Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 28 Jun 1933

Vol. 48 No. 11

Local Government (Extension of Franchise) Bill, 1933—Report Stage.

Question—"That the Bill be received for final consideration"—put and agreed to.

Question proposed: "That the Bill do now pass."

Mr. Fitzgerald

I am afraid that I shall have to repeat myself to some extent. I regard this Bill as wrong. It is a proposal that the present register, which is limited to rated occupiers, should be extended to give adult franchise. The responsibilities of local government are different from those of the Dáil, because the Dáil legislates, and its legislation affects the lives, safety and conduct of the people of the country. Local bodies assess and collect rates and spend rates. There is another little point of difference. That is that the whole mass of the people elect Deputies, and these Deputies themselves become almost an electoral college for electing the President and Executive Council. The real power is centred in the Executive Council, of which the President is merely the senior member. With regard to these local elections, the people elect a body of men who are to assess, collect and spend the rates, and that body of men is actually to be the executive for that purpose. Everybody who pays rates, whether living in a small room or whether he owns a mansion, has the right to vote. If the father and mother of a family have a son or daughter living with them over 21 years of age, the vote does not extend to the son or daughter. Under this Bill everybody, men and women, over 21 years of age will have a vote. What is the purpose of that?

We must recognise that in the management of local government you do want responsibility, and you want care, so as to ensure that the people who have to provide the money for the rates should get good value for that money which is provided. The best way to secure that is to see that the people who pay the money shall have the power to vote. That right has in no way varied according to the sum they pay. It means that the people voting have merely an interest great or small in the spending of the rates. In modern countries there has been a great development of that thing so dear to Labour parties—social services. In this country there is a tendency towards providing greater social services at the moment. I do not say that there is anything wrong about that. If the Government consider the moral well-being of the people, I cannot see what the purpose of this Bill is except to hand over the power to a very large number—an enormous addition to the register—many of whose interest in the rates is that they are potential beneficiaries. It means that these new voters will not have much consideration as to how great the rate will be. Voting will largely be a scramble to get a share of the money to be collected from the people who have to pay the rates. I say that the attempt to create that spirit is one of the unfortunate results of a mentality where you have everybody hoping to have the machinery of local government used for the purpose of taking money out of other people's pockets and putting it into the pockets of those people who pay no rates.

Whatever may be said about universal suffrage for the Dáil, as far as these local government electors are concerned there is a limit to the power and control of the people they elected. Their power is limited to collecting and paying out the rates. There is really no principle behind this Bill at all. It is a suggestion that the power over the rates shall actually be put into the hands of people who are not themselves going to be affected by the payment of the rates. I know that a whole lot of people think this is quite a splendid thing. On examination anyone will see that there is a large element of inequity in the proposal that another body of people will come along, a body of irresponsible outsiders, and that while others will have to pay the rates, they will have no feeling of responsibility so as to see that the spending of these rates is done economically and that the services will be economically run, and the work well done.

It seems to me that this is a definite retrograde step, and the only purpose is, as everyone knows, to secure that the present Government, who are not satisfied to be the most supremely powerful Government in the world in so far as their control of the country is concerned, should also have power over those intermediate associations like local government bodies. They want to have control in each individual area through the local bodies. It seems to me most extraordinary the Government has come out openly to say that it is necessary for them that they should have their own creatures controlling those bodies, men who when the Government sing will dance, and when the Government cry will appropriately weep. This is the policy pursued. This Government is going to be all-powerful, and the people in this country are to have no power except they belong to certain classes, because everybody knows now that we have in this country a Government who make their appeal to one class, and that the basis of their appeal to that class is that it is most numerous. Now here having done the thing in general, they are really extending it to the particular.

