffe, Timothy.
- McCartin, John Joseph.
- Mannion, John M.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Mullen, Michael.
- O'Brien, William.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Toole, Patrick.
- Owens, Evelyn.
- Sanfey, James W.
- Walsh, Mary.
- Whyte, Liam.
Tellers: Tá, Senators W. Ryan and Garrett; Níl, Senators Sanfey and Halligan.
Amendment declared lost.
Question proposed: "That the entry relating to the constituency of Clare stand part of the Schedule."
I should like to restate our attitude in regard to the truncation and mutilation of the county administrative area of Clare, to emphasise once again that our strong view is that this paragraph to the Schedule should not stand as it is but should be in accordance with our amendment which has been rejected. I am sorry for putting the Seanad to the trouble of another vote. We feel very strongly on this matter as a point of principle. We will say no more about it because everything has been said that needs to be said. We feel that we are on a strong rock of principle in regard to this matter. For that reason we must oppose this paragraph of the Schedule which seeks to, in effect, mutilate and gerrymander County Clare in the nefarious interest of depriving the combined counties of Clare and Galway of a seat to which the people of those areas are entitled. The whole purpose of the combined exercise, which we debated on our amendment, is to reduce the representation by one and to deprive the people in those two counties of the representation, and the particular paragraph here is designed to ensure that. This paragraph which we must vote against is the paragraph that is the specific basis on which this nefarious edifice has been erected designed to deprive people of their proper representation to the extent of one seat stolen from the people of those two counties.
On that basis and without any more ado from our side of the House, we wish to challenge a vote on the paragraph to the Schedule in the democratic interests of the people residing in the area and, indeed, in the democratic interests of the country as a whole who, I feel, should some day be entitled to some impartial form of dividing constituencies so that this sort of blatant gerrymandering does not occur.
Question put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 24; Níl, 15.
Tá
- Barrett, Jack.
- Boland, John.
- Burton, Philip.
- Butler, Pierce.
- Deasy, Austin.
- Farrelly, Denis.
- Fitzgerald, Jack.
- Halligan, Brendan.
- Harte, John.
- Kennedy, Fintan.
- Kilbride, Thomas.
- Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
- McAuliffe, Timothy.
- McCartin, John Joseph.
- Mannion, John M.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Mullen, Michael.
- O'Brien, William.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Toole, Patrick.
- Owens, Evelyn.
- Sanfey, James W.
- Walsh, Mary.
- Whyte, Liam.
Níl
- Aylward, Bob.
- Brennan, John J.
- Brosnan, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick (Fad).
- Cowan, Bernard.
- Dolan, Seamus.
- Garrett, Jack.
- Keegan, Seán.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- McGlinchey, Bernard.
- McGowan, Patrick.
- Ryan, Eoin.
- Ryan, William.
- Yeats, Michael B.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Sanfey and Halligan; Níl, Senators W. Ryan and Garrett.
Question declared carried.
Business suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.
I move amendment No. 4:
In page 4, to delete the entry relating to the constituency of Cork City and substitute the following:
"
|
Name |
Area |
Number of Members |
|
Cork City, North-West |
The following wards in the county borough of Cork: |
Three |
|
Tivoli B, Tivoli A, Montenotte B, Montenotte A, Mayfield, St. Patricks A, St. Patricks B, St. Patricks C, The Glen A, The Glen B, Blackpool A, Blackpool B, Centre B, Shandon A, Shandon B, Farranferris A, Farranferris B, Farranferris C, Commons, Fairhill A, Fairhill B, Fairhill C, Gurranebraher A, Gurranebraher B, Gurranebraher C, Gurranebraher D, Gurranebraher E, Churchfield, Knocknaheeny, Shankiel, Sundays Well A, Sundays Well B, Mardyke, Bishopstown A, Gillabbey C. |
||
|
Cork City, South-East |
The following wards in the county borough of Cork: |
Three |
|
Mahon A, Mahon B, Mahon C, Knockrea A, Knockrea B, Ballinlough A, Ballinlough B, Ballinlough C, Browningstown, Tramore A, Tramore B, Tramore C, City Hall A, City Hall B, Turners Cross A, Turners Cross B, Turners Cross C, Turners Cross D, Centre A, Southgate A. Southgate B, Evergreen, Ballyphehane A, Ballyphehane B, Pouladuff A, Pouladuff B, Greenmount, The Lough, Gillabbey A, Gillabbey B, Togher B Togher A, Glasheen A. Glasheen B Glasheen C. |
"
The main purpose of this amendment is to call upon the Minister to maintain the status quo in Cork city and county and, in particular, to leave the city of Cork with its two three-seat constituencies rather than the five-seater proposed in this Bill.
I am sure everybody in this House will agree that this proposal to change the city of Cork from two three-seaters to one five-seater has caused more comment, more criticism and more suspicion than any other proposed change in this Bill. It is incomprehensible that the city of Cork should be treated differently from the city of Dublin. Nobody has explained, and nobody can understand, why the same criterion, the same yardstick, should not be applied to the city of Cork as is applied to the city of Dublin. If three-seater constituencies are appropriate to the city of Dublin why, I ask the Minister, are they not appropriate to the city of Cork?
The feeling of the people of the city of Cork and, indeed, the county of Cork, and many others outside the city and county of Cork, is that this is a deliberate downgrading of the city of Cork. This is an electoral insult. It is a cynical slur on the citizens of the second largest and probably the most progressive city in the State. Why, they ask, should Cork be different? Why should it be discriminated against in comparison with Dublin? Both cities have a great deal in common. They are both densely populated and highly industrialised. They have many other features in common, including the benefits and the problems which inevitably flow from highly industrialised and highly populated areas. They are both today, and have been for many years, rapidly expanding population-wise and industry-wise, but, I venture to say, the relative growth is greater in Cork than it is in Dublin.
The prospects for Cork in the immediate future are certainly brighter than they are for the city of Dublin. Therefore, if a case can be made for three-seaters in Dublin, as good a case, if not a better one, can be made on the same basis for having the same arrangement in the city of Cork.
The Minister seems to have acknowledged this in another context. He introduced a Bill in this House some months ago in which provision was made for a very substantial increase to the National Building Agency. In that Bill he made specific provision for the increased housing needs of Cork in the immediate future. He also made provisions in that Bill in regard to the Shannon estuary. I submit to the Minister that the argument I am adducing in favour of Cork is equally valid in relation to the amendment debated here before tea in relation to the county of Clare.
The Shannon estuary and the lower harbour in Cork would appear to be the two areas where we will have most development and most growth in the immediate future and the Minister, who is conversant with the number of planning applications coming from these areas, should know that better than anybody else. I should like the Minister to explain why he took cognisance of this impending growth in these two areas in his legislation in relation to the National Building Agency and why he ignored the same principle in connection with the Bill before the House.
As I say, this is a deliberate downgrading, a reduction in the status of the city of Cork, and I can assure the Minister that the people of Cork are very bitter about it. There is a heavy onus on the Minister to explain, to the satisfaction of the citizens of Cork, his thinking in this matter. They are entitled to an explanation. He has been pressed on several occasions as to why he should distinguish and differentiate between Cork and Dublin. An unworthy motive has been attributed to him. It has been suggested that this is an effort on the part of the Minister to manufacture a seat for a political colleague. That may be so; it may be an effort on the part of the Minister to resurrect and reconsolidate his own party in the city of Cork. The Minister can tell us if that is so but, if he wishes to do that, he could do it much more effectively in the constituency in which I live in North-East Cork, where there was a representative of his party in the Dáil up to a short time after the second last election. He could have done his own party a service and me a good turn if he had created a five-seater out of North-East Cork.
Outside of the cities of Dublin and Cork it is probably the most highly industrialised area in the State. The supporters and the members of the Minister's party in North-East Cork are not at all pleased with his failure to provide for them rather than for the city of Cork, where the chances, if I am correct about the alleged motive attributed to the Minister, of attempting to strengthen his own party in North-East Cork would have been much better.
The Minister, when pressed on a number of occasions, stated that it was in deference to the former Taoiseach that he created a five-seater in the city of Cork. I do not know whether the Minister was serious or whether he was indulging——
I did not say that.
That was not quite the meaning of what the Minister said.
When I was asked why did I not do that, I said I have too much respect for the former Taoiseach.
I am sorry, but my interpretation of what the Minister said was that he could have left the city of Cork as it was, but the impression he gave me, naïve as I am, was that it was in deference to the former Taoiseach that he created this five-seater. The Minister could have put a four-seater where the former Taoiseach was.
I would not need to do that.
I know that, with the slightest bit of juggling with figures, that could have been done, and justifiably so.
I suggest to the Minister that, if he wanted to pay a tribute to the former Taoiseach, he should have left Cork as it was, with two three-seaters, or else he could have made a four-seater of the constituency represented by the former Taoiseach. That would have been a better expression of his admiration and respect for the former Taoiseach than what he has done in downgrading his city and his constituency.
There is also the fact that in the city of Cork as it is at present, we the Opposition, have four Deputies. With the proposed five-seater it is inevitable that we must lose a seat. We have four Deputies at present and the Minister's proposal is a deliberate discrimination against the people of Cork city, the majority of whom are supporters of the Opposition. Their representation in the Dáil is to be reduced from four to three by the juggling and the machinations of the Minister.
Could the Minister state if that was the motive which inspired him to reduce the number of seats in Cork city to five? The most astonishing performance by the Minister in relation to the Cork constituency was the removal of a large area from Cork city and pushing it into Mid-Cork. I am referring to the area of Bishopstown. The number of votes involved is in the order of 18,000. This area comprises some of the most historical and ancient parishes in Cork city. The Minister found it convenient to pull the people in that area up from their roots and throw them into a rural constituency. Some of these people come from the centre of the city, such as Barrack Street and Western Road, the precincts of the college and they have nothing in common with the people in parts of the Mid-Cork constituency.
If the Cathaoirleach was still living in Cork he would be transferred from Cork city into Mid-Cork.
He would feel at home there too.
I wonder would he, electorally, if he was a member of our party, or had the good fortune to be a member of our party. I come now to the proposed Mid-Cork constituency. This proposal is the most patent and blatant illustration of the failure of the Minister to abide by the lofty sentiments and to apply the lofty principles which he mentioned in his brief. He was not inspired either by the letter or the spirt of the Constitution or by the decisions of the courts in interpreting the Constitution in relation to these matters. He has repeated in this House that he was giving fair play to every area as far as he possibly could. Does he really think he was giving fair play either to Cork city in making it a five-seater constituency or to Mid-Cork in making it a five-seater?
The Minister has breached every local boundary, every electoral boundary and every county boundary, both in the city and in the constituency of Mid-Cork as it now stands. He has criss-crossed it and has failed completely to take into account the matters which he has stated repeatedly should be taken into account in doing a job of this kind. He has ignored the traditional and the cultural entities which exist as of now in these three constituencies—two in Cork City and one in Mid-Cork. What have the people of The Lough and Togher in common with the people of the western part of the Mid-Cork constituency? They are different in every way, even in regard to games. In Cork City hurling is the popular game while in the constituency of Mid-Cork football is the popular game. There are also the Gaeltacht areas.
The Senator has heard of Cork Hibernians and Cork Celtic.
I am speaking about Gaelic football. If the Minister wants to be smart that is all right.
It would not be smart to arrange constituencies according to their propensities of kicking football or hitting a hurley ball.
It would be smarter than the way adopted.
