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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 30 Apr 1959

Vol. 174 No. 10

An Bille um an Tríú Leasú ar an mBunreacht, 1958—Tairiscint (atógáil). Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1958—Motion (resumed).

Thairg an Taoiseach an tairiscint seo a leanas, Dé Céadaoin, 29 Aibreán, 1959:—
DE BHRÍ go ndearna Dáil Éireann, ar an 29ú lá d'Eanáir, 1959, an Bille um an Tríú Leasú ar an mBunreacht, 1958, a rith agus a chur chun Seanad Éireann, agus gur dhiúltaigh Seanad Éireann dó ar an 19ú lá de Mhárta, 1959.
Go gcinneann Dáil Éireann ANOIS AR AN ÁBHAR SIN leis seo, de bhun ailt 1 d'Aireagal 23 den Bhunreacht, go measfar an Bille um an Tríú Leasú ar an mBunreacht, 1958, mar a ritheadh ag Dáil Éireann é, a bheith rite ag dhá Theach an Oireachtais."
The following motion was moved by the Taoiseach on Wednesday, 29th April, 1959:—
"THAT WHEREAS the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1958, was, on the 29th day of January, 1959, passed by Dáil Éireann and sent to Seanad Éireann, and was on the 19th day of March, 1959, rejected by Seanad Éireann,
NOW THEREFORE Dáil Éireann, pursuant to section 1 of Article 23 of the Constitution, hereby resolves that the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1958, as passed by Dáil Éireann, be deemed to have been passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas.
Athchromadh ar an díospóireacht ar an leasú seo a leanas ar an tairiscint sin:—
Na focail uile i ndiaidh an fhocail "go" sa chéad líne a scriosadh agus no focail seo a leanas a chur ina n-ionad:
bhfuil an Bille um an Tríú Leasú ar an mBunreacht, 1958, tar éis beachtaíocht thromchuiseach leanúnach a tharraingt i nDáil Éireann, gur dhiúltaigh Seanad Éireann dó, agus gur cúis imní agus easaontais i measc an phobail é,
Go gcinneann Dáil Éireann ANOIS AR AN ÁBHAR SIN leis seo gan beart de bhun ailt 1 d'Airteagal 23 den Bhunreacht a dhéanamh go dtí go bhfaighfear tuarascáil ó Chomhchoiste de Dháil Éireann agus Seanad Éireann, a cheapfar chun scrúdú a dhéanamh ar iarmairtí sóisialacha, polaiticiúla agus eacnamaíocha na n-athruithe sa chóras togcháin atá beartaithe sa Bhille um an Tríú Leasú ar an mBunreacht, 1958—an tuarascáil a bheith le tabhairt ag an gComhchoiste tráth nach déanaí ná an 29ú lá de Lúnasa, 1959.
(Na Teachtaí Seán Ua Coisdealbha, Risteárd Ua Maolchatha).
Debate resumed on the following amendment thereto:—
1. To delete all words after the figures "1958" in line 2 and substitute therefor the words:
"has given rise to serious and sustained criticism in Dáil Éireann, has been rejected in Seanad Éireann, and has caused disquiet and division among the people,
NOW THEREFORE Dáil Éireann hereby resolves to postpone action under section 1 of Article 23 of the Constitution until a report shall have been received from a Joint Committee of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann, appointed to examine the social, political and economic implications of the changes in the electoral system proposed in the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1958—the Joint Committee to report not later than the 29th day of August, 1959.
(Deputies John A. Costello, Richard Mulcahy).

As I stated last night, those who are fighting this tell us about the sacredness of the Constitution. We know, however, that there is not a single individual here who was out at the hustings to fight that Constitution, tooth and nail, when it was put to the people, who will not be out again on the same job this time. They will be out, every one of them, without exception.

I am not going to cover the ground covered here by Deputy O'Higgins last night. We are told of what Eamon de Valera said on such a date and what someone else said on some other date. Let me take what Deputy Dillon said on such a date. He will be down the country telling us about the sacredness of the Constitution which he opposed in 1937 and the sacredness of every line and Article in it. Here is what Deputy Dillon said about this P.R. business when speaking in the Dail on November 12th, 1947:—

Proportional representation is, in fact, as we all know in our hearts, the child of the brains of all the cranks in creation.

Here is the interesting part, when we take Deputy O'Higgins's statements.

So far as this country is concerned, it was tried out on the dog.

I wonder who tried it out and whom Deputy Dillon meant as the dog on that occasion. He continued:—

I doubt if any other sane democratic country in the world has put it into operation in regard to its Parliament.... It was foisted upon us by a collection of half-lunatics who believed that they had something lovely that would work on paper like a jig-saw puzzle, but like all these crank ideas in operation, it has resulted here in an election in 1931, an election in 1932, an election in 1938, an election in 1939, an election in 1943, and an election in 1944.

That is what Deputy Dillon said.

I am afraid I cannot.

Ah! Do not try that out on the dog.

Does Deputy Dillon mean that he has completely changed?

I shall deal with you when I am ready. You are a lame old dog for that kind of job.

Deputy Dillon will be rather lame around at the hustings in the country for the next month, explaining away the view he then expressed here.

Do not worry about that.

He will have to explain why it was not as sacred then as it is now. I had practically the same views as Deputy Dillon about P.R. In the first place, I do not think there will be the big change that people say. Any Deputy worth his salt or who has been of any good in this House will hold his seat against all comers, particularly when the radius within which he will have to fight will be only a 15 or 20 miles radius from his home. If he has done anything here in the past nine or 10 years, he will be able to hold his own. In my opinion, there will be far more Independents in this House than we have under P.R.

The attitude which has been adopted by the Opposition is a ridiculous one. What we are deciding is whether the people are to get an opportunity of judging this or not. This House is not going to judge it, the mar dheadh non-political Seanad will not be the judge, and the non-political professors, the Lord between us and all harm, are not to be the judges.

The Seanad and its members may not be discussed on this Motion.

We had a quotation last night from Deputy O'Higgins in respect of the six Senator professors.

That quotation was made in respect of a statement which was not made in the Seanad but was made by the professors in their personal capacities.

I know those non-political gentlemen who are supposed to have a detached view. There is no man in this country, from the Ceann Comhairle down, who has not political views and he would not be worth his salt if he had not. Where is the good in talking about non-political people? The old Cumann na nGaedheal Party, which later became the Fine Gael Party, had a habit of putting up non-politicians, calling them Independents and saying later on: "Come to mama." They had a habit of absorbing those non-politicians into their own Party. Deputy Dillon came in here as a non-politician. He came in as leader of the farmers and leader on the road to freedom. He saw to it that the annuities were faithfully collected and handed over to John Bull. Deputy Dillon was thrown out by the Fine Gael Party but when the necessity arose he was taken back. Deputy Dillon did not go before the people as a Fine Gael Deputy when he first sought election to this House. What right had Deputy Dillon, when people came in here as the farmers' representatives——

I do not see how this is related to the motion before the House

I am dealing with an argument that has been put up about the abolition of small Parties and I am giving a definite example of what did happen in regard to small Parties. The people elected six Deputies as farmers' representatives and eventually we had the spectacle of one Deputy, the late Deputy William Kent, being the sole representative of the farmers in this House. The whole of this discussion is nonsensical. This measure should be passed and unless there is a terrible dread of the ordinary voter, the ordinary voter should be allowed to judge this issue because he has sufficient intelligence to do so. It is on his vote that this matter will be decided, not on the vote here.

You will find an extraordinary attitude towards this question down the country. There are people who will vote for Eamon de Valera and his policy and who will vote for P.R.; I know others who would do anything rather than vote for him and his policy, and yet they will vote for the abolition of P.R. The people will express their views as they have a right to do, no matter what is said here or anywhere else. My own opinion is that you will get a far better Deputy elected by the new system. The area will be smaller and if we could cut down the number of constituencies it would be better still. Like the Civil Service, this House is carrying a lot of dead timber at very big expense to the nation. In any event there will be a smaller constituency with one man representing it. It is up to him to do his job properly, and if he does not do it, no matter what political flag he flies, the people will give him the high road at the next election. I have seen many people coming in here from time to time in my 32 years as a Deputy and at the next election they vanish. The reason is that they do not do their job.

Even the large political Parties under the present system endeavour to follow out the single seat line. Deputy Moher is from one end of a constituency; I am from another end. The former Deputy O'Gorman is from my end of the constituency and Deputy Dick Barry from the other end. Why were they selected that way instead of being alongside one another? It was done in order that they would fit in as best they could with the situation in certain city areas. Any Deputy who does his job for his constituency will be elected to this House no matter what flag he flies and no Party will stop him from coming in. You will have a larger number of Independents here than ever you had before. I have studied this new system as carefully as I can and that is my opinion. The people will have the advantage of having a Deputy directly responsible to them. How many times have I come up to a Department only to find that some other idiot had been there before me to whom a refusal had been made?

That term should not be applied to anybody.

I am giving an example of the evil of P.R. and the evil of having three men doing the same work. If you go to a Department a civil servant will tell you: "That was refused to Deputy So-and-So and we cannot do it." It is a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. This proposed change has been delayed too long. I do not think the three-member constituency fulfils the object in which the people opposite pretend to be interested. If you want to have proportional representation and minorities represented, you must have a constituency big enough—a ten-seat or twenty-seat constituency—so that all the cranks can get together in that. If they can agree long enough between nomination and polling day, they may win the election. You will not get that in the three-seat constituency, but you will get "flukes".

I remember one gentleman being elected by one vote, and that vote was a No. 6 preference. Fancy the man who went into that polling booth and who said: "I shall give my No. 1 to Bill Kennedy and give my No. 2 and No. 3 to somebody else." Looking down along the line, he said to himself that he would give his No. 4 and No. 5 to the candidates he hated and his No. 6 to the candidate he hated most. Yet that is the fellow who came into this House. That is what happens under P.R. Generally, the weak man is helped out so that he is strong enough to get two out of three. Last night I told how my constituency was the only one in the Twenty-Six Counties in which in 1954, when our fortunes were at a very low ebb, we succeeded in doubling our representation and bringing in a second man. Why?

The Deputy was there.

I was and I was sorry to get down off the top rung of the ladder. At about 9 or 10 o'clock at the count they were so certain they had won that they went to the nearest pub to celebrate what they called "the dethronement of the king." One man came and said to me: "I am sorry for you," and I replied: "I am quite happy." But, later on, there was consternation in the camp when our second man beat Deputy O'Gorman by 19 votes. That is what they paid for "dethroning the king."

You have casualties occurring in the same way. A casualty occurred in the case of the late Deputy Moylan, God rest his soul. The question is to decide at what phase to stop this manoeuvre. Foolish things happen under P.R.—things that in my opinion will not lead to having what we want here: a definite team. You can get all the cranks in creation together here and form a mixum-gatherum Government such as we had in the Coalition. The first time they ran out after three years; they could not last any longer. People began to become suspicious of them. The second time suspicion was created again and they had to run out in despair after two years and nine months, leaving all the mess behind them to be cleaned up. Unfortunate local authorities down the country were without a penny and had to go begging to bank managers for the loan of money. That is what happens when you have Governments, without responsibility or anything else, such as are brought about by P.R.

Surely no one will tell me that if Deputy Mulcahy, Deputy John A. Costello, Deputy Dillon and the rest of that Front Bench spent a third of their time thinking out a decent policy for the next election—if they could agree on it—they could not bluff the people? But you find they are not even prepared to do that. They have a feeling of absolute despair. They say: "We cannot put up any policy to beat the Fianna Fáil policy; therefore Fianna Fáil will get 80 per cent. of the representation in this House." That leaves me with a very poor idea of the remaining 20 per cent.—the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party—and the policies they are prepared to put before the people. Apparently they have no policy which they think will get them elected with a majority. After all, they have all the advantages on their side. For no matter what Government there is, after about six months they become unpopular because they do things and tread on some fellow's corns.

That is why P.R. must go.

Deputy Giles has been here a long time and nobody will tell me there is any fear of losing him under the straight vote system.

Not the slightest.

Well, what is the Deputy afraid of? He has a nice constituency in which he can stand up and he will not have two or three more fellows coming in upsetting the applecart on him. Look at the advantage it will be to him; no one can put him out. The Deputy will be one of the very few— one in six, I think—Deputy Blowick said would succeed in being elected. I am sure Deputy Giles has no qualms of conscience as to how he treated his constituency. If he were not doing his job, he would not be here so long. The same applies to other Deputies and it is only the Deputy who does not work for his constituents who will get the knife when he goes out for judgment.

There are cranks like Deputy Dillon, cranks and foolish people, who do a great deal of harm. I would honestly say that apart from anything else that happened during the Coalition term of office, the biggest asset we had when we were in Opposition in getting the Coalition out and in getting ourselves in was Deputy Dillon. If in the smaller area now, Deputy Dillon is not able to hold his corner, I do not know what we will do for somebody to put out the Coalition the next time they manage to get in.

I do not see any reason to delay this matter in this House. It is the people who must judge, not the House and not the non-political Seanad. I want to spare the feelings of the professors and I shall not say one word about them but, God help us, if you put all their brains together, you would not get enough to make one farmer.

Following Deputy Corry, I cannot help feeling that he himself is one of the most cogent arguments against the retention of P.R. He has been a member of the House for a long time but I am afraid his contribution this morning has been more amusing than enlightening.

In this amendment, we have asked that a committee of both Houses of the Oireachtas should be set up to consider calmly and coolly, and as non-politically as possible, the social, political and economic implications and consequences of the proposed change in our method of election.

Will the Deputy say what this committee will be? What is the difference between the discussion here and in the Seanad and what the Opposition are proposing?

There is the consideration that applies to any committee which is meeting in the full glare of publicity and discussing a matter like this in a political way. It must inevitably be discussed in both Houses in an atmosphere of politics. Many thinking people feel—in fact, it was proposed originally by the professors on whom Deputy Corry has just been pouring scorn although I think that scorn is more in the nature of confidence—that the committee which we are seeking should be set up to go into these matters and discuss them calmly and nonpolitically in an atmosphere which is quite different from the atmosphere of the Dáil or Seanad, which is inevitably tinged with politics.

We believe, and I believe very strongly, that this proposal, quite apart from the effect it will have on this question, quite apart from the fact that it may, and undoubtedly will at the beginning, alter the composition of this House, will have an effect in the country. Some Deputies will not hold their seats; other will. That is a matter, perhaps, not of very great moment except to the individuals concerned and at this stage nobody can say how far those changes will come about, but what is far more serious than the individual composition of the House, than the changes that may or may not be made, is the effect on the country. Even this House is not the best place to consider those changes calmly. That can be done by a committee working in a calmer atmosphere and not subject to the intense glare of publicity which is naturally present in this House or the Seanad in discussing a matter of this moment.

