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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 12 Apr 1961

Vol. 188 No. 2

Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1961 — Second Stage.

I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. The purpose of the Bill is to replace the Electoral (Amendment) Act, 1959, parts of which, providing for the revision of Dáil constituencies, were held by the High Court to be repugnant to the Constitution.

It has been decided in fixing the total membership of the Dáil to apply the lower ratio of population per member permitted by Article 16 of the Constitution and, accordingly, the total membership of the House, as proposed in Section 2 of the measure, has been fixed at 144, the same total for which the Act of 1959 provided. If this proposal is approved, the next Dáil will have three fewer members than the present House which was constituted with reference to the Electoral (Amendment) Act, 1947. The Bill proposes to increase the existing representation of Dublin city and county by four members and to add a further member to the constituency of Kildare which is being extended to incorporate some electoral divisions in Meath and Westmeath. To compensate for these gains and to provide for the reduction in the total membership of the House, it is necessary to propose reducing by one member in each case the present representation of constituencies in Cavan, Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Longford-Westmeath, Sligo-Leitrim, Wexford and Waterford.

The number of constituencies provided for by Section 3 of the Bill and the Schedule thereto is 38, as against 40 under the Act of 1947. This results in an increase from 9 to 12 in the number of four-member constituencies and a reduction from 22 to 17 in three-member constituencies. The number of five-member constituencies will remain unchanged, at nine.

The proposals for the revision of constituencies have been set out in some detail in the explanatory memorandum which was circulated to Deputies with the Bill and are delineated in the maps which I have had prepared by the Ordnance Survey and have placed in the Oireachtas library. I have also circulated to Deputies a statement compiled by the Central Statistics Office, setting out the population of each of the proposed constituencies, the ratio of this population to the membership provided for in the Bill, and the deviation of the average population per member in each case from the national average. In the circumstances I do not think that it will be necessary for me to take up the time of the House in referring in detail to the changes which are proposed in the case of individual constituencies.

I would, however, like to comment in passing on the position in County Kerry. Deputies will be aware that the explanatory memorandum circulated with the Bill mentioned, amongst the provisions of the Bill, that the district electoral divisions of Cordal and Derreen would be transferred from South Kerry to North Kerry. It transpired, however, that the two divisions in question were inadvertently omitted from the description in the Schedule of the proposed North Kerry constituency and it was necessary to issue a note correcting the reference in the memorandum. It is my intention, however, to move an amendment at the Committee Stage to remedy the omission.

While the main purpose of the Bill is to provide for a revision of constituencies, the measure also contains provisions, usual in a Bill of this kind, to enable arrangements of an administrative nature to be made to deal with the new constituencies. Section 5 is one of these. Under it the constituency of Clare specified in the Schedule to the Bill will be deemed to correspond to the constituency of Clare specified in the Electoral (Amendment) Act, 1947, for the purposes of Section 3 of the Electoral (Chairman of Dáil Éireann) Act, 1937.

Section 6 of the Bill embodies a necessary consequential provision whereby the registers of electors to be prepared by registration officers by the 15th April, 1961, can be adapted to relate to the new constituencies. As a temporary measure, related only to that register and the electors lists, etc., to be compiled as a revision of that register, registration officers will be empowered by Ministerial direction to arrange, wherever appropriate, for the insertion of the name of a new constituency on the title page or in the relevant sections of the register or lists. The section also provides for the preparation, as soon as possible, of postal voters lists for all new constituencies.

The returning officer for a constituency specified in the Schedule to the Bill will be determined in accordance with Section 7 which, in effect, makes no change in the arrangements provided for in this regard by previous Electoral Acts. Under the section the county registrar, or sheriff where there is one, will be returning officer as at present for a constituency all of which is situated in a county or a county borough.

Where a constituency is situated in more than one county or county borough, one of the sheriffs or county registrars for the areas concerned will be appointed returning officer by Ministerial order. He, in turn, may then appoint as assistant returning officer or assistant returning officers, the sheriff or county registrar for each area outside the county or county borough. This also is the present arrangement.

Since the Bill was drafted some doubt has arisen whether or not Section 7 would cover all possible cases in which assistant returning officers will have to be appointed. It may be found necessary on further examination to propose an amendment of subsection (2) of the section to eliminate any doubts in this regard, but any such amendment will be of a purely drafting nature.

Section 8 of the Bill contains provisions of a transitory nature to enable existing polling schemes to be adapted where necessary to relate to the new constituencies. The provisions will apply only until such time as revised schemes can be prepared conforming to the new constituencies.

While the decision of the High Court was that only subsection (1) of Section 3, Section 4 and the Schedule to the Electoral (Amendment) Act, 1959, were repugnant to the Constitution, it is considered that the appropriate course is to repeal the Act entirely and to re-enact the provisions of that measure which the Court did not regard as unconstitutional. Provision has been made accordingly in Sections 5 to 8 of this Bill and Section 9 proposes the complete and immediate repeal of the 1959 Act. The section also provides that the Electoral (Amendment) Act, 1947, will be repealed on the next dissolution of Dáil Éireann.

The operation of gerrymandering is never a very pretty spectacle and it is really not surprising to me to find Fianna Fáil up to its old tricks again in respect to this piece of legislation, but I think these things can be carried too far. Redistribution is a very integral part of our whole system of representative Government and it really reaches the nadir of absurdity and disruptiveness when we have a map erected in the Custom House with members of the Fianna Fáil Party gathered round it like bees or wasps round a honey pot, to see what they can do.

This Bill is a ridiculous attempt to gerrymander. Personally, it is one that causes me no consternation because I am quite content to see a general election fought on this distribution of the constituencies, or any other distribution, provided we can get it fought soon. However, it is right that we should recall to ourselves on an occasion like this that this happens to be the third attempt of Fianna Fáil to fix the electorate if they were able, to protect themselves from the consequences they have already experienced in the constituencies of Carlow-Kilkenny, and, most recently, in Sligo-Leitrim.

We are quite happy about Sligo-Leitrim.

Perhaps the Deputy is quite happy that they managed to have one seat taken away, but I doubt if the people of Leitrim are happy. We recently had a by-election in Sligo-Leitrim and in this Redistribution Bill presented by Fianna Fáil there is a seat taken from Sligo-Leitrim, a large part of Leitrim is moved into Roscommon and a large part of Roscommon is moved into Mayo. Outside of Bedlam was there ever such a redistribution as that? This began when Fianna Fáil set out to abolish proportional representation and they thought they could get away with it. They failed because the people defeated it. We then had our first Redistribution Bill and that was brought before the courts who declared it unconstitutional.

We now have our third effort and I very much doubt if there are not inherent in this measure flaws just as blatant as those which brought down the last Bill. I would ask everybody to overlook their objections and get to a general election on this or any other Bill of its kind as quickly as we can. I want to see this Bill, and the Party responsible for it, brought to the judgment of the people because I think that a general election is the best solution of this and any other problems created by Fianna Fáil.

I do not think it is in the public interest that we should ignore the kind of transactions that have been carried on preparatory to the introduction of this Bill. Deputies are familiar with the unedifying fact that the Deputies of Fianna Fáil were summoned to the Custom House, asked to go over the map and see whether any wangling could be done and that they were given a deadline under which they were told that any wangling that was to be done must be done by a certain date, after which there could be no more wangling. We have as a consequence the astonishing arrangement of a reduction of representation in Sligo-Leitrim, the transfer of Carrick-on-Shannon and the removal of Ballag-haderreen into Mayo. You have in the case of Cork the removal of a large lump of the city into the county. There is not a Deputy representative of Cork city who does not know the pious purpose it was sought to serve by making that particular transfer.

We have the fantastic situation in the two-constituency county of Limerick in which a particular Fianna Fáil Deputy in County Limerick is shaky, and we all know he is shaky, and a piece of West Limerick is brought in to shore him up, while at the other end of the constituency, a piece of East Limerick is shoved into West Limerick in order to restore the balance. Fianna Fáil Deputies may laugh at that. I suppose it has its ludicrous aspect. I think the picture of the unfortunate Fianna Fáil Limerick Deputy dashing around trying to get something to seal up the hole through which his votes were leaking may be a ludicrous spectacle. But we ought to remember that if you bring the institutions upon which this State is founded into disrepute and spread generally throughout the country the impression that that fraudulent kind of corruption is acceptable to us all as a satisfactory kind of arrangement—good enough for us— then the people will value us on the valuation we put upon ourselves.

I suppose one of the most solemn responsibilities this House could have would be to see that the representation of the people was carried out on a fair and equitable basis. I suppose it is true to say that every democracy revolts against the absurdity and iniquity of the conscious gerrymander. I do not deny in respect of this particular piece of legislation that, with a few exceptions, it has been done with a good deal of skill to conceal the operation that was in hand; but I would like to remind Deputies of how frequently we pointed the finger of scorn at the Government in Stormont when they carried their gerrymander to extravagant lengths. They were quite shameless about it. They made no secret of their desire to destroy opposition to the Government that exists in Northern Ireland. Because they were shameless and because they were prepared to do a shameless thing, they succeeded in their effort fairly well in Northern Ireland, but they made their reputation stink in the nostrils of the people.

I think that here an effective gerrymander cannot be done. The poor Limerick Deputy may possibly get some relief from his temporary distress as a result of that particular wangle, but, taking the overall picture, I do not believe it matters a damn. I do not believe that with all the gerrymandering Fianna Fáil have been able to do, they will alter the result of the verdict of the people by any significant degree. I want to deplore what they have done because I think it is unworthy and I think it generally lowers the whole standard of public life here. But I want to say most emphatically that I sincerely hope this Bill will pass into law and that at the earliest possible opportunity we shall have an opportunity of referring this Act on its merits and on its authors to the judgment of the people. I shall be quite content to accept that judgment when it is communicated.

I hope whoever is responsible for the next Redistribution Bill, which it is the duty of an Irish Government to introduce into Dáil Éireann, will be able to find some machinery which will avoid the disedifying and, in my opinion, demoralising exercise which has attended the drafting of this Bill and that in future the constituencies will be delineated for submission to this House by someone who is primarily concerned to secure that the people will be fairly and equitably represented in this House rather than have the Bill drafted by a succession of deputations of Fianna Fáil T.D.s visiting the Custom House to explain their personal hopes, aspirations and fears to those responsible for drawing the line of the new constituencies.

I could multiply, if I had the time and the desire to do so, the number of fantastic things that have been done in the process of the gerrymander attempted in this Bill, but I think the instances I have given are sufficiently dramatic to make clear to the people the trick that was in process by the present Government. I want to say I do not give two fiddle-de-dees for their trick. Let us pass this Bill as quickly as we can so that arrangements can be made for a general election on the earliest available date; and on this Bill or any other Redistribution Bill, we confidently hope and pray we will end the problem of the Government by abolishing it.

Before I deal with the actual proposals in the Bill, I should like first to register a protest against the manner in which the Bill was published. Apart from the fact that snatches of the proposals were heard around the corridors of Leinster House before we actually saw the Bill in the Green Paper before us to-day, apart from that sordid aspect, I want to register this protest. It is not the first time I had to do so. When the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1959, was published I received a copy of it at my home at approximately 2 p.m., but throughout the morning I could be told by various people, who happened to be listening to the radio before I was out of bed, what my new constituency was to be and what changes there were in the other parts of the country. On this occasion, the Bill the Taoiseach had promised over a number of weeks was delivered to me half a day after it was published in the newspapers and many hours after it had been announced from Radio Éireann.

I think that is scandalous treatment of Deputies. I believe the first information concerning proposals in major legislation of this kind should be given to Deputies, or at least should be given to them at the same time as it is given to the general public. I do not know who is responsible for that, whether it is the Minister for Local Government or the Department of the Taoiseach, but I would urge the Minister in future to ensure that Deputies are not the last in the community to receive information concerning major legislation such as we have before us.

This is the second attempt Fianna Fáil have made to establish new constituencies in accordance with the Constitution. One immediately asks oneself: why was not a Bill similar to this produced by the Government in 1959? The Electoral Bill of 1959 was criticised by individual Deputies from various points of view and not so much by Parties. Some Deputies protested that their constituencies were unwieldy while others had different criticisms. The Minister for Local Government, the same Minister who is before us to-day, said that was the only Bill he could produce—that he had spent many long months and hours trying to devise a new constituency system for this country. We had long arguments on why it was necessary for Donegal to have seven Deputies, why it was necessary for East Donegal to have four Deputies— in fact the argument became so involved that many of us not conversant with the northern part of the country did not know whether the hills of Donegal ran from east to west or north to south. The Minister tried to justify the proposals he put before the House in the 1959 Bill. Now, within a matter of weeks, he can give us a Bill which, I might say, is some improvement on the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1959. Therefore we can only conclude that so far as the 1959 Electoral Bill was concerned it was an attempt at sharp practice by Fianna Fáil, an attempt to gerrymander to their own advantage.

That is justifiable criticism in view of all that has happened, not necessarily all that happened in the action taken in the High Court. I do not accuse the Government of out-and-out gerrymandering. I do not think it could be said, or ought to be mentioned, that it is gerrymandering in the same way as one associates the Six-County Government with gerrymandering. I should prefer to call it legalised gerrymandering. I do not think anybody could criticise the distribution of seats or the arrangements of contituencies vis-à-vis the population, but if one has regard to political support— strictly speaking I do not think we should have regard to political support—and places where particular support is likely to be forthcoming, it must be said that there is an attempt in this Bill to gerrymander in a legal fashion in accordance with the decision of the High Court so that the Minister will ensure that the maximum number of Fianna Fáil Deputies will be returned after the next general election.

However, that is another story and I do not think this Bill will have a great effect on the result of the next general election. I should like to know what is going to happen if and when the Bill is passed in this House. I should like to ask the Minister if this Bill will be tested before the Supreme Court. On the last occasion the Government were very confident that if the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1959, were referred to the High Court, or the Supreme Court, it would be declared to be in accordance with the Constitution. We have since seen the decision of the High Court with regard to that Bill. The Taoiseach has not said "yes""aye" or "no" on this matter. He was asked on several occasions at Question Time but I did not hear him give any definite answer as to whether this Bill will be referred to the Supreme Court. As a matter of fact, on one occasion he made so bold as to express the opinion that the High Court was wrong and that he still believed the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1959, was framed in accordance with the Constitution. He should say now whether or not it is intended to send the Act, as it will be when passed, to the Supreme Court.

There is also the question of the census of population. The Constitution says that the constituencies shall be determined in accordance with the population as ascertained in the last preceding census. I know the great minds that came to bear on the phrase "what is practicable" in the Constitution. There were many brilliant minds brought to bear on that question to decide the exact meaning of that phrase. I do not want to attempt to give the meaning of "ascertain" when it refers to the "last preceding census." The Taoiseach should tell us how we stand with regard to the census taken on Sunday night last, the 9th April. As far as the population of the country is concerned it is available. It may not be known but it is available and are we to be in the position that, after the passing of this Act, in the next few months, if somebody refers the matter either to the High Court or to the Supreme Court, that we may discover this piece of legislation is not in accordance with the Constitution?

We ought to know something about whether or not the Government have had expert information as to the meaning of these words to which I have referred, "the population as ascertained in the last preceding census." Or would I be right in assuming or believing that the Government are deliberately taking this course on the assumption that this piece of legislatio will also be declared unconstitutional, thus putting the Government in the position of saying to the people and to Dáil Éireann: "Well, we have no option but to prolong the life of the Dáil?" The Minister may laugh but Fianna Fáil have made quite a few attempts in the last few years to hang on to office and to try to ensure they will be in office after the next general election. The Minister may smile but——

He is convulsed.

The Minister is convulsed?

Well, not only today—

Let us deal with today.

Their first attempt was to abolish Proportional Representation with a view to keeping Fianna Fáil in office as long as they could after the next election, and elections after that. It seems that the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1959, was designed for the very same purpose. Now, as I said, there is the possibility that the Taoiseach wants to be put in the position where he has to say to the people that he has no option, as a result of a Supreme Court decision, but to extend the life of the Dáil beyond the normal period of five years. I do not pretend to know the country as well perhaps as the Minister, with the knowledge he has available to him in his capacity as Minister for Local Government. I could not make any detailed criticism about the arrangement of the majority of the constituencies in the country. The only one about which I can speak in great detail is my own constituency, one that has been reduced from five to four members. I could put forward many suggestions to the Minister to ensure that Wexford will remain a five-seat constituency but I do not believe I should do so at this stage anyway.

It seems to me that in regard to other constituencies the Minister has made it very awkward for those who will be returned to Dáil Éireann after the next election. Of course, there is also, as I said before, the legalised gerrymandering. It is true that every Deputy now will represent 20,000 people approximately, but the Minister wants to ensure that the Deputies who will be representing 20,000 people will in the main be Fianna Fáil Deputies. There is no greater example of that than what is being done in South Tipperary. I do not think there is any justification for taking 25 per cent. of County Waterford to give it to South Tipperary in order to try to ensure that there will be three Fianna Fáil Deputies elected to South Tipperary after the next election. These are the political implications of that particular change. I do not pretend to know the political feelings of the people in Waterford or Tipperary. They can be known only after the next general election but it seems to me to be an attempt to reduce Opposition representation in County Waterford to ensure that the present number of Fianna Fáil Deputies in South Tipperary will be maintained.

Again, I do not speak with any great local knowledge but I think, as far as County Cork is concerned, some of the constituencies are very unwieldy. It has been suggested to me, and I put it to the Minister—it can be explained better by the Cork Deputies— that, while the constituencies as they stand now seem to be unwieldy, the Minister should consider establishing constituencies in Cork County in accordance with the areas of the three Boards of Assistance outside Cork City itself.

I have referred to the Donegal constituencies and I was very amused when I saw the Minister's proposals and remembered the arguments he put forward here on the last occasion as to why Donegal county should retain its seven members. In this Bill he has tried to justify the existence of two constituencies in Donegal and still has regard to some extent to the hills of Donegal, but it seems that it is only the hills of Donegal that matter in regard to this question. There are many other ranges of hills in the country that must be skirted and these still appear to have one constituency. There is the example of Wicklow with a range of hills dividing an area very distinctly from the major portion of County Wicklow. The Minister did not seem to consider that the hills of Wicklow made any difference, so far as the convenience of Deputies and others is concerned.

There are other remarkable features about this legislation and one begins to think that there might be a case—I do not advocate it—for the changing of counties. We have a peculiar situation in one county, in Kildare, which under the present proposals embodies three county council areas—and the Minister and Deputies know that as far as Parliamentary members are concerned, not alone do Deputies have to make representations in respect of the work of the Government but to a very large extent the work of local authorities also—and it seems that in these constituencies that have to deal with two or three or four local authorities, the work of the Deputies will be very difficult indeed.

I have little more to say on this measure. I could not criticise it as Deputy Dillon did. I do not think he described it as a piece of shameless gerrymandering. I do not think one could call this shameless gerrymandering; I prefer to call it legalised gerrymandering. This has been done in the hope that Fianna Fáil will get the maximum representation in this House after the next election, but as has been said, perhaps Fianna Fáil will get the shock of their lives and will find that the work of the Minister for Local Government and the intrigues of the Government have come to naught after the next election.

The Leader of the Opposition welcomed the Bill and hoped there would be a general election as soon as possible. The Leader of the Labour Party did not come to a decision one way or another on the matter. It is regrettable that this Bill had to be introduced because of a decision of the High Court. On a former occasion, I charged the Minister with taking away from rural constituencies the representation that, in my view, they were entitled to have. I do not welcome this Bill; I believe it is the death-knell of rural Ireland. The Government accepted the decision of the High Court that the previous Bill was unconstitutional. I had asked the Taoiseach to take the matter into his own hands for the first time and I argued that if he allowed it to go any further, the situation would become worse. Now it has been accepted by the Government that from this on rural Ireland will count for nil.

I compliment the Minister and the Government on one thing—acting quickly. If they had waited for the counting of the census forms which we filled up on Sunday, it would make the position much worse than it is to-day. If we are to develop along that line—I believe we are; as Deputy Dillon said and I may repeat, it is nothing personal to me—representation in the near future will belong to the few cities we have and, quoting the words of a gentleman I heard speaking last Saturday night, "to a dwindling population." If that happens, it will be a bad day for the country and we are actually heading in that direction now.

I blame the Government for this because, in my view, for the past four years, they have been responsible for the exodus of 200,000 people from rural Ireland. They alone are responsible for that. When one puts questions to the Government in this House asking how many of our people have emigrated, they say they do not know. They say many go to England one month and come back the next and that one cannot keep account of it, but ask them the number of pigs or sheep or cattle exported and they can tell you the figures. They will not tell you the number of people who left.

The Deputy is wandering from the subject.

In the British Parliament, when the question was asked, the answer from the Home Secretary was that 200,000 new insurance cards were issued to Irish workers there.

I cannot allow the Deputy to proceed on that line. He must keep to the matter before the House. He is quite irrelevant at the moment.

I suppose the Minister cannot help this situation. I want to be fair to him and I must say I believe that the 1959 Act that was challenged in the High Court was fairer. I supported it. I believed it was the right thing. Some people thought otherwise. The solicitors and the lawyers came into it. The courts reached a decision much to the disadvantage of rural Ireland and its people. Of course, with Fianna Fáil, the Constitution is almighty. According to them, it is the Gospel. They have an opportunity now of seeing what their Constitution is costing the people of rural Ireland. The Taoiseach was not man enough to submit the matter to a referendum so that the people might be given an opportunity of changing the relevant Article in the Constitution and getting a fair crack of the whip. There is no credit due to those who brought the action in the High Court. If the day comes that Dáil Éireann will be influenced by a completely city mentality, it will be a bad day for Ireland and for her people.