One of the criteria which the Minister has repeatedly mentioned is culture and games.
Would the Senator quote me, please?
The Minister discussed this in detail in the debate in the Dáil—about his football prowess.
That was with Deputy Wilson who was a footballer; between Meath and Cavan.
That was an issue.
It was a different issue altogether. I happened to play on a team that played Deputy Wilson's. It was a different thing altogether.
I suggest it is an issue. I am merely illustrating the difference between the two communities. Am I not entitled to do that? The people in Bishopstown—if I may again try to illustrate the difference between the types of people in the two communities—drink Murphy's and Beamish. If you go back to the other end of the Mid-Cork constituency, the western end bordering on Kerry and Limerick, they drink Guinness. If the Minister went down there and called for a drink he would get a "Little Nora" only and nothing else. I am not trying to be facetious. I am merely trying to illustrate the Minister's abysmal failure to take into account the principles which he said guided him and inspired him in carving out these three constituencies.
With regard to the question of tolerance, in the proposed constituency there is a plus of 695 which I suggest is for the city of Cork. It is too much above the national average. In our proposal if the two three-seaters were retained, the figures in North-West Cork would be minus 967 and 293 in South-East Cork. I submit to the Minister that these figures would be more realistic and more beneficial to the people of the city of Cork having regard to the inevitable expansion of Cork in the near future.
I would agree that, where you have a rapidly expanding economy and society, the tolerance should be as much as possible in favour of such areas.
Even though the Minister was not bound to do so, he should have taken into account the fact that, even since the figures on which he was working were ascertained, there has been a very large increase in the population of the city of Cork and its environs. The Minister, rather than having a plus of almost 700, would be doing a service to the people of Cork if he had adopted the figures which we suggest here, one below the national average and the other slightly above it.
With regard to the third amendment, which deals with the removal of a number of small areas in the North-East Cork constituency, I do not think it is of great importance except that I would suggest to the Minister that he would have served his own party much better and, incidentally, myself if he had left these areas in the North Cork constituency. With a little juggling of figures, he could have made it into a five-seater and restored the confidence of the people of North-East Cork who throughout the years returned a representative from the Minister's party to Dáil Éireann.
In conclusion, I want to repeat what my colleagues on this side of the House have stated repeatedly. This Bill can be described only as a piece of shameful gerrymandering. I can assure the Minister that his fame or his infamy has gone far and wide and abroad on account of this piece of legislation. I can tell him that I was at a meeting abroad last week, which was discussing discrimination and human rights and, when I complained about the situation in Northern Ireland with regard to gerrymandering on political and other grounds, I was told that I or anybody else from this part of the country should be the last to talk about gerrymandering because at this point in time we have a proposal——
The truth is far better than a proposal.
——which is a scandalous piece of gerrymandering. I am not at liberty to say where the meeting was.
A Chathaoirleach, in view of the fact that the Senator has mentioned this I think he should.
I have given the facts.
Give us the details here and now.
I will give you the facts. I have some regard for matters of confidentiality and I will not——
If you have regard for them you should not give a reference that you are not prepared to stand over.
I am prepared to.
Stand over them if you are.
I can stand over them. I will give you the facts.
Give them here.
I was met by the argument that I was in no position to talk about gerrymandering having regard to the Bill which is before the House at the moment.
I think the Minister will accept that, during the course of these discussions, I have on several occasions told him that I recognise that he has had—and, indeed, any Minister must have had—considerable difficulties to face in framing a Bill of this kind. No matter how you set about doing it, there are problems that arise, variations and adjustments to be made. If you change one county another county falls to be changed also. It is a very difficult task for any Minister to perform. I accept this and, on several occasions I have told the Minister my views on this. Anyone who examines the situation must concede that this county of Cork, with its five constituencies within its boundaries, was the easiest of all the areas in the country to deal with. It need not have taken more than, perhaps, five minutes to settle the whole thing. The Minister knows why and I shall stress the facts in order that they may be clear to Senators and go on the record.
As regards the constituencies in County Cork, the figures of the census of 1971, on which we are working, show that Mid-Cork had 20,030 of population per seat, which is nearly 1,000 below the norm on which we are working, the maximum of 21,123. Therefore, Mid-Cork, taking it by itself, could have remained without adjustment. North-East Cork had a population of 20,715 in 1971 per Deputy. This was 408 below the maximum that could be allowed and therefore it could have been left untouched. South-West Cork had a population of 19,790 per Deputy for each of its three seats, somewhat below the average required for the whole country, but well above the minimum that is allowable. Therefore these three constituencies, taken on their own could be left untouched. In Cork city, both constituencies were slightly too large. To be exact on this, Cork City North-West had a population of 704 more than the maximum to be allowed; Cork City South-East had 1,203 above the maximum. The variation required, the number of population that had under the constitutional provisions on which we are working to be allotted to other parts of other constituencies in Cork, amounted to something under 2 per cent of the entire population of these two constituencies and of Cork city.
All the Minister needed to do in order to settle the whole of Cork county was to take approximately 2,000 votes in total from these two constituencies and give them to adjoining constituencies and then, as he has done, to allot certain small areas to South Kerry in West Cork. The situation was that only marginal changes were needed.
It is fair to suggest that in framing a Bill of this kind, a Minister should, as a general rule, if circumstances allow, make as few changes as the variations in population allow. The variations in population in Cork were small. In Cork city and county combined there was a total increase of some 13,000 people which would have enabled the Minister, if he had seen fit, to give an extra seat somewhere in Cork. However it was a legitimate decision of his not to do so: it was one of these marginal cases and he decided to leave them with the same number of seats. I accept this as a legitimate exercise of his discretion.
He told us, as he had told the Dáil earlier—and I quote from column 681 of the Seanad Official Report of 9th April, 1974. He said:
...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....
He was left in the happy position in Cork city and county that almost no variation was needed. He would have had to breach—if that is the word—the boundary of Cork borough to a very limited extent in that at least 704 people from North-West had to be pushed into some adjoining constituency, and at least 1,203 from Cork City South-East. That is all that was needed. But what has he done? He has eliminated these two Cork city constituencies, converted them into one five-seat constituency, driven an enormous wedge of rural Cork, Mid-Cork, up almost to the centre of Cork city, taking out of Cork city many of the most historic, traditional parishes of Cork city; taking out of Cork city almost all the corporation housing estates; taking out of Cork city the buildings of University College, Cork. For what purpose? In order to make the semirural area of Mid-Cork into a five-seat constituency and to take a seat away from Cork city. Cork city had an increase in population in the five years from 1966 to 1971 and as a result, they find themselves with one seat taken away from them.
The reasons for this would seem very clear in the absence of any alternative explanation from the Minister. The Labour Party Conference was held in Cork city last year and a report was circulated at that conference in which the fact was lamented that at present there was no Labour Deputy elected for Cork city. The report went on to say that something must be done about it. Apparently, "the something" is being done in this Bill. The Minister feels, rightly or wrongly, that in a five-seat constituency it may be possible for some Labour candidate to get the necessary one-sixth of the votes in order to obtain a quota, and gain election to Dáil Éireann. It is a legitimate aspiration, a legitimate ambition of the Minister, on behalf of his party colleagues, to hope that they will be elected to Dáil Éireann. I would suggest that it is an unsavoury and rather unpleasant way of achieving this, to carry through on a gerrymander, as is set out in his Bill. If the Minister had shown elsewhere in this Bill a feeling that, perhaps, in a city area five-seater constituencies were the thing, I could understand it. If he had felt that, all things considered in an urban area the optimum form of constituency was a five-seater, one might still object to what he had done in Cork but at the same time it would show a certain consistency of thinking.
In fact, in the only other major urban area in the country, the city of Dublin, the Minister has been at the greatest pains to divide this urban area into exclusively three-seat constituencies with the solitary exception of Dún Laoghaire, which we have discussed already and, I have no doubt, will again. All the others are three-seaters. Therefore one would have thought that what was satisfactory and suitable, and what was in the Minister's mind as the correct thing to do in the urban area of Dublin would also be the correct thing to do in the urban area of Cork city. The Minister has not done this.
On the Second Reading I asked the Minister if he would give a reason for this. Some explanation is needed for these radical changes: the taking out of Cork city of 24,000 people who live in the borough of Cork, and bringing them into a totally new constituency. During the course of my speech on the Second Reading, I asked the Minister if he would tell us his reason. As reported at column 915, Volume 77, of the Seanad Official Report for 10th April, 1974, I said:
...In replying I would like the Minister to tell us openly and straightforwardly why he divided Cork borough and Cork county in this fashion?
I went on to say, and I think I was justified in doing so:
I do not want smart cracks or anything like that, or remarks about what anybody else did or could have done. I would simply like an answer.
In view of that, it is interesting to consider what answer I got. In his reply, the Minister dealt with this matter. At column 1025 he said:
I should like to say to Senator Yeats—for whom I have a high regard——
I am happy naturally to hear this——
—that, as far as the question of the changes in Cork are concerned, the statement made here to the effect that I deliberately did this because the former Taoiseach lived in Cork is untrue.
I said nothing about the former Taoiseach.
But one thing is true and I want to put this on record, as I did in the other House, The natural change— my conscience has been troubling me a bit about this—should have been that I would take the area in which the former Taoiseach lives and put it into North Cork. That is what I should have done....
I cannot understand this. I have already pointed out that what he should have done was to leave the two Cork constituencies almost unchanged. In the paragraph before this the Minister had made what I thought was an interesting comment.
I do not want to follow Senator Yeats all around the country. We can take his statement about the Cork area as a fair example of his attitude. He asked me to explain why certain changes have been made in the Cork area. Then he went on to tell me what answer I should give. He said he would not accept any other answer. This sounds very like Alice in Wonderland....
It would sound like Alice in Wonderland if this were what I had said. I did not tell the Minister what he should tell me because I do not know what the Minister has to say. I said I did not want smart cracks which, indeed, is what I got. I did not want remarks about what anybody else might have proposed to do with constituencies. I said, and I say it again, I want to hear—and we are all entitled to hear—from the Minister exactly what impelled him to make this radical change in the existing state of affairs in Cork city and county and what impelled him to make this major breach in the existing administrative boundary of Cork. He said—and this has been quoted over and over again, and it is worthwhile quoting it once more—in his opening speech in this House, as he also did in the Dáil many months earlier, at column 681:
I endeavoured, as far as possible, to avoid breaching existing administrative boundaries....
This is precisely what he has not done in Cork city. He could have dealt with Cork city by a simple transfer of, perhaps, 2 per cent of the population, maybe a couple of thousand people. He has taken 24,000 out of Cork city and put them in Mid Cork. This even the Minister must accept, is a very radical breach within an existing administrative boundary. I do think we are entitled to be told why he did this. Of course, his action is completely contrary to what is alleged to be Government policy. We have, for example, reported in The Cork Examiner of January 26th last a speech in Cork by the Minister for Finance. He told the people of Cork:
Dublin and Cork have long been rivals. In a sense I am on Cork's side. I assure you that I am perfectly sincere. I am not being in the slightest degree disloyal to my native Dublin city. I believe it is in Dublin's ultimate good and to the good of the country as a whole that Cork should thrive.
Later on he states:
The Government are particularly conscious of the importance of Cork. Cork is a great industrial and commercial centre, has always counterbalanced in the south the economic and social influence of Dublin. Cork acts as a focal point of southern development, a role which benefits both the city and its hinterlands.