Mr. Dillon

I do not propose to let this Bill pass its Final Stage without saying a word as to what I think the consequences will be. I listened with attention to the discussion that took place on the Second Stage. But defenders of this Bill throughout all its stages have sought to create an antagonism between old and young and to constitute themselves the defenders of youth and idealism. Fianna Fáil is going to trust the young people! As I said before, that is all eyewash—pure eyewash. The question at issue here is a question of ratepayers as against non-ratepayers and the contents of this Bill provides that a large body of persons in the country, who have no liability for rates at all, are going to have a final say as to what those rates are going to be. I pointed out before, and I do so again, that if any charge could be made that the local authorities had defaulted seriously on social services, there might be some defence made for the final passage of this Bill. No such charge, however, is made or has been made throughout the whole discussion. I think it is only right at this stage to consider this aspect of the question, that this Bill is going to regulate for the future the way in which the rates will be struck.

I cannot but remember that one of the promises that the Fianna Fáil Government made at the last election was that there would be complete derating of land. They have defaulted on that promise and they have, in substitution for it, undertaken to remit half of the land annuities. Agricultural land remains liable for rates and what I apprehend is that the result of this Bill is going to be this, that whatever the people have been spared by the reduction of their land annuities will be taken from them, and probably a great deal more, in the rates that will be imposed by local authorities elected on the new franchise. To my mind, that is wholly wrong because, as I pointed out before, if at any time a local authority, under existing circumstances, made up its mind that it could not afford to provide some desirable social service, it was open to the representative of that area in this House to put it up to the Government that, where the local authority was not able to afford the services, it was the duty of the Central Government to step in and fill the gap; and this House has repeatedly done that. The Agricultural Grant was largely made for that very reason. Its purpose was to make it possible for local authorities to provide social services they otherwise could not afford. That was right. If a particular district, owing to exceptional circumstances such as agricultural depression as it exists at the present time, feels that it cannot afford to do all that it would like to do in the way of social services. It is up to the Central Government, if they feel that this service ought to be provided, to provide for it out of national taxation.

There is another point which I do not think has been sufficiently considered. What difference is there between the authority of these local bodies and Dáil Eireann once they are both elected on universal suffrage? Suppose you have a body administering the affairs of County Kerry to-morrow, elected on the suffrage laid down in this Bill, and it comes into violent collision with the Minister for Local Government in respect of some matter relating to local affairs in County Kerry, what better authority vests in this House with reference to the particular conditions in County Kerry than vests in the local bodies? They are elected by the same electorate. There is as much solemnity attaching to their election as there is to ours and I think that before many years have passed you will have a situation arising in which you will have 26 rival authorities to the authority of this House and will have people putting themselves forward with a very good show of reason for it. I do not think that is a desirable situation.

The last objection that has not been countered is that the result of this new Bill will be that every county council in the country will be turned into a museum for rodomontade—a museum because there will be more nonsense poured out on the county councils of this country than will be heard in any other country in the world. The raiment of Caitleen Ni Houlihan will be torn into flitters by the Tipperary and Cork and Kerry and other county councils. Robert Emmet, Wolfe Tone, the Fenians and everybody else will be required to form fours for the edification of the ratepayers of this country and it will be found before very long that the supreme qualification for election to a local body in this country will be the candidate's efficiency in thumping a tub at some street corner. We had a good deal of that in the past and as I said, on another stage of this Bill, it is one thing to the credit of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government that by their influence they very largely put an end to that kind of claptrap in local bodies and the local bodies addressed themselves to the bread and butter business of administering local affairs to the best of their ability. In my opinion, this Bill is going to bring us back to the same old stage and when Fianna Fáil is beginning to totter they will start passing resolutions of confidence in Eamonn de Valera. All the same old worthless rubbish will be revived by this Bill, and, mind you, when it comes to adopting that course they will be adopting the right course because where you have men who have no interest whatever in the size of the rate their interest will be in the men who will make the most noise and we all know that perfectly well. Any man who has had any experience in the public life of this country knows the weight that any person pulls who can go out and make a fine rousing speech at the cross-roads.

Mr. Traynor

You ought to qualify so.

Mr. Dillon

I consciously blush at this tribute from Deputy Traynor. There are a good many Deputies on his benches who, I think he will agree with me, can thump the tub in topping style, but they are not too particular what note they extract when they are thumping.