I suppose this is the best Bill the Government can bring in in the circumstances. It is as near as possible to representation for every 20,000. What will be the position if this wrong is permitted to continue? What will be the fate of the people living in the rural areas? Will the majority here be Deputies from Dublin city and Cork city and the other cities? I regret the Taoiseach did not put this by way of referendum to the people. Of course, not so long ago the Government were defeated on another referendum. I suppose they were afraid to have a referendum on an honest issue, remembering their defeat on a dishonest one. I believe that, had they sought such a referendum in this connection, they would have won.

I believe the Government are starting off in the wrong direction. What will be done now will never be undone because the position will be similar to that which obtains in the Civil Service; a precedent has been established and it cannot be changed. The position, as a result of this Bill, may go from bad to worse. Deputy Dillon talked about gerrymandering. I know something about gerrymandering; there is an electoral area now, West Galway, that never existed before. What is the reason for that?

The Minister can always assert that this is not his fault and that he wanted to leave things as they were. I suppose we will have to accept this Bill unless the lawyers see fit to contest another constitutional issue. My remarks have nothing personal in them. I protest as a public representative. I think this Bill is a step in the wrong direction. It will deprive the people in the rural areas of adequate representation. Remember, it is only a start; day after day and year after year, worse will probably come. The precedent has been established. It will be impossible to undo what is being done here now. Another Government tomorrow would probably do the same thing.

This is a very important measure but the Leader of the Opposition spoke on it for about ten minutes.

Which was as long as the Minister.

He spoke for about ten minutes. Normally, he would take that time to tell us he was going home. On this important measure, all he can do evidently is abuse the Fianna Fáil Party, make allegations of corruption and gerrymandering and boast of the defeat Fianna Fáil suffered in connection with their effort to abolish P.R. So far as criticism of the Bill was concerned, he said nothing. He did not refer to the reason it was necessary to introduce the Bill. He did not make any reference to the court action or to the people who took the previous measure to the courts. He did not say why they took it to the courts. I think people are entitled to some explanation.

It is self-explanatory.

I have a feeling that it was because of the defeat in connection with the abolition of P.R. that they took this measure to the courts. It was in Dublin, as Deputy Donnellan is aware, that the decision against the abolition of proportional representation was taken. It was the majority of the Dublin people who decided that issue.

I did not say that at all. I did not discuss proportional representation at all.

Evidently it was that which induced the Fine Gael Party to believe that in a general election they would get an additional number of seats. All the argument in the courts seemed to me to indicate that the demand was that there should be ten extra seats for Dublin. Rural Ireland is forgotten completely in all the arguments in the courts so far as I can see. Undoubtedly, the 1959 Bill took into consideration the difficulties of rural Deputies and their constituents. It did depart from the rigid 20,000 per Deputy. I believe, although I am not in a position to be a final arbiter on this question, that provided the total number of Deputies was related to the 20,000 divided into the population of the country, it did not matter a great deal how these Deputies were distributed through the country. There was another phrase in the constitution which I believe would allow for that.

However, the 1959 Bill did undoubtedly offer some compensation to the people in rural Ireland and particularly the constituents in rural Ireland. In Dublin, a Deputy might meet half a dozen constituents in a quarter of an hour. In a constituency such as mine, the constituents might take half the day to come to see me or to talk to me and it would take me exactly the same time. The Deputy in Dublin has Leinster House at his disposal all the year round. Undoubtedly, there is a case why rural Ireland should have a greater number of Deputies.

Deputy Corish suggested that the 1959 Act was devised to keep Fianna Fáil in office. There is only one thing that keeps Fianna Fáil in office and that is the population—the electors. It is not for one year, one election or half a dozen elections that Fianna Fáil elected a greater number of Deputies than all the Deputies in the organised Parties of the State put together. They did that on every occasion since 1932.

We are not dependent upon the division of constituencies for that purpose.

They depend upon false promises.

They are not dependent upon anything save the good will of the people. We have that all the time. Let me repeat that the Fianna Fáil Party have secured from the people as many Deputies as all the other organised Parties of the State put together. I think Deputy Corish could revise his statement that the 1959 Act was passed in order to keep Fianna Fáil in office.

He told us that he did not know much about the effect of this Act throughout the country, but he did know that in his constituency of Wexford, the representation would be reduced from five to four. He did not offer any comment on it. He did decide to comment upon a constituency which I am sure was among those which he said he did not know much about. He said that Waterford county had been sliced in order to give South Tipperary, plus Waterford, three Deputies out of four. It is a rather extraordinary thing that any combination of counties could give three Deputies out of four, even though we succeeded in South Tipperary in doing so on the last occasion.

I should like to tell Deputy Corish something about that particular situation. He, as the Leader of a Party, should know that in Waterford, there were 74,031 persons and in South Tipperary there were 73,800. In other words, both of them were about 6,000 short of the total which was necessary to give each four Deputies. The court decided that there should not be a greater difference between the number of persons per Deputy than 1,000 either way. We had a very considerable difference in both of these counties and in order to reserve for rural Ireland the extra seat, we had to decide that a portion of some other county be added—that either Waterford or Tipperary had to lose a seat.

Why did you say it was Waterford?

We can argue that. That was only a toss up of a penny.

It was a useful penny.

The Deputy should be allowed to make his speech without interruption.

I know those counties very well. I can argue that question as well as any of the lawyers on the other side. It was essential that one of these two counties should have four Deputies in order to preserve that extra Deputy whom Fine Gael wished to take from rural Ireland. That is the main purpose of it. Uutimately, it was decided that it was a piece of Waterford which could be tacked on to Tipperary.

Proportional representation would not allow a constituency of two Deputies. Consequently, it was necessary either to transfer the 56,500 votes to some other county or to add something to the 56,500 votes. It was decided that portion of South Tipperary, the northern end of it, would be added to North Tipperary in order to make it a three-member constituency. For the information of Deputy Lindsay, I should say that there is no better Fianna Fáil area than the area we are losing in the northern end of South Tipperary. Very reluctantly we agreed that that portion should be taken from South Tipperary and tacked on to North Tipperary.

Who are the people who agreed?

How were those discussed?

Our arguing on the Bill. What do you think people are?

The Deputy saw the Bill before it came into the House?

I certainly did not see the Bill before it came into the House. I am arguing on the Bill as it stands.

The Deputy said that he reluctantly agreed.

Am I under cross-examination?

You left yourself open to it.

Fine Gael had eight Ministers in the previous Government, all of whom were lawyers. The lawyers should give the laymen a chance to talk once in a while. It was essential that some votes from somewhere should be added to North Tipperary so that they would have three seats. The decision was that that particular number of votes should come from South Tipperary. We were very reluctant to see votes taken from us because of the great support we got there. It is not an easy thing to allow an area to go which we feel is an excellent one from our point of view.

It is heartbreaking.

That is what held up the Bill.

The Minister decided that and we have to accept it. We gave that to Waterford. Deputy Corish appeared to suggest that we attempted to gerrymander. I can assure Deputy Corish that were I given the opportunity of having my way in Waterford, and I could make a division there, I would allow no such choice whatever. While I am not going to say what I could have done, I would not mind showing Deputy Lindsay on a map what I could have done and how effective it could be, so far as I was concerned.

Is the Deputy not safe under the present scheme?

I am talking of the present scheme. I believe the Minister made an effort to be fair to every Party. There has been tacked on to South Tipperary a portion of Waterford constituency. I never had any contact with that constituency.

Do not be vexed.

I am giving the bare facts.

The Deputy has three weeks.

There is portion of the constituency that I hardly ever travelled in, not to speak of meeting any people there, but we are satisfied. Waterford was always a good constituency just as South Tipperary was from our point of view and we are quite happy with any part of it that they tack on to South Tipperary. We are happy about the addition only because it was either Waterford or Tipperary that had to lose a seat. Waterford is losing it. We are getting the extra numbers. We hope it will give us the three out of four that Deputy Corish spoke about and why should we not get the three out of four if possible?

That is fair enough. You admit you did a bit of gerrymandering there.

Deputy O'Donnell knows that the talk about gerrymandering is pure bunkum.

Once the Deputy is admitting that he is endeavouring to get three out of four, that is enough.

I am at the mercy of the lawyers but I am certainly not admitting. No matter how the Waterford constituency or the Tipperary constituency was divided there could not be any gerrymandering because the people are the same generally throughout the country. Could Deputy O'Donnell indicate one part of the constituency as being a good Fine Gael area or a good Fianna Fáil area? As far as Deputies from South Tipperary are concerned, they are satisfied that the tacking on of any part of Waterford to South Tipperary will give good results.

What do the Fianna Fáil Deputies from Waterford say? What does Deputy Ormonde say?

I am only replying to a statement made by Deputy Corish. I have no fears whatsoever. I believe that Deputy Lynch is quite happy about it. I understand that the Labour Party in Waterford summoned a meeting to be held on Tuesday night, to which the Deputies for the county were invited, knowing that the Dáil was meeting on that day. I do not know whether the meeting was held but I could not understand what they were holding meetings about. After all they were a party to the Coalition and were a part of the appeal to the High Court, in my opinion.

On a point of order. It was not the Labour Party; it was the Council of Trade Unions which summoned the meeting.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee. There was a link between the Labour Party and the Fine Gael Party. The solicitor acting for the plaintiffs in the case before the High Court was, I understand, the Private Secretary to Deputy Everett when he was Minister for Justice in the last Government. So that there was a definite liaison between the two Parties from that angle. I cannot understand why the Labour Party did not protest to the Fine Gael Party when they brought the action to the High Court.

So far as I am concerned, I have already said that with great reluctance we parted with a very excellent area of the North Riding of South Tipperary. We are going into an area of the greater part of which we have no knowledge whatever, but because we know the great record of Waterford we are satisfied they will give to us in future the same support as Tipperary gave to us in the past.

Were you in the Custom House at all in the past few weeks?

The Deputy will be killed.

I do not blame the Minister. He had to bring in the Bill. We forced him to do it. I was one of those who forced him and I did it as a Dublin Deputy.

This is a funny sort of Bill. We are more or less inclined to go back to the jungle because those of us who fear the effect of it are thinking only of ourselves. That is natural.

Personally, I do not care. The Bill took one-half of Finglas where I have very strong support away from me, but I got back another area beside where I live. Whereas, I lived on the flank of my area, now I live in the very centre. I did warn the Minister that no matter what he did I would not lose. The reason is that I work hard. Anyone who works hard has nothing to fear.

The decision to bring in the Bill and not to appeal to the Supreme Court was good tactics on the part of the Government. If they appealed, clever lawyers might hold up the case and that might postpone the election for a year or two. The Government feel that things look a bit rosy for them. Money is plentiful, so they say. The additional money from the Pay-As-You-Earn scheme will help them to bribe all those fellows who are looking for a few bob. The Government probably want to put themselves in a position to have a push in June or July. That is not impossible, do not forget. The Minister's move was to ensure that he had the tactical advantage of being able to say when the election would take place. If he appealed, the tactical advantage would move to the other side.

Alarm has been expressed by rural Deputies. I have been invited to speak at a meeting to be held next week on the subject of emigration. I took considerable pains to study the problem. I studied all the books on emigration including the Report of the Commission set up by Deputy Norton. I gather that people are moving out of rural Ireland, that people are not moving out of Dublin to any extent and that those who are moving out of Dublin are Dubliners; that rural people are moving into Dublin. All the evidence I have indicates that while people are leaving the country the population of Dublin is increasing. Following the last census the population of Dublin was over 600,000. I expect that it will be over 700,000 when the results of the recent census are known.

If rural people are moving into Dublin, their representation should follow. A country is not composed of sticks and stones. It is the people who comprise the nation. If the population of Dublin is increasing, Dublin is entitled to increased representation. The suggestion that if a seat is lost here or there the people are being disfranchised is not true. That suggestion is made because some local people are alarmed that they might be the victims.

It is my personal experience that in areas represented by three, four or five Deputies there are always a few representatives who do not do very much and one or two who do most of the work. I am not aware that there will be any loss sustained by the people by the loss of a seat. True representation would be obtained by a system of single seats. Under that system every representative would have to work and there could be no "old soldiering." If the people wanted to see their representative they would send for him and, if he was not available, they would tell him how to get off in the next election.

What is the present position? If the people cannot find "Mick", they send for "Joe". In that way "Mick's" idleness is not so obvious. "Joe" is doing all the work but "Mick" is elected just as usual. If "Mick" were the sole representative and were not active, he would get no votes at the next election.

I do not accept the proposition that the loss of a seat in a three or four-seat constituency does the area any harm. Dublin is entitled to the extra seats. The population is increasing and will tend to increase. The population of Belfast has increased by 200,000 in the last 60 years. In Dublin, the population has increased by 100,000. The tendency is for city populations to increase and rural populations to decrease. Even anticipating the future, the Minister is doing the right thing in giving Dublin greater representation. As proof that the rural people are moving to Dublin just as much as they are moving to England and elsewhere, 65 per cent. of the members of Dublin Corporation, which is supposed to be represented by local people, were born in the country—in Mayo, Cork, Tipperary and elsewhere. The rural areas have nothing to fear; it is up to the few other Deputies to do their duty and, if they do, their areas will be well represented. I regret the Minister has no single seat areas so that the people who do not do the work will get what they deserve, a kick in the pants.

Whether or not there is gerrymandering, I do not care. I am not personally affected. Any Party that would have control of a Bill of this sort would gerrymander up to a point. I am not saying such gerrymandering is done to suit the rank and file of Deputies. Parties do not care who is a Deputy. There was much discussion as to whether certain people had information before the Bill was published. I practically knew what the changes were ten days before the Bill was published. I gave the information to the Evening Mail and I was correct in three of the areas. I gave the townships, County Dublin and my own area ten days before the Bill was published, so it was common knowledge. I will not say anything regarding gerrymandering. There is one way to win and that is to fight. If you fight vigorously you will always get back. If you do not, you deserve to be beaten.

The Minister must feel himself in a rather invidious position in connection with this Bill. When the 1959 Bill was before the House many suggestions were made to the Minister regarding the allocation of seats but the Minister, with the aid of his majority, successfully maintained the position that, though he devoted long hours and sleepless nights to the production of a suitable Bill, he had not been able to produce anything better than the one which he then recommended to the House. He told the House if they had all the experience he had of working out a Bill, that was the kind of Bill they would ultimately arrive at and that there was no other Bill possible.

Nothing happened as regards the geography of the country since then, but an action was taken in the High Court seeking a declaration on the constitutionality of the last Electoral Bill. The courts have decided that the last Electoral Bill was ultra vires the Constitution; consequently some other Bill had to be introduced and this is the Bill we got. It is worth the time of the House to dwell for a few moments on the situation in which we have been landed by the Constitution, by the courts and by all the legal people who advised the Government. The courts' decision is that the last Bill which gave a seat in constituencies with fewer than 20,000 of a population per seat was ultra vires the Constitution. That has been the position in many constituencies since the Constitution was passed over 20 years ago.

The Wexford constituency, for example, never had 100,000 of a population since 1911 but it has had five seats in this House since 1922. I do not quote that as an example against Wexford. The same remarks can be applied elsewhere, that all these constituencies with a population of fewer than 20,000 per Dáil seat have been electing to the Dáil a number of Deputies they were not entitled to elect, that areas in the country sent to this Dáil Deputies who were redundant and for whom there was no legal or constitutional place here because of the fact that our legislation in the past has been based upon the assumption that if we did not get the 20,000 in each constituency, it was good enough to get it in the country as a whole.

The courts have now said that there must be a population of 20,000 per seat, that representation must be based upon a certain equalisation of seats throughout the country. The clear inference from the courts' decision is that our constituencies in many respects have been over-represented. That position has gone on in relation to this House despite legal opinions throughout the years. Now we find that in an effort to remedy that situation we will create more and newer problems.

An examination of the number of persons in each constituency per Dáil seat will show that it could still be argued in the courts that Dublin is entitled to another seat. I am not saying that Dublin ought to get another seat but that can be argued, and between now and polling day, some person may go into the courts and say: "This new Bill does not implement the decision of the High Court." If this Bill is passed, the situation may arise that a month or two before polling day the courts may hold that even this Bill is not in accordance with the judgment of the High Court.

What is it proposed to do in respect of this Bill? Is it proposed to sail on and hold an election under this Bill in the ordinary way and assume that there is no objection to it, or is it intended to submit this Bill to the Supreme Court and ask the Supreme Court to pronounce upon the constitutionality of the Bill? Is it intended to do that when the Bill is through the Oireachtas or is it intended, after the Second Stage of the Bill is passed, to refer it, if it be possible to have a Bill referred at that stage, to the Supreme Court for adjudication? Or are we going to let matters drift on, having no legal view as to the constitutionality of this Bill, and wait to see whether anybody will move in the courts to declare it unconstitutional, perhaps a month or two before the election takes place? I should like to have that point cleared up so far as the position of this House and the position of the Government is concerned.

The Taoiseach has already put it on record that he does not believe in the High Court judgment. The Taoiseach has said that he is quite satisfied the last Bill which was declared unconstitutional was, in fact, in accordance with the Constitution. He made that perfectly clear in the replies which he made in this House on the subject. That view has never been recanted by the Taoiseach. Now we have this Bill which does not do to the fullest what the High Court Judge says it should do in order to comply with the Constitution. The Government ought not to run the risk of allowing this Bill to go on the Statute Book only to find that it is unconstitutional, could be challenged, perhaps successfully challenged, in the courts at a time when the opportunity will not be available for carrying out an amendment of the Bill unless by a prolongation of this Parliament.

The Government have not had a distinguished record of success in the Courts in recent months and they should not be allowed to give any more hostages to fortune. They should ensure that, so far as this Bill is concerned at least, the Courts will pronounce on its constitutionality, so that we may see a clear period between now and election day, and that it will be possible to feel that there is no danger of a new situation arising such as that created by the High Court decision.

The efforts to draw up the new constituencies have given us a hotch-potch arrangement which I think it is hard to justify. So far as I am concerned, I believe the political thumb is well and truly tattooed on the original draft of this Bill. It is obvious that Parties, and not Parliament, were the main consideration when this Bill was being drafted, because there can be no other explanation of the way in which these constituencies have been mutilated to get what I assume the Government hope will be pleasant results.

Everyone remembers, when we were discussing the abolition of proportional representation, all the speeches which were made from Government benches about how desirable it was to have small constituencies, where you could trot around and have tea in the evening with several constituents; in a small little area you would be well known by your Christian name and you would know every family in the constituency and be on the most "matey" terms with them. That was all being sold to us as reasons for swallowing the abolition of proportional representation.

We were told by the Minister, by the Minister for Health and other apologists for the Government at the time, that in the future with these smaller constituencies it would be a short run only to get around one's constituency instead of the arduous motor drives which are now necessary to get in touch with these outposts of the far-flung electoral empire. We were told then that the small constituency was the ideal thing for a democracy, and the ideal territorial area to be aimed at.

Now from the same Minister we have a new Bill. For what? To make smaller constituencies? Not at all. To make large constituencies. All that he said on the proposal to abolish proportional representation has been swallowed by the Minister in this Bill. The small constituency has gone. What has happened? He has made larger constituencies, larger more inconvenient constituencies than exist at present, and than existed at the time he was making those speeches in this House.

Prophecies by Ministers seem to be related to the width of the rope they are walking at the time. The tight rope then was to find excuses for the abolition of proportional representation. We were told of these nice, "matey" constituencies where everyone would know everyone else in an idyllic atmosphere, that a number of Parties would not represent the constituency, but that you would have the whole flock to yourself for three, four or five years to do with it whatever you liked.

That has all been abandoned and we are now getting the four-member constituency. Three was not big enough and it must be made four now, although it is only 12 or 18 months since we were told that even three was too big and that the three-member constituency should be broken into three separate constituencies. We had three-member constituencies then with three Deputies and we were told that was too big and that we should have three separate constituencies with one Deputy representing each. Now that three has gone in a number of cases and we have four instead—a complete reversal as Deputies will recollect of what was said when we were discussing the abolition of proportional representation. Anyone who would like a nice literary exercise can read the speeches of the Minister and members of the Government Party in favour of small single-member constituencies.

I think it is crazy to do what is being done with some constituencies. I represent the constituency of Kildare which is known everywhere as a clearly defined territorial area. In order to box the compass in connection with the results at the next election, Kildare has a chunk of south Meath clamped on to it at one end, and an extreme corner of Westmeath at another end. Now to the constituency which consists of the County of Kildare, a chunk of south Meath and a chunk of Westmeath are being added, and it will be all grouped under the heading of Kildare, although that substantial portion will not in fact be Kildare, but portion of two other counties. The only effect of that is effectively to disfranchise people who live in south Meath, and people who live in Longford and Westmeath, because of the fact that those areas are not big enough, or not numerically strong enough, to ensure representation for the counties of which they are a natural part. They will be, as it were, just small lungs of Kildare. I think that is a most undesirable way of trying to create constituencies.

The case mentioned by Deputy Loughman is another case in point. He hopes, as he said, that what they lose in one way they will gain in another. It is obviously desirable that we should endeavour to get parliamentary representation to run side by side with local representation. Deputies know that in the course of their duties they have, inevitably, to make representations to local authorities when the business of their constituents requires them to do so. That is not such a difficult job if you have to make representations to the local authority for the area you represent, but if two or three other local authorities are added to the main local authority, a situation will arise which will become unmanageable, and especially unmanageable with regard to the virtues we were told 12 or 18 months ago the small single-member constituency had.

