The motion I submit is as follows:—"That, with a view to the prevention of corrupt practices during the election of members of the Legislature and of local governing bodies, and in connection with the appointment of officials under public boards, it is desirable that a Committee should be set up without delay, charged with the duty of devising the best practicable measures to prevent such corrupt practices." This motion is designed to deal with evils with which all Members of the Dáil are more or less familiar, and it is primarily intended to deal with the basic corrupt practice of impersonation at elections. Now this question of personation has existed as long as I am familiar with elections and, of course, a great deal longer. But it has increased very much in recent years. That increase is due to a number of reasons. The Register has been increased, the area consequent on the adoption of the Proportional Representation system has increased, and there are other causes. Up to four years ago personation, although it existed and was deplored, was within a measure that could be grappled with. We read about it and a certain amount of organisation and machinery was capable of curtailing it within certain limits. But since about 1918 this evil has grown until at a recent election it increased to an extent that was never witnessed or dreamt of in the past. At the local elections of 1920 there was a very noticeable increase, and at the Poor Law Elections, six months later, there was a much greater increase. At the recent Parliamentary elections, especially in the City of Dublin, it went beyond all former dimensions. In fact some of the older hands who were familiar with how it was done in the past turned green with envy when they witnessed the facility with which it was being performed. I think it would be fairly safe to say that if personation existed in the past to an extent of 5 or 10 per cent. it would be an outside figure, but I am prepared to submit evidence that in one constituency with which I happened to be connected personation existed to the extent of 60 to 75 per cent. of the votes for a particular candidate. Deputies may not believe all that, but I now bring it forward as a solemn fact that can be supported by evidence. In the old days it required a certain amount of skill, knowledge, organisation and preliminary enquiry to carry out personation. All that thing was thrown to the wind recently. Certain machinery used to be set up to ascertain whether a voter was likely to record his vote or not, to see whether a person was dead or in hospital, and that information proved very useful to the skilled operators on the day of the Poll. But recently that was all brushed aside and mass voting without reference to any of these preliminary enquiries became popular. We are all familiar in industry with the cases where things that used to be produced by skilled craftsmen or artists are now made by mechanical contrivances which were invented to replace them, and in these or other respects it was natural that craftsmen should give way to the machines. That, of course, is the humorous aspect of it, but this thing is very serious and goes to the very foundation of our public life. The public bodies elected by this method administer very important functions and deal with large amounts of funds and patronage, and with the ordinary activities of our daily life that affect all citizens, and, unless adequate steps be taken to deal with this thing, other corrupt practices will, and do, necessarily flow from it. One of my colleagues would, had he been here to-day, have told you of a remarkable incident that happened in his constituency down the country. As he is not here I will repeat it. One would suppose that the maximum of impersonation of votes recorded would be 100 per cent. of the Register, but in the instance he gives 100 per cent., plus two, voted in a particular district. A number of voters came in, and subsequently there was a large influx, and the Presiding Officer was compelled, at the point of the revolver, to fill the ballot papers for every name on the Register, and thus the Register was polled with 100 per cent. plus two votes. That was not unique, and a remarkable thing about it was, that notwithstanding the fact that this personation was rife there was not a single arrest in Dublin, or any other part of the country. That showed that no attempt was made to stop those corrupt practices, and I would urge the Ministry that some adequate steps should be taken to deal with this evil. When we come to deal with the actual proposals, there will, of course, be differences of opinion. These corrupt practices are more prevalent in large centres of population like Dublin than in country parts, because in large towns it is difficult to know the individual voters. Where there would be large numbers of well-organised political parties with ample time to make preparation, that could be checked. That state of affairs did not prevail in the last election, and if public life is to have any meaning at all, this will have to be dealt with before the next election. In Dublin, for example, the form in which the election register is compiled has a great deal to do with it. Streets are arranged alphabetically. The result is that two or three or four streets may be grouped together at a particular polling station, and there may be a great difference in location between these streets, and the one personation agent can have no knowledge of all the voters in these particular streets. I would urge that the Ministry should consider this matter carefully, and see what adequate steps they can take, in conjunction with the Electoral Bill which they propose introducing, to deal with the changes consequent upon adult suffrage.
THE COST OF LIVING. - PREVENTION OF CORRUPT PRACTICES AT ELECTIONS.