Mr. S. Jordan

They do not "B" flat. They are "C" sharp—a lot of them.

Mr. Dillon

I do not know whether it is sharp or flat, but whatever note they produce at the elections sounds sweet when it is being sounded, but it is liable to turn very bitter in retrospect. Promises are generously made. I have no doubt that county councillors seeking election under the new franchise will be just as generous in their promises. What I am afraid of is that, not having to pay the piper, they will make their profligate promises, but unlike Deputies of Fianna Fáil they will keep them.

Mr. Minch

I always hate opposing the Vice-President, who is always so polite and nice that it is almost a pleasure to co-operate with him in passing a Bill in this House. As a matter of fact when the Vice-President stands up you can almost hear: "Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a great pleasure for me now to distribute the prizes." You feel the very homely atmosphere he introduces into the House. I even think that some other Ministers might take a leaf out of his copybook.

The difficulty I see is purely from the Vice-President's own position in this affair, and that is the question of responsibility. It is to give responsibility I presume to the youth and, therefore keep them quiet, but it may react very considerably against the Vice-President as Minister for Local Government, because as he knows the local authority can hardly dot an "i" or cross a "t" without his sanction. The point I do not understand is that the Vice-President stated that he would like to apologise to the House and to his own Party for not introducing this a year ago. Therefore it must have been very much uppermost in his mind prior to the general election, but we heard nothing at the general election about universal suffrage for local authorities. We can do nothing here to prevent this becoming law. I think it was 90 years ago that a speech turned a vote in the House of Commons in England. It would never do it here. At the same time I must congratulate the Vice-President on the wonderful way in which he introduced this whole measure. As a matter of fact he is getting away with it nice and quietly, and smiling along gaily.

Mr. Norton

I have only been tempted to intervene in this debate by the two speeches I have listened to from Deputy Fitzgerald and Deputy Dillon. I do not think Deputy Fitzgerald claims to be a democrat. I think many of his utterances in this House have displayed what one might describe as a contempt for democracy.

Mr. Fitzgerald

It is a matter of definition.

Mr. Norton

Or that if the Deputy is democratic he is one of that peevish kind of democrats who believe in democracy so long as they are always getting their own way. The other day we had the Deputy making a speech for the retention of the Seanad as a means of guarding the liberties of the people. Here we have the Deputy making a speech to-day for the retention of an outworn system of local election based upon a property franchise. The sole purpose of the Deputy's case in that particular matter is the same as his case for the retention of the Seanad, namely that the Deputy's Party draws support from the property classes in the community, from the elements well endowed with this world's goods, and the Deputy wants to keep out of the democratic arena in this country all those people who do not come from the elements of the population that have not yet found out the Deputy's Party in the realm of political, social and economic activity, or who, if they know the Deputy's Party's policy in those respects, like it because it is one out of tune and out of step with the desires of the plain people of the country.

From Deputy Dillon one might have expected some different kind of speech. However, he was less enthusiastic about his federalism to-day than he was on the Second Reading of the Bill. Deputy Dillon speaks about Caitlín Ni Houlihan being torn to shreds and made to form fours with some other characters, real and legendary, in our history. The Deputy is surely not telling us anything new from the point of view of the extent to which one can have political raméis in local authorities. The Deputy knows or ought to know perfectly well the kind of resolutions that were passed by those local authorities when the Irish Parliamentary Party were in front of the footlights from 1888 or 1890 to 1914, 1915 and 1916. There was an opportunity then for seeing the kind of snowballing resolutions that went around from one local authority to another, and there were many more local authorities then than there are now. The Deputy abhors now the suggestion that a certain majority of a certain political colour on the local authority might pass a resolution of confidence in their President. Perhaps they might spend their time doing something of more practical value to the local people, but Deputy Dillon ought to be the last in the world to complain about local authorities affirming their faith in certain political headmen in this country, because we can all remember the time when local authorities used to meet specially when any prominent member of the old Irish Parliamentary Party died; used to adjourn for quite a considerable period after his death, and the poor man was almost taken out of his coffin for 12 months after his death by the efforts to recall his magnificent service to his own particular political Party.

