I move Amendment 17:—"Page 11. After Article 56, and before Article 57, to insert a new Article as follows:—`Article 56A—Every Minister shall have the right to attend and be heard in the Seanad.' This amendment proposes a new Article, giving Ministers the right to attend and be heard in the Seanad. It is advisable that the Minister, say, in charge of a Bill should be entitled to speak in explanation and in support of that Bill in the Upper House. He probably will have—he ought to have, at any rate—a better grasp of all the details of it, the reasons that prompted him to insert a particular clause, and so on, than any member of either House. For the purpose of supporting and elucidating his measure in the Seanad it is advisable that he should be allowed to attend.
A NEW ARTICLE—56 A.
Mr. O'HIGGINS
Mr. BLYTHE
seconded the amendment.
Mr. DARRELL FIGGIS
I am opposed to this, for this reason, that I think it spoils the original intention of the Seanad. Surely the purpose of the Seanad is that it should be kept out of those party issues to which constant reference has been made in this House. They would normally and naturally sway a Chamber. In whatever aspect we regard them, Ministers will be the mouthpiece. In an earlier discussion in this Dáil Professor Magennis referred to the Seanad as a "Cooling Chamber," and I remember the Minister for Home Affairs himself adapting and using that excellent expression. Obviously, if it is to be in any sense a "Cooling Chamber," you are at once bringing those passions that are alone supposed to be the monopoly of the Chamber of Deputies into the Seanad by allowing the Ministers to arrive there and introduce there all the discussions that have already been heard, and might even possibly have been read in the Seanad. It is a possibility that they may even read the debates of the Chamber. Whether they do or they do not, I suggest that the Seanad be left to its own separate consideration, without Ministers invading it with issues that have already been thrashed out in the body where they naturally belong. For that reason substantially, and reasons that are attendant upon it, I think it would be better that Ministers should not have the right to go and speak in the Seanad. There is one further consideration. Even if we assume that a Minister might speak in the Seanad, I suggest it would be wrong here to interfere with the right and authority of that House. It might be said any Minister might speak in the Seanad by the wish of the Seanad or by the authority of the Seanad, but the Seanad should not be compelled to hear him even though the Seanad did not desire to hear him. While I am opposed to the principle of Ministers speaking in the Seanad, I do not press that very strongly, but what I do press as emphatically as I possibly can is that the Seanad should be left its rights as a House, and should be left that principal right of not hearing anybody or of hearing anybody according as it may decide.
The amendment was declared carried.