Mr. WM. O'BRIEN
Mr. BLYTHE
I second the motion. I agree entirely with all that has been said by Deputy O'Brien. In the last election the extent to which personation was carried out was an absolute scandal, and was in some cases so bad as to make the election something in the nature of a farce. I do not think that there was anywhere so little personation that it was not in the nature of a scandal, and the presence of a 100 per cent. poll in particular districts, with the Register stale, and where a large number of the electors must have been dead and gone, was enough to show the value of such a poll. In one case I knew, 100 per cent. polled, and there was the coincidence that every paper in the box had its No. 1 for the same candidate, which showed the peculiar unanimity of the people in that district dead and alive. The principal corrupt practice is, undoubtedly, personation, and, I think, it is so important that a Committee should be set up to devise the best means of dealing with the matter. There have been other suggestions made —one was made to me—with a view to dealing with that particular difficulty, but the machinery was so cumbersome and complex that the proposition could not be adopted, and it is because of the difficulty of getting some scheme of check that will be ample, but will not hold up the smooth running of elections, that it is necessary that the matter should be thrashed out by a committee of people of large and varied experience before it is brought before this Dáil at all. One of the principal defects that Deputy O'Brien suggested, in connection with the form of the Dublin Register, is undoubtedly the way in which streets, from different ends of the Ward, have been brought together at one polling station, and that has led to a lot of difficulty in detecting personation. Even in the Register now being compiled we are trying to arrange for the division of Wards into areas, so that streets in the one area may fall into one polling booth. That is a difficulty we are trying to rectify already. The resolution deals with another matter, which is, perhaps, not in the same category; that is corrupt practices in connection with the appointment of officials to public boards. It seems to me that that particular form of corrupt practice—and, of course we know there is a great deal of corrupt practice—is of a kind that is in a different category from the corrupt practice in connection with the elections to the Dáil, and the Senate, and Local Government bodies, and it might be as well it should be dealt with separately. It may be some little time before we come to deal with the Local Government legislation that will be necessary on the abolition of the workhouses, and the setting up of County Homes, and that will necessitate besides, other reforms overdue in Local Government legislation. That, perhaps, will not come just immediately, or just so soon as the Electoral Laws. It may be better, in regard to any change as to officials to local bodies and safeguards to prevent corruption, that they should be considered at the time when we are bringing before the Dáil legislation in connection with Local Government, and I think it would be better if the resolution were altered so that a Committee could be set up which would deal only with the corrupt practices in connection with elections to this Legislature and to local bodies.
Mr. T. JOHNSON
I note the suggestion of the Minister in regard to the appointment of officials on public boards, and the practice which leads to the selection of one person in preference to another, and I admit there is some distinction between the two cases cited, and perhaps, if so desired, Deputy O'Brien will be prepared to eliminate that particular phrase from this resolution on the understanding that the Minister himself would use all the powers that he has— and I think they are very considerable in such matters—to prevent the buying of posts. We know, as a matter of fact, and everybody who knows the country knows it, that where there is a possible vacancy, say, for a dispensary doctor, some young man with a father who has plenty of money, or who can borrow plenty of money, really bribes the Guardians for the appointment in question. I think it would be possible to obviate a good deal of that if there was an understanding that appointments in the districts should be offered to seniors within that particular area who have had a number of years' experience, provided there is no reason against the appointment of the seniors. The senior should have the option of taking the better appointment, rather than that a new man should be able to come in and get that particular vacancy by purchase. Now, this question of purchase is, of course, a condemnation of the Guardians and others who will be purchasable, just as much as it is of the purchaser, and I think there ought to be very drastic steps taken, when any suggestion comes to the ears of the local authority that there has been a purchasing of appointments, and that the culprit in such a matter should be punished very severely. Now, coming again to the question of personation and corrupt practices at elections, the evil, unfortunately, is not only with the personators. We know very well that public officials have been parties to this evil wholesale. Public officials have been appointed as presiding officers and returning officers, and have actually gone out of their way to fill the ballot-boxes with papers filled up by themselves. This is even more grievous than the crime, as it is a crime and offence, of a voter himself or herself, and I want to emphasise the femininity of this particular offence. It is probably exaggerated to a degree almost inconceivable by the willingness of women to act as personators. I think the process takes something like this course: a little timid urging to go in and vote as a "duty to the cause"; a vote for somebody whom they know to be on their side. That is found so easy that they try again, and again, and again, and then they delight in the prospect of being able to poll 20, 30, or 40 votes per day! This has a very serious moral effect, and I believe the evil is not so much that the person elected is not the free choice of the electors, but that the electors themselves have lost all sense of the value of their civic rights, duties, and responsibilities. There cannot be a proper civic spirit developed when this cheapening of the ballot is extended through the country as it has been in the last few years. It is a sport; who can do best and poll the most votes; and I think, if we are all frank and honest, as we might well be now, neither of