An Bille um an Tríú Leasú ar an mBunreacht, 1958—An Dara Céim (Atógáil). Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1958—Second Stage (Resumed).

D'atógadh an díospóireacht ar na leasuithe seo leanas:—

(1) Go scriosfar gach focal i ndiaidh an fhocail "Go" agus go gcuirfear na focail seo ina n-ionad:—

ndiúltaíonn Dáil Éireann an Dara Léamh a thabhairt don Bhille de bhrí go gcreideann sí i dtaobh díchur chóras na hIonadaíochta Cionúire

1. go gcuirfidh sin isteach ar chearta dlisteanacha mionluchtaí,

2. go bhfuil sé in aghaidh ár dtraidisiún daonlathach,

3. gur dóigh parlaimintí neamhionadaitheacha agus rialtas stróinéiseach a theacht dá dheasca,

4. go mbeidh sé níos deacra dá dheasca deireadh a chur leis an gCríochdheighilt,

5. nach bhfuil aon éileamh air ag an bpobal, agus

6. uime sin, leis an gcor atá faoi láthair ar an saol agus ar ár gcúrsaí eacnamaíochta, gur dochar agus nach sochar a dhéanfaidh sé do réiteach fadhbanna an náisiúin,

agus go molann sí ina ionad sin go ndéanfar, d'fhonn eolas a sholáthar don phobal, coimisiún saineolaithe a bhunú chun an córas toghcháin atá ann faoi láthair a scrúdú agus tuarascáil a thabhairt ina thaobh.—(An Teachta S. ua Coisdealbha.)

(2) Go scriosfar gach focal i ndiaidh an fhocail "Go" agus go gcuirfear na focail seo ina n-ionad:—

ndiúltaíonn Dáil Éireann an Dara Léamh a thabhairt don Bhille de bhrí nach ndéanann sé foráil le haghaidh vótála de réir na hionadaíochta cionúire agus ar mhodh an aonghutha inaistrithe sna Dáilcheantair aon-chomhalta. —(An Teachta Ó Bláthmhaic).

Debate resumed on the following amendments:—

(1) To delete all words after the word "That" and substitute therefor the words:—

Dáil Éireann, believing that the abolition of the system of P.R.

1. will interfere with the legitimate rights of minorities,

2. is contrary to our democratic traditions,

3. is likely to lead to unrepresentative parliaments and to arrogant government,

4. will make more difficult the ending of Partition,

5. has not been demanded by public opinion, and,

6. therefore, in present world conditions and in our economic circumstances will impair rather than assist the solution of our national problems,

refuses to give a Second Reading to the Bill; and recommends instead that for the purpose of informing public opinion an expert commission be established to examine and report on the present electoral system.—(Deputy J.A. Costello).

(2) To delete all words after the words "That" and substitute therefor the words:—

Dáil Éireann declines to give a Second Reading to the Bill as it does not make provision in the proposed single member constituencies for voting on the system of P.R. by means of the single transferable vote.—(Deputy Blowick.)

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance (Mr. Bartley)

One would have expected that a Bill of this kind, which cannot be finalised by Parliament and must be decided by the people, would in fact have been permitted to go to the people without prolonged and acrimonious discussion on it here. The Opposition, however, has decided that this is a matter which must be opposed ab initio. What is not so easily understood is the fact that Deputies who opposed the discussion of this Bill in the first instance here subsequently rushed down to their local councils and sought to suspend the ordinary agenda for the purpose of having a full-dress debate in the local councils on this constitutional issue. There does not seem to have been very much consistency there.

I had occasion last night to refer to a number of what I regarded as offensive and unworthy references in this House to the Taoiseach. I also referred to an offensive reference made in a newspaper to the "rank and file" of this Party, the Party to which I have the honour to belong. It is not the practice of members of the Fianna Fáil Party to criticise the Press adversely. We know, of course, that one section of the Press had been abused roundly here on many occasions. I refer to the Irish Press.

In my remark last night as to the offensive reference, I certainly did not wish it to be understood that we on this side of the House would in any way wish to abridge the freedom of the Press in commenting on public affairs and in discussing the conduct of public men. However, I think the particular reference went a little bit too far and, if any such interpretation might be taken from my remark, I should like to qualify it now by what I have just said. Outside of this House, it was the only organ, so far as I know, which carried on a continuous and more or less persistent campaign on this matter. It was perfectly entitled to do that, and it did open its columns to the exponents on both sides.

In passing, I might mention that on a former occasion I read a reference— I think it was in the same paper—to the fact that the two large Parties here had filled the back benches with nonentities. Since this discussion commenced, one of the approaches has been to try to instil some little apprehension into the minds of the Fianna Fáil back benchers that all will not be well with them under the straight vote system. It was pointed out that certain well-known colourful characters in Dáil Éireann are almost certain to be elected under any system. If that is the approach, then I think the transfer over to what I describe as the "stationary vote" should be welcomed. If the Irish electorate has now reached the stage in which it will fill Dáil Éireann with representatives qualified to make Parliament more colourful by supplying better political entertainment, then there is in my opinion an obligation on all responsible people to check the evil effects of any such tendency. Here, we have a measure calculated to put on the brake in that respect.

I shall not go back on what I said last night about the bitterness which has characterised some of the references made here. What was said about Eamon de Valera, statesman, and Taoiseach, seemed to me to savour of the Pharisee. One of those who likened the Taoiseach to Kruschev was not so very long ago put into the same category by somebody in his own particular political set-up. It is most unworthy of the leaders of Parties to make such references to a man whose reputation has been well established, not alone in Ireland but all the world over. In my opinion, it weakens the case they seek to make against this Bill.

There is one aspect of the discussion that one cannot fail to note. It is the continuous reference to Fianna Fáil as a minority Party. If the implications of that description are accepted, one is entitled to conclude that all the Parties, including the Independents, who oppose Fianna Fáil, whether Fianna Fáil is the Government or the Opposition, are, in fact, one solid political amalgam. If that is the viewpoint of the Opposition Parties, the system of the single member constituency and the non-transferable vote offers them a means by which they can give effect to that at election times.

Deputy Mulcahy referred at length to co-operation and to harnessing in unison all the activities of the population. Here is a place where he might commence and could show at election times that that unity which he pretends to believe exists amongst the Opposition Parties is in fact an effective bond between them.

Deputy Russell mentioned last night some anomalies arising from the operation of the P.R. system. He mentioned the case of a candidate in County Galway who topped the poll but was not elected. That did happen. It is one of the possibilities of P.R. In fact, I understand it is possible to be elected to Dáil Éireann without having received as much as one first preference vote.

Mr. Dillon

If you would believe that, you would believe anything.

Mr. K. Boland

Then the Deputy is letting down Deputy Mulcahy. I thought the degree of unity had, in fact, been established there and that you had given practical effect to it during that election. In any event, the pool of voters who voted for Deputy Coogan and the Clann na Poblachta candidate in that election would have voted entirely for Deputy Coogan, if the Clann man had not been there. Whether that would have been reciprocated in favour of the Clann na Poblachta candidate, if Deputy Coogan had not been a candidate, is anybody's guess.

Mr. Sweetman

——that the numbers in the largest Party in the House or the second largest Party in the House should bear more weight and effect in the ruling of the country than two Deputies who gave vent to a whim at a critical point and brought about a general election. I think a general election would not have been called on that occasion if Fianna Fáil, with an overall majority, were the Government. I want to offer that as an argument. I think the Coalition Government were very badly treated on that occasion in that respect.

Now, let us come to 1954, when the Coalition Government came into office. We in Fianna Fáil are prepared to regard them as a genuine coalition. I have seen the votes of the different Parties being transferred one to another and they go religiously from one Coalition Party to another almost to the same extent as, and, in fact, to a greater extent than, the preferences go from one Fianna Fáil candidate to another.

Mr. Sweetman

You are making a great speech for us.

Mr. Bartley

I am making a great speech for the recognition of the fact that has been established that when you come to the people and ask their votes you should not fool them by saying that you are different Parties, when the people know that the greatest bond between you is opposition to Fianna Fáil.

In 1954, the Coalition came into office with an overall majority of 16. What the people down the country cannot understand is why a Government with an overall majority of 16 should have to walk out of Dáil Éireann without having been defeated and without any by-election pending. At that time there was no crisis known to the public and no crisis known to Fianna Fáil.

Mr. Corish

You were shouting for three years about a crisis.

Mr. Bartley

They came in in 1954 with an overall majority of 16 and they had that majority when they went out. So far as I know, and I have not yet heard it contradicted, the problem which caused the dissolution of the Dáil in 1957 was caused by a report of the Capital Investment Committee, the first report which was issued, which contained certain recommendations, the principal of which was the abolition of the subsidies.

Mr. Sweetman

That report was made to me——

Then the Coalition broke up in 1957 for no good reason and walked out of this House. Surely that is justification for this Bill. Here we had a Government with an overall majority of 16 and in less than three years, they had walked out of Parliament. Surely that is a damning condemnation of the system under which we elect the House?

There was a statement published in a newspaper recently and I take it that the writer believed what he said to be true. I believe Kerry was the county that was mentioned and the writer stated that under the system of one Deputy, in a single member constituency, a Fine Gael voter would not approach a Fianna Fáil T.D. for his aid, in any of the ways in which T.D.s are approached by the public. I think the writer of that statement believed implicitly in the truth of what he said. Surely, however, a newspaper located in Dublin, having contacts with the administration of public service, and with all the acquaintanceship newspapers have of that service, could have very readily discovered whether there was any substance in that allegation or not?

Anybody who has seen a Government file will be immediately convinced of the untruth of that statement. Sometimes you will find in the case of an old age pensioner, to whom a certain amount has been granted, that every T.D. and Senator in the pensioner's constituency has been approached. In fact, on one application you may see every public representative in a constituency making representations on behalf of a particular person and, therefore, there is no truth, good, bad or indifferent in the statement to which I refer. If that statement has been made in good faith I should like to assure the writer that he is completely wide of the mark in that respect.

It has been said that in 1911 Arthur Griffith plumped for P.R. Why did he do so in 1911? Why did every Irishman do so at that time, every Irishman who was interested in having a Government established here? It was because any change that would have been made in the system of voting in 1911, by the London Government, would have applied to Great Britain as well as to Ireland. I was very interested in a article which appeared in the Irish Independent early in October which gave an example of an election that took place in some part of Lancashire in 1911. The Tory candidate was bracketed as being anti-Home Rule, the Liberal was bracketed as being Liberal Home Ruler, and the Labour man was bracketed as being a Home Ruler. The Tory candidate received 12,000 votes while the other two combined got 18,000 votes and, in this article, that election, resulting in the return of the Tory, was quoted as a case which supported the demand for P.R.

However, there are a few things that need to be said in relation to that example. First and foremost, if Arthur Griffith noted that result I think it would impel him to plump for P.R. straight away. Here was a case where, under P.R., had these people meant what they said, Home Rule for Ireland would have got consideration, but I doubt very much had either Party been returned with a majority that that would have had any effect on their action. That was proven by the Labour Government in Britain in their Ireland Act, 1949.

Had there been P.R. in Great Britain in 1911 there could have been a considerable number of results such as the example I have mentioned but, if there was P.R. in 1918, would it have been possible to establish Dáil Éireann in 1919, as a result of the 1918 election? That, of course, is only a speculation but I believe it is worth taking into account. The argument about this three cornered election in England, in my opinion, proves our case, for the following reason. I take it that if there was any such thing as an English nationalist point of view, at that time the Tory would have been the person who would be regarded as holding it, and the granting of Home Rule to Ireland would have been a defeat for England. By having the straight vote the English point of view was maintained in that election whereas, if P.R. had been the system of election, the British point of view would have been threatened and the Irish case would have been advanced. That, I think, is a very good example of a case which supports what we are doing here.

Mr. Dillon

Is the Deputy aware that there was a Liberal Government in England for five years before, and for eight years after, the election to which he referred?

Mr. Bartley

I am commenting on the logic applied to the result of that election, and I believe I have drawn the proper conclusion from it—that the single member constituency there defeated Home Rule and helped the British point of view whereas, had there been P.R., the Home Rule viewpoint would have been sustained. I am applying that logic to our own position. I believe that one of the main purposes which impelled most of us to accept P.R. earlier on had something to do with the question of Partition, in guaranteeing to minorities that if they came in they would be granted a proportionate share of the seats in Parliament. We know that has not taken place. They threw P.R. overboard and were not attracted by the guarantee that it offered. Therefore, its main purpose, in my opinion, was not achieved and cannot be achieved.

Normally the people and the organs outside this House who have been critical of this Bill have been generally fair, from their viewpoints, and I would be sorry if I appeared in any way to criticise their rights to make such statements. Their point of view is that the people in the Twenty-Six Counties should be induced to draw the Border southwards. Our viewpoint is, of course, that the people in the Six Counties should be induced to draw the Border northwards, and there is, I take it, a fundamental difference between those two viewpoints.

Mr. Corish

Contrary to what the members of the Government say, there is no effort and no evidence of any effort by the members of the Opposition to prevent a referendum from being held. In the first place, it is futile in view of the fact that there are so many Fianna Fáil Deputies in the House and that they follow the leader invariably. All of us know what the conclusion to this vote will be; the Bill will be passed and the referendum will be held.

I refuse to enter into any sort of discussion with the Minister for Defence. Practically every member of the Opposition will express his point of view to inform public opinion and especially to give his point of view to the constituency which he represents. As far as the Government Party is concerned, I do not know whether it has just happened that way but we find that the members who are behind the Ministers have not attempted to intervene in this debate. I think that in itself is significant.

Mr. Cunningham

That is not true.

Mr. Corish

We have had various Ministers, including the Minister for Defence, the Minister for Education, the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach.

Deputy O'Malley was allowed to intervene and Deputy Booth intervened for some specific or peculiar reason. In any case, all we have had are statements from four or five of the Ministers of the Fianna Fáil Party. That demonstrates but one thing to me, the pathetic and mistaken loyalty of many of the members of Fianna Fáil to the Taoiseach, Deputy de Valera, because we would have had much more respect for the members of Fianna Fáil if they stood up, as did the Ministers and the Parliamentary Secretaries, and gave us their opinions whether for or against P.R.

