We are passing legislation, and later the courts may be asked to interpret it on a point of law. Surely, we ought to make it as clear as possible to the courts, and it is not too much to expect that we should use ordinary intelligence in the drafting of amendments. The Minister must know very little of the way in which trade unions carry out their business or he would not have said what he has said. Trade unions make returns of one kind or another, some of them routine returns relating to affairs of management, to income, to expenditure, to affiliation with other bodies, and to payments made on the basis of that affiliation. That is all purely office routine. Those returns may be signed by a member of the staff or an officer of the union, but to imagine that a whole executive council would be gathered from the four provinces to examine the statement that was being submitted, and to go back over the detailed work which the office staff in a trade union would do, in order to find out if they had miscalculated in regard to one member, would be equal to taking leave of one's senses. That sort of thing never happens.
The Minister suggests that the committee of management are to be responsible. What seems to be implied is this — that it the Minister wants a return to be made, the committee of management are to be brought together and they are to be asked to check up on the entire membership of the union in order to see that the actual membership is represented by the figure compiled by the office staff or by an officer of the union.
Does anybody imagine that to be a practical proposition? Some unions might have an executive of 20 people, and they are asked to furnish returns of membership. Are these 20 members to get at the register or card index and check them to ascertain whether in fact the figure proposed to be furnished is the correct figure? No one in his senses would propose that an executive of a trade union should do that, and yet, according to the Minister, they would be guilty if they knowingly made a false statement. The wording seems to imply that all on the committee of management must check the register of membership.
Let us take the case of one trade union with 40,000 or 50,000 members, and try to bring a little practical experience to the working of such a large organisation. The entire executive, according to the Minister, is responsible for ensuring that the return is not knowingly false. Does that impose on each of the members of the executive the obligation of counting the membership? In other words, counting 40,000 names to see if that is the correct membership. In the course of a wearying task of that kind one member might discover 39,500, and another, owing to fatigue and exhaustion, discover 39,600 and others varying figures. Is not that what they would have to do if they wanted to arrive at some measure of agreement, in order to discharge the obligation placed upon them, that the return should be knowingly true, in view of the penalties for submitting a knowingly false statement? It is clear to me that no thought has been given to such circumstances when a careless amendment of this type was tabled. If the Minister only knew a little more about the manner in which returns of this kind were furnished, he would realise that it is impracticable to impose a requirement of this kind on members of the executive of a union. Yet, if the statement is knowingly false, the union will be punished, because the members of the executive, according to his requirement, are required to check the records individually so as to satisfy their consciences and so that, in relation to the unions, they may discharge their responsibilities conscientiously by making a correct return.
The mentality revealed in Section 14 is entirely different from the mentality revealed in Sections 11 and 12. In Section 11 the union and officers of the union are made responsible, but in this case the entire executive is made responsible. The Minister talked about unions fixing responsibility as to who was to make the return. That is not legislation. We are supposed to be passing legislation. The unions may decline to fix any responsibility. I think the amendment discloses gross carelessness and inexperience. The word "gross" does not even describe the position. On the point made by Deputy Morrissey, it is perfectly true to say, in relation to this amendment, that we are classifying failure to make a return as an offence comparable with knowingly making a false statement.