I understand that the Government have 180 days in which to move to alter the Constitution. We propose in this amendment that the committee should have four months during which to consider all the wider aspects of the matter. They could report on or before 29th August. That would be four months from yesterday and the Government would have something like two months in which to consider the report of that committee. Any time inside that period, the Government could move to have the change brought about if they so wished, so that what we are asking is not in any way a danger to the proposals of the Government. If they accept this amendment, they will not find themselves unable to put the matter to the people within 180 days. I want to make that quite clear, in case some people should think that we have put forward an unreasonable proposition, asking the Government to run the risk of not being able to implement their own proposals. That is not so.

We are putting this forward; it is perfectly reasonable and perfectly possible. If the Government wish to accept our amendment, nothing would be easier than to set up the committee which would have four months in which to consider the whole matter.

I felt very strongly that we were reaching a stage in our development in self-government when we were able to consider constitutional changes and such matters in an atmosphere as nearly non-political as possible.

This proposal, I am afraid, has shattered the ideals of many people. Many of us feel that the slow process of growth which this part of Ireland has been building up over almost 40 years of self-government will be hurled aside and that we shall be pushed back into the wild catch-cry hurly-burly period of the beginning of the century. We thought that Irish men and women were in process of evolution, were making this State a place where we could have our excitements, and our political differences, but, nevertheless, when it came to grave constitutional matters, they would be decided calmly by the will of the majority and not as a result of catch-cries and shoutings at the hustings.

Yesterday I listened to the Minister for Health and Social Welfare. He made some points that sounded almost reasonable until we examine them for a moment. One of the points was that we opposed the First Reading of the Bill introducing the proposed change because we did not want the people to have an opportunity of considering it. That is not so. Every Deputy knows, and anybody who studies Parliamentary procedure even in the most cursory fashion will know that, on rare occasions, a Bill proposing a change of some sort is brought into the House which is so abhorrent to a large section of the people that their representatives, who believe they are expressing the point of view of those people, feel that they can make the greatest protest against it by saying: "We simply do not want this Bill. We feel it is so abhorrent that we will not even allow it to be discussed, if we can prevent it." That is a rare occurrence but it shows the sincerity and the depth of feeling that lies behind the attitude of the people on this side of the House, in fact, the attitude of all Parties except the Fianna Fáil Party. I would earnestly ask the Taoiseach to consider that aspect of the matter.

In addition to the evolution of the country, which was very pleasing to many people, there seemed to be an evolution also going on in the minds of some of the older men, and, I presume, women, who had been present at the fierce differences of almost 40 years ago. It seemed that more reasonable attitudes of mind were taking place. I appeal to the Taoiseach to give us the, perhaps, supreme example of his career of that evolution of mind and spirit in a way that will be very acceptable to many Irish people—I think to all of us.

There are many things that I could discuss in relation to this matter. It has been gone over before. It is a remarkable thing that when a matter is discussed at great length in this House one will meet people who will say: "But you did not fight that to the last. You ought to have gone on discussing every point of view." Therefore although it may appear sometimes as if we are repeating old arguments, we are doing so because we want to be sure that we have left nothing undone to secure that this very important matter is put before the Irish people from every point of view, every facet of it having been discussed.

To return to what the Minister for Health and Social Welfare said last night, that the country would wish for a discussion of this matter in the House—that was the burden of his statement—in point of fact, of course, the matter was not proposed to this House. I think I am correct in saying that at the end of the month of August or at the beginning of September the matter was thrown out by the Taoiseach at a Press conference. It seemed then to be what the French call a ballon d'essai but I am afraid it really was not a ballon d'essai. It seemed to be a harsher, cruder, more modern effort than that, more in the nature of a rocket than a ballon d'essai. The country has not signified in any way that it needed or wished to have this change. No county council or responsible body of opinion that I am aware of, either before this matter was mentioned in public or since, has signified approval of the Government's proposals.

I do not wish to go at length into the question of the difference between proportional representation and the single member system in England, which is the closest example to us of that system in operation. It has worked in England probably because the English are a very democratic people and have had a long period of Parliamentary history. Parliamentary institutions and democratic institutions generally have worked satisfactorily in Britain in spite of that system and not because of it. I think the history of Ireland and England, in their reactions the one towards the other, would have been entirely different had proportional representation been the system in operation in Britain in the nineteenth century. I think this country, in that set of circumstances, not only might but would have been saved immense suffering and hardship.

It is not always the system, of course, that matters. It is the men behind the system. As I say, I think the British have moulded their system into something workable. They have made the best of a bad system. I think that we, too, here in Ireland are in the process of making the best of a very good system, namely, the P.R. system. I think that system is peculiarly suited to us. One of those fortunate chances of history brought it about. In this country, torn as it has been by differences of all sorts, proportional representation is above all else the system which enables men to meet together, sink their differences and work for the common good. It is the system which enables that to be done slowly, and sometimes even quickly, as compared with other methods of election.

In our efforts to have proportional representation retained here, all we are asking is that a system which enables Irish men and women to meet together and work together for the common good, in spite of certain political differences, should be retained. The Fianna Fáil Party say: "No. We wish to have just one Party in the country." Surely it is better and more civilised to ask men and women to come together, sink their differences, and run the country on deliberative lines rather than try to have big majorities obtained by political methods during elections.

All we seek is the retention of the present system which enables men and women of divergent loyalties to come together happily and work for the common good. In this amendment we are asking that the best—the most reasonable, the most tolerant and the calmest—members of both Houses of the Oireachtas should be permitted to meet together and discuss this proposal to abolish proportional representation in the light of the vast changes it undoubtedly will bring about and not discuss it merely from the point of view of the effect it will have on individual Parties in this House or in the Seanad. That is all we are asking and I appeal to the Taoiseach to do now what may prove to be one of the outstanding gestures of his career, namely, to accept this amendment.

We have heard the views of the main Parties—the Parties with an axe to grind, the Parties which have much to win or much to lose. I notice the Taoiseach is leaving the House. Perhaps he is not anxious to hear my views. It does not matter. You may bet that the papers he represents will give me just one or two lines, as they have done heretofore when I spoke for one and three-quarter hours.

The main argument of the Government is: "Why continue this debate? Why not let the issue go to the people?" I am one of the people. I represent quite a lot of people. But my views are not wanted evidently and that goes to show that the argument: "Let the people decide," is a two-faced argument. What the Government want is just to get the people who read their papers to decide.

Now the Dáil passed the proposal to amend the Constitution. The Seanad rejected it. Who passed the proposal here? A majority with no free will. Not one of them could claim that he passed this amendment of the Constitution in the exercise of his own free judgment. Admittedly I cannot prove that but if anyone on the Government benches had dared to oppose the amendment he would have been ejected from the Party and his nomination would not have been accepted at the next general election. He would be out of public life or, if he cared to continue in public life, he would have to face the problem of putting down £100 and spending £300 or £400 more on top of that, breaking his heart and probably losing the election.

The proposal to amend the Constitution was passed by a majority here. The people have the right to suspect that the vote in favour of that amendment did not represent the free view of all those who supported it. The vote, in other words, was the view of the machine, individuals having no individual choice. The value of the majority is, therefore, questionable. As against that, the Seanad rejected the proposal to amend the Constitution by a narrow majority. I think it was a majority of one. Now, to some extent there is freedom of opinion in the Seanad. Senators, even those who are directly affiliated to Parties, do not come under the Whip to the same extent as members of the Dáil do.

The Deputy may not discuss the Seanad, its deliberations or its decisions. If the Deputy desires to praise the Seanad, someone else may want to do the reverse, and so the Seanad would be discussed.

The Seanad was discussed here yesterday.

The Seanad qua Seanad was not discussed. The discussion was on the views of certain members of the Seanad in their personal capacity outside the Seanad. It was not a discussion in the Seanad.

Anyway, the Seanad rejected the proposal. That is my point. That rejection was about two to one, because amongst those who supported the proposal were 11 members appointed by the Taoiseach. Take those 11 out of the count and it represents two to one against the proposal to amend the Constitution. In a moral sense, in other words, the Seanad rejected the proposal by a two to one majority. The proposal was carried in the Dáil by people whose judgement is suspect and can be questioned because there was not a free vote of the House.

Amongst those who opposed the proposal were at least seven of the nine Independent Deputies here, Deputies free to voice their opinions according to the dictates of their own consciences. Two members of the Independent group voted for the proposal but I understand one of them always votes with the Government. Therefore, only one can be said to have made a case for his position. Therefore, in effect, it can well be said that, combining the Dáil and the Seanad, there is no moral claim at all that the Oireachtas wants an amendment of the Constitution. Like many other people, I am convinced the Bill is being introduced simply to keep the rank and file down.

The case has been made that no more time should be wasted, that the Bill has been sufficiently discussed. I do not doubt that it has, but if the Government have a game to play, the Opposition is entitled to try to beat them at that game. The Government's game is to get cracking with their mass publicity so that there will be no hitch in holding both elections on the one day and I say it is part and parcel of the whole conspiracy. It is being put to the Opposition that it is their duty to let the people decide.

I do not think people will be more enlightened by further discussions here because, as I said, most of what is being said here is repetition, and what someone like myself says does not make any difference. If everything I said here were printed it would make a difference, but it is not. I see that my supporters get copies of what I say, but it does not reach the people in the country and, therefore, my views do not count with them. The views of the big Parties will count because they will get a spread. So much for the talk about the will of the people.

The President appealed for unity amongst the men who fought together. He did not enlarge on the subject. He could have said there should be a national Government. That is the only practical way, whatever the President thinks, in which unity can be brought to fruition—a national Government comprised of both sides who fought together 30 years ago. Naturally, the Government do not want that. It is an extraordinary thing about political Parties that it is in their interests to have the country divided. If there were unity between the two big Parties, what would happen to the hangers on on both sides, to those who are Ministers or hope to be Ministers, because the main jobs would go to the principal leaders on both sides? There is no desire for unity, and there never will be, so the President is wasting his time if he is thinking of unity in terms of a national Government.

I listened to Deputy Corry. He is a nice old warrior and I like him, but, to be quite frank, he toes the Party line. He spoke as if this country were the property of the people on one side or the other, and as if there were no body of people outside the big Parties, the people against whom this conspiracy is aimed and of whom I am a typical example. I got in here through my own effort and there are thousands like me. I found it hard to get elected even under the P.R. system, but under the straight vote it would be almost impossible. How many Independents have they in Britain? Deputy Corry said the new system would be better for both sides of the House, as if the Dáil were the property of two sets of individuals. That, of course, is what the Parties aim at.

I read recently—I read a lot—that it was the view of a great political thinker of 200 years ago that the maintaining of Parties as such was a conspiracy against the whole nation. That is true. Parties, by a process of ganging up, hope to control something by virtue of keeping everyone else out, and they can do it by virtue of numbers.

This proposal to amend the Constitution aims at excluding even the few who now manage to get a little place in the sun as members of the Dáil. As I said, with the abolition of P.R., the individual is faced with an area covering 20,000 or 30,000 electors; he is faced with the cost of an election and, worse than the feeling of having invested what may perhaps be his life savings, he feels that he is going to lose, that he has not a chance. He faces all that from the very beginning, knowing that he has to compete with two huge Parties with unlimited publicity and funds at their disposal. Quite obviously, the average person who is not wanted by the Parties has no chance—and do not forget that not only are the Parties a conspiracy against the nation but they are a conspiracy against themselves, because within each Party there is nothing but conspiracy, but while they are prepared to conspire against one another, they aim to keep the outsider out.

I know politics inside out, and apart from my practical knowledge of politics, I have made a keen study of politics itself. I have studied Roman politics and I have studied the biographies, military history and political history of every nation on the earth right back to the Ancients. I am not saying that any of that is experience, but when it is combined with my experience, it conveys to me very clearly that politics is a conspiracy and a series of conspiracies, and that the man on the outside has very little chance of getting a leg in. That is politics; that is human nature, and nothing can be done about it.

In a constituency comprised of a number of seats, P.R., at least, gives an opportunity to the person who is not wanted by the Parties or who was thrown out by the Parties. The Taoiseach, the man who is piloting this proposal through the House, is, by his very nature, an Independent. I know him. I can imagine him as a young man of 30 years joining a Party, with no nonsense about it when making up his mind, and I can imagine the reception he would get from some of the fellows in the Party who were aspiring to be Deputies or Ministers. They would see in him an opponent to themselves and they would want to keep him out. The Taoiseach is now on top, however, and he is taking a selfish view. He cannot see that there may be other de Valeras who want to play their part in the affairs of the country but, if they do, under this proposal they will have to contest single-seat constituencies at tremendous expense.

Very often the right people are poor people. It is an extraordinary thing that the best politicians are poor people. We have heard it said that business men are the best people for politics, but I do not accept that viewpoint because business men have no time for politics. They may like the title or the honour they acquire in politics. That may help their business but they are successful in their own businesses because they pay attention to them, and they will not destroy their own businesses just to become successful politicians. Very often they do not want to attend Dáil sittings and seek to be excused. Similarly, the business man has no time to devote to the constituents who elect him and his constituents are overawed by the fact that he has a flashy car and a big house. I am not talking about the beggar or that class of man, but the worker, the man who has a little capital, who might not be accepted by a Party and who, if he joins a Party, finds a dozen fellows who are well dug in, waiting to accept any nominations that may come during the next 20 or 30 years.

I have my own personal experience to go on. I did not immediately jump from the outside into the Dáil. I fought municipal elections. At the beginning I told myself I had handicaps. I had no flashy car and no father who was a T.D. or a Minister. I told myself that first of all I would get elected to a local council and I worked it out systematically, but it took me 15 years to do it. When I speak like this I am picturing the position of any young man who has an interest in politics, who has some small capital but who will not be accepted as a member of a political Party. He cannot get into the Dáil in one jump. He must contest municipal elections and he will not win at the first attempt.

In the first election I contested I got only 500 votes. I waited five years and I got 750 votes. After another three or four years I got 750 votes again, but in a constituency half the size of the previous one, which means I doubled my vote. Finally, I was elected with 1,500 votes but it took me 12 or 13 years to become a member of a council. It was only because I was a member of a council and thus got into the public eye, and got to meet people by thousands, that I secured my chance to go forward for election to the Dáil. Those are the difficulties facing the average individual who wants to become a member of the Dáil and who has not got a seat served up to him on a plate, like many people.