I do not blame the Government for introducing a Bill to deal with this situation. A Bill had to be introduced. That was inevitable after the decision of the High Court, but it is quite clear that the Constitution which imposes upon us the responsibilities now clearly defined by the Court, is a Constitution which should be amended and amended in a much more useful respect than the abolition of proportional representation—amended so as to get rid of that obligation which we now have of a swing between 20 and 30 and that swing still not being a certified legal requirement of the highest court in the country. We are not prepared to bring the interpretation of the Constitution to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the country. We are leaving it to be decided by one judge sitting on his own. The High Court decision did not go to the Supreme Court.

The Constitution we are now acting on is the Constitution as interpreted, not by the highest court in the country, but by a judge of the High Court sitting on his own. No one can pretend to believe that is a very satisfactory decision. I think the decision of the judge compelling us to butcher these constituencies in this way is not a satisfactory solution to the whole question of the delineation of constituencies.

Someone ought to have a new look at the situation created by the legal decision, created by the necessity of making Parliament work, making the constituencies work and making them sufficiently homogeneous to ensure that the system of Parliamentary representation so reached will continue to give satisfactory results locally to the electorate, and satisfactory results from the standpoint of having the constituencies adequately represented in Parliament to ensure that their viewpoint will be put adequately and without impairment on the floor of this House. I think it would have been much better for the Government if they had endeavoured to get an all-Party committee at least to try to define in broad outline certain principles which ought to be followed and certain undesirable practices which should be obviated in the preparation of a Bill of this kind.

So far as the manner in which the constituencies are drawn is concerned, it seems to me that political expediency more than abstract justice or a desire to implement the legal position operated to draft the provisions of this Bill. If we pass this Bill in this most unsatisfactory position we shall leave large portions of the population virtually disfranchised. Some effort should be made to get out the dead timber in the Constitution in that respect and to give us, at least for the subsequent general election, a method of Parliamentary general election which will conform to modern conditions of Parliamentary representation and independent thinking.

Speaking from the Government Benches a few moments ago, Deputy Loughman deplored the necessity for this Bill. He said the real reason for it was the result of a High Court decision on the 1959 Electoral Act. Let us look at the position. The Constitution was enacted in 1937. It was the brainchild of Fianna Fáil. It was bitterly opposed by Fine Gael, not only in this House but in the country. Still, Fianna Fáil told us it was the ideal Constitution for this State.

In 1959, the Fianna Fáil Government introduced an Electoral Bill. They were warned in this House that in the opinion of Fine Gael it was unconstitutional: in other words, it was against the book of rules which they themselves drew up. Having been warned, they now hold up their hands in horror because a member of Fine Gael blew a whistle when they committed a foul. They were warned about it just as they have been warned today that this Bill may be unconstitutional.

When the Bill was introduced, the Taoiseach was warned that a census might intervene between the passing of the Bill and its implementation. He said, in effect: "If I thought there was any foundation for the allegation of unconstitutionality I would postpone the census." We may take it, therefore, that he has now procured legal opinion as to the constitutionality of this Bill. I sincerely hope he is right.

Suggestions were made that there has been gerrymandering under this Bill. Let us look at the position. Before the last election Fianna Fáil went to the country and asked for a strong majority. They got the strongest majority of any Government in the past 35 years. Serious problems were facing the country, economic problems, financial problems and the unemployment problem. With what was the first year of office taken up? It was taken up with a Bill to amend the Constitution by the abolition of proportional representation.

For what purpose did Fianna Fáil in their first year of office, with the strongest possible majority in Government, wish the Constitution amended? How wise were the Irish people to refuse to abolish proportional representation ! Today, we accuse Fianna Fáil of gerrymandering. What would they have done had they the drawing-up of the one-seat constituencies? The present Minister let the cat out of the bag during that debate when he said: "If this Bill goes through, Fine Gael will have had it."

This matter was raised before. The records of the House are in the possession of the House. Photostat copies are available of what is in the records. What the Deputy is now quoting is not what was said and I want it withdrawn.

What was said?

We do not want a team of lawyers.

The Minister did say it. I heard him.

If the Minister says he did not make the statement attributed to him by Deputy O'Donnell then Deputy O'Donnell must accept it.

I accept that what I quoted does not appear on the records of the House. I merely quoted what I heard the Minister say.

The Minister says he did not say it.

Therefore, I accept it. Supposing, for a second, the Minister had made that statement.

Are we to have this House turned into the type of institution in which Deputy O'Donnell seeks to earn his living outside? Does he think he will get away with that sort of thing?

I have made the position clear. The Deputy must accept it.

What is the institution in which I make my living outside of which the Minister thinks so little? Is he referring to the courts of this country?

I made a statement in this House against allegations previously made and which are now being trotted out by Deputy O'Donnell. The House and Deputy O'Donnell accepted that they were not made.

The Minister referred to the institution in which I make my living. He spoke in a manner which would suggest it was an institution of some disrepute.

That is not in order.

The Deputy, I am afraid, is imputing rather than——

If the Minister did not, then I withdraw that.

Let us come back to the Bill.

Supposing one said that if this Bill went through Fine Gael would have it. To what could he be referring other than to gerrymandering. The Irish people did not accept the advice of the Government. They retained proportional representation, and wisely so. Before leaving office, the Government had to introduce an Electoral (Amendment) Bill under the Constitution. We did not get that Bill until their second last year of office, 1959. It was quite evident to any person reading it that the Bill was unconstitutional. They were warned by a number of Fine Gael Deputies that in the opinion of those Deputies the Bill was unconstitutional. Despite that, and despite lengthy arguments not only by the Minister but by Deputies on the Fianna Fáil benches supporting the Bill, the High Court has declared the Act unconstitutional. Here, now, in their last few months of office, the Government are asking us to rush this Bill through.

Speaking on the 1959 Bill, the Minister said it was the only Bill he could equitably introduce. He has now told us this is the best Bill he can produce to comply with the decision of the High Court. Before I left office as Minister for Local Government, I had my officials draw up a Bill to comply with those conditions. A most peculiar thing is that the draft of that Bill has never been produced.

Why did the Deputy not do it?

I tried to do it in the High Court but I was ruled out. The Minister objected to it and privilege was claimed.

Why does the Deputy not do it now?

The Minister knows very well. I divided County Donegal by drawing a line down through the centre between Ballybofey and Carrigart.

The Deputy did not.

I did, and the population of east and west would then be the same. I did not create new constituencies; I stuck to the old constituencies of East and West Donegal and I was able to tell the House that by drawing a line down from Carrigart, leaving Downings in the west and Carrigart in the east, there would be an equal population in both constituencies. The Minister told us that owing to a ridge of hills in the centre of the county, it would be impossible to divide it otherwise than in the manner in which it was divided under the 1947 Act. What has he done now? If I may use a vulgar expression, he has kicked the belly out of it. He has taken a hump out of the centre of East Donegal. Not only was he not satisfied with that, but he took the tip out of North-West Donegal and put it in with the new constituency known as North-East Donegal and created a new constituency of South-West Donegal.

I am not complaining in the least about it. The difference to me is absolutely nothing, but I think it is unfair to the county itself that portion of it, the northern part of the old West Donegal area, should now be asked to elect new representatives to this House and that the people of the area around Ballybofey should be asked to do the same, whereas one of the boundaries could be left as it was. There was nothing to prevent the Minister leaving the old North-West boundary between Portnablagh and Dunfanaghy and putting Convoy in with East Donegal. If the Minister is able to give a good reason for his action, I am prepared to accept it. The only reason I mentioned it is the question asked by the Deputy from Galway. I am sure the Deputy paid a good many visits to the Minister's room before these things were fixed.

The Deputy need not worry about me at all.

I take it that the Deputy has things fairly well fixed now. Deputy Loughman said: "We reluctantly agreed to taking a certain portion of south Tipperary into north Tipperary and taking in a portion of Waterford with South Tipperary." So there was a say in it all right. There were discussions. I know now that Deputy Geoghegan is quite satisfied because he possibly was concerned with these discussions. I shall not say anything about Kerry but I notice one Kerry Deputy very conspicuous by his absence. I wonder if he reluctantly agreed to let Dingle into South Kerry. I wonder if Deputy Moloney was taken into consultation.

Then of course we have Leitrim. They wanted to punish Leitrim for having the audacity to defeat Fianna Fáil in the recent by-election. The Minister took a very good portion of the constituency where there were a considerable number of Sinn Féin and Fine Gael supporters and gave it to Roscommon. Then he took a portion of Roscommon and put it into Mayo. I am sure it was not a Fianna Fáil portion. I do not know whom the people of Ballaghaderreen support but I feel sure it is not Fianna Fáil.

Take Ballyfermot. We are now taking it out of the city of Dublin and giving it to the county. Everybody knows this is being done to save a seat for the Minister for Defence. Everybody knows Deputy Burke would beat him two to one, so we must make certain of a seat for the Minister and the only way in which we can do it is to throw Ballyfermot into County Dublin.

Is the Deputy aware the Minister does not reside——

He has a place of business there. Of course I accept the Minister's word if he says the Minister does not reside there.

It must have been a terrible struggle to get him to take Ballyfermot.

I suppose he reluctantly agreed. Anyhow, it shows the Government are not forgetting rural Ireland. We are giving County Dublin two extra Deputies. I hope this Bill goes through the House and that there will not be any delay in having it passed and that it will not be later challenged in the courts. It is largely a Committee Stage Bill which, I am afraid, will be discussed by Deputies mainly concerned with their own constituencies. I am not in the least dismayed by the change in the counties, except insofar as it reflects the drift away from rural Ireland. There will be fewer rural Deputies, but that is largely the fault of the people who drafted the Constitution of 1937.

I listened to a short speech from Deputy Dillon, in which he made a few general charges, and a rather longer one from Deputy O'Donnell who was a little more specific. What I would have liked to have heard—and what the people of the country would have liked to have heard —was why Fine Gael, knowing the consequences of this court case and its effect on the traditional boundaries of constituencies throughout the country, should have come to the courts and contested an Act which had passed through this House and which was agreed without a vote being taken, if we except a few divisions on Committee Stage.

In 1959, a Bill was introduced to revise the constituencies, where necessary, in accordance with the Constitution. As I said, that Bill passed through the House without a vote; it was an agreed Bill. We can well remember what happened when the Opposition were in violent disagreement with a Bill. We remember what happened when we introduced a Bill to allow us go to the country to endeavour to change a certain section of the Constitution. Hardly one section of that Bill was allowed to go through without a vote. But the 1959 Bill went through the House without a vote.

That is not right.

There may have been a vote on a few sections.

There was a vote against the Fifth Stage.

I would like to know why there was a change of heart on the part of the Fine Gael Deputies during the following year. It took them 12 months to make up their minds that they would protest against it. One wonders what the reasons were. Were they concerned with the people in Dublin who had not presumably sufficient Deputies to represent them? Obviously, they were not concerned with the people of rural Ireland. Were they concerned with defeating the Government on a constitutional issue or were they concerned with something else? I cannot say that.

I should like to say a few words about the manner in which this matter was brought before the courts. There are two ways in which it could have been brought before the courts, but I cannot say which was adopted. Senator O'Donovan may have taken this case on his own initiative, or it may have been a Party decision. I am well aware that Senator O'Donovan was within his rights, if he so wished, to bring such a case before the courts, but what makes one a little doubtful about it is the fact that Senator O'Donovan is a Fine Gael Senator and he surrounded himself with a considerable number of very prominent Fine Gael people.

He had a right to get the Attorney General.

He surrounded himself with a coterie of prominent Fine Gael Deputies and Senators. That leaves me in doubt as to whether this was done by the Senator himself. I am forced to the conclusion that it must have been a Party decision. If it was a Party decision, then the Fine Gael Party would find themselves rather in a quandary, because it obviously would not look too well for a Party whose Leader has been constantly wailing and crying about the people of rural Ireland, if they were to contest an Act in the courts and by so doing deprive rural Ireland of a number of Deputies and hand them over to Dublin city. If the Party came out in public and agreed that they were contesting this as a Party, obviously the people would decide that the tears shed by Deputy Dillon over the years were crocodile tears. Of course, we are aware that they are crocodile tears, but there may be some people down the country who are not so aware.

I believe the main reason this Act was not contested in the courts for a year was that Fine Gael were trying to find a way out of that difficulty. Finally, they decided—or perhaps, some agile mind among them decided —that the best method of contesting this Act would be to choose people from their Party who were not as amenable to discipline as the remainder, people who were known to have kicked over the traces so far as the Party are concerned. They felt that, by doing that, they could accept the decision if the going was good, but could disclaim all responsibility if the going was not so good. That is what they are doing now. They are attempting to claim they are not responsible for this court case.

To go to the court, they selected Senator O'Donovan, who is a former Parliamentary Secretary to the Government in the last Coalition Government. They had as solicitor Deputy Richie Ryan, a Fine Gael Deputy.

All that was used in Sligo-Leitrim but to no avail.

They had Deputy McGilligan, a former Minister in the Coalition. They had Senator O'Quigley, a prominent Fine Gael Senator and they had Mr. MacBride, a former Deputy of the Clann na Poblachta Party.

Surely you did not expect them to get Terry de Valera?

It was rumoured around the House for months prior to the taking of this case in the courts that it would be taken. That was the time when responsible Fine Gael people, who realised the effect this would have on the traditional boundaries of the constituencies, should have done something to prevent it. Obviously, nothing was done. The case was taken before the courts and I had the honour of giving evidence on the Government side in an effort to maintain the traditional boundaries of the constituencies.

And the Deputy's evidence was not accepted, even on oath.

You will not sidetrack me, no matter how much you interrupt. I recognised, as any intelligent person would recognise, that if a decision were given in favour of Senator O'Donovan, who contested this action on a population basis, it would have an adverse effect on the boundary of my own constituency of Louth. I knew the total population there was too large for three Deputies and that part of my constituency would go somewhere else. I was very strongly opposed to a change being made in the constituency of Louth, which was bounded by the traditional county boundaries. Those boundaries had never been disturbed, either in our times or in British times, when we had North and South Louth. The boundaries of the county were always allowed remain intact. That was what I was fighting for, that we would not have to make these changes in the boundaries of my constituency.

I was not making that fight for purely traditional or sentimental reasons, although they formed part of my reasons, but for the reason that I am firmly convinced that the constituency of Louth is the only perfect example of Fianna Fáil policy in operation. We have in that constituency a balance between industry and agriculture. The constituency is, and has been, an example to other constituencies as to what it is possible to do. It was really like a pilot plot for the rest of the country. I felt it would be a grievous mistake to have the boundaries of this constituency interfered with and, as I said, I came specifically to the court to give what evidence I could to try to maintain the boundaries of that constituency.

If I had succeeded in doing that we would also have succeeded in maintaining the traditional boundaries of other constituencies as well. In spite of all the Minister could do in his evidence and what we Deputies on our side could do, the decision was given against us. One thing I forgot to mention was that, apart altogether from the counsel and solicitors which the Fine Gael Party had gathered around Senator O'Donovan in court, they had as witnesses, Deputy O'Donnell, who was a Minister in the last Coalition Government, and Deputy Coogan, also a Fine Gael Deputy. As I said, despite all we were able to do, the decision of the court was given against us.

Your evidence was rejected.

The decision of the court stated that a national average could be ascertained and the Minister then was not allowed to go more than one thousand above or below that national average. This immediately placed the Minister in a straitjacket when it came to deciding what the new constituencies should be. He had no option but to create constituencies in which a Deputy would represent the national average as fixed, or within one thousand above or below this average. As I said before, it was obvious that once the Minister had to do this it would have an adverse effect on practically every constituency. As we see now, we have got the results of this decision of the court in this Bill. The city of Dublin——

In accordance with the Constitution.

The city of Dublin has got increased representation and rural areas which are thinly populated have been placed in a much worse position than they were previously. It is all very fine for some people to say that the main function of a Deputy is to legislate. Of course we are all perfectly well aware of that, but we should also remember that there are other factors to be taken into consideration as well. We must recognise that unless a Deputy is in reasonably close touch with his constituents he will find it very difficult to represent them in this House. We have constituencies which are 80 miles across, I am told, represented by three Deputies, and we have one instance of a constituency 80 miles across which now has to be made larger. A Deputy from that area will find it very difficult to represent his constituents here because he cannot maintain the close touch which is necessary if he is to represent them properly. He can come up here and make speeches about certain matters, but whether he is speaking directly on behalf of his constituents or not is a different matter altogether.

Another point that worries me in connection with the whole matter is the fact that the results of this court case have given increased representation in the cities which is a dangerous matter, in my opinion, in an agricultural country. If this trend were to be continued we would have a purely city approach to matters here. Again that argument was another reason why the Minister and Deputies on this side of the House who gave evidence in the court case made such an effort to have the 1959 Act declared a valid Act. Finally, I should like to say that the present Bill was forced on the Minister by a decision of the High Court. It was forced on him by a decision of the High Court in a case brought by members of Fine Gael and it is a Bill which the Minister did not want. It is a Bill which the Party did not want——

Hear, hear.

——and which I personally did not want but it was forced on the Minister and this House.

The longer this debate goes on and the more we hear from the Government benches, the more amazing the situation becomes. Gone are the days when we had to hearken to the dictum: "The majority has no right to do wrong." The majority, in this case the Government, in enacting the 1959 Act did wrong and was found to have done so and their arguments today appear to be based upon the idea that the High Court had no right to alter the wrong they enacted in this Legislature. Let us be clear about this; I should like the Minister to advert to it in his reply, or preferably that the Taoiseach should come into the House and state definitely that he accepts the functions of the High Court as being in accordance with the Constitution. Let us have an end to this nonsense of Deputy Faulkner saying that this Bill was forced upon them by the High Court when, in fact, the High Court was the instrument through which the Bill was forced on the Government and the Fianna Fáil Party, by the Constitution which the Party enacted in 1937 and in which it was then, and still is, laid down specifically what were to be the considerations governing public representation in Dáil Éireann.

It has come to a rather sorry situation when, as a result of questions put to the Taoiseach over the past few months, he stated quite clearly that the advice of the Attorney General given on the 1959 Act was correct. That statement coming from the Taoiseach, leader of the Government, after the High Court had found that the Bill was unconstitutional is certainly promoting a most undesirable clash of views and ideas as between the Executive, and the Executive through the Legislature, and the Judiciary. Our system of the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary is a time-honoured one which should not only be accepted but respected by us on all occasions.

The Minister for Local Government and Deputy Faulkner who has just spoken, as well as other Deputies, went into the witness box in the High Court to give evidence during the hearing of this case. They took an oath stating that what they said would be the truth, the whole truth and nothing else but the truth. Now, according to Deputy Faulkner, we hear that they went into the court to make an effort to preserve the boundaries. Is it now revealed that the situation is such that Ministers and Deputies will go into court and take an oath to preserve a situation or adhere to a situation which is in conflict with the Constitution to which they subscribe by virtue of another oath?

What are oaths for? Are they meant to be adhered to? Do they mean anything or are they an empty formula— to use a time-honoured phrase? If the oath taken and the evidence given were in pursuance of an effort to tell the truth and the results went against them I think the honourable thing for the Government to have done when that decision came out, would be to have followed one of two courses. One course was to appeal immediately to the Supreme Court and get a final decision and the other was to resign and have the clash between themselves and the Judiciary brought to a practical conclusion.

We have the Taoiseach telling us here that were it not for other considerations he would appeal to the Supreme Court. The other consideration means, I suppose, the census. That was pending at the time he was giving that opinion in reply to a Question.

The census is taking place and for what it is worth I should like to warn the Government, a Government formed from a Party which places such emphasis on the national language, that the Irish version of the Constitution is the version which is operative in the case of doubt and the Minister for Local Government and the Government as a whole might find themselves in serious constitutional trouble on the interpretation of the word "Daonáireamh" in the Constitution.

There is great whining here today to the effect that rural Ireland is being deprived of Deputies. As a result of the preponderance of Fianna Fáil Deputies and Fianna Fáil Governments, rural Ireland is being stripped of its population and its families. That is the kind of complaint I should like to hear Deputies opposite make rather than saying that it is necessary to keep up a level of representation in Parliament that is hypocritical in proportion to the population of these areas. That is the situation and the Government Party know it. If the present situation in rural Ireland is any indication of the feeling of this Government for the small farmers and the small shopkeepers then that argument goes by the board—that you want higher representation for them. The Government have been long enough in office trying to do something—I give them a present of the "trying"—and they have failed miserably.

Deputy MacCarthy of Cork, in an aside, said that proportional representation was beaten by the cities. That was when a reference was made by somebody here to the result of the referendum. The whole history of the legislative efforts in regard to representation since this Government came into office is a sorry one beginning with proportional representation.

Deputy Faulkner went to great pains to discover why we went to the High Court, but every citizen has the right to go there. Even a citizen under twenty-one, if he finds suitable machinery to help him, can go to the High Court to seek redress on any matter in relation to an enactment of this House. I do not see why Fianna Fáil complain when somebody goes to the High Court to see that their muchvaunted Constitution is adhered to and that its terms are properly observed not only in the letter and spirit but also in the practice.

I wonder why we got the proportional representation effort before we got the effort to redraw the constituencies? I wonder have Fianna Fáil realised that the time has arrived, or almost arrived, certainly, when it is not possible to count with accuracy the votes for Fianna Fáil, Labour, Fine Gael or anybody else? I am glad to see that, even though I might personally suffer as a result. I welcome that approach on the part of our younger people showing that they are able to think for themselves and vote for whom they like and not in the traditional spirit of hostility towards one side or the other. The Fianna Fáil Party might well have said: "The game is up; we cannot revise the constituencies now with the certainty we had in former times. We shall have a `go' at another method. We shall reduce the size of the constituencies, make them one-member constituencies and then, for our time at any rate, we shall survive." Perhaps, that is what happened, but certainly it is as sound a conjecture as many of those put forward by Deputy Faulkner.