the last two parliamentary elections gave any indication of the will of the people. The supposed 1918 election was not an election which decided that the people wanted a Republic. The 1922 election did not indicate the will of the people at all in these public matters, and but for the fact that there was other evidence of the will of the people, but for the fact that there was other evidence, outside the ballot, of the will of the people, nobody could, say what the will of the people was upon these particular momentous matters. It is hypocrisy to refer to the elections as a test of the will of the people. There are other methods of testing the will of the people, not formal methods, but obvious methods, and that is the only evidence that is of any value in testing whether the people of Ireland were supporters of the Republic, or whether the people of Ireland were supporters of the Treaty, but the elections were a farce and utterly useless as any test upon these questions. I suggest that such a Committee as may be appointed may well consider that there should be something in the way of citizenship papers issued to every citizen which might be producible under a proper signature, and photograph or other mark before a person would be entitled to the use of the vote. But, whatever method is adopted it is essential in my opinion that it should take place before the next election, and that we should not have any qualms about drastic measures, even though those measures limit the poll. I believe it would be well even to demand that there should be personal application to go on the Register before any person is put upon the Register. I think we should aim at making the exercise of the vote as something akin to a religious rite. Because it might be made the most important item in a man's life with regard to his civic activities. And I think we should rather try to elevate this exercise of civic rights. I am glad to know that the Minister has readily accepted the proposition, and I have little doubt that at his request the mover of the resolution, Deputy William O'Brien, will agree to the deletion of that particular clause on the understanding that the Minister will use all the influence and powers of his department to prevent corruption in the making of appointments.
Mr. BLYTHE
The Deputy may take it that I will use any powers that are vested in me, and that I have been thinking of additional measures to deal with the matter.
Mr. DARRELL FIGGIS
I did not intend to speak on this matter, believing that some Deputy would mention one aspect of this question that I judge to be of very considerable importance. Deputy Johnson, my colleague in the representation of the County Dublin, came very near to it; and I desire to take this opportunity to make specific and clear mention of one of the most important parts of this very important subject, and it is this:—Following the recent election I had occasion to speak with certain persons of electoral knowledge in different countries, knowledge that I used in drafting a certain Bill, which I thought would meet this matter, but which did not get so far as the First Reading. This Bill did embody the experiences of several countries, by reason of the fact that there were certain people from these countries present in this country at the time, who had knowledge of the methods by which this abuse could be rectified. I was told by one of those gentlemen that in certain European countries, Norway was mentioned and the Scandinavian countries were specified, a citizen would as soon think of committing a crime of the nature of theft as he would think of personation. It is only when that attitude of mind is produced in a people that this will finally be met. The only way, therefore, I believe, in which it can be stopped is by treating personation as a crime. There are people in this country of the devoutest faith who would be reluctant to thieve or lie, but who, never-the less, will go in with the utmost cheerfulness to thieve or lie when they get inside a polling booth. The only way in which this matter can be adequately met, and in which it has been met in other countries, is by treating the person who steals somebody else's vote exactly in the same way as if they stole somebody else's watch and chain. If that can be done, and those are the lines in which it can be done, you would be able to destroy what, unfortunately, in this country is a habit. I am willing to put in evidence, before any Committee that may be appointed, that in a recent election personators came up drilled to a certain polling booth, thirty or forty at the time, and marched in drilled, and registered their votes drilled, and that when a certain person who was acting for one of the candidates made an objection to this rather flagrant method of conducting this business, the objector was told that it was a recognised part of the game. Unfortunately, that is the attitude adopted towards it—that it is a recognised part of the game, and is so regarded, and is not regarded as what it is in absolute fact, and that is a crime. It is a crime by which the only substance on which democracy can rest is endangered. The wells of democracy, if they be defiled, will corrupt the whole national life, and until that is cleaned—and it can only be cleaned by inculcating a right attitude towards it—we will get legislators elected to meet here, or elsewhere, that will have no right or authority to legislate, inasmuch as they will hold no right or authority from the people whom they are presumed to represent. It was a very remarkable thing in the recent elections that a certain type of candidate on his first count got a certain measure of votes and never got any further. In the distribution of the surplus votes he never advanced beyond that point. And when Deputy O'Brien said that he was willing to put in evidence that a certain candidate in a certain Dublin constituency got votes, 60 per cent of which were personated votes, I venture to say that if the political party of that candidate were to be discovered—I am not inquiring who it is, though I can make a very shrewd guess—if the co-adherents of that candidate throughout the country were taken, it would be found that the average number of votes that they got everywhere throughout the whole country, that well over 50 per cent. of those votes would be personated votes. I am entirely in favour of this, and the only reason I rise to speak on it is that I desire to say if we are going to deal with this matter we must deal with it as a crime, and make it a criminal process, and not in the least hestitate to punish it as a crime.