Bad as my experience was, my elections were fought in three- or five-seat constituencies where I had a chance to get sufficient votes to secure the last seat, but a man in my position will now have to contest a one-seat constituency in which there are 20,000 or 30,000 voters, if this proposal is passed. Such a man will be meeting Party candidates backed with newspapers which have daily circulations of hundreds of thousands, aided by hundreds of cars, and supported by thousands of individuals who believe that they can get a rake-off from the Parties. The individual has no rake-off to give. He has only his family and a few friends to support him. I would still fight an election if I were 90, but just because I might do such things, the average fellow might not be prepared to go that far. That is why I am saying that this proposal actually gives the control of politics to a couple of well-organised groups which, it can be said, are a conspiracy against the nation, and are Parties comprised of conspiracies against one another. Despite that, they are all joined in a conspiracy against all outsiders.

That is politics. You do not have to read Machiavelli to understand that. There is not a man here who can say that anything I am saying is not true. We are all nice fellows here but we have to do a lot of hard work and guard ourselves against a lot of wangling, and sometimes we have to do many things of which we are ashamed when we are in politics.

This proposal means that well-meaning outsiders, not wanted by the Parties, will be cut away completely from public life. They will be forced to join conspiracies, not within Parties but outside Parties—perhaps in illegal organisations. Recently, when certain incidents occurred in the North following the release of prisoners, the Taoiseach said that if such incidents were to recur he would have to take strong measures. What alternative is he offering those people? In effect he is saying to them: "You are not going to get in here. We are going to make that impossible." Those people are well meaning young fellows now; they may be misguided but they are the stuff of which the men of 1916 were made. The young fellows who are prepared to take risks without payment are the type who fought for this country. The best type is not the moneyed type. When men come to have responsibilities they do not take risks. In my opinion, these young men are comparable to the men of 1916 and the men of 1798, but the Taoiseach is saying to those people that they will go into jail again and, at the same time, he is telling them he will make it impossible for them to come into the Dáil.

How can this body of people, who represent a certain ideal and certain methods, get a majority in single-seat constituencies? It is a peculiar thing about patriotic elements that they never have a majority backing. We hear a lot about the people, but actually the people do not count. They never did and it is only a bluff to say that they count. They are made to appear to count only when it suits someone. Take 1916—did the people give authority for that? The Parliamentary Party represented the people at that time. They had as much right as the Dáil now has to say they represented the people——

The Deputy is wandering slightly.

He is wandering more than slightly.

I shall try to develop what I was saying. Those people who are threatened with internment are given no option but to conspire on the outside. They are to be deprived of any reasonable chance of coming in here in the future. Under the straight vote system they will never get sufficient backing to get in here because the majority of the people keep away from danger. They might get a chance under P.R. in big constituencies, and they did succeed in three or four areas already. This proposal means the keeping out of well-meaning individuals, and it also means the keeping out of very patriotic—some people may say misguided—men out of public life. To some extent it also aims at keeping out the Labour Party who represent a particular point of view, the organised workers.

We are not an industrial country and therefore it is not possible that the Labour Party here could do what the Labour Party has done in England. England is a country of 40 or 50 million people, with a huge labour force. In this country, as we are not industrialised, the farming community thinks somewhat differently from Labour and therefore there is not likely to be a Labour Government here, in my opinion, for a long time to come. Perhaps when England is beaten and all the unemployed come back and we become a mass of discontented individuals we might have a Labour Government, but that is something for the future.

This proposal could mean that the Labour Party, small as it is, could be reduced to about two or three individuals whose success would largely be based on their personalities. Therefore we are to have a Dáil composed of two groups with no great difference in policy apart from the difference of what one might call the difference of spite—one spiting the other because of what one or other did 30 years ago. That is the type of Dáil we shall have. You will have these two Parties regarding the country as if it was theirs, with the rest counting for nothing, judging by the remarks of Deputy Corry.

It is amusing to hear the arguments advanced about one person being well able to look after his constituency. It amuses me because I can speak only from my own experience and that is what everybody should do. Lots of people speak about what they have read or what somebody else has said. I speak only from my own experience and I say what I think myself. I am in an area where nearly everybody who wants something comes to me. God help them if I lose my seat, although it might please a lot of people here. I see 500 people a week and I defy anyone to contradict that. I could bring them in here to prove it. That will not happen in the future because Deputies will keep out of their areas so that they will get only a few letters. That is the amount of representation and support which the people will get. That generally will be the type of person likely to get nominated after a while.

After a while those who will be nominated will be business people who will be able to put £200 or £300 into the constituency so that they can get support by that practice and by giving a few drinks here and there. When it comes to nominations they will get them and not the hard working fellows who are willing to slave because they are professional politicians, which to my mind are the best type. They are the persons who like to be in the Dáil and who know that if they do not work hard they will not be kept there. The other type of person has it in his power to get the nomination because the hardworking type has just enough money to keep himself going. Deputy Murphy had to go to Canada because he had not his rent. It was not because he could not get anything done in this House.

Take the old Irish Parliamentary Party; it was largely composed of shopkeepers and publicans. There is no man in the British House of Commons who is not earning several thousand pounds a year. Even the Labour members are because they are all union secretaries. All the Conservative Party members are big business men; half of them are members of the legal profession. Speaking of that, I do not think this proposal is so attractive to Fianna Fáil Party members. I was in that Party and because I was I know a lot of the members and they speak quite freely to me. I know the members in the Corporation and I know their views. They do not like to talk about it but what can they do about it? They are taking "pot luck". The members of the Dáil are hoping that they will get back but there will be many misgivings when this is over but it will be too late then; the Taoiseach will have achieved his purpose.

The Government are anxious to get this over; they are anxious to get their steamroller moving. They are anxious to lead the people up the garden path and get the Fianna Fáil Party set in power. It is significant that they do not want delays and that they will not accept proposals of the Opposition. They want to get this done in June and they want to use the Taoiseach's personality. If the Taoiseach goes out of the picture, if he ceases to be a member of the body politic he cannot take part in politics if he is elected President. He is an old man now and I wish him luck but he is more or less out of public life. The Taoiseach has quite a personality and people who would not normally vote for Fianna Fáil keep supporting him. If he departed from the scene tomorrow, many of those people would probably cease to vote at all. Nevertheless, they vote for "Dev." while he is there. Fianna Fáil hope to capitalise on that and to get this measure through in June. If they wait until August it might be bad tactics because they hope that all those people who will vote for the Taoiseach as President in June will vote also in favour of the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill. The propaganda machine will be telling them to do both, but the people might not come near the polls if the Presidential election and the referendum were not held together.

In a sense, this business of trying to use the Taoiseach's personality will have the effect of hamstringing the people for a considerable number of years and it is deceptive. The Taoiseach is to be used but he will pass out of the political scene. The prop which was used to get this measure through will then be taken away, with the Taoiseach's removal, and in effect it will mean that the measure was put over by a swindle. I think that is deceptive.

I shall not say any more because I know it is a waste of time anyway. As I told my colleagues here I always make my point because so far as I can see you have got to do that. In politics it is a matter of publicity and if you do not keep in the public eye then you are out. Fianna Fáil are doing that now and they are going to make sure that they put their side to the public but they will try to see that the other side is kept in the dark. That is why the whole thing is questionable. It is a trick; the people are to be led up the garden path.

I feel that any honest person in this House will agree that if there is one issue which would command an overwhelming majority from the people it is that we have already spent too much time debating this measure. We have been discussing this matter for the past six months, inside and outside the House. No one should object to the issue being put clearly before the people. No one should object to the result of their decision being made known clearly to them also. Therefore, there is no purpose to be served by rehashing these arguments now.

It is said that we who speak on this side of the House, who are identified with what is called the Fianna Fáil Party machine, are imposing our will on the people. That was said several times, but it is a false statement since we cannot, and are not, imposing anything on anybody. We are giving the people an opportunity to make a decision which will have a great bearing on the future of our country. Talk about the "Fianna Fáil Party machine" comes ill from those who are members of other Parties. I presume that there is the Fine Gael Party machine and the Labour Party machine. When they speak of the threat to the country from the Fianna Fáil Party machine, is that done because that political Party is more effective and can command more support than the Parties opposite? If so, it is a pity that they did not strengthen their own Party machines over the past thirty years, so as to do something to combat the influence of the Fianna Fáil Party.

The Taoiseach has been criticised because he brought this matter first before a Fianna Fáil Árd-Fheis and because he said that we must "take off our coats" and work to put it through. Is he to be blamed for saying that? When we look back, we see the opposition there has been to every measure brought in here by the Taoiseach for the betterment of the country; therefore, is there any wonder that he would expect violent opposition to this also? We remember the opposition to the abolition of the post of Governor-General, who was representing a foreign King. We remember the violent opposition to the removal of the oath of allegiance to a foreign king. We remember, still further—and surely we should have expected something else—the violent opposition to the Constitution of 1937. On that occasion, we were bringing in a Constitution which is now admitted, on all sides of the House, to be so sacred that we should not ask the people to alter it in any way.

I remember the dire prophecies made in 1937 of the calamities which would befall the people if they enacted that Constitution. It was said then that it would lead, if not to a de Valera dictatorship, at least to a Fianna Fáil dictatorship. We know the history of the Opposition Parties in regard to these matters. Even in the case of the Economic War, which was fought to retain the land annuities for other purposes, the Opposition went so far that if they did not actually help, they certainly encouraged the enemies of this country.

I do not see how that arises on the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill.

I am mentioning it, only because I want the people to know that the opposition has been there always, whether the matter is for the good of the country or not—and in the cases I have mentioned, history has proved that it has been for the good of the country. I will leave that point, as it is not a subject about which one likes to talk about on any occasion. Even so, the opposition was there. I would say, in passing, that only for the fact that the Economic War was fought and won, we probably would not have been able to stay neutral in the last World War.

That matter is not relevant.

In 1925, in Washington, it was admitted before every nation in the world, that the Irish Parliament here was the only body which could involve this country in war.

If the Deputy makes these points, other Deputies will have to be allowed to reply to them.

I am tempted very much to speak about the Port which I represent. When the Union Jack was flying over that Port, it was hard to say that it was neutral.

The Deputy should get away from that point.

He should be very glad to get away from some of the points he is at.

Is it any wonder that the Taoiseach would envisage the kind of opposition he would meet, when he would go before the people with this referendum; and that he would advise us that, if we wanted to get it through, we would have to do as we did before —take off our coats and work for it?

I maintain that the leader of any country is one who not only actually leads but advises and guides the people towards making good decisions, especially on a matter of fundamental importance to the welfare of the country. What the Opposition Deputies are inclined to overlook is that Éamon de Valera has been the leader of the majority in this country for nearly forty years. He is not just a nominal leader of a Party, which changes leaders to suit the expediency of the political situation; he is the leader and spokesman of the people. When he goes before the people and suggests something, he is not just imposing his will. Surely they are entitled to listen to the man who has guided them wisely and well over the years and whose decisions they regard with respect? I do not think that makes him a dictator or means that his political Party is acting in a dictatorial manner.

It has just made him a calamity.

The only reason the Irish people would have for regret in regard to the past, is when his advice was overborne and the people were led away into doing something he advised against. The consequences have shown that they would have been better served if they had followed his advice.

I personally think the people will also remember—and should remember —that Deputies who speak here cannot be held to be impartial observers. We all know our presence here is due to the system of proportional representation, and for that reason I do not think we are completely impartial in our decision. It has been charged that we are at one in this because we support the referendum. We are a disciplined Party; we have our own opinions, but we obey the will of the majority—and that is democracy as I understand it. It is, of course, and has been, the envy of other Parties. We have all read, from time to time, banner headlines about the disintegration of the Fianna Fáil Party, about jealousy amongst Ministers and about rivalry to get to the top; but the fact is that for thirty years we have been a united Party, under one leader. We feel that we speak for a substantial section of the community. We think also that we are entitled to advise the people as to what would be best for the future of the country.

We could debate various systems here for years to come, as there are so many different systems under which we could have elections; and at the end of that time we would be no nearer agreement. It is not the system that counts but the results we get from it. I, for one, am perfectly satisfied that by abolishing proportional representation and going to the straight vote system the result will be a better and a healthier future for our people.

Speaking in Monaghan on Sunday, April 26th, the Taoiseach was reported as saying:—

"He hated making any changes in the Constitution and would not have proposed this change only that it was fundamentally necessary for the nation's well-being. It was because Fianna Fáil could not count on obtaining an over-all majority in any future election under the present electoral system that they decided to allow the people to decide by what form Dáil members should be elected in the future."

Perhaps the Deputy would give the reference?

As reported in the Irish Independent on Monday, 27th April. That comes to the heart of the whole matter.

That is infallible, of course.

Does Deputy Moloney deny that the Taoiseach uttered those words?

They are infallible according to the Deputy.

Does he deny he uttered those words?

No, but the Deputy says they are infallible.

Deputy Dillon should be allowed to speak.

I am quoting what the Taoiseach said. I am not surprised if Deputy Moloney is a little shocked.

I am not a bit shocked. It is not so easy to shock me.

That consoles me, but for someone less toughminded than Deputy Moloney I would have every sympathy if he were shocked, because that goes to the heart of the matter. The purpose of Fianna Fáil is to wipe out of this House the Labour Party, Clann na Talmhan, Clann na Poblachta and the Independents. The device they seek to employ is to impose on this country by a confidence trick a system of election to Parliament unknown in any democratic country in Europe except in Great Britain and Northern Ireland and adopted in Northern Ireland because the junta there discovered that P.R. preserved the right of the Nationalist minority to be heard and they were determined to suppress it.

Nonsense.

With that end in view they abolished P.R. with the result that the bulk of the seats in Northern Ireland to-day are not contested at all. The purpose of Fianna Fáil in this manoeuvre is to persuade our people to adopt an electoral system, with all our history behind us, in which you can have a constituency where Fianna Fáil get 8,000 votes, Fine Gael get 6,000, Labour get 3,000, Independents get 2,000, and Fianna Fáil get the seat. The Taoiseach shocks Deputy Moloney by avowing the reason he seeks to do that, when speaking in Monaghan he says:—

"I want to persuade the people to do that because Fianna Fáil could not count on an over-all majority in any future election under the present electoral system."

That is what Fianna Fáil describes as stability.

I want to remind Fianna Fáil that big battalions do not bring with them political stability in free society. The substance of stability in free society is the knowledge that justice has been done to all, and that provides the moral basis upon which a sovereign Parliament stands and whence it is entitled to command obedience from the people who have chosen it to govern. That is the basis upon which this Parliament stands and that is the reason that, over the years of disturbance and difficulties through which we have passed, we stand to-day a sovereign, free democracy within 30 years of the conclusion of a bitter civil war. That is something of which we on all sides of the House have every reason to be proud and the danger is that for the futile purpose outlined by the Taoiseach in Monaghan we are going to throw all that away.