They came along with the 1959 Bill. I wonder if we are to judge the sincerity of the adherence to veracity of Fianna Fáil Party members by the opening words of Deputy Faulkner? He said the Bill went through the House without a vote and when he was challenged he said "a few votes." If he were not challenged he would have had it published in his local paper—that was the main object of his speech—as a wonderful statement purporting to be true, that there was no vote on the 1959 Bill in this House.

Deputy O'Donnell has already adverted to the gerrymandering efforts. In relation to the constituency which I represent people tell me that I have got a wonderful present. In regard to that I do not differ in any way from the man who wrote many years ago: "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.” It is to be hoped that my Party and I will be able to convert the gift into something quite different from what the donor meant. Deputy Loughman let the cat out of the bag——

He always does——

Whatever else we might think of his politics, Deputy Loughman might be described as impetuously honest. Certainly, he was impetuously honest today when he said: "We reluctantly agreed to let that good Fianna Fáil portion of the South Riding of Tipperary into the North." Does that not mean that the whole Fianna Fáil Party had access to the draft of the Bill, that there were consultations, that one member said this and the other said that? Was it not common knowledge all around this House that there was such a multiplicity of Fianna Fáil Party meetings that there was concern only with this work? The result is that we have boundaries that do not result from any High Court decision. They do not result from any attempt to adhere to the Constitution. They result from embarrassments, on the one hand, and fears on the other for the personal future of certain Deputies in the Fianna Fáil Party.

As the leader of the Opposition pointed out at the end of his speech, the day has come when it is no longer possible to count with certainty the votes in any ballot box. I think that situation is rapidly becoming more crystal clear to everyone. While a majority Party here can, with the legislative machinery available to it, do a wrong as a majority, in the end the people can stop them and I believe at the next general election, the people will go quite a long way towards stopping this rather shamefaced effort to deceive them, crying about rural bias and the decline in representation in rural areas when they know themselves in rural areas that they have been shamelessly betrayed economically and politically by this Government.

Deputy Faulkner stated that, by reason of the court decision, the Minister found himself in a straitjacket. That is true, but, like the great Houdini, the Minister found a way out of the straitjacket. Deputy Faulkner may forget the determined battle we fought in 1959 in our struggle for justice for two rural constituencies. We have listened to a lot of bleating this evening about rural constituencies. In 1959, when we were fighting for justice for four rural constituencies, the Minister was well able to slip a fast one over. The Court, thanks be to God, gave the final decision. He did his utmost in 1959 to slaughter justice so far as the people in Cork county were concerned. He failed in his attempt and he is now switching a little towards the east.

Studying the maps in the Library, we find that this Donegal Minister has discovered all of a sudden that the mountains in Donegal are not so terribly high that they cannot be climbed. He failed in Cork and he has now decided to do his damnedest to succeed in Waterford. Is there any limit to the political dishonesty of a Minister, a Taoiseach, and a Party who rob roughly one-third of the population of Waterford of their rights? Just because, as Deputy Loughman stated this evening, a piece of South Tipperary went to North Tipperary, they had to take a good slice out of Waterford to compensate South Tipperary.

What are the figures in the 1956 census? Will the Minister contradict me when I say that, even on the basis of the 1956 figures, each Deputy in Waterford represented more people than did each Deputy in South Tipperary? Does the Minister deny that? He does not. What is the position then? When an examination is held for the Civil Service, there may be 20 vacancies; the candidate who gets 21st place is naturally called to fill any subsequent vacancy that may arise. It is not No. 22 who is called, or No. 23. Of course, it is the Civil Service Commissioners who are involved there and not an interested political Party. The Civil Service Commissioners are interested only in fair play.

It is quite obvious now that Deputy Loughman making his defence this evening let the cat out of the bag when he said they did their utmost, but then agreed to giving a little bit to North Tipperary. In actual fact, Waterford should hold its four seats. I am not pleading for any particular area. As in 1959, all I demand from the Minister now is justice. Apparently it is beyond him now as it was beyond him in 1959. Deputy Booth got up in the Government benches in 1959 and lambasted some of us on this side of the House. He asked why we had not put down an amendment asking for a seat for Cork. He should have known at the time what the answer was. The Taoiseach discussed the position with representatives of the Labour Party and made it clear that there would be a free vote on the matter. It is always so easy for Fianna Fáil to say one thing and mean another. We know what happened. We know the Whips were put on and justice was denied to one county, the county the High Court has decided was the one county which should not have been interfered with. Where are the hills of Donegal now?

We have been told a good deal about the increase in employment in the past few months by the Taoiseach and his Ministers. I wonder was that employment provided by levelling down the hills of Donegal? I wonder where the mountains are now in the area represented by the Tánaiste? They seem to have disappeared also. The Minister created a position in which people were asked to vote for Wexford as against Cork. Where were the mountains in Wexford? It was a sorry day for the Minister when he had his name appended to the political hypocrisy of the Bill that was brought in here in 1959. Sorry I am that many of my friends in the Fianna Fáil Party found themselves in the position of not being able to vote freely but rather being compelled to vote against their consciences.

Deputy Faulkner said a few moments ago that his main concern in giving evidence in the High Court was the boundaries of his county. I do not blame him for that. What about the boundaries of all the other counties? We know that in Louth Fianna Fáil have two Deputies and keeping the boundary there would almost certainly mean keeping two Deputies out of three. If that was the position there, what was the position in other areas? Why did they pick on Waterford to drop one out of four? Is it because they hope to get two out of three? Let them be barefaced. Let them attempt that. What will they say to the people?

In the report of the High Court action, it was obvious to me that the learned judge held that the convenience, or otherwise, of Deputies should not be taken into consideration. The only issue was the issue of proper representation. Have we got that in this Bill? Will the people in West Waterford, from Youghal Bridge east, have proper representation? Will they have better representation as compared with the people in Tipperary? As one speaker said this evening, it is not just national matters that are of concern to local people. I am sure it must be the same in every county as it is in Cork. I would go so far as to say that for every case I as a Deputy would get in Cork or in the Departments here, I would have at least seven or eight local ones. Where do the people in West Waterford stand now? To whom will they send their inquiries? Is it to a person representing them who may live in Tipperary? Will they expect him to contact the local authority office in Waterford in order to get fair play for them?

I do not agree with my colleague, Deputy Corish, because I believe in calling a spade a spade. We must know that there is gerrymandering up to the hilt as far as they can manage it in this Bill. As regards the 1959 Act, I demanded a vote on different sections. With the Departmental advisers, I had no quarrel. Never once did I cast a shadow of doubt on any of these officials whose job it was to provide the facts for the Minister. It was the Minister, his political advisers and apparently the Deputies in South Tipperary and others who had access to the Minister who at a very important period switched the electoral areas and townlands in parts of the counties.

It was amazing this evening to listen to some Fianna Fáil members bemoaning the terrible position of rural Ireland because of the decision of the High Court. I had hoped that in view of the decision of the High Court, the Taoiseach would move for an amendment of the Constitution, where necessary, to give protection to rural Ireland. Apparently, neither the Taoiseach nor the Minister was prepared to do that. There is no use in the backbenchers of Fianna Fáil now complaining that the people of rural Ireland are being robbed of their rights when, in actual fact, the only people who could restore those rights to them and improve on them, if they wished, were the Taoiseach, the Minister for Local Government, the Fianna Fáil Government and Party. They refused to do so.

I read the reports of this case in the Cork Examiner and I was amazed when perusing the cross-examination of the Minister by Mr. MacBride, senior counsel. In the battle in 1959, when Deputy MacEntee, the Tánaiste, was able to secure an extra seat for his constituency, there was then left to decide whether the constituency represented by the Minister for Finance or Cork County was to gain. It was the Minister for Local Government who stood up in these benches and said: “I move”. He said no more because he had no case for Wexford. Nevertheless, he stood up and said: “I move” and that meant an extra seat for Wexford. Yet in cross-examination in the court, according to the newspaper reports, the same Minister stated that the Government's difficulty was whether Wexford or Longford-Westmeath were to get this “odd man out” seat.

Strange, the constituency of the Minister for Finance in Wexford would have got it or apparently the area of the Minister for Transport and Power up in Longford-Westmeath would have got it. Where did Cork come in? Cork whose figures everybody knows were above those for Wexford and Longford-Westmeath was still being robbed. Fianna Fáil have a fair representation from Cork city and county. The people support them. It is a damn shame that apparently the Taoiseach or any Minister who so wishes can totally ignore the lawful and just claims of the people who are represented in these areas by his own Deputies.

What about the constituency in Cork city and county? In 1959, we pointed out to the Minister a simple remedy. Of course, he would not accept it and naturally, when introducing this Bill, he would not include in it the simple remedy without the chopping and changing which has occurred. Cork city, as we know, is the most southern city in the county. To the south and very slightly veering to the east is the entrance to Cork harbour. Leaving the harbour and on the left-hand side, we have Roche's Point lighthouse. A little outside the harbour entrance we have another famous place, the Old Head of Kinsale with its lighthouse.

We have boys and girls at present studying hard for examinations which will be held in the near future—the Intermediate, the Leaving Certificate and other examinations. They probably forget one thing that is true. They are very lucky that the Minister for Local Government has nothing to do with the setting of the paper in geography because we now discover that Roche's Point lighthouse is in north-east Cork and to the west of the entrance to Cork Harbour. The Old Head of Kinsale lighthouse is located in mid-Cork. If anyone looked at the map and asked any boy or girl in third or fourth class in what part of Cork was the Old Head of Kinsale, he or she would certainly not give the same answer as the Minister for Local Government. With Cork taking in such a southerly point, we find that the border is well up towards the Kerry border. We are just six electoral divisions away from Tralee. It is strange that all that is in Cork.

The Minister finds it important to change the name of West Cork and call it South-West Cork. Why? Because he includes the town of Macroom. It is recognised in the most ancient history that Macroom has been and is still considered to be the headquarters of mid-Cork. It is practically in the centre of the county but because a town in the centre of a county is tacked on to West Cork, the constituency becomes South-West Cork. Surely one should expect some little bit of reason in the Minister, the Taoiseach and the Government and that they would stop being so blatant in their gerrymandering of areas, not affecting Deputies and intending Deputies, but the people in these areas.

In this new area of mid-Cork there will be four Deputies, whoever they will be. These Deputies will now be in the position, naturally enough, of having to deal with the local problems of some of their constituents living in West Cork. They will have to go down to the West Cork offices to help out their constituents. At the same time, they will find themselves getting complaints from north-west Cork away up near the Kerry border. He will then have to go to the Mallow offices of the Cork County Council to try to solve the problems. A man elected in North-East Cork will have to call into the offices in South Cork.

It cannot be suggested that the rigging which has taken place now again in Cork County is anything but political. There was an easy answer. In 1959, we offered it to the Minister, that is, to take some of the western part of South Cork and give it to West Cork which was its natural home under local authority jurisdiction and let South Cork take a small portion of the western or, if necessary, the southern suburb of the city; let East Cork get a slight piece from the other suburban part of the city. In that way, you would have even distribution of roughly 20,000. That would not do, of course. We know the reason.

I am not much interested now except to say that in Cork County the gerrymandering is not as bad now as it was in 1959 because the court prevented the Minister from continuing his campaign to wipe out just representation, but as far as he could go in 1961, he has done it. Thanks be to God we have retrieved some of the losses. I believe in giving credit where credit is due. I give the credit to an individual, not to a Party. I give the credit to an individual who upheld the rights of the individual, who apparently was in a financial position to do it. I refer to Senator O'Donovan. Had he not gone into the court, we would find ourselves in the position now that Fianna Fáil would once again have got away with it.

As I said at the start and say now, there is still political shame attaching to the Minister. By every standard of decent, honest political behaviour, Waterford should not have been interfered with and Deputy Loughman should not have been in a position to come in here and say that they reluctantly agreed to give a part to North Tipperary, because, of course, they got a slice of West Waterford. They did. Lismore is one area. Deputy Loughman knows it well. The Minister knows it also. We know what is behind it. I say that the chopping up of Waterford was done at the behest of the Minister and political advisers. They want to ensure that if Cork escapes them, there will be a victim in the county of Waterford.

I came in here this evening at the time Deputy Loughman was speaking and I was rather shocked to hear him. From the statements he made, it looked as if he was the organiser or that he and some other persons had to do with this matter. He said "We agreed" to cut this portion from South Tipperary—this good Fianna Fáil portion, he implied—and give it to North Tipperary. He said, "We agreed" to cut this portion from the constituency of Waterford. I had suspected that but I was shocked to discover that my suspicions were right, because a month ago when I was speaking in this House to the C.I.E. motion, Deputy Loughman came in and was a persistent interrupter and I happened to say to him that he must have been back from the Custom House where, I had been told, he was butchering my constituency. He did not interrupt me any more. So, taking that and what he said here this evening, it was obvious that he had been there and that this was the manner in which the Minister for Local Government arrived at the new constituencies.

Blame has been put on the Fine Gael Party and on Senator O'Donovan by a Government spokesman who evidently came in here with a supplied brief—Deputy Faulkner. He lamely blamed the High Court for their decision and actually found fault with them for not taking his evidence and the evidence of the Minister for Local Government.

I was rather proud of Senator O'Donovan. I was rather proud of our institutions and of the manner in which all this matter was carried out by Senator O'Donovan. I was proud of the fact that when this House did make a decision, Senator O'Donovan went to the courts; he did not go to the hills.

It may be said when I refer to my constituency of Waterford that I am selfish about this. I am not selfish. I am prepared to fight Waterford under the old regime or under the Minister's, but I am concerned that, whenever anything is to be taken away from anybody, Waterford is always singled out. That is typical Fianna Fáil policy. If a seat had to be taken from a constituency, it had to be Waterford. It was not a question of taking a small portion of Waterford; they took nearly one-third of the population of Waterford.

This matter arose before 1947. Before 1947, there were four seats in Waterford. We had a portion of Cork —Youghal to Killeagh. That was only a small portion of a county that came in to make the Waterford constituency a four seat constituency. That could be done again, but, as Deputy Loughman said here to night "We agreed" to do a certain thing. The whole business was done without any concern for the constituency of Waterford or for the people of Waterford, but in order to make a safe seat for Deputy Loughman. It was a case of "to blazes with the people of Waterford and the Deputies for Waterford". That is typical Fianna Fáil policy.

Deputy Faulkner was bragging about his ideal County Louth and the wonderful industries there. Some of the industries in County Louth were stolen from Waterford, engineered out of Waterford by Fianna Fáil, engineered out of it by the Minister for External Affairs. He engineered the cement factory out of Waterford. That was spoken of here. I challenged it but it was let go from Waterford. There was a margarine factory in Waterford and it was taken out of it also.

It is irrelevant to this measure.

It is good to say it.

It may be good to say it but it is not relevant.

Waterford would have a bigger population if the factory had remained there. It is very relevant.

Very relevant. It is about time we stood together on this as we have stood together on many things. I was in the House during the passage of the 1959 Bill and at the time of the discussion of the Referendum when it was preached by the former Taoiseach that the small constituency was a wonderful thing, that everybody would know the Deputy, that he would be within hailing distance. What have we now? In the new constituency in South Tipperary, we have people isolated, down as far as Ardmore, who will be trying to get in touch with Deputies in South Tipperary.

The Minister for Local Government, in his forceful way, said in 1959 that it would be impossible to divide Donegal on account of the location of the mountains. He has done a right division on it now.

If anybody says that this is a fair division of constituencies in order to conform to the Constitution, may I ask why had Sligo to lose a seat? Was it to conform to the Constitution or was it to punish Sligo-Leitrim? There are other constituencies in which there are glaring cases of punishment. There is an eminent counsel representing Dublin and a good bit of carving was done to see could damage be done to him. I am glad I voted against the Constitution. I never thought it was any good and the High Court has proved that it was no good. It was obvious to the Government what they could have done and they would not do it. They could have attempted to amend the Constitution. They attempted to amend it with their referendum in order to keep themselves in office.

In Waterford, we have three members representing this butchered constituency. There is the whole of the Nore valley and that part of the west of Waterford, Ballyduff and down the Blackwater valley to Lismore, Cappoquin and Tallow, traditional Waterford places which have been turned over to County Tipperary. It is a scandalous state of affairs that this enormous slice of a constituency is being taken away.

Deputy Faulkner cast aspersions on the lawyers, as he called them—as if to be a lawyer were something to be ashamed of—who appeared for Senator O'Donovan. As has been said, surely he did not want him to have the Attorney General? Who else would Senator O'Donovan get but eminent constitutional lawyers, people who knew something about administration? He would have a job to get them on the Fianna Fáil side of the House. If it came to fiddling with administration, he might find them but he would not be able to find people who would have a real knowledge of the law.

I am not concerned with other constituencies but I am not making this protest for myself. I have known defeat and I am prepared to face defeat any time. When I win, I know how to win gracefully. It is something that the people in my county are able to do, whether it is in politics, football or hurling. I want to make this protest against the butchering and gerrymandering of this constituency by a Donegal man. We have suffered a great deal at his hands and I suppose we cannot expect anything else from him. I do not expect that this strong Government will allow any amendments to this Bill because in the gossip around the House, it has emerged that the dictators of Fianna Fáil have said to their Party members: "You may make your recommendations; you may go down and see the map; but when everything is settled and when the Bill is printed, you will trot into the lobby and pass the Bill, whether you like it or not."

I doubt if any member of the Fianna Fáil Party is proud of this piece of work the Minister for Local Government has brought before the House. It is so obviously a piece of vicious political gerrymandering born of the Government's resentment at the fact that their ears are pinned back to their own Constitution. They resent the fact that they were reminded not only in this House but subsequently by the courts that there was a Constitution there proposed, written and brought before the people by the Fianna Fáil Government, that there was a Constitution which had been enacted by the people and that, having been enacted, everyone in the country, including Fianna Fáil Ministers, was obliged to abide by it. They are now showing their resentment in the petty forms so obviously demonstrated in this piece of political gerrymandering which they have introduced into this House under the title of the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1961.

As other speakers have already mentioned, the Fianna Fáil Party are making determined efforts, not by their policy but their political manoeuvrings, to bring about a state of affairs in which this country will be saddled with successive Fianna Fáil Governments. So far, they have been beaten in those efforts by the people and they have got their decision in the law courts of this land. I have no doubt at all that the people will give them their answer once again when they have plucked up courage to face the people at a general election, with this Bill or without it, because it is quite clear that even this effort by the Minister for Local Government is at least of doubtful constitutionality.

What steps the Government propose to take in that matter, I do not know. They were advised to look at the Constitution when the redistribution of constituencies Bill was discussed a couple of years ago. They ignored that advice. Possibly they will take it now because questions are arising in relation to the constitutionality of this Bill and the indecent haste with which the Government endeavoured to beat the census.

I have described this Bill as what I believe it to be, a piece of vicious political gerrymandering. I do not intend to go into details, unless I am invited by the Deputies opposite. Each Deputy is entitled to speak particularly for his own constituency and the people he represents in this House. Other Deputies on these benches have given their views, have given their opinion of the manner in which their constituencies have been dealt with under this Bill. I believe, rightly or wrongly—I would like to be persuaded that I am wrong—that when this Bill was drafted, it was drafted with one eye on the Constitution and another, and a very vicious eye, on the individual who opposed the last Bill brought in by the Fianna Fáil Government and the lawyers who advised him.

I believe that is reflected in the way the constituency boundaries in Dublin city were drawn by the Government. I believe also—and I propose to give what I believe to be facts in support of this—that having drawn up their Bill the Fianna Fáil Government threw it open to the Party to rearrange as best they could, in their own interests and to the detriment of their political opponents, if they could work out boundaries which would be to their detriment. What I am saying is proved up to the hilt in the explanatory memorandum, or the White Paper published with this Bill because, in regard to at least two Dublin constituences, the memorandum gives constituency boundaries which bear little or no relation to the boundaries fixed in the Bill.

I challenge the Minister to deny that what happened was that first of all the Bill was prepared, then the memorandum was prepared and printed, and then some Fianna Fáil Deputies went to him and put pressure on him to alter the Bill which he had prepared, with the result that we have issued from a Government Department a memorandum accompanying this Bill which, in regard to at least two Dublin constituencies—there may be more throughout the country—contains very obvious errors, which to my mind shows quite clearly that the Bill was altered in the manner I speak of.

I put down a question yesterday to the Minister for Local Government asking him to explain how the memorandum issued with the Bill came to be inaccurate in relation to the constituencies of Dublin South-East and Dublin South-West. In his reply the Minister stated that the explanatory memorandum was not inaccurate with reference to the Dublin South-East and Dublin South-West constituencies. I want to challenge that statement here and now, and I would be obliged if the Parliamentary Secretary would ask the Minister to deal with this matter in his reply, because I believe it to be of some importance.

I believe it to be of some importance to drag out into the open the operations which so clearly went on behind the closed doors of the Fianna Fáil Party, in the period between the preparation of the Bill and its publication. I believe it is of importance to ordinary Deputies to ensure that when they put down a Parliamentary Question they will get a correct answer from the Minister, and that they will get all the information which the Minister has to make available in relation to the subject matter of the Question. The Minister brushed me aside yesterday when I asked this question with the statement that the memorandum was not inaccurate. I want the Parliamentary Secretary to go through this memorandum with me line by line, with regard to the two Dublin constituencies of which I speak. I invite him then to ask the Minister, or any other representative of the Fianna Fáil Party, if he is prepared to stand over the answer given in this House yesterday.