I am prepared to make it.

Mr. Corish

We know that in certain elections any man who was not acceptable to the Taoiseach had the finger put on him and he was then scrapped. That is the reason, in my opinion, why Deputy Corry is allowed to go a certain distance but if he voted against the Party he would find himself deprived of his seat.

It has been insisted by the members of the Fianna Fáil Party that this is not a political problem. Why, therefore, does the Taoiseach and the Government not declare a free vote? We are told this is not a political question, so that Deputies should be free to vote as they like. It has been said by members of the Labour Party that this question of P.R. versus the straight vote was not mentioned at the general election; nor indeed was it mentioned by any member of the Fianna Fáil Party, to my recollection, in any general election, except by the Taoiseach once in 1937 and once in 1943. I have yet to know of any Fianna Fáil Deputy who was in any way critical of the system of P.R. not alone at any election but at any time up to recent weeks. As I have said, the only person who ever commented adversely on P.R. was the Taoiseach and for a very specific reason.

Deputy Booth, when he made his speech here last Thursday, said that P.R. was not considered at the general election. It was not even a big enough problem to consider at the general election. He went on to say, and I quote his own words:—

"...there were so many more important matters to be discussed and considered...

Now we are told by Fianna Fáil that if we change from the system of P.R. to the straight vote we are on the road to getting rid of the ills under which we suffer at the present time and under which we suffered for a very long time in the past.

Mr. Coogan

Unemployment and emigration.

Mr. Corish

I do not know whether it is true—we have to believe what we read in the three or four national newspapers—but we are told that there was a unanimous decision at the Fianna Fáil Árd-Fheis that P.R. should go. We have our annual conferences in the Labour Party and have discussions on very important matters. Not alone were our members not afraid to vote against what would be considered to be the leadership or the platform, but they had themselves reported in the Press. It is inconceivable that of the hundreds of delegates at the Fianna Fáil Árd-Fheis there was not one voice in favour of P.R. That is pathetic, mistaken and misdirected loyalty to the man who introduced the proposal.

Mr. Sweetman

The ones that were against it must have gone out like a whirlwind.

Mr. Corish

Deputy Booth made some statements on Thursday last which I think are worthy of comment. At column 1186, Volume 171, of the Official Debates of the 27th November, 1958, Deputy Booth quoted the Taoiseach, Deputy de Valera, as stating at Kilrush on the 3rd June, 1938:—

"The more that the national fight disappears, the more the sectional fight begins. You will have little groups trying to get representation in Parliament and you will have the type of Cabinet you have in France. I have always supported P.R., so much so that I have put it into the Constitution; but I am seriously concerned with results there are likely to be."

Again is it not peculiar that only one year after the Constitution was passed Deputy de Valera had doubts about the system of P.R.?

We know, of course, the only reason he said that about P.R. in the 1938 election was his fear that Fianna Fáil would be put out of office and there would be a Coalition Government. We had much discussion about the enactment of the Constitution in 1937 and the Taoiseach said at that time it was of great importance; yet he had his doubts about it one year afterwards. If the Taoiseach had doubts, he could have approached the people and asked them to vote on it separately in 1937.

Deputy Booth quotes the Taoiseach speaking in Limerick on 10th May, 1943, when again there was a general election. He quotes the Taoiseach, as reported in the Irish Press of 10th May, 1943, at column 1186, Volume 171 of the Official Report:—

"If P.R. got them into the position in which they were going to have Coalition Governments representative of a number of different groups in the Cabinet, they were going to see, in his opinion, the end of democracy here. ‘If it ever did happen that the people of this country put a Government which would be composed of groups from various Parties into being, then, much as I am in favour of P.R., I would suggest to the people that they should end it rather than have that situation'."

The only conclusion we can draw from the Taoiseach's statement on that occasion is again that he saw a possibility of a Government other than Fianna Fáil and for that reason he pretended to warn the people of the dangers of P.R.

Deputy Booth took Deputy M.J. O'Higgins to task when he said it was surely not relevant to quote the Reverend Canon Luce 20 years ago when he made some favourable references to P.R. Again, it is typical of the attitude of the Fianna Fáil Party to say it is wrong to quote somebody and what he or she said 20 years ago, but perfectly all right to quote the Taoiseach, no matter how far back he had talked.

In any case, the issue now is, that the Taoiseach and the members of the Fianna Fáil Party want the people to change their system of election from that of P.R. to the straight vote. Again, in my opinion, that is just another de Valera—I cannot say the Taoiseach—"Gimmick". We had a Fianna Fáil Government for, I suppose, 20 or 21 years. I do not think that, while all of us can admit that there have been improvements here and there, there have been any real improvements, despite the fact that we had a Fianna Fáil Government for 20 or 21 years. I will not dwell on that, except to say that the two main difficulties or evils, emigration and unemployment, are still with us, despite the fact that we had a Fianna Fáil Government for 20 or 21 years. We had a Coalition, as the Government Party, like to call it, for approximately six years.

This is another de Valera "gimmick" and he has introduced gimmicks at regular intervals since he came into the Dáil in 1927. He raises issues which he pretends are important and represents them to the people as being important, but they are issues which have no real bearing on their way of life or standard of living. It is undoubtedly true that this issue about P.R. has caught the public imagination. It was designed for that purpose and, unfortunately, it has succeeded in its object, to divert the minds of the people away from the things that really matter, apart from the merits of P.R. or the straight vote.

Like the unique dictator that he is, he, like many other much more dangerous men in the same profession, feels he must keep doing something spectacular all the time, raise different issues, pretend they are important and so divert the minds of the people from the things that really matter.

Mr. Cunningham

Nonsense!

Mr. Corish

That is my opinion. We are waiting for Deputy Cunningham's opinion, but I reserve my right to express my opinion. If I am offensive to any member of the House, Deputy Cunningham is entitled to check me, but so long as I am not offensive, I am entitled to give my opinion.

It is a coalition. I wonder, with all the words that have been spoken by Fianna Fáil, if any of them have attempted to tell us what exactly the then Taoiseach said in 1937 when he was introducing the Constitution. Speaking about P.R. he said, as reported in the Official Report of the 1st June, 1937, Volumes 67-68, column 1343:—

"The system we have we know; the people know it. On the whole it has worked out pretty well. I think that we have a good deal to be thankful for in this country: we have to be very grateful that we have had the system of P.R. here. It gives a certain amount of stability,...."

The then President, Deputy E. de Valera, the present Taoiseach, said that P.R. gives a certain amount of stability. He continued:—

"...and on the system of the single transferable vote you have fair representation of Parties. I understood when I was in opposition that this whole principle of P.R., was being threatened,...."

What did he do? Here are his own words. He said:

"...and I was rather anxious here that we would ensure in the Constitution a reasonable basis for P.R."

Therefore, at that time, he enshrined it in the Constitution.

Later on in the same debate, as reported at column 1353 of Volumes 67-68 of the Official Report, he is reported as saying:—

"I think we get, probably, in this country more than in any other country, better balanced results from the system we have. If you take the countries where P.R. exists, you get better balanced results than you get in the other countries. I think we get the benefits of P.R. in reasonably balanced legislation here better than in any other country that I have read about or know anything about."

I think Deputy Booth should have quoted the Taoiseach, who was then the President, when he spoke on P.R. in this House on the 1st June, 1937, rather than some of the people he did quote here on Thursday last. That is a pretty good defence of P.R.

Mr. Booth

I quoted a further extract from the Taoiseach which qualified all that.

Mr. Corish

You cannot have it both ways. This was a very serious occasion. The then President, now the Taoiseach, was trying to persuade the country that the system of P.R. should be enshrined in the Constitution. It would save a lot of discussion here if the Taoiseach had said, when introducing this debate, "Look boys, I have changed my mind." He has not said that.

So far as the Fianna Fáil spokesmen are concerned, this proposal to change from P.R. to the straight vote is designed to provide for stable government. I do not ever remember the Taoiseach, any of his Ministers or any member of the Fianna Fáil Party describing their Governments as unstable.

Mr. Booth

No, they were not.

Mr. Corish

I think the Government from 1951 to 1954 was not too strong. The Taoiseach talked about the dependence of large Parties on the whim of the minority. Where did he stand when he told us on that occasion he had a stable Government when, as Deputy Dillon described it, he had a "busted flush"? All of us saw on that occasion, not the minority dictating to the majority, but the degrading spectacle of Ministers answering parliamentary questions in the lowest, meanest and most mealy mouthed way they were ever answered in this House to try to keep the support of four Independents for whom they had no respect—and the Taoiseach, at that time Deputy Eamon de Valera, was prepared to carry on for three years, for what?

Mr. K. Boland

That was one of the evils of P.R.

Mr. Corish

We never heard about it from 1951 to 1954. No member of the Fianna Fáil Government talked about P.R. in those three years or said whether or not they were depending on four Independent Deputies——

Mr. T. Lynch

It was the cut-price Budget. That was the evil of it.

Mr. Corish

It is alleged by a political correspondent in one of the newspapers that in 1937 and 1943 the Government were left without a majority in times of crisis. What crisis was there in 1937? We had vague talk about the Europeon countries preparing themselves for war but that is not the fact in relation to the summer of 1937. The year 1943 may have been a difficult period. I do not want to go into the history of the war period or of the 1943 period. Naturally, I was a little younger then than I am now but, if I remember rightly, we were asked on that occasion to give the Fianna Fáil Party an overall majority to ensure that we would not have to go into the war. It was urged that our neutrality would be preserved. I can see what is coming from the Minister for Defence now. I am talking about the vast majority of this House. Primarily, I am speaking for the Labour Party. The neutrality of this country was never a real issue. If the Minister for Defence wants to talk about anything Deputy Dillon said, I say he gave his opinion. None of us agreed with it. I did not. The members of the Labour Party did not. But the question of Irish neutrality in 1943 was not a real issue as far as the Irish people were concerned.

Again, some political correspondent in one of the Sunday newspapers talked about the weakness of P.R. and said that the weakness was demonstrated in the two Coalition Governments. The political correspondent said that small Parties went into the Government—the inter-Party Government or, as Fianna Fáil like to say, the Coalition Government—and did not fulfil their promises. It is not necessary to be a member of a Coalition Government in order not to fulfil promises because Fianna Fáil did that and pretended to talk as an independent and a single Party. They made promises—I shall not refer to them now—which they did not fulfil, not alone before the election but, on one occasion, they incorporated promises in a 17-point programme and broke them.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The fulfilment of promises does not seem to be relevant in this debate.

Mr. Dillon

It was made an issue by the Taoiseach in introducing this Bill.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It does not arise on the Third Amendment of the Constitution.

Mr. Corish

The Labour Party had a certain policy and programme which they put before the people. So also was the case with Fine Gael, Clann na Poblachta and Clann na Talmhan, The people were under no illusion as to why we joined the inter-Party Government. There was a 12-point programme agreed to by all the Parties and to which the Labour Party subscribed. You can say that the Labour Party put their policy into abeyance and that Clann na Poblachta and Fine Gael did the same. However, I went in there with my eyes wide open and I came out of the inter-Party Government in 1951 proud of what I had done.

They believed they could never be put out. They believed they could impose any sort of legislation on the people and get away with it. I will not say they did that deliberately to scourge or persecute the people or inflict wrongs upon them. They got into that humdrum lackadaisical way. They believed they would be in office for 40 years. If the Coalition did nothing else but wake up Fianna Fáil they did a good job. They did not criticise the fact that Clann na Poblachta, Independents and Fine Gael congregated together. They tried to work on the feelings of the people by saying that they should not have joined with such and such a person who took such and such a side 30 or 40 years ago.

We are told—again, I do not know whether it was by the Taoiseach or the organ of his Party—that democracy worked best when there are two Parties. Can you say that in respect of all countries? Can you say that especially in respect of this country? Deputy Booth tried in a calm manner to demonstrate that we could get more effective government in this country, if we had two Parties. Does that mean that minority and smaller Parties are to be cut out? It is the stated intention of the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste to cut out minority Parties. Surely Clann na Poblachta, the Labour Party, Clann na Talmhan and Dr. Browne's Party have a right to be in Dáil Eireann.

I heard Deputy Russell speak strongly in favour of the straight vote. I was amused to-day when he asked certain questions about a particular appointment to some Government office. If he were in a big Party or in opposition he could ask those questions but if he were in the Government Party he dare not, or I should say, he would not ask them. Because Deputy Russell is an Independent, he has a right to ask questions and the interests of some people are served by reason of the fact that Deputy Russell is here. If it were only 5,000 people he represented, at least those 5,000 people have a spokesman in Deputy Russell.

Without any prejudice to the Fianna Fáil Party, they count loyalty to the Taoiseach above everything else. I call it pathetic and misdirected loyalty. For Deputy Cunningham's benefit, that is my opinion. I do not want to shove it down his throat. From the evidence we have, it does not matter what measure is concerned the Party Whip is strictly on as far as Fianna Fáil are concerned. Deputy Corry kicks up blue murder about the 5/9 levy in regard to wheat. People admired him for that because he speaks about a matter affecting the farmers. He did not pursue the matter, however, because he is a member of the one big Party. We have that right in the Labour Party. When the Labour Party formed part of the Government, motions were put down by the Labour Party in order to do certain things but the Fianna Fáil Party do not act in that way.

Their mistaken loyalty has got them into such a position that I fear to think what will happen when the Taoiseach resigns. Not wishing that any harm should befall the man, I think they will be left in a very bad way. The problem with which the Government Party is faced at the present time is this. The people are not voting for a personality in Fianna Fáil. They are not voting for Deputy Loughman, for example, because he is an energetic man and looks after this, that and the other. They are not voting on a question of policy. They are merely voting for him because he is de Valera's man. I think that is wrong.