There is a number of Deputies here who entered this House with me in 1932 and some who entered it before. Could they ever have anticipated that, in that short time, the atmosphere of this House should have so profoundly changed that with the evolution of tolerant, democratic practice we have had four changes of Government and that still debate and discussion can now proceed on terms and at a level which compare favourably with those of any legislative assembly in the world? When we think of some of the Deputies who have spoken from these benches on my right hand—often to the great temporary irritation of Ministers— and prominent members of the principal Opposition Party and think of the Independents agreeing with neither Party who came and sometimes went, our minds will turn back to the classic figure of the late Deputy Alfred Byrne who, no matter what way the pendulum swung, kept coming back here as an Independent representative of the people of the City of Dublin and was often a thorn in the side of both Governments by his reiterated representations on behalf of the minority of people who believed that they were abandoned but always had one faithful spokesman who loved them and represented them because they were poor.

Was it not an addition and an adornment to this House that such a man had access to our councils? That is all to be swept away and I ask again: do Deputies consider what this House would be like today if those benches where the Labour Party, Independents and the smaller Parties sit, were vacant? Would this be a better House or a poorer legislative assembly? It is no answer to say that all Fianna Fáil does in this procedure is to give the people the right to decide. There are many issues that should not be put to the people by any responsible Party. If Fianna Fáil brought in a Constitutional amendment to abolish trades union in Ireland does Deputy Gus Healy think that issue ought to be put to the people by a democratic Parliament? Does he think that would be a suitable question to invite the people to vote "Yes" upon? Would he agree with me that if you wanted to preserve democratic institutions in this country, no responsible Party should ask the people to vote for a Constitutional amendment prohibiting the existence of trade unions in this country?

I could not visualise that happening.

I agree, but I never could visualise this happening until it did happen. I lived in the belief since 1937 that the leader of the Fianna Fáil Party said he believed in P.R. Let me read for Deputy Healy what he said in 1927 because I think it is impressive:—

"From the outset I have led Sinn Féin in accepting proportional representation on the ground that is was just. I would never say that any minority should be denied representation and, if the object of those who advise the abolition of proportional representation was to wipe out minority representation, they would get no support from me."

I am quoting from a letter which appeared in the Irish Independent of which unfortunately I have not got the date because I cut out the extract.

Could we have what the Deputy said about it?

Yes, I want to deal with that. I have it here. I shall deal with it, and deal with it in language which may cause a shock to even the tough mind of Deputy Moloney. But I shall deal with this matter first. Deputy Healy said he could never have imagined anybody from a democratic Party putting such an issue in a referendum as the abolition of trade unions. But his own leader said he never could imagine anybody asking the Irish people to abolish proportional representation and to deny to any minority the right to representation. But he has done it.

The case I am making is this. Suppose you succeed—and I do not think Fianna Fáil will succeed—in carrying this through by a narrow majority in the country, do you think that makes a contribution to stability—to take from half of the people something they consider to be a great instrument of liberty by a narrow majority for the purpose—as the Taoiseach himself said in Monaghan—of "ensuring that Fianna Fáil will not be in the position that they could not count on obtaining an over-all majority in any future election under the present electoral system." It is because I think Fianna Fáil are doing something which, no matter what way the result transpires, must do the fundamental institutions of this country a great disservice, that I am exhorting them at this eleventh hour to accept our proposal, and that is to pause and examine the existing electoral system to see if it wants to be remedied and where remedies could effectively be employed.

Deputy Moloney or Deputy Healy asked me: "Would you make reference to what you said as recently as 1947?" Gladly. I have already dealt with that in this House. The reference, Sir, is Col. 1714 of Vol. 108 of the Official Report for the 12th November, 1947.

Tell us about 1937.

It was in 1947. I was speaking on the Electoral (Amendment) Bill 1947. It is from that speech that Deputy Corry read the extract. In the course of that speech I said:—

I believe in the single member constituency, with the transferable vote, so that the man who gets the support of the largest number of people living in the constituency will represent the constituency ... Deputy Byrne has pointed out that all the talk about proportional representation—when the vast bulk of the constituencies are three-member constituencies—is just fantastic. It becomes manifest at once that the majority will get two seats and the minority will get one. The Independents, unless they are of exceptional character, will get pushed out altogether.

I urge on the House that, perhaps, the best thing it can do is to pass this Bill in order to manifest to the people the obvious fraud that proportional representation has become in this country. That would be a valuable step towards the abolition of this system of election and the substitution therefor of single-member constituencies with the transferable vote. It would ensure that the individual who ultimately secured the support of the largest numbers of voters residing in the constituency would be elected to represent him in this House...

Is there anything that shocks the Deputy's sense of consistency now? I was speaking on the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1947 in which Fianna Fáil were completing the job of abolishing all five-member and seven-member constituencies and turning them all into three-member constituencies. I pointed out to the House that the people who evolved the system of proportional representation, which requires the seven- or five-member constituency to make it work, were living in a wildly Utopian world, believing that Parties like Fianna Fáil did not exist and would not take the chance at the earliest opportunity of rigging the constituencies, which Fianna Fáil did. First of all, in 1937 they abolished half the five-member and nearly all the seven-member constituencies. Then they came back in 1947 and they abolished all the seven-member and most of the five-member constituencies and reduced the constituencies to three-member constituencies, whereupon proportional representation did not work, because whoever got the majority in a three-member constituency got two seats.

Take my own constituency of Monaghan. Until the Sinn Féin candidate came along, Fianna Fáil got two seats for years, on a minority vote. The moment you got a large majority you got two to one, and proportional representation went out the window. All I said was that the system of proportional representation had broken down, and anyone with any foresight or sense would know that the moment Fianna Fáil got their hold on it they would break it down.

But that is not the only system of proportional representation; and the only thing I am concerned to ensure is that whatever electoral system we have, nobody will be in a position to say that there has been a grand cabal of the big political Parties in this country to wipe out the small Parties and the Independents. That is all. I am ready and willing to sit down with Fianna Fáil to examine proportional representation to find out some system of proportional representation that will work better for us than the existing system but which will preserve that fundamental principle.

I admit that in the discussion and consultation I believe I shall find members of the Fianna Fáil Party who will agree with me and members of my own Party who will disagree with me. I believe there are members of my own Party who do not agree with me about the single transferable vote and the single-seat constituency. I think there are members of the Fianna Fáil Party who would prefer the five-seat constituency within the present system, but let us not be repelled by that. The best of all settlements of a discussion of that kind is a settlement which does not give to any side all its wants. In fact, if there is a settlement of a fundamental dispute of that character from which one Party goes away saying: "We got everything," and the other Party says, "We got nothing," it is a bad settlement. The right and desirable settlement is that which gives a stable and moral basis for all that ensues. It is the settlement from which the majority Party comes back and says, "Well, we had to give something away but, for peace sake, it was better to do that and it was better to get a settlement with goodwill than to get an ideal settlement which left a deep sense of grievance," and from which the minority Party comes away saying: "We did not get all we wanted. They did not give a great deal. They could have done more but the fact that they did not do it is evidence that they wanted to be fair." That is all I want.

What on earth difference does it make to certain individuals whether we are elected to this Parliament or not? There is a number to whom it would be a great advantage not to be re-elected. But here is the state and our pride and glory have been that we have made it work to the confusion of all those who have traduced us through the centuries and have constantly prophesied that there would ultimately arrive the day when, like Kilkenny cats, we would tear one another to pieces. That was their prophecy and their hope. That was the confident ground on which they justified their opposition to independence for this country. They have been completely confounded. They gloried in the fact that the Civil War was launched on the threshold of our existence as a State. They said: "Here is the very disaster we prophesied; here you see the collapse of this people in chaos and confusion." We gathered up the pieces and we restored the State and is it not a model of democracy for the world to behold today?

I ask Deputies who are rushing headlong on this line to pause and think, from our own experience, of what may result from this decision. Deputy Moloney and Deputy Healy have not forgotten that in 1927 their leader was the leader of a minority of a minority. He was the leader of the Sinn Féin Party whose policy was one of abstention from this House and a tacit maintenance of the Civil War position. He summoned that Party together in this city and told them he had come to the crossing of the roads, that he did not believe the policy they were then following could best serve the interests of the State and he proposed to change it. The Sinn Féin Party split and the fragment that adhered to him he called the Fianna Fáil Party. It was then the splinter of a splinter, the minority of a minority.

Sitting in this House was the Cumann na nGaedheal Government and it was in their power at that time by a simple Act of this House, where they had a clear majority, so to change the electoral law as to make it impossible for him to get elected to this House. If they had done it, he would have found himself in the position of being driven back into the policy in which he no longer had any confidence and from which he sought to deliver his own followers.

What would happen Cumann na nGaedheal then?

I agree with the Deputy it would have been disastrous if they had taken up that vindictive, vicious line and what I am begging Deputy Healy and his colleagues is not to do in 1959 what W.T. Cosgrave had the statesmanship and wisdom to forbear from doing in 1927. Remember that was only four years after the end of a bloody civil war and it was followed by five years of furious tendentious debate in this House. Some day Deputy Healy should get the reports of the debates and read there what W.T. Cosgrave and his colleagues faced in those years and faced cheerfully and dealt with, because they brought Fianna Fáil in.

There was an election in 1932 and they handed over Government to Fianna Fáil and—let the tale be told in full—it came ultimately to the election of 1948 and Fianna Fáil handed the Government back. Every prophet of woe and every prophet of chaos who confidently foretold that democracy would not work in Ireland was finally confounded. They had lived to see Cosgrave hand the Government to De Valera and De Valera hand it back to Costello and so the law of the swing of democratic Parliament had been established.

Then came the election of 1951 when we had to hand Government back to Fianna Fáil and the election of 1954 when they gave it back to us. Lastly, there was the election of 1957 when we gave it back to them. Was there anything in that history which did not redound to the credit of the electoral system which we were working? As Deputy Corry said today, there passed in and out here Parties and individuals some of whom remained, like myself, some of whom disappeared of their own will because they found the going too tough or because the electorate grew tired of them and rejected them.

All the time it was true that if there was a quota of voters in the country who wanted somebody to represent them, their right to send him here was never challenged. Those they sent were sometimes eccentric, sometimes able and sometimes foolish, but they were a constant adornment to this Parliament because they were the visible assertion that Dáil Éireann truly represented all our people and they were the guarantee that we in Parliament here had a right to choose a Government and to endow it with full unchallengeable authority to say to everybody in Ireland, with the measure of freedom we here enjoy, that the elected Government of the Irish people is in a moral position to say to all: "Nobody will arrogate to himself the exclusive functions of the elected Irish Government and if they persist in those courses Parliament has equipped the Government to deal with such a challenge whenever it may come."

Has it not been a source of relief and comfort to us who have had to pass through that kind of ordeal time and again to know that we were taking Draconian measures in supporting a Government, and that whether they were Government or Opposition, these benches on my right where the Independents, the Labour Party and the smaller Parties sit, were open to anybody who wanted to make his voice heard and that without holding occupancy of those benches he had no right to claim to represent the people?

We are going to throw away this if the referendum is conceded. Deputy Healy does less than justice to this question when he says, or seeks to persuade the House, that all Fianna Fáil is doing is leaving it to the people to decide. Does he believe that, when his own leader said he thought it inexpedient and wrong to hold the Presidential election and the referendum on the same day lest the issues become confused, and then, discovering that there was a deep, convinced opposition to this proposal to abolish proportional representation, changed his mind and determined to have the referendum on the same day as the Presidential election, and then came to the conclusion that it was necessary to throw himself into the fray in order further to confuse council, that is simply leaving to the people the net issue of which electoral system should prevail?

We should not apologise for urging, even at this eleventh hour, in this House, that something gravely detrimental to the future stability of Ireland is contemplated by the Government, that they have yet time to mend their hand and all we seek to urge them is to try to find common agreement. I put it to Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party: suppose we did find common agreement on some such basis that Fianna Fáil's desire for the single-member constituency would be accepted by all, that our desire for a transferable vote so as to secure rights to minorities would be accepted by Fianna Fáil, and perhaps some other point, if it were earnestly pressed by the Labour Party or a group of Independents, were welded together into a common proposal of which the leaders of every section of the community in Parliament were prepared to say: "All things considered, we think it is a fair and salutary change".

It is certainly true that, while one must be solicitous of the legitimate claims and interests of the minorities, we have a duty also to have respectful regard for the desires of the majority and if the majority come forward and say: "We want a single-member constituency; we think it would be a better thing", that must carry weight. No rational committee of men seeking to find agreement will say that, because the majority wants it, it must go out through the window. Any agreement which consisted of nothing but the desires of the minority would be absurd. Conceive what a different position we would be in today if there was a common agreement on all sides that a change was desirable and was now recommended to the people by all Parties. Would you have the division, the suspicion, the potential resentment which may boil up to the point of hatred, developing in this country?

I have no desire to chew the rag about the Constitution of 1937 or the Constitution of 1922. The Constitution of 1922 is substantially reproduced in the Constitution of 1937, with some frills and furbelows put upon it. But remember that the only time the new provisions in the Constitution of 1937 were brought to the Supreme Court by the Trade Union movement they were overturned.

And the Education Act.

Let us not wangle or tangle about that too much. I believe the Constitution of 1922 was a good Constitution. I believe, in so far as the Constitution of 1937 is a good Constitution, it is because it is a copy of the 1922 Constitution. I will admit that, from the point of view of a professional politician, the frills and furbelows put on the Constitution of 1937 made it a much more attractive picture but let us not get into a tangle as to whether it is on the basis of the Constitution of 1922 or of the Constitution of 1937——

But we did get into a tangle about it at the time.

Exactly, because you tried to spit in the other fellow's eye. Do you follow? If you had sat down and said, "Look, this Constitution of 1922 wants bringing up to date, cannot we do it?"——

How does the Deputy know he is not spitting in our eye now?

No. Let us not get back to what happened in 1937.

The Deputy tried once too often.

That was fought out and I think the Deputy will agree with me that, once the battle was over and the decision was taken, then the Constitution was accepted by all.

And it will be the same again, please God.

I do not agree——

It will.

——because fundamentally there was nothing effective in the 1937 Constitution that was not already present in the 1922 Constitution.

And it would not have been passed without P.R. being included, according to the Minister for External Affairs.

Let us not argue about that. All I am trying to say is, whether P.R. has its roots in the 1922 Constitution or the 1937 Constitution, it is there and it has been made manifest by this debate that, whatever the Deputies of Fianna Fáil may think or believe, it is precious and it is regarded as a precious instrument of liberty to all Parties in the Dáil and Seanad Eireann except the Fianna Fáil Party. That is an important consideration.

Let us face facts. People are always quoting what happens in Denmark, Belgium, France, Germany and the United States of America but none of these countries is Ireland. The fact is that in Ireland we have the Fianna Fáil Party and we have a number of other Parties. The fact is that in the light of that situation you are likely to have in one form or another, Fianna Fáil getting 8,000 votes, Fine Gael, 6,000; Labour, 3,000 and the Independents, 2,000, and Fianna Fáil getting the seat with 8,000 votes when 11,000 have been cast against them.

