May I ask, before the Minister begins, if he is really determined to enforce that this be taken now? We thought that the Bill was going to be a simple one, but those who have examined it with knowledge tell me—and it seems clear enough on the surface of it—that it has very wide implications, and these implications need time in which to be examined. I suggest that we would do the nation's work better if those who are here to criticise a measure were able to criticise it properly. I know that it has been ordered, but I suppose the Order could be set aside by agreement, and I would ask the Minister—in no sense at all to cause obstruction, but in order to do our work well—if he could leave this over till next week so that sufficient time would be given for its examination.
Committee on Finance. - Local Authorities (Works) Bill, 1949—Second Stage.
Mr. de Valera
I understood that this matter was already decided to-day. This Bill does nothing in the direction that Deputies opposite fear. It has no power to do anything of the kind and all these fears as they are generally felt are wholly unfounded. It is very necessary that this Bill be put into law at the very earliest date from the point of view of bringing certain lands in this country into production and from the point of view of the promotion of employment. If the Bill is to be delayed for a certain period the purposes it is intended to serve will also be delayed and I must ask the House, therefore, to take this Bill as already arranged.
Mr. de Valera
We can only protest. I take a different view from the view the Minister takes and we will see who is right.
Mr. Murphy
I move that the Local Authorities (Works) Bill, 1949, be now read a Second Time. As Deputies will have observed, this Bill is a short one. There are, in fact, only six clauses in the Bill but the whole idea of it is contained in Clause 2. The Bill, as Deputies will also have observed, is framed in very simple language which is very easily understood and that relieves me of the responsibility of making any lengthy explanation of its contents. The Bill is intended to serve two purposes. It is designed to remove a disability which precluded local authorities from protecting public property in the past, a disability the presence of which was very keenly felt in many counties in this country. One purpose of the Bill, therefore, is to enable local authorities to execute such works as they consider reasonable for the protection or relief from flooding, landslide, subsidence or other similar occurrence of any land owned by them, or any permanent construction, that is, a road, bridge, building, wall or embankment which was constructed by them or which they are required by law to maintain. But it goes somewhat further and it proposes to provide against or remove the cause of flooding in any lands within the functional area of a local authority which are not owned by them but which it considers necessary to improve in the interests of the landowner concerned or in the public interest generally.
Section 2 of the Bill describes the type of work that is visualised under the Bill. The types of work which it will be possible to execute are the clearing of obstructions in watercourses, the making of drains, the widening or deepening of watercourses, the making or repairing of walls or embankments and the diversion of water into watercourses.
There is a provision in the Bill enabling the Minister to nominate a person to carry out works which a local authority is unable or unwilling to carry out. I want to assure the House that that is a perfectly innocent provision. The position is, of course, that work of this kind may arise in quite a number of urban areas and urban authorities will have neither the means, the organisation nor the facilities to carry it out. It will then be necessary to nominate, say, the county engineer of the authority of the county in which the urban area is situated. It might be necessary in certain areas, or because certain difficulties have arisen, to nominate some engineering officer, say, of the Department, to see that the work is carried out in accordance with the terms of the Act.
There are two ancillary sections, one of which deals with the right of entry on land and the other which provides for the payment of compensation to persons whose lands are damaged by reason of the carrying out of works. Deputies will have observed—and I think this is a complete answer to the suggestions that there was something sinister, far-reaching and dangerous in this Bill—that the Bill does not in fact propose to arm local authorities with any compulsory powers for the acquisition of land. The Bill follows closely, almost exactly, the pattern of the Sanitary Services Act and the Arterial Drainage Act and other legislative measures which have been enacted in rapid succession in this House over a number of years and which provide for the right of entry on land. It is no more revolutionary, radical or far-reaching than the provisions of the Emergency Powers Order which enabled lands to be entered on for the purpose of getting turf, opening bogs or drains, or making roads to facilitate the people who used these bogs and it is quite in accord with the general lines of legislation of a similar kind which has already been passed into law. I want to emphasise, therefore, that it is not proposed to arm local authorities under this measure with compulsory powers for the acquisition of the land necessary for the carrying out of schemes.
My firm conviction is that the many schemes which I believe will be formulated under this Bill and successfully operated will be put forward as a result of the full measure of co-operation in rural Ireland which I expect for this Bill. I am quite satisfied that the Bill will be generally welcomed by land owners who have been interested, not for a short time but for many years, in the passage into law or the provision in some other way of powers such as this Bill will provide and I therefore confidently believe that the bulk of the work to be carried out under this Bill when it becomes an Act—and I believe there will be a very considerable amount—will be carried out on the basis of co-operation, harmony and understanding between the local authority and the land owners concerned. I do not think it will be necessary, therefore, to engage in any long justification of this measure. However, it may be necessary to make a few general observations so that the position may be very fully understood in this House.
As I have already said, the first power conferred on the local authorities by the Bill is one to enable them to undertake works for the protection of land or the relief of flooding on land owned by them. I am quite sure that there are still a considerable number of people in the country who are of the opinion that there is no legal impediment to local authorities going in and doing work of this kind. Take, for instance, the case of a public road that is flooded by an adjoining river. The obvious and the proper and the legitimate thing for the local authority to do would be to enter on the stream or river in question and to clear it of whatever causes the flooding. In fact, they have no right whatever to do this work. A number of local authorities know already to their cost—because that cost is represented in the subsequent deterioration of a good deal of their property—that they have no right to do this work. There are members in this House who were colleagues of mine on a local authority for a number of years. We know how often we experienced the feeling of frustration that a difficulty of this kind caused in regard to the carrying out of very necessary public works. We did, in fact, over a number of years make representations that these impediments should be removed. No steps that I am aware of were ever taken to do so. Therefore, apart altogether from the other provisions of the Bill, it would be necessary at some stage, and at a very early stage, to undertake the enactment of legislation that would remove that disability so that existing public property would be maintained in a reasonable condition of repair and would not be subject to the deterioration that the existing position entailed.
This difficulty is exemplified by instances where rivers or streams which run alongside or under roads become swollen as a result of continuous rainfall. The remedy is very often quite simple and it is very often largely an inexpensive one. The removal of obstructions such as tree trunks or silt or rocks, the widening and deepening of the bed of the river or stream and the building of embankments or retaining-walls is necessary to remove difficulties of that kind. It is a common occurrence to notice bridges endangered, very frequently because of an accumulation of silt under the eyes of the bridges. Notwithstanding that position, there is no legal authority whatever to undertake that work. The local authorities who undertake work of that kind, through their officers, are liable to surcharge for its execution although the canons of commonsense seem to be outraged by such an extraordinary procedure. The local authorities are in the position that, while they can spend public money on repairing, say, the fabric of a bridge, they cannot enter under the eye of it to remove an obstruction that endangers the structure and damages public property on an adjoining roadway for a very considerable distance on either side of the bridge. During the last two or three years there have been, in many districts where there was never in the public knowledge very much flooding, frequent experiences of very severe flooding. In my judgment a measure of this kind will help very considerably to obviate that flooding in the future. I am not imprudent enough to suggest that it will completely remove it but I believe it will lessen it very considerably and remove entirely the frequency—the degree if not the frequency—of flooding in a number of areas.
I feel quite sure, therefore, that this Bill will be welcome. I am quite satisfied that it will receive from the owners of land a very substantial measure of co-operation. I would emphasise again that the spirit in which we hope to see this Bill operated is one of co-operation and understanding. There is no intention whatever, and I think this fact should be recognised by anybody who wants to face the facts, to do anything that will in any way injure the property or the interests of any person. Rather is it intended under a measure of this kind to help people; to remove the disabilities under which they have laboured for a long time; to protect public property and—a very important point in my judgment—to provide a very large scheme of employment in the rural areas. That employment will be provided by way of productive work —work that will result in making the lands that will be dealt with under this Bill more productive; work that will, therefore, be of benefit to the community as a whole in the districts in which schemes of this kind will be operated. I believe that the Bill will be very generally operated in rural Ireland where it seems to me and it has seemed to me for a number of years there is very wide scope for the execution on a large scale of works of this kind.
I have given the House an idea in a general way of what this Bill proposes to do. But it proposes to do something else also. It proposes to do endeavour to grapple with that problem in a number of towns where public property, represented by local authority houses, is subject to periodic flooding and where most difficult conditions have arisen in many instances in past years. Again, I do not pretend that this Bill will provide the complete remedy for that but I confidently assert that it will ease the position that was created in a number of areas in past years.
It proposes also to enable the local authority to do work for the removal of the danger of flooding to houses not owned by them. The local authority is more and more, as time goes on, concerned in this matter of housing. Damage to house property of any kind is now becoming a serious matter for the local authorities, because more and more the local authorities are being compelled by the force of circumstances to undertake the provision of houses for widening sections of the people. One of the reasons for this Bill is that the work which it proposes to do is beyond the financial capacity of any individual landholder or any group of landholders. Because of that fact, the local authority is asked to act as agent of the people in having works of this kind executed.
As Deputies will observe, this is an enabling Bill. The finance necessary to operate this Bill is being made available by the Government. The grants to local authorities will be 100 per cent. and local authorities need have no reservations whatever on that point. I am confident that the local authorities will see a wide scope for the execution of schemes of this kind in their administrative areas. I am quite sure that their engineers, who are already engaged on preliminary examinations and the possibilities of schemes of this kind, have had a tremendous lot of useful information and proposals put before them, and I expect to get the result of these examinations in a short time.
As I explained, the urgency of proposals of this kind is the necessity for getting on with useful public work. The necessity for doing useful public work has been felt on all sides of the House, not alone for the past 12 months, but for many years. This seems to me to afford a good opportunity for putting that policy into practice. I believe, therefore, that the proposals, instead of being regarded with suspicion or doubt down the country, will be welcomed because they indicate an opportunity of undertaking in a national way work of this kind which members of local authorities for very many years have felt would be useful and valuable. I have mentioned the proposal by which small local authorities, who may not have a technical staff to undertake schemes of this kind, will be facilitated by the nomination of some other agent for that purpose, and that is the main reason for the section in the Bill dealing with that matter.
Mr. Byrne
Does the expression "local authorities" include harbour commissioners? I am thinking of coast erosion.