I know it is to a large extent a unique dictatorship. I think Fianna Fáil would be in a far better position if they were not led—I do not want to use a stronger word—by a particular individual in the Party. One of my objections to this proposed change is, as Deputy Mulcahy said yesterday, that we have an extraordinary set-up in this country. I think it true to say that, as far as Parties are concerned, we are not politically mature.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, as was said by Deputy Mulcahy unless I misinterpreted him, were born out of civil strife. I think it could be said that Fianna Fáil were established in 1926 or 1927. Still they were a Party from 1922 or 1923. They were formed as a Party mainly because they were the people who opposed the Treaty. I am sure they did not possibly have time at that stage to decide what their policy would be in industry, social welfare, agriculture and those other things with which they are now concerned.

Again, as Deputy Mulcahy said, Fine Gael were the remnants of the Sinn Féin Party. I presume that is what he meant. They were people who stayed in the Dáil and voted for the Treaty. They had some semblance of a policy inasmuch as they were five or six years in the Dáil before Fianna Fáil and had time to formulate a policy. We have a situation in this country whereby the two main Parties at the present time were born out of the civil strife of 1922.

The Labour Party were formed with a policy. You can say what you like about the policy. You can say it is weak, strong or mealy-mouthed, as the Tánaiste said, but at least there was a point of view in the Labour Party from 1912 to 1918, when in the national interest, they stood down for the Sinn Féin candidate. They came back in 1922 as the Labour Party and against Cumann na nGaedheal they tried to plug a policy.

May I say about the members of the Labour Party at that time that they made it possible for Parliament to function inasmuch as they were the only real Opposition? They have tried to put forward a point of view in this House. Because there was bitterness undoubtedly and because there is still bitterness in this House between the Government and the Opposition, you had Parties such as the Labour Party. You had such Parties as Clann na Poblachta, the Nation Progressive Democrats, Clann na Talmhan, and different other small Parties. They have come up, but they have not succeeded. People have called them "Splinter Parties" and mushroom growths. We are a growing country. We are in process of growing up and one cannot expect a country such as ours, under a foreign yoke for so many centuries, to grow up politically in a period of 36 years.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is travelling away from the Bill in dealing with the policies of the various Parties.

Mr. Corish

I am making a defence, as far as I can, for the rights of small minority Parties to exist and to be allowed to sit in this House. I do not think I have gone deliberately outside the Bill or outside the amendments. In my opinion—people may have a different opinion 20 or 30 years hence —no matter what the merits of the straight vote, this country is not ready for it. There is room for small Parties such as I have mentioned. They have a right to talk in public and to be represented here. If it is the stated opinion, and it is the deliberate opinion of the Tánaiste that there should be only two big Parties, will he go further, we are entitled to ask, and say that, as long as we have this Party and that Party—call them what you will—Clann na Poblachta, for example—they have no right even to hold public meetings? Could we not then arrive at a stage where Christian Socialists or Christian Democrats would not have the right to establish a Party in this country?

It is very difficult to follow some of the prophecies of members of the Fianna Fáil Party. The Tánaiste said that we will have Fianna Fáil, with all that it stands for, and Fine Gael, and we should try to edge into the Fine Gael Party; Clann na Poblachta, the Independents, the National Progressive Democrats and Clann na Talmhan should gradually change their policies and go into Fine Gael. We all have independent policies and an independent programme. Is that an admission by the Fianna Fáil Party that they would prefer Fine Gael to a Labour Party? Is it not in absolute conflict with the expressed wish and desire of the Tánaiste when he said there should be a Fine Gael Party, a Fianna Fáil Party, and a Labour Party? On the other hand, we have the Taoiseach telling us that Fianna Fáil represent all classes and all sections.

I should like to ask the Tánaiste was he in that statement saying:—"As soon as we have a straight vote and as soon as Deputies are elected on a straight vote, we will relinquish all our claims to represent industrial labour?" Does he mean that? Does he mean that what Fianna Fáil want is to come out openly and describe themselves as the Conservative Party, like the Conservative Party in Great Britain? These are questions we shall have to ask. These are questions trade unionists especially will have to ask themselves. Whether or not the Tánaiste wants to correct that statement, I do not know, but he did say there would be a Government Party —meaning a Fianna Fáil Party—on that side and a Labour Party on this side.

From amongst the Opposition. He determines from what Party they are to come, who they are to be. Let us assume that the Ceann Comhairle will be impartial and will try to do the best job he can—a job that has been imposed upon him. I do not think it would be unreasonable to say that the Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, who has been the leader of Fianna Fáil, a political Party, for 30 or 40 years, might be suspect. Why should he have the right, as a leader of a political Party, to select from the Government Party? If this referendum goes through, I do not think that is the proper or desirable method of having constituencies defined.

There have been various comments here about the judiciary and somebody said yesterday that it was wrong to comment on the judiciary or on the judge who might be appointed to this commission. He will not be acting in his capacity as judge. I think we would be entitled to criticise him and to say what we might be entitled to expect of him. I do not intend to comment on him in any respect, but I do say that the method proposed for the definition of boundaries is, in my opinion, the worst that could be suggested and I will not suggest an alternative.

I wondered what Deputy Booth was trying to get at when he talked about the repeal of the External Relations Act. I think he did say in his speech that it was of such vital importance that it should have been put to the people or that it was a question such as might have been put to the people, if I interpret the Deputy correctly. Why should it have been put to the people? There was no opposition in the House to the repeal of the External Relations Act. As a matter of fact, if my recollection is correct, the Tánaiste said something to the effect that he welcomed the repeal of the External Relations Act and the introduction of the Republic of Ireland Act and that his only regret was that Fianna Fáil had not had time to do it. I am open to correction on the actual words, but that is, in effect, what the Tánaiste said when he was in opposition. If Fine Gael, Labour, Clann na Poblachta, Clann na Talmham, Fianna Fáil and the Independents thought it was a good idea to repeal the External Relations Act, why then would it be necessary to put it to the people?

Comment was made on the fact that an announcement was made in some part of Canada to the effect that the External Relations Act was to be repealed. I know for a fact—I was in the House at the time—that Deputy Norton, on the Adjournment Debate in July, 1948, intimated on behalf of the Government that it was their intention to repeal the External Relations Act. I was not present on Fine Gael platforms in the 1948 election. Neither was I on Clann na Talmhan or Clann na Poblachta platforms. I was on Labour platforms and spoke on behalf of the Labour Party. It always was our stated policy to repeal, any time we got the opportunity, the External Relations Act. I think we were being consistent inasmuch as the Labour Party, possibly with some Independents, were the only major political Party who opposed the introduction of the External Relations Act in 1936. I do not think the people were under any illusions as to how the Labour Party stood, as far as that Act was concerned.

It is all very well for the Taoiseach to say that the people will decide. It is all very well to appeal for fair play and reasoned argument. It is all very well to say: "Let us put the two sides." There is a very important body who have and who can and who, I am sure, will mould public opinion, especially in the next five or six months. I refer to the Press. I have never had much reason to criticise the Press. I do not mind the Irish Independent taking a certain line in a general election or in local elections. I expect the Irish Press to take a certain line—a Fianna Fáil line—in general elections and in regard to ordinary Dáil debates. As far as the Irish Times is concerned they take a certain line. They may have been consistent—I do not know. I think the Press could play a very important part in this referendum. I do not think that I criticise the Irish Press, the Sunday Press or the Evening Press in this House but I do think that they could play the game on this occasion.

I do not want to evoke any interruptions or heat on this debate but the Minister for Education spoke here yesterday. The Minister for Defence is also a young Minister and is new to this House. He spoke here yesterday and I think that there was one other Fianna Fáil speaker but one would imagine from to-day's Irish Press that nobody else said anything but these three Deputies.

Mr. Loughman

Deputy Flanagan spoke and he was well reported in the Irish Press.

Mr. Corish

There were six Opposition speakers and they were all reported. I am not criticising the Irish Press for that. The speeches were long and they were all reported. I am not canvassing for publicity but if there are arguments here for or against this measure then I say the Press, which is a very important body in this country, could do much to help the people to make up their minds. We all know that the three Press papers, the Irish Press, the Sunday Press and the Evening Press belong to a Party organisation. Deputy Ó Briain said that they got certain people to establish these papers with their money.

There were other comments about the fantastic efforts on the part of the Opposition to confuse the issue. I do not think that that is so. Of course there have been orderly and disorderly interruptions but the Ceann Comhairle and the Leas-Cheann Comhairle have successfully prevented discussion about such matters as the withdrawal of food subsidies and the Inchicore works about which we might have liked to speak. Only the question of the abolition of P.R. and the amendments to the Bill have been discussed. There have been no fantastic efforts on the part of the Opposition to confuse the issue.

We would have welcomed a discussion on other matters and tried to have these matters included in the amendment which was ruled out of order. The proposal to go over to the straight vote is designed to divert people's minds from the other issues. It is about the only thing on which the people now have a voice. The Taoiseach is giving the people something to chew on. Some of the speakers said that he would prefer to have a referendum on other matters but the Taoiseach, in view of the cynicism of the people, decided to give them something to occupy their minds. He gave them something to talk about rather than let them talk about fundamental matters, such as finance and banking, with which they might be concerned. The straight vote is not one of the things promised by the Taoiseach.

Deputy Russell says that the passage of this proposal will bring about a psychological change. What does he mean by that? He says there will be a new outlook and that the people will approach things in a different manner. I do not believe that is so. I believe that the people will be very disillusioned. They will find that they will have no minority Parties and no Independents but that instead they will have two big political Parties, the members of which will be muzzled. Certainly the members of the Government Party will be muzzled. For those reasons I oppose this Bill which proposes to call a referendum in which Fianna Fáil will ask the people to change to a straight vote. I think that minorities should have the right and the opportunity to represent the minority point of view in this House.

Mr. T. Lynch

I think, Sir, that we should not now be debating this Bill. The Government should now be bringing in legislation to grapple with the nation's problems. The Government should be showing the people of Ireland that they, the Government, are men of honour. This House should have been busy for months past, and should be busy for months to come, endeavouring to stem the tide of emigration, to reduce unemployment and to give hope to our young people that there would be a livelihood for them in their own country. Instead of that, we are debating this Bill.

The Bill is just another smoke screen and the whole of the business of the country is enveloped by it. I have seen various smoke screens in the past; the smoke screen of the Republic was the biggest of them all. You could talk about anything but once the cry of the Republic was raised from the edge of the crowd everything was all right. This Bill will be passed in this House and then it will go to the people, but the people should think well before they vote in favour or doing away with P.R. The idea behind the whole thing is, if it goes through, that they will set up Government not for the people but Government for a Party.

That has always been the object of Fianna Fáil. When they were in office they governed for the Party—preference for the Party, privilege for the Party. The Minister for External Affairs quoted Wolfe Tone here the other day but nobody has ever given the quotation from Wolfe Tone which is most relevant as regards Fianna Fáil. Wolfe Tone, when describing the Ascendancy of his day, described it in a manner which could be compared to that in which the Fianna Fáil Party have conducted themselves throughout their whole lifetime. It is on record and it is in the Library, if anyone wishes to see it: "The Ascendancy only see Ireland as a place to produce pensions, places, power, patronage and payment."

I thought that when I came back here, I would not have a minute to go home on my own business with all the buzz that would be here, all the "get-cracking" and people going back to work. I thought we would be legislating here until two o'clock in the morning. Instead, we have often had only one day's work in the week.

We are not a rich country and the biggest proportion of our population are wage earners. We often hear people talking about labour, as if they were a large, uneasy group of people to be kept with a tack rein in their mouths. The majority of the people talking about labour never employed anybody in their lives, and, if they did, they probably would not pay them a decent wage. The majority of our people are wage earners and I would remind them, whether they work in the fields or the factories, whether they are civil servants, school teachers or anything else, that they were under a standstill Order from a strong Government.

The Minister for Education said a good deal last night. He distorted the facts in regard to France. That seems to be a log-rolling policy of Fianna Fáil, to keep on distorting the facts about France and talking about what happened in Germany when the man they all admired, Herr Hitler, came to power. They made some very good cracks about that. Deputy Booth said that P.R. encouraged Parties and pressure groups and that it was under this system that the Nazi and Fascist Parties came to power in Germany and Italy. The system under which they came to power was the system of a strong Government and strong Parties able to crush out all opposition. That is the danger facing this country.

The Minister for Education, the Minister for External Affairs, and many other Ministers log-rolled what was said in the British House of Commons in 1918 on P.R. by some English politician nobody ever heard of. The most extraordinary thing I heard last night was when the Minister for Education, before his colleagues and the House, said that 10 per cent. of the Deputies do not understand P.R. or where the transfers go after the second and third counts. I have a good deal to say to the members of Fianna Fáil but I would not like the Minister to get away with that. I have never yet met a Fianna Fáil man, old or young, tall or little, who did not know every intricacy of P.R.

The same thing applies to my own colleagues. When you go to a count, you take for granted the intelligent way people vote, although one time it was a matter of surprise to me. The Minister for Education said they did not know what went on, but I have seen supporters of the various Parties standing outside the rails and they always have been able to give a fairly good forecast of what would happen when a distribution took place.

Mr. Loughman

As long as they had the first count.

Mr. T. Lynch

The Minister for Education said they would not know what would happen after that. Somebody said here that the constituencies would be fixed by this commission and a judge. I do not know whether that is the correct word or not. We will say there is an impartial commission or that the propagandists are able to sell it to the country as impartial. Take it for granted the commission is imparttial. Everybody says that is all right. But I am led to believe there is a map in existence already showing how the constituencies will be divided. Does the fact that this map is already in existence suggest that these constituency boundaries are already a fait accompli?

I read the other day of a prominent teacher expressing support for the Government policy. When I first met that teacher, he was out on strike in Dublin under a strong Government. Our friends over there have trotted out the wonderful system of Government in the United States. Even the Minister for Education last night talked about the system of election they have there. I do not want to be misconstrued and I do not want to be put into the position of making an attack on the United States of America, because it is something I am not doing; nor am I attacking its traditions or its Constitution because I have too many relatives in America who were transported there by Fianna Fáil, who had to go there to get a living. I have too many friends and schoolfellows there, too. I have been in communication with them and I am very close to people in America, and I do not like the American system of election or anything that has to do with American politics. Bad and all as we are over here, we could show them the way. I would not ever want to see a system from which a Tammany Hall can arise.