Mr. D.J. GOREY
One would think from the Deputies who have spoken that personation is a monopoly of Dublin. Now, coming from the country, I can assure you that it is not. We have had our hands in the game up to the elbow, and perhaps a little bit further. I know something about personation, unfortunately. I have listened to Deputy O'Brien and the rest talking about what they heard. I will not talk about what I heard. I will talk about a little I know. I have seen men voting that were dead ten years, and men who were dead two years and six months; men who were here in Dublin in hospital voting down in Kilkenny, but not at the last election. I have no complaint, or very little, to find with the last election, because I believe it was an honest record of the votes, except as regards a small section—perhaps one hundred or one hundred and fifty— and the votes were polled by a certain section of the community who were in a minority. The result was that Kilkenny gave a clear vote as to what they and Ireland thought. I have had experience of elections both in the Local Government and for the Dáil, and it is a question whether the local Councils or the Deputies represent the dead or the living. I think some of the Deputies should be classified as representing Glasnevin. I am very glad to see that we are going to change all that. Neither the 1918 Dáil nor the 1921 Dáil was a correct record, so far as the voting is concerned. The recent election, where the bully with the gun obtained, was not a fair election, and the biggest offenders we have got, I regret to say, are the ladies. They do not look on it as a crime at all. They look on it as a fine art. Really it is well done when you come to see how they do it; and unless you adopt Deputy Figgis's suggestion and make it a criminal offence and punish it as a crime, it will continue. Prevention is no good. I know presiding officers who personally would do nothing wrong, but I have seen them not exercising their authority and allowing people to vote who were not entitled to vote. They said it was not the presiding officer's business to challenge any vote except it was brought to his notice by the personating agent. It should be mandatory on any official to exercise his knowledge and punish crime, whether it was brought to his notice or not. I do not know that there is anything else to be said about it, but if you want the names of the people I saw personating dead men, I can give them to you.
There are one or two matters I would like to mention in this connection. It has been stated that the Returning Officers, or persons employed on the day of the poll were guilty of some offences against what is known as the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Acts. I think it is the bounden duty of anyone who has any such information against any person so employed to acquaint the Minister for Local Government with the names of these persons, so that, under no conceivable circumstances will these persons be again employed in positions of responsibility such as that. There have been cases during my term of office—there has certainly been one case during my term of office as Minister for Local Government—of interference with members of a local authority attending to do their duty as members of a local authority when an election took place. That is not, I believe, within the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Acts as they are at present constituted, but it is in essence a corrupt act. It might not be a corrupt act according to the law, but it is corrupt, and there is no provision whatever in the law as it stands at present to prevent a person going to a Returning Officer and presenting a nomination paper to him. Cases occurred in the last election where it was alleged at least that there was interference and obstruction, and I believe something equivalent to an arrest was made of a person who intended to present a nomination paper. but was headed off by the other side. That should also be included. I believe it should be the duty of the Returning Officer seeing a person coming into the booth to vote on more than one occasion to refuse that person a ballot paper. I think Deputy Gorey will bear me out with regard to Presiding Officers at the election, that they either fail to appreciate the responsibility of their office, or they carry it out in such a slovenly way as really to prejudice the result of the election. Hundreds of papers that were actually, so far as electors were concerned, perfect votes, were rendered invalid by reason of the fact that the Presiding Officer did not put the stamp on which he is required to put on each paper before it is handed out. There is not much use in criticising the last election. A good many of us were not present at the 1918 election, and we are not in a position to speak about it. The last election was held under abnormal circumstances at a time when the ordinary law, and respect for the ordinary law or for common order, was not very well pronounced. There were no peace officers functioning throughout the country, and it was well known that party feeling ran very high, and the ordinary peace officer has got a wholesome respect for guns. I expect he may have thought that guns might be used. In this matter it is not really what regulations are imposed or what Acts of Parliament are passed. It comes down to this, that there must be common support from all sections of the community to make any Act of Parliament, or any regulation you may make of this kind, operative and effective. Something is needed in this matter to arouse the civic conscience. Personation, I believe, is unknown in other countries. It would be too great a crime against civics, and the people are too patriotic to offend against any such code of honour—and it ought to be a code of honour. Now, it would have been impossible in the late election to have preserved that position as we would like to have seen it preserved, and it is only