Mr. Murphy
No. I think not. I understand the Minister for Industry and Commerce has proposals which will be made public later on and which will deal with the problem the Deputy has inquired about. I recommend this Bill to the House. I assert that the operation of the schemes to be promoted under this Bill, when it becomes an Act, will prove conclusively that there is no danger whatever of any indue or unfair interference with people's rights or property. I am quite satisfied that the people in rural Ireland need have no fears whatever on that score and that they will embrace the opportunity which this Bill will afford them of restoring to fertility lands that periodically and for several months of the year have been water-logged over a number of years. I am satisfied that these people in rural Ireland who have not regular employment now nor for very many years past will also be glad to participate in the good and useful work which this Bill will make possible for them at good wages. I, therefore, recommend the Bill to the House as a useful measure which I am very glad to have an opportunity of putting forward.
I should have thought, in view of the furore here to-day, that the first task to which the Minister would have addressed himself in presenting this Bill to the House would be by way of self-exculpation, to have demonstrated beyond yea or nay the need for urgency to the Opposition, one of whose functions in Parliament is primarily to protect the rights of the private individual. Just as it can be said that the Government are charged in an especial measure with safeguarding the public interest, so those of us who are private Deputies must do our utmost in Parliament to protect the rights of ordinary private citizens like ourselves whose rights are likely to be affected by legislative proposals. Because we do speak for the common people of the country, we are entitled, in justice, in order that we may be enabled to discharge our duties properly, to get fair facilities for studying the measures put before the House.
The Minister to-day, led by the Taoiseach, and supported by the majority which is behind him, showed a wanton and brutal disregard, not merely for the responsibilities of the Opposition, not merely for the rights of the Opposition but for the rights of private individuals when, in relation to a measure of such far-reaching implications as this Bill, he allowed us no more than two days to study it, to examine and analyse its provisions, and to satisfy ourselves whether, on the whole, they are or are not likely to conduce, not merely to the public interest but to the general happiness and prosperity of the private people of this country. Let me make it clear again that, though this Bill may have been delivered to the post office on Friday evening or Saturday morning, it did not in fact reach the homes of the majority of members of this House until Monday morning, or perhaps even in some cases Monday afternoon.
Tuesday afternoon.
As my colleague says, even Tuesday afternoon.
When did the Deputy receive it?
That is not the point. If Deputy Cowan thinks that every public issue should be decided in relation to his own personal approach to the matter, I do not. I am not so selfish nor so self-centred as Deputy Cowan appears to be. I have some regard for the rights of other Deputies and my colleagues in this House.
You have always shown it.
I think, too, that we ought to have respect for the collective right of this Assembly as a whole. As Deputy Allen said, we are in this position, that in many cases the text of this Bill did not reach Deputies until Tuesday afternoon. Since Tuesday we have been heavily engaged in this House. We were engaged in the discussion of a most important proposal— the Vote on Account—to provide a considerable sum of the taxpayers' money to carry on the services here, to approve of a policy which many of us think is disastrous to the people of the country, a policy which requires close and detailed examination. How, in the light of his other responsibilities in this House, could any Deputy adequately examine this Bill and come in here and discuss it intelligently, and discuss it, as we are bound to do, critically? That is the position in which we now find ourselves.
This Bill is being rushed, and it is being rushed without any justification. Where are the vast public interests that are at the present moment being endangered by reason of the fact that this Bill is not law? What public edifice is being undermined by floods or water? I should have thought that one of the difficulties that we are experiencing at the present moment in this country is, perhaps, a shortage of water; but, in any event, where are these vast tracts of land that are at present endangered; where are the valuable public properties that have been jeopardised or damaged by reason of the fact that this Bill has not become law? I should have thought that, when the Minister put this Bill before the House as an urgent measure, he would, at least, have told us all that, or at least have given us some examples of major damage that was being occasioned by reason of the fact that the local authorities had not the powers which he is now asking. But the Minister has not addressed himself to that question; he has not even addressed himself to the Bill, and the remarkable thing about the Minister's introductory speech is the fact that he has failed completely to follow the normal precedents in this Legislature to expound this measure for the benefit of those Deputies who have not yet had time to peruse it.
The Minister says this is a simple Bill. I suggest to the House that it may be simple, but I am going to contend that, even if the Minister does contend that it is simple, it may be a very dangerous measure, and that those who look at this simple enactment cannot allow themselves to forget that it is a simple enactment affecting the property of a great many individuals in this country, and they cannot allow themselves to forget that an important element in the Coalition which is sponsoring this Bill is a group which believes that, in order to open the way towards the establishment of an Elysian Paradise in this land, all rights in property should be expropriated. I will justify this warning later.
If the Fianna Fáil Government had proposed to bring in a measure which is so conspicuously lacking as this in any safeguard for the rights of an individual who may be affected by the operations of these local authorities, we should have been told that we were rushing headlong towards Communism. Now, we have had an attempt to establish totalitarianism here in Blue Shirts, and in this Bill we have totalitarianism in jack-boots, because, as I will show, under this Bill the Minister has power, and he himself has admitted it, to choose his instrument and to choose his agents to go in anywhere on any person's land and carry out any works that he, the Minister, may think should be carried out if by any chance the local authority is unwilling to obey his fiat.
The Minister says that this is a simple Bill. A Bill to make it a capital offence to possess private property would be just as simple a Bill as this, perhaps even simpler. It might be written in three lines instead of in five sections, but because it would be written in three lines that would be no excuse for accepting the Bill just on the ipse dixit of the Minister that it was a very simple Bill. The Minister for Local Government has said that all our fears are unfounded. He says that the Bill is necessary to bring lands into productivity. Well, we shall examine it in the light of that argument. Just examine sub-section (2) of Section 2 and see what it says:—
"Where a local authority to whom this section applies are of opinion that—
(a) any land owned by them, or
(b) any permanent construction which was constructed by them or which they are required by law to maintain,
has sustained or is likely to sustain damage from flooding, landslide, subsidence or other similar occurrence, the local authority may execute such works as they consider reasonable for the purpose of affording relief or protection from the damage."
Will the Minister tell us the extent of the agriculturally productive land that is owned by local authorities? There are local authorities which do not own even a cow park, and yet look at the wide powers which are to be conferred upon them in this Bill, powers which, we are told, are to be conferred upon them in order to enable them to increase the productivity of their land.
Read the next sub-section.
If the Deputy will just wait I shall come to the next sub-section. I am going to try to do the thing which the Minister neglected to do, though he was in duty bound to the House to do it. I am going to try to explain to the House the purport and content of the various provisions in this Bill, and if the Deputy will be just patient enough he will hear something about sub-section (3) in due time. I am again putting it to the Minister to tell the House the area of land in the ownership of local authorities, the productivity of which is at the present moment being endangered by reason of the fact that they have not got these powers. Do Deputies not think that at least the Minister ought to have told us that? He has been harping on the fact that this Bill is necessary to enable local authorities to do certain things; he has told us that if they are given these powers it will increase the productivity of land, theirs amongst others. I think that if this Bill were the fruit of any investigation or any study, if it were anything else than a panic measure introduced in order to try to appease the widespread disaffection and discontent in the country which the Minister's policy in relation to the roads has created, the Minister would be fortified by statistics showing the area of land in the ownership of local authorities whose productivity would be increased by the provisions of this measure.
Before I pass from sub-section (2) of Section 2 I would ask him also to enumerate to the House the number of permanent constructions in the ownership of local authorities which have sustained, or are likely to sustain, damage from the causes specified in the Bill. I think that he ought at least to have told us that, if indeed he can find any justification for the plea of urgency which he has made for this measure.
The Minister says, of course, that this Bill is simple in language. I have already told the House that it would be quite easy to draft measures containing the most outrageous provisions in very simple language and very terse language, but the unfortunate thing about bad legislation that is drafted in simple language, in language which appears to be clear to the ordinary layman, is that it has the unhappy knack of proving to be very difficult to interpret, and very difficult to make operative. There is one thing the history of the legal profession has taught us, and that is that lawyers always reap a very rich harvest from legislation which is expressed in oversimplified terms. I can assure the House, though I am only a layman with, however, some experience of what the lawyers in the courts can do with simple phraseology, that in the interpretation of this Act there will be a good many pickings for the lawyers.
Mr. Murphy
You were always a bad prophet.
At least there would be if, under this measure, the ordinary private individual was not being deprived of his constitutional rights.
Are there pickings or are there not?
Deputy O'Higgins has asked me what about sub-section (3).
In relation to what you have been saying about sub-section (2).
Sub-section (3) reads:—
"Where a local authority to whom this section applies are of opinion——"
It is very easy to become of a certain opinion when you want to serve your friends. That is a point which will arise for consideration later.
"——that—
(a) any land in their functional area, not being land owned by them, or
(b) any permanent construction in their functional area, not being a permanent construction which was constructed by them or which they are required by law to maintain, has sustained or is likely to sustain damage ... may execute such works as they consider reasonable for the purpose of affording such relief or protection."
If this matter is urgent, do you not think the Minister should have been in a position to place before the Dáil some estimate of the amount of land in private ownership that is being damaged or is likely to be damaged, as the sub-section sets out, from flooding, landslide, subsidence or other similar occurrence? That is not a problem with which the local authorities are unfamiliar. There is not, I am certain, a county surveyor or an assistant county surveyor or even a road ganger in any part of this State who could not at once enumerate those particular pieces of property in private ownership in his district which are likely to be damaged in these ways.
If the provisions of this Bill have received the consideration which their importance merits, surely the Minister for Local Government would have received from the local authorities already, would have collected during the past 12 months, the statistical data which would have enabled him to give to the House figures for the amount of damage taking one year with another which has been occasioned by the causes mentioned in this Bill? One would have thought that that would be a simple thing to do, but the Minister, instead of doing his ordinary normal duty as a responsible Minister and treating the House as a responsible legislative Assembly, as a congregation of reasonably intelligent beings who should be persuaded by argument, substantiated by some evidence, chooses to ignore every one of us. He feels confident that he has behind him the support of a majority and, therefore, he disdains to give, not merely to the members of the Opposition and not merely to those who support him, but he disdains to give to the people of the country, the facts and figures upon which he bases the outrageous proposals in this Bill.
What is outrageous about them?