What about Deputy Cummins's by-election?

That is the very thing. That settled it. All the votes were counted and Deputy Cummins got in and everyone said, "That is fair" and that is all we are asking for.

He got 6,000 votes as against 11,000 votes.

And then the other votes were counted and came to him and we said: "O.K." Deputy Haughey has just rambled into the House in the last 10 minutes. I have been here since 10.30 a.m. I was making a case before the Deputy came in.

He has not missed much.

He missed the point that I was making, that those who believe in the single seat and the transferable vote and those who believe in the present system of P.R., by sitting down together, could probably arrive at a compromise acceptable to all but not the demand of anybody. I am not going to go back over that simply because Deputy Haughey has rambled in at ten minutes to one.

The Deputy has already made that speech 15 times.

I do not think that Deputy Haughey, when he comes in, needs to be rude. Deputy Healy and I have been arguing fiercely across the House and neither of us got rude to each other at all.

And Deputy Healy can be a lot more tough than Deputy Haughey.

I do not want to be rude to Deputy Haughey but he must not be rude to me. Many young Fianna Fáil T.D.s, a bit wet behind their ears, have learned that lesson to their cost. I do not want to say a word offensive to anybody but I am not to be crossed.

I only made a simple suggestion, that the same thing could happen under P.R.

If the Deputy sits here until 5 o'clock he will get his chance to get in and speak and make the single transferable speech, but, ad interim, let me do the talking. When I am finished, the Deputy can start.

The Deputy will not deal with my point.

Deputies

Oh!

Yes; the Deputy ought to shut up. Order demands it. The Deputy's point is that Deputy Cummins got in. The votes of the others were counted. The plan that Fianna Fáil are now seeking to urge the people to adopt is to secure that these votes would not be counted and it is that that we object to.

At the risk of being considered rude, I say the same thing can happen under P.R. as under the straight vote.

Deputy Haughey must allow Deputy Dillon to make his speech.

The one thing that cannot happen is: at the end of an electoral count it cannot be said under P.R. that 11,000 people voted against and 8,000 voted for and the man who had 8,000 has got elected.

That is the fallacy. They did not vote against.

That may be the Deputy's view, but the Deputy ought to learn the lesson that is there to be learned if the Deputy wants to carry on stable institutions here. Stable institutions are founded on the consent of the governed; and to get that consent reason must prevail. Now, the rule of reason demands that the views of everyone be heard and that they be given adequate weight; that the view of the majority shall not be pressed down on minorities simply because the majority has the power to do so. It is a simple lesson, surely, that the hallmark of democratic Government is not the size of its majority but the solicitude it habitually shows for the fundamental rights of the minority.

The danger into which Fianna Fáil is drifting is the illusion that in our society one can substitute for the sound rule I propose the false principle that the big battalion have the right to prevail. They never have prevailed in this country. No Party, however strong, backed by all the resources of the British Empire, has ever succeeded in trampling minorities in Ireland underfoot, and, please God, they never will.

Hear, hear! I do not think the Deputy need worry about them. They are well able to look after themselves.

I am not worrying about the minorities. They will survive. But the majority, in an insane attempt to trample them underfoot, may shake the foundations of this State. That is what I am worried about. I am not apprehensive that you will trample them down; what I am apprehensive about is that you will drive them out of Parliament. And, if they cannot make themselves felt here, where and how will they make themselves felt? And what will we do if they make themselves felt in another way, if they can make the case with verisimilitude that we have excluded them from the Parliament which it was their alternative to enter and employ?

I listened to Deputy Corry this morning resorting to the old disreputable ruse of quoting a paragraph from a speech and seeking to give it a meaning diametrically opposed to that which the whole speech was revealed to mean. And when I contemplate the Fianna Fáil Party presenting this issue to the country for decision, and then injecting it with the Presidential election to confuse the public mind, I cannot help feeling that that demonstrates one of the fundamental things which divide us on this side of the House from Fianna Fáil.

This was strangely illustrated in a recent article by Deputy Briscoe. He described how he was charged to carry confidential papers and was afraid that he might be found with the papers upon him. He put them into the diaper-napkin of a little child and he trusted to the honour of simple British soldiers that they would not strip the child in the presence of its mother; he did that to secure his own safety. And the ruse succeeded. Now I can understand any frightened man having recourse to such a device, because he was afraid; but what shocks me is that, 30 years after, he can look back and boast of it and have it received with the sniggering applause of his Fianna Fáil colleagues.

Extremely indelicate in a discussion on proportional representation.

That is just the kind of thing Deputy Corry tried to do this morning. It is just the kind of thing Fianna Fáil tries to do when they swear before their Maker that it would be wrong to have a Presidential election and a referendum together on so fundamental an issue as this and, on the morrow, growing afraid, they throw in the body——

The baby in the napkin.

——of their Leader into the fray in violation of all the things they said were right, because they were afraid. I have an uncomfortable feeling that, ten years hence, they will greet the recollection of what is happening now with the same sniggering applause with which the story of Deputy Briscoe's infant's nappie is saluted to-day. I do not blame Deputy Booth. He is not comfortable. I do not expect him to be. This is something of which none of us need to be proud and something in respect to which even so sophisticated a member of the Fianna Fáil Party as Deputy Booth does well to remove himself, because he is a little ashamed, if he had the moral courage to admit it; but it might not be safe for Deputy Booth to dissociate himself too emphatically from Deputy Briscoe.

Do not be silly.

Somehow, or other, I have a feeling that Deputy Booth is not enamoured of danger, any more than his despised colleague, Deputy Briscoe.

That is a very foolish remark, indeed, without any foundation at all.

I think it is true.

The Deputy would.

There is one other point I want to make. It has been said that the straight vote system has provided in Great Britain single Party Government, strong and stable, during the last century. That statement is, of course, made by people who know little of history. The fact is that over the past century, for half the time, if not for more, Great Britain has been governed by a Coalition; and, it is only in the last decade, Party Government has been revived in Great Britain under the straight vote system, with majorities which would correspond to a majority of anything from three to ten, or less, in Dáil Éireann.

There is nothing to commend the proposal. There is great danger in pressing it to a referendum. There is everything to be said in favour of getting some agreed proposal for a change, if change be needed. I have never concealed my view that I should like to see a change from the existing system of proportional representation based on a three seat constituency, which I regard as fraudulent and calculated to frustrate the true purpose of P.R., and to substitute therefor a single seat constituency with a single transferable vote, such as that, which Deputy Haughey pointed out, elected Deputy Cummins in the by-election.

I believe if we had the goodwill to sit down together, we could find a solution acceptable to every section of the House for recommendation to the people. I believe it to be a wicked breach of trust for the Fianna Fáil Party to go to our people at the present time and seek to amend the Constitution as they are doing because, in the words of the Taoiseach in Monaghan last Sunday, the Fianna Fáil Party cannot count on obtaining an over-all majority in any future election under the present electoral system.

The issue joined between us in this manner cannot too often be stated because I believe it is the purpose of the Fianna Fáil Party to hide it from our people, as they have practised deception so often before. In this referendum, what Fianna Fáil seek to do is to wipe out all minorities in Parliament by providing an electoral system calculated to ensure that in a single-seat constituency, if Fianna Fáil get 8,000 votes, Fine Gael 6,000 votes, Labour 3,000 votes and Independents 2,000 votes, Fianna Fáil get the seat.

The last point I want to make is: Let us face the fact that we have in Ireland the Fianna Fáil Party as a large and powerful electoral machine. Let us face the fact that in Ireland the Opposition is divided. It is divided into Fine Gael, Labour, Clann na Talmhan, Clann na Poblachta and the Independents. That is the picture in Ireland. It is irrelevant to talk about other countries. That is the picture for which we have to legislate. That is the situation in which we have to operate to get a Parliament that will truly represent the people, that will command their support, and demand their obedience for the Government chosen by them.

I assert that with that situation present to their minds, in pursuit of the purpose proclaimed by the Taoiseach at Monaghan, Fianna Fáil deliberately seek to persuade our people to accept an electoral system which must operate to favour the single bloc Party, to extinguish, in so far as it can, the small minority Parties, and to prevent the emergence of an alternative Government to themselves. I implore Deputies to waken up to the fact that you cannot deceive a free people for ever. Parliament is Parliament so long as it consists of a government and an alternative government. Stormont has ceased to be a Parliament; nobody believes in the democracy of the Stormont Parliament. There is not there an alternative Government; there never will be; there cannot be. The territory represented in Stormont was so designed as to ensure that there never would be an alternative Government to the Ascendancy established by the act of Partition. They did not bring in the nine counties of Ulster; they brought in only six counties because that was the maximum area they could consolidate into a place where there would be a facade of democratic Government, with an entrenched ascendancy.

I beg the Fianna Fáil Party to waken up to this: if they, by their electoral confidence-trick, persuade our people to create a situation which in Dáil Éireann will leave us with a Government but with no alternative Government, on our record of the past 30 years, the Dáil will carry on for some time and continue to be accepted as a democratic Parliament, but, ultimately, it will acquire the moth-eaten, fungoid appearance of Stormont, housed in its magnificence but functioning before the world as a despised fraud. This Parliament is respected all over the world and at every international gathering, and it is housed in accommodation which is poor and wretched when compared with the magnificence of Stormont, but what is inside this Chamber lives and breathes and functions as the vindication of a free people to choose their own legislators; and what lives in Stormont is a monument to an effete Ascendancy sustained by the subsidies and arms of an outside power.

Are we to take from ourselves, by our own act, the quality which gives us life, or should we ask the people to do it? On the day Dáil Éireann constitutes itself on the lines which characterise the Parliament in Stormont, our decline will begin. What argument based on reason does anyone imagine will persuade the Ascendancy in Belfast to surrender their ascendancy to the common good? Do we believe ourselves so far superior in moral or political status that if such an ascendancy is once established here, argument will persuade it to concede that its perpetuation is contrary to the national interest. If you once establish an ascendancy in this country, you have no grounds for believing that any succeeding generation of politicians in this House will have the vision and the wisdom, they themselves being in the enjoyment of ascendancy, to say that a permanent ascendancy is inconsistent with democratic freedom. We must take steps to restore the swing. We must look back and remember that when Mr. Cosgrave did that in 1927, it meant that he never again held the office of Taoiseach, but like those who went before him he had faith in the people. He knew, if it meant the surrender on his part of the prospect of enduring power, it bestowed on the people the stability that ensured that the democratic institution would continue to govern.

I see an analogy there with which I should like to end. The people who fought the Land War never hoped to enjoy the benefits of their victory. They knew it probably would not be realised until they themselves were dead but they were confident that they were passing on to posterity a foundation of security on which they could build with dignity and freedom and independence for our people. They were supremely right because they had faith in what came after, but I am afraid that this manifest lack of faith in our people freely to govern ourselves, the passionate desire to elect themselves into an ascendancy, is betraying Fianna Fáil into the supreme betrayal of our people. What terrifies me is that the injection into this disputation of the person of the Taoiseach as a candidate seeking for votes, may so confuse our people that, in a fatal moment, they will degrade Oireachtas Éireann to the status of the ascendancy in Stormont.

I think it is because Fianna Fáil have not thought of these things that they have put their hands to this deplorable work. There is still time to stop, think again, and substitute for this shocking proposal an alternative which could be offered to the people on the authority of us all, which would ensure that whatever Government succeeded this one and the one after that, would be fortified not only by the claim, but by the knowledge, that they had the right to govern in the name of the free people of Ireland.

I believe I was the first to make the suggestion that, since we were faced with the Presidential election, the referendum should take place on the same day. I have received severe criticism for that suggestion— indeed, listening to Deputy Dillon, I felt I might almost blush—but it is true to say that I also suggested to the Taoiseach that he should have a general election on the same day under proportional representation, the system under which he was elected to a Government more stable than any other Government since the birth of the nation. I even went further and suggested that the municipal elections, not due for another 12 months, should be advanced and also held on the same day, if for no other reason than to save the Exchequer the colossal amount of money these elections cost the nation. At that time, I was not aware that our finances were in such a good state that we could satisfy ourselves that we were solvent.

I have no apology to make for making that suggestion and if it may be taken as advantageous to the Taoiseach by any section, or by any individuals, I wonder, if the Fine Gael Party were in office at the moment, would they not choose the same standard-bearer for the Presidency and, if it were considered advantageous to have the election of the President and the referendum held on the same day, would they not do that? However, added to that suggestion—be it an excuse—I did suggest that if the Fianna Fáil Party were returned to power in the general election to be held on the same day, the referendum would be then accepted, and that I felt sure that no Party in the House would question the wisdom of that alteration to the Constitution in the future.

Deputy Dillon today spoke at length regarding the Civil War and I feel if this discussion were to be prolonged, with the bringing back of the memory of that tragic period, it would be better that the discussion conclude and this matter be allowed go to the people. I am satisfied that the abolition of P.R. will be advantageous to the Fianna Fáil Party. I am not quite sure that I am prepared to accept Deputy Dillon's ratio of 8,000, 6,000, 3,000 and 2,000 for the Independents. It is quite true that it may happen that way, but, at least, the people are being given an opportunity of deciding what they want. Rather than hold up this House. I consider it would be more advantageous for those opposed to this to do their campaigning outside, without any references such as have been made, because I never intend to feel apologetic as a Civil War participant. While I have described it as a tragic period, the pathos expressed by the last speaker regarding the loss of the Six Counties was certainly uppermost, and that loss was an outstanding factor, in the minds of many who participated therein.

If the Taoiseach did listen to my suggestion, I am pleased. I am not sufficiently egotistical to consider that he did, but I should like to use this occasion to say I have no apology to make for that, and I had no ulterior motive in suggesting that the Presidential election and the referendum should take place on the same day. I should also like the Press to acknowledge or take note of the fact of the additional suggestion that was made at the same time, that the Taoiseach should call a general election, go to the people once again under the system by which he was elected, because it has been stated by the Minister for External Affairs that it was wrong and unjust for an Opposition to go to the people without setting down a policy and a Cabinet before they went to them. It was also wrong, in my opinion, that the Fianna Fáil Party, in going to the people on the last occasion, did not indicate that, if elected, they would abolish P.R.

It is not my intention to speak at any length. I propose to confine myself to the issue before the House, that is, the motion to deem the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill as having passed into law, notwithstanding its amendment and subsequent defeat in the Seanad by a small majority. There is also, of course, the amendment to the motion, that the subject matter of the Bill be referred to a joint committee of both Houses of the Oireachtas to examine and report upon its political, economic and social implications.