That is what the Minister for Finance says. His colleague, the Minister for Local Government, deals with this important second city of the Republic at a time when its population is increasing by removing one seat from it and handing over 24,000 people to the Limerick-Cork constituency.
I would accept completely that this was a legitimate operation if the Minister would only tell us why he has done it. On the face of it, it is a pure crude exercise in gerrymandering. But, perhaps, I am wrong. It may be that the Minister has a reason but he has not, as yet, given any reason. He gave no reason that I saw in the Dáil. He certainly has given no reason in the Seanad. I do think that on a Bill of this importance dealing with a city of the importance and prestige of Cork and, in particular, considering the allegations which have been made naturally in Cork but also elsewhere, that this is a pure exercise on the Minister's part in gerrymandering. He owes it to himself and, indeed, to the prestige and the reputation of Irish politics in general to give some explanation.
I am sure Senator Yeats will admit that my reputation in Irish politics will stand up to that of anybody else, particularly anybody in his party. That crack coming from him is just a little bit unfortunate.
I am in the peculiar position here that if I attempt to give the reason for doing something it is not accepted. If I point out rather foolish things that have been said by the Opposition, I am being a smart aleck. It is not my fault if some of the things which have been said by the Opposition here do draw retorts which are considered to be rather, as Senator Yeats said, smart aleck. I do not want to do this but when I find people making some of the comments which have been made here, there is no other answer for them. It just happens that way.
Senator Brosnan asked why I was able to take cognisance of future developments in Cork in the case of the National Building Agency Bill but was not able to do it in relation to the present Bill. Senator Brosnan again, as one of the intellectuals of the party, I am quite sure is well aware that it is not possible in this Bill to take cognisance of future developments. I am stuck with the 1971 census. Therefore, it was rather foolish to make a comment like that. Those are the exact facts and I cannot get away from them. Neither can Senator Brosnan nor anybody else. Senator Brosnan repeated—and, indeed, Senator Yeats followed him along and I was rather surprised to find him do it—the old double-edged argument that we have heard so often here during this debate. He implied that the Bill creates a five-seater in Cork city to benefit the Labour Party. Then he went on to say that if I was not a member of the Labour Party I should have concentrated on north-east Cork. Senator Brosnan made—and Senator Yeats agrees with him—the suggestion that it was for the purpose of helping the Labour Party.
In the absence of any other explanation.
O.K. This is the sort of rather foolish statement which is being made by the Opposition. I cannot be blamed if I point out that here are two contradictory statements. Senator Brosnan did add that it would also help him, and brought me back to the Sleeping Beauty who also made the same argument and felt it would help him, too, if we give an extra seat there. Indeed, I would assure Senator Brosnan that at casual observance it would appear he need not fear about his seat the next time. He should be very safe. I do not know why he should worry. Again, we had arguments here which just do not stand up. For instance, under the present Bill in Dublin the average per seat is 20,142. Under the Opposition amendment it was 20,776.
In the rest of the country it is 20,116. Under the Opposition amendment the average was 19,873. In the Cork area under the Bill the average is 20,556. Under the amendments which the Fianna Fáil Party have introduced it would be 19,414. We got lectures in the other House and here about about the fact that city areas should have a much higher number to qualify than the country areas. Again there is the double-thinking. They say one thing as it suits here, and something entirely different if it suits somewhere else. They just make up the rules of the game as we go along. If they are not spotted that is all right. That seems to be the way it goes. Senator Brosnan asked what the people of The Lough and Togher had in common with the people in the western part of the Mid-Cork constituency. I ask him: "Are they not all Corkmen?" It is not as if they were two different races or nations. They are all equally proud to call themselves Cork people. If they were asked, they would claim that they had a lot of things in common. This is the type of argument: whether they play football in Mid-Cork, or hurling in Cork city—they have good football teams also, including Gaelic and soccer— whether it is Guinness or Murphy that is drunk in a particular part has no relevance. The Constitution or the High Court do not have regard to whether they drink Guinness or Murphy or whether they play hurling or football. I have to draw up constituencies as they are. The rules are laid down for me. Bringing in things like this does not help, and they, perhaps, tempt the smart answer. Perhaps, as Senator Yeats says, I should not fall for the temptation.
Senator Brosnan also stressed the cultural difference between the people of Bishopstown and the people of County Cork. I do not pretend to follow his argument on this. His amendment transfers more of Bishopstown to Mid-Cork than my Bill does. Let us have the facts and let us stand over them.
Senator Brosnan, in support of his argument for increased representation for Cork city, talked about the potentially big increase in the population in the future. The other Opposition speakers did not take this line when dealing with the Dublin area. In the other House I pointed out that we had evidence, not census evidence, of a tremendous increase in population in certain areas. In Dublin, particularly, if we had census evidence we could have increased the number of seats. The Opposition said: "Look, that is all right but the census says such and such." The 1971 census laid it down for Cork as it did for Dublin and, therefore, whether there is this big increase or not, I could not take cognisance of it. That is the situation.
Senator Brosnan also said that where we had a rapidly expanding society tolerance should be given as much as possible in favour of such areas. It is a pity the Senator did not make this point much earlier because it would absolutely refute the argument which had been made by his party against doing that in Dublin. The argument was entirely opposite.
What I suggested was in respect of newly expanding areas.
Dublin also is a rapidly expanding area and the argument was completely opposed to what the Senator said. I could go a long way——
There are new problems and new difficulties now in newly expanding areas.
Senator Yeats talked about the undesirability of making radical changes in constituency boundaries. As far as Cork city is concerned the bulk of the city was in one constituency until 1969. Was it not a radical change then to split it in two or does Senator Yeats think it is only a radical change when somebody other than Fianna Fáil does it? It was a two-constituency area in 1969 and the present Bill puts the great bulk of the city back into one constituency. Senator Yeats admitted that it was a legitimate decision not to increase the representation of Cork, so now we are beginning to make progress. He also admitted that the boundary between the city and the county had to be breached. The objective should be to make as few changes from the existing position as possible. Apparently he has forgotten that the amendments he supported involved changing every constituency in the Cork area and the Bill he is condemning does not do that.
I do not want to go on in this way but the facts seem to be that two speakers from the Fianna Fáil side have made arguments which in some cases are contrary. In the main, however, the argument has been entirely contrary to what they have been saying since this Bill began to be debated in the House. They just cannot have it both ways.
I will point out something which Senator Yeats seemed to think was amusing when I said it the other day, and it is that everybody in Cork, both Cork City and Mid-Cork, after the next general election will have not three or four TDs whom they can turn to: they will have five representatives.
Instead of six.
To say that this is reducing representation is something which beats me. I do not want to draw the former Taoiseach into this because it was not I who mentioned it first. I want to make that clear because Senator Brosnan obviously misunderstood what was said. When it was suggested to me that it is in the northern end of Cork city I should have made the changes I said I was tempted to do it but that I did not do it because it is the area in which the former Taoiseach lives and I felt it would be unfair. People would say that I had singled it out because of the former Taoiseach. Not that it would matter much to him because I am quite sure he would be elected to head the poll in Cork no matter what happened.
You could have made it a four-seater.
I could have. It was a matter of judgment and Senator Brosnan feels that it would have been all right if I had put a four-seater there. I do not think so. I think it was better to do what I did. I have given everybody in Cork city five Deputies to whom they can turn after the next election.
Instead of six.
In each of the Cork constituencies there are three people who can be turned to. After the next election they will have five.
You did not tell us about the pal.
It is not a pal who is concerned. In Cork city we have no Deputy. We had an excellent one for years but he died. We have, at present, a Labour Lord Mayor in Cork and if he is good enough to win a seat he will be welcome in the Dáil and if he is not good enough to win it nobody will kick up a row about it because it is just one of those things that the electorate will have chosen.
There is one thing about the former Taoiseach that I discovered after I had drawn up the boundaries, and I want to explain this because there may be misunderstanding about it. I also understand that the boundaries as drawn up by me went pretty close to where one of the city Deputies lives. I did not do this deliberately. I want to make it clear that I am satisfied from the amount of work which he does in his area that he is like Deputy Bill Loughnane who has two constituencies from which he can choose.
Who told you that?
I spent a few days in Cork talking to ordinary people and I do not talk behind closed doors so I can repeat what they said outside and not fail to give their names. If Senator Brosnan wants to quote to this House he should do so, but please give the source, because I am terribly suspicious——
I will give it to yourself.
I do not want it myself. Senator Brosnan gave a quotation which he wanted put on the records of the House and he was not man enough to give the name of the person who said it.
I will seek permission from the chairman of the meeting that I attended and give you the name, but at the moment I cannot do it.
If Senator Brosnan could not give the name he should not have mentioned the incident because it makes it very suspicious. There is no point in giving me something in private which I cannot use. If he wants to give it it should go on the record of the House along with the alleged quotation. If he was referring to the present constituency boundaries as drawn up by Fianna Fáil, not within this Bill, if he was referring to the present constituency boundaries then he would have reason to complain and say that this was an outrageous thing to do.
The reference was to the Bill.
Not as outrageous as the Bill.
He meant to nail the Senator but he did not have to because no matter what anybody does he cannot save your political soul.
The Minister is in the habit of making this kind of crack. We ask him for answers and then when he gives an answer we are not satisfied with the answer he has given. Some are in relation to a number of arguments on this Bill and particularly to this one of Cork city.
I have spent hours——
It is not that at all, it is that the Minister has given no answer. He has discussed in his usual way alleged discrepancies between what one person said and what another person said. The Minister has at no stage made any effort whatever to explain why he divided Cork city in the way he did. The Minister went back to 1961 and said that in those days Cork city was a five-seat constituency. Of course it was. The population was lower than now.
By how many?
I will give the figures to the Minister.
It would not make a difference of three seats.
The Minister has asked me to produce figures, so I might as well produce them. In 1961 Cork County Borough had 112,317 people. In 1966 it had 122,146. Now it has 128,645. In other words going back to 1961 it had 112,317 people, which just about rated five seats. The Minister has made no effort whatever to explain to us why he has dealt with the Cork city situation in the manner in which he has. He raised the question of the former Taoiseach. The question of the position of the Leader of the Opposition was not raised by a anyone on this side of the House nor I think by any Fianna Fáil Deputy in Dáil Éireann. It was raised by a colleague of the Minister's in the Fine Gael Party, the Chief Government Whip in the Dáil, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach, Deputy John Kelly. We had Deputy Kelly for some years in this House and one of his salient characteristics was a vigour of speech coupled with a certain candour which is sometimes, I think, a little embarrassing for his political friends. The Chief Government Whip in Dáil Éireann had this to say at column 2030; Volume 268, of the Dáil Official Report:
The situation in relation to Cork is a special one because one would expect a good Fianna Fáil vote there by reason of the fact that the Leader of the Opposition comes from the constituency.
This is how we come to this interesting discussion about the Leader of the Opposition, not through any Fianna Fáil speech but from Deputy Kelly.
I am sorry. I cannot find the reference but I know it was referred to by one of the Ministers——
Anyway, the only reason I ever raised this matter in this House was because of this interesting speech of Deputy Kelly's. This is what makes Cork city a special case. He goes on to say:
In Cork in 1973 Fianna Fáil won four seats for which they paid 7,591 votes each. Fine Gael won two seats at a cost of 8,071 votes each, while the Labour Party did not succeed in returning anyone to the Dáil although they succeeded in winning 4,715 first preference votes.