According to page 2 of the explanatory memorandum issued with this Bill, the Dublin South-East constituency consists of "the existing South (East) constituency less part of the Rathmines West ward". I want to emphasise the word "part". Surely if the Government tell us a constituency consists of something, less part of a ward, the implication—it is more than an implication; it is a positive statement—is that some other part of that ward remains in the constituency. If we look at the Bill we find in Part I of the Schedule that there is no reference whatever to any part of the Rathmines West ward being in the Dublin South-East constituency. I say the memorandum is inaccurate and wrong in stating that any part of the Rathmines West ward is in the Dublin South-East constituency, and yet the Minister says that the memorandum is not inaccurate.

Going on in relation to the Dublin South-East constituency the memorandum continues: "...plus the Rathfarnham South ward and part of the Rathfarnham ward." Is not that saying, in effect, that only part of the Rathfarnham ward is in the Dublin South-East constituency? Look at the Bill. According to the Bill the entire Rathfarnham ward is in the Dublin South-East constituency. Is that not an inaccuracy in the memorandum? If it is an inaccuracy in the memorandum, as I assert it is, then was not the Minister's statement in reply to my question yesterday a wrong statement and a misleading statement? That is two errors at least, so far as Dublin South-East constituency is concerned. Deputy Noel Lemass is shaking his head.

If I may say so, if the Deputy reads the explanatory memorandum further, he will see it lays out the constituencies as they were at the last revision.

I was hoping some "mug" in the Fianna Fáil Party would walk into that one, because that was the implication in the Minister's reply yesterday, simply because I referred to two constituencies only. If Deputy Lemass reads the explanatory memorandum with reference to other constituencies he will see that is not what is intended in the memorandum at all, because we see that, according to the memorandum, the North-Central constituency consists of "the existing North (Central) constituency less the Glasnevin ward." It was not "less the Glasnevin ward" prior to the 1947 revision. Which does Deputy Lemass want? Is the memorandum inaccurate in relation to Dublin North-Central, or inaccurate in relation to Dublin South-East and South-West? Is that not a fact? Deputy Lemass should be man enough to admit that he and his colleagues pressurised the Minister for Local Government to make changes in the Bill after that memorandum was printed.

The memorandum is clear enough to me.

One "mug" has walked into it; let us see are there any more. With reference to the Dublin South-West constituency the memorandum says: "The South-West constituency consists of the existing South (West) constituency less the Kilmainham ward". So far so good: quite accurate. Then it goes on: "...and part of the Rathfarnham ward." I want to know now what part of the Rathfarnham ward is in the Dublin South-West constituency.

According to the memorandum which yesterday the Minister said was accurate, and to which Deputy Lemass tried to lend his support today as being accurate, portion of the Rathfarnham ward is in the Dublin South-West constituency. According to Part I of the Schedule to the Bill, however, no part of the Rathfarnham ward is in the Dublin South-West constituency. Again, was the Minister wrong yesterday, or is the memorandum wrong? What is the position? We are entitled to an explanation. I have given one explanation and I still believe it to be the correct one. This is an important matter, but I am willing to make any wager Deputies want to make that the Minister will do his best to side-step answering it when closing this debate. That is why I deliberately challenged the Parliamentary Secretary to report to the Minister and invite him to answer.

The Minister for the Gaeltacht is on the Bench.

I am sorry, I forgot he was promoted. I hope the Minister will pardon me and pass on my remarks to his colleague.

I shall do that.

Now that the Minister is a Minister he should remember that the Government have collective responsibility. While my remarks have particular reference to the Minister for Local Government, to some extent they apply to all his colleagues who sat in council with him on this matter.

The memorandum continues, on the reference to the Dublin South-West constituency, that it is the existing constituency less the Kilmainham ward and part of the Rathfarnham ward, which is obviously wrong, plus the Crumlin West ward and part of the Rathmines West and Ballyfermot wards. It does not contain only part of the Rathmines West ward; it contains the entire of it.

I put down a question yesterday looking for an explanation of these inaccuracies which are very obvious to anyone familiar with any of those constituencies and which I think of importance because newspapers, certainly the Fianna Fáil newspaper, the Irish Press, did not bother to analyse the Bill. It took, as it was entitled to take, the White Paper issued with the Bill as being an accurate synopsis of what was in the Bill. The Irish Press, with very heavily leaded type, splashed the changes in Dáil constituencies and on their first page and quite inaccurately dealt with the changes made in the Dublin constituencies — not through their fault but because the Minister was rash enough to allow himself to be pressurised by Fianna Fáil Deputies after the memorandum was printed. I shall continue to hold that belief until the Minister convinces me I am wrong.

When I raised this question yesterday the Minister calmly replied that the explanatory memorandum is not inaccurate with reference to Dublin South-East and Dublin South-West constituencies. When I saw that reply I knew very well that the wriggle would be that someone would say: "That memorandum does not apply to the new constituencies proposed under this Bill. It applies to the constituencies under the last revision of constituencies Bill which was not repugnant to the Constitution." That is all nonsense. It might work if someone with a knowledge of the constituencies were not listening. It will not work when told to someone who has a knowledge of the constituencies and the constituency boundaries in Dublin.

If the Minister's reply yesterday was deliberately misleading then I should have no hesitation in saying it was a disgusting performance. I hope the Minister or some of his colleagues will take an early opportunity to make amends to the House. It does not matter if I am misled because I know the situation but it does matter if a lot of Deputies who do not know the situation are misled. It matters if members of the public are misled. The Minister should make a full and ample apology for the answer he gave yesterday to my question. I shall not hesitate for a second to make a full and ample apology to him if what I am saying is wrong and if he can show me that the explanatory memorandum issued with this Bill is accurate in relation to those two Dublin constituencies.

I started off by saying I do not believe any member of the Fianna Fáil Party can be happy about this piece of work. I do not think their demeanour in this House while the Bill is being discussed gives any evidence that they are happy about what they are doing and what they have done. They have very good reason to be unhappy.

The day has gone when the Fianna Fáil Party can thump the band-stand and get everyone to cheer "Up Dev" and "Up the I.R.A." and "Vote No. 1 Fianna Fáil." Now, Fianna Fáil must face the people with the acid test of their performance. On that test, Fianna Fáil will go down badly, whenever they have the courage to face the people in a general election.

Even with this effort to gerrymander, even with this effort to foist Fianna Fáil on the people, we are quite happy to face them in the morning. If they will give us an undertaking to dissolve the Dáil within the week we can give them this Bill and let it be put into operation.

We know what Fianna Fáil are trying to do. Sligo-Leitrim was the constituency where they recently suffered a defeat in a by-election. The reaction to that defeat is to chop a seat off Sligo-Leitrim. Do you think that kind of manoeuvring is lost on the people? It will not pay you. It will not do you any good. Pile up any advantages you think you have behind you now. As sure as I am standing here, when the votes are counted in the next general election you will not be in a position to pile up any advantages behind you in this House.

I do not intend to say a lot on the Bill particularly because my constituency happens to be affected and it might be thought that any protest I might make would be because of the weakening or strengthening of my chances at the coming election. I welcome the Bill as a Fianna Fáil triumph. I want it to be quite clear, without any heat, that I was deliberately waiting to hear the views of my colleagues from Waterford on this Bill. I am afraid they are conspicuous by their absence. I must presume they agree with the measure inasmuch as they are not here to protest.

This Bill is a Fianna Fáil triumph from the Waterford point of view. They very cleverly endeavour to deprive the opposition to Fianna Fáil of a seat in Waterford. They reckon that with the voting as it was there, and taking into consideration South Tipperary and the voting there, the best way is to massacre Waterford and to add to South Tipperary.

Somebody here exonerated the officials of the Department of Local Government and said that like Pontius Pilate they are all free. No official is responsible in this House. It must be the Minister. If I hit at the Minister and say what some officials do, I am glad to hit them too, through the Minister. If any official can tell me why South Tipperary, with a smaller population than Waterford, can continue to have four seats while Waterford is to be butchered, I shall be very glad to hear the explanation.

I am not worried about the results, but I do not like hypocrisy whether it comes from Ministers or officials. The people who put up with it are as much to blame as the Minister who brings measures of this kind into the House. I understand the Minister's officials have no chance of replying to me, but perhaps they will do so through the Press. It is a fact that in figures published in the records of this House there are more than 300 fewer voters in South Tipperary than in Waterford and I do not include the extra population in Waterford as a result of the extension of the borough boundary. This should surely give Waterford the right to four seats. Those advising the Minister should have realised that. The facts were before them as published in the records of this House.

I do not want to interrupt the Deputy but the Minister is responsible to this House and he alone is open to blame.

Then I am blaming the Minister. I am stating that the Minister deliberately gerrymandered this thing and that the people who advised him——

The Minister is responsible to this House and only he may be blamed for anything.

I shall accept your ruling but you cannot stop me thinking.

I do not want to stop the Deputy thinking.

And you never will. I accept the fact that the Minister must take the blame but I cannot resist saying that his advisers——

The Deputy should not take advantage of his position to attack officials. The Deputy is in a privileged position and he should not take advantage of it to refer to officials of any Department in a derogatory fashion.

I have said all I want to say on that point. There is no doubt that even without the transfer to Waterford of Rockingham there were 300 more registered voters in Waterford than in South Tipperary. The transfer to Waterford of Rockingham brought in between 500 and 600 extra voters to Waterford. That being so, Waterford, with a stronger population of nearly 1,000, has the right to retain its four seats. What was the factor the Minister considered when he decided that Waterford should lose one seat while South Tipperary retains its four seats? I hope the Minister, in his reply, will tell me what it is.

Will the Minister agree that South Tipperary was allowed to retain its four seats because there were three Fianna Fáil Deputies there and that in the next general election there will be at least one Labour Deputy and one Fine Gael Deputy and that this would not give a chance to the three boys? Will he agree that this was why he, with the aid of somebody, mutilated the constituency I represent? I feel funny talking about this since it looks as if I were worried as to my chances of retaining my seat. I shall stand for re-election and if Labour are good enough to elect me—there should be enough of them there to do so—that is fair enough. I do not mind Fianna Fáil being crooked. What I do mind is the Irish Press preaching about the North not being honest. If Fianna Fáil are crooked themselves, they should cease criticising the North for being crooked.

Fianna Fáil are dishonest people who rant so much about nationality and the language. They are dishonest in their talk about the North. They try to make out that the people in the North are cheap when they themselves are cheaper and dirtier. If Fianna Fáil want to gerrymander they should do it honestly. Will the Minister be honest with himself and with the people and stop this gerrymandering or else stop criticising the North for the same dishonesty of which he himself is guilty? Surely it is evident to all that he has been guilty of the most blatant gerrymandering in the case of Waterford and South Tipperary. It would be the simplest thing in the world to have left Waterford alone and to have given to North Tipperary a portion of South Tipperary. I would give a small section of the town of Carrick, which is partly Waterford but for G.A.A. purposes and local purposes is South Tipperary and that would have been complying with the decision of the High Court. That would not be disrupting natural boundaries.

The Deputy does not know Carrick. I know it well.

Would the Deputy tell the Minister that?

I did not because he knew it himself.

Deputy Loughman is forgetting that for the purposes of this Bill part of Rockingham has been ceded to Waterford under the extension of the borough boundary. How much more is it suggested should come into Waterford that we would need all Carrick, plus six or seven miles of the surrounding area? I would suggest to the Minister that with Carrick alone and without any six or seven miles of the surrounding area, we would have as many as Clare with their 19,280 people. We have 20,700 now, quite a difference. But you can do almost anything in the name of Ireland and the Fianna Fáil Party.

If the Minister is so anxious about the rural areas as he said he was in the High Court, would it not have been a simple matter for him to consult with the members of all the Parties? They are consulted in regard to the commencing and finishing of sessions and all Parties are represented on the Committee on Procedure and Privileges. If the Minister were sincere about it, what was to prevent him saying to Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, Clann na Talmhan or any of the Independent groups: "Come together in my office and we will discuss this matter and see that the rural population get a square deal." I would have gone a long way with the Minister had he done that, but he did not do so, despite his loud protestations in the court.

The people of Lismore, Cappoquin, Tallow, Four-Mile-Water, Ballyma-carbury, Villierstown, Aglish and Templemichael are as rural as the people in Donegal and they are to be deprived of their right to a Waterford Deputy. They are to be transferred to South Tipperary. Deputy Loughman or any other Deputy from South Tipperary will never be able to represent them. The natural alignment is with their own county. This may be brought about because of the Fianna Fáil vote. Of course, it is not a vote at all, because no man there has a right to express his opinion but has to follow the leader. For that reason, the two Waterford Deputies have been afraid of their lives to talk.

What will happen when these people from Tallow to within six miles of my own town, a distance of 30 miles, are transferred into South Tipperary? If a South Tipperary representative, whether he be Labour, Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil, wants to raise some matter in connection with county affairs or the health services, he will have to write to the county manager in Dungarvan. If he wants to raise matters in connection with, say, the free milk scheme or the assisted footwear scheme, the South Tipperary Deputy will have no right to interfere. All he can do is write a letter. He is not likely to come down from Cashel, Clonmel or wherever he may be in Tipperary to attend a meeting of the county council in Dungarvan in order to help them out. I know the fate of isolated areas like that: they get a visit just prior to the election. But when these people were within the confines of their natural constituency of Waterford, they were taken care of.

If a plebiscite were taken of the people residing in the one third of my county now being gerrymandered and transferred to South Tipperary, I believe that, whether they be Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or Labour, they would unanimously protest against the highhanded and deceitful action of the Minister for Local Government. That action has been taken by him, despite his loud protestations in the court against the violation of boundaries.

He has been forced to.

Yes, I suppose, by the Party.

By the courts.

All right. I have given the Minister a solution which would not involve the rape of any county, North Tipperary, South Tipperary or Waterford, that is, to take portion of Carrick and give the excess of South Tipperary to North Tipperary, making it three and three there.

That would lose a seat.

Lose a seat to Fianna Fáil. Probably your seat. Up to recently, I had a fair admiration for the Minister and for a lot of Fianna Fáil people. I thought they were reasonably honest. Somebody may laugh, but I am certainly not satisfied now they are honest. As long as they admit they are dishonest, I am quite happy. Perhaps my Party might do the same thing if in power, but I certainly would not do it. Fianna Fáil have reduced themselves to a very low level in this case of Waterford and South Tipperary. The three Fianna Fáil Deputies in South Tipperary have fallen from the high standards they had. I think you will find the Fianna Fáil people in Waterford will react to this. Our people in Waterford have been honest and have voted as they felt was right. I bear no enmity to my political opponents there and I would hate to have to put out a Fianna Fáil Deputy to win my seat. The Fianna Fáil Deputies there are personal friends of mine, for whom I have a strong admiration. I want it to be recorded here that I believe the Minister is indicted for what he and his Party have long accused the North—gerry-mandering. By this Bill Fianna Fáil are worse than the North ever were.

It seems to me from the discussion we have had on this measure and the previous measure that it would be in the general interest if we could devise some system of redistributing seats when the occasion warranted which would give greater satisfaction and, if possible, eliminate the suggestions, from whatever side they may come, that one side or another would allocate seats in a particular fashion. Other countries where this problem has to be dealt with have in some cases an arrangement, in certain cases, an ad hoc one, under which a boundary committee or commission sits. On the basis of changes in the population, alterations are made in constituencies, and on these committees and commissions, there are representatives of the various political Parties. That seems to me to be a desirable objective if it could be achieved here. While I have not detailed experience of how it works elsewhere, probably the practical application over the years has been reasonably satisfactory if it has been continued. At some stage or another, some similar arrangement might be contemplated here and many of the unnecessarily acrimonious suggestions would therefore be avoided. As I understand it, the Constitution lays down certain requirements and subject to complying with those requirements, it is possible to allocate or divide seats on a variety of bases or considerations, but I feel that in this matter at some stage we should consider some form of committee or commission which would have as a permanent responsibility the obligation to make appropriate revisions as occasion warrants.

It is true that in this country the movements of population are not as dramatic or as large as those which occur in other countries. Certain industrial areas move very rapidly and huge towns or cities arise in a very short period. In this country, the main growth is in a particular part of the country, that is, the area around Dublin city and county. I suppose it is somewhat natural that anybody speaking on this measure will be inclined to consider his own particular position. In commenting on the situation that has arisen, I may say I have had the somewhat unique experience of being considerably affected by the 1947 Electoral Act and this Bill. The 1947 Act removed a large portion of my constituency on two sides from the area in which I had resided and this Act completes it.

Frankly, I feel that certain changes could be made which to some extent would improve the allocation of seats in the area adjacent to Dublin and certainly would allow a somewhat more compact area to be made which would facilitate not only Deputies but their constituents. My experience over the years, originally as a Deputy for County Dublin, was that when the county extended around the fringe of the city, it was extremely difficult for Deputies to keep in contact with their constituents and difficult for constituents to get in touch with Deputies because of the wide area involved. Similarly, it seems to me the same situation may arise under some of the proposed changes. It may be that it will be possible on Committee Stage to consider certain changes.

Subject to that, I believe we should seriously consider, either now or at some appropriate stage in the future, a different system in relation to revision matters. If that was brought forward here as a separate proposal, it could be considered in such a way as to avoid the suggestion that it was introduced for particular purposes at a specific time. If a similar arrangement worked elsewhere, it ought to be possible for us to devise a system which would suit our own requirements and prevent some of the abuses which may arise under the present system.

May I make a short personal explanation to the Minister? When I was speaking, I suggested that the Minister had been inaccurate when replying to a question yesterday. I have studied the 1947 Act and I see from a reading, which I assume is the Minister's reading, of this memorandum, that his reply yesterday was quite accurate. The Minister was not present when I was speaking and I said that if I was wrong, I would have no hesitation in making a full apology. I am now doing that and I am withdrawing the suggestion which I made and the implications which followed from it.

Thank you.

It is a pleasure to be in the House just at the moment and to find that the debate is coming on to a more reasonable basis. It is just as we would expect from Deputy M.J. O'Higgins that he should have spoken so graciously as he has done just now. As before, I find it a pleasure to be speaking after Deputy Cosgrave, because he has made a very good contribution. He has tried to be helpful and constructive and there were no wild accusations or any signs of bitterness in what he said. In particular, I should like to support his suggestion which I think was that there should be an inter-Party committee set up. It would be really a committee of the House which would keep the revision of constituencies constantly under review. I hope that such a committee will be formed in due course and in fact would have wider terms of reference than purely the revision of constituencies.

In the past, our electoral system has tended to become a matter of Party politics and the time has now come when our electoral system should be carefully reviewed by a committee of the whole House. It is a great disappointment to us all that this Bill has had to be introduced at all. At Deputy Kyne has said, the new constituencies completely disregard some of the ordinary natural boundaries to which we all have become accustomed. It was precisely because the Minister wished to preserve those boundaries that the 1959 Act was brought before this House and passed as an agreed measure by the whole House. The 1959 Act, when it was a Bill before this House, was criticised and fully debated but was never drastically opposed by any of the Parties forming the Opposition.

Mr. Ryan

They voted against it twice.

There were some votes but not on principle. It was——

Mr. Ryan

On the Fifth Stage, Deputies voted in the lobbies and we voted against it.

There have been a number of times when Fine Gael voted against the Government for no apparent reason and this was one of them. In this case, we have been forced by the decision of the High Court to revise the constituencies purely on a mathematical basis. Deputy Kyne was trying to make suggestions in regard to territorial revisions but of course territory is something which does not come under consideration at all, in view of the High Court decision. It is just a mathematical calculation and once the Government have decided as to the correct ratio between population and Deputies, there can be very little room for manoeuvre of any sort. In a particular case, as the Minister explained, the Government decided to adopt as the basis a ratio of 20,000 of the population to each Deputy. Once that is settled one has to start, I suppose, with the city and divide it into units of 20,000 and then work away out along the country and see what happens.

The Minister would possibly be the first to admit that some of the results of this mathematical basis of division are extraordinary when one sees them on a map, but unfortunately the population is not equally spread over the country and sometimes you must draw boundaries in a very odd way to keep the constituency in the right ratio of population to representation. When it is accepted, as it had to be accepted, that there must be virtually no variation in the ratio between the population and the number of Deputies over the whole country, there can be no question of gerrymandering.

It was very disappointing that right from the start the Leader of the Opposition has hurled this accusation across the House. He did it not in any malicious fashion, judging by his expression. He did it out of sheer lightheartedness; he had a broad smile on his face as he described how wicked we were in having introduced this Bill. If he were really serious, I think he might at least have appeared to be serious. Actually, he took the whole thing in a most lighthearted way. Since it appears that he was not serious in his accusation, I think he should not have made it at all but so many people are so obviously ignorant of what gerrymandering means that I should like to get this on record.

If one wished to gerrymander a constituency, one would have to devise a scheme whereby, in some constituencies favourable to one's own Party, it would need only a population of, say, 10,000 to return one Deputy, whereas in other constituencies where the supporters of one's own Party were fewer, it would need a very much greater number. Where in all constituencies the ratio is uniform, it does not make, and cannot make, any difference to the final result whether the constituencies are divided in this, that or the other way.

Suppose that in a certain area of South Tipperary Fianna Fáil support is rather weak and suppose there was a revision whereby certain Fine Gael votes were taken out of that area and put into another constituency. That would not affect the final result in the number of Deputies returned to this House because the Fine Gael votes which had been transferred from one constituency to another would be just as valid in the constituency to which they were transferred. Under the proportional system, they must achieve their result.