I propose to be relevant, so far as I can, to the motion and the amendment. It has been suggested, even as late as in this present debate, that this Government are seeking to bulldoze this measure through the Oireachtas. On a number of occasions I have asked in what respect this charge can be justified, since the Government are acting strictly within the spirit and the terms of the Constitution enacted by the people themselves. When the Constitution was enacted the people deliberately recognised the Dáil, its democratically elected House of Representatives, as the authority which would enact legislation for and on behalf of the people.

They also decided that a Second House should be set up but limited its authority. The Dáil is elected under the widest possible system of universal suffrage. The Seanad is elected under a certain democratic system but with very limited suffrage. It was for that reason, no doubt, that the people restricted the powers of the Seanad. The Dáil, which as I have said, is democratically elected, enacted this measure, again within the terms and the spirit of the Constitution, and sent it forward to the Seanad. The Seanad, having debated it at considerable length, in the first instance amended the Bill in such a manner as defeated the fundamental purpose of the Bill and then, inexplicably, threw out its own amended Bill—admittedly by only one vote. Nevertheless, under the terms of the Constitution the Bill comes back to the Dáil after the prescribed period and, within the tenets of the Constitution, the Dáil is now asked to regard this Bill as being deemed to have passed both Houses of the Oireachtas, notwithstanding the fact that it failed to secure the required majority in the Seanad.

I should like to ask again in what respect it is suggested that the Government are bulldozing this measure through. If they are bulldozing, the bulldozing is being done, in the first instance, in full accordance with the will of the people, as expressed by the majority who enacted the Constitution, and secondly, by the majority given to the Fianna Fáil Party so that they had sufficient seats in the House to claim an over-all majority. That is democracy exercised and implemented in its full sense and with its true purpose.

The amendment to the motion is another form of opposition and an attempt at delay, by the combined Opposition Parties, in bringing this measure to the people. The amendment seeks to set up a Joint Committee of the Dáil and Seanad to examine the implications—political, social and economic—that the measure might have. The justification for that, as put forward by the Opposition, is that the people at large should be given adequate opportunity to examine the seriousness of this measure. Nobody on this side of the House has in any way sought to minimise the seriousness of this measure. We have tried to present it to the people as something not only affecting their fundamental rights, but affecting their economic and political future in such a way that if they are to reject it, it may well prejudice these rights, the rights of the people to rule by majority and the economic future which they are entitled to expect from the guidance and the programme of a democratically elected Government.

We believe that since this measure was first mooted, in last October, and since it was first introduced in the Parliamentary manner for debate in the Oireachtas, sufficient thought has been given to it, not only by Deputies and Senators but by independent organisations throughout the country and by the people as a whole, to enable them to form a fair opinion of what the issue is that is being put before them. I fail to see in what manner a joint committee of the Houses of the Oireachtas could further enlighten the people in any way. All the documentation that bears upon the issue has been referred to and quoted at length in these Houses over the past six months; quoted at length at various symposia organised by some political Parties, by certain voluntary organisations and by debating societies. Due publicity has been given to any and every worthwhile contribution on the subject and I fail to see how any further research by a committee, such as that which the Opposition seeks to set up, can throw further light on what the people are being asked to decide.

I am not going to suggest that the setting up of this committee is a reflection on the capacity of the people to make up their minds but I think it would, in a certain respect, serve to conceal the issues and the pros and cons that have been thrashed out here in the open. We all know from our own experience the method by which commissions and committees entrusted with special tasks operate. Their deliberations are carried on largely in private. They seek evidence and submissions from outside individuals and bodies, and if possible, they come to an agreed recommendation, or a recommendation with reservations, or with some minority recommendations as well. All that is condensed in a form in which many people will have little or no opportunity of assessing the arguments put forward within that committee or commission for its agreement with recommendations, or with reservations, at the end of its deliberations.

Surely the best manner in which a subject of such public importance could be debated is to have it openly and publicly discussed, as it has been here over the past six months? I believe that nothing new can be brought into the arguments on one side or the other, especially after such a protracted period of debate both here and elsewhere.

These are the two issues before us —whether the Dáil will decide, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, and deem this Bill to have passed both Houses of the Oireachtas, or whether it will agree to this amendment—which is a delaying amendment, which seeks to provide for the people knowledge which has been provided already in the most open and most democratic fashion possible.

Nevertheless, in case I may be accused of sidestepping what underlies the motion and the amendment we are discussing here today, I think I should refer in brief to the whole purpose of these debates in both Houses of the Oireachtas. The purpose is to change an electoral system which we have had since 1921, as put forward in the Government of Ireland Act of 1920. It is a form of proportional representation which, as far as I know, is peculiar to this country and one or two other territories in the world, one being Tasmania, I think. I forget the other country in which the system operates. It is an electoral system, and, as such, is an instrument of the people, whereby they can secure the election to Parliament of their representatives and whereby, through those representatives, they can get a Government with the power and authority to govern the affairs of the country for a reasonable period.

The system has worked well, reasonably well, in this country over that period, that is, over the past 37 or 38 years. For that reason, it is suggested to us that we should leave well enough alone. It, however, has been pointed out that there were certain factors, and one dominant factor, which enabled the system to work well here down through those years. That factor was the main division of political thought between our people which emerged as a result of the Civil War. It has been contended, and with some justification, that that dividing line will gradually become dimmed and blurred, with the result that the P.R. system will not tend to make for the stability in government which we, fortunately, have enjoyed over that period and which is likely to disappear now unless we revise our electoral system.

It is suggested that minorities may not get a fair show under the proposed alternative system. When we ask what form of minority the Opposition Parties refer to, they usually refer to a religious minority or to a minority which, even under P.R., disdained this House and adopted an attitude whereby they abrogated their right to forward their points of view here. The Labour Party does not regard itself as a minority. They feel they represent what they describe as the working classes of the country and which comprise by far the largest adult majority in the country. The fact is that these working classes prefer to be represented—to some extent, at any rate—by other of the existing Parties here. Therefore, to suggest that the Labour Party represents a minority is fallacious. I do not know what other minorities the Opposition Parties have in mind.

If the argument is that minorities must be represented, that we should have a system whereby every minority capable of securing what would amount to a quota of votes, would have a right to representation here— in other words, that we should have a truly proportional system of election —in order to bring that about, the country should be one constituency. Then, if the quota is about 7,500, a minority interest which can secure, from one end of the country to the other, that quota, should be entitled to representation here. I am sure most Deputies would not agree with that as a desirable system. Under it, there would be such a plethora of representation as to make reasoned and reasonable government impossible.

We suggest, therefore, that in order to assist the people to carry out the function to be achieved by an electoral system, we should give them the opportunity of deciding whether or not they adopt a simple form of election which will give reasonably stable and responsible government. Not only will such a system give reasonably stable and responsible government, but it will give a reasonable Opposition as well, an Opposition capable of forming an alternative Government.

It has been suggested that, if they make this change, the people will dilute their authority. I suggest it would strengthen their authority over changes of Government and strengthen their influence over their representatives. If a Government who have lost favour with the people put themselves forward in a succeeding election, I believe that, under the straight vote system, the people will have a more effective means of displacing that Government from power than they have at the present time.

Let us imagine a situation—as it might well develop—where, under the proportional representation system, there would be in this House on the Government side a combination of Parties, with another combination on the Opposition side. If the people decide to change the Government then, they will be in no way in a position to anticipate what form the alternative Government is to take. The alternative Government may take the form of some elements in the existing Government, with one or two accretions from the Opposition side. It might well be that the dominant influence in the alternative Government would comprise largely the dominant influence in the Government which the people have decided to get rid of. Therefore, from the point of view of making the electoral system a potent weapon in the hands of the electorate, I think the straight vote is the best means whereby that can be achieved.

Deputy O'Higgins, in his address last night, in so far as I heard it, made a reasoned and reasonable contribution. He said that we on this side of the House had abandoned our references to continental countries and our comparisons of what has developed in some of them with what might well develop here. I would not for a moment suggest that the conditions obtaining in many of these Continental countries are similar to those obtaining here; but I assert that the science of Government and the science of politics are largely the same in every country. The reactions of the people to situations will naturally differ. The reaction of the people of Holland and of Sweden, when in recent months they were for long periods without a Government, was such as to give time to the existing Parties to combine, to bargain, if you like, and ultimately to provide a Government; but there were definitely periods when those countries in recent times were without a Government. I believe that it would be a serious situation for us if that occurred here. That situation developed in those countries because of their proportional representation system.

Again, I would offer no apology for referring to the situation which developed in France, before the advent to power of General de Gaulle. The French Assembly alone had power to dissolve Parliament. The French Assembly was composed of various different Parties, and from them somebody had to form a Government, as those Governments fell in rapid succession. The French became prisoners of their own Parliamentary institutions. Until General de Gaulle came along and freed them from the shackles of those institutions, they were unable to form a reasonably stable Government that could bring together again the people of France in order to advance their economy.

There was a time shortly before General de Gaulle came to power when the officer in command in Algeria rang up the French Prime Minister for instructions as to what he might do in view of the fact that the hordes were marching on the headquarters of the Army. He was told there was no Prime Minister to give him instructions, but fortunately the particular general was able to act in a self-appointed, caretaker fashion until such time as M. Pflimlin was given some degree of authority which he in turn passed on to General de Gaulle and so avoided what would have been a very serious situation, not only for Algeria, but ultimately for France itself.

No matter how much we try to argue that conditions in these countries differ from ours, these are situations for which we cannot but have regard and situations which have been largely brought about by the electoral systems which are proportional in those countries and which I readily admit are not similar to the system we have had here for the past 37 or 38 years. Therefore, if during the course of the debate here, some members of our Party have not referred to the situation that has developed, and might well develop further, in continental countries, it is not because we have abandoned the argument as something that ought be borne in mind in considering our own electoral system.

Deputy Dillon argued very forcibly in favour of representation of minorities but did concede that in no way was he advocating government by minority. He himself had an unfortunate experience of that in recent years. The last inter-Party Government was composed of a certain number of Parties and we had one other Party, Clann na Poblachta, who declined to take part in the Government but decided to support it. They had three Deputies and when the 1956 economic crisis came, they were probably worried about their own political future and decided to give notice to the then inter-Party Government that they intended to withdraw their support. They did in fact withdraw their support, with the result that the then Taoiseach felt obliged to dissolve the Dáil and hold a general election.

That was the extreme example of government by minority, the extreme example of the tail wagging the dog. Such a situation might well have been created on a number of successive occasions under P.R. Were it not for the fact that the people had on that occasion and on the former occasion, when the Coalition Government broke up, a reasonable and unified Opposition to which to turn, the situation we seek to avoid by asking the people to change the electoral system might well have developed. If there were, instead of the unified Fianna Fáil Opposition, a combination of Parties such as comprised the Government, we might have had, and probably would have had, an embarrassing and dangerous succession of coalition Governments already.

It is for that reason we are asking the people now to face the issue in a realistic fashion, to examine the situation as it has been presented to them and, I would suggest, presented very exhaustively and effectively, and to decide whether they want to take advantage of this situation that might never again present itself to preserve a P.R. system or change to the single non-transferable vote and single member constituency.

If they approach the matter realistically, the people must realise that the issue is not only bound up with the existence or survival of political Parties but the existence and survival of the nation as an economic unit. Stability in government is one of the fundamental factors that will provide an economic future for this or any other country. I am convinced from my examination of the events that have taken place and of the possibilities of events taking place, that P.R. will foster a multiplicity of Parties that will inevitably lead to a succession of coalition Governments.

The straight vote will have the effect of providing a political Party with the opportunity of getting a sufficient majority to form a responsible Government, a Government with unity of purpose bound together by certain fundamentals and capable, out of their own deliberations, of forming and pursuing a policy which will give that degree of stability and which will be the foundation of the degree of economic progress we desire.

As I have said on a number of occasions, while this measure might appear, in the first instance, to be of some benefit to Fianna Fáil, it is not designed to preserve Fianna Fáil as such. I am one of those who came into Fianna Fáil many years after the civil war, who did not remember the wide differences or the fine differences that divided the people in the early 1920's but who having looked at the political scene objectively, decided that since I was entering politics, the policy and the programme adumbrated by Fianna Fáil was the one that approximated most closely to what I felt ought to be done by parliamentary means for the benefit of the Irish nation.

Everything Fianna Fáil have done has not met with my approval, any more than, I am sure, everything that other organised Parties have done has met with the approval of their individual members, but those of us who are in organised Parties are in them because they have certain ideals which have attracted us and which we hold dear, and as long as our Parties act within the framework of those ideals, they will continue to have our allegiance. Therefore, Fianna Fáil as such or any other political Party, is not, to the average thinking Deputy, anything sacrosanct.

The important thing is that a group of people who are motivated by ideals and who are bound together by fundamental principles will be able to present themselves as a political Party to the electorate. When a majority of the electorate seeking a government see in that political Party or organisation something desirable, it is only then such Parties and organisations have a right to exist. Under this system, no single Party can say whether, if the new system comes, it can maintain whatever measure of support it has now, but the fact is that the people will know what group or individuals they will support. They will know roughly what form the Government is likely to take and they will know with reasonable certainty, as they are entitled to know, who the leader of that Government is likely to be. These are facts which will appeal to the average citizen in his approach to the issue. These are fundamentals for which the average voter will have high regard when he comes to exercise his franchise on this occasion.

It has been suggested that we have no right to ask the people to decide this issue. Surely only a Government supported by a majority Party will be able to exercise that right? Nobody has a better right to make up their minds than the people themselves. No commission—no matter how widely representative—has the right to put forward a ready-made scheme for the people's acceptance that will have the approval of all the political Parties. It is far better that proportional representation, with all its virtues and weaknesses, and the straight vote, with all its faults and virtues, should be presented to the people to enable them to make up their minds whether or not to change this instrument of democracy, the electoral system we now have.

I want to ask again the question I have put to Fine Gael and the Labour Party on a number of occasions. They contend that under the present system different political Parties and groups will be represented in the Dail. It is reasonable to assume therefore that they support the idea of inter-Party or coalition government in the future. After the defeat of the last Government, one of the units supporting the Labour Party—the unit which I think is the dominating factor in Labour thought—decided that never again would Labour take part in a coalition with Fine Gael. If proportional representation is retained and Fine Gael and Labour are returned with a greater number of Deputies than Fianna Fáil or any other Parties, will they then combine and form a coalition or inter-Party Government or will Labour decide to adhere to the solemn decision already taken that they never again will combine with Fine Gael? In the context of this debate and of the issue before the people, that is a fair question to put. It is fair also to ask the people themselves to cogitate on whether they will deliberately create a position of uncertainly—perhaps uncertainty leading to chaos in the formation of a Government—by rejecting the straight vote and maintaining the present system which will bring about an unknown degree of stalemate in the formation of Government that should be avoided at all costs.

The Minister for Health has posed the question, and I think he posed it previously in the Seanad——

And was not answered.