He goes on to say
The Minister for Local Government is not St. Francis of Assisi——
How right he is.
——and it would be asking a superhuman virtue on his part to permit that situation to continue.
So now we have it. The Minister has refused consistently to offer any explanation why, when the only change needed in the whole of Cork city and Cork county was a minor 2 per cent shift in population out of Cork city, he has made these enormous changes; an almost static situation was all that was required. We have it now from the Chief Government Whip in Dáil Éireann, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach, that he had to do this because of the unfortunate fact that the Leader of the Opposition stood for Cork city, which made Cork city a special case. A special case in the Minister's terminology of course means a case for Fianna Fáil. This Bill is full of such special cases. Cork city according to Deputy Kelly, the Parliamentary Secretary, is a special case because of the presence of Deputy Lynch. Therefore it had to be dealt with in a special way. Since the Minister, it goes without saying, is not St. Francis of Assisi, we have this curious situation in the Bill.
St. Francis would have boosted the former Taoiseach.
That is the basic point and no amount of smart cracks, no amount of suggestions, that so and so has said one thing and so and so has said another will enable the Minister to evade the basic issue that this situation in Cork city was a blatant gerrymander, an enormous change where a purely marginal change was all that was necessary. It was done for one purpose. It was not done really to deprive Fianna Fáil of a seat, because after all we will get three out of five in Cork City and three out of five in Mid-Cork. It is not even as if Fianna Fáil stand to lose a seat. It is done for the sole, specific, simple purpose of making room for one Labour Deputy in Cork City. That is the crux of the matter. That is the answer and unless the Minister is prepared to give us some other reason as to why he did this the world in general is going to go on believing that.
We are back here to the basic question of principle. I made it emphatic in the discussions on the earlier groups of amendments that what we were concerned about here in a rational, deliberative assembly was to advance amendments to the Minister that would improve this Bill. We recognise that the Minister has adopted a certain attitude and for that reason in the discussion on the first group of amendments we agreed that he should have his large number of three-seat constituencies in Dublin city and county but that he could improve the adjustment of constituencies in that area without breaching county boundaries, without doing violence to loyalties and to affinities and associations by keeping within Dublin city and county nine three-seat constituencies, two five-seat constituencies and a four-seat constituency. We were beaten on that. In regard to the group of amendments concerned with Cavan, Monaghan, Louth and Meath, I acknowledge that the Minister had an equal case with our case and we said: "Right the Minister's case may be as good as our case." However, in regard to the first group of amendments we were on a straightforward point of principle: to preserve the territorial integrity of city and county of Dublin. In regard to the third group of amendments, the amendments concerned with the west, and in particular with Clare and Galway, we advanced the same argument of principle. We were again beaten by the votes on the other side against our very rational propositions in that respect.
The same attitude of principle applies in regard to this group. I want to identify this group concerning Cork city and Cork county rearrangements as being in the very same category as the argument that we advanced in regard to Dublin city and county and that we advanced in regard to the west, particularly in regard to Clare and Galway. Here again we have violence done unnecessarily and totally without any basis to existing administrative borough, county and traditional arrangements of very long standing.
Enough has been said already in regard to this aspect, but I want to bring the debate back to the fundamental point of principle. Without any great degree of adjustment there were two three-seat constituencies in the borough area of Cork City. Slight adjustments were necessary, but why the departure in regard to Cork compared to the principle adopted in regard to the metropolitan area of Dublin? This is the key question of principle that must be asked in this respect, particularly when one sees the net effect of the five-seat constituency proposal in regard to Cork city. I leave aside North-East Cork as not being relevant to this argument because, basically——
It is relevant because it would have to be changed, too.
——as the Minister is aware, what is involved is Cork city being changed from two three-seat constituencies. Why was there a change from the metropolitan criterion adopted by the Minister for the principal city in the State—where every single constituency is a three-seat constituency—in regard to the other major city in the State, Cork city? Why the change?
He is giving away to the Fianna Fáil arguments that were made in regard to Dublin.
I am coming back to a fundamental point of principle that we have adumbrated here, that any judicial tribunal or commission would take an impartial look at this matter and our amendments are ones that are seeking to bring in a judicial and impartial attitude into the rearrangement of these constituencies.
The Minister resurrected, earlier in the day, various matters concerning what was being proposed and was not being proposed in regard to constituencies, the various arrangements made under previous Acts of this kind. I am not concerned about this matter. What we have here is a series of amendments put down by our group in the Seanad with a view to improving the Minister's Bill. We have not sought to eliminate the Minister's Bill or to adopt a holier-than-thou attitude. We have said: "Right, maybe there is some semblance of reality in what he proposes and we want to improve it." We have been met right through this debate with a totally negative attitude. The Minister must learn that that is not the purpose of having a Dáil or a Seanad. That is not the purpose of Parliament. There has not been one single yield by the Minister in regard to the tremendous yields we have given by acknowledging the broad scheme of his proposals but at the same time suggesting constructive amendments in regard to Dublin city and county, the Galway-Clare situation and the situation in Cork City and Mid-Cork. I would largely confine my remarks to both Cork City and Mid-Cork in this context. With very little adjustment— it would not have required any great imagination—the Minister could have retained, as we suggest in the amendment, two three-seat constituencies in Cork City North-West and Cork City South-East.
In regard to Mid-Cork we have the Minister's proposal of five seats. I used very strong language earlier on in regard to the way in which Clare had been raped and the way an artificial constituency of West-Galway had been created. That language would pale in comparison with the sort of language I could use in regard to the monstrosity of Mid-Cork. I am not an expert on County Cork. I was reasonably familiar with the townlands and the areas concerned when we were discussing the adjustments in the West. But it does not require any expert knowledge from me or anybody here to realise what has happened in the new Mid-Cork five-seat constituency. We know that a substantial part of the borough area of Cork city which has never been outside a Cork city constituency since the formation of the State has been taken out.
Two three-seat constituencies could have been established in Cork city. Instead of that we have wards in the County Borough of Cork—Bishopstown, Gillabbey, Glasheen, Pouladuff, The Lough and Togher—hived away from the borough area of Cork city and incorporated in the administrative county of Cork which includes for other constituency purposes the Mid-Cork area ranging from there to the Kerry-Limerick border—an area that includes Newmarket, Kanturk and Charleville, areas totally unrelated to the needs of the people in the borough area of Cork. If the Minister does not know sufficient about the county, I know a certain amount—although not as much as I should like to know. I know that there is no relationship between the problems of Kanturk and Newmarket and the problems of the part of the borough of Cork which the Minister has linked in with Mid-Cork.
The reality of the situation is that, assuming a reasonable and responsible attitude could have been adopted by the Minister, there was a situation where Cork city had two three-seat constituencies, constituencies such as the Minister has sought in Dublin city. Surely the rational approach was to adopt what we have proposed here in amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6 and make a proper organisation of the constituencies of Cork City, Mid-Cork and North-East Cork? There would have to be, I agree, some impingement of Mid-Cork on Cork city but not anything like the total carve-up which the Minister has made in Cork city in order to achieve a five-seat situation in Mid-Cork. The metropolitan principle which the Minister has established in Dublin should have been applied to Cork city and Mid-Cork and North-East Cork should then have been dealt with consequentially. I should like to hear from the Minister why that has not been done.
I shall make a very brief interjection. Senator Lenihan asks why. Unfortunately he was not here when I was replying to Senator Yeats and Senator Brosnan. I may have to repeat some of my remarks. Senator Yeats is in the position that nobody can satisfy him.
The Minister did not reply to my satisfaction either.
(Interruptions.)
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Minister, without interruption.
I have not answered anyone on the Fianna Fáil benches to their satisfaction because they could not be satisfied. The only way they would be satisfied would be to bring them over here and let them put through their own Bill as they did the last time. That is out, so therefore I cannot satisfy them.
You are a Minister of State.
I uphold the dignity and integrity of Ministers of State. If all the Fianna Fáil Ministers did that this country would be a happier place today. We have a five-seater in Cork city. I should like to point out that, although Senator Yeats said that we were making a very big change— and he wanted to know why—in 1923 Cork city was a five-seater; in 1935 a four-seater; in 1947, a five-seater; in 1961, a five-seater; in 1969, two three-seaters; and in 1974 a five-seater. Now we are accused of making a big change. The change was made by Fianna Fáil and we are rectifying it. There is a breach in the boundaries of the existing constituencies. If we are to talk about that, they must all be changed, according to the amendments put forward by Fianna Fáil.
Marginal.
Could we have one consistent argument from Fianna Fáil? We have not had two Senators making the same suggestion. One argues one way and the next argues another way. Then I am told I have not replied properly to these arguments. I should like to tell Senator Lenihan that Cork was always a five-seater, with one exception when it went down to a four-seater. We are going back to the five-seater constituency and everybody in Cork city, after the next general election, will have five Deputies to call upon. Can I get that through to Fianna Fáil? Anybody who states I am reducing the representation in Cork city does not know what they are talking about.
The Minister speaks about being consistent in this matter. I should like to draw attention to the fact that he has gone all out for three-seat constituencies in Dublin. He now refuses to give three-seat constituencies in a similar city. Cork city has expanded over the last ten or 15 years, thanks to Fianna Fáil policy. The population has increased and it is wrong to demote them at this stage by reducing the representation from six to five. Cork people are nationally-minded and support their own industries; they are good citizens and take great pride in their city. In the past the Cork people have been wise and have supported Fianna Fáil and the re-arranging of the constituencies appears to be for the purpose of gaining a seat for the Labour Party in Cork city. The Minister also spoke about consistency in other fields. If he were consistent he would not have allowed the comparative situation which exists between Louth and Clare to develop. The Minister should have accepted our amendments which were put down in all sincerity. There has been no consistent argument on this Bill in this House.
I am beginning to understand why Fianna Fáil wanted to keep this debate going on for so long. They put down a number of amendments which were grouped. When we started dealing with the first group of amendments there was a certain set of arguments being churned out by Fianna Fáil. By keeping the debate going they hoped that by the time we reached this group of amendments the Minister and everyone else would be so weary that we would have forgotten about the arguments which were churned out on the first group of amendments.
I do not want to go back over ground already covered, as was done by Senator Lenihan. I should like to make this point, however. We remember clearly the arguments presented in relation to Dublin city that in a large urban area there was no question of it mattering a thraneen what kind of constituency we are in, that we should have large constituencies and that this idea of three-seaters in Dublin city was a sinister plot of the Minister's.
That is not what is in our amendments.
I pointed that out to Senator Eoin Ryan after he had made this argument. Typically this was the argument which was churned out. But the amendments dealt with enlarging County Dublin and not Dublin city. The argument was that where there is a large population with no particular local affiliations or loyalties there should be large constituencies. The Minister has created a large constituency in Cork city. He has reverted to the historical and traditional situation in Cork city. When my late father represented Cork city it was a five-seat constituency.
Any change in population since then?
Yes, there has.
The population in the time of the Senator's father was 80,000.
We are told now to forget about the arguments put forward in relation to Dublin. We have now gone down south and there are such great differences between the people of Cork, whether they are south or north of the Lee, whether they are from Cork county or Cork city, that it must be looked at as closely and minutely as possible. This was seriously put to the Minister. It must be taken into account whether they play football or hurling.
That was by way of illustration.