Deputy Kyne, in particular, appeared to think that if you drew a line which was not approved by him, you were obviously gerrymandering. We all know that certain revisions might be more suitable to one's personal wishes than others but that does not involve gerrymandering. The only way in which you can gerrymander a constituency is by altering the ratio between population and representation. Once that is uniform, the result must be fair. That is the beginning and end of it and I trust we shall have no more fanciful suggestions that Fianna Fáil have done anything in the slightest degree improper or anything that even remotely could possibly be to their own advantage.

What were they all doing in the Custom House for the past month?

I do not know. The curious thing is that it was not until today that I heard about this rally at the Custom House.

They must be trying to freeze out the Deputy.

I doubt it. I know I am a bit awkward at times but I keep my ears and eyes open and if there was a tremendous rally of my own Party in a certain direction, I should almost certainly hear something about it. But I never did. I am forced to conclude—not for the first time—that the imagination of certain members of the Opposition very often runs away with them. We have had cases like that before and undoubtedly we shall have them again. Certainly, I heard nothing of this amazing rally of Fianna Fáil Deputies around the map in the Custom House but if somebody can tell me more about it—not in this House because I think that would be wasting the time of the House—tell me who were there and what happened——

Ask Deputy Loughman.

The Deputy is outside the circle.

Deputy Booth should be allowed to speak without interruption.

There is no circle so far as I know, even though my constituency was completely revised. The only point at issue here is whether revision suits certain Deputies or does not. That is something which unfortunately is entirely irrelevant. The only really relevant point is: is this a fair and proper division of the country, accepting the unfortunate decision of the High Court that there must be no variation between the ratio of population and the number of Deputies? The only criticism one could make is that in certain cases the proportion is 200 or 300 or perhaps 400 over the average and in certain other cases that it is 200, 300 or 400 under the average. You can hardly get closer than that without drawing lines down the middle of a street or having a boundary which could not possibly be justified.

I am absolutely satisfied that there has been no consideration of Party advantage and even with the worst will in the world, there could be no Party advantage, once the judgement of the High Court is accepted and once the ratio is uniform throughout the country. There can be no gerrymandering in those circumstances. I am absolutely satisfied that there has not been any and I hope we have heard the last of it because once this charge is thrown across the House, it causes quite an unnecessary spirit of bitterness to arise, something which Deputy Cosgrave referred to when speaking recently and when he mentioned the unnecessary tension that can arise in a debate such as this. Let us remember, and I should like to join with him in this, that this bitterness and tension are unnecessary. Let us have done with them and discuss the Bill on its merits.

Mr. Ryan

Having listened to Deputy Booth tonight and having listened to him on 19th November, 1959, I scarcely recognise him as one and the same person. I should like to remind him now of remarks I made on that occasion on the unconstitutional Electoral Bill then before the House, remarks which he described as "sudden and unsubstantiated accusations". I had taken my seat here seven days previously. I said then that the Taoiseach was wrong when he stated this House is the final judge of what is practicable. It is not. The court can determine whether or not this Bill is a practicable distribution of the influence of the Irish people and, even if the Taoiseach marshals all his majority behind him on this Bill, there is another place in which it can be subsequently tested and destroyed.

Would the Deputy give the reference?

Mr. Ryan

Column 435 of Volume 177 of the Official Report. Almost at the very beginning of this prolonged and costly controversy over practically two years, I asked the Minister to have the Bill thoroughly revised so as to avoid the necessity of going to the Supreme Court. The Minister, his colleagues in the Government and his supporters in the Party refused to amend the Bill, except in one small instance when, after an attack of conscience, they gave one seat to Dublin. Dublin, of course, should have got five seats. That one seat was given to balance off a certain Fianna Fáil seat given down the country.

Later at column 1071 of the same volume, I said:

It is certainly an ironical situation that it is the Government whose Party introduced the present Constitution who are flouting it and we have to stand up and appeal to them to have respect for the Constitution which they introduced. As I have said, if it is not done in this House, there are still two other places in which it can and will be done, if necessary.

I was supported by several other members of the Fine Gael Party, here and in the other House. We told the Minister and the Government that the Bill was as unconstitutional as any Bill could be. Deputy Booth, amongst other Fianna Fáil supporters of the measure, told us we were being unreasonable.

Would the Deputy quote that?

Mr. Ryan

There were cries from the opposite side of the House.

On a point of order, the Deputy has alleged I made a certain statement. I should like him to give the reference.

The Chair did not hear the Deputy give any quotation and I cannot, therefore, ask him to give the reference.

Mr. Ryan

Deputy Booth is, of course, a pastmaster in the art of trying to put speakers off their stroke, but it takes more than Deputy Booth to put me off my stroke. In 1959 I said quite bluntly that the Bill was as unconstitutional as it could be. My statement was greeted with jeers from the other side of the House. From Deputy Corry, it was: "That poor baby over there." From Deputy Browne, it was: "He is young yet." From Deputy Seán Flanagan, it was: "He is only a newcomer." It seems now that out of the mouth of the babe and political suckling words of wisdom came forth.

Remember, it is not the Fine Gael Party and it is not the High Court which upset the 1959 Bill. It is the Constitution. Fianna Fáil love to denigrate the courts. They love to attack the whole legal system on which our fundamental liberties depend. They love to drag it down into the mud. They traipsed the highways and byways of Leitrim ridiculing our Judiciary. But it was not the judge and it was not Fine Gael; it was the Constitution itself which damned them and the Bill of 1959 and it was the Constitution which makes this Bill now so necessary.

It is a fundamental law of democracy that all votes shall have equal value. It is a simple rule of democracy—it bores Deputy Booth—that every man will go to the polling booth knowing that his vote will have equal influence in the selection of a Government. That is the essence of the democratic system in which we believe.

Does the Bill not do that?

Mr. Ryan

This Bill does it because the Constitution has compelled the Government to do it. Costly and prolonged efforts had to be made to make the Minister for Local Government respect the obligations of the Constitution. The Constitution provides that every vote shall have equal value. In a democracy, it is one man—one vote and to every man an equal vote.

The Deputy supports the Bill then?

Mr. Ryan

The 1959 Bill gave threequarters of a vote to the Dublin voter and one-and-a-quarter votes to voters in some of the rural constituencies in which Fianna Fáil had a traditional majority. Deputy Loughman hopes that what he says here will not be heard by Dublin. But it will be heard by Dublin, just as the words of Deputy Corry have been and will be heard by Dublin. So long as there is any freedom of speech here, attacks made on Dublin by Deputies opposite will be shouted from every street corner and from the rooftops in this city.

In 1959, when there was an amendment tabled to give to Dublin a small modicum of justice, Deputy Corry said: "I am asking this House to wipe out the first amendment, to get rid of Dublin". He went on to say: "I am asking all the country boys to marshal themselves together and to do the job. Then we shall have no difficulty". Perhaps it was a difficulty that Deputy Ryan was elected in July, 1959, with a majority in a constituency in which Fianna Fáil had had an overwhelming majority at the general election two years previously. If I happen to be that difficulty, then I am proud that seven days after I took my seat here, I told this House and the Minister for Local Government that the 1959 Bill was as unconstitutional a piece of legislation as ever came before this House.

What were the reasons put forward here and elsewhere to justify the 1959 Bill? We were told that Deputies had a colossal amount of work to do, running hither and thither, over here and over there, writing letters, receiving thousands of people, and doing, if I may say so, a great deal of work which the Constitution does not contemplate, which the Constitution does not even allow, and which no true democracy would sanction. It was said here that there were certain rights to which the people were entitled but which would be denied them, unless they went grovelling with their hats in their hands to their T.D.s.

Nobody said that.

Mr. Ryan

That was the implication behind the overwhelming argument made.

It was not.

Mr. Ryan

It was argued that people could not obtain their rights unless they got their T.D.s to go and see Ministers down in their confessionals in Leinster House or into their offices scattered all over the city. Rights were not obtainable in this country unless you went to secretaries of political Parties; rights were not obtainable unless you went and prostituted your political belief.

Will the Deputy make that statement to the Leader of his own Party and see what he will say to him?

The Deputy is entitled to speak without these interruptions.

That is not a speech. It is only blathering.

Mr. Ryan

The functions in which Deputies can usefully engage on behalf of their constituents are, of course, very many but the deliberate and sustained effort by some politicians to pretend that everything they are asked to do can be obtained so long as it is asked of them has demoralised this country and has brought the people to the belief that their rights are not obtainable unless they go begging for them from T.D.s.

If there are—as there appear to be —many Deputies who find it inconvenient or who find it most onerous that people should come to them seeking advice or looking for assistance, then they ought not be members of this House. I have no doubt that there will be many who will stand up here or elsewhere to accuse me of being unwilling to do the necessary work which a Deputy ought to do. That is not so. I want to underline what I believe is a very dangerous trend in Irish public life and that is the corrupting influence which certain politicians are inflicting on the country by pretending that rights are obtainable only through them.

That is not relevant to the Bill before the House.

Mr. Ryan

It is insofar as the functions of Deputies are related to it.

I do not see how the achievements of Deputies can be relevantly debated on this Bill.

One of the reasons the constituencies are manipulated is to permit Deputies to work better.

Mr. Ryan

Certainly this aspect of the matter was discussed at very great length under the 1959 Bill. It may well be that some of these things are not the substantial considerations. That, indeed, is my argument. It is because I say they are not the substantial considerations that it is necessary to emphasise there is a considerable amount of pretence and make-believe by some public representatives who pretend that it is well nigh humanly impossible to do what they have to do and a great deal of it might be better not done at all.

There is a very easy way of providing for our people a system which will give them advice and assistance without having to submit themselves to the indignity of going along and promising political support to a member of this House. Other countries have a system of citizens' advice bureaux many of which are run on a voluntary basis. I believe it might help to uplift our people and kill the notion that a right is not obtainable unless you go to a politician if we had the system of citizens' advice bureaux.

In the final analysis, of course, you cannot limit the rights of Deputies in relation to almost anything which they are called upon to do. If you limit the right of a Deputy in this House or of a Senator in the other House, you are limiting the rights of the people themselves. I am not arguing that there should be any limitations on the rights or, indeed, any curb put on the duties of Deputies, but I would respectfully suggest that it is time the members of this House made it quite clear that natural rights and statutory rights are obtainable in this country without the necessity of going along with hat in hand to promise political support to a member of one Party or another.

Deputy Booth made his usual quota of erroneous statements. Not the least of them was his remark that the decision of the learned judge of the High Court was that the constituencies should be measured on a purely mathematical calculation. Deputy Booth told us that the decision of the judge was that the constituencies, according to the Constitution, had to be revised according to a purely mathematical calculation. I have not a copy of the judgement in my hand but I am prepared to challenge any member to quote from the decision of the learned judge any remark which can even be interpreted as possibly meaning that the only consideration had to be a purely mathematical calculation.

The learned judge prefaced his remarks by saying, not once, indeed, but on a number of occasions throughout the judgement, that he could not consider a revision of the constituencies on a purely mathematical calculation. Indeed, if you did we might have more vulgar fractions in the House than we have at the moment. The Constitution makes it quite clear that the ratio between the number of members in any constituency and the population of that constituency shall, as far as practicable, be the same throughout the country.

That is what this Bill seeks to do. I am prepared to credit the Minister with that purpose but what is the whole history of this Bill and what is the history of all that has led up to it? We had in the early part of 1959 an attempt to change our electoral laws, to abolish the system of proportional representation which gives fair representation to all sections of the community. The Government also sought to set up a tribunal which would not be subject to the criticism of this House, which tribunal was to arrange the constituencies.

We in Fine Gael opposed that measure and the people of Ireland supported us; they condemned that effort to change the electoral laws. Fianna Fáil having again been defeated, tried another method to perpetuate themselves in power. They tried to implement an Act which was illegal according to the law as it stands. They were defeated there because the courts obliged them to respect their own Constitution. Again I emphasise that it was not the decision of one man. It was the Constitution which declared the Bill of 1959 to be unconstitutional. Unless Fianna Fáil try to make anything of the fact that there was only one High Court Judge who condemned the Act of 1959, I am saying here— as I said elsewhere—that the only reason the Government did not bring the decision of the learned High Court Judge before the Supreme Court for revision was because they were absolutely certain that the Act had not got the chance of a snowball in hell of being upheld by the Supreme Court.

Having been defeated in the proportional representation referendum and having been defeated in the High Court on the illegal Act of 1959, they were not going to risk a third defeat by getting another whack against themselves in the Supreme Court. That brings us then to the necessity for another illegal Bill—this one.

We are now in the peculiar situation that no matter what the Minister tries to do, no matter what the Government try to do and no matter what the Houses of the Oireachtas try to do, we are still committing a legal mortal sin, if I may put it that way. No matter what we do now, we cannot comply with the provisions of the Constitution which require that the constituencies be revised from time to time in periods of not fewer than 12 years. That cannot now be done because we are more than 12 years from 1947. The responsibility for this sorry mess, the blame for the manner in which we are ignoring our Constitution, lies upon the Minister personally, upon the Taoiseach who leaves him in his office and upon all member of the Government and of their Party who have been accessories before and after this fact.

We find ourselves now in another quandary, the quandary as to whether or not we should await the results of the census which was taken last Sunday. Whether we want to argue on this or not, the fact remains that the census is already taken, even though the results of it may not be known. If you post a letter, you have posted it, even though it has not been received.

All this legal mess, all this disrespect for the institutions of this State, all this contempt for the constitutional provisions, is a natural flow from the real contempt in which Fianna Fáil hold the institutions and the system of law.

It may be all very well and very funny and very good music-hall to jeer at lawyers. I am prepared to accept all the cracks which can be thrown at lawyers but I do submit quite seriously to this House that when you do not respect your institutions and when you treat lightly very fundamental constitutional and legal obligations, you are undermining the very foundations of the State and of democracy itself and you do not know where the rot will end.

There is another criticism of this Bill, that is, that it is directed at the next general election and thus far only. Any Government, whether it be Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour or inter-Party, who seek to control the destinies of this State by just looking to their own narrow view of a general election are playing very foolishly, very foolishly for themselves, in the first instance, because, when you try to work out things for yourself politically you are not always successful and certainly not successful in the long run. It is also very foolish because it is perhaps damaging the whole institution of our parliamentary system when a Government play around in that way.

Deputy Booth and others have endeavoured to refute the charge of gerrymandering by pointing out that as the constituencies are now being made equal and as the ratio between members and population is so far as is practicable the same throughout the country, there is no room for gerrymandering. Of course, that is quite wrong. Fianna Fáil have at the moment the largest majority any Government have had in the history of this State. It is the first and the last time they will have it. The fact is that they have it at the moment and, therefore, they need be concerned with one thing only—not with keeping out their opponents because their opponents are now so much weaker than they—but they have only to try to preserve the seat of each individual Fianna Fáil Deputy and no more. That gives them an everlasting majority if they are successful but, of course, they will be far from successful.

If anybody wants to look at the new constituencies map, he will find that the counties which have had their borders overrun are areas in which there is a marginal Fianna Fáil seat which they are endeavouring to preserve by stretching out so as to have a larger area around the parish of the particular Deputy. It is as simple as all that. There is no other explanation for many of the incongruous changes which have taken place in constituency boundaries.

If one needed any more sure evidence of whether or not it was personal interest which was being kept in mind, one could go to County Donegal where we find that the border, instead of being moved eastwards, as would appear to be the reasonable and most practical thing to do, has been turned on its axis so as to give a much larger area of influence adjacent to the Minister's residence. The Minister would probably be prepared to admit that elsewhere, but, of course, he will deny it very flatly in this House and get most annoyed with Deputy Ryan and others for suggesting it. But, from looking at the map itself the manner in which the axis has been so extraordinarily changed is obvious. It may, of course, be just a coincidence, in which case I apologise to the Minister, but it is seldom that there are political coincidences that are so exceedingly convenient.

Could the Deputy suggest a different line?

Mr. Ryan

A different line was suggested in another place.

Mr. Ryan

If the Deputy is interested, I have four maps on which I would be glad to demonstrate to him a more rational way in which it could have been done.

The Deputy will not charge him for that, I hope.

Deputy Ryan was one of the persons responsible for all this.

If he asks Deputy Ryan as a constituent, he will not charge him.

I am sure he will not charge him in any case.

Mr. Ryan

Deputy Davern has spoken. He says that Deputy Ryan is responsible for all this.

One of the persons, I said.

Mr. Ryan

Is Deputy Ryan not a mighty man, that made the Fianna Fáil Party respect their own Constitution? Is he not simply fantastic?

Deputy Ryan always thought so.

Mr. Ryan

Not all the power of Deputy Ryan could have changed the Bill of 1959, if it had not been unconstitutional, and the Deputy knows that. The law as regards the arrangement of constituencies was fixed as far back as 1922 under the first Constitution of this State and accepted by the Fianna Fáil Party and again by the people of Ireland in 1937. Deputy Ryan was not heard of in 1922 when the law was fixed providing one man, one vote, and to every man an equal vote. That is when it was determined—as far back as that —and that is the fundamental basis, I believe—maybe I am wrong—the fundamental reason why so many people sacrificed so much in this country. It was in order that the principle of "one man, one vote and to every man an equal vote" might be the principle on which Irish political life would revolve.

In the last century, we had the forty shilling freeholder. We had for a long time, until we could get rid of it, the property vote. We had the educational vote which gave extra political power to people who had received what might be called upper education. We had rotten boroughs which gave privileged power to a small section of the community. We got rid of all those inequalities. We got rid of the property vote; we got rid of the educational vote; we got rid of the rotten boroughs. It was sought to reintroduce them in 1959. It was sought to introduce a system by which extra political power would be given to a person if he were lucky enough to reside on the western seaboard or lucky enough to reside anywhere but in Dublin. But, because so many generations had fought for the principle of equality and of fair play and because we enshrined it in our Constitution in 1922 and because Fianna Fáil accepted the principle in 1937, the 1959 Act was upset. Deputy Ryan is not responsible for it at all, but it is good for the people of Ireland that there are Deputies here —and they appear to be only on this side of the House—who insist upon respect for the Constitution and who insist upon fair play, no more and no less, for all sections of the community.

Notwithstanding the effort to achieve equality, there is still a bias against Dublin and in favour of the western seaboard. It is not as obvious or as atrocious a bias as there was in the 1959 Act. However, if anyone goes down the schedule of ratios which the Minister so kindly circulated, he will find that the minus sign is before the western seaboard constituencies, in the main, and that in front of all the Dublin constituencies there is a plus sign. It may be just a coincidence again, but I wonder how large would the minus be and how fantastic would the plus be, if this Bill were to be framed upon the census taken last Sunday.

The Minister and the Government know well that this Bill would have to be changed even more and whether we like it or not, the probability is that over the next 12 years, Dublin will continue to expand. I most certainly hope that other areas of the country do not suffer any further drop in their population. I am as anxious for that as anybody else. We have more than enough to cope with in Dublin at the moment. The probability is, however, that my hope and the hopes of others will not be completely realised and that by the end of the 12 year period, Dublin will again be grossly under-represented compared with other parts of the country.

In the decision on the 1959 Bill, there was a general welcome by many Deputies because the Bill made very few changes as against the 1947 position. I believe that one reason for that is that once you get into a groove, be it a political or any other one, you do not want to be disturbed. Very few people like changing house and very few people like changing their beds. They prefer to stay as they are and hope for the best. That was a natural reaction and that was one of the reasons why the 1959 Bill was not more roundly attacked.

The constitutional provision is there because of the need to change constituencies. It is reasonable to expect that our population will move over a 12-year period, whether it be into the cities, out of the cities or otherwise. We may have large towns building up. There are hopes in regard to the Shannon estuary; we do not know, over the next 12 years, what proportion of the population may become resident around the Shannon development area. That is the kind of thing the constitutional provision is there to cater for, that when there are changes in the population, extra seats or fewer seats will be awarded as the circumstances require.

The condemnation of the 1959 Bill was not solely dependent upon its failure to respect a provision requiring equality. It was also because it had failed to make the changes necessary by reason of the movements in population. A movement of population is not a movement which is confined to any 12 year period. The movement in population which the Constitution requires us to respect is a movement at any time. We had the peculiar situation in which the population of Kerry, Donegal and Mayo had dropped considerably since 1922 and yet these areas had not lost one Deputy, whilst areas like Dublin and Cork city had received only about one-third of the extra representation to which they were entitled.

Whether we live in Dublin or in Cork, in Ballyfermot or Ballydehob, makes no difference. There is one golden rule which we all ought to respect, that all Irishmen are equal, that no Irishman has a right to any greater power than another and no Irishman should be made suffer any lesser power than his fellowman, unless it be economic. That is the simple rule enshrined in the Constitution, and it is the Constitution and the Constitution alone which condemned the Bill of 1959.

This Bill shows a regard not, if I may say so, for the judgment of the High Court—that is only a passing incident in our constitutional history— but for the constitutional provisions which were there long before Deputy Ryan was even thought of and long before even the Minister was in a position to gerrymander or, shall we say revise, the constituencies. It is the constitutional decision that the Irish people have made twice in their history, in 1922 and in 1937——

The Deputy has said these things very many times. Repetition is not in order and the Deputy should come to the Bill.