——and the question which the Minister for External Affairs has persistently asked here is: what would the Labour Party do in the event of Parties other than Fianna Fáil having an overall majority? I do not think that Fianna Fáil or the Minister for Education, as members of this House, can shed their responsibilities by posing that question to the Labour Party or any other Parties. May I ask a similar question? If in the event of no Party having an overall majority, what would Fianna Fáil do? That is a question I asked the Minister for External Affairs on several occasions during the debate here previously and he refused to answer. I suggest it is a question that just cannot be answered now. Fianna Fáil will have to make up their minds on what they will do in that eventuality. The Labour Party, Fine Gael, Clann na Poblachta and every Party will have to make up their minds how they will behave in the event of no single Party being able to form a Government.

In 1948 and 1954, we decided, in deference to the unanimous wishes of our Party, that we would combine with Fine Gael or other Parties to form a Government. I believe that at the time that was the will of the people who voted for us. If Fianna Fáil argue it was not the will of the people in 1948, certainly it was their will in 1954. I have no apologies to make for it. It is a situation that will confront not only the Labour Party but every single Party in this House, including Fianna Fáil, and I shall refer to it later. The introduction of the straight vote does not necessarily mean we will not have coalitions in this country. It may be designed by the Taoiseach to try to ensure that there never will be coalitions, but the fact is we certainly can have them and there is a great possibility that, after another few elections, there will be necessity for a coalition.

However, I think the net point in this motion is the rejection of the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill by the Seanad. Like Deputy Kyne, I was amazed last night that the Taoiseach, in a very brief speech, was so contemptuous—not so much of the Dáil as of the Seanad itself—in not giving us a more detailed survey of the circumstances under which this Bill was rejected by the Seanad. There was no attempt to explain the significance of it. After the Seanad rejected the Bill, the people became more and more confused about the position and the functions of the Seanad or the lack of them.

As far as I could gather from the Minister for Health last night, he seems to be all out to have the Seanad abolished. I would not disagree with him on that, but up to now it has been the policy of himself and his Party to retain the Seanad, and retain it in its present form. People are not talking so much about the change from proportional representation to the straight vote, but are asking themselves: What is the use of the Seanad? That is uppermost in their minds and it is a question that will have to be answered very soon. I hold no brief for the Seanad, especially as at present constituted and as I think has been proposed in the report published by the Minister for Local Government, following the report of the Commission he set up. But we must confess that the Seanad is certainly made up of a fairly good cross section of the community. It was so designed. It is representative of agriculture in all its branches, of business people, of industry and trade unions and even of politicians, many of them. It is representative of education and the arts, and in addition the Taoiseach according to the law has the power, and has used it, to nominate eleven people to be members of the Seanad.

I feel that a discussion on the Seanad per se would not be relevant to this motion.

I am only relating public opinion to the proposal to change from P.R. to the straight vote. The Minister for Health, speaking last night, did not seem to think that the rejection of the Bill by the Seanad was of any significance. He said that the Bill was rejected by the barest majority, a majority of one. I do not think that is anything for the Minister to boast about or make a point about, especially when we remember that he became Minister for Finance in 1951. I think, when his Government was elected by a majority of two votes. A majority is a majority whether one or 21. Two votes gave Fianna Fáil power in 1951 and they took the power to abolish food subsidies. That was a pretty drastic step for a Government elected by what the Minister for Health would consider to be a near approach to "the barest majority", two votes. I think it would be of much more interest and concern to the people if they had referred to them in a referendum the question of whether or not the Seanad should be abolished. If that were put to them I think there would be an overwhelming majority in favour of its abolition especially in view of the treatment——

The question of the future of the Seanad does not arise.

My remarks regarding the Seanad and its abolition are purely incidental and I do not propose to pursue the subject. But we have been told here about the importance of this referendum and how important it is to the people that such a question should be referred to them and that this is the correct democratic method to use because the proposal to change the electoral system could have such an effect on the whole country. Surely it would be logical to refer other things to the people which they regard as even more important. The people were never asked to say whether the food subsidies should be abolished, whether we should buy jet planes, or whether we should revise the licensing laws.

In any case, it seems this question will go to the people but, in my opinion, the issue has been deliberately confused. Deputy Carroll, an Independent, made certain suggestions in his speech which, in my opinion, would confuse the issue still more. Not alone does he want a referendum and a Presidential election but he wants a Dáil election, county council elections, corporation elections, urban council and town commissioner elections as well. I do not think anybody will agree to such a stupid suggestion. The fact that the Presidential election is being held in connection with the referendum makes it very confusing for the people and I think it is deplorable that they should be held on the same day. It may be convenient for politicians and their Parties to carry on the Presidential election campaign and speak at the same time in support of a Presidential candidate and for or against the referendum issue but I think the extra cost of a separate election would be well worth while. It is false economy when one considers that an election would cost £60,000 to £80,000 not to have separate elections. I suggest the money now being remitted in respect of the dance tax could be used. The remission could have been postponed and the dance tax collected could well be devoted to holding a Presidential election on a different date from that of the referendum.

I think it was last Sunday that the President made a plea to political leaders and Parties and to the people to forget the past and come together. In my opinion—and I do not want anybody to agree with me—I believe the issue now being put before the people in the form of a referendum tends to divide them again. The fact that a Presidential election is thrown in worsens that position very much. I firmly believe, and I do not think many in the House would disgree, that the merits of proportional representation as against the straight vote will not be the over-all consideration in this referendum. Much time as we have spent in discussing the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, I think the people are uninformed and will still be uninformed when the referendum is held on or about June 16 or 17. The issue then, so far as the referendum is concerned, will be whether you are "for Dev." or "for MacEoin."

I do not blame political Parties for treating the referendum on that basis. I appreciate the loyalty there is to the Taoiseach in the ranks of Fianna Fáil; I appreciate the loyalty and admiration there is for Gen. MacEoin on the Fine Gael side of the House. The people will not be asked to argue for or against proportional representation or the straight vote. People who have been supporters of Fianna Fáil will be asked: "Are you going to let Dev. down now? You must vote for Dev and you must vote ‘yes' in the referendum." So far as Fine Gael is concerned the issue will be put this way: "You must stand by Fine Gael now, stand by Sean MacEoin, the blacksmith of Ballinalee, and vote ‘no' in the referendum." It is inevitable that that should happen.

Here is a situation where the Taoiseach has been an important figure in Irish politics over the last 40 years. He has led his Party during most of that time. He has been Taoiseach for 21 years and here is the last thing he is asking the Irish people—to elect him as President of the country. There will be an emotional appeal there, a passionate appeal, especially to Fianna Fáil supporters not to let him down in the last days of his life, now that he is considering retiring from politics.

That may be a good thing when there is merely a Presidential election involved; it may be all right when it is merely a question of "a vote for Séán MacEoin" or "a vote for Dev" but on the same day we are also asking the people to vote in a referendum which suggests that our electoral system should be radically changed. For that reason I say it is wrong and bad for the Taoiseach and his Government to decide, as they have done, to have the two issues determined on the same day.

It has been said, in what was a rather heated and controversial debate in the Dáil when the original Bill was going through, that there was an element of dictatorship in the Government's proposals. Many people laughed at that. Most of us took it with a grain of salt. The Minister for Health is a fairly influential man in the Government. He has held very important posts and, if circumstances permitted, I suppose he would be one of the nominees for Taoiseach, assuming that the present Taoiseach were to retire from politics. The Minister for Health and Social Welfare, in a speech in Dundalk or Drogheda some days ago, said that it would be a dreadful thing if Mr. de Valera's ability and experience were lost to Irish public life. I do not know whether or not he said, "lost to the Fianna Fáil Party," but he said, "lost to public life." For that reason, he says that people should vote for him to send him to the Park as President. We ought to be realistic. What real political ability and experience are needed to be in the Park? I do not want or mean to depreciate in any way Mr. de Valera's ability or experience or that of His Excellency Mr. Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh, the President.

The Presidential election and the qualifications of the candidate are not before us.

I want to tie it up with the referendum and the proposed change from proportional representation to the straight vote. Therefore, coincident with this proposal to change the system of election, is it also proposed to change the powers of the President? Does the Minister for Health anticipate that the new Presisident, if he happens to be the Taoiseach, will wield a new power similar to the power the Minister for Education said General de Gaulle now exercised as President of the French Republic?

That does not arise on the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill.

The Minister for Education told us that General de Gaulle was installed as President of the French Republic and made certain changes, including a change in the electoral system, and I wonder whether or not there is any significance in the Taoiseach's ambition to go to the Park and his proposal to change the system of election. Apropos of the speech of the Minister for Health in Drogheda or Dundalk with regard to his ability and experience, I would suggest that, if the Taoiseach wants to retire from office, he can do like Churchill and be a backbencher.

He would not do that.

Or, if the Fianna Fáil Party want to avail of his ability and experience, he could be a member of the Cabinet as a Minister without portfolio. I have no desire to see the Taoiseach lost to the Fianna Fáil Party, if the Fianna Fáil Party want him, but I get suspicious when there is such a tremendous campaign to try to install him in the Park, especially when one considers the type of speech made by the Minister for Health in Dundalk or Drogheda and that made by the Minister for Education this morning with regard to the great changes made in France on the appointment of General de Gaulle as President of the French Republic.

None of this has any relevance to the matter before the House.

It should be said again, as Deputy Carroll said this morning, that it seemed this time last year that nobody had any criticism to make of the system of proportional representation. No county council, chamber of commerce, trade union, business association, manufacturer or section of the Church criticised the system of proportional representation. Then, out of the blue, we got a suggestion from one man and one man only, the Taoiseach, not speaking on behalf of his Party, because he had not got the permission of his Party at that time, that it was time to change from P.R. to the straight vote.

The Minister for Education said that a change to the straight vote would make for stability and would prevent the establishment of coalition Governments in future. As I said at the beginning of my speech, I do not think it would. If, for example, there will be 120 single member constituencies in the 26 Counties, if this proposal is accepted by the people, could not the result of an election mean that there would be three Parties in the House composed of 40 members each? What would Fianna Fáil do in that situation? Would the Minister for External Affairs or the Minister for Education ask the Labour Party what they were going to do and were they going to coalesce with Fine Gael? Would not the Fine Gael Party or the Labour Party be entitled to ask Fianna Fáil what they were going to do? Would there be a stalemate? Would we have to go to the country again and perhaps get a situation on the next occasion also that no Party would have an overall majority?

Or draw a name out of the hat?

In such a situation, Fianna Fáil also have a responsibility. We had that responsibility in 1948 and again in 1954, and we did what we believed was the right thing. Apropos the appeal that was made by the President with regard to unity in the country, when he was speaking at Ashbourne last Sunday, the Labour Party more than any other Party in this House have demonstrated that they are prepared to forget the past. It is not from the Labour Party that the remarks, retorts about Blueshirts, Greenshirts, the blowing up of bridges, murders or any aspect of the Civil War come, because we believe that that is a period of history that ought to be forgotten. Irrespective of what Parties have been, if they have sensible suggestions to make, if they have what we believe to be good policies, we shall support them. We do not oppose merely for the sake of opposition, merely because the suggestions come from Fianna Fáil, Clann na Poblachta or Fine Gael. We oppose when we believe the suggestion is not good; we support when we believe that the suggestion or policy is good.

It has been suggested on numerous occasions here that the abolition of proportional representation will mean that after the next election and for a long time to come, Fianna Fáil will be by far the majority Party in this House. That may be the position after the first election or even the second or third election, but, eventually, the people will get wise to Fianna Fáil and will change the Government. If I believe that Fianna Fáil will have a big majority in the next election or the election after that, it is not for that reason that I oppose the idea of the straight vote. If Fine Gael were in office and made the same suggestion, I would oppose it also because I honestly believe that proportional representation, in our circumstances, is the best electoral system.

In this country we have not a tradition for either conservatism, in its widest sense, or Socialism, in its widest sense. As has been so often stated here, we have an unreal situation as far as politics are concerned. I do not doubt that Fianna Fáil have a policy in relation to agriculture, industry, social welfare and everything else. So have the Fine Gael Party. But, primarily, the Fianna Fáil Party is bound together by the fact that they took the anti-Treaty side in 1922. That is what has kept them together up to the present moment.

That is not relevant to the motion.

I think it is very relevant. It is especialy relevant in view of the fact that the Minister for Education adverted to that aspect of Irish life when speaking here this morning. On the other hand, I believe that Fine Gael, while they have a policy in respect of agriculture, industry and all the other things, were formed primarily as the Party for the Treaty, with a certain loyalty to leaders in that Party, just as the Fianna Fáil Party have a certain loyalty to their leader, Deputy de Valera. That is what makes the political life of this country unreal.

All that has to be sorted out. Up to the present, it was in process of being sorted out by the system of proportional representation. Evidence of that can be found in the formation of Parties like Clann na Talmhan, Clann na Poblachta, and even the National Progressive Democrats, or any of the Parties that have come into this House. We are in a transformation period as far as politics are concerned, but this proposal will tend once more to throw us back to the unfortunate division that rent the country in 1922, 37 years ago.

The Labour Party has always been there. The Labour Party will always be represented in Dáil Éireann. It is the oldest Party in this House. It has maintained a persistent and consistent policy. We have been twitted from time to time with being associated with this Government or that Government, with this Party or that Party; but we were never concerned with what people said or did many years ago. Our only concern was for the people who sent us here and how they would be affected by legislation introduced here, how they would be affected by policy in respect of emigration, prices, employment and other things. We have never had occasion to make any apology for anything we did.

The Taoiseach should have second thoughts on this proposal. I do not believe the people are yet sufficiently well-informed to make a decision. A snap decision will be made and that decision will be inserted in the Constitution. It will be there, I suppose, for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 or 100 years perhaps. We have always boasted of the fact that, as against most other countries, we have a system of proportional representation. I remember speaking to delegates in international conferences. I remember their asking what system of election we have; on our telling them we have proportional representation, they were very envious indeed. We are aiming now to throw that system overboard and revert to the system operated in Britain and in the Six Counties. That is a retrograde step.

This referendum will not unfortunately be considered on the merits, or demerits, of the proposals; it will be considered on the merits, or demerits, of the two Presidential candidates. For that reason, I am opposed to this motion. I ask the Taoiseach to have second thoughts about it and do, as Deputy Maurice Dockrell suggested this morning, the best thing and the biggest thing he has ever done in his life, namely, withdraw the Bill.

The Minister for Education drew a comparison with France and mentioned the mess into which France had got prior to the advent of General de Gaulle. If I may correct the Minister, what was wrong with France was the fact that some ten or twelve years ago France decided on a constitutional change. First, it was decided that Parliament could not be dissolved, even with the downfall of the Government. The Government had to remain in office for the full statutory term. Secondly, any private Member could introduce a Money Bill. It was these factors which brought about the state of affairs which resulted in putting General de Gaulle into power. There was no change in the system of voting. The system is the same to-day as it was before. There has been altogether too much straying into other countries' affairs in this debate. This is a purely domestic matter. The same set of conditions might not apply here as apply in other countries.