It must be taken into consideration whether they drink Guinness or drink Murphy. When one has conducted this kind of examination as between the people of Cork city and Cork county then one can get out one's drawing board and put on one side of the column "These people drink Guinness, so they stay in Cork county"; on the other side one puts "These people drink Murphy, so they must go into Cork city". Then one draws another line the other way and above the line states "These people played hurling with Jack Lynch and must stay in a particular part of Cork". Under the line one says "These people played soccer, and must go somewhere else". This is the kind of consideration the Minister is asked to give to the Cork constituencies.
Do Fianna Fáil Senators realise how they must appear in the eyes of the public? This is the first time for 51 years that the Fianna Fáil Party were not allowed to draw the constituencies and one after the other they are displaying their sores in public. They do not know what to make of the present situation because every Constituencies Bill since 1923 was drawn by the Fianna Fáil Party. This is the first time for over half a century Fianna Fáil were not allowed to do as they wished when distributing seats and drawing constituencies. That is what is wrong with them. They cannot get accustomed to the fact that the Minister is not obliged to take every little whisper of advice or every little whimper of advice tendered to him by Fianna Fáil Senators in this debate.
Cop yourselves on. The people have their eyes on Fianna Fáil just as much as they have on the performance of the Government. They see Fianna Fáil for what they are. They see them whining and whinging in this Constituencies Bill. They see the kind of arguments that are being put up. They see the advice that is being solemnly tendered to the Minister as reasonable and right. Fianna Fáil drew every Constituencies Bill for 51 years but their performance in this House leads me to believe that it will be 51 years more before they draw up another.
I have had the pleasure —and I mean this—of being a Member of this House along with Senator Michael O'Higgins for some years now, and one thing I have always noticed is that when some matter comes up on which Senator O'Higgins feels he has absolutely no case he begins to bluster. His performance just now, knowing Senator O'Higgins as well as I do, shows quite clearly that in his own mind he realises that the matters dealt with by this amendment are, from his point of view, indefensible.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
There is a tendency to stray from the amendments.
I am speaking on amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6. Senator O'Higgins was speaking on amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6. On amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6 he has shown quite frequently that in his view the matters dealt with in these amendments are quite indefensible. The blustering tone, and indeed the irrelevant tone, of his speech shows that without any doubt. However we have had a kind of an answer at last from both the Minister and Senator Michael O'Higgins as to why this extraordinary butchering of Cork city was carried out. They both say, in effect, that many years ago when Cork city had a population of some 80,000 it only had five seats. In 1961 it had 112,000.
Up to 1969 they had five seats.
Yes, that is right. There is a certain awful consistency about the way in which he has divided the constituencies in this Bill. It is very interesting. One would expect, as a matter of course, that in areas of the country where the population was rising by and large where changes were necessary there would be more seats given and that in areas of the country where the population was falling by and large where changes were necessary there would be a loss of seats. The Minister has succeeded, admirably, in turning this simple law on its head. We have had over and over again Cork city, Clare, Galway where the population is rising but where— and this is where the special cases come in—Fianna Fáil are strong and the number of seats comes down. In other areas such—for example, Mayo, Sligo, Roscomon and Leitrim —where the population is falling, and alas falling rapidly, but where the Coalition parties are strong the seats are maintained or where possible increased. That is the basic reversal of the laws of nature that the Minister has succeeded in bringing about.
The population of Cork city rose by some 6,000 people in the last census period but Cork city loses a seat. If the Minister was all that interested in having a large constituency he could have even have made it a six-seater. I was interested in the Minister's remark that, after all, in a five-seat constituency there were five Deputies to look after you instead of three. I do not think it is a very good point but, for what it is worth, it is a point. I will accept the Minister's sincerity that in an urban area, where after all constituencies are small, there may be potentially some advantage in having five Deputies to look after you instead of only three. It means you can write to five people, if you are looking for something, instead of writing to only three. But why did the Minister not adopt this curious doctrine in the city of Dublin? It would have been very simple for him there if he had really believed that there was some basic advantage in having five seats. If he really believed this he would have been able to bring in such constituencies in Dublin, but of course he did not believe it.
Originally Cork had four seats or five seats when the population was much lower. When the population rose it got six seats. But when the population rose further, so that there were slightly too many votes for six seats, the Minister, following what he describes as the natural progression of things, takes a seat from them and 24,000 people are taken out of Cork city and put into an adjoining constituency. One thing I am absolutely certain of is this. In all the variations in Cork city, depending to a large extent on its gradual increase in population, there never has been a redistribution in which as many as 24,000 inhabitants of the borough of Cork were put into an adjoining constituency. The Minister knows very well that, despite what he may say about what happened in 1951 or 1961 or what may have happened in the days when Senator O'Higgins's father stood as a Deputy for Cork city, under present day conditions the natural, normal and indeed honest thing to have done with Cork city would have been to have left it with two three-seat constituencies.
Before Senator Lenihan speaks I should like to reply to Senator Yeats. He referred to the fact that Senator O'Higgins was blustering and that he had no case to make. As I said earlier on a number of occasions, Senator Yeats is an intelligent man and he has adopted here a supercilious, patronising tone when he knows himself that what he is talking about is sheer, utter nonsense. In order to give it the impression of being something which should be listened to he uses a tone which suggests: "Here is the great master now talking. Nobody else should have any say" as if the Creator came down and had spoken and after that nobody else should interfere because Senator Yeats knows it all. He has made many contradictory arguments since the start of this debate. He was accusing me of not being able to answer his arguments. I referred earlier to the "pullapusha" bird——
Not being prepared for it.
——the pullapusha bird flying in opposite directions at the one time. If anyone can do that better than Senator Yeats I should like to know him.
I want to again bring this debate down to the common sense of the matter. I said earlier on that I have sought at all times to be constructive. We have been seeking a response from the Minister that would indicate he is seriously interested in having a constructive Committee Stage debate here——
I am here all the time and I have been debating it.
There is no point in raising little points like that. We are here in a House of the Oireachtas considering specific amendments that have been put down. I have granted the Minister's arguments in the case of some of our amendments. We suggested a rearrangement that would grant him a large number of three-seat constituencies in Dublin—nine three-seat constituencies out of 12. I asked him would he not consider an amendment that would involve two five-seaters and a four-seater for County Dublin, but it was rejected. We adopted the very same attitude in regard to Galway and Clare. We propose to have another amendment on that basis for Report Stage, involving a simple exchange of the four and three between Clare and East Galway to give some reality to the situation there.
Here again, I want to try to bring this debate on to a reasonable debating level. Let us for a few moments, even if it involves a suspension in the Minister's intellect and in Senator O'Higgins's intellect, get down to a reasonable plane and get away from the idea of Senator O'Higgins and of the Minister that we are all engaged in a kind of black-and-white debate, an argy-bargy debate, without any constructive purpose. We are concerned about a constructive purpose and there is no point in Senator O'Higgins or the Minister talking about Cork city's historic right to five seats, as if there was something sacrosanct about Cork city having had five seats in the twenties, and the Cork city that exists in 1974 being entitled to only five seats. The facts of life change rapidly. The population of Cork has gone up enormously. Without any violence whatever to the borough of Cork, in the last rearrangement conducted in 1969, there were two three-seat constituencies: south-east and north-west. By very little adjustment and rearrangement, the Minister could have continued with that situation.
I should like to know why that situation was not continued. This would have been the attitude of any impartial commissioner. Any honest tribunal would have said: "There is Cork borough. It has enhanced its population due to economic development. It justifies six seats, broadly speaking, within the borough area." There are two three-seat constituencies there since 1969, dividing the city. In addition to that, the Minister has adopted the very same principle in regard to the other major city in the country, the metropolitan area of Dublin. In our amendments, we have not disputed this. We have agreed with the nine three-seat constituencies in Dublin city. We have proposed that there be two five-seaters and a four-seat constituency in the county council or rural area of County Dublin, so as to keep the territorial integrity of County Dublin. We have granted the Minister's point and agreed that within the inner core of Dublin the argument is strong for nine three-seat constituencies. We have suggested constructive amendments for County Dublin, which have been rejected, in order to preserve the territorial integrity of County Dublin.
I want to emphasise our consistency in this. What the Minister and Senator O'Higgins should address their minds to here are our amendments. What is under discussion here are the amendments which we have put forward. Irrespective of what was said in the Dáil, irrespective of what was said in regard to debates of this kind before, our amendments hang together as a consistent whole. Viewed in the context of the amendments, we suggest that there is total consistency in having two three-seat constituencies in Cork city. They have been there since 1969 and were established there by reason of the increase in population. This runs on parallel lines with the nine three-seat constituencies which we have admitted in our own amendments to be proper for the inner heart of Dublin city, for metropolitan Dublin.
We proposed eight.
Senator Halligan is not counting properly. Eight in the metropolitan heart of Dublin and one in south-west County Dublin. That is nine. Then two five-seat constituencies and a four-seat constituency for County Dublin.
That is what you said—eight.
That is a very small point in the very large——
It is a good point.
A three-seat constituency in south-west County Dublin, designed not to breach the county boundary into Wicklow. In Dublin and greater Dublin; there are nine three-seat constituencies proposed in our amendments; two five-seat constituencies and one four-seat constituency.
(Interruptions.)
Senator Halligan may not have been here last night. He was taking one of the rests that Deputy Tully has referred to. However, the Minister was not reading these amendments too well last night either. He made the same mistake. He did not realise that amendments Nos. 7 and 8 were essentially grouped together, as referring to——
(Interruptions.)
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Would Senator Lenihan be allowed to speak on the amendment before the House not the amendment that was passed last night.
In his own amendment he has three county constituencies, Dún Laoghaire, and the eight city constituencies are grouped——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
That amendment was dealt with last night.
He is referring to it now and using the argument on this one.
The Senator may not appreciate the point. He is a little bit obtuse on this. Our amendments Nos. 7 and 8 were deliberately argued together, by permission of the Chair, and were brought together in a group because of the need to keep Dublin city, Dún Laoghaire and Dublin county together as one group of amendments. The whole debate last night was conducted on that basis. The Minister was a little obtuse at one stage, he did not quite get this point, which is that as far as the Chair's decision is concerned, County Dublin, Dún Laoghaire and metropolitan Dublin were all taken together for the one purpose.
We acknowledged the right of the Minister to have as many three-seaters as possible in a city area. Our amendments provided for two five-seaters and a four-seat constituency in the greater Dublin area. We wanted to ensure the maximum number of three-seat constituencies for the benefit of the Minister and the preservation of the territorial identity of Dublin city and county. Here, we are now passing into a very similar approach in principle. I am making the point that we have been consistently arguing on principle right through this debate. Our view is that to be consistent with what the Minister has done in regard to the metropolitan area of Dublin, he should do the same in regard to the second major metropolitan area in the country. The two three-seat constituencies that existed there, with very minor adjustments, could have been preserved in that way. Instead, 24,000 people were wrenched——
Out of Cork into Cork.
——out of the heart of Cork city and put into a Mid-Cork constituency which is totally unrelated in regard to affinity or in regard to traditional association with the problems that exist in the metropolitan area of Cork city.
(Interruptions.)
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Senator Lenihan to continue.
What I am talking about is the traditional Mid-Cork constituency that has varied in numbers over the years but that basically is a strong dairy-farming, mixed farming part of the country. It has vigorous small country towns such as Newmarket, Kanturk, Macroom, Charleville and Bandon, which are typical of the Cork rural area, together with their own farming hinterlands. There is no relationship, good, bad or indifferent, between that type of constituency and the very urban problems of the 24,000 or 25,000 people who have been wrenched from the city of Cork in order to establish a five-seat constituency there. That might have been all right a generation ago, when Cork was a small town; now that Cork is a major thriving metropolitan city, with an expanding economy, it justifies receiving the same treatment as Dublin. There is no justification for wrenching part of that city and throwing it holus-bolus, in an artificial manner, into a Mid-Cork rural constituency with an entirely different background and an entirely different environment.