There is a system in America under which they have a Republican President, a Democratic Congress and a Democratic Senate. If that is what we are leading to here, I would prefer to stay as we are. The system the Government would like to see introduced in this country would disfranchise a great number of people—more than half the people. They would not have a representative to approach, to ask a question in the House. There would be 110 or 115 Fianna Fáil Deputies here and a very small Opposition that would be crushed. Even as it is, the Government is a strong Government, but there is a reasonably strong Opposition here and, God knows, it is hard enough to get information and answers from some of the Ministers.

Last night, the Minister for Education said that when Arthur Griffith propounded this doctrine or policy of P.R., he was politically immature. The Minister gave reasons and showed how he had been politically immature himself and gave us to understand that he was now politically mature. He said it was going too far back to quote Arthur Griffith in 1909. There was not much point, he said, in these quotations. I would not agree with him there, either. I like to do research and to honour the people's memory by reading of their work for Ireland in various ages and in various activities. I am seldom in accord with the Taoiseach, but that is one thing on which I agree with him, when he comes in here and quotes people, because he is honouring the people whom he is quoting. Perhaps sometimes he is trying to take advantage, but giving honour where honour is due, he does it in a way that shows he has respect for these men and does not regard them as politically immature.

If Griffith was a young man in 1909, when he was propounding the doctrine of P.R., it would then make Emmet, Tone, Davis and Meagher and all these young men, including John Blake Dillon and Parnell, who built up the nation, politically immature because they were all young men. The Bill is actually to ensure an overall majority for Fianna Fáil. It is to ensure, as I said before, the lease of the House for Fianna Fáil and the advancement of the Party before everything else.

I should like to say also, because I saw a great suffering from it, suffering that has left its mark, that it is a very dangerous thing for the farmers of Ireland to have a strong Government. I saw a strong Government dealing with the farmers of Ireland in their protest and dealing with them in the way in which the British dealt with others in '98. They sent out people who could be compared with the yeomen, for they were armed with the same truculence and recruited from the same kind of people. I saw unfortunate people who did not know where their next penny was coming from and I saw these truculent "boyos" posing under the name of one of the finest men this country produced, Hugh O'Neill. The name of Hugh O'Neill was a nom-de-plume and a cover-up for an emergency man travelling with the Broy Harriers.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

This has no reference to the Bill.

Mr. N. Egan

And what about the Blueshirts?

Mr. T. Lynch

I do not know where the farmers would be but for the Blue-shirts.

Mr. Galvin

And the Brownshirts?

Mr. T. Lynch

I leave the Brownshirts to you. It shows the strength of this Party and it shows what a strong Government can do that it would make a man the persecutor of his own class. That is where the Taoiseach shows himself to be a keen student of history, as he actually told Deputy Mulcahy in Stephen's Green, a student of Machiavelli's. The Prince—Mr. Machiavelli to Deputy Loughman, and Nicoló to the rest of us——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy should address his remarks to the Bill and not to these far-away things.

Mr. T. Lynch

It is, Sir, a rather Machiavellian situation and it shows the strength of a prince, or a leader, or a Taoiseach, who could take men from a class and use them as persecutors of that class. We have reached the stage when we have the idea of P.R. rejected by several Ministers. They must be very happy about it; they must never have to do the work. It is all prepared for them; they do not have to dig it out themselves. I have checked on this, and I find they all quoted the same thing. I can read it out if the House wishes. How the Taoiseach has the "brass" to come along and tell us that he wants this done without admitting that he was wrong is something that would be startling if we were not accustomed to it because he has been doing it for a very long time.

There is another danger in this proposal. If in the referendum the people are foolish enough to abolish P.R. they will never again in our lifetime or that of our children have another opportunity of changing the system because the Government will be a strong Government, a well-drilled Government, a Government that will do what it is told. It will never bring in any legislation to give the people an opportunity of another referendum.

Despite what my namesake said, I am going to close with an extract from last week's Sunday Independent. I shall close with John Philpot Curran's famous paragraph, and I say this to the electorate:—

"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God has given liberty to man is eternal vigilance, which condition if he break it, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."

Mr. Loughman

I should like to disabuse Deputy Lynch and, perhaps, Deputy Corish of the belief that newspapers, so far as I have observed in my lifetime, have a tremendous influence in moulding public opinion. My earliest contact with politics was at the time of John Redmond and at that time the present Independent was the vigorous opponent of the Redmond Party. Notwithstanding that the Redmond Party held almost the entire national representation. During the period of the Sinn Féin Party that we talk of at the present time—not the Sinn Féin of Arthur Griffith; he included the Kings, Lords and Commons of Ireland—there was no daily national newspaper favouring the Republican movement——

Mr. T. Lynch

I beg the Deputy's pardon. The Irish Independent went all out for the Sinn Féin movement in 1917 and the Freeman's Journal was for the Irish Party——

An Ceann Comhairle

Mr. T. Lynch

I beg your pardon?

Mr. Loughman

I have listened to him with great patience for a considerable time this evening and if he could tell me of something in his speech which was worthy of publication I would be prepared to accept his complaint but I do not know of anything he said which has not been better said before——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should come to the Bill.

Mr. Moher

The paper wall.

Mr. Loughman

Deputy Corish referred to the fact—he seems to have a grievance about it—that the backbenchers of Fianna Fáil, with the exception of two members, had not spoken and that all the other speakers on this side of the House were Ministers. My recollection of the grievances of the Opposition heretofore is that they felt that Ministers were not intervening sufficiently in the debates and it is with some surprise that I heard Deputy Corish talk about backbenchers not being allowed to speak because so many Ministers were speaking.

When a Minister and a backbencher rise together the Ceann Comhairle in his wisdom—I am not disputing this—automatically calls the Minister. I rose last night and the Chair called the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Bartley. I had no grievance whatever on that point and I did not think Deputy Corish should have any grievance either.

Deputy Corish proceeded to proclaim that mistaken loyalty on the part of Fianna Fáil members to their leader was responsible for many of the ills affecting the country. He said we were muzzled and prevented from expressing our opinions in any form. Deputy Barrett referred to us as "Yes-men", and I think Deputy Dillon by way of interjection said: "When Pa turns, we all turn." If I might be permitted I should like to say that I have been a supporter of the Republican movement for, perhaps, over 40 years and I have known the present Leader of this House intimately—I should not say intimately, but as a member of an organisation to which I belong. During all that time I have never known him to be anything in the nature of a dictator.

I can safely assure everybody he is a person prepared to listen to anyone's case and, if the case is a reasonable one, he will accept it. I resented the statement by Deputy Corish and Deputy Barrett, and even Deputy Dillon's remark that we all turn "when Pa turns." We believe that a leader is necessary in a Party, and members of the Party are entitled——

An Ceann Comhairle

Would the Deputy say something about the Bill?

Mr. Loughman

Deputy Corish accused us in that fashion. He spent practically a quarter of an hour in that vein and I have spent only two or three minutes dealing with his remarks. However, I bow to your ruling.

An Ceann Comhairle

I shall allow the Deputy a reasonable time to refute what he considers the false allegations of another Deputy.

Mr. Loughman

Deputy Corish also made the statement, that as far as he gathered, Fianna Fáil would prefer to see a Fine Gael Government to a Labour Government. Fianna Fáil made no such statement. What Fianna Fáil might perhaps say is that Fianna Fáil would prefer to see either Labour or Fine Gael in power as a Government than to see both of these Parties with others in power as a Coalition.

I am expressing an opinion based on the remark made by Deputy Costello. I am not asking you to believe what I am saying. From the time Deputy Costello made that statement until he made the deplorable statement with which he ended his speech, it was just one mass of platitudes, misstatements and historial inaccuracies. In fact, for a man of his eminence his speech was a very poor case for the amendment he was proposing.

His opening statement was that if this Bill is passed it will have serious consequences on the lives and liberties of our people. We can all subscribe to that. He also said we are at the beginning of a new era and on that account it was inopportune now to introduce this measure. He made any number of statements of that description. He told us that Arthur Griffith in his day, back in 1911, was a member of a P.R. association. I presume he intended to convey to us that Arthur Griffith was an expert on electoral systems. I remember Arthur Griffith and met him on several occasions, and whatever about his other ideas I never heard his being announced as an expert on electoral systems.

Deputy Costello then gave us the figures for three elections in 1911, two in Scotland and one in England, notwithstanding the fact that in Ireland at that time we had 105 constituencies. He mentioned Edinburgh, Midlothian and some other county I have forgotten. He forgot to mention the fact that at that time the franchise was extremely restricted. Only male householders were entitled to vote. Women could not vote and many adult citizens had no vote. He might well have gone back to the period that Deputy MacEoin mentioned, 1870, when, he pointed out, 11 voters in a pocket borough were able to elect two members of Parliament. He proceeded with those figures to show us, say, that a candidate securing 5,000 votes would be elected whereas two candidates, one having 4,000 and another 3,500 would be defeated, concluding that the votes of the candidate with 3,500 would all go to the other minority candidate who had 4,000 giving him a total of 7,500. The facts are completely different as I shall prove later to the satisfaction of anybody who wishes.

The main case against this measure deals with the fact that P.R. as we know it gives greater representation to the people. P.R. is divided into two principal characters. On the one hand, we have the multiple member constituency and on the other hand the single transferable vote.

Deputy Costello told us the people of Ireland were educated in the system and had a profound knowledge of it. I dispute that statement. However, I should like to give some idea of the futility of the transferable vote. I shall take my own constituency, where the result showed the futility of the transferable vote. In my constituency, Deputies Davern, Breen and myself were at the head of the poll on the first count. Senator Crowe was next on the list. He had 49 votes more than Deputy Mulcahy. On the last count, after all the transfers had been made. Deputy Mulcahy was elected because of the transfers.

In North Tipperary, three candidates at the top of the poll, including Deputy Tierney, were ultimately elected after all the transfers had been effected. Let us take all the counties surrounding the county of Tipperary and see what happened. In the Waterford constituency, four Deputies who were at the top of the poll on the first count were ultimately elected. In East Cork, precisely the same thing happened—three Deputies at the top of the poll on the first count were elected on the final count. In West Limerick, the same thing happened. There were three Deputies, Deputies Jones, Collins, and 6 Briain. In East Limerick, the four Deputies who were at the top of the poll on the first count were ultimately elected.

In Clare, three seats were contested. The three at the top of the poll on the first count were elected also. In South Galway, the three at the top of the poll on the first count were ultimately elected. Laois-Offaly is a five-seat constituency. The five candidates at the top of the poll after the first count were ultimately elected. Carlow-Kilkenny is another five-seat constituency. Again, the five candidates at the top of the poll on the first count were elected on the last count. Of 37 Deputies elected, only one was elected by the transferable vote and that one Deputy is a member of the same Party as the man who was at the top of the poll on the first count.

We talk about the transferable vote, bothering ourselves, as Deputy Lynch said, and bothering the electorate, with Radio Éireann issuing bulletins and the papers giving so many transfers and so on, and in the end we get the same result. For the entire country in the last election, 132 of the 146 members who were elected, were at the top of the poll on the first count, and I could examine the remaining 14 and show that in most cases that position occurred in respect of those 14 when one Party or another put up five candidates for five seats, or three candidates for three seats, or where a candidate like the Tánaiste gained a tremendous vote and consequently reduced the vote for one of his other candidates.

I maintain that when Deputy Blowick introduced his amendment he would have done much more effective work for his Party or his people if, instead of ensuring the single member constituency with the single transferable vote, he had sought the multiple constituency with the straight vote. It would mean precisely the same thing.

Some people—Deputy Costello, for instance. Deputy Norton, Deputy Barrett and Deputy Blowick—came to the conclusion that in a single member constituency, the transferable vote had a terrific effect. I want to give an idea of what happened on the last count in South Tipperary at the time of the last general election, just to make the position clear to those who talk about the 5,000 and the 8,000 people, and the man who gets 5,000 votes and is elected, whereas two others with 4,000 each failed to secure election. In other words, 5,000 people put their candidate in and the other 8,000 got nowhere, assuming of course, all the time that all the 3,500 transferable votes would go to the 4,500 man, and that he should have been elected.

To show exactly what happens in circumstances of that kind, on the fourth count, which was the decisive count, in the South Tipperary election, the Labour candidate was eliminated at a time when he had 4,700 votes. Mr. Crowe had 5,027; I had 4,962 and Deputy Mulcahy had 5,355. On the calculations made by the members on the opposite benches, these 4,000 votes that Mr. Treacy had should go altogether to them, but what happened? Mr. Crowe got 1,104, I got 1,295, Deputy Mulcahy got 1,203, and there were 1,074 non-transferable votes.

Mr. Moher

Was that not very decent?

Mr. Loughman

In other words, 50 per cent. of those votes were transferred to the people who are making those claims. Then if they want to have a single constituency position, we should go to the last by-election held in Dublin. It illustrates the effectiveness or the non-effectiveness of the single transferable vote.

At the by-election in Dublin South, on the first count. Deputy Cummins had 6,014 votes. There were 11,000 against him. On the basis of the calculation, he was in a minority of 5,000 —6,000 as against 11,000. The opposite thing happened with all these votes. As other candidates were being eliminated, Deputy Cummins secured support on every count from Mr. Hartnett's transfers. He got his reasonable share from the Labour Party and on the transfer of the Fine Gael candidate's votes, he got no less than 877 votes. On that count, there were 1,351 non-transferable votes. The remaining candidate was Mr. MacBride. He got 2,158 votes, 50 per cent. again. So that the claim being made that the straight vote will give victory to the man at the top of the poll to which he is not entitled is completely wrong, so far as I can judge on the figures.

I went to the trouble of examining the figures for four general elections to see if the pattern of which I spoke in the beginning was just a freak one. I found in each of those four general elections that precisely the same thing occurred, so far as the transferable vote is concerned. It is absolutely futile. I believe the maintenance of a system which bothers the people so much for the sake of having that transferable vote is absolute nonsense.

Deputy Costello tells us that everybody knows all about P.R. That is the greatest nonsense. I heard Deputy Lynch say from these benches that 10 per cent. of Deputies do not understand P.R. I subscribe to that statement, notwithstanding the fact that 100 per cent. of the members of this House are able to instruct the electorate on how to vote correctly. If the members of this House were asked to conduct a P.R. election, that is where the rub would be. We are using a system which the people do not understand.