by the strongest possible co-operation by every section of the community we can have this thing recognised as a crime. It is a crime at the present moment, and it is punishable as a crime. People have been punished in the last ten years for attempting personation, and we know that in the last election such laws were practically inoperative. I do not agree with Deputy Johnson that the onus should be placed on individuals to have their names registered, and I do not agree with it because my experience is to the contrary. Up to seven or eight years ago I took some interest in registration, and I found that, while people were particularly anxious to have votes on the day of the poll, they had no such anxiety a month or two previous, when the time came for putting their names down to be qualified to vote. If you place the onus on them, you will find that there will be a very small register, and that it will not represent the general body of the public. Having regard to the fact that we levy rates and taxes on the public, they are entitled at least to this service that their names should be entered on the Register of Voters. It may be possible—I do not know about the next election—to get some sort of civic distinction for each citizen, which should be presented at the time of voting, but I think that within six or eight or ten months it would be scarcely possible to do that. In the meantime there ought to be a Press campaign, and the aid of the Church ought to be sought, and the aid of every political organisation in the country ought to be invited in order to get the civic conscience aroused to bring it home to the people that it is a question of honour, and that it is their honour that is impugned if personation takes place.
Professor WILLIAM MAGENNIS
We have heard from all sides of the Dáil a very painful history of the depths of political depravity to which our people have sunk. I am no believer in machinery for making people good. I do believe in compulsory education, I do believe in the compulsory subjection of all so-called educators, to conform to a standard which shall be sufficient to secure their capacity for such important work as they undertake. Behind all that machinery there must be some other force of a far more vital kind. Now, you may pass all the acts of Parliament that you can contrive with all your legislative skill, and you will not get rid of this evil, until you begin to rear up a population of Irishmen and women who will have a different attitude altogether towards their public duties from that which prevails in the present generation. No one has spoken here of the need of reform in educational matters and, after all, that is the root. The mal-education or the neglect of the education of the people is the root of nearly all the evil of which we have to complain. For many years I tried to bring pressure on the Intermediate Education Board to include this great subject of Civics in its curriculum; to make it a compulsory subject in all the schools, and at one period the Intermediate Board was so impressed with the necessity of this that I was asked to draw up a programme, but, by a snatch vote, as I understand, at a later period, the thing was withdrawn, and the vote was rescinded. I have laboured for years and years to have it made a subject for instruction for teachers in the Training Colleges. The programme issued under the new regime in this and the following years at last contains a very admirable course in Civics. There are few people in Ireland who have the slightest opportunity for understanding the needs and the duties of citizenship, which was never included in the moral teaching they received. It was really withheld from the public; it was never allowed to be a subject in the school books. Years ago, if I may be pardoned for the egotism of giving what I did as an example, I introduced into reading books for children in the National schools certain lessons dealing with laws and institutions, in order that they might understand why there are laws, and why there are institutions of government, and the moral that was intended to be conveyed was that these were sacred things, that they were practically divine institutions, and that it is the duty of everyone with a proper enlightened sense of patriotism, to do for his country everything when the opportunity for doing it came his way. And these lessons were impugned. Some of them were expunged from the books on the grounds that these lessons were Socialism. Now, that is the kind of educational deficiency that our country has been suffering from for a long time. It was always possible to introduce poems into books where one could thank God that He had made him a happy British child, but the duty of the child to his nation and to his community, his sense of civic pride, were never cultivated. It was not allowed. Lessons directed towards that were looked upon with suspicion as being seditious, and were disapproved of by the educational authorities because they seemed to lead to sedition. You were allowed to glorify William Tell if you liked; you were allowed to recount the glories of Robert Bruce if you liked; but you should remain silent about every Irishman that the Irish people held in reverence. You should draw no lessons from his sacrifices and from his devotion to his country's need. The result was that through this educational system the people were hardly allowed to realise that they had a country and that their country was entitled to make demands upon them by way of service, so that the only side of life in which they were allowed to become cognisant of it was through the activities of politics, and from that kind of malignant influence and malignant conditions that prevailed it became necessary for the people not merely to evade the laws, but to break the laws, and we are the inheritors to-day of all of that evil tradition that laws were made to be broken, and that electioneering is part of a public