I want to keep this debate in low key and on a sensible plane. I should like to know from the Minister if he made any effort to try to retain Cork city in a two three-seat situation. He could then have worked out the very minor adjustments that would have had to take place in regard to the Cork county constituency rearrangement both in regard to Mid-Cork and North-East Cork. That very minor adjustment of boundaries between North-East Cork and Mid-Cork would have been necessitated by having two three-seat constituencies in Cork city and the minor readjustments would have taken place between constituencies that were exactly the same in character.
Anybody who knows County Cork knows that as far as Mallow and Fermoy are concerned they are basically towns with the same sort of problems as those which Charleville, Newmarket or Kanturk would have, so that you are moving into an area where, with minor adjustment between the rural constituencies of County Cork, North-East Cork and Mid-Cork, the Minister could have settled his problem and kept the two urban constituencies of Cork city in a two three-seat situation.
I want to know from the Minister did he at any stage address his mind or the minds of his officials to the desirability of maintaining a situation that was working well where the population justified it, where all the loyalty, affinities and associations justified it, of maintaining the borough area of Cork which, due to an expanding population, justified two three-seat constituencies as its sister city of Dublin justified them? Why was that not done?
Question put: "That the amendment be made."
The Committee divided: Tá, 14; Níl, 22.
Tá
- Aylward, Bob.
- Brennan, John J.
- Brosnan, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick (Fad).
- Cowen, Bernard.
- Dolan, Séamus.
- Keegan, Seán.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- McGlinchey, Bernard.
- McGowan, Patrick.
- Ryan, Eoin.
- Ryan, William.
- Yeats, Michael B.
Níl
- Barrett, Jack.
- Boland, John.
- Butler, Pierce.
- Deasy, Austin.
- Farrelly, Denis.
- Halligan, Brendan.
- Harte, John.
- Kennedy, Fintan.
- Kilbride, Thomas.
- Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
- McCartin, John Joseph.
- Mannion, John M.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Mullen, Michael.
- O'Brien, William.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Toole, Patrick.
- Owens, Evelyn.
- Russell, George Edward.
- Sanfey, James W.
- Walsh, Mary.
- Whyte, Liam.
Tellers: Tá, Senators W. Ryan an d Killilea; Níl, Senators Sanfey and Halligan.
Amendment declared lost.
Question proposed: "That the entry relating to the constituency of Cork City stand part of the Schedule."
I can assure the House that I do not propose to spend any length of time on this. We have discussed it even though we have not really obtained the kind of explanation the House is entitled to. I would like to say something, particularly for the benefit of Senator M.J. O'Higgins who seemed to be a little confused about the historical situation in Cork City—for all it is worth, and I do not think that the historical details are of much importance. In 1961 the population of Cork County Borough was 112,317 which is not enough for six seats. Cork City had five seats. In 1966 Cork City had arisen in population by 10,000 to 122,144 which is just right for six seats, divided into two three-seat constituencies. Now, with a further rise of some 6,000 the population of Cork is 138,845 more than it should be for six seats. Therefore, you had a pattern, over the years, of a rising population resulting in an increased number of seats. The population has now arisen still further and the Minister has taken a seat away from Cork City. The Minister has said a couple of times in interjections that after all that all Cork men are Cork men and if 24,000 are to be taken out of Cork City, they are still in Cork. That is true enough. However, I would ask the Minister, in the light of his reiterated statement that in the framing of this Bill he has tried so far as possible to adhere to administrative boundaries, is the border of Cork City an administrative boundary or not? It is of course. I am taking the Minister at his own word. The Minister, not in relation to Cork men but in relation to the country as a whole, said quite clearly and categorically in this House and in the other House, on a number of occasions, that in framing this Bill he had done his utmost to adhere to existing administrative boundaries. Now the boundary of Cork City is an existing administrative boundary. The Minister has quite deliberately violated this existing administrative boundary and taken 24,000 people out of Cork city and put them into Mid-Cork. It is no use his saying that they are all Cork men. We are all Irish men. It was he himself who said it. The Minister said that he had endeavoured to keep to existing administrative boundaries and this is a clear, simple and straightforward case in which he has done precisely the opposite.
I do not want to hold up the House on this, but I think again I should point out how inconsistent Senator Yeats has been right through the debate. Earlier he admitted that the city boundaries would have to be breached because both of the three-seaters had gone across the permitted number. He can now stand up and attempt to try to put it across that in some peculiar way it would be possible not to breach the city boundaries, and that I should have kept them all within the city in some peculiar way. I do not want to start another debate on this but I want to say that as far as I am concerned, No. 1, they are all Cork people and, No. 2, Fianna Fáil found no difficulty at all in Dublin. The city boundaries did not seem to matter a whole lot as far as Dublin was concerned. They were prepared to trot over and back across the boundaries but in Cork, because they feel it would suit them in a different way, they want to change them. I believe the Bill as I have drawn it up is better than what they propose and I am sticking to that.
The Minister again, of course, refused to reply to the points I made before the vote. I want to refer to them again now because he has referred to Dublin and I do so more in patience than in anger. We have, in our amendments, taken Dublin city, Dún Laoghaire and County Dublin. The Minister and Senator Halligan can appreciate what we have done here in order to preserve the territorial and administrative integrity of that area and of the county. We suggested, in a group of amendments, that they be nine three-seat constituencies in metropolitan Dublin, in County Dublin and——
(Interruptions.)
I am following up the Minister's point. In regard to Cork city we are following the very same consistent point of principle in which we seek to do as little damage as possible to existing administrative areas. We adopted this principle in regard to Dublin city, Dublin county and Dún Laoghaire and we are adopting the same principle in regard to Cork city. What we have suggested, in having the two three-seat constituencies in Cork city, is that the minimum amount of violence be done to the historic though administrative area of Cork city. By having two three-seat constituencies—there is no point in talking about anything else except our amendment——
That Amendment has been disposed of.
Our amendment is very relevant to our discussion on paragraph 4 of the Schedule which relates to Cork City and "the county borough of Cork, except the part thereof which is comprised in the constituency of Mid-Cork" which is to have five seats. Our amendment proposed that we preserve the administrative area of the county borough of Cork by having two three-seat constituencies. The Minister's proposal is grossly to violate that administrative boundary and to take out of the Cork city area some 25,000 people.
That amendment was debated at length and was decided on. If the Chair had been strict in its ruling it would not have allowed a further discussion in regard to the entry to Cork city. The Chair has allowed that sort of discussion in regard to the entry to Cork city and in fact the discussion must be confined to that. There cannot be a further discussion of amendments disposed of.
I am talking about the county borough of Cork and the entry in the Schedule relating to Cork city. That five-seat constituency has drawn 25,000 people away from the county borough of Cork to a Mid-Cork constituency to which they bear no relationship. These citizens of the city of Cork have been removed from the Minister's five-seat constituency in the Schedule and consigned to a rural constituency with which they have no familiarity, no association and no basic affinity. We deplore the way this particular part of Ireland has been violated in the naked interests of the present Government Administration. No rational argument has been advanced against the other excellent amendments we have tabled to this Schedule. We have sought to put forward logical arguments and, in the absence of any logical answer to our rational arguments, we are driven back to the reluctant belief that a Minister of State is introducing a grossly corrupt, in the political sense, legislative measure designed entirely for narrow party advantage. Why Cork city should be reduced from six seats to five seats, while metropolitan Dublin has four three-seat constituencies, is something I find incomprehensible.
I do not wish to interrupt but, in relation to the conclusion of business, I understand that it is agreed that we rise at 10 o'clock——
No, give or take an hour.
——and that we conclude the Committee Stage. If we are to allow Senator McGlinchey an opportunity of discussing his amendment in relation to Donegal I think I should draw the Senator's attention to the time.
As the Leader of the House and the Chair is aware, this is a Committee Stage debate and the target is that we finish tonight. Ten o'clock is the desirable target but it may be later. It may be 10.30, 11 o'clock or 11.30, but we will hopefully finish the Committee Stage tonight, hopefully have the Report Stage next week, to which we will have further amendments down because we want to put on the record exactly what is being done here. I would comment in this respect that, in the Dáil, there was no opportunity given to devote any real time to what is the kernel of this matter and adequate discussion is what, with all due respect and thanks to the Chair, the Seanad ought to be enabled to have. It is imperative that we discuss the enormity of the gerrymander and the enormity of the political corruption involved in the Schedule to this Bill, particularly as the Dáil was deprived of engaging in democratic debate because of the Minister's guillotine. Due to the Chair, and this House, and due to the responsible attitude adopted by the Leader of this House, we have been enabled to have a rational debate and we have been enabled to go through the Schedule without any attempted filibuster and through our own amendments, group by group. I will leave it at that. We will try to finish the Committee Stage tonight. We are setting a target of 10 o'clock but we are not necessarily tied to that target.
Senator Halligan was engaged in the discussions regarding the agreement. Do not misunderstand me: I am not suggesting bad faith on anybody's part, but it does appear that the agreement was made in much more concrete terms than Senator Lenihan has suggested.
We will do our best. The Leader of the House, the Minister and Senator Halligan are wasting time at the moment.
There is not much point in engaging in discussions reaching on agreements. The discussions preceded the tea break; there was an understanding that there would be a break of one hour for tea and that we would conclude the Committee Stage by 10 o'clock. There was no question of trying to conclude by 10.30 p.m. or 11 p.m. or, perhaps, 11.30 p.m. Ten o'clock is ten o'clock.
We are not dealing now with a guillotine. We are not in the French Revolution period or anything like that. We are, I hope, engaged here in democratic debate.
Perhaps the Senator would indicate to the Whips when it is intended the debate should be concluded. We can then make our own arrangements.
As leader of our group here, I will try to ensure that we finish the Committee Stage tonight. Already ten minutes have been wasted by both Senator O'Higgins and Senator Halligan, apart from the minutes and the hours wasted by the Minister in this discussion. Instead of dealing in a logical way with our amendments——
I think I should point out that I, on a number of occasions, told Fianna Fáil speakers that I was deliberately taking very little time because I wanted to give them all the time they needed. If they wasted time filibustering they cannot come back at me now. Senator Lenihan is wasting time again now because he is talking nonsense.
The Chair would like to hear from Senator Lenihan now on the entry in regard to Cork City.
We are arguing against making a five-seat constituency of Cork City because it is, we believe, totally unjustified having regard to the existing three-seat constituency situation there and, for that reason, we are opposing this particular paragraph in the Schedule.
I think it was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach who said in the Dáil that some people may think that the Minister for Local Government is another St. Francis of Assisi. I can assure the Parliamentary Secretary that I, for one, would not look upon the Minister as a St. Francis. I believe that the good St. Francis himself could not persuade the people of Cork city that in this proposal the Minister has not produced one of the most blatant examples of gerrymandering in the entire legislation. I can only compare the way this city has been carved up with what was done to one other city in this country. The lay-out for Cork city is, in fact, identical to the way the city of Derry was designed and gerrymandered by Sir Basil Brooke.
That is a lot of nonsense.