Mr. Minch

He probably did give good service.

Mr. Norton

Oh, quite. The Deputy is entitled, and Deputy Dillon is entitled to recall those services, but if it was right in the days of the old Irish Parliamentary Party what I want to ask Deputy Dillon is—what is wrong with it now? I can see a good deal wrong with it, but I want Deputy Dillon to say whether it was right when the Irish Parliamentary Party used to do it and wrong when another Party proposes to do it. Deputy Dillon's speech, as I said the last day, and Deputy Fitzgerald's speech too, contained the kind of case that was made against the extension of the adult franchise to the population of the country in respect of Dáil elections, the kind of speech that was urged in favour of the retention of the urban borough system as it existed in this country a hundred years ago. You had then, apparently, as we must have now, Deputies such as Deputy Fitzgerald and Deputy Dillon standing up and saying that this question of electing representatives to Parliament is the kind of job that ought to be left to the property squire. Keep on electing the squires was the viewpoint of many people then and Deputy Fitzgerald, while he does not make such an open case for the squire by name is, in fact, to-day backing a system of local government which is calculated to give an undue advantage to the propertied elements of the population, putting in an adverse position in relation to that propertied section of the population those who are not qualified to vote in local elections under the present system of franchise.

As I stated on the Second Reading, I could understand certain kinds of tests being applied to persons as a condition of voting. I could understand, for instance, the worthiness of the citizen might be taken into consideration; I could understand his intelligence being taken into consideration; I could understand the general trustworthiness and integrity of the person being taken into consideration; but under the present system of local government we are not concerned about his worthiness, about his intelligence, about his trustworthiness or his integrity. We are concerned apparently with only one matter, and that is that he has a property upon which he is entitled to cast a vote. None of the other conditions enters into the matter. He may have acquired his property in any manner, no matter how disreputable, and still the Legislature will give him a vote. That is the only condition they require fulfilled for the purpose of giving him a vote, namely, that he has sufficient property.

Deputy Fitzgerald says this is a case for giving the youth of the country, who pay no local rates or local taxation, a voice in the spending of public money. Take the case of a family, a man with his wife and two sons. Suppose the sons are 30 years and 35 years of age. They live as a small community. Perhaps the father is the ratepayer. The mother votes in local elections on the strength of the father's vote. Suppose the father and mother do not work because of infirmity. Clearly in that case the sons are maintaining the household and it is out of their earnings the rates are being paid. But Deputy Fitzgerald wants to give the father the vote, simply because his name happens to be in the rate-book. He proposes to disfranchise completely the person who earns the wherewithal to pay the rates. Every family lives as a group, as a community, in a particular homestead.

Mr. Fitzgerald

With the head of the group.

Mr. Norton

If there is a head to the group perhaps it is a good reason for saying that the head of the group ought to be the lord of appeal in the house if there is any domestic feud. But why the head of the group ought to be treated as expressing all the views of the group in a matter in which the group might have very diverse views, I do not quite understand. The Deputy knows that in this country, especially in the last ten years, whole families have been sundered on social, economic and political issues. In the last election one family in a certain constituency provided one member who stood as a Cumann na nGaedheal candidate and one who stood as a Fianna Fáil candidate. What happened the head of the group in that case?

Mr. Fitzgerald

They were not living as a family, and the Deputy knows that. There is no head to that group.

Mr. Norton

The Deputy says they were not living as a family.

Mr. Fitzgerald

To the best of my knowledge.

Mr. Norton

Well, from the political aspect, the Party managers must not have been very careful. As a rule, the whole family pay the rates. The total income of the family is utilised in one way or another so as to make provision for the payment of the rates. In my opinion, every member of the family ought to be entitled to cast a vote on the strength of his or her contribution towards the rates. Deputy Fitzgerald would allow only one person to express a view on a matter of that kind.

Mr. Fitzgerald

The head of the family.