I do not want to boast of my knowledge, but I began to learn about P.R. in 1919. I attended a lecture and a mock election on that occasion. I might mention that Deputy Dillon's father, the present Taoiseach, Deputy de Valera, Mr. Redmond, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Carson were our candidates that evening. We elected Mr. de Valera at the top of the poll in that year, too.

From that time onwards, I have been interested in P.R. I know something about it. I know enough about it to convince me that the vast majority of the people of this country are using a system for election purposes which is in part futile, which is a nuisance and which most of them understand only in so far as marking the ballot paper is concerned. People may say, as Deputy T. Lynch said, that everybody is able to elect the candidates at the actual count. Everybody goes to the count. Everybody has his own ideas as to who will get in, as to who will be knocked out, and so on. The fact remains, however, that the people do not understand P.R.

Deputy J.A. Costello, when making his case, was very inconsistent in my opinion. He talked about the new era and about the time being opportune. He said we were imposing an untried system on the people in place of a tried system—a system which had been tried over 36 years. Almost in the next breath he came along to tell us how delighted he was to inflict a very complex system on the people back in 1922. His term was that we were at that time at the end of an era but my term is that we were at that time at the beginning of an era.

At any rate, we had at that time the end of an era. It was perfectly all right then, at the end of an era, to consider the infliction of a very complex system the proper thing to do. Now, also, at the beginning of a new era, according to Deputy J.A. Costello, it is grossly wrong to inflict on the people a very simple system in exchange for a very complex one. His view is that when we do it now, we are putting on to the future something which we should not do, something which we are not entitled to do; we are forcing our will on the people for the future. He also suggested that the people would have to be instructed about it as we are forcing a new system on them. No more fantastic statement was ever made in this House. There is no electoral system—I do not mean parliamentary election; it is not necessary that a person should take part in a parliamentary election in order to understand a system—more fully understood in this country than the straight vote system.

The Labour Party in this House contended that democracy is being attacked by abolishing P.R. The Labour Party, I am sure—I cannot be sure of it; I am only expressing an opinion —when they are electing their executive, do not use P.R. Neither do Fine Gael and neither do Fianna Fáil. It is not good enough for our Party executives but it is good enough for the Dáil.

I am talking about organisations.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order! Labour Deputies can make speeches later if they wish to.

Mr. Loughman

I do not know of any organisation. I am glad to hear there is one because, after all, there is something to be said for P.R. if more assemblies than the Dáil use it.

I do not want to pursue that angle of P.R. any further. I shall have much to say about it when the referendum is before the public. I have my firm conviction. I do not like Deputies across the House to impute, as has been done, to me or to the members of my Party motives other than the correct motives when we try to ensure that the people be given an opportunity to, decide this matter. I shall accept the people's decision.

Deputy T. Lynch told us here that if we carry out this change in the electoral system an opportunity will not arise in this country for 50 years again to change it back—that we cannot have another referendum. If the people reject the straight vote system on this occasion or if this Bill is not passed on this occasion, the likelihood is that there will not be an opportunity available to the people again.

Mr. Finucane

The likelihood is that he will go to the park.

Mr. Loughman

After 36 years of trial the people are entitled to an opportunity of expressing their opinion and there is nothing undemocratic in that.

Mr. Casey

Would the Deputy explain to me why the people are unlikely to get another chance?

Mr. Loughman

Deputy T. Lynch said that. He told us that if the people adopt this system it will be 50 years before they will get an opportunity of having another referendum. I am asserting that it is likely also that if the people do not avail of the chance now they might not get it either. After 36 years of trial of a system of election which I believe is futile, the people should get the chance of expressing their opinion and I have no doubt but that the people will avail of the chance to give themselves the new system.

Before I close I want to refer to a statement made by the Taoiseach. In addition, I want to refer briefly to a deplorable speech delivered in this House yesterday evening by Deputy O' J. Flanagan. First of all, I want to say that I regard Deputy O.J. Flanagan's speech as particularly despicable. His opening statement was that this Bill stinks in the nostrils of every decent person in this House. On that count, there is not a decent person sitting on these benches. It is a bad bird that fouls its own nest. I shall not bother further with Deputy Flanagan. There is a further saying I should like to quote, but I shall refrain from doing so.

Deputy Costello set the headline. I think it regrettable that Deputy Costello referred to the commission to be set up in the terms in which he referred to it, but before I deal with that aspect of the matter, I should like, again, to deal with Deputy Corish's statement about the commission to be appointed. Deputy Corish queried why the Taoiseach should nominate three people from this side and why the Ceann Comhairle had to nominate three from the Opposition. It is very easy for this side of the House to decide on the limitation. We represent more than half the House. The system announced by the Taoiseach in this Bill is an excellent one, which gives a fair opportunity to every person and I think Deputy Costello was completely wrong when he condemned it.

His condemnation in regard to the chairman of the commission came rather queerly. The chairman is to be appointed by the President, on the recommendation of the Council of State—the nebulous body, as he called it. So far as I can remember, the Council of State consists of the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste, ex-Taoiseach, the ex-President of the Executive Council, the Ceann Comhairle, so far as I know, the Cathaoirleach of the Seanad and, if I am not mistaken, the President of the Supreme Court. It could not by any means be said that that body could be biassed in favour of Fianna Fáil. That body meets and elects a judge——

Mr. Dillon

No.

Mr. Loughman

——to act as president of the commission.

Mr. Dillon

Let us omit irrevelance from this debate. Let us face the fact that behind all this brouhaha from Fianna Fáil, two facts stand out: one is that they want the country to forget the poster: “Elect Fianna Fáil and get your husbands jobs”; to forget the poster:“Give us a chance to get cracking and we will beat the crisis.” They want the country to think of anything but the fraudulent representations on which they sought the people's votes. They want the country to forget the bitter disillusion of those who did not get jobs and of the 60,000 people who emigrated to Great Britain in the past 12 months.

The second purpose, when you brush all the irrelevancies and fraud from the case they make, is they want to wipe the Labour Party, the Farmers' Party and the Independents from this House. They cannot wipe out this Party. They would love to do it, if they dared, but the survival of parliamentary institutions in this country depends upon the maintenance not only of a Government Party but of an Opposition. The Tanaiste says he wants the Labour Party to survive. Deputy Booth, the back bencher, says that if he thought it meant the elimination of the principal Opposition Party, he would not vote for this Bill, but, fundamentally, what they want is the elimination of the Labour Party, the Farmers' Party and the Independent Deputies from this House.

Is that a good thing? I do not think it is, but that is the judgment the people will have to take. Do they want a system in this country in which the voice of none is to be heard except those who command large and powerful political machines? If that is the view, if, as Deputy Corish very significantly asked, the electoral system is so to be framed that the Labour Party is to go, the Farmers' Party is to go and the Independents are to go, is the next step to be that they are not to campaign for their survival? If, in a referendum, the people endorse the proposition now advanced by Fianna Fáil that we are to have an electoral system which will put an end to all minority Parties, what is the answer to Deputy Corish's question? Are the small Parties going to go on being allowed to seek the people's suffrage, or are we going to come to the day wherein the Government for the time being will declare who may contest an election in this country?

When we come to consider the question of P.R., the fact is that the system of P.R. that we have at the present time has been substantially reduced to a fraud by Fianna Fáil. The system of P.R. that we are operating in this country at present hypothecates the existence of five, or seven-member constituencies. I say deliberately that to live with the saints in heaven is glory, but to live with them on earth is quite another story. The saints amongst us are the blessed cranks who believe in the perfectibility of human nature—they forget the possibility of Fianna Fáil—and they produce the ideal system, the system of P.R. based on a five, seven or nine-member constituency. They expect in an ordinary society that that perfect concept will survive. They do not realise that from time to time that system will throw up a clear majority for a Tammany gang and, the moment that Tammany gang gets control, their object is to destroy the very thing that brought them to power.

You get then such a redistribution Act as Fianna Fáil brought in in 1935, which wiped out half the five-seat constituencies, all the nine-seat constituencies and most of the seven-seat constituencies. Then you had, as Nemesis approached them in the train of Eindigger, Maximoe and Dunnico, the Distribution Bill of 1947, and there they proposed to finish the job. Every five-seat constituency was to go. There was to be nothing left but three-seat constituencies. They reduced, as they intended to do, the system of P.R., as we originally knew it, to a revolting fraud. And they very nearly got away with it. Their aim was to create the maximum number of constituencies in which a majority of one vote would give them two seats to one for the Opposition. They failed, and they have never ceased to regret that they failed. Do not forget—this House should not forget—that this is not the first time, nor the second time, that Fianna Fáil sought to beat down opposition in this country.

I remember a time when I could not appear on a public platform in this country except under the protection of organised supporters, who fought armed men with their bare hands. I remember a time—Deputy O'Malley may or may not remember it; he was probably only a small boy at the time—marching up O'Connell Street in Limerick, and nothing got me up that street alive but ranks of blue-shifted men on each side of me, who protected me from the consistent, sustained and malevolent attacks of Fianna Fáil mobs led by Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party. I saw men beside me with their faces split by missiles thrown by mobs led by Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party, and the only reason I reached the platform to speak at a public meeting was because there were Blueshirts to stand between me and the broken bottles hurled by mobs led by Fianna Fáil Deputies with the intention of preventing me speaking.

I could recite that experience, not only for Limerick City but for Ballina, Macroom, Nenagh and Clonmel. I spoke in many towns in this country only because I was in the position that I could muster amongst our own supporters forces sufficiently strong to hold the ring so that, within it, free speech might survive. No one will ever forget the night in Kilkenny City when the late Desmond Fitzgerald addressed a crowd there, with a howling, roaring mob of Fianna Fáil supporters clamouring that it was their right to break up that meeting, disperse it and deny the right of free speech. They failed then. I hope they will fáil again.

I say that P.R., as they debauched it in 1947, was a fraud, and a disguise from which we of the Opposition, by a very narrow margin, protected the country. But that is not the only form of P.R. If that form has been successfully debauched by Fianna Fáil, there are other forms we can examine. All our amendment urges is that, instead of sweeping away something which has preserved the right of small Parties of minorities to have their voices heard in their own Parliament, they will be suffered to survive and that the thuggery policy of Fianna Fáil of trampling down any voice raised against them shall be frustrated by the laws of this land.

All we are asking for is, if the present system of P.R. is not functioning properly—and I do not think it is because it has been debauched by the Fianna Fáil Party—that we should review the system and see what other variant of P.R. will function and will secure for the most detested minority the right to send their spokesman here to Parliament, if they can command the support to win his entrance here; so that the Executive of this country shall be entitled to say: "Lawfully, as well as morally, no man in Ireland is entitled to take up arms against the lawfully constituted Government of Ireland because there is no man so small, no man so insignificant, no man so weak that he cannot get up on his own box at any street corner in Ireland and, if he can successfully secure suffrage to the extent of one quota, that he cannot come into Parliament and make his voice heard here, under the protection of the Ceann Comhairle, in the certain knowledge that not the whole Executive, nor the whole Dáil can silence him if he comes in here to represent one quota of citizens, however simple, however poor, however insignificant."

Is that not something that we are entitled to be proud of in Dáil Éireann? Is that not something that we ought to refuse any opportunity of sweeping away? How would we stand vis-a-vis Sinn Féin and the I.R.A. to-day, how would our consciences feel if we sanctioned their internment in the Curragh Camp for taking up arms against the lawful Government of this country if we were not in a position to say to them: “You have your remedy. If you do not agree with the policy of the Government of the country, go to the people, get elected, come into Dáil Éireann, make your case, and keep going to the people and, if you can swing the people to your view, you can take over the Government; and those of you who are in the Curragh Camp to-day can be the Government and we, who are parliamentarians, pledged to the system of parliamentary democracy, founded on a free and equitable system of election, are bound not only to bear with you, but to hand over to you the whole machinery of Government to do with this country what you please?” Is that not the moral position in which this Parliament holds over 100 men, in durance, without trial, on the Curragh of Kildare? If we had not that moral position from which to move, how should we hold them long?

Who talks to me of this system working in England and that system working in the United States of America? Are Deputies all fools? This is not the United States of America. This is not Great Britain. Harold Macmillan has not fought Hugh Gaitskell in a civil war. Nobody looks across the floor of an English Parliament to recall that his father may have fallen at the hands of another member's father. Do you imagine that in the past the Irish Party sat in the British House of Commons with the same calm detachment prevailing there to-day? Do you imagine that when the friends of John Mandeville who had been slaughtered in a British jail heard Arthur Balfour tell them to be calm and discuss things with detachment, their answer was to throw the ink bottle at him?

I know that, happily, the bitternesses of the past are receding behind us but I shall obey no injunction to forget the past or those who have gone before. I think we should remember all of them but forget the injuries in so far as we can. But make no demand upon us to act like Englishmen or to act like the polyglot people of the United States of America, for we are neither one nor the other. We are a cohesive, perhaps too intimate, people, knowing the history of our father and our father's father. We are as God made us and as history has destined us to be and it is something of which we can be proud and nothing for which we need hang our head.

I have no doubt, Sir. I am submitting that I am entitled to point to the results of the system of election which obtained in this country. I have heard allegations from Deputy Booth and a dozen others, including the Taoiseach himself, of the consequences of P.R. in every country in the world. Am I to be the only one to be told: "You are not to refer to the consequences of P.R. in your own country"? I have heard of it in Switzerland, in Germany, in France, Italy and God knows where else, about which I do not give a damn, but there is one country where it does matter and that is here in Ireland and it is of here we speak with personal knowledge and it is a recollection of which I speak with pride.