Mr. Ryan

It is only because of the necessity to underline these things that I have repeated myself. I apologise if I am doing so, but I am pointing out that the 1959 Bill was upset because of the decision of our people in 1922 and in 1937 and not because of any decision of any legal institutions in recent times. Deputy Booth referred to the unfortunate decision of the High Court. Is it not a sad day indeed when a member of this House says that a court makes an unfortunate decision when it obliges the Oireachtas to respect the Constitution? Let this be said here, as some people were only too glad to emphasise elsewhere: it was the Houses of the Oireachtas that were on trial in the High Court. There were 41 of us in this House who went into the lobbies and voted against the 1959 Bill, but unfortunately it is the Houses of the Oireachtas which passed that Bill. It shows a very serious dereliction of duty when a court can find the Act deserving of condemnation on each and every ground on which the plaintiff sought to have it declared unconstitutional. It shows that many members of this House either have never read the Constitution or, if they have read it, do not respect it.

In order to preserve the fundamental rights of all citizens, from the humblest to the most powerful, in order to make us all equal, whether we come from Ballyfermot or Ballydehob, the Bill of 1959 was declared unconstitutional and this Bill has been brought in. This one, of course, gerrymanders within the law. A great deal can be done within the law. The members of the Fianna Fáil Party ought to try it some time, instead of always trying to go outside the law. That is what this Bill tries to do but we say to the Fianna Fáil Party now: "Take this Bill. Go to the country on this Bill and we will beat you on it. The people defeated your efforts to change the electoral laws in 1959. As a member of our democratic structure defeated your effort to gerrymander in 1959, so will the people in 1961 reject the Fianna Fáil Party, and send them here with a minority equal to the majority they got by accident, or by default, in 1957."

They know that day is coming. They cannot postpone it with a Bill like this. They can try to soften the blow. They are a bruised and beaten Party and I do not blame them for wanting to soften the blow but they need not worry, the blows will ultimately get home. This Bill, although far from being what a fair Bill should be, is constitutional, and it certainly will not protect them from the wrath of the Irish people as soon as they give us a chance.

The Deputy who has just spoken is a great believer in the theory of one man one vote, and that all votes are equal. That is fair enough, provided the circumstances and the background are the same, but if a voter in the west of Ireland has greater difficulty in getting representation here through his Deputy, in contracting his Deputy to put his views before him, or in causing his views to be made known in Dáil Èireann, than the city voter, if you make each vote equal it does not, in the long run, achieve what you may have in mind.

In other words, if you follow that theory to its logical conclusion the same set of circumstances must be operating for the vote in Dublin as for the vote in Donegal or Kerry. I contend that it is more difficult for any group of people in Donegal or Kerry to have their views represented here, because they must travel to meet their Deputies, or their Deputies must travel to meet them. In that way an arrangement by which one vote in Dublin equals one vote in Donegal does not give fair representation. We have heard several speakers here today advocate that the matter should be put to the people by way of a referendum to obviate the difficulties which have cropped up on this occasion.

How many votes would the Deputy give to Donegal?

With regard to the revision of constituencies, Fine Gael want to have it their own way on every occasion. They opposed the proposal in the referendum to set up one-seat constituencies because they alleged that Fianna Fáil wanted to ensure a permanent overall majority at that time. During that debate it was pointed out that as a result of the revision of the constituencies in 1959, the Bill would operate to provide a large number of three-seat constituencies, and it was the belief of Deputies opposite that that was done because Fianna Fáil thought that in most three-seat constituencies they would have a majority.

We have now got away from that number. In the Bill we have a lesser number of three-seat constituencies, yet Fine Gael and the Opposition shout "gerrymandering". It sounds most illogical to me to try to put forward the same argument, whether one-seat, three-seat or four-seat constituencies have a preponderance in the Bill. The Minister can rest assured that no matter what type of division or rearrangement he attempted, it would be criticised, and criticised severely as this Bill has been criticised, especially by Fine Gael.

The previous speaker referred to the Minister's own constituency and the previous Minister for Local Government, Deputy O'Donnell, said that in his opinion there was gerrymandering in Donegal. That is not so. The Derry Sentinel referred to this Bill when it was circulated. They would be expected to, and I think they did, take an objective view of the Bill. A very fine article appeared in that paper pointing out that in their opinion the only result in Donegal would be that the Independents in Donegal would lose representation. They went on to say that the Bill was not of Fianna Fáil choosing but that no matter what lines were drawn in Donegal it would not affect the situation at all and that any other line drawn would have the same effect as this line will have.

Deputy O'Donnell suggested a line he had in mind. That line would not produce a result in the next election different from the result this line will produce. Everyone of us here, given a map, would, I presume, draw different lines to conform with that Article of the Constitution which indicates the population per Deputy. When a Minister is confronted with the building up of three-seat constituencies where the population at the moment does not warrant it, he must, if the population is 50,000, keep going until he gets 60,000. What determines where the line will be is where he arrives at the figure of 60,000 people.

The same will happen when he is trying to build up or maintain four-seat or five-seat constituencies. If county boundaries have to be ignored, as they have, I do not see why the Opposition should blame the Minister who is tied by considerations of mathematical accuracy. If you are trying to plan with a certain figure in mind, you must cross everything. If it is a local authority boundary for county council purposes you must cross it or you must cross county boundaries and Dáil constituency boundaries. That has been done.

To conform to the decision of the High Court, it was imperative that numbers rather than any other consideration should be the guiding principle. No matter what rearrangement takes place you will have changes in representation. No matter what Deputy or Minister produces a rearranged programme, some members will lose parts of their constituencies. For that reason, those who are affected beneficially like it and those who are adversely affected do not like it.

It is unfortunate that the Leader of the Opposition, Deputy Dillon, set the tone of this debate by crying "Gerrymandering". It is a hateful word in the history of this country. It is unfortunate and unwarranted and it should not have been used.

I oppose this Bill on the ground that there has been a considerable amount of gerrymandering. We were promised the Bill two weeks before it saw the light of day. We have not heard any excuse for the delay. We know that every Fianna Fáil councillor in every constituency was consulted in connection with the drawing of the line.

That is absolutely untrue.

We all know it. It was all you were doing—fighting down the corridors.

I was not consulted.

There is no other excuse for the delay in producing the Bill. The draftsman did his job. He probably conformed to the requirements of the Constitution. When he had his job done, apparently the Fianna Fáil Party found it necessary to fiddle with figures to suit themselves. We have a few obvious cases where the boundary lines of constituencies have been altered to a considerable extent. There is no reason for it except to bring advantage to the Fianna Fáil Party.

If the Bill had been left as originally drafted, instead of presenting us with what we have now, there would be less for us to complain about. When this type of activity becomes obvious, it is up to us to make known to everybody that the Fianna Fáil Party are interested in preventing the people, so far as possible, from getting them out of office when the people try to get them out.

This is just one of a series of efforts by Fianna Fáil to prevent the people from having the voting strength and the power to put them out any time they wish to do so. A few years ago they wanted single-seat constituencies in the hope of abolishing all other political Parties in this House so far as they could. They failed in that, thanks to the people. However, it took the people to do it because Fianna Fáil steam-rolled the Bill through this House and said that the country would have it, whether or not the people liked it. However, the people had to be consulted and the people rejected it.

Fianna Fáil came to us with the 1959 Electoral (Amendment) Bill which again was unfair to the average elector. That Bill was found to be unconstitutional. Now we are faced with this Bill. On each occasion on which Fianna Fáil were compelled to bring in an Electoral (Amendment) Bill which would give equal strength to any vote whether cast in Cork, Kerry or Donegal, they tried to take a mean advantage and to organise the system in a manner to bring advantage to themselves and disadvantage to electors in certain areas.

This Bill was intended and designed I am sure to give equal voting strength and fair play to all citizens. Now we see some rearrangements in some constituencies which make it obvious that Fianna Fáil have reorganised the figures, having consulted their cumainn and local representatives. Take for instance, the County Dublin constituency which has been increased from three to five seats. Obviously, the reason for the increase is to ensure that the Minister for Defence will be elected at the coming election. At any time, he could be beaten two to one by Deputy P. J. Burke. His seat in County Dublin was, therefore, very much in danger.

The Minister for Defence stood for election on three occasions and was elected only on the last occasion when one of the outgoing Deputies did not contest the election again. The 1959 Electoral (Amendment) Bill left all the city vote inside the city boundary. When it became obvious that the Minister for Defence would be in danger at the next general election, Fianna Fáil decided to take approximately 10,000 votes from inside the city out into County Dublin. I refer to the area of Ballyfermot where the Minister was resident for a long time and where he personally campaigned actively. Therefore, he took that area out from the city and brought it into the county constituency.

Another situation is that Deputy Cosgrave was taken out of his constituency and is now living in my constituency. Deputy Cosgrave, who represents Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, now finds himself residing outside a constituency which he has represented for so long. There are approximately 8,000 electors who will not have the opportunity of supporting him in the next general election. Instead, they will have to vote for a candidate in the Dublin county constituency. As I have said, under the Electoral Act of 1947 he lost a large slice of his constituency in the south and west. On this occasion he loses it on the south and east which leaves him completely cut off and without the opportunity of seeking support among his neighbours whom he has represented since 1944.

Reference has been made to the constituency of Waterford and to that of Tipperary. It seemed very obvious that the constituency of Waterford should have been left with four seats instead of the arrangement whereby nearly 30 miles of the Waterford area is taken into South Tipperary. This Bill ignores the census which took place on Sunday last. When constituencies are being revised, attention must be given to the last census figures. If Fianna Fáil had gone about this business straight and fair in 1959 we should have had the constituencies reorganised and rearranged by now. Instead of that, they spent a year trying to take the proportional representation system away from the people and giving them a single-seat system instead.

In 1959, 12 years had elapsed since the previous revision and the constituencies, by law, should have been revised by 1959. It was Fianna Fáil's duty to do that. When it came to the 1959 revision, instead of bringing in a plan of reorganisation under the proportional representation system, they brought in a new system which they tried to put over on the people. They failed in that effort. Now the opportunity to rearrange the constituencies has passed and we are here in 1961, 14 years after the 1947 revision, arguing about the lines to be drawn in the various areas for the new constituencies. I consider that we should have waited a few months for the census figures of last Sunday to be made out so that the revision of the constituencies could take place on those figures.

I am satisfied that Dublin city and county would be entitled to at least one more seat if the new figures were known. We all know that the population of Dublin city is increasing at the rate of 15 souls per day—something like 100 per week. That increase is due mainly to people coming into the city; we must take it that a large proportion of those 15 souls come into the city from some part of the country. Those people are entitled to equal representation, no matter what part of the country they may have come from. When the census figures for Dublin city and county become known we shall surely find we have not given to either area its proper representation; we shall find that both Dublin city and council will be under-represented in the Dáil in relation to the new figures.

I was impressed by some of the arguments put up by previous speakers. Deputy Norton made a very good point regarding the taking into his constituency of parts of two other counties. I agree with him that that arrangement was not justified. Deputy Faulkner referred to the fact that the town of Ardee was being taken out of Louth and put into Monaghan. He seemed to repeat the case he made in the High Court which brought defeat to the result that he wanted. He said that Louth was the finest example of prosperity brought about by Fianna Fáil in any county. I know his constituency as well as he does and I know there was mass unemployment in Dundalk when the railway works were closed down there.

What about when the Deputy's Party closed down Inchicore?

One would think from Deputy Faulkner's speech that he did not live in his constituency, that he did not read the Drogheda Independent or the Dundalk paper which published large reports of unemployment in both those towns. He need not set up Louth as an example. If there is any credit for prosperity in those towns, it is due entirely to the enterprising businessmen of those towns who were engaged in the export industry. Thanks to the Sweetman plan of tax remission——

The relevance of those remarks escapes me.

It was relevant for Deputy Faulkner.

The point I am making is that they have taken Ardee out of Louth and put it into Monaghan, and that anything Deputy Faulkner has said does not provide justification for that action. I consider there is no justification for it. We have heard some rural Deputies speak about the representation in Dublin city and county. I would again remind them that the people in Dublin city have come from all over Ireland and when the people of Dublin city and county speak, it is with the voice of the whole country, all gathered in one community. I forecast a situation in the future where it will be necessary in each 12-year period to have the position of the constituencies rearranged in accordance with the census figures so that we shall be acting in accordance with population trends. We may have a greater number of people leaving the rural areas for the towns and cities. Their vote must follow them. That is the benefit of a revision of the constituencies.

It would be unfair to the people of the country for the Minister to ask the House to accept the Bill in its present form. Obviously, it is designed to give an advantage to the Fianna Fáil Party and to prevent the people who want to remove the Government from doing so. I suggest that, even at this late stage, the Minister should set up an all-Party committee of the House and go into this arrangement of the constituencies again. I think he could be sure of being met fairly by every Deputy, whether of his own Party or of the other political Parties. There are a few examples of revision in this Bill crying out for remedy and crying out for fair play and justice to the people concerned, who are being taken out of constituencies and put into others to which they do not rightly belong. Instead of waiting for amendments to come along, the Minister should set up such an all-Party committee.

Some of the speakers opposite tried to tell us that the 1959 Bill was an agreed measure. It was opposed by the Opposition at that time. If the Government consider that an agreed measure would be best, then an all-Party committee would be the remedy. The Minister should let us know if he would be prepared to accept such a committee.

The Opposition to this Bill can be summed up in a few words: "Suspicion haunts the guilty mind." There is no doubt if the Fine Gael Party had the drafting of this Bill, they would gerrymander. Knowing their own faults so well and knowing they are always prepared to take advantage of any fault in any Bill, any referendum or anything else, they are attributing to Fianna Fáil something that is untrue. They cannot have it both ways. When they opposed the single-seat constituency, they gave as their reason that they wanted rural Ireland to have greater representation. They were afraid that Dublin and Cork might get greater representation. Today we hear a completely different story. They want more representation for Dublin city. Deputy Rooney let the cat out of the bag. It is not the first time the cat escaped from Deputy Rooney. It is another indication of how little discipline there is in the Fine Gael Party. A year and a half ago, the Fine Gael Party agreed to what is known as the 1959 Bill.

They voted against it.

You were delighted when you saw the final text of it because some of you were afraid of your lives there might be changes detrimental to your future interests.

The Minister for Defence did not like it.

I am sure Deputy Rooney is now very uneasy at the thought of Deputy Cosgrave hovering around his area. No wonder he would be uneasy. I should be very worried myself if a young and intelligent Deputy like Deputy Cosgrave were in my Party——

There is no danger of having a young and intelligent Deputy in your Party.

Deputy Rooney gave no other reasons for opposing the Bill than that there was a danger of losing his own political identity. We have heard the word "gerrymander". As Deputy Cunningham said it is a word that should not be used here to any appreciable extent. Fine Gael are attributing to their fellow Irishmen in the South the system responsible for Partition. The people who use that word ought to be ashamed of themselves and should stop using it. There is no gerrymandering in this Bill.

Of course, there is.

I am sure the Minister has no personal animosity against me. Deputy Sweetman has been studying form, apparently, and he knows Gortnahoe is gone. If there were a few more Gortnahoes in Ireland, Fine Gael would never be heard of again. They would scuttle out of the country as quickly as they scuttled out of government in 1957.

The Deputy may be scuttled out after the election.

That could happen. It would be the will of the people.

I am sure the Deputy reluctantly agreed, the same as Deputy Loughman.

If the people decide, I shall be happy. Deputy Sweetman will have to travel faster, too. He was very near losing his seat the last time. I was never as near as that and I hope I shall not be in the future.

He was not making promises.

It is because we do not make promises that we get the people's confidence. That is why we are here with such a majority, and the next Dáil will show a greater majority for Fianna Fáil. Deputy Rooney will be looking around for dual purpose hens and feeding them with tomatoes. I would advise him to do that rather than criticise a Bill about which he knows little. The Minister has no personal animosity against me, but, as Deputy Sweetman says, it is quite on the cards that I will be the victim of the rearrangement of townlands.

Surely the Deputy knows why? Because the Deputy happens to have as a colleague the assistant Whip of the Fianna Fáil Party.

There are no pets in this Party. Ability counts here. When I look at some of the members of the Coalition Governments, I would say it is not ability that counted in their case. The lawyers were here up to a few minutes ago. There were four out of eight. They were responsible for all this rearrangement of the constituencies but now they are trying to hide behind poor Senator O'Donovan. Deputy Ryan is trying to claim all the credit. I wonder was the matter brought before the High Court with the authority of the Fine Gael Party?

To uphold the Constitution.

It would be about time you thought of doing it.

We did it at a time that you did not.

I wonder did they——

I wonder did the Fine Gael Party condone the action of Senator O'Donovan, Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Ryan?

We always uphold the Constitution.

You have not said that. You cannot ride two horses. You either did or did not and if you did, why pretend for over a year that you were accepting the 1959 Bill?

We voted against it.

It shows the country quite clearly what they can expect from the Fine Gael Party in the future, as in the past. Deputy Sweetman is a past master at interrupting.

Deputy Sweetman.

I am glad the Deputy acknowledges it.

The Minister has nothing personal against me.

He might.

I am quite sure he has not and I have the greatest sympathy with him in trying to adhere to——

The Constitution.

——what would be an unanswerable case in the courts if the Fine Gael Party were officially or unofficially to bring it before the High Court again. Perhaps here or there you will find certain Deputies who will gain. I cannot say that, but I can say that there was no other method open to him in Tipperary South except what he did. It is unfortunate for me but I cannot grumble. It is about time that the Fine Gael Party now said whether or not they were responsible for bringing the High Court action. It often strikes me that people are trying to ride two horses. That is what the Fine Gael Party are trying to do now. You are ashamed to say you did——

The Deputy is constantly using the second person. He should use the third person.

I am so fond of Deputy Sweetman, you will forgive me, Sir.

You should be very concerned about the third person in South Tipperary.

We have the old Coalition again. Look at the way Deputy Corish will stand up for them when they are on their own tails again.

He is a constitution-alist too.

Although Deputy Corish pretends there will never be a Coalition again, and his instructions are there will not be, still when he sees that they are getting it hot and are asked a straight question, he has to draw a red herring across the track. He can make his mind easy; the third person will be elected.

I think Deputy Davern is the one who will not be.

The Deputy might be right. He will not shed any tears and I am sure Deputy Sweetman will not.

I should be very disappointed if I had not the Deputy to interrupt now and again.

You will have to make up your minds on which side you are now. It is about time you did.

The Chair is not supposed to be on any side.

It is about time the Fine Gael Party did make up their minds and apologised to the people for the enormous taxation and cost they have again put on them. It is reminiscent of the Sinn Féin Funds. This is not the first time that the Fine Gael Party were responsible for extra taxation.

That does not seem to be relevant to this measure.

It does not seem to be true either but you would not mind that.

The legal luminaries have been the curse of this country and when they formed the first Coalition they were the greatest curse since Cromwell. It is about time they answered that question.

Which one?

It is about time they got off the fence and stated whether the action in the High Court was of their making——

What was wrong with the action in the High Court?

——or whether it is their secret methods again; whether they do not agree with what their colleagues did. If that inconsistency is there the Fine Gael Party are damned for ever.

The majority has no right to do wrong.

In regard to my constituency of Cork City I feel that the Minister, for various reasons, has undoubtedly made a very bad job of it. Whatever may happen to Deputy Davern or Deputy Sweetman as a result of the introduction of this Bill, I feel it is not the Deputy that matters. You can always find another Deputy and possibly a better one. The thing that matters is the electorate. The person to be thought of is the citizen and the spirit and the letter of the Constitution was that the citizen should be given the best possible representation. That is the attitude of mind which the Minister should adopt when he is approaching a Bill of this nature. He should give to rural constituencies rural Deputies; he should give to urban constituencies, in so far as he can, urban Deputies.

We find in regard to Cork City that he has taken from the present constituency approximately 9,999 votes in the Blackrock area. In passing, I think that the original explanatory memorandum issued in regard to this Bill is misleading inasmuch as it indicated that the electoral division of Blackrock is being returned to the Cork county constituency. I may be wrong but I can never remember an occasion when the electoral division of Blackrock was in the county. If it was then, it was an amazing anomaly, because the electoral division comes to Victoria Street, which is about one to one and a half minutes walk from the City Hall. It also comes to High Street which is three minutes walk from the City Hall. Certainly 99 per cent. of the people who reside in the electoral division of Blackrock work in the city and regard themselves as city folk.

The city bus services serve every portion of that division. It is in every way, except for the purpose of local government, a part, if not the most important part, of the city. The Minister has taken that away and given it to the new constituency of Mid-Cork and by way of consolation prize he has given Cork city the division of Rathcooney which is purely rural. Rathcooney runs to a distance of eight or nine miles from the City Hall and it has always been looked upon as an electoral division which is obviously rural and it should continue to be rural. I appeal to the Minister to have second thoughts about recasting these constituencies. I know he has difficulties but he is not doing the best possible job in this Bill. He is not giving Cork city the proper type of representation. If he asks Deputies of his own party I think he will find that is true.

There may be reasons why constituencies have been recast and for the manner in which it is being done but none of them is valid from the point of view of giving the best possible representation. It may be purely a coincidence that if this Bill goes through the two Opposition Deputies for Cork City will both find themselves outside their own constituencies while the three Fianna Fáil representatives will find themselves inside their constituencies. It may also be a coinsidence that Deputy Manley, who sits next to me here, representing South Cork will find himself in Cork city. This is a ridiculous situation and it should not be allowed to go on to the Statute Book. I ask the Minister now to reinvestigate the matter and try to give more appropriate representation to the residents of Blackrock division.

