Deputy Flinn is a very fine rhetorician. I am going to ask the House to come back from rhetoric to the facts of last Friday. I am also going to ask the House to come back from the spirit of the concluding remark of Deputy Flinn, to the spirit shown earlier in the debate by Deputy Thrift in one of the finest appeals that I have listened to in this House, to the spirit of the House as a whole. I for one would not remain for one instance a member of any Chamber in which it was accepted, as Deputy Flinn apparently is prepared to accept it, that our representative in the Chair was, in his elegant phrase, "a paid party hack."
Deputy O'Connell, earlier in the debate, said that he thought Cumann na nGaedheal Deputies should welcome this motion. I, for one, do welcome the motion, though not perhaps altogether for the reason which Deputy O'Connell suggested. I welcome it in the same spirit which Deputy Thrift already welcomed it, namely, that perhaps now that Deputies generally realise that there is, as the Ceann Comhairle indicated on Friday, an appropriate way of calling attention to any complaint which anyone may have to make against the Chair they may hereafter refrain from these disorderly and insulting interruptions of which we had too many examples last Friday, and of which we have had examples on other occasions. When we are invited to judge the conduct of the Ceann Comhairle everyone of us is bound to ask himself how he would have acted had he found himself in the place of the Ceann Comhairle. That seems a particularly appropriate question to be asked by Deputy Fahy, who has on various occasions himself occupied the Chair, and occupied it. I may say, with great dignity, great fairness and with complete acceptance from all parties. It is quite true that the President has reminded us that neither Deputy Fahy nor anyone else is invested with the power which falls to the Ceann Comhairle in respect to the closure. Nevertheless, it would not be difficult to imagine that some day, perhaps before very long, Deputy Fahy may find himself in the position in which he may be invested with all the powers and duties of the Chair. When that happens he will have to consider, when, perhaps, faced with a similar situation, whether or not he should grant the closure on an occasion such as that.
I think he will probably find that he will have to be guided by two or three fairly simple principles. He will have to consider, in the first place, not as a final, but as an important consideration, what are the precedents in the matter. He will have to consider also the character of the Bill or motion actually under discussion. Finally, he will have to consider the nature and character and length of the discussion which preceded the claim to move the closure.
I want to say one or two words upon these three points. If Deputy Fahy looked up the precedents he would find that, taking, for example, the present session, the Ceann Comhairle had, in fact, withheld his assent to the closure on three occasions when it was moved by the Minister, and had granted it on four occasions. He would also find that on the only occasion on which it was moved by a Private Deputy, he granted it—on a motion of one of the Deputy's own colleagues. I am not pressing that at all, but to that extent I think he would come to the conclusion that that was not the action of a partisan. If Deputy Fahy proceeded a little further and looked up other precedents to see the length of time which had been adjudged as duly suffucuent for Bills of certain importance here, and also in other assemblies, he would find some interesting information. He would find, for example, that the Second Reading of the Juries Protection Bill occupied twelve hours of the Dáil's time. He would find that the Censorship Bill occupied seven hours and twenty minutes, and he would find that the Game Protection Bill of the present session, which, after listening to something that had been said by Deputy Lemass, one would think would have taken a longer time than the Dublin Bill, occupied, on Second Reading, four hours and forty-five minutes. He would also find another rather interesting thing. That whereas the Dublin Bill occupied practically fifteen hours, the Cork City Management Bill was disposed of in less than four hours, and he certainly would be a very daring person who in this assembly would suggest that Dublin was a more important city than Cork. He would find other things even more remarkable, and I think decidedly pertinent to this issue if he pursued his inquiries as to what period of time was allotted for some of the most important Irish measures in the House of Commons.
If he looked up the debate on the Second Reading of the Irish Land Act, 1903, he would find that the time actually occupied by the Second Reading debate was three Parliamentary days, almost exactly the same period as was allowed here for the Greater Dublin Bill. If it be said, as Deputy Flinn said, that that proved nothing, because, of course, our complaint always was that we did not get sufficient time for Irish Bills in the House of Commons, let me point out this: That this was a Bill of a very unique and peculiar character. It was a Bill which revolutionised the entire land tenure and pledged the credit of the taxpayer of the United Kingdom to an unlimited extent. Consequently it was not purely of Irish interest.
Now there were six hundred odd members of the House of Commons. There were 105 Irishmen, and the debate, as I said, occupied three days. It was suggested the other day, and it has been suggested here to-day again, that there exists a right in a member to be heard in a particular debate; at any rate in relation to the Dublin Bill that a special right to be heard attached to Dublin Deputies. Just conceive what that would mean in regard to the Irish Land Bill of 1903. There were 105 Irish members of the House of Commons. Imagine no English member taking part in the debate; there is no question whatever that every Irish member, Nationalist or Unionist, was vitally and immediately interested in the fate of the Bill. Imagine how many days it would have taken if every Irish member of the House of Commons on that occasion had insisted on his right to take part in the Second Reading debate of the Bill of 1903.
I take another case, and that is the Home Rule Bill of 1912, and that will illustrate another point that I think it worth while making. What period of time was occupied in the debate on the Second Reading of the Home Rule Bill? The Second Reading debate occupied seven days, not much more than twice as long as was occupied on this Greater Dublin Bill. Here we come to what I think is an important matter and which is the last point that I desire to make, and that is, the character of the Bill. In the Home Rule Bill, you had a Bill which is almost the exact opposite to a Local Government Dublin Bill. It was a long, complicated measure. If you had taken every single clause out of that Bill, except one, the objection on principle would have remained. Our Second Reading debates are essentially directed to matters of principle. You could have taken out all the clauses and you could have turned the financial clauses on their head; you could make any arrangement you pleased, but so long as there remained in that Bill one single provision, namely, that there should exist in any shape or form a parliament in this country with an executive responsible to it, so long would the objection of a powerful opposition be persisted in. Consequently, it was not a Bill which could really be dealt with on Second Reading, but the Second Reading of it was obviously a vital stage. Yet, when the closure was moved at the end of what was in effect a parliamentary week, I have no recollection—although at the moment the most bitter feeling existed between the two sides—there was ever a suggestion that in accepting the closure upon that Bill the Speaker of the day was acting in a spirit of partisanship.
[An Ceann Comhairle resumed the Chair.]
Let us look for a moment at the nature of the Dublin Bill and consider it. I listened carefully, not to the whole of the debate, but certainly to the greater part of it, and I can only discover this. The principle of the Bill, it appears to me, is that you should substitute for commissioners a council and a manager. If that is accepted, all that remains, to all intents and purposes, are matters that can be only satisfactorily dealt with in Committee. So far as I heard, nobody has said that we do not want the Bill at all, same as was said with regard to the Home Rule Bill. I listened with great care to Deputy French, who made the most powerful speech, in my opinion, against the Bill, but my recollection is that he was very careful to say that he did not object to the principle of the Bill.
What many people objected to was the allocation of the powers and duties as between the Manager and the council. What other people objected to was the area to be taken in; others objected to the creation of a separate borough, and some others to the creation of a special commercial register. These are points that are clearly intended for the Committee Stage. Therefore, whether we look at the matter from the point of view of the length of time occupied or from the nature of the Bill itself; the character of the debate which preceded the Closure Motion, or from the nature of the opposition and the character of the opposition, I have come to the conclusion that no case has been here made out in condemnation, sir, of your action.