I heard Deputy Booth—and I will speak more bluntly to-day of him than I spoke on a prior occasion—blathering about his explanation of what happened in Italy, what happened in Germany, and I forgave him. I thought, "This is the ignorance of an inexperienced young man who has had a brief thrust into his hand by his Party boss and has come in here to purge his insolence. He had the impertinence, I do not doubt under the protection of the Tánaiste, to challenge the Minister for Finance on the Finance Bill and is now coming in to protest his undying loyalty to the Party". I listened to his tripe about what happened in Germany and in Italy and it bore as little relation to the truth as a child's nursery rhyme. When I told him that, he rose in indignation to express his dismay that anyone would asperse his unblemished honour. Feeling for him, I said I did not wish to do that or to represent that he was consciously saying what he knew to be untrue but that I thought he was misinterpreting the facts. His bosom swelled with virtuous indignation and he gave us all a dissertation on how, when he went up to the Temple to pray, he discharged all the obligations of a conscientious public representative and begged all of us to believe that nothing could corrupt his pure and pious purpose. He even wound up with a moving peroration that if any of the rest of us were turning our eyes towards the Temple we might very well emulate his example when we approached the altar.

I listened to all that with tolerance but then I read part of his speech which I did not hear, when he had the insolence, the impudence, and the gross bad taste to use the following words, at column 1192. He was referring to Deputy Costello:—

"Deputy Costello jeered at me across the House and virtually called on me to thank him and his colleagues for being allowed to live in our own country. He referred to me and my class. What did he mean? I know what he meant; the House knows what he meant but he had not got the courage to say so. His reference was to me and other Protestants. Then he realised that he was exposing the bigotry which I always suspected. I want to make it perfectly clear that I shall not have my religion thrust down my throat by him or anyone else."

I want to tell the Deputy that his observation about bigotry was insolent and false. It was unworthy of this House. It was a loathsome slander on an honourable man and the man who uttered it is unworthy of the position he occupies as a Deputy of Dáil Éireann. Happily, we have never carried into our discussions in this House the validity of the religious convictions of any Deputy and Deputy Booth is the first one, certainly in my 26 years' membership of this House, who has trailed his religion round the floor or who has challenged any colleague in Dáil Éireann with what in this community is regarded as the lowest and most detestable of qualities, a bigotry against our neighbours.

Mr. Booth

I think I was the first who had to. I hope so.

Mr. Dillon

I do not propose to pursue that matter further. I have said in respect of it all I wanted to have said.

A Deputy

That is wise.

Mr. Dillon

It is wise because if I said more I might say things which, in my calmer moments, I might regret even though they did not redound to Deputy Booth's regard.

I think we must examine the motives that inspire this legislation. It has been said, and truly said that:—

"If you want to understand men's motives you should appreciate that a Prime Minister cannot observe all the things for which men are esteemed."

This is the further quotation:—

"And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to fidelity, friendship, humanity and religion. Therefore it is necessary for him to have a mind ready to turn itself accordingly as the winds and variations of fortune force it, yet, as I have said above, not to diverge from the good if he can avoid doing so, but, if compelled, then to know how to set about it.

"For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.

"For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody; because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on. One prince of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never preaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is most hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of reputation and kingdom many a time."

An Ceann Comhairle

That seems to me to be a quotation.

Mr. Dillon

The last time I quoted it I misquoted deliberately one sentence and the Taoiseach corrected me from memory. He knew it by heart.

An Ceann Comhairle

It seemed to me to have a familiar ring. I should like to know what the quotation is.

Mr. Dillon

If you force me. Sir, I shall give it. It is the advice of Machiavelli to a prince. There is one man in Dáil Éireann who knows it by heart. Twice across the floor of this House I have misquoted it deliberately and twice he has corrected me from memory.

Mr. N. Lemass

I fail to see how this is relevant.

Mr. Dillon

Deputy Lemass has now taken the floor but I have little doubt that if he and his colleague, Deputy Booth, are given the opportunity of following their present leader for very long, a day will come when both of them will be able to correct me from memory if I misquote again. I understand it is the Taoiseach's present practice to call his young associates in and say to them: "Young man, on the threshold of your political life, you will be well advised to familiarise yourself with the principles of——"

An Ceann Comhairle

Is this another quotation?

Mr. Dillon

You may remember, Sir, that Machiavelli tells the prince:—

"A prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright and religious."

But even Homer sometimes nods.

The Taoiseach was listening with visible impatience to Deputy Costello speaking in this debate, and the following exchange took place as reported at column 1013. Said Deputy Costello:—

"The Taoiseach at that time thought that this sacred principle was being threatened and he rushed to its rescue. What has happened since that time?

Mr. Dillon: 1948."

At this stage the Taoiseach was heard to say "precisely." Up to this time P.R. was sanctified. It was the sentinel of freedom. It is the very same system that we had when the Taoiseach said this about it:—

"The system we have we know; the people know it. On the whole it has worked out pretty well. I think we have a good deal to be thankful for in the country: we have to be very grateful that we have had the system of P.R. here. It gives a certain amount of stability, and on the system of the single transferable vote you have fair representation of Parties. I understood when I was in opposition that this whole principle of P.R. was being threatened and I was rather anxious here that we would ensure in the Constitution a reasonable basis for P.R."

Then came the exchange. Said Deputy Costello:—

"The Taoiseach at that time thought that this sacred principle was being threatened and he rushed to its rescue. What has happened since that time?"

It was then that Deputy Dillon said "1948" and the Taoiseach said "precisely".

That may be the Deputy's argument.

Mr. Dillon

Was not the case made here by the Taoiseach himself that he wants to end P.R. because it produced Coalition Government? Is that not his case?

The Deputy may not refer to housing. I am pointing out to the Deputy that an amendment tabled along those lines has been ruled out. I cannot see how the Deputy's remarks would be relevant when an amendment along those lines was ruled out. There can only be one rule of order.

Mr. Dillon

There can be only one rule of order and I claim no more than the right to refute the case made by the Taoiseach in presenting this Bill. The case made by the Taoiseach in presenting this Bill was that the situation, created by the events consequent on 1948 and 1954, convinced him the change was required and at column 996 of the Official Report he is reported as saying:—

"It has been suggested that there has been no public opinion, no voice asking for this. All I can say to the Leader of the Opposition is that, if he thinks that, he must have had cotton wool in his ears from 1948 to 1951 and from 1954 to 1957, because everywhere I went through the country, everyone I met wanted to-know when we were going to get rid of that system which was going to ruin the country."

In the name of common sense, if the Taoisech was entitled to say that everyone in Ireland "was asking me when we were going to get rid of the system which was going to ruin the country" does any sane rule of debate preclude me from saying: "Ruin the country—we saved it from corruption, from bankruptcy, from the disaster that 20 years of Fianna Fáil rule had clamped down upon the people"? If any Deputy has a sense of duty in this House he has a solemn duty, for the benefit of our people, to refute that type of allegation given utterance to by the Taoiseach, and that not for the first time. I want to say that the Governments of 1948 and 1954 wrought powerfully and splendidly for this country. I want to glory in that in this House. That Government increased the arable area of land by 1,000,000 acres and made us the greatest users of agricultural lime in Europe.

Mr. Killilea

And the electorate sent us back, the strongest Fianna Fáil Government ever known in Ireland.

Mr. Dillon

I am asking you now, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, can we refer to the new testament of the Fianna Fáil Party?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We are not discussing the testament of the Fianna Fáil Party. We are discussing the Bill before the House, and the Deputy has not yet adverted to the Bill.

Mr. Dillon

Oh yes, I have, Sir.

It is significant that the Minister for Defence constantly reverts to this theme.

Mr. K. Boland

I did not mention any scheme. As a matter of fact, I did not speak.

Mr. Dillon

Mr. K. Boland

No, that is the Deputy's.

Mr. Dillon

No, that is not true. I want to say that I believe there is room in this Parliament—there may not be in the Congress of the United States or in the House of Commons—for Independents. I have been in office long enough to know what a damn nuisance they can sometimes be, but I rejoice to remember that I began my career in this House as an Independent. I rejoice to remember that I had the freedom in this House to do as daft a thing as any man in shoe leather ever did—I voted for de Valera. It was never held against me.

Those who were my colleagues on all sides accepted that I did then what I thought was right, and when I learned the folly of my own mistake I was not afraid to correct it. In due time I found that I believed I could best serve the country by joining a Party, and then came the time when I was again an Independent because of a difference with my colleagues over what appeared to me to be a matter of fundamental principle. But we parted as friends. I understood their views and they understood mine. Neither abrogated his duty to the people and at the next election they, in the course of duty, opposed me in my own constituency, putting a candidate against me. I survived that challenge and the challenge of the Fianna Fáil Party.

Later it came to pass that I was again a member of a Party and a Government. I am not unduly proud of the part I played but I have done as much as my neighbour in the last century in this House. There were a good many others who went into this House as Independents who have served this country well. Some of them have fallen by the wayside. Others have found an opportunity to serve in the ranks of Parties. Different fates attended on those who held faith as Independents. Some entered as members of Parties but found their conscience forced them to revert to Independent status. That works in the British House of Commons and the Congress of the United States. I have seen it work in Ireland and it worked well.

It left us all a degree of freedom to do as we thought right in the public service—which certainly for me was precious and which I think lent a lot to the dignity of Dáil Éireann—all these together because the hard-faced men who reckon on the monetary resources they are in a position to command for the favours they have to dispense, feel that it would be a cruel frustration of the legitimate reward of such political precedence that their hope for permanent office should be frustrated by a machine that gives all people an equal right to speak, rich and poor.

I think we stand on the threshold of a great decision and it is one that a lot of people forget. Individual liberty, like the air we breathe, becomes so familiar an assset of our Daily equipment that we forget what life would be without it. If we lose air to breathe we die and so suffer what is relative deliverance; but if we lose individual liberty we are not always privileged to die. We may have the detestable destiny of continuing to live without it. God knows, we who have lived in this century should at last have learned the hideous lesson that millions have lost it and, in all those millions that we have seen lose it, not one single one has yet found the means of getting it back. I am not implying, and I do not think it proper to imply, that the Fianna Fáil Party aims at a dictatorship in this country but I want to warn them of this——

Mr. K. Boland

Not like Fine Gael.

Mr. Dillon

——it is not on the good intentions of the Fianna Fáil Party that individual liberty survives in this country. It survives just so long as Parliament survives and let nobody deceive himself on that. Scan the horizons, of the world and you will find there is no system of Government which has yet emerged that secures for ordinary people the incalculable blessing of individual liberty except the system of parliamentary democracy. With all its faults, with all its delays, with all its inefficiencies, with all its failures to act dramatically, Parliament is the sole unassailable citadel of the simple person's right to live as a free man. It survives only so long as those over whose destiny it presides see in it a true Parliament.

We had better ask ourselves, and ask ourselves quickly, what we mean by a true Parliament. Do we mean the Parliament that meets in Moscow and confirms every decision by a vote of 99.9? Do we mean the Parliament that meets in Peking and confirms every proposal by a majority of 100 to nought? Remember those two Parliaments between them preside over the destinies of 1,000,000,000 men.

Ask yourselves the question, if you look at Poland, Czechoslovakia and all the other countries which have suffered their parliamentary institutions to perish, what chance have they of winning back the right to live in freedom again? Their Parliaments have gone and have ceased to function as citadels of freedom because the people— although under duress they call them Parliaments—no longer believe they are truly so. The people know that so long as this House broadly represents the people, in the last analysis they will sustain us, but if this House becomes a masquerade for Parliament a fraudulent pretence of true representation, the people will cease to sustain it. On that day it perishes and with its death will perish the freedoom of the people who themselves lost faith and it is on us, the Deputies of Dáil Éireann, unworthy as we are, that the people depend to maintain our institutions in a state that will retain their confidence.

Mr. Booth

That is precisely my point.

Mr. Dillon

There is an immense responsibility on this Dáil and it is not a responsibility that we can shoulder off to the people. It is here that the issue must be argued. It is here the representatives of the people must speak, in the presence of the people, of the things they believe and it is here that must be vindicated the democratic quality of this Parliament and its truly representative character.

I want to remind this House—and sometimes in matters of this kind I feel like the Trojan prophetess Cassandra in the fable who saw the dangers which threatened her country too soon and could not persuade the Trojans to take precautions in time— that we are living in times such as the human race has never lived in before. There are abroad in the world powers that hate freedom and all the things that we most dearly cherish, and they will not rest until those things are undermined and, in so far as it is within their power, destroyed, not only within their own country but everywhere else. To them belief in God and individual liberty amongst the people are a standing threat to the tyrannies with which they feel they can build up the Cominform.

I want to ask this House and the people this. We can, but I do not believe we shall, be overwhelmed by the numerical majority in this House and by the concerted effort of the kept Press of the Fianna Fáil Party. It might be that the majority of our people would be led into the belief that this departure could be made and minorities swept away and result in greater stability for the institutions of this country. I would ask them this question. If you advise minorities with deeply held convictions that the electoral system is being so reconstructed that they will be swept aside and denied the opportunity of a voice in this House what do you expect them to do? Do they not constitute in their frustration just the very muddied waters in which certain Powers love to fish?

Can we not see these minorities getting together with one common grievance to inflame their hearts? The doors are shut against them; they have no chance of making their voice heard in a constitutional way and there will be among them those who will regard that as no misfortune, those who do not want the constitutional way. They believe in the way of force as the proper, ultimate arbiter in the affairs of men. Into that confused situation there comes a Power to fish which says: "There is a remedy for your dilemma; it has worked elsewhere—a popular front. Let all those who feel discontented come secretly together. We will provide the sinews of war. If you do not agree on anything else at least join together for the correction of your common grievance, the denial of the right of representation."

Those of us who are more fortunate can look objectively on that picture and realise what that has resulted in everywhere else in Europe that it has been tried. It is the story of the lady of Riga who went for a ride on a tiger. The tiger returned with the lady inside and nothing was left but the tiger. Is there a popular front left in Europe that is not now a Communist organisation? Is there a country in Europe which willingly accepted Communist domination? Is there a country in Europe that was not betrayed into a dictatorship which it detested through the customary formula of the minorities being approached and being told: "You have no vote, but there is a remedy, a popular front."