One would have thought that where any public bodies are given wholesale and arbitrary rights to interfere with private property in the way proposed in this Bill that at least the Minister would have been able to adduce to the House irrefutable figures which would have justified his proposals. He has refused to do that and, instead, he has come here saying, "I am a meek, harmless and simple individual; all I am anxious to do is to increase the productivity of the land and provide employment and therefore you must pass this Bill without any hesitation or criticism, without any attempt to point out to the people the dangers which are involved."
That is too much of a confidence trick. There is no use in trying to sell the farmers a gold brick, to tell them this will benefit their land when, in fact, it will enable local authorities to deal with those farmers' lands in any way they like.
It is rather extraordinary that the Minister did not refer to some of the other provisions in this Section 2. Let me read again sub-section (3), which Deputy O'Higgins was so very anxious to hear about a little while ago:
"Where a local authority to whom this section applies are of opinion that—
(a) any land in their functional area, not being land owned by them, or
(b) any permanent construction in their functional area, not being a permanent construction which was constructed by them or which they are required by law to maintain,
has sustained or is likely to sustain damage from flooding, landslide, subsidence or other similar occurrence and that it is in the public interest to afford relief or protection from the damage, the local authority may execute such works as they consider reasonable for the purpose of affording such relief or protection."
Do Deputies not think that the House in this section is being asked to abrogate one of its major functions? We here are, in general, supposed to be the ultimate judges of the public interest. That is why we have the lawmaking prerogative. When we pass legislation to limit the rights of property in certain ways, or to do other similar things, we do it as judges of the public interest. We are under the Constitution the judges of the public interest; and one of the points that may arise later in the courts—if people can ever get to the courts under this Bill—for the consideration of the judges is as to whether we have any right to constitute the local authorities as the unrestricted and unqualified judges of the public interest.
They are not unrestricted and unqualified.
Of course they are.
Does not the section limit them?
It does not. There is no limitation on the local authorities.
Are they not limited by what the section covers?
They are not limited by what the section covers in relation to any one of these works. Under the Bill the local authorities are virtually free of all responsibility for any illjudged action of theirs which they are of opinion is in the public interest. We shall deal with that when we come to the relevant section. At the moment I am dealing with one particular point: for the first time in its history Dáil Eireann is being asked, I believe, to allow small bodies of local men—however estimable they may be in other respects—to become the judges of the general public interest. However estimable they may be in other respects, they cannot have the necessary vision or the necessary experience to constitute themselves reliable judges in such a cause.
Does the Deputy forget the Sanitary Services Bill?
What about the Managerial Bill?
The Managerial Bill does not contain a single reference to the public interest. If the Deputy were familiar with that Bill and if, before he made that sort of interjection, he had gone and read it he would realise what exactly the County Management Bill does. Perhaps he will be patient with me now and allow me to continue for I was patient in listening to him talking about the Land Commission, and perhaps we shall get on a little better then.
Now, what else does this Section 2 do? It empowers the local authorities to carry out works without restriction as to their nature or as to their cost.
Are you serious, or just dumb?
I am serious. The local authority under this Bill now has power to attack any work which it adjudges to be in the public interest so long as it is of opinion that certain things are damaging, or are likely to damage, land or any permanent construction. That is the plain meaning and purport of it.
Does not Section 4 limit what they can do?
It does not limit it.
You must not be able to read.
It does not limit it. I was arguing that with another lawyer. I was arguing that perhaps it did. He pointed out to me that it does not.
He must be as good as yourself.
It does not limit, because these things are not exclusive. They are mentioned here as enumerating the types of works in particular that may be done. It does not say "shall include only." Therefore, we are in the situation, so far as Section 2 is concerned, that the local authorities may undertake at the public expense— we shall deal with the question of who is going to pay for it afterwards, whether it is to be the ratepayers or the taxpayers—and carry out work on a certain person's land, with no limitation in regard to cost and with no concern for the damage they may do to some other man's property.
What did you allow the Electricity Supply Board to do?
And I repeat with no concern for the damage which they may do to some other man's property. We are in the position that a friend of a Minister—if there is such a Minister of that character in office, as there may be—could be benefited at the expense of an opponent of the Minister, because there is nothing in this Bill which provides an adequate safeguard for the damage which may be done by a local authority in carrying out such works as it elects to execute under Section 2 of the Bill. That is the plain and simple fact. Any person who has read the Bill cannot deny it.
Before we depart from that Section 2, let us see some of the things which may be done. The making of drains seems to be simple. In many instances I have no doubt it is a useful and necessary work but, in certain circumstances, it is work which is likely to occasion great damage. It will depend upon where the work is done; it will depend upon the nature and extent of the work. We all know the very serious drainage problems which have been created by ineffective, inefficient or inexpert attacks upon a particular drainage problem. We have some experience of that, even if Deputy Collins has not. That was one of the problems that the Turf Development Board had to face and overcome in its early stages. Because of the unsatisfactory condition in which we took over the drainage systems of this country from the Cumann na Gaedheal Government, as soon as ever the Turf Development Board began to attack the problem of bog drainage they found they were immediately flooding out large stretches of the country. While it is quite true that in a great number of cases—and I do not want to appear to unduly minimise the number of cases—it may be a useful and necessary work; nevertheless if such work is carried out without due thought and consideration for all the factors involved it may do more harm than good.
Take the next particular item—the removal of substances or things causing obstructions in watercourses. I wonder would a weir he held by the courts or by the local authority to be a "thing causing obstruction in watercourses"?
It could be.
Precisely. I am grateful to Deputy Sir John Esmonde—I am sorry if I ascribed the assistance for which I am indebted to Deputy Collins to Deputy Sir John Esmonde. I apologise to Deputy Sir John Esmonde, and I am very grateful to Deputy Collins. Because of Deputy Sir John Esmonde's well-known interests in fisheries I thought perhaps the prompt would have come more readily and properly from him. I understand, however, that it is to Deputy Collins I am indebted for the fact that the expression, "things causing obstruction in watercourses", might be held to cover and include weirs—fishing weirs, perhaps mill dams——
Or a frog.
——and other watercourse features or constructions which constitute a very valuable property for individuals. We are now at the stage, therefore, at which it will be possible for a local authority to benefit a friend of a friend of an officer of that authority, or the friend of a friend of a member of the local authority, with sufficient influence to persuade whoever is going to be the responsible executive officer under this Bill, by making it possible for that authority under this Bill to remove, say, a weir in order to improve the drainage of a certain stretch of land along a river and, at the same time, do a great deal of damage to the private property of some other man.
What is the meaning of the expression "reasonable"?
The Deputy is a barrister. I am not. However, I know the great difficulty there is in trying to get the courts to interpret these wide generalities like "reasonable", "the public interest" and all the other things which appear to make legislation so simple to the layman and so very profitable to the lawyer.
It is a pity you did not qualify that.
I am not going to say very much about the widening or deepening of watercourses. You cannot widen or deepen a watercourse without having a great deal of what is sometimes very undesirable material from the point of view of the farmer, to get rid of. Where is the material which is removed when the watercourse is widened or deepened to be deposited? Wherever, so far as the Bill goes, in God's good earth the local authority likes. It may even be on the land of the farmer whose holding happens to adjoin the watercourse which is widened or deepened.
I have not much to say about the making or repairing of walls or embankments. The diversion of water, under paragraph (e), into watercourses may be productive of very undesirable consequences; but it is to be done, mind you, if the local authority considers it reasonable to do so and in the public interest in order to protect, say, the property of one individual without any regard to the rights of another. That is written all through this Bill and that is why I said at the start that we ought to consider it very carefully. There is no single safeguard in this Bill which will protect the right of any person whose property is likely to be affected by the operations of the local authority. It is very remarkable that in the course of his speech introducing this measure the responsible Minister did not once advert to that very undesirable position. Here he is giving the local authorities wide powers without restriction.
Let me, however, make my position quite clear. This Bill is not entirely the creation of the Minister. There was prepared for inclusion in a measure for which I was responsible provisions which would confer upon the local authorities power to carry out certain necessary works to protect their own property; the power to clear obstructions from the eyes of bridges; the power to construct embankments to protect roads. But they were not introduced.
Mr. Murphy
The Deputy might say where he can refer me to those provisions.
I did not say they were embodied in a proposal which came before this House.
Mr. Murphy
Are they in the records of the Department?
Yes.
Mr. Murphy
They are not—and the Deputy knows that—because I asked for them immediately I went in and nobody had ever heard of them.
If the Minister will be good enough to refer to the former Secretary of the Department, Mr. James Hurson, he will tell him. I think, perhaps, the former Secretary, Mr. Collins, will also tell him. However, at least Mr. Hurson will tell him because this matter received very careful consideration from me in relation to a stretch of road in Cork County with which the Minister is very familiar. It would have been introduced, I think, in the Local Government Act of 1946 except for the fact that when this apparently simple provision was being drafted we at once found ourselves up against some of the very important considerations which I am now endeavouring to put before the House. If the Minister looks in the draftsman's office he will find a draft of the section to which I refer, in which we decided that we would not bring it in in the 1946 Bill because the matter required further consideration. We were proposing ultimately to bring it in in the amended and expanded Sanitary Services Bill.
I want to get back to the point I was going to make. I am not for a moment going to deny that it would be useful to give power to the local authorities to do some of the things that are embodied in this Bill. It would be very desirable that they should be able to make drains in certain circumstances. It would be very desirable that they should be able to remove substances causing obstructions in watercourses. For instance, as the Minister has said, the accretion of loose stones which often chokes the eyes of bridges and causes flooding is not a very desirable thing. However, this measure goes far beyond that. It gives the arbitrary power to a local authority, an urban district council, a county council or the corporation of a county borough or a borough, to go in on any man's land and do any of the things which they think are reasonable and necessary.
In certain circumstances.