Mr. Norton

What is the objection to allowing every member of a family over a certain age to express an opinion on local matters? There is only one explanation of the Deputy's objection to a scheme of that kind, and that is that the Deputy's Party is appealing to a portion of the population which is numerically weak, and the Deputy believes that the more restricted the franchise the better the prospect he has of getting a bigger proportion of the votes. That may be a very strong reason from the point of view of the Deputy's Party for opposing this Bill, but it is not a sufficient reason why people of 30, 40 or 50 years, who help to provide local rates, should be deprived of the right to express a view on matters of local administration.

I think the case for widening the franchise in the matter of local elections is overwhelmingly strong. Listening to this case being discussed in the House on its merits by the Minister and the complete failure of the Opposition to make any effective case against the Bill, one must be forced to vote for it because of the sheer inability of the Cumann na nGaedheal or the Centre Party to submit any convincing argument. I believe if democratic government is to be strengthened against all the attacks made against it, you can save it in this and other countries by the widest possible diffusion of responsibility over the widest possible number of our citizens. If this measure helps to diffuse responsibility, if it helps to impart a new sense of responsibility and a feeling of consciousness to those who have no votes in local affairs at the moment, it will be good from the point of view of the State as a whole and it will tend to healthier and perhaps cleaner administration. It will help to introduce a better spirit in local administration than is possible under the restricted franchise which exists to-day.

Mr. MacDermot

I have to confess that I am not, perhaps, 100 per cent. orthodox as an opponent of this Bill. If I were to look at the thing from a purely theoretical point of view, the Bill would rather attract me. I dislike property qualification in principle and I dislike anything that postpones the imposing of responsibility on the young people once they come of age. It is not so much for the theory of the thing that I oppose this Bill, it is because of its probable practical effects. Deputy Norton has just said that there is going to be a great advantage in developing a sense of responsibility in young people by giving them this franchise. But can it be honestly said that there has been anything in the experience we have had of adult suffrage in Parliamentary elections to make us think that that argument carries much weight, to make us think there is any great deepening of the sense of responsibility in young people because they happen to get the vote? My feeling about this Bill is that it is going to enfranchise people who have, in fact, however it happened, less regard for economy than the people who at present have got the franchise. I say this is not the moment to make an experiment which is likely to lead to increased expenditure. Moreover, the class that is likely to be enfranchised is more likely to be subject to political influence than those already enfranchised. However that state of things came about, or whether it is likely to be permanent, is another matter. Very likely the aim of the Bill is to assist in turning the county councils of the country into what might be called political bodies, mixing themselves up in political matters, and passing flaming resolutions on things which do not concern them at all, instead of conducting their affairs in a businesslike way.

I think that Deputy Norton has overstated, altogether, the alleged injustice to the younger members of families in the present state of things. I very much doubt if Deputy Norton would allow his own sons or daughters an equal say with himself in the expenditure necessary on household matters. I do not know that there is anything outrageous in the suggestion that the head of the family should have more say in the fixing of the rates than the junior members of the family. Deputy Norton has spoken of divisions which often occur in the family when one member is of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party and the other of the Fianna Fáil Party. Such an incident occurred in connection with our own Party, when Deputy Belton stood as a Cumann na nGaedheal candidate and his brother stood as a Centre Party candidate. I do not see that an illustration of that sort carries us much further.

I want to make clear in opposing this Bill that I do not do so because I am opposed, in principle, to extending responsibility to youth, or that in principle I am attached to a property qualification. As a matter of fact, the qualification for the municipal franchise is not a property qualification. That is proved to be true in my own case. Deputy Norton is fond of contemptuously alluding to me as a man of property. As a matter of fact, I have no vote in the municipal elections because I have not got the right kind of property. The qualification is not properly a property qualification. I think this Bill should be resisted, because I think the effects of it will be bad and also for other reasons.