amusement, or some sort of a game in which a man who can get the best of his opponent is the best practitioner. Now, I would suggest that this is a matter quite as much for the Minister for Education as it is for the Minister for Local Government. It seems to me that we ought to realise that the great bar to getting Acts of Parliament which shall be passed hereafter in the next Dáil and in successive Dáils—the great bar to secure the proper spirit of obedience will be the want of understanding of the people of how they stand related to the Institutions of Government. We have lost the habit of obedience. The country will have to undergo a new discipline. Every child should be required to go through a proper course, with the same care with which he is put through a course of religious instruction, with regard to civics; and what is more, I would hold that in the framing of electoral laws we should see to it that before any citizen is allowed to have a vote he must have had sufficient schooling and have passed a satisfactory test with regard to Civics and that he ought to know what he is doing, that he is not going blindly through some ritual, or not doing something which he is ordered to do by a political boss, but that he is discharging a duty to the country with a full sense of the responsibility that it involves. These are reforms for future legislation, I shall be told. And if the working of reforms through education is too slow, and meanwhile there must be a penalty, then let the penalty be to deprive the offender of citizenship for so many years. That makes the punishment fit the crime. To personate is a denial of the claims of citizenship, and those who deliberately and consciously violate citizenship, in this fashion, should be deprived of citizenship for a number of years, so as to bring home to them what the nature of the criminality is, and also to open their eyes as to what their duty is.
Mr. D.J. GOREY
In framing this Bill what will be the position of a man who turns up to vote and finds he has been already voted for? You have had any amount of that. You would want to make provision so that that man may be provided with a second ballot paper.
Mr. P. GAFFNEY
I rise to support the motion of Deputy O'Brien. I believe the sooner this Committee is got together the better. I do not share the views of the President, that it would not be possible to do anything within the next eight or ten months. I believe if such a Committee were set up immediately that something could be done, and that the result of it would be that these corrupt practices, at any rate, would be brought down considerably. During the last election there were many cases, in various parts of the country, but not so much as in the 1918 election. I would say it was well noted, and well known that in certain areas in the last election, where a particular candidate got most of the preferences, and where the Presiding Officers were not of the same way of thinking as the candidate who got the most preferences, whether it was done deliberately or not, the papers remained unstamped. In that connection I suffered very much in some areas in my constituency; perhaps the same thing may apply all round.
Mr. GOREY
There are bigger sufferers than you.
Mr. GAFFNEY
But I could afford a few. I believe in connection with this matter of appointment of officials on public boards, though this is not relevant to the motion, a good deal could be done if, for those positions, competitive examinations were to be the deciding factor in the future, and that canvassing was done away with. Canvassing, to my mind, in many places through the country, has had very evil effects. It has had the effect of placing people in positions they were not fitted for, and it led to other causes which could have been combated had those positions gone by competitive examinations at the beginning. So much has been said in connection with this matter, that for me to speak on it now would only mean going over the ground that has already been covered, but I would say that there are many points in which this matter of voting could be decided. There is the question of each person going to the poll having his photograph, with his signature or finger-prints, or there may be other means devised. However, with a small Committee, some system can be devised whereby this could be done away with, to a still greater extent than at present. As regards the matter of personal application to be put on the Register, for a few years I had to deal a little with this, and I know if it were to be left to the individual to have his name put on the Register, the Register for the various Constituencies in Ireland would be at least 75 per cent. less than what it is at present. I would say that it should be the duty of the local Rate Collector, or whoever has to do with it at present, to see that those who are qualified to have a vote are on the Register, until such time as we hope there will be sufficient civic responsibility that people will realise that it is their duty to have their names on the Register, and not be complaining when they find their names do not appear when it comes to the day of the poll. I would strongly urge that this matter be taken up immediately, and that any assistance it is possible to give in the matter will be given, and that for the future, at any rate, we will not have a repetition of the evils which confronted us at the last couple of elections, or at least in the election of 1918, when, as my co-Deputy remarked, people who had been dead for years were voted for by young people. I might say, in that respect, they were voted for by men and boys more than by ladies. I do not believe that all the vice rests with the ladies in that respect.
Mr. WM. O'BRIEN
With the leave of the Dáil, I am proposing to delete from the resolution the words: "and in connection with the appointment of officials under public Boards."
The motion, as amended, was then put and agreed to.