It gives them the power to execute works designed ostensibly to prevent flooding of any lands owned by them or any land, in fact, owned by any private individual and to do that without being compelled even to give notice that they are going to do so to the persons whose lands are likely to be detrimentally affected. We have had many examples before this House where important public works were being undertaken; works of great magnitude which were undeniably in the public interest, works which were generally approved by the people almost unanimously. Yet, in the case of every one of these works carried out by responsible people who were subject to public criticism and attack here in the Dáil and over whom we had this control: If they abused the powers we gave them we could remove them from office and appoint more considerate and more prudent men to take their place. Notwithstanding that these boards were carrying out important public works on a vast scope, works which would undeniably improve the productive capacity of the people, the Dáil thought it wise to write into all the legislation empowering them to do these things certain provisions for the protection and the safeguarding of the public. We had, for instance, in relation to the Shannon Electricity Act of 1925 provisions in Section 10 providing that before work was commenced steps would be taken to ensure that all parties likely to be affected thereby would know what it was proposed to do. Where is there any provision in this Bill to ensure that this will be done? Section 45 of the Electricity Supply Act of 1927, the Act under which the Electricity Supply Board was set up, may be summarised in these terms because it is a lengthy provision: When the board thinks proper to use compulsorily any easement or other right over land, or any right of impounding, diverting or abstracting water for the performance of any of its duties or functions, it must by Special Order, declare its intention and before making the Special Order, it must deposit in a suitable place documents which will fully and clearly indicate what it is proposed to do. It goes on to say that before doing any of these things— the availment of any easement or right or the diversion or abstracting of any water—it shall give notice in such manner as it may consider best adapted, for informing persons likely to be affected by the Order of its intention and of the manner in which representations and objections in respect of the Order may be made. Where is there any such provision in this so very simple Bill, which gives to a local authority power completely to expropriate certain private rights which individuals have in their property?
Again, in Section 53 of the Electricity Supply Act of 1927, we have it laid down that certain provisions must be complied with prior to the placing of an electric line across land. There is no question here of entering land and depositing on it the rubbish which may be taken from the bed of a river—the carcases of dead dogs, old pieces of tin cans, old bicycle wheels and the general débris you get along a river. It is not a case of doing any permanent damage to the land; it is a case merely of running an electric line across it and yet see what the board must do. The board has to serve notice of its intention on the owner and the occupier of such land. Then, take the Electricity Supply (Amendment) Act (No. 2) of 1934. Section 8 of that Act makes certain provisions and I feel the wording of the section is very significant because it shows you that the approach of the previous Government to the rights of the private individual was very different from the approach of the present Government. We did believe in individual and human rights when we were in power. At any rate, Section 8 of the Electricity Supply Act of 1934 provided that one month before interfering with any property, the board had to take steps to ensure that all proper parties likely to be affected would know what was proposed to be done. It provided, in order to ensure that, that the board should give notice by advertisement, published twice in each of two or more newspapers, and that the plans and records of what it was proposed to do and all the necessary forms should be made available for inspection in a specified place. There is no proposal of that sort in this simple Bill. In this simple Bill of the Minister's the local authority may do what it likes without advertising the fact, without publishing the fact, without giving any notice whatever to any person who may be detrimentally affected by their operations.
Surely there is no analogy between entering on a man's land to erect high tension wires and entering on a man's land to make drains?
There is not, except that the high tension wires will pass high over head and will do no damage to the land.
It is quite fallacious to argue that the owners of land should get the same notice where it is merely proposed to carry out drainage as they should where it is a question of erecting high tension wires which may endanger life.
Is it the Deputy's point that so long as the local authorities do not endanger the lives of citizens, they can do what they like with the citizen's property?
No.
That is, I know, a fundamental of the Deputy's political philosophy.
Take another instance. The Deputy says that the reason that the Electricity Supply Board must give notice, when it intends to run an electric line across a man's land, is that it may endanger life. If the Deputy when he leaves the House will go down to the Library and take down a copy of the Electricity Supply Act of 1927 and turn to Section 98, he will see a provision which has nothing to do with electric lines, which has nothing to do with dangerous equipment which the Electricity Supply Board may have under its control or may wish to erect. He will find a provision dealing with the simple procedure of cutting any tree, shrub or hedge. It provides that before lopping or cutting any such tree, the board shall give seven days' notice to the occupier of the land on which it grows. That was an onerous obligation, some people might think, to place on the Electricity Supply Board, who have their headquarters here in Dublin and who may have to carry out these activities in remote parts of the country, but the local authorities—the urban councils, the county councils and the corporations of the county boroughs—are not so remote from the people who are going to be affected by their operations and if the House considered it reasonable in 1927 to impose on the Electricity Supply Board the obligation of giving notice to the occupiers of land and to persons whose shrubs or trees they proposed to lop or cut, do you not think that, if this Minister had any regard for the rights of individuals, he would have put some such provision also into this Bill? The notice could be given by advertisement in the local Press or it could be sent, as we are compelling the Electricity Supply Board to send it, by registered post. It would be a simple matter and it would protect the rights of private individuals. Yet it has not been done by the Minister in this allegedly simple Bill.
Then, again, in the Turf Development Act of 1946 we see in Section 31 that not later than one month before the board interferes with any property or right, the board must deposit documents sufficient to show every interference proposed to be made and must give public notice by advertisement published twice in each of two or more daily newspapers and in such other newspapers as shall be prescribed as to where these forms may be inspected by any person who considers that he is likely to be affected. Why should we impose these obligations upon bodies like the Electricity Supply Board, the Turf Development Board, Mianraí Teo. and other bodies of this sort, which are under the ultimate jurisdiction and supervision of this House? They can, if we think it necessary, be brought to account here by putting down a motion asking the Minister, for stated reasons, to justify their actions in certain regards. Why should we impose that obligation on them in relation to works which are admittedly and undeniably of great public importance and public interest, which will increase the productive capacity of the State; while we allow the local authorities to do anything they like and carry out any sort of works they like, which may not be ultimately in the public interest at all, without compelling them, in the interests of the private citizen, to accept and fulfil the same kind of obligation as we impose on the bodies I have mentioned? Is there any justification for the failure of the Minister to write those very proper and very necessary safeguards into this Bill?
We are told that these works are of minor importance, we are told that the Bill is urgent, because those works are going to increase the productive capacity of the land and give employment. It is asserted that they are going to increase the productive capacity of the land and will give productive employment and because of that we are inserting here in this Bill the thin end of a very big totalitarian wedge. If this thing can be done in relation to these matters by the local authorities, without their being compelled to give the notice which we insist on from these larger corporations in relation to schemes admittedly of public importance, some other person will come along and say: "Why do you insist on the Electricity Supply Board giving this notice, why do you insist on the Turf Board giving this notice, when you allow local authorities to do other things, much more questionable and much more doubtful, without giving notice?" Then we will be faced with the situation that the almighty State and the corporate bodies established under it will be able to do what they like with any man's property, without let or hindrance and without any appeal to any impartial authority whatsoever.
That is why this measure is dangerous—and it is not without its significance that it should be introduced by a Coalition Government which depends for its majority upon the support of a number of totalitarians sitting here in this House.
The Irish people.
We did not have that for a long time. It is about due again now.
Deputies who are reading the newspapers know that a great many people are disquietened by what is going on, by the sinister developments that are taking place in this country under the Coalition Government. We had the Minister for Justice to-day admitting that one of the great newspapers supporting the Coalition carried a free advertisement for a pro-Soviet organisation in this country and cheek by jowl, so to speak, was the report of the persecution of the Church in Hungary.
To what section of the Bill does this refer? Even Deputy Burke is smiling.
Mr. Murphy
It is too much even for his intelligence.
I wanted to deal with the arguments which the Minister advanced in support of this measure. He says this is a Bill to give employment. It is true that there is growing unemployment, but that has been created by the Government which refused to provide funds to enable local authorities to carry out urgent works to maintain and improve public property, the important property of our road system, in which untold millions of pounds have been sunk.
Surely that is not relevant?
It is, Sir. The Minister said it was a Bill to provide employment.
Not on the roads.
Yes, Sir. I am afraid, Sir, that I have to refer you to Section 1 of the Bill:—
"The expression ‘permanent construction' includes roads, bridges, houses, buildings, walls and embankments."
The local authority may carry out any work on these "permanent constructions", including roads. There are works which could be carried out on roads, works which are urgently needed to restore those roads to proper condition and maintain them in proper condition. That could be done without giving the local authorities the wide, unrestricted powers which this Bill proposes to confer on them. It could have been done, it ought to be done, and because it is not done we have created throughout the length and breadth of this country an employment problem which the Minister for Local Government states this Bill is intended to solve.
Let me address myself to the question of the employment which will be given under this Bill. How much employment will it give? Have we had any exposition to the House by the Minister in that regard? Has he told us about the important works that are held up because the local authorities have not got the powers which this Bill proposes to confer on them—and confer on them so dangerously in the form in which the Bill is drafted? We have not had a single example. He has not given us even one instance of flooding which could be cured and he has not told us the amount of employment which would be given by remedying that defect. He has not told us the number of men which would be employed on any one particular work. You would think he would at least have examined a few samples and be in a position to justify his attitude here. He has not produced a single instance; he has not cited a road work in such and such a place which would give employment to ten men. Mind you, clearing the eye of a bridge is certainly not going to provide long term employment for any significant number of men.
It will help, though.
I would say this, that if every eye of every bridge in this country which is at the moment unduly obstructed by an accumulation of stones and earth or gravel were to be cleared, it would not give employment to 1,000 men for one week.
There are more things than the eyes of bridges.
The Parliamentary Secretary is coming to the rescue of his hard-pressed colleague and he says that there are many more types of public works than the eyes of bridges. If the Parliamentary Secretary knows such a wide diversity of works which could be done under this Bill and knows the vast extent of employment they would give, why had he not at least the good comradeship to impart that knowledge and information to his colleague, the Minister for Local Government?
Every rural Deputy knows it.
Because the Minister apparently could think of nothing but clearing the eyes of bridges.
He expected you to be more intelligent than that.
I am dealing, if I am to be permitted to do so without interruption by the Parliamentary Secretary or some of the other more enthusiastic members of the House——
I have taken notice of a number of interruptions and the cup is very nearly full for three Deputies.
What is the extent of the employment that is to be given under this measure? The making of drains—no doubt, there is a great deal of land that could be improved by the making of drains, but it is not land which is going to be touched mainly by the provisions of this Bill. Sub-section (3) of Section 2 says:—
"Where a local authority to whom this section applies are of opinion that—
(a) any land in their functional area, not being land owned by them, or
has sustained or is likely to sustain damage from flooding, landslide, subsidence or other similar occurrence and that it is in the public interest to afford relief or protection from the damage, the local authority may execute such works as they consider reasonable for the purpose of affording such relief or protection."