It is not a lot of nonsense. Sir Basil Brooke in the constituency of the city of Derry took a lump out of the centre of the city, just as the Minister has done here, and he put it into a country district ten miles away. I do not know if Sir Basil Brooke wrote a book about his political life but, if he did, I am sure the Minister must have read it because he has certainly taken a leaf out of it.
The only orders I read recently were Orders from the Captain.
The Minister was not a captain.
The Committee div ided: Tá, 22; Níl, 13.
Tá
- Barrett, Jack.
- Boland, John.
- Butler, Pierce.
- Deasy, Austin.
- Farrelly, Denis.
- Halligan, Brendan.
- Harte, John.
- Kennedy, Fintan.
- Kilbride, Thomas.
- Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
- McCartin, John Joseph.
- Mannion, John M.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Mullen, Michael.
- O'Brien, William.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Toole, Patrick.
- Owens, Evelyn.
- Russell, George Edward.
- Sanfey, James W.
- Walsh, Mary.
- Whyte, Liam.
Níl
- Brennan, John J.
- Brosnan, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick (Fad).
- Cowan, Bernard.
- Dolan, Séamus.
- Keegan, Seán.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- McGlinchey, Bernard.
- McGowan, Patrick.
- Ryan, Eoin.
- Ryan, William.
- Yeats, Michael B.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Sanfey and Halligan; Níl, Senators W. Ryan and Killilea.
Question declared carried.
Amendment No. 5 has already been discussed.
Amendment No. 5 not moved.
Question proposed: "That the entry relating to the constituency of Mid-Cork stand part of the Schedule."
On this we propose to vote against the entry of Mid-Cork because it is an integral part of the gerrymander in Cork city.
The Committee divi ded: Tá, 22; Níl, 14.
Tá
- Barrett, Jack.
- Boland, John.
- Butler, Pierce.
- Deasy, Austin.
- Farrelly, Denis.
- Halligan, Brendan.
- Harte, John.
- Kennedy, Fintan.
- Kilbride, Thomas.
- Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
- McCartin, John Joseph.
- Mannion, John M.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Mullen, Michael.
- O'Brien, William.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Toole, Patrick.
- Owens, Evelyn.
- Russell, George Edward.
- Sanfey, James W.
- Walsh, Mary.
- Whyte, Liam.
Níl
- Aylward, Bob.
- Brennan, John J.
- Brosnan, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick (Fad).
- Cowan, Bernard.
- Dolan, Séamus.
- Keegan, Seán.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- McGlinchey, Bernard.
- McGowan, Patrick.
- Ryan, Eoin.
- Ryan, William.
- Yeats, Michael B.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Sanfey and Halligan; Níl, Senators W. Ryan and Killilea.
Question declared carried.
Amendment No. 6 not moved.
Question: "That the entry relating to North-East Cork stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question: "That the entry relating to the constituency of South-West Cork stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question proposed: "That the entry relating to the constituency of Donegal stand part of the Schedule."
In order to facilitate matters and seek to finish this debate as early as possible, which is our objective on this side of the House, perhaps we might take in conjunction with the Donegal entry, Senator McGlinchey's amendment relating to Sligo-Leitrim, and the Sligo-Leitrim entry. Senator McGlinchey's amendment which is related to the paragraph on page ten relating to Sligo-Leitrim also relates to Donegal. This suggestion might save time.
This is a matter for the House to decide. The suggestion is that amendment No. 17 be now called, that there be a debate on the amendment as well as on the entry in relation to Donegal and the entry in relation to Sligo-Leitrim.
I am agreeable.
It is not my intention to detain the House very long particularly as I have to drive home tonight, through the west, through the towns of Ballyshannon and Ballintra.
They will not be waiting for the Senator with bags of stones or bags of guns. He need not be afraid.
I drove on that road many times and I have been suffering for it ever since.
Are your wounds starting to bleed again?
No. I got my wife in Ballyshannon. The original proposal made by the Minister for Local Government was to draw a line between the town of Ballintra and the town of Ballyshannon. By so doing he was putting the Fine Gael Deputy who lives in Ballyshannon into the constituency of Sligo-Leitrim.
On Second Stage I outlined Deputy White's reaction to this proposal. It is not my intention to repeat it here tonight except to say that Deputy White made it crystal clear that he would not accept the original proposal of the Minister for Local Government. As a result it became necessary for the Minister to revise his plans. In doing so he has put into the constituency of Sligo-Leitrim the townlands of Cavangarden, Cliff and Carrigboy in the former rural district of Ballyshannon. They are areas that are much closer to the Donegal constituency than the town of Ballyshannon. On the last occasion I pointed out that when one leaves the town of Ballyshannon and drives to Donegal town for the first three miles one is in the Donegal constituency, for the next three miles one is in the Sligo-Leitrim constituency and for the remainder of the journey to Ballintra one is back in the Donegal constituency. But in the village of Ballintra one finds oneself a couple of hundred yards from Sligo-Leitrim.
In his reply to the Second Stage debate the Minister tried to justify his actions when he said in Vol. 77, col. 1014 of the Official Report:
The boundaries of these areas were drawn up more than 100 years ago. I can hardly be blamed if these boundaries happen to cross Ballintra road. I did not draw up electoral division boundaries. I was not alive 100 years ago. I can assure Deputy McGlinchey that if he tries some time to get a motion or a resolution passed—I do not know what it would be exactly—to straighten out the boundaries of electoral divisions or if he succeeds in getting the Ballintra road moved or the electoral division moved over I certainly will not object.
This, of course, is complete and absolute nonsense. The Minister knows in his heart of hearts, but he naturally will not admit it publicly, that in his initial plan this electoral division that he has put into Sligo-Leitrim was not included—that is the one I referred to in my amendment. He knows and the people of Ballyshannon and South Donegal know and, indeed, the local newspaper that published an editorial knows that this zig-zag division was designed for one reason only and that was to keep the town of Ballyshannon in County Donegal.
I agree that the town of Ballyshannon should be in Donegal but I do not agree that these electoral divisions of Bundoran rural, Carrigboy, Cavangarden, Cliff and the urban districts of Bundoran should be put out of Donegal. I can assure the Minister that if he were to accept my amendment the person that he would please most of all would be Deputy White. Any reasonable person would agree with me that the very townland surrounding his own home has been cut up but the position the Minister was in was either to cut Deputy White's throat or his main artery. Faced with that choice he chose the main artery and he has thus produced a map for a constituency that of all the areas on this map—and I have studied this map and I have studied all the constituencies throughout the country on this map—we have nowhere a more blatant example of gerrymandering than here in this small area of South Donegal.
Is Clare-Galway not worse?
If Senator Killilea would look at the map and see for himself the line that goes round the town of Ballyshannon crossing the main road as it does, he would have to admit that there is nowhere else in the west of Ireland one could find a more blatant example of gerrymandering than in this area. It is gerrymandering such as this that could cause trouble in the future. When I on Second Reading suggested that a bad electoral system such as we have in Sligo-Leitrim and Donegal would be rejected by the people on the streets in the years to come, the Minister tried to suggest that I had said something that I certainly did not say. In Volume 77, column 1019 of the Official Report the Minister said:
...if Senator McGlinchey or anybody else thinks that they can upset the decision of Oireachtas Éireann by taking to the streets or using violence, then most certainly they will be condemned by me....
Of course, the Minister deliberately misrepresented what I said, because I accept—whether I agree with this legislation or not—the democratic decision of this House, the democratic decision of a democratic parliament, elected by the Irish people. However, if I need a lecture on good citizenship, I do not need it from the Minister. I was not in the Mater Hospital trying to spring prisoners, like some of the Minister's Deputies who support him and his inept Government. I would suggest to the Minister that if he wants to give a lecture on good citizenship, he should concentrate on his own colleagues in the Labour Party in Dáil Éireann.
Nor did he carry anybody out of the High Court after the decision of the——
I did not carry anyone out of the High Court, and if I did, it would have been a perfectly democratic right. I was not——
The Senator was not there anyway. He was not allowed there anyway. He was not allowed——
(Interruptions.)
A long-distance republican.
I was not in the Mater Hospital in this city when an attempt was made to free a prisoner by the force of arms, as some of the Deputies supporting the Minister——
Where did the arms come from?
I do not know.
Maybe the Senator will know if he checks back.
(Interruptions.)
The Minister should ask the Labour Deputies who were outside the Mater Hospital.
(Interruptions.)
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Order. The last few interruptions, from both sides of the House, are not relevant to the amendment before the House. Senator McGlinchey to proceed on the amendment, without interruption.
You have a difficult task trying to control the Minister. I was completely misrepresented by the Minister, I suspect deliberately. I do not believe and never have believed——
Never?
Never—that anyone should create a situation of violence in the Irish Republic. In his reply the Minister stated about the Bally-shannon-Ballintra road that there was a side road used by some of my friends. I do not know exactly what he meant because I am not aware of the side road. He said that some friends of Senator McGlinchey used this side road quite a lot. Around the Border, side roads are used for two purposes: smuggling, on the one hand, and illegal organisations on the other. I take it that the Minister was referring to one of these two. I wish to state clearly and categorically in this House that I have never had associations with either of the grouping that the Minister, I think, suggests could use this road. He was possibly referring to something else. I believe and have always believed that, no matter which Government are elected, it is the democratically elected government and they alone are responsible for law and order in this nation.
If the Minister is trying to imply that I believe anything to the contrary, I want to assure him that he is wrong. However, that is taking us away from the Ballintra road. I will not go into the constituency of Donegal again at great length. We have made our protest that it is wrong that a seat should be taken from that town. Looking at the map of Ireland, one can see that it is one of the largest constituencies in the country—without a doubt, it has the largest acreage. The action of the Minister and his Government in denying the people of Donegal their just representation will be looked upon by the people of that county as one of the most unjust and despicable acts of the present administration. I feel sure that when the opportunity presents itself, they will not forget this foul act of the National Coalition Government.
I will be very brief. The effect of this amendment would be to make all of County Donegal a five-seat constituency. The population of the county, 108,244, is too high for five seats and too low for six. The constituency of Donegal as proposed by the Senator is not, therefore, within the permitted tolerance range. The maximum population for five seats would be 105,615. The proposed figure is 108,244, which is 2,729 too high for a five-seat constituency and there is no point in discussing it further.
I should like to ask the Minister, in all seriousness, does he not admit to the House that he could have brought about the results that he now has without drawing a map like a dog's hind legs? That is a crude way of expressing what he has done. The Donegal Democrat published a front page blown-up photograph, and Senator McGlinchey referred to an editorial in that newspaper. These are the people on the ground who are really embarrassed, being so close to Fermanagh.
The people in Fermanagh and the people who have gerrymandered parts of the North for years are only in the infant class by comparison with what this Schedule demonstrates we are capable of doing in Donegal. It will be the basis for any argument that the majority could put forward against gerrymandering in the North—we will have provided them with the basis to defeat the minority in any example of gerrymandering. Any such argument will be closed up in saecula sæculorum by the very simple example that they have on their doorstep.
It is scandalous. I do not think the Minister can sit there in all honesty and express justification for retaining boundaries as far as possible, putting forward good reasons as to why this was done and that was done in every constituency, and then hold up that map to anyone he expects to have the use of understanding. It is the most ridiculous piece of draftsmanship. I am sure he is embarrassed by even the officials who sit beside him. I say with sincerity that it is a most disgraceful performance by a Minister of State.