Mr. O'Kelly

The speeches delivered upon the Final Stages of this Bill have been very largely repetitions of speeches delivered particularly on the Second Stage. Deputy Fitzgerald, indeed, said that he could not find anything new to say on this occasion and, therefore, I think, I need not take up too much time in replying. I want, however, to emphasise one or two points I made on the Second Reading. One was that Deputies sitting on the opposite side of the House never lost an opportunity of impressing upon everybody when they were in power how anxious they were to trust the people and to give them every opportunity of exercising the franchise and showing what confidence they had in them when they did what they thought was the right thing. They seem, however, since they changed from these benches to the other side of the House, to look at this matter from a different point of view. They no longer trust the people. People are not only to be refused the local government franchise but Deputy Fitzgerald thinks that they should lose the remaining franchise, which proves a trouble to him.

I think Deputy Norton is right when he says that he has doubts of the democratic views of Deputy Fitzgerald. So far as we are concerned, we are quite content to trust the people even to a further extent so far as the franchise is concerned. I certainly am strongly of that opinion. I am prepared to put my experience against that of Deputy MacDermot, who cannot claim to have the same knowledge of local government affairs as I have. I say, from my experience, that young people are more inclined to practise, and to be out for, economy in administration than probably 75 per cent. of the older men —men of 60 years of age and older that I have known. I have known some men of that age to be the greatest squanderers of public money, and to have less regard for the pockets of the ratepayers, especially when it came to paying unduly large and generous salaries to officials, than the younger people would have. My experience is that the younger element set themselves more against the spending of money in a wasteful way, in the views of the people who elected them, than do men of the older type. Another reason why I am in favour of the extension of the franchise is that possibly now that we have our own parliamentary legislation——

Mr. MacDermot

Before the Minister passes away from that, is it not possible that the reason for his experience is that under the existing system only exceptional and virtuous young men like himself were elected?

Mr. O'Kelly

I do not think there was any exceptional virtue or ability responsible for my selection. I was dragged into public life, through membership of the Dublin Corporation, by the merest fluke, because they could not get anybody else to come forward that would satisfy them. So I was very much pressed into the service, and that is what is responsible, for my miserable fate, and possibly for my remaining so long in public life.

Mr. Norton

Can that crime be undone?

Mr. O'Kelly

A lot of people have tried to undo it at elections. I do not know how many municipal and Parliamentary elections I have been through but I have survived them all—for my sins, I suppose. I am not speaking to-night merely from my experience of municipal life and local authorities. I am speaking of what I watched happening since I became a Minister and I think I can say with truth that the younger people are more practical and less liable than older people to pass flaming, flamboyant, rodomontade resolutions, of which Deputy Dillon spoke. Deputy Dillon is associated with that influence in his family for generations. He was brought up on it. He is more familiar with it, very much more so, than I am; and so if there is to be rodomontade it will come from those who carry on the old Parliamentary tradition and from nobody else. The young people to-day have got away from all that kind of sentiment and feeling; they are far more practical and sensible. They have not time nowadays on local bodies for that kind of thing. Deputy Dillon also thanked Cumann na nGaedheal for having, I think he said, ended political discussions and that kind of rodomontade resolutions at public boards. They ended them by ending the public boards—that was their method of ending them.

Mr. Norton

And they want to abolish proportional representation.

Mr. O'Kelly

I do not know. Probably you shall have some resolutions of that kind coming up before the next general election, as they suffered so badly at the hands of proportional representation in the last.

Mr. Fitzgerald

The Government does not seem to like it.