I have said that there is a great deal of land which could be improved by the making of drains but it is not land which can be touched by this Bill, unless this term "public interest" is to be so interpreted that the local rates or the Central Exchequer is to be made one vast pork barrel into which every man may dip his hands. Most people reading this Bill would assume that what is meant here by the "making of drains" is the making of drains on land which adjoins a river where it may be easily drained. I do not know whether that is the correct interpretation of the provisions of the section or not, because the Minister whose duty it was to inform the House failed to do his duty in that regard. He contented himself with repeating ad nauseam how very simple this measure was, but he did not tell us what type of land was going to be affected by the making of drains and he did not tell us, either, who was going to be employed by the local authority in the making of these drains, or whether these drains were to be made irrespective of what the wishes of the landowner were or whether the local authority, in virtue of its own opinion, was going to be empowered to send in all its disemployed road workers to any farmer's land to make drains in order to provide employment to get the Government out of a mess of its own creation. He did not say one word about that, but I assume that the local authorities, as they are at present constituted, will act reasonably. I am not so certain how the local authorities might act if the Minister's Party had a majority on these bodies, because it is rather remarkable that, in relation to a great number of these affairs, the members of the Minister's Party who are on local authorities seem to wage a perpetual vendetta against the most substantial ratepayers and against landowners. However, there is a problem to which the Minister might have addressed himself in presenting this Bill.
Let me see what else there is—"the removal of substances or things causing obstructions in watercourses". So far as the amount of employment that it is likely to give, it can quite readily be equated with the work which will be done in clearing the eyes of bridges. I think it will prove to be virtually negligible. Go down the whole of this list and I am prepared to bet that, even at the end of next year, when the local authorities have made the fullest possible survey of all the work falling within one or other of these categories which they could and should reasonably do, and if they drew these up as a constructional programme and embarked on it, they would not give work to 15,000 men for one month, and that is supposed to compensate the road workers for being thrown out of employment, to compensate for the sum of over £2,000,000 in grants of which the local authorities were deprived this year.
The Minister in fact has disclosed one of the reasons why this Bill is considered to be urgently necessary. He is trying to pass on to the ratepayers responsibility for dealing with an unemployment problem which is of his own creation. Normally, therefore, in justice, the Government should accept financial responsibility for carrying it out. He has said that this is merely an enabling Bill, so far as the local authorities are concerned. I have shown that it is a Bill which enables them to do anything they like, without giving notice or warning to any person likely to be detrimentally or prejudicially affected by what they do. He says that it is an enabling Bill, and that, in order to enable the local authorities to make effective use of it, he proposes to give them grants amounting to 100 per cent. of the cost of the work. The Minister can make that promise and still leave the Minister for Finance with a very easy mind, because we are told that local authorities must have schemes in by April 15th. That is not a justification for describing this Bill as an urgent measure, because there is nothing to prevent the local authorities from drawing up their schedule of work long before the Bill becomes law, if necessary, and no justification for the House swallowing this Bill holus-bolus in the form in which it has been presented to it. It is no justification for this House scamping the serious consideration which certain of the proposals in this Bill demand.
As I have said, there is nothing to prevent the local authorities from preparing their schedule between now and April 15th, but what sort of schedule is it going to be if they have only got until April 15th to prepare it? How many schemes will emanate from each local authority between now and April 15th? I forget how many local authorities there are in the country. I think there are about 900 odd. Perhaps it is a much smaller figure. Supposing two or three schemes come from everyone of them, from all the urban districts, from all the county councils. Perhaps more will come from the county councils. Perhaps three schemes will come from each of about 400 urban districts, what is going to be the extent of work that will be provided by any one of those schemes? Will there be £100 worth of work in any one of them? If you have three schemes each from 400 urban districts, that is 1,200 schemes at £100 a scheme. That is, £120,000 worth of employment will be provided by 400 bodies. Assume that ten schemes come from each county council. These schemes are not likely to be anything like as extensive or as expensive as the local authority scheme. But, assume again that each of them costs £100, that is £26,000 to be added to the £120,000, that is £146,000.
All of us who have any experience of trying to get public works in the City of Dublin know how limited the field is for that sort of enterprise. Suppose we get 50 schemes in the City of Dublin and another, say 30 in Cork and ten in Limerick and ten in Galway, that is 100 and supposing these schemes cost £500 each, that is £50,000. So we have got to this stage that, on schemes submitted between now and 15th April, the amount of work which will be carried out will cost something like £200,000.
It is a fair calculation that in order to give one man employment for one year you would have to spend, even on the type of work which we are now considering, giving the Minister every benefit in the estimate, about £600. Six hundred pounds per man per year. I see Deputy Lehane shake his head. He is right. Long experience in relation to these matters and the experience of the Board of Works has always been that you are not safe in calculating the cost of giving an unskilled worker employment for one year at less than between £1,000 and £1,200.
Will the Deputy answer me this question?
No. I would prefer to develop.
What do you lose when you pay him unemployment assistance?
I am giving the Minister the benefit of every doubt and the amount of employment, under the most favourable circumstances, that could be given under this Bill would be about 5,000 men. For the sake of giving 5,000 men employment—I am not going to decry the desirability of doing that if it can be done—we are going to destroy the right of every private individual to have some court of appeal if he is injured or aggrieved by the action, not merely of another citizen of the State, but of a public authority. Where is that right of appeal given in this Bill? I have shown the House quite conclusively that, apparently, the local authority may act in secret, clandestinely anyhow, and, without due notice, carry out works which, as I have said, may damage seriously the property of a private citizen and yet they are not even called upon to notify the persons likely to be affected that they propose to do that and, if they do carry out this work and people's property is damaged—and it may be very severely damaged—there is no right of appeal.
The Minister did not refer in his opening speech to Section 4 of this Bill. Would the House look at Section 4:—
"A local authority or person executing works pursuant to this Act or an order made thereunder, or any officer, servant or agent of such authority or person, may enter on any land for the purposes of the execution of the works."
These local authorities are given quite arbitrary rights of entrance. If we were dealing here now with a very serious public health problem, as we were dealing with it in the year 1946 and 1947, if we were dealing with the case, say, of a person who was suffering from an infectious and deadly disease and who was breaking the law by concealing that, by failing to notify the local authority of the fact that he was so suffering, and if we wished to give to the responsible officer of the local health authority the right to enter the property upon which that person was being maintained or in which he was residing, we would have to provide that the officer must be armed with a warrant before he could do it, even though the health of the whole community was being jeopardised by the action of a law-breaker. Here in this Bill, however, we have a quite arbitrary authority given to any officer, servant or agent of a public body to enter upon the lands of any man in this State. He is not even asked to produce his credentials and, if his right to enter is challenged, we are told that the person who obstructs or interferes with the exercise of the power conferred by sub-section (1) shall be guilty of an offence under the section and shall be liable on summary conviction thereof to a fine not exceeding £10.
Do Deputies think that the House is justified in passing a Bill containing a clause giving unqualified and unrestricted right of entry to any officer, servant or agent of a public body? Is there any farmer in this House who thinks that it would be right and fair in the interests of his fellows that the officers of the local authority should be armed with that right of entry on his land. It does not matter who the person may be. He comes there in the guise of a private individual and yet, if you challenge him it may be held by some court to be obstruction. He is not called upon to carry any credentials and you do not even receive notice that he is coming from the local authority—they do not publish any— and yet you are to open your gates and let this man in to do whatever he damn well likes on the land.
That is what is proposed in this "simple Bill". Do you not think there should be at least some provision that the person should be duly authorised and carry some kind of authority and that the person on whose land he proposes to enter should be notified in advance as to what he proposes to do so that the farmer may expect him and be ready for him? I think, if the Bill goes through, that the farmers will be ready for him, ready for him in another way. Is it not astounding that this Bill should emanate from a Government which contains a Minister for Agriculture who said that a farmer would be quite justified in shooting any inspector who set foot upon his land without due authority.
Gentle James.
And also a Minister for Industry and Commerce who said that the best thing shopkeepers could do when inspectors called upon them unnecessarily and without warrant was to show the pip-squeaks the door. Apparently shopkeepers and town dwellers may show the pip-squeaks the door with impunity, but if a farmer even closes his gates against one he is fined £10 under this "simple measure" which the Minister for Local Government failed to expound to us.
Let us come to Section 5. I said I would deal with this Bill and discharge the duty in which the Minister failed. Let me remind the House again that, under Section 2, a local authority may enter upon the land of any individual in this country and carry out any work —"such" work is the word—as they consider reasonable in the public interest to execute in order to accomplish certain things, and, among other things, it may dispose of any substance or thing that is removed from a watercourse—the section is very specific about this—no matter how noxious it may be, on land adjacent to the watercourse. The local authority may remove it or dispose of it otherwise as the local authority thinks fit. The section gives local authorities rights to dispose of any substance or thing it likes on land adjacent to a watercourse from which it has been removed. That may do very serious damage to land which is adjacent to the watercourse. Some of these other things, which it is particularly enjoined on local authorities to do under this Bill, may do very, very serious damage to land which is remote from the watercourse which is being drained or widened or from which obstructions are being removed, and yet what right of redress has the person who is affected? What redress is afforded under this Bill?
What about Section 5?
Read it yourself.
I am coming to Section 5. I have not the advantage, I will admit straightaway, that Deputy Lehane has of being a lawyer. It says here:—
"Where any land sustains damage by reason of the execution of works pursuant to this Act or an order thereunder, the local authority concerned shall pay compensation in respect of the damage to the persons having estates or interests in the land."
So far so good. But will Deputy Lehane turn his attention to sub-section (2) and tell me what does it mean? I suggest that by implication and indirectly it imposes a limit as to the amount of compensation which persons whose land is affected may secure.
There is no such implication.
This question of compensation is strictly within the jurisdiction of the District Court. I know that Deputy Lehane has not read the Bill and, therefore, does not know what is in sub-section (5) of Section 5. He will see there what, in effect, Section 5 does, and it does what I have said. It places this question of compensation strictly within the jurisdiction of the District Court. I think that is quite clear:—
"The jurisdiction conferred by this section on the District Court shall be exercised by the justice whose district is the district in which the relevant works were executed."
The Deputy had better stick to the papers and leave the law alone.
I think there will be very sound lawyers to argue that the section, as I have said, places this question of compensation within the jurisdiction of the District Court. It provides that the maximum amount which a person whose property has been damaged by the operations of a local authority may secure by way of compensation would be what in a libel action would be described as "contemptuous damages", contemptuous compensation.