All I ask is that on the wide field of our electoral system we should say to our people, in a Dáil of 147 Deputies; we unanimously stand for the principle that no minority in the country is so insignificant that we, with one voice, can shout it down. No group is so weak that we can unanimously claim the right to suppress it. No individual in our society is so humble that his voice may not be heard or his vote duly weighed. It is in the name of that principle, which even Deputy Booth concedes is the very hall-mark of genuine democracy, that I suggest to the Fianna Fáil Party that they should think and think again before they do something very nearly irrevocable, which is at least open to the description that we are concerned to eliminate minorities.

If this system of P.R. which Fianna Fáil debauched is felt no longer to be effective, all sides in this House will help the Government to find such modification of that system as will preserve the principle. This is a task worthy of collaboration amongst us all, the reaffirmation before the world that we still trust the Irish people, that we love our minorities and we esteem them as the hall-mark of our democracy.

Mr. Sherwin

I propose to speak a little differently perhaps from those Deputies you have already heard. Most people here have a vested interest in one way or another in this Bill. They either believe it will better them or they fear it will destroy them. I am perhaps one of the very few who has no fear because I won a by-election against all Parties and headed the poll last year. I believe I can repeat that, that, with the reduced areas, I can be doubly successful, because all around my area are people who are solid with me. Even if they tried to gerrymander my area they would have to bring in areas just as solid as mine. I would not put it beyond certain people to try to gerrymander me out of it and to go so far as to pass an Act to keep me out. Over 20 long years they have made every effort against me. One could go to Machiavelli for the tactics they used to keep me out of this House. I shall have mercy on them and mention no names.

I am opposing this Bill on principle. I think of myself of course when I think of principle. The late James Larkin was fond of a slogan: "An injury to one is the concern of all". This Bill is intended to eliminate all Parties except one or two, and is therefore a definite threat to persons like me, and they can be legion.

History is a chronicle of events. Who creates the events? It is not masses of people but individuals, the people who lead them. Masses do not automatically create revolutions or reforms. Somebody says: "We will do this" and they do it. The Taoiseach is a case in point. He was a member of Sinn Féin after the Civil War. He proposed something which was not agreed to and he said: "I am leaving" and the boys left with him. He was the leader, one of the people who create history.

This Bill is intended to protect one or two Parties and to deny to small Parties and Independents, the type who create small Parties, the right to be elected. Insurmountable barriers are created so that it is impossible to get into this House unless, as the Taoiseach said, they join one or two Parties. Let us take the one or two Parties that everyone has in mind, the Fianna Fáil Party and the Fine Gael Party. They are both conservative Parties. They were split by the Civil War. Their outlook is much the same, as admitted by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. He said that Fine Gael was a surplus Party, but that has to be seen. The difference between them was the Civil War and it has been largely personal ever since. Each side, especially the Fianna Fáil side, largely depends on a certain blood lust which they continue to stir in the Irish Press, always going back to the executions with the intention of getting people to rally back to them.

This is a vast conspiracy intended to isolate the small Parties from the Fine Gael Party and then to put the finger on the Fine Gael Party as the executors of the Republicans in 1922, and to bring themselves into a position of power like the Unionists in the North. In the North there is a Party there for 40 years and likely to be there for the next 100 years. From time to time there is some little difficulty because the fringe that supports them breaks away. It broke away some time ago and voted Labour. Immediately the Unionists shouted: "The Pope", "Religion, Religion" and they went back again to the Party. That is what this Party has in mind when they continue to stir up feelings in relation to the Civil War period, which is the only justification they have for their existence.

Coming back to this question of the surplus Party the very existence of Fianna Fáil depends on one man and I pay him tribute. I cannot be accused of being personal in this at all. I may hate certain corrupt elements in Parties but I do not hate Parties as such. I do not hate de Valera. I am very fond of him. I fought for de Valera and suffered more for him than any man in this House. If any man on the Front Bench of Fianna Fáil refers to their sacrifices and sufferings, I will match my sufferings and sacrifices against theirs, and they were all endured on behalf of the Taoiseach, Deputy de Valera. Therefore, I cannot be accused of any personal spleen against the Taoiseach or the Party as such. I hate a certain caucus group that exists in every Party and always will exist. Those groups can always deny an individual his rights, and do. I hold that individuals whose rights are denied should be allowed to stand at least as Independents, or to form a Party of their own. They should not be denied that right. The whole of history is a mass of cases of caucus groups deciding who will get in and who will not get in, who shall be barred and who shall be kicked out.

Let us take the Communist Party in Russia. Stalin takes over and all his potential enemies and those who differ from him are blotted out. In Germany, every man Hitler thought was not fully in favour of him and his policy was blotted out during the night of the Long Knives. That is human nature. In every group, in every association, in every organisation throughout history, that has been shown to be human nature. The people in possession despise, watch, hate and obstruct those who are looking for their place. That is simple common knowledge. What the Taoiseach wishes to see is the formation of two large Parties. Do you not see that these big Parties will deny any individual his right to enter this House? They may give him the right to enter a Party in a passive, docile manner to work for the caucus, but let him put himself forward for some job which someone has, and see how soon he will get the knife.

My point is that this Bill asks that all the small Parties should disappear and that only two big Parties should remain, and that everyone else should have no option but to go, hat in hand, and ask permission to join one of these big Parties. If they dare assert themselves and show any little ambition at all, even from the loftiest motives, they are kicked out. Does not that cut across the whole principle of equality of opportunity? How can there be equality of opportunity, if a person can be kept out, or rubbed out, or kicked out, just because he might vie with some of the people in control in certain Parties? Do you not see what I am getting at?

There is no opportunity of choice for individuals. Suppose individuals do not want to join the Fianna Fáil Party; suppose they do not want to join the Fine Gael Party. Why should they be denied the right to stand independently? You may say they have the right, but this Bill makes it almost impossible for them to have a chance of election. You may say that Independents have no rights. I will quote one of the greatest Independents this world has ever produced, Abraham Lincoln. It may interest Deputies to know that Abraham Lincoln was not produced by a political Party. He did not come from any political Party. They did not want him.

Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin. He was a poor man and was practically illiterate. Even as President of the United States, he did not have much education, except what he learned from books on his way up, but he had a great soul. It was not his education that counted, but the spirit of the man, and when asked about his ambitions what was his answer: that there was no reason for a candidate for Congress in 1844 concealing his political ambition. There was no reason, in Lincoln's opinion, for concealing political ambition. He added:—

"Do you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men?"

That was his answer.

It is asked: what rights have Independents? What rights have little groups? What rights would Abraham Lincoln have or what chance would he have, if he were to stand for election here as an Independent? He says himself in a nutshell: "If I joined a Party, the old men would not put me up." And so he stood as an Independent and won as an Independent, and it was only when he was a made man, a celebrity, who had established himself that the big Parties wanted him. It was only then they supported him and noticed him and the Republican Party was prepared to accept him. It was only then that they realised that they wanted a man like him, in view of the coming war with the South, and even then they obstructed him and they were actually delighted when he died because they thought they could control him when he became President, but they never could.

My whole point is this. There was a man, a humble man who would never have got into this Dáil, if he were born again, under the conditions visualised in this Bill. Look at that man. He saved the Union; he emancipated the slaves. The Party did not do it. Parties to a large extent are followers. They do not actually participate. The word "Party" derives from "participate", but they do not participate—they follow. When Lincoln decided not to allow the South to secede, his Party actually tried to force him to allow the South to secede. It was his personality that decided otherwise.

It all boils down to one thing: if this Bill is passed and if some individual here has ambition, as Lincoln had—there is nothing wrong with ambition if your ideas and spirit are good—what chance would he have of being elected? It takes a fortune to fight an election against the big organised Parties and it would break the spirit of the man and probably bankrupt him. He would have to throw his hat at it. The big Parties have got their own men placed in the constituencies. Deputies know that each constituency is controlled by a few ambitious individuals, and there is no harm in that. That is the way it has always been. These people have their eye on the Dáil and all Deputies know that they have to fight bitterly against opposition and are never sure of themselves.

What this Bill asks the people to do is to ask the rest of society, the people not in the big Parties, Sinn Féin, the Independents and Clann na Poblachta, to break up and join the big Parties. Imagine them trying to put themselves forward as candidates for this Dáil. Do you not know that the dice would be loaded against them?

This present system is an escape. It allows people, if you like, to let off steam and to a large extent nothing is happening but the letting off of steam most of the time. Take Party politics. In Party politics, it is the duty of one side to misrepresent the other side and the duty of one side to deny the success of the other side. That is the whole idea, and with all these denials and counter-denials, people will get confused, so that at least the Parties will hold their own. That is Party politics.

I do not know, although I am speaking here, if I am convincing anybody. Perhaps I may convince a few of the people in the gallery, but I do not know. You are all men with your minds made up. We know that every word we say here will go into the Dáil Reports, but nobody reads the Dáil Reports. If what you said here appeared in the public Press, O.K., but it will not.

It would not matter if I were to say here how Partition could end. I would be despised and hated all the more for saying it. They do not want me to say it. They do not want anybody to say it unless one of their own says it. Whatever is said must reflect the glory of the Party. That is Party politics. That is why you hear charges of "You said this" and "You said that". This is serious. Consider the plain people, the multitudes, the people who have not much time for politics. The only way they can judge as between one Party and another is through what they read. Now, what chance will they get? The Taoiseach said "Let the people decide." How can they decide? Will all my speech appear to-morrow in the Irish Press? One Independent, only one man, so far, outside the Fianna Fáil bloc, has supported the Bill—one man. What happens? He gets four half columns and his picture in this morning's paper. All right. “Let the people decide.”

I attended a Mass for the 3rd Battalion on Sunday in the Castle. The Taoiseach was there. So also were a number of people, not many, about 25 or 30 altogether. I was there as an Old I.R.A. man. I am a Deputy. The former Lord Mayor of Dublin, Deputy James Carroll, as a Deputy was there. No one else was there—no one else. Now, according to Monday's Press, the Taoiseach was there, the names of a few people prominent in the Old I.R.A. were given "and members of the corporation". Do you see the way they described us? Now, the corporation was not there. I was there. I am a T.D. That is a superior title to that of councillor. It should have been mentioned that Deputy Sherwin and Deputy Carroll were there but we were not mentioned. Then the Taoiseach says: "Let the people decide."

Look, two years ago at the anniversary Mass of Rory O'Connor, which occurs again next Sunday. Again, I was at the Castle. I was one of a number who got their picture taken. "Let the people decide"—that is the point I am making. The Minister for Industry and Commerce was in the centre and I was the second on the extreme end. My name was taken. The reporter took all the names: Councillor Sherwin, I was then. The next morning everyone was in the picture but I was cut out. This is the way the people are to decide. How can the people decide if they are not told what I say but are told everything that the other side says? How can they decide?

Supposing you went to court and were defending a case. Let us say there was only a jury but no judge and that the opposition had a first-class lawyer. What chance would the defendant have if he had not an equally first-class lawyer? What chance? The jury are only ordinary people. They are confused. When a lawyer makes a great speech they are all full of it and then when the other fellow makes a similarly great speech they think he is great too. It is only when the judge sums up that they really know what is relevant. The people are like that. There is no way for the people to get the case summed up. I might do it, as an Independent, but I am denied that right. The newspapers might do it but when you have newspapers with the greater part of the circulation all on one side, how can the people judge?

Look, this question of the people judging depends on the Press. The Press conveys what we say to the people. If certain newspapers, allied to a political Party, continue to put only one side and refuse the other side all but the minimum space, so that they can hardly have any argument at all, then, on the grounds, as Barnum put it, that if you say a thing often enough the people will believe it, what are the people to think? If the Press give big headlines to their man, and put the Opposition in the corner, and deny all other parts of the Opposition, how will the people decide?

The people will be asked to decide but the newspapers convey information to them. It is not the people, therefore, who decide. It is not what we say. It is this wealthy Party which has the control of a paper. I believe it was one of the mistakes of the Coalition Government that they did not bring in a Bill making it unlawful for a person to be a director or controller of a daily newspaper and, at the same time, a member of the Oireachtas.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That does not arise on the Bill.

Mr. Sherwin

It may not arise but surely, if the only way we can get our views across to the people is denied us, we can refer to those who deny? If that paper were an independent paper, with no connections, there would be a tremendous difference as far as the opinion of the people would be concerned.

I listened to a lot of arguments here. They were flowery arguments. They were all around. They had little to do with the issue at all which is: Are there to be two Parties or several Parties? I am making the issue that this Bill would deny the principle of equality of opportunity. I hold that all men should be equal in opportunities. They are not equal in ability but they should be equal in opportunities and that principle will be denied. The effect of this Bill, if enacted, will be to deny equal opportunity to all men.

We heard of France. We heard of continental countries, countries with problems which have no connection with us or with problems of which we know very little. It is objectionable for people to drag in things of which they have some knowledge as a result of going into the Library and reading a lot of books and playing on the ignorance of the people to whom they are passing it on. How can they express an opinion on that? I will prove that there was a lot of covering-up in those arguments. Spain was not mentioned in all those arguments. Spain had a straight vote before the Franco revolt—not P.R. but a straight vote. The Left got into power although they got only 46 per cent. of the votes. It is here in Professor Hogan's book—the book that was misrepresented here some weeks ago by Deputy O'Malley. It is mathematically worked out there that, if there had been P.R. in Spain, they could not have been the Government and, therefore, there might not have been any civil war. There is one argument against all the other arguments—although I do not want to bring in outside countries of which we do not know a lot.

I should like to bring in Britain of which we do know something. We speak the same language. We read the English papers every day. Our people are going back and forward. We are acquainted with many aspects of British politics. We know little or nothing about the politics of other countries except what we read—and the writer might be biassed. However, we have a very good idea of English politics.

The argument is that there are two large Parties there and that it works well. There has been no serious difference between the English people since the Cromwell revolution and that is long forgotten. The country is divided between workers and people with property. There is no other great division. Naturally, the Labour Party can absorb all the people of that Left nature while the Tory Party can more or less have all the rest. But remember that it is a country with 50,000,000 people whereas we have only 2,750,000. people. It would not be right to make a comparison there because it is a country with 50,000,000 people and two Parties in this country could not be compared with the size of the two Parties in England. If there are 2,000 active members of the Fianna Fáil Party here there are probably 50,000 in the Labour Party in England. That is an important point to remember. In small Parties like the Fianna Fáil Party and the Fine Gael Party, there is too much control. It would be impossible to assert oneself within a Party of that sort, but in a huge Party like the Tory Party or the Labour Party in England, there can be different factions which can all unite to beat a common enemy but no one faction is powerful enough to break another faction. That is the position in England to-day.