Mr. O'Kelly

My belief is that with the older generation the flaming resolutions and the rodomontade will have died out; that the younger people have so many practical problems relating to public health and the management of the big and responsible affairs associated with local government to-day, there is no time for them, generally speaking. There is a fair proportion of the older people who have been on public boards for 25 or 30 years still on them, and it is from those that these long-winded resolutions usually emanate. Talking about rodomontade during the last week or two, and even in the last two days, we have had exhibitions from the other side of the House which even the days of the old Parliamentary Party could not beat, and that is saying a good deal. Another point made against this Bill is that we are giving the franchise to a section that does not pay the piper. All the people, young and old, whom we propose to enfranchise under this Bill, whether they pay directly as holders of property or not, pay rates. Whether they are earning or whether they have an income they have to pay rates. If they only pay rent for a room they have to pay a certain proportion of the rates. It comes out of their pockets in some form, directly or indirectly. It is no longer true to say that it is only the man who hands over the cheque to the rate collector who pays rates. Everybody pays rates. Young people are bound to have as much interest as any other person in the community in what happens inside these local authorities. The local authorities in their own way legislate for them, and have a very vital part to play in the life of every member of the community. Whatever age they are, once they are sensible enough to take an interest in local affairs, it is my belief that they ought to be entitled to the franchise and, at any rate, entitled to take an interest in and be elected on a local authority.

I am very dissatisfied, indeed, that those who have the franchise at present do not exercise it to a greater extent. We have had discussions in this House which were published in the daily press with reference to the franchise and to the necessity for people using the franchise. These discussions do not seem to have had any good effect in urging those who have the franchise at present in Dublin City or Cork City to use it. That is a very bad thing. I hope that when this reform is put into operation there will be a much greater interest taken in local affairs; that there will be a livening up of interest in the whole matter, and that the activities of the young people will encourage and induce people to make greater use of the franchise.

Mr. Minch

How many voters will this add to the present register in the Free State?

Mr. O'Kelly

Roughly 700,000.

Question put.

The Dáil divided: Tá, 55; Níl, 33.

Tá

• Aiken, Frank.
• Bartley, Gerald.
• Beegan, Patrick.
• Bourke, Daniel.
• Brady, Seán.
• Breathnach, Cormac.
• Breen, Daniel.
• Browne, William Frazer.
• Carty, Frank.
• Cleary, Mícheál.
• Concannon, Helena.
• Crowley, Timothy.
• Daly, Denis.
• De Valera, Eamon.
• Doherty, Hugh.
• Doherty, Joseph.
• Donnelly, Eamon.
• Everett, James.
• Flynn, John.
• Flynn, Stephen.
• Gibbons, Seán.
• Hales, Thomas.
• Hayes, Seán.
• Houlihan, Patrick.
• Jordan, Stephen.
• Keely, Séamus P.
• Kelly, James Patrick.
• Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
• Keyes, Michael.
• Killilea, Mark.
• Kissane, Eamonn.
• Lynch, James B.
• MacEntee, Seán.
• Maguire, Ben.
• Maguire, Conor Alexander.
• Moane, Edward.
• Moore, Séamus.
• Moylan, Seán.
• Murphy, Timothy Joseph.
• Norton, William.
• O'Dowd, Patrick.
• O'Grady, Seán.
• O'Kelly, Seán Thomas.
• O'Reilly, Matthew.
• Pattison, James P.
• Pearse, Margaret Mary.
• Rice, Edward.
• Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
• Ryan, James.
• Ryan, Martin.
• Ryan, Robert.
• Smith, Patrick.
• Traynor, Oscar.
• Victory, James.
• Ward, Francis C. (Dr.).

Níl

• Alton, Ernest Henry.
• Anthony, Richard.
• Bennett, George Cecil.
• Burke, James Michael.
• Burke, Patrick.
• Cosgrave, William T.
• Costello, John Aloysius.
• Davitt, Robert Emmet.
• Dillon, James M.
• Dockrell, Henry Morgan.
• Dolan, James Nicholas.
• Doyle, Peadar S.
• Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
• Fagan, Charles.
• Finlay, John.
• Fitzgerald, Desmond.
• Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
• Holohan, Richard.
• Lynch, Finian.
• MacDermot, Frank.
• McGuire, James Ivan.
• McMenamin, Daniel.
• Minch, Sydney B.
• Mulcahy, Richard.
• Nally, Martin.
• O'Connor, Batt.
• O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
• O'Leary, Daniel.
• O'Mahony, The.
• O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
• Rice, Vincent.
• Roddy, Martin.
• Rogers, Patrick James.

Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Traynor and Smith; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Bennett.

Question declared carried.