There is no such thing and the Deputy knows it.
Perhaps we will have the opportunity of listening to men more able to argue the question than I am. I am a layman and do not set my authority against that of Deputy Lehane, but I am fortified by the fact that many competent persons believe that the effect of that section would be to limit the amount of compensation that will be given in any case, no matter how serious the damage may be, to £10.
There is the Bill which the House is being asked to accept as a matter of urgency. I have expounded it as the Minister for Local Government should have expounded it and dealt with it clause by clause as he has failed to do. I say to this House and to the country that it is an outrage upon Parliamentary procedure to have thrown this Bill at the House in the way it was and to expect a serious legislative assembly— the Legislature of the nation—to discuss it and debate it without having given the House due time to examine and consider it. I have no doubt whatever that if I and my colleagues, the people who sit on these benches, had another week to deal with this Bill we would have shown that it was a most dangerous Bill. I have already shown that it is dangerous in all its implications because it lacks the ordinary safeguards customarily enshrined in Bills of this sort where private property is in question in order to protect the rights of the private individual. These rights are entitled to be safeguarded. Granted there is a sort of diarchy between the rights of the State and the private individual, who is the person on whose security and happiness the welfare of the State depends. We are bound to give him justice. We are bound at least to see that the avenues of justice are open to him but this Bill closes them against him, and sweeps away some of the most cherished rights, some of the most important characteristics of private property. Surely it is important if I own land that no person should be entitled to walk into it arbitrarily at the dictate of any person, even of the Minister. Mind you, the Minister has very wide powers under this Bill. I have not yet dealt with Section 3.
Section 3, we were told by the innocent Minister, is a simple section. The only thing that section proposes to do is to help those unfortunate local authorities whose resources are so limited that they would not have the technical staff necessary to enable them, say, to clear the eye of a bridge. That is the sole purpose, he told us, of Section 3. If the House will read Section 3 it will be seen that it is a very much more far reaching provision than the Minister has pretended it to be.
First, there is no question about a local authority being satisfied that something is in the public interest or that certain works are necessary. Not at all. The local authority is dealt with in the same way as the Minister proposes to deal with officers of the Kerry County Council when he told them that if they gave an unqualified, conscientious opinion about certain proposals that was in any way in conflict with what he thought was right he would deal with them. There is no question in Section 3 of the local authority having any rights whatever. It gives the Minister full power to override the local authority in the exercise of its judgment as to what is in the public interest and what is reasonable.
Section 3 reads: "Where the Minister is satisfied——" That is very different to what we have been told about Section 2. That is very different to what we have been told about the rights which the Bill confers upon local authorities. This is something which confers unfettered power upon the Minister, because where the Minister is satisfied that particular works should be executed pursuant to this Act by a local authority and the local authority are not merely unable but are unwilling to execute the works, what happens then? When the Minister is satisfied that certain works should be done and the local authority are unwilling to execute such works, perhaps because they do not consider that it is in the public interest to execute them, or that it would be reasonable to execute them, what happens then? The Minister, who has professed to have such regard recently for the rights of local authorities may, by order, nominate a person to execute the works and thereupon that person may execute the works. How? Not, mark you, in accordance with the wishes of the local authority, but in accordance with the directions of the Minister, and in relation to the execution thereof this nominee of the Minister shall be deemed to be acting on behalf of the local authority and shall have all the powers conferred on them by this Act. There may be some safeguard for private individuals in the fact, even though no other is provided for in this Bill, that the members of the local authorities have to live among their neighbours. They have to face public criticism at the churches of their own parish. But here is a section which gives the Minister power to send down an emissary from Dublin, armed with quite dictatorial powers, to go in on any person's land to do anything the Minister is satisfied should be done under this Act.
Mind you, there is no limitation imposed on the Minister's judgment in this matter or upon his discretion. They may do anything the Minister likes, enter upon the land of any person, carry out the work and then hie off home again and leave to the local authority, perhaps, the responsibility of clearing up the mess which the Minister has created.
I think, moreover, the terms of this section open the way to graft and corruption. Under this Bill there is no question about the Minister's appointee being selected by the Civil Service Commission. There is no provision that the Minister shall delegate to carry out this work only a person who is an officer of the Department or an officer of any local authority or an officer of the local authority concerned. I must say I think it would be very invidious for the Minister to appoint an officer of the local authority which was unwilling to carry out the works the Minister would demand. I do not think even the present Minister would be so tactless as to do that. In any event here is the position that the Minister has unfettered power not merely to do anything he likes under this Bill but to appoint any person he wishes as the person to do it. What an avenue of sinecures and emoluments that opens up to the secretaries of labour clubs. What a bright prospect there is for all the members of the labour clubs in the Minister's constituency. Every person who has been in the Department of Local Government as long as I was in it knows how the present Minister for Local Government built up a political organisation by making certain that his friends were appointed foremen and gangers on every road work that was carried out in County Cork.
Mr. Murphy
And of course it was never done before.
What a pretty picture. What an alluring prospect to dangle before the eyes of the dying and diminishing Clann na Poblachta organisation, and, of course, Clann na Talmhan will not be left out——
Clann na Talmhan is all right.
——when it comes to its members having an opportunity to dip their hands into this new pork barrel of which the Minister is asking the Dáil to approve.
Why does the Deputy say that?
I see a greasy collection in front of me. When the Parliamentary Secretary was an officer of the local authority he got a fair crack of the whip from the Minister for Local Government. The Parliamentary Secretary was treated with respect by him.
There is an implication in that statement.
Certainly. Why does the Parliamentary Secretary accuse an ex-Minister of having treated officers other than decently and honestly and fairly?
The Deputy made an allegation in regard to the Minister for Local Government about his constituency.
We have been told that £50,000,000 will be spent. If they spend £300,000 under this Bill it will be the maximum amount. One thing is certain. I tell you that if the local authority shows itself to be unwilling to carry out the ukase of the Minister in regard to this Act the Minister will make jolly well certain that, so far as he is concerned, he is compensated by his power to confer patronage on any one of his followers whom he may send down to do the job.
I rise to support this Bill. In supporting it, I find myself speaking, as the last Deputy announced he spoke, in the full realisation of the obligations imposed upon a Deputy of this House to safeguard the rights of individuals. I approach the discussion of this Second Reading on that basis. But, in addition to that, I approach the consideration of this Bill in the belief that, if we have a local authority in this country, no matter whether it be to-day or ten years from now, and if we have a Minister for Local Government in this country, whether it be to-day or ten years from now, that Minister and that local authority will act reasonably and in the best interests of what they are there to act for and without any ulterior motives. I will subscribe to that belief until the opposite is proved to me beyond all reasonable doubt. In discussing a Bill of this character we must remember that we are turning out legislation and handing certain powers to certain of our countrymen who are going to act in the best interests of the people and we are not going to condemn them here as potential criminals for the administration of the particular functions assigned to them.
I might introduce my remarks by relating an experience I had some time ago in regard to a problem that came before me. The problem was the very bad state and condition which a certain district in the County Wexford had got into as a result of flooding. All the parties concerned came together with a view to ascertaining how this flooding could be remedied. I found the following situation. They found that in order to deal with the matter there were no less than four bodies who had to be consulted or who had to be brought into co-operative action together. First of all, there was a board of trustees, and then there were the Board of Works, the county council and the Land Commission. There were four bodies each of whom was passing the responsibility to the other and, in the meantime, the good land was sinking under the flooding that was taking place. I believe that this Bill will give to the local authority or, failing the local authority, to the Minister, just such rights and opportunities as are wanting in that particular case.
Deputy MacEntee has referred at great length to the infringement of the rights of the private citizen in this particular case. At the risk of being described as some sort of a totalitarian in disguise, I say that there is nothing that I can see which infringes the rights of the private citizen more than these rights have been infringed in Bill after Bill piloted through this House. Every single Electricity Supply Board pole on private ground to-day is a greater infringement of the rights of private individuals than the mere licence given in this Bill to go on to a private individual's land for the purpose of carrying out necessary work. Deputies know that under the housing code a man's property can be interfered with. I shall give an illustration. A landlord of a tumbled down house in a country town or in any city which he does not want to let can, under the law as it stands at present, be called upon by the local authority, if the house is one which, in their opinion, is capable of being put into such a condition as to be let, to put that house into repair. Surely that is a greater infringement of the rights of private individuals than the mere licence to go on a person's land in order to ease flooding on a road in order that public traffic may go to and fro.
Do Deputies realise that under the Local Government Act of 1925, the local authority can go to the district justice and get an order to go on to the nearest land where there is a quarry or sandpit and having got that order, no matter what the owner says, can go in and take the stone or sand or whatever is necessary? This is not an infringement of any individual private right except what is absolutely necessary for the purpose of carrying out these necessary works.
In my constituency at present there are three works urgently calling for attention. They have been waiting for attention for some time past, and the reason they cannot receive attention is that there is no way of dealing with that particular problem. At any moment we expect the causeway known as the road to Great Island to be swept away by the floods on the adjoining river. When that causeway is swept away, there will be swept away with it hundreds of acres of good arable land. This simple Bill will enable the local authority, with money furnished from the Central Exchequer, to save that land which is in imminent peril at present. Deputy O'Leary and Deputy Corish have been on deputation after deputation with me to the various Departments concerned with a view to doing something to alleviate the rot that is setting in in what is known as the Macamore district in County Wexford, where an artificial watercourse or drainage system urgently requires repairs. That can be done under this Bill. Then there is the Kilmallock area on the edge of the Atlantic which is gradually moving back into the Atlantic by reason of the fact that there are half a dozen different authorities concerned and, as it is not the particular problem of any one of them, it cannot be dealt with. That can be dealt with under this simple Bill. From my point of view, this is not so much a question of employment. It is important that employment does enter into the matter but, from my point of view, these are urgent necessities which exist in my constituency, as I am sure they exist in every other constituency.