Every Deputy has read of revolts of the Left Wing and the Right Wing in the Labour Party. Every Deputy has read of Bevan threatening Morrison and vice versa. That is all possible in a huge Party. There are probably more members of the Labour Party in one shire in England than there are in any one or two Parties here. People joining a big Party in England can assert their independence. They can get away with it and they get certain freedoms, but if you asserted yourself and created a faction in a Party such as the Fianna Fáil Party or the Fine Gael Party, you would be thrown out. It is possible to have liberty in a huge Party but that is not possible in a small Party. That defeats the argument of comparing England with Ireland. Even in the Tory Party, there was a bloc which defied the Prime Minister. They threatened to make things difficult for him. The Party was so huge that it could absorb these factions.

The Sinn Féin Party is a pretty substantial Party with a very good type of following. They believe in the language and all those things about which the Taoiseach talks. They seem to be even greater believers in the language than those Parties which always talk about the language. They do most of the speech-making during the elections in the language. They may be right about Partition. At least they have a policy, whether or not it is the wrong policy. It is a policy and is something positive. The Fianna Fáil Party has no policy, as far as the Taoiseach is concerned. Sinn Féin must get credit for the fact that they have a policy.

How could this Party at which this Bill is aimed join the Fianna Fáil Party who had some of their men executed? Let us take Fine Gael. How could they join that Party when Republicans were shot in the unfortunate civil war? How could they join either of those Parties? What do they propose to do with the Sinn Féin Party? So long as Partition exists, it will be like a red rag to a bull. The young men will organise but this House will do nothing. You will come the heavy hand and then there will be shooting. What was your argument? It was: "Give up the gun; come into the Dáil, and when you can get a majority, you can use lawful means." You are now saying that they are not eligible for the Dáil. In other words, you are forcing them to use the gun.

I will utter one word of warning. You are going to create bitterness and hatred. You will give to the Sinn Féin Party that which they lack, in my opinion—leadership. They are lofty-minded, but they lack leadership. I am not aware of any well-known political leader among them; they are more or less unknowns.

I have already established one or two points. The Bill proposes to put insurmountable obstacles in the path of the small Parties. It proposes to send into the wilderness this third force. What led to the introduction of this Bill? I have never said a wrong word about the Taoiseach in my life. He is an old man. We must all pass away sometime and he has got to make his arrangements. I mean no offence at all by that remark. All old people must make some provision. That is only elementary common sense. He must have seriously thought that as he was the Chief, just as O'Connell was and Parnell was. When he has passed away, the people will feel lost as they felt when those other leaders passed away. They may turn to someone else.

Who will succeed him? Perhaps the Tánaiste or the Minister for External Affairs who are spoken of as being the heirs. I do not know. While they may be clever men—and I have no doubt they are very good executives—they have not got that appeal which the Taoiseach has, nor will they ever have it.

An Ceann Comhairle

That scarcely arises on this measure.

Mr. Sherwin

I am dealing with the reasons for the Bill and I am suggesting that it arose out of some kind of arrangement for the future. It must have. Perhaps, it arose because I struck the first blow in the North Central constituency. Again, I do not know. It stands to reason that a Party in power always makes enemies. They promise this and that, but they do not carry it out. I have here a list of the promises that were made. On the eve of the 1932 election, the Taoiseach stated he believed that this country could maintain 19,000,000 people. He was asking the people for their votes and they must have believed him. If that number could be maintained here, then there was every reason to believe——

An Ceann Comhairle

I cannot allow the Deputy to proceed along that line. The Deputy will have to come to the measure.

Mr. Sherwin

Can I not argue that the Taoiseach is making a mistake? I submit that I am at liberty to say that, having made mistakes, the Taoiseach might make another and that the people should be careful. I believe that with the loss of the Taoiseach's personality and with the lapse of time, the Party will lose 20 or 30 seats at least. That has a definite relation to the Bill; it must have. I am not a fool and neither is any Deputy in the House a fool. We do not walk blindly into the future. We think ahead and the Fianna Fáil Party must have thought ahead.

The argument for the Bill is that stability is all important. It got the headline in the Press: "Stability is more important than representation." That was the attitude of Louis XIV— he was the State. I accept that stability is essential. I shall even agree that some modification of P.R. might be desirable, so long as the rights of individuals to stand for Parliament are safeguarded and so long as there is no proviso that they must be okayed by the caucus in either of the big Parties. Those are my principles-Now, I am not afraid of myself. I am thinking of other people and the rights of other people.

If this Bill goes through in its present form, this country will be completely in the hands of Taoisighs of the future. If this Bill is accepted, then there will be a barrier to the Parnells and de Valeras of the future. It will be almost impossible for individuals, as I showed in the case of Lincoln, to get into public life. Under our present system, a future leader of this country might be born in a stable. His vocation might be going around selling newspapers. Some of the Presidents of the United States of America started life by selling newspapers.

The Taoiseach came into the public eye because he was the last surviving commandant in one famous affray. From that, he became, first, President, and then Taoiseach of this country. Perhaps, if he had been compelled to come up from the bottom, he would have more experience. He never had my experience. He came up overnight, with no experience. The result is he has no proper understanding of his fellowman. I can sympathise with him in his disability and when, around the Treaty period, he came into grips with his fellowmen, he did not intend to do wrong; it was because of his inability to understand his fellowmen and his lack of knowledge of human beings that he mishandled the position. That is my belief. I believe that when he came out of jail after the hard knocks, and everybody experiences some hard knocks——

An Ceann Comhairle

Would the Deputy now try to come to the measure before the House?

Mr. Sherwin

Sir, I hold that almost anything is related to this Bill.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy seems to be acting on that principle —that anything is relevant. I assure him it is not, and I ask him to come now to the terms of the measure before the House.

Mr. Sherwin

I believe that, if the Taoiseach was wrong again and an Independent tried to be Taoiseach, it would not be possible for him to achieve that position, should this Bill become law and be accepted by the people. That is my opinion. Remember, leaders do not come out of Parties. They get into Parties. But, unless they establish themselves first, they are not accepted by Parties. I am not aware that the existing Parties ever produced any great number of leaders. I am not aware of that happening anywhere in the world, and I am a very keen student of history.

There is one very serious aspect of this Bill. It denies the right of the individual to put himself forward as a candidate for Parliament. It also robs the small man of the opportunity of becoming a candidate in either of the two big Parties. P.R. has so worked that, if a Party believe they can win two seats in a certain constituency, and only two, they will put forward three or four candidates. They know they can win only two seats, but there is no harm in putting forward a third and a fourth candidate. That is a piece of very vital Party policy. The third and fourth candidates may be new people, so far as the electors are concerned. Party members who have been active in Party affairs and are anxious to become T.D.s Now, it would be dangerous to put them up on their own, but they can be put up and brought to the notice of the electors through P.R. They may not get in, but they may get a fair showing. They will have the experience of having contested an election, a very vital experience indeed. They may be the obvious choice, if they make a good showing, in a subsequent election. Those men, in other words, can get a chance under P.R. in the existing political Parties.

The position in future, should the proposed referendum be successful, will be very different. The caucus in the Party, realising that there is only one seat to be won, will put up the man who is prepared to throw a lot of money into the campaign, as is done in America and England. The obvious choice in England is the man who throws £1,000 into the fund. In America to-day, it is the millionaires who are fighting for office. It is the moneyed people everywhere. In England, the small man has very little chance, despite the fact that there is a certain amount of liberalism there in the big Parties. Nevertheless, there is very little chance of the poor man being chosen. The decisive argument, in the last analysis, is the cost of the election.

In future, the tendency here will be for the big Parties to look around to see who is the man with the money— perhaps Denis Guiney, or someone like that—who can contribute £500, or so, to Party funds. That will be the deciding factor and the major concern. That is the major concern in the constituencies in England. The small man, who hopes that by his labour in the Party, he will have a chance of one day sitting in Parliament, will be denied that chance in future. That is elementary. What Party will put forward a candidate who is known only in a few back streets? Even if he were put forward, the central executive would refuse to ratify the choice. He will have no chance. Under P.R. he would have a chance. The two candidates—the third and fourth candidates to whom I referred earlier —who fail to reach the quota may actually help the successful candidates to win. They will get a few votes off their own bat, so to speak, from relatives and friends and those votes will be transferred to the two who have the best chance of winning.

Added to all that is the fact that these two have been brought before the public mind. Their pictures will appear on the public hoardings and in the Party literature and people will grow familiar with them. They are identifiable. That is how a political career develops. I fought my first election when I was on the dole. I fought a municipal election. I had nothing but a kitchen chair. I brought it out into the street and I spoke from it. That was my public platform. I got 800 votes. I did not win, but I got 800 votes. I do not say that because I did that, others would do it. The Taoiseach may be a unique dictator, but I am a bit unique in my own way. I can assure the House of this: I never surrender.

This Bill denies the right of opportunity to the hardworking small man. That is why I say this issue is a very serious one. It is not my intention to belittle the Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party. I know that many of you would like to differ, but you are not allowed to differ. You may think that you may be knocked out in the next election, and there is nothing you can do about it. There is a chance you may win. But there is no chance for you if you dispute the Party's decision. That is the important point. So, although you may say: "Hurrah for the straight vote," some of you are admitting quietly that you do not like it.

I can prove that. We had a debate in the corporation a month ago on this. I made the same statement there as I have made here now, and a few days later I met another councillor, who was not of my way of thinking, and he said: "Frank, you were right, but what can we do?" That is the truth. It is elementary.

There is another very important factor in support of P.R. It is suggested that it would be better to have one man in a constituency, that he would represent all the people in the constituency. It is denied that the one man would represent only his followers and would make things difficult for Opposition supporters. I know human nature. If there were anything going, a job or anything like that, he would make quite certain that his followers would get priority. That is elementary.

There is another very important feature. One man is supposed to be the best for an area. I deny that from all my experience. I do not want to be personal. I said I would not mention names. I maintain that I do nearly all the work in North Central and that is the reason why, as a councillor, I top the poll. That breaks your argument and brings you around to another point. There are people who are active by nature, leaders by nature, passive or cowardly by nature. To say that if one man is elected he will look after the area is a joke. Take a lazy man who has been a long time in politics and is browned off. Do you think he will go around the area? He will not. I can say in all honesty that half the T.D.s are slackers. I mention no names. Is it seriously suggested that if one of these slackers is elected he will look after all the area? Do not you know that he will not? Do not you know that half the areas will be disfranchised?

Under the present system there is a certain amount of competition which makes it possible for all the people to be looked after. I will not take my own case because I might make it difficult for some people. Let us say that there are five T.D.s in an area and that two or three of them are a bit too important to come into the area, that they live miles away and never see the area, which does happen. One or two of the five will be active by nature or because the incentive is there. By being active they will be on the sure side in the next election. We try to cultivate activity. As the Minister for Industry and Commerce says, hard work will get one through always. There may be one or two men who are active and one or two slackers who depend on the Party to get them in. It is quite possible that the active men may be members of small Parties or Independents.

The Independent knows that he is depending entirely on his own efforts and that if he slacks he is finished. The Independent is always working. He has to work. He is depending on the people in the streets, upon them all saying, "We will vote for Sherwin." The people will not say that if they do not see him. Those two active men will do the work of all the people in the area, or of as many as they can. They regard every constituent as a potential vote in the next election. Therefore, every constituent is a potential supporter. If a man helps a constituent who formerly voted for, say, Labour or Fianna Fáil, he is almost certain to obtain his vote in the next election. That is elementary.

In other words, competition means that the area is looked after, in spite of the two or three slackers that there may be in the same area. Remove that competition and then you have one man who knows that he has no competition to meet, who knows that he has a huge Party behind him, with huge funds, and that the Irish Press or some other newspaper will come in on the eve of the election or the week preceding the election with banners and carry off a lot of simple people to the poll. The area has been disfranchised and that man is not fit to be a member of the House and the people are given no alternative but have to vote for one or other of those two men. That is the answer to your small poll in South City. Many people there are like the people in North Central. They despise the Parties, probably due to my publicity. My backing is in the adjoining areas just as well. Remember that.

Do you not see the point? If the areas have a choice between only two men, both the standard bearers of the big Parties, the people will not vote for one or the other because they do not think much of either. That is where there is grave danger. You may find a Government elected representing only 40 per cent. or 45 per cent. of the people. In fact, a Government could be elected representing only 25 per cent. of the people. Let us say that the number who voted in South City will vote. Let us suppose that that was to happen generally. Let us suppose that the people, because of this Bill, said, "We will boycott their election", as many of them will say, and as the other Parties will advocate if they see that they have no chance of going forward. Naturally, they will say, "Boycott it". Let us suppose that a Government is elected by 25 or 26 per cent. of the population, as is possible.

I want to prove that the point made by the Minister for Defence is wrong. He said that if A. gets 6,000 votes and B. 5,000 and C. 4,000, the people who voted for C. did not give B. one; that the people who voted for B. did not give C. one. The people had their minds made up on one point. The people who voted for C. and B. did not want A. Say, they gave 6,000 votes to Fianna Fáil, 5,000, say, to Fine Gael and 4,000 to Labour. Say that Fine Gael and Labour between them secured 9,000 votes. One thing is certain. Those 9,000 voters did not want Fianna Fáil. That is elementary.

The value of Independents was amply quoted. I do not like referring to documents. Up to now I have made my own case. People who dig up documents are making no case. They are only quoting other people's brains, not using their own. I will quote one gentleman. Professor Hogan, the man who was misquoted as being a person who was all for the abolition of P.R. Deputies heard it. It is in the Official Report.

Debate adjourned.

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht - Wednesday, 3 Dec 1958

An Bille um an Tríú Leasú ar an mBunreacht, 1958—An Dara Céim (Atógáil). Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1958—Second Stage (Resumed).

A Deputy

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 3 Dec 1958