The real reason, of course, for this Bill is not to prevent Coalitions; it is to make sure that Fianna Fáil will have full, unfettered power. Another reason is the desire to reduce the power of the voter by four-fifths at least—to reduce his power to one-fifth of what he has at the moment. The purpose is to prevent any Party, other than Fianna Fáil, forming a Government. Fianna Fáil want even more power and, not alone do they want full power, but they want to shackle the people at the same time.

If a majority of the people vote for the abolition of proportional representation, they will abrogate some of the power they already have. Fianna Fáil is cunningly asking them to shackle themselves in such a way that they will no longer have any choice. Fianna Fáil want to prevent the people bringing about a change of Government, should the people so desire. That is the real reason. Any other reason given is just moonshine.

I would ask the Taoiseach a few questions. Who first asked for this change? What public body asked for it? Did any county councils? Did any corporations? Did any responsible body of thought demand it? By what process of reasoning does he hold that he is justified in spending £100,000 of the people's money on a referendum, which has not been asked for by anybody? Why has the system of proportional representation which was a good system, and a blessing in 1937, become a bad system and a cursed system to-day? These sudden changes of opinion demand an explanation.

Of course, the real reason this has come about is that Fianna Fáil were defeated in 1948, and again in 1954. This is an attempt to prevent such a defeat ever occurring again. They want to prevent a situation in which the people will have power to put them out of office. That is precisely the mentality that inspired Hitler when he seized control in Germany. That is precisely the mentality which inspired Stalin into creating the situation he did in Russia. It is the mentality which seeks to put it out of the people's power to have any Government, but one. Then the Government can do what they like.

I remember when the Clann na Talmhan Party first came in here in 1943. It came in as a result of the failure of the Fianna Fáil Government to implement promises made to the people in the rural areas. When the opportunity came, the people voted for us. They put us in and, no sooner had we come in, than Fianna Fáil saw their mistake and proceeded to put on the Statute Book certain measures for which the people had been clamouring for years but which Fianna Fáil had no intention of introducing. That is the reason the Farmers Party cannot get into the Dail.

The Minister for Education said that Clann na Poblachta withdrew their support from the inter-Party Government in 1957 and broke it up. If that is his line of argument, may I ask why Fianna Fail, with a majority in the House, dissolved the Dáil on three occasions, in 1933, 1937 and 1947, after a very short time in office? No inter-Party Government or Coalition Government could possibly be as capricious as the Taoiseach was on those three occasions.

That would not seem to be relevant to the debate.

I am answering the Minister for Education who raised the point——

He ran to the Park.

——that the inter-Party Government broke up after three and a half years in office. That is perfectly true, but Fianna Fáil dissolved the Dáil on three occasions when they had an overall majority. The inter-Party Governments did not show the same capriciousness as Fianna Fáil displayed on those three occasions. I should like to hear the Taoiseach's explanation for that: if coalitions are bad, why did he dissolve the Dáil in December, 1947, while it had 18 more months to run and he had a majority of seven. That is something we ought to be told. Why?

The Taoiseah is vexed and peevish at the present time simply because his carefully thought-out propaganda that coalitions are bad does not seem to be accepted by the people. There was a time when it would have been accepted. There was a time when schoolboys and schoolgirls coming from and going to school, would have been waving flags displaying the catch-cries and the catch-cries would be heard every fair day, at every market, and in every congregation, but it is not catching on now. Many people regard them as foolish senile mutterings and pay no attention to them. No inter-Party Government promised the things Fianna Fáil promised to do and very carefully guarded themselves against doing. They did not have the slightest intention of doing what they promised.

When the Taoiseach is replying, I want him to tell me where he gets the authority to lavish £100,000 on this election and the referendum. There was a scene in the House at Question Time yesterday with regard to the expenditure of a sum of £11,000, but when compared with the £100,000 that this will cost, £11,000 is a mere bagatelle. We all know now that there was "murder" in the Fianna Fáil Party for the past five or six months by the members who were against this proposal. I want to know why or by what authority the Taoiseach feels called upon to spend £100,000 of the people's money which could better be spent elsewhere. I cannot help thinking that we now know the reason why the Local Authorities (Works) Act was cut out, probably in preparation to meet this huge bill.

In days of old during the first world War and prior to it, it was a common thing for recruiting sergeants to give the Saxon shilling to a man, and once he took it, he had enlisted. In those days, it was the recruiting sergeant who did that type of thing. Nowadays people are being asked to subscribe £100,000 in order to shackle themselves hand and foot by reducing their voting power. Under the P.R. system, a voter can vote 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 10, if there are ten candidates on the ballot paper. That is a very fair system of voting, but now it is proposed to cut down and give each person one solitary choice, and the reason is no more or less than to keep Fianna Fáil entrenched in power for all time.

The effect of this Bill will definitely be to wipe out small Parties and the representation that minorities are entitled to in this House. It is aimed at that, and I believe it will have that effect. It seems very strange to find a Party like Fianna Fáil who are supposed to be the champions of labour, business and the farming community, deliberately trying to bring about a situation in which none of these people will have the power to send one representative here. I must admit that it is embarrassing, annoying and irksome for a Government to have Opposition representatives asking for certain things. It is a grand thing for a Government, if when they get into power, nobody asks them to do jobs that cost money and if they can sit down and tell the people—if I may put it vulgarly—to go to hell.

This process that Fianna Fáil wants would provide them with an overall majority to come in here and calmly sit back and run the country just as they liked, doing nothing and paying no attention to minority or sectional interests. When the next election comes along, they will go to the people with another lot of plans and try to fool the people again, knowing that once the people have lost their voting power, there will be little they can do anyhow. That is the whole reasoning behind this Bill.

The amendment put down by Deputy Costello is a reasonable one. It does not seek to deprive the people of having their say on the merits of the referendum. All it asks is that a reasonable stay will be put on it for five, six or eight weeks more, and that a chance be given for a commission to inquire and report back to the House. The people can be told what the commission's findings are and then they can have their say and vote on it. There is nothing unreasonable in that amendment. It is very fair, but it exposes the indecent haste with which Fianna Fáil is trying to rush the Bill to the people when the people are not properly prepared for it. It has been said that we have the newspapers and the radio, but I believe the vast majority do not read a daily paper. On the radio a quarter of an hour a day is given to the report "Today in the Dáil", which is very instructive. Even in the limited time—a quarter of an hour—they try to give a fair show to every Deputy who speaks; but that is really a very short time for such a programme. In addition, many people do not hear it. Many people throughout the country do not know what all this is about. Fianna Fáil do not want them to know what it is all about. They do not want them to know that it is a fraudulent attempt to deprive the people of the voting power by which they can change a Government at election time.

As I said a moment ago, every time a dictator or dictatorial Party wanted to entrench themselves strongly in power in Parliament, the very first thing they did was to change the voting system in their favour. It happened in Germany, Italy, and Russia and we know what occurred in these countries. After a few years of apparent prosperity, the change brought nothing but disaster in its train. If this is enacted in time it will bring the same results.

It has not a chance.

With the Taoiseach out of the way it might.

The Deputy need not worry.

If the people realise the power they have under P.R., and realise the benefit it is for certain large minorities, they will not be so foolish as to throw it away. The last thing I want to say is that I think the Taoiseach would be very well advised to take heed of the fact that the Seanad has rejected this Bill. It may be difficult for him to swallow but it takes a big man to do big things, and it would be a big gesture on the Taoiseach's part if he took the advice of the Seanad and reconsidered this whole measure. He would be doing a good day's work if he did that.

How the proposed change in the electoral system would succeed in entrenching—as Deputy Blowick said—or riveting—as Deputy Norton said—the Fianna Fáil Party in power for all time, is beyond the ordinary person's understanding. If a stranger to this country happened to be in the Public Gallery listening to these debates it would be unfair to blame him for coming to the conclusion that we here were living under some sort of a dictatorship, and that the people never got an opportunity of having a voice or a say in the Government or in stating the personnel of the Government they wanted. It is rather amusing to listen to Opposition speakers tell how impractical the Fianna Fáil Government have been, and to hear them relate the various malpractices they have been guilty of during their years in office. In the next breath we are told that if the electoral system is changed it will ensure that Fianna Fáil will be riveted in power for all time.

Deputy Blowick made the allegation that the main purpose of this measure was to entrench the Fianna Fáil Party in power. I feel that his view on this matter is somewhat the same as that expressed by the Leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Norton, when he said that its purpose was to rivet the Fianna Fáil Party in power. There is only one way in which a Party can be riveted or entrenched in power and that is when the people want them to be in power. In accordance with the provisions of the Constitution the people get an opportunity every five years to decide who shall constitute the Government of the country for the next five years.

If the straight vote system is enshrined in the electoral laws of this country, I fail to understand why or how any Party should have any special preference or any special guarantee that they are likely to be in a favourable position, particularly in view of the fact that the people will decide, in the first instance, which candidates are to be elected. The candidates who are successful then decide who shall be the members of the Government. If one particular form of election seems to help one Party more than another, let us examine that contention. So far as P.R. is concerned experience goes to show that that system has been reasonably kind to the Party now in office. Since the State was set up in 1922 we have gone through 14 general elections and on eight occasions Fianna Fáil have succeeded in being elected the Government of the country.

And that did not satisfy them.

Undoubtedly on all occasions they did not succeed in becoming a Government with an over-all majority, but they did succeed in becoming a Government with an over-all majority on four occasions. On the last occasion in 1957, they became the Government with the greatest ever recorded over-all majority. It is fallacious, therefore, for any Deputy to make the case that because Fianna Fáil were likely to lose power in the immediate future, or because of certain changes anticipated in the leadership of the Party, they had something to worry about. Government spokesmen gave good reasons for the proposed change when this measure was first introduced and we are now discussing it again.

Deputy Blowick said that the people were not properly informed on this matter. He went so far as to say that only a small proportion of the people in rural Ireland, particularly, had an opportunity of reading a daily newspaper. If one is to judge by the certified sales of the daily papers, there is no difficulty in making the case that three out of every four households in the country receive a copy of a daily newspaper, and receive it regularly. In addition to that, the people have the advantage of radio broadcasts and they have heard broadcast discussions on this matter, in addition to the report of the proceedings in the Dáil.

I can tell the House that from my knowledge of the views of the people, they are well-informed, and if anything would help to confuse the issue it is the continuance of this debate. It would be better if the discussion in this House were carried on in the nature of a general review. If that were possible, it would serve the greatest good, and it would help to enlighten the people on any point about which they might not yet be clear. So far as the P.R. system is concerned the people may have a preference for it so that they can give certain members of Parties or Independents a measure of support which they cannot give under the straight vote system. The experience of the smaller Parties co-operating with the Government of the day, over recent years, has, however, in my opinion, made the people somewhat suspicious. There is no doubt, from the figures available from the last election, that the people regard one-Party Government as the ideal system.

That is a decision which the people have come to after some bitter experience. It is a decision which, I rather think, it would be difficult to change. I am not prepared to go so far as to say that the people will keep the same single-Party Government in power for all time. It is obvious that as Governments carry on they tend to become unpopular with certain sections of the people eventually. It is human nature that a change is bound to be deemed desirable sooner or later. Whatever change might ensue it would not, in my opinion, be a change from a one-Party system. The Opposition Parties attempt to make a case for Coalition Governments. They ask if the people want that form of Government are they not entitled to have it. That has to be admitted.

One thing which the Opposition have never explained is why two or three particular groups of Opposition Parties have on a number of occasions put forward sufficient candidates who, if elected, could form a single-Party Government. Fine Gael have, as a rule, always put forward sufficient candidates to form a Government if elected, on their own. The Labour Party has also done so on a couple of occasions, and Clann na Poblachta did it on one occasion. That indicates clearly that these Parties accept the principle that the ideal form of Government is a Government based on a single Party. It is only when they fail to get the support of the electorate, and find themselves without sufficient strength to take over the reins of Government, that they change their minds and decide that half a loaf is better than no loaf. They then come together with other Parties although for some months previously they had indicated, by the manner in which they sought support, that the single Party system was the ideal one. Overnight, they decide, because the people do not see fit to give them that power and authority, that they should come to an arrangement—call it Inter-Party or Coalition or whatever you like. It is the very opposite to the policy which they have preached and asked the people to accept some months before during their election campaign.

I should be glad if some speaker from the Opposition could explain this: if the Parties to whom I have referred have put upon their panel of candidates a number, which if elected would be sufficient to take over the Government and carry it on, why at the same time when that move fails, do they take the other course? I have to assume that any reasonable Party, such as the Parties I have referred to, will put up a number which is only a little more than sufficient to enable them to get that measure of support from the electorate to give them a majority in a single Party Government.

For a number of years past the Parties which are at the moment on the small side were not able to get that support. Fine Gael have not been able to get it ever since the inception of that Party and their predecessors, Cumann na nGaedheal, did not get it either. Looking back over the records I find that at no time was the Party in a position to carry on in Government without the support of allies, either from Independents or splinter groups.

We say that the purpose of the proposed change is to ensure stable Government in the future. The Opposition speakers make the point that in practice there has been what amounted to very stable Government over the years under the present system. One feels inclined to examine that statement and to assess the truth contained in it. In the early years of Government the general stability of the Government, as far as economic matters were concerned, was reasonably good but for the past 10 years the prospects of how long a Government would last in office could never be judged with any reasonable degree of accuracy.

I feel that we are now coming to the stage when the big national issues —bar one, Partition, which is still with us, unfortunately—which heretofore kept the two main Parties divided are more or less no longer there. There is very grave risk that you will have entering into the political field many splinter Parties. As the Taoiseach said, when introducing this measure on the Second Stage, those groups, at the outset, who have very little chance of electoral success can make wild and impracticable promises to the people in the hope of getting support, particularly from the more irresponsible element which can always be found in every electorate in the world.

The purpose of these promises is, of course, that they know that they are scarcely likely to be in the position of having to carry them out; they have no prospect of ever getting sufficient numbers elected to form a single Party Government and the best they can hope for is to participate in a coalition arrangement. The result is that their promises will be put in abeyance. One Party is in fact on record as putting their promises in abeyance in 1948. They were at least honest at that stage but other Parties have not gone quite so far. They represented that they were prepared to implement their various promises but when it came to the time of reckoning they held that they were only part of a group of people and could not implement them. They had the excuse that they were only part of the Government and that the other elements were not favourably disposed towards those promises and for that reason they were not able to put through their policy. It was a case of sending the fool further every time.

Cuireadh an díospóireacht ar ath-ló.

Debate adjourned.
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