As regards the question of the private rights of individuals being infringed, it has to be assumed that the officials, the local authorities and the Ministers will act according to their conscience. Supposing they do not, we have got the courts, and these courts will make the official or the local authority or the Minister concerned amenable. Fifteen years ago, at the behest of the owner of old thatched cottages in the town of Cashel, a clearance order under the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, which had been decreed by the Cashel Urban Council was set aside and nullified on the basis that the local authority had not reasonably exercised their powers. There are abundant safeguards not only in our ordinary law but under the Constitution. Deputy MacEntee knows as well as anyone else that any Act which goes through the Oireachtas can be set aside and nullified by the courts if it is an infringement of the Constitution. Some years ago, when I was on the other side of the House and Deputy MacEntee was piloting the Trade Union Bill through the House, I implored him, not as a lawyer, but as a member of this House, to consult his legal advisers and ask them whether a particular section in the Bill was not unconstitutional. In spite of that, the Bill went through and that particular part was declared to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The very same sanctions, the very same safeguards, exist in regard to this simple Bill.
They are very expensive safeguards.
They are safeguards. Coming to the question of compensation, do the Opposition realise—because I take it that Deputy MacEntee is speaking on behalf of the Opposition when he is dealing with the question of compensation—that under Section 5 compensation is to be assessed by the District Court?
Here again, I assume, that every responsible Deputy will admit that even the district justice is going to act in accordance with justice. Compensation is to be assessed by the District Court on what basis? According to the argument advanced against this Bill, it can only be assessed on the basis of contemptuous damages in an action for libel. The Deputies opposite must be aware that, where a local authority has power to go in on land for the purpose of getting stones or gravel, compensation is assessed by the district justice also and his jurisdiction is not confined to contemptuous damages.
Does the Deputy contend that under Section 5, with the normal jurisdiction of a District Court a district justice could give, for instance, £5,000 damages if such were necessary?
I want to make it clear, because I know that the rôle of a lawyer is a difficult one in this House—it is often ascribed to him that he dogmatises and lectures—that I never speak in this House as a lawyer. I speak only as a Deputy.
Mr. de Valera
It is very hard to change your judgment.
I speak here in my representative capacity. I am sent here by my constituents and I voice their views here. There is a competent staff behind the members of the Government, and they have the Attorney-General to advise them. I am not asked to give an opinion, but I do say, with regard to this particular section, that under the corresponding section which, I think, is Section 32 in the Local Government Act of 1925, the District Court has power to assess compensation for gravel and stones taken from quarries, and I would find it very hard to believe that the maximum amount ever awarded in such cases was over £25. However, if there is any doubt as to the efficacy of a district justice to deal with a matter of this kind, there is always a right of appeal to the Circuit Court.
Not under this Bill.
If the Deputy will permit me I should like to remind him that there is the right of appeal from every single order made in a District Court. Again, I speak only as a Deputy. The Deputy might consult his legal advisers. However, for some reason or other there is opposition to this particular Bill, and I wonder why? There is opposition, I gather first of all, because of the haste with which the Bill has been introduced. I do not propose to deal with that, but admitting that that is an argument, I take it, then, that the only real ground of objection to the Bill that now remains is that it was introduced in a hurry and that otherwise it is perfectly acceptable.
Mr. de Valera
No.
I gather that to be the position.
Mr. de Valera
That is a non sequitor, anyhow.
I can assure the House that there are four areas at least in the constituency which I and my four colleagues represent which will be very glad indeed when this Bill becomes an Act and is implemented by the local authorities or by the Minister. Some of the sections of the Bill have been referred to in detail by Deputy MacEntee. Play has been made with what a local authority is empowered to do, such as the making of drains, the removal of substances or things causing obstructions in watercourses, the widening or deepening of watercourses, the making or repairing of walls or embankments and the diversion of water into watercourses. What would have been said, if it was not properly laid down in the Bill, what a local authority was empowered to do? If there was just a statement in the Bill that a local authority could go in and do what it liked with land, then, presumably, we would be met with the very serious charge that there was no plan laid down as to what a local authority could do, but because the local authority is, so to speak, put in a strait-jacket with regard to what it can do, and because safeguards are in the Bill to ensure that a local authority must believe that these things are necessary, we are challenged and told that there is something wrong with the Bill.
With regard to Section 3, which provides:
"where the Minister is satisfied—
(a) that particular works should be executed pursuant to this Act by a local authority, and
(b) that the local authority are unable or unwilling to execute the works,"
one must assume that the Minister and the local authority are not going to carry out a deadly war from morning until night. One must assume, in the modern state of our democracy, our civilisation and our national charity, that the Minister and the local authority are going to work together for the benefit of the country.
Deputy MacEntee, in the opening part of his speech, treated us to a lecture to the effect that the Opposition in this House have a duty. Of course they have. The Opposition have a duty not merely to oppose and to criticise, but they have a duty to assist, and if the point of view of the Opposition is that, where there is flooding, as contemplated in this Bill, or where there is obstruction in watercourses or where there are any works urgently required to be done, as they are waiting to be done in County Wexford, these works should not be done, they ought to have the honesty to get up and say so, but they ought not to get up and oppose this Bill just because it is one of the first Bills introduced by the new Government.
Surely, to goodness there are enough general debates here on which we can let off steam without doing so on a Bill like this which has been introduced for the purpose of dealing with immediate necessary work. It is a proper thing, a patriotic thing, and within the walls of duty laid down for every Opposition, that they should give the Government every assistance in this case. I have not heard one single word throughout all the criticism that has come from the opposite side suggesting the slightest change or amendment in the Bill as it is before the House. It is to be condemned, and condemned for one reason only, that it has been introduced by the very excellent Minister for Local Government behind whom I have the honour to sit.
Not being a legal man, or a man with a legal mind, I am prepared to accept the opinion of the experts so far as the legal aspects of this measure are concerned. I am satisfied that the rights of private citizens are no more being infringed under this Bill than they were under any previous Bill introduced in the Dáil. Many fears in regard to the Bill have been expressed by Deputy MacEntee. He said the Bill was dangerous and that it was unknown what kind of trickery the local authorities would be up to. It is rather significant that a Bill of this character should have been introduced by this Government in view of the fact that the majority of the local authorities are opposed to the present Government. It shows that this Government is not concerned to make political capital but rather to do the work, irrespective of who gets the credit for it.
I welcome this Bill as an earnest of good things to come. It shows a sincere desire on the part of the present Government to face up to the problem of unemployment—to problems associated with drainage and land reclamation. After all, this Bill has associations with the proposed new scheme of land reclamation.
With regard to the fears expressed by Deputy MacEntee, it was quite evident that those fears were not concerned with the safety or welfare of the farmers but rather with the safety and future of the Fianna Fáil Party. There is no doubt whatever about it that this Bill is going to be another nail in their coffin.
Much play was made here by Deputy MacEntee about the reduction in the grants for the main roads and that, as a result, there would be a lot of unemployment. The Minister for Local Government gave an assurance here some time ago that such would not be the case and he asked the local authorities to keep spending money on the main roads until such time as alternative employment was available for the men who were working on them. In spite of that, valuable time was wasted in the House by Fianna Fáil in their efforts to make political propaganda out of the reduction in the grants for the main roads. Now, when an attempt is being made by the Government to put men into productive employment and not to have them working on main roads—because nobody for a moment in his senses would suggest that work on the main roads is work of a productive nature—such tactics as Fianna Fáil has adopted are ill-advised. Actually, 75 to 80 per cent. of the money expended on main roads goes into material. The labour content is not as big as we are led to believe.
I listened to Deputy Childers and to Deputies from my own constituency worrying about the skin on the main roads. All I have to say is that if the skin on the main roads is half as thick as that on the Fianna Fáil Party, then they need not be done for the next 50 years. I wonder do the rural Deputies on the Fianna Fáil Benches subscribe to the views expressed by Deputy MacEntee? Will Deputy O'Rourke or Deputy Killilea or Deputy Beegan or Deputy Lahiffe or any other Deputies on the Party opposite go down the country and criticise the powers that are now being given to the local authorities to tackle problems that have been a worry for years to those local authorities?
The section of this Bill dealing with the right to go in on a man's property is surely necessary if any good is to be done at all. How is any drainage work to be carried out if the local authorities, or the people who are going to do it, have not the power to go in on a man's land? Take, for example, a rural improvement scheme, where 25 per cent. is put up by the people who want the scheme carried out. If one individual associated with that scheme objects, then the work cannot be done. In other words, what would be a useful scheme benefiting nine out of ten people has to be thrown away, just because one crank objects to it.
I welcome that section of the Bill. There is too much of this bad neighbour business, of jealousy and things like that. There have been many instances where an old maid living at the end of a road has held up the repair of that road or prevented the making of a drain, all out of pure spite to her next-door neighbour. Under this section that type of crank will get short shrift.
There is one matter I should like the Minister to give me more information upon. It is in connection with a certain type of drainage. I would like to know whether it can be done under this Bill. Like Deputy Esmonde's constituency, there are a number of drainage problems in my constituency which could not be tackled up to the present. I will give the Minister one example. In the Elphin area there is a drainage district and this district was reconstructed by the Board of Works under the 1924 or 1925 Act and it was then handed over to the county council for maintenance. Each year the county council spends approximately £600 in maintenance in that drainage district. Several of the streams that comprise that district were not sunk deep enough, with the result that there is constant flooding around May and June, and this holds up the turf season because there is flooding of the bog area.
Every year Roscommon county councillors are pressing to have these streams deepened or to have obstructions in them removed but, due to the fact that this would be regarded as improvement work and not maintenance, no money can be expended by the county council. In addition to that, the charge is a county at large charge and naturally enough people in other areas do not feel like subscribing to maintenance or improvement work in the Elphin district. The county councillors have tried year after year to get this work done and I should like to know if, under this Bill, it will be possible to carry out this improvement work in the Elphin drainage district?
Mr. Murphy
It will.
I am very glad to hear that. If it is the case that such a problem as that can be dealt with, then I think this Bill is even better than any of us had hoped and the criticism levelled here to-night was totally unjustified. I do not know whether it was in a spirit of spite that Deputy MacEntee got on his feet, but he certainly did not convey to the House the opinions of rural Deputies. I am certain that if the Whip were taken off the rural Deputies on the opposite benches, and if they were allowed to speak their minds, they would run Deputy MacEntee out of the House for his contribution to this debate.
Firstly, I should say that I propose to deal with what is in this Bill and not what is in the mind of the Minister. The Minister may have good intentions, and some of the intentions as expressed by him in the explanatory memorandum which was circulated with this Bill may be quite sound, but the Minister's intentions and the principles he has enshrined in this Bill are entirely different matters, and I propose to point that out to the House.