All I can say is that Senators who have spoken know quite well that there were a dozen different ways in which the line could be drawn. If the people in the North want an example of how gerrymandering could be carried out they do not have to look at this Bill. They can go back to the Act of 1969. There was not a darn thing I could do. Though I have a lot of sympathy with Senator McGlinchey's suggestion that I should keep Donegal in one county it is not possible to do it. It is as simple as that. Therefore, I do not propose to pursue it any further.
Could the Minister not have left the real natural boundary, and that is where——
The Minister has to deal with the amendment as it stands.
I think it is a reasonable question on the boundary of Donegal. Could the boundary not have been left where the Erne comes down and divides a very natural straight-forward boundary? That is what the amendment proposes.
That is not proposed in the amendment. I am talking about the amendment which is here. There is no point in talking about it. The Bill has been drawn and that is that.
(Interruptions.)
The amendment could not achieve what the Opposition want.
Could I ask the Minister one question—what would be the consequences——
The Minister knows what the consequences would be.
Would the Senator go back to sleep.
I would ask the Minister not to go to sleep—yet.
(Interruptions.)
Could I ask the Minister what would be the consequences if he were to accept the amendment in this case? Would it be disastrous? Would it embarrass him? Would it upset the whole approach? Would it cause a real upset in the Department?
It would be contrary to what has been laid down. Senator Yeats made the point that perhaps sometime somebody should draw up a Bill that would be challenged in the High Court and we would find out whether the tolerance we have now is absolute. I do not propose to be the Minister who will introduce something which I know myself is contrary to what it should be. Therefore, I do not propose to do this. I had to take away a portion of Donegal in order to bring it within the tolerance range. Though Senator McGowan may be right, in saying that it may look ugly, I am sorry if I have upset The Donegal Democrat editor. The fact is, I had to take a certain number of people out of that constituency. I did that. These are the facts. I say that the amendment is not in order. It could not be accepted as it is. Therefore, that does it.
It could be accepted.
It would be contrary to High Court decision on tolerance.
It could be accepted.
Question put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 22; Níl, 14.
Tá
- Barrett, Jack.
- Boland, John.
- Butler, Pierce.
- Deasy, Austin.
- Farrelly, Denis.
- Halligan, Brendan.
- Harte, John.
- Kennedy, Fintan.
- Kilbride, Thomas.
- Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
- McCartin, John Joseph.
- Mannion, John M.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Mullen, Michael.
- O'Brien, William.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Toole, Patrick.
- Owens, Evelyn.
- Russell, George Edward.
- Sanfey, James W.
- Walsh, Mary.
- Whyte, Liam.
Níl
- Aylward, Bob.
- Brennan, John J.
- Brosnan, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick (Fad).
- Cowen, Bernard.
- Dolan, Séamus.
- Keegan, Seán.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- McGlinchey, Bernard.
- McGowan, Patrick.
- Ryan, Eoin.
- Ryan, William.
- Yeats, Michael B.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Sanfey and Halligan; Níl, Senators W. Ryan and Killilea.
Question declared carried.
Amendment No. 7 not moved.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Mid-County Dublin stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of North County Dublin stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of South County Dublin stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of West County Dublin stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question proposed: "That the entry relating to the constituency of Dún Laoghaire stand part of the Schedule."
I rise very briefly to oppose this entry. I do not propose to go over the arguments we have stated already. I should like, however, to say that this was one of eight four-seat constituencies in the Dublin area, the only one where the Coalition had a majority, the one selected to remain a four-seater, although the sensible thing to have done would have been to make it a five-seater because the population of Dún Laoghaire as it now stands is 98,000, which is exactly right for a five-seater. But the decision about the four-seat constituency was simply in accordance with the Minister's prevailing practice of arranging of the number of representatives for the constituency in order to suit his own side first. It is another piece of the general gerrymandering in this Bill, so we propose to oppose this entry in respect of this constituency.
Question put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 22; Níl, 14.
Tá
- Barrett, Jack.
- Boland, John.
- Butler, Pierce.
- Deasy, Austin.
- Farrelly, Denis.
- Halligan, Brendan.
- Harte, John.
- Kennedy, Fintan.
- Kilbride, Thomas.
- Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
- McCartin, John Joseph.
- Mannion, John M.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Mullen, Michael.
- O'Brien, William.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Toole, Patrick.
- Owens, Evelyn.
- Russell, George Edward.
- Sanfey, James W.
- Walsh, Mary.
- Whyte, Liam.
Níl
- Aylward, Bob.
- Brennan, John J.
- Brosnan, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick (Fad).
- Cowen, Bernard.
- Dolan, Séamus.
- Keegan, Seán.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- McGlinchey, Bernard.
- McGowan, Patrick.
- Ryan, Eoin.
- Ryan, William.
- Yeats, Michael B.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Sanfey and Halligan; Níl, Senators Killilea and W. Ryan.
Question declared carried.
Amendment No. 8 not moved.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Dublin (Artane) stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Dublin (Bally-fermot) stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Dublin (Cabra) stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Dublin (Clontarf) stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Dublin (Finglas) stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Dublin North-Central stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Dublin (Rathmines West) stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Dublin South-Central stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Dublin SouthEast stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Amendment No. 9 not moved.
Question proposed: "That the entry relating to the constituency of East Galway stand part of the Schedule."
The Committee divided: Tá, 22; Níl, 13.
Tá
- Barrett, Jack.
- Boland, John.
- Butler, Pierce.
- Deasy, Austin.
- Farrelly, Denis.
- Halligan, Brendan.
- Harte, John.
- Kennedy, Fintan.
- Kilbride, Thomas.
- Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
- McCartin, John Joseph.
- Mannion, John M.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Mullen, Michael.
- O'Brien, William.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Toole, Patrick.
- Owens, Evelyn.
- Russell, George Edward.
- Sanfey, James W.
- Walsh, Mary.
- Whyte, Liam.
Níl
- Aylward, Bob.
- Brennan, John J.
- Brosnan, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick (Fad).
- Cowen, Bernard.
- Dolan, Séamus.
- Keegan, Seán.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- McGlinchey, Bernard.
- McGowan, Patrick.
- Ryan, William.
- Yeats, Michael B.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Sanfey and Halligan; Níl, Senators Killilea and W. Ryan.
Question declared carried.
Amendment No. 10 not moved.
Question proposed: "That the entry relating to the constituency of West Galway stand part of the Schedule."
The Committee divided: Tá, 22; Níl, 14.
Tá
- Barrett, Jack.
- Boland, John.
- Butler, Pierce.
- Deasy, Austin.
- Farrelly, Denis.
- Halligan, Brendan.
- Harte, John.
- Kennedy, Fintan.
- Kilbride, Thomas.
- Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
- McCartin, John Joseph.
- Mannion, John M.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Mullen, Michael.
- O'Brien, William.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Toole, Patrick.
- Owens, Evelyn.
- Russell, George Edward.
- Sanfey, James W.
- Walsh, Mary.
- Whyte, Liam.
Níl
- Aylward, Bob.
- Brennan, John J.
- Brosnan, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick (Fad).
- Cowen, Bernard.
- Dolan, Séamus.
- Keegan, Seán.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- McGlinchey, Bernard.
- McGowan, Patrick.
- Ryan, Eoin.
- Ryan, William.
- Yeats, Michael B.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Sanfey and Halligan; Níl, Senators W. Ryan and Killilea.
Question declared carried.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of North Kerry stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of South Kerry stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Amendment No. 11 not moved.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Kildare stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Laoighis-Offaly stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of East Limerick stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of West Limerick stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Longford-West-meath stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Amendment No. 12 not moved.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Louth stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Amendment No. 13 not moved.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of East Mayo stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Amendment No. 14 not moved.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of West Mayo stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Amendment No. 15 not moved.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Meath stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Amendment No. 16 has been dealt with.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Roscommon-Leitrim stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Amendments Nos. 17 and 18 not moved.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Sligo-Leitrim stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
I move amendment No. 19:
In page 10, in the second column of the entry relating to the constituency of North Tipperary, to delete all words after "district electoral divisions of:" and substitute the following:
"Graystown, Clonulty East, Gaile, Killenaule, Clogher in the former Rural District of Cashel;
Buolick, Fenner, Kilcooly, New Birmingham, Poyntstown, Farranrory, Ballyphilip, Crohane in the former Rural District of Slievardagh;
Curraheen, Glangar, Cappagh in the former Rural District of Tipperary No. 1."
At this late stage I do not propose to detain Senators. I intend to withdraw amendment No. 20 and deal with amendment No. 19. After so many other amendments, this amendment may appear to be of little importance but it is of importance to the people of County Tipperary. There are two county councils in County Tipperary, north and south. We regard them as the boundaries between Tipperary and Kilkenny and Tipperary and Limerick. In the last census, the population of the South Riding was 69,228, and of the North Riding 54,337. In an Electoral Bill some years ago a portion of South Tipperary was transferred to North Tipperary with approximately 5,043 persons. This brought our population down from 69,000 to 64,185 and increased the population in North Tipperary from 54,000 to 59,380.
The Minister has now decided to take a further part of South Tipperary, namely, Farranrory, Ballyphilip, Ballingarry, Modeshil, Crohane, Killenaule, Graystown and Ballysheehan. This amounts to 4,245 in population. By taking these 4,000 from South Tipperary you reduce the population there from 64,185 to 59,940 and you increase the population in North Tipperary to 63,625. This is merely juggling with an area and makes no difference. We are suggesting that another small portion of South Tipperary could be transferred instead to balance the vote more evenly between the two counties. This would bring Glengar and Cappagh into North Tipperary. The Minister dug into the heart of South Tipperary; he has come into Cashel and within eight miles of Clonmel. This is most unfair, in our opinion. If the Cappagh and Glengar areas were transferred to North Tipperary it would mean 1,448 people, which would give South Tipperary 62,737 and North Tipperary 60,828. Both constituencies would then have a more even division of population for three Deputies.
The Minister could state there are three Deputies in North Tipperary and only two in South Tipperary excluding the Ceann Comhairle. If the Ceann Comhairle came from any other constituency South Tipperary would not be a three-seater; it would be left as a four-seater because otherwise the Labour Party would suffer.
No matter what changes take place somebody will bring pressure to bear on public representatives to make representations to have other changes. Senator W. Ryan referred to juggling with figures and areas. He is doing the same thing. I am not blaming him for this as there was probably pressure from people who did not like being moved, although they are still within County Tipperary.
His last remarks stating that if the Ceann Comhairle were not from South Tipperary it would be a four-seater constituency surprised me. As far as I remember, the Ceann Comhairle headed the poll in the last general election. He would then get the first seat and it would not worry him who got the fourth.
There is a difference between a three-seater and a four-seater.
He headed the poll and that cannot be taken away from him. Everybody in Tipperary should be pleased that they have their own area now and that the portion of Waterford which was stuck on has been taken away. Only a fool tries to please everybody.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment No. 20 not moved.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of North Tipperary stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of South Tipperary stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Waterford stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Wexford stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Amendment No. 21 not moved.
Question "That the entry relating to the constituency of Wicklow stand part of the Schedule" put and agreed to.
Sections 3 to 5, inclusive, agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported without amendment.
I suppose we could not take the next Stage now?
We have been consistent in our efforts in going through the democratic process of consideration although the response has been zero so far, despite our efforts. However, we intend putting down amendments on Report Stage.
Report Stage ordered for Tuesday, 30th April, 1974.
The Seanad adjourned at 11 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 30th April, 1974.