I think it will be admitted, particularly by Deputy Esmonde and Deputy Cowan, that our drainage code represents one of the most difficult and complex types of law on the Irish statute book. I must register my protest against the rushing of this Bill. It was circulated to Deputies, particularly country Deputies whom it affects most, and they were given only two or three days to consider its implications.
Are not opposition Deputies bound to vote against it anyway?
I can assure Deputy Cowan that no speaker on this side has expressed his intention of voting against the principles of this Bill. There are certain matters in connection with the infringement of rights that I propose to point out and that we will vote against. We will endeavour to protect the individual by amendments which will be submitted later. It is one thing to say that a local authority should get certain powers in the direction of relieving flooding at bridges where they have not already got those powers. It is quite a feasible proposition to suggest that local authorities should have the right, in connection, for instance, with flooding on roads, to take the necessary action to relieve that flooding. But, apart from that altogether, there is the natural right of the ordinary individual, whose adjoining lands are flooded by water thrown on to them, to proper compensation. The local authority, as we all know, is the strong body in this case. It is very difficult —indeed impossible—for a poor farmer of £2, £5 or £10 valuation to come into the courts and fight for his rights if the local authority waves the big stick and exercises all the rights that we may give them if this Bill passes into law in its present form.
Why?
Because, for Deputy Cowan's information, it is impossible for the small farmer of £10 valuation in the West of Ireland to come up to Dublin and pay for the fancy legislation on his constitutional rights before the High Court and to pay men like myself and Captain Cowan and the long list of senior counsel who would be required on such an issue.
I have often done it for nothing.
The Deputy may often have done it for nothing. Many members of the Deputy's profession have tried to help people who did not have funds to pay them. But I am sure the Deputy will not suggest that in a constitutional action of this kind on behalf of some unfortunate man down the country that the counsel whom he might instruct would have such an interest in the unfortunate farmer as to give their time and services free for four or five days when they could be more profitably employed earning their normal professional living.
I know several of them who have done it.
I have 15 years' experience and I have yet to find these public-spirited gentlemen down in the Law Library prepared to argue a farmer's rights in a High Court action for weeks on end merely for the honour and glory of safeguarding the interests of the small farmers.
It has happened.
I do not believe that any Deputy sitting behind Captain Cowan would accept that proposition. The Deputy knows quite well that is not so. To suggest to us that it is sufficient protection for some small farmer whose rights may be infringed by the actions of a local authority under this Bill that the generosity of the members of the Irish Bar will come to his aid and fight his case is simply not facing up to the situation, and the Deputy well knows that.
I have a better opinion than the Deputy has of the members of our Bar.
The Minister says the local authorities should have these powers. I am quite prepared to give the local authorities these powers but, if I give them these powers, I want to ensure that there will be adequate protection for the ordinary small farmer whose rights may be infringed under this Bill. The Minister seems to be a very simple man. He has asked us to accept him as such. In his opening statement here to-night he did not refer to one solitary thing in the Bill. He referred to his own intentions. But what is in the Minister's mind and what is in the Bill are two different matters.
The Minister gave this House an undertaking that the cost of the work proposed to be done under this Bill would be borne by the Central Fund. There is not a word about that in the Bill. I accept it that it is the Minister's intention that that should be so for this year. I want the rural Deputies, however, and particularly those of them who are members of local authorities, to remember that it is usual, when the Central Fund is going to bear for all time the cost of certain works, such as those envisaged in this Bill, to put in a section providing for that and thereby making sure that it will be for all time and not just for the period during which the Minister may happen to be in office. The possibility is that at some future date the local authority might be told that the Central Fund will provide only so much of the money and that they will have to make up the rest. The Minister will have to give some assurance that the local authorities will not be saddled with further expenditure under this Bill. All that need be done is to insert a simple section on the Committee Stage providing that all expenditure under this Bill will be met out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas. One thing that makes one suspicious of this Bill is the fact that no money has been provided in the Estimate for works to be carried out under this Bill.
Money cannot be provided in the Estimates until the Bill is passed.
The Minister suggests that the Opposition is approaching this Bill with suspicion. There is every reason why we should approach the Bill with suspicion. One of the reasons given by the Minister for rushing this Bill through the House is that it would alleviate unemployment in this country. That is the reason given by the Minister who undertook to absorb all those unemployed owing to the stoppage of the turf scheme and on work on the roads. That is the Minister who slashed the grants for the maintenance of roads. Why should we not approach the Bill, therefore, with suspicion, when the Minister who introduces it has let us down before? Because he has slashed the grants for the making and maintenance of roads by the local authorities and thereby created unemployment, he now puts forward his reason for introducing this Bill as being one for the purpose of absorbing these unemployed.
In connection with the Bill itself, I think it is a very badly drafted Bill for the purpose for which it is required. I think it is one of the worst drafted Bills that has ever been presented. I propose now to deal with Section 5 because Section 5 is of vital importance to every other section in the Bill. Under Section 5 the Minister purports to provide machinery for giving compensation to those whose rights are infringed or to whom any damage is done as a result of works undertaken under this Bill. A very significant thing about Section 5, sub-section (1) is that it is the local authority concerned who are liable to pay compensation. The Minister, in his opening statement, did not elucidate as to who is going to pay for the fun when it starts. I am satisfied that if this Bill is allowed to go through in its present form without any provision being made for any fishery rights that may be interfered with, without any provision for any interference with the lands round about these streams belonging to people who have rights which are guaranteed under the Constitution of this State, it will be the finest harvest for the gentlemen of the legal profession that ever was abroad in this country. It is all very fine for Deputy Sir John Esmonde to say that there are safeguards for them. We shall have fleets of actions as a result of the damage that is likely to be done and the rights that are likely to be interfered with under works that may be executed under this particular measure. The rights of the ordinary private individual, the ordinary small farmer with a £10 valuation, seem to be sneered at here.
It seems to be the mentality of some members of the Government that a local authority should be entitled to come along and steamroll right across the small man or that the Minister for Local Government under Section 3 of this Bill is entitled to send one of his minions down to the West of Ireland or the South of Ireland to walk in on top of any small farmer and carry out any work which the Minister is of the opinion should be carried out under this Bill notwithstanding the fact that the local authority representing that small farmer has decided that such work should not be carried out. For the benefit of the people on the Government Benches who sneer at the rights of the small man down in the country it is well that we should throw our minds back to the Constitution which, I believe, is now accepted by everybody both inside and outside this House. I hope so, at all events. Under Article 40 of the Constitution it is provided that:—
"All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law."
It is also provided under Article 40, Section 3, that:—
"The State guarantees in its laws, to respect, and as far as practicable, by its laws, to defend and vindicate the personal rights of the citizen."
The next sub-section provides that:—
"The State shall, in particular, by its laws, protect as best it may from unjust attack and, in the case of injustice done, vindicate the life, person, good name, and property rights of every citizen."
Are we hereby rushing through this hasty measure to cut across all the rights and many of these personal rights in property that we have enframed in our Constitution to protect the small man against any infringement by anybody?
Under Section 5 of the Bill it is provided that the local authority concerned shall pay the compensation. The Minister did not see fit when he was presenting this Bill to the House to tell us who was to provide the cost, in the first place incurred by the local authority for the necessary engineers and staffs that would be required to carry out these works. He certainly provides under sub-section (1) of Section 5 that the local authority shall be the body responsible for the compensation in respect of the infringement of any of the rights of any citizens who shall be affected by works under this Bill. Sub-section (2) says that:
"Compensation ... shall ... be determined by the District Court on the application of the claimant."
I should like to point out to the House that this sub-section (2) states the "District Court". I challenge the Minister or any member sitting on the Government Benches to show any instance in legislation that has gone before this Bill where a District Court has been given jurisdiction to deal with any claim over £25 in contract or £10 in tort. I want to point out to the House that this section does not contemplate the appointment of a district justice as an arbitrator. This section simply refers to the District Court and the District Court's jurisdiction is defined under the Courts of Justice Act. The District Court's jurisdiction is confined to £25 in contract and £10 in tort. As I see it, practically all the claims for damages under this Bill would be questions of tort, let the damage be five acres of village flooded, two acres of hay trampled down or the mud and silt of a river thrown across it, the farmer deprived of the right to water his cattle by the stream being diverted, a claim for £10,000 compensation for some vested fishery right in a particular stream being diverted, the claim of a mill owner whose mill is built on the banks of one of these streams, the watercourse being diverted or the water power being reduced so that his mill is adversely affected. The claim of that case might possibly run into thousands of pounds. I submit and suggest to the House that the total compensation that is open to any of these people is the sum of £10 tort under the District Court's jurisdiction.
I ask any Deputy on the Government Benches to point out any instance where a district justice has exercised jurisdiction to the extent of assessing damages in any case over £10. I will ask any Deputy of the Government to point out any precedent where a district justice exercised jurisdiction that is normally exercised by the Circuit Court or the High Court. This may be a matter that can be put right, if it is the Minister's intention to put it right on the Committee Stage. Incidentally, on the question of the drafting of this Bill we are told under sub-section (2) that:—
"Compensation ... shall ... be determined by the District Court on the application of the claimant."
This sub-section of the Bill does not provide for any form of notice. Does this sub-section mean, as it stands, that the individual affected—poor Pat Brown from down in the bog—can walk in before the district justice without notice to anybody and say: "My rights have been infringed"? Does the sub-section mean that the district justice is entitled to say to Pat Brown: "Very good. From what you tell me I find that you have suffered damage by flooding from up the river as a result of this drainage scheme to the extent of £500"? There is no form of notice provided under this section even to protect the local authorities. There is no form of application set out under this section for the claimant to come before the District Court. No rule is laid down under this section to guide the District Court or the district justice as to what way they should assess compensation in these cases. No rule is laid down, no indication is given to this court who never, I submit to this House, exercised jurisdiction of this kind before, as to what basis it should proceed on. In previous enactments various methods were laid down as to how a court should assess compensation. In this Bill there is no indication given to the court, to the claimant or to the local authority as to what basis the court shall proceed on.
What would John Brown do?
The Deputy is the best example in this House of the saying that you can take a man from the bog but you cannot take the bog from the man.