Four years ago the present Fianna Fáil Government were elected and since then their record in relation to electoral laws has been unique. They began in 1958, when they should have been attending to their economic business, trying to find out how they could carve up the country so as to ensure they would be retained in office when an outraged electorate got an opportunity of voting them out. When they should have been attending to Government business, they were trapesing up and down the country trying to abolish proportional representation and we lost—probably forever—the differential of 10 per cent. that we had on our pigs and bacon exports to the Danes because the Government were asleep in regard to that side of our business. They were too busy trying to ensure that with the abolition of P.R. they would find themselves secure. The people defeated them on that issue notwithstanding that they had the bait of having their leader as Presidential candidate at that time. He very nearly went the same way as a result of the outrage the people felt at the attempt to change the system of voting for purely Party purposes.

The Fianna Fáil Party made a second effort in the Electoral Act of 1959 and their own rules—they were the people who introduced the present Constitution—when the referee blew the whistle, proved them to be fouling. Now they are upset and annoyed because they are not allowed to override the rules they themselves laid down, not allowed to set at nought the Constitution and the principles they themselves put in writing. It is the same old story of Fianna Fáil—every condition, every rule, every Act is perfectly all right so long as it suits Fianna Fáil but, the moment it does not suit them, it goes out the window and they try to get away with something else and make it suit themselves. We have seen that over the years. Now they are whining and crying because they were caught out.

Here, they come along with a third effort. Deputy Davern takes great exception to the use of the word "gerrymandering." What is its origin? It was called gerrymandering because the shape of the constituency was in the form of a most peculiar shape of bird. If one were to consider only personalities—but it is not a question only of personalities, as Deputy Barrett said— I should be delighted to have an addition to County Kildare but if you look at that on the map and if you then take up the pamphlet issued by the All-party Committee on Partition some years ago and see what they gave as the typical example of gerry-mandering—the bird—you will find exactly the same shape as we now have in Westmeath, Meath and Kildare. We even have the bill coming right down in exactly the same way. Yet Deputy Davern objects to the use of the word "gerrymandering." Of course, it was done.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social Welfare has left the House but we know why that bit of Westmeath was cut off. It was because he did not like one of the Labour county councillors in that area because he was becoming too strong. That was deliberately cut off and they also deliberately cut the tail off Deputy Fagan's constituency just on one side of his house. They did the same on the other side to Senator Sheridan and Deputy Giles' house is to be the last house in the constituency.

They took me out.

All of us get our strength naturally enough from the areas around us and they deliberately left his as the last house and took him into my county. I am glad to have him. They did it deliberately, cut it down the middle.

Travelling from that up to Donegal we find that the old divisions of east and west were changed into north-east and south-west deliberately, to suit the Minister for Local Government on the one hand and to get Deputy Sheldon out on the other. Deputy Cunningham was honest enough to admit that was the purpose and that would be the result of the Bill in Donegal—to get rid of Deputy Sheldon. A few cats have been let out of bags in this debate.

We all know why Louth was dealt with as it has been. Deputy Faulkner had to come in and put a brave face on it but it was necessary, when pieces were being taken off Louth, to come right down into the county, to cut out its whole middle, so to speak, right down to within five miles of Deputy Faulkner's own house. Why? Because Fianna Fáil are in danger of having only one seat there after the next election and it had to be made certain that that seat would be left for the Minister for External Affairs in case Deputy Faulkner might beat him otherwise.

Deputy Davern does not yet seem to have realised that it was because Deputy Loughman is assistant Whip of the Fianna Fáil Party that a "skelp" had to be taken out of Waterford and built on to Clonmel to try to bolster up Deputy Loughman. Wherever you look, you will see that this Bill has been deliberately framed for the benefit of Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries and Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party where there was any danger for them. Pontoon and Straide were taken from North Mayo and put with the South for the benefit of the Minister for Lands. Ballaghaderreen was brought in from Roscommon to South Mayo because it was the old living place of Deputy Séan Flanagan. In Sligo-Leitrim, because we beat Fianna Fáil there the other day, the whole heart had been torn out of Leitrim. You can go up and down the country and see the same thing wherever you go. It makes no difference so far as a Party may be concerned because, if the votes are taken out of one area they are in another, but it does make a difference for individuals. It is in order to protect certain individuals in Fianna Fáil that this Bill has been designed in this way.

Deputy Barrett spoke about what is being done in Cork city. I do not know whether it is because Deputy MacCarthy felt himself in danger in Cork that they took the Blackrock area out of the city and put it into mid-Cork. It is an entirely unnatural revision to take a suburban area out of a city constituency and to take a rural area which has no real roots in the city, or its suburbs, and put it into the city constituency. That is what is being done in Cork city. Three years ago, Fianna Fáil tried to keep themselves in office by the abolition of P. R. The people beat them. Last year they had a Bill, with a similar aim. The courts beat them there by making them keep their own rules. This year they are trying once again to gerrymander but in the next general election it is the people who will beat them, and beat them hollow.

This Bill has been introduced in rather peculiar circumstances. It has been introduced in consequence of a decision of Mr. Justice Budd. It is astonishing that the Government, in the dilemma in which they found themselves, did not have recourse to some alternative means of rectifying the position that arose as a result of the decision of the High Court. It was open to them to appeal to the Supreme Court. I do not presume to have any knowledge of the law, but I thought the decision of Mr. Justice Budd a rather challenging one: he asked that the matter should go to the Supreme Court. That was never done. He must have had serious grounds and it is rather surprising that the Government did not there and then appeal to the Supreme Court. I wonder had they some foreknowledge that the decision would be upheld in the Supreme Court?

If the 1959 Bill is unconstitutional, is it not pertinent to ask whether the various Dála set up here in recent years were legally constituted? I believe that if all the Bills which revised the constituencies had been brought before the court they would have been found to be just as unconstitutional as the 1959 Bill. I wonder did the Government go about righting the wrong done in the right way? There was nothing to stop them amending the Constitution. That would have been the most practicable way of dealing with the situation. This measure pinpoints the necessity and importance of the Constitution where electoral Bills are concerned. I think the position should have been remedied in 1960 or in 1961, instead of leaving it to some later date.

Is it not obvious from this tabular statement issued by the Minister's Department that there are 17 constituencies with 66 Deputies, who individually represent, on an average, fewer than 20,000 people. In 21 constituencies, there are 78 Deputies representing individually, on an average, over 20,000 people. There is still a disproportion, no matter what this Bill purports to do in regard to the ratio of representation. Again, electoral divisions framed on the old poor law and dispensary areas are obsolete. There is grave need for a new approach. It was suggested very sensibly this evening that a joint committee should be set up to examine into this question of electoral divisions and to bring them up to date.

There is one particularly regrettable feature in the chopping up of some counties. We cannot complain on that score in Cork, but some counties have been ruthlessly chopped in order to get the necessary proportion. The county is the administrative unit, so far as local authority goes. There is invariably a certain rivalry between counties. There is a certain clannishness in counties, to the extent very often that people in one county will not vote for someone from a neighbouring county or another county. That is a grave danger in this Bill. I would much prefer to cut down representation and leave the county as the unit. I would regard that as more practicable in the long run.

There is another regrettable feature. There is an increase of four Deputies in Dublin city and county. We appreciate the population of this area is 705,007 or practically 25 per cent of the population of the Twenty-Six Counties. It is much easier for a Deputy in Dublin to represent 30,000 people than it is for a Deputy in Connemara to represent 10,000 people. No matter what the Constitution says, I do not thinks we are approaching this problem in a practical way. It should be possible for a Deputy adequately to represent 30,000 constituents in an urban area like Dublin. There would then be no need to give these extra seats to Dublin. I would be the last to try to cause any rift between Dublin Deputies and rural Deputies. The Dublin Deputy has, however, many advantages. He can do his day's work and then come in here. The rural Deputy must stay away from his home and business for two or three days at a time. There should be some compensation for these rural Deputies as against those who are centrally situated.

I have very radical views about representation. I believe there is over-representation here. When the Act of Union was passed in 1800, the representation given in the British House of Commons was 100 and the population then was double, if not treble, what it is in the Twenty-Six Counties today. I believe we are being over-generous with Dublin. I do not want to cause ill-feeling but we must be realistic and must appreciate the inconvenience rural Deputies have to face as against those centrally situated in their urban constituencies.

Deputy Barrett referred to the changes made in Cork city constituency. As in the case of the counties which have been chopped up, geographical considerations were entirely disregarded. Nobody could condone the change made in Cork city where a purely urban area was taken out of Cork city and put into a rural constituency. It may serve the members in that constituency but it is not the practical and sensible way of dealing with it because the people in that area have nothing at all in common with the people in the rural constituency of mid-Cork.

Deputy Barrett mentioned that the buses run to all parts of the Blackrock area. So also did the old electric trams in Cork. Deputy MacCarthy or any of the Cork city Deputies will readily admit that. It was most incongruous and most anomalous that should be done. Rathcooney is a purely rural area which, as Deputy Barrett said, is eight or nine miles from the centre of the city of Cork. That is being brought into the city constituency. At least the Minister should make some effort to make an alteration in that in order to bring about some kind of harmony between the type of representative and the needs of the people who elect that representative. There is nothing at all in common between the Blackrock area—it was purely a city area at all times and has been from time immemorial—and Rathcooney which is a purely rural area. I think that is entirely incongruous.

Another reason why it is rather tragic to chop some of the counties— I sympathise with those who have been divided—concerns the health administration which is now a very important activity in every county. It is very awkward for the people who are brought from an outside county into another county. In so far as local affairs are concerned, they will go to their own local authorities, but in so far as national affairs are concerned, they will have to go to a man outside their county altogether. It is a bit awkward for them.

These are the only remarks I wish to make. I am making them from a national point of view and not for any personal reason whatever. Like Deputy Barrett, I agree that it is not the Deputy who matters but the people. They should be given the fairest representation. That should be the motive. I do not know why the Minister in some cases made the changes he made. I do not know what motivated him to make these changes. We cannot interpret the Minister's mind in that respect. At all events, the decision in Cork city is rather peculiar. I think it could very easily be remedied. There are certain other areas on the outskirts which could go into the constituency of mid-Cork and thus leave Blackrock where it has been from time immemorial.

It was suggested by a number of speakers that an all-Party committee should be set up to deal with this very contentious matter. Whilst it would be over-optimistic to expect that an all-Party committee would agree 100 per cent. in a matter such as this, I feel that that suggestion merits at least some attention. In passing, I might add that if other matters were referred to all-Party committees, irrespective of their nature, more progress would be made in this House.

Coming from County Louth, I should like to assure the Minister that, whilst I sympathise with his position to a certain extent, the people in County Louth area affected, an area which will be put into County Monaghan, are very resentful of the intentions of this Bill. Various opinions were expressed by both Fianna Fáil supporters and Fine Gael supporters. They all resent being put into a separate county, being detached from their existing native county of Louth and put into Monaghan.

Earlier this evening, Deputy Faulkner pointed out that County Louth was a constituency which had enjoyed all down the years since the foundation of this State its own natural boundaries. Admittedly, there were years ago two constituencies in that small county, North and South Louth, but, as a county, its boundaries were always respected. I think it is a very retrograde step for the Minister at this stage to tamper with our boundaries.

I should like to comment in that respect that the decision of the High Court judge in the recent court case did not suggest in any shape or form, as far as I can recall, that boundaries as such should be tampered with. Certain suggestions were made by Mr. Justice Budd. I do not think he mentioned or even encouraged that county boundaries as such should be touched. Then, again, we have the anomalous position facing us, if this Bill is passed, that people, in one area in my county anyhow, will be voting for a man in the Dáil election who possibly may not be a County Louth man. As Deputy Manley said, when the local government elections take place they will have to vote for one of their local men. I think it is fraught with great danger in so far as there will be much confusion. More serious still is the danger that most people may not vote in future elections to the same extent when they discover that they will not have the chance to vote for a county man. They will be expected to vote for a man who is not one of their own.

This Bill intends to cut off the whole town of Ardee which is a very prosperous and up and coming town. In addition to that, a large slice of a rural area is also due to be put into County Monaghan. I think it is a very retrograde step.

One point puzzles me very much. Last Sunday night a census was taken. I cannot understand why the Government are not prepared to await the result of that census. The allocation of population to Deputies is being based in this Bill on the census taken in 1956. When the result of the present census is known it will undoubtedly disclose that the population of this country has diminished, if not considerably, at least to a fair extent. We will be faced with the unusual position of allocating 20,000 people to a T.D. in 1961 and that position will obtain for the next 12 years, because as we know, the revision of constituencies must take place within at least 12 years.

We are going to pass a Bill on a census which is five years out of date. That is all the more surprising when we remember that a new census is being compiled. I cannot see why we cannot afford to wait a few months until we get the new population figures. If we had those figures, it might mean that we would not have to interfere with county boundaries now. It might result in a reduced number of Deputies but that might not be a bad idea, either. I think the Government would be well advised to await the result of the current census which should be out in a few months time.

The pattern all down the years has been to allocate approximately 20,000 people to one T. D. As Deputy Manley suggests, would it not be better and more equitable to move up the scale a bit and concentrate on hovering around the 30,000 mark? Again, that might mean that slices of one county would not necessarily have to be put into another county to make up the difference in that county. These points merit consideration by the Government.

Many references were made by Deputies to the court decision given recently in respect of Senator O'Donovan's action. Either the court decision was right or it was wrong. There is no via media. If the Government think that the court decision was wrong, why are they not appealing against it? If they do not appeal against it, it is to be presumed that they are in agreement with the decision that the Electoral Act of 1959 was repugnant to the Constitution and that, therefore, Senator O'Donovan was quite right in making known that fact. The Government cannot have it both ways. They should either appeal against the court decision or state honestly and categorically that they accept the court's decision, that they acknowledge their mistake and that they will abide by the court decision.

As Deputy Sweetman pointed out, the people, in 1958, rejected the attempt by the Government to foist single member constituencies on the country. They rejected it in no uncertain terms. Again, the court defeated the Government recently. I am confident that, irrespective of the Government's measure now, the people will rally around the Fine Gael Party. Speaking personally for County Louth, I have every confidence and every hope that they will turn once more to the Fine Gael Deputies.

This is an ordinary piece of gerrymandering which, unfortunately, we have to discuss in the sort of academic atmosphere of the Constitution. It is, clearly, the third effort of a gerrymandering type to retain power for a Party that is on the way out. That was recognised in most places when the action which ended against the Government, or against the Attorney General, was being discussed. Everywhere that action was discussed during its progress say, at the inconveniently-placed bus stops in O'Connell Street or in the public-houses, whether open under the old licensing law or under the new, or wherever teachers, Army men, civil servants or guards gathered together to discuss their own peculiar depressions, the ordinary comment made about Senator O'Donovan's case was that it was a great effort on the part of the Government for a shocking piece of gerrymandering and they were caught out and were exposed completely, as they deserved to be.

Notwithstanding that, Deputies have rolled into this House this evening to talk about this in terms of principle. Deputy Faulkner said that the 1959 Act which was repealed by the High Court as being unconstitutional was an agreed measure. It was nothing of the sort. I interrupted to say that there was a division. He parried that by saying: "Yes; some small points were divided on on Committee Stage." There was a division on the Fifth Stage, the last Stage of the Bill. It was after I personally had made an intervention to indicate a point of view that the measure was in many respects unconstitutional.

On the Fifth Stage, there were about six speakers. On that occasion, one only supported the Minister, and he was Deputy Booth. Others had views that were more consonant with the views I expressed than with the views expressed by Deputy Booth and the Minister on behalf of the Government. In the end, there was a vote for or against the measure and it did not leave this House as an agreed piece of legislation. It was not so. It was objected to at the beginning. There was an effort made to see could some betterment be made in it on Committee Stage and when that failed the Party I belong to, joined by the Labour Party, Deputy McQuillan and Deputy Sherwin, all voted against the measure as a whole without paying any attention to the details of it.

On that particular occasion, as I say, I indicated various points of view and I will come back to these at a later stage. I want to get rid of one misconception that appears to prevail through the House, that is, that the Electoral Act of 1959 was drafted with a view to giving the rural areas better representation. The phrase that was used continually throughout that debate—and I used it myself— was that the Minister expressed the attitude that he should approach the revision of the constituencies with a rural bias. He denied that.

Will the Deputy give the reference?

I am going to give the reference—column 235 of the Dáil Debates of 19th November, 1959. He said:

There is one argument that has been used here or rather—should I say?—misused. It was stated several times by many Deputies that I said that there was a rural bias in this Bill but what I said in my speech on Second Reading was that there may appear to be a rural bias so far as the provisions of the Bill were concerned. If viewed in a purely statistical light "there may appear to be" as distinct from "there is". I just want to correct that misuse...

So far as the Minister is concerned, he put himself on record here as disclaiming any effort to approach this question with a rural bias and I hope we will hear less of that when the new measure comes to be discussed in the election that will be, I hope, held on the amending measure before us tonight.

I personally want to go back on the Minister's phrase. I think he did say that he thought there should be a rural bias in dividing out the constituencies but I know that when he was in the witness box on oath, he denied that he said that. I want to put in contrast the phrase he did use here in Dáil Éireann and the phrase he used before a court when we were not permitted to bring in the Dáil Debates to show what he had said when speaking on this measure. Whether there was rural bias or not in the Minister's approach rural bias is not allowed under the Constitution, and that is what the judge declared.

Comments have been made here as to the new piece of legislation about hurling bricks at county boundaries, how it fragments boundaries, how you have pieces of one county shoved on to another and pieces of another county tacked on to the bottom of another, and so on. There is a great deal of clamour in regard to political life that the county boundaries are there, that they govern local authority business, that local authority business and public business of the Parliamentary type often run together and that it would be very convenient that the county boundaries should not be broken when one comes to deal with the National Assembly. These are all great points of view—rural bias, keeping the county boundaries as they are, not fragmenting counties, not breaking up counties, not having people in one county area put into another one. They are all great views but they were not made a prominent matter when the Constitution was being passed and they are not in the Constitution. The people who lament now the fact that these standards cannot be used must look back on their own past and blame themselves for not being viligant enough to see that these standards were embodied in the great Constitution of 1937. It was plainly recognised that the county boundary was not a standard in the Constitution. The standard was, as I described it on the Fifth Stage of the 1959 Bill a purely statistical one to be found in Article 16 which was under investigation by the courts in the recent action.

Those who appeared for the Attorney General used every method of obstruction that court procedure allows in order to prevent the true picture being put before the judge who determined this matter in the courts. One of the matters it was sought to bring in before the judge was the Third Amendment of the Constitution which was deemed to have been passed by both Houses and then failed to get the required vote at the plebiscite. It involved a constitutional amendment, in fact, involved several, and one of them was this:

As soon as may be after the receipt of the request from the President the Commission shall proceed to determine or to revise the boundaries of the constituencies on a fair and equitable basis having due regard to geographical features and established administrative and territorial divisions and, subject to these considerations, in such manner that the population of each constituency, as ascertained at the last preceding census, shall, so far as it is practicable, be the same throughout the country.

This was an amendment to the Constitution. Article 16 simply says:

The ratio between the number of members to be elected at any time for each constituency, and the population of each constituency... shall, so far as it is practicable, be the same throughout the country.

In the amendment which was defeated on referendum, there was an attempt to bring in a constitutional provision that when determining constituencies, the Commission should look at geographical features, established administrative and territorial divisions. Their general direction was to divide on a fair and equitable basis and, all those things being considered, then to come to the final matter which is in the Constitution, to divide in such a way that the population of each constituency, as ascertained at the last preceding census would, so far as practicable, be the same throughout the country. It was recognised when the referendum matter was being considered that these words were not in Article 16, that it was sought to put them in. Then the futile argument was made in court that it had to be assumed that these words were there and the judge was not allowed to have this brought to his notice through legal procedure.

On a point of order, I would be slow to impute this to the Deputy but it does seem to me that he is implying that the ordinary procedure adopted by the court in relation to the matter he is now discussing constituted obstruction of the judge. The judge gave a ruling in this matter and I take it it was a good ruling.

The judge was obstructed.

The judge made the decision.

I take it Deputy McGilligan is entitled to refer to the court procedure.

I am referring not merely to court procedure; I am referring to misuse of court procedure by those who appeared for the Attorney General.

I think it is wrong— and Deputy McGilligan should know this much better than I do—that the procedure adopted in court over which a learned judge presided should be described in this House as a misuse of the procedure of the court. That should not be allowed.

Surely the Chair should not be asked to give a ruling on that question, whether the procedure was correct or incorrect.

Those who appeared for the Attorney General could have allowed this matter to come before the court. Why did they not allow it?

That is a different matter from what the Deputy has just raised.

Why would they not allow it? For the same reason as the Minister is objecting in this House: they wanted to hide it. There was obstruction in court as there is obstruction here.

Deputy McGilligan is having a slap at the Judiciary, just as he did previously in this House on a similar matter.

If there be any suspicion that I am having a slap, open or sub rosa, at the judge, I want to disclaim that. I am having a slap, and I mean to have a slap, at those who appeared for the Attorney General, advised by him on their procedure. They would not allow this matter to be brought into court.

Was it not the judge who decided, in the last analysis, whether it should be brought into court or not?

He decided it should not.

Why blame the Attorney General?

I am blaming the Attorney General because he would not let that be brought before the court. I am bringing it before the public now. I am entitled to speak of it now.

It was ruled out of order by the judge.

And I am bringing it into order here because it was ruled out of order by the judge.

So the judge was wrong?

I say the Attorney General was wrong. The procedure was there to be availed of and the Attorney General took refuge behind it. I want to explain what happened.

May I point out to Deputy McGilligan that we are getting away from the Bill?

I am trying to keep to the Bill.

The Deputy is now arguing the whole court case again.

It does not seem to be relevant.

The constitutional case was argued on Article 16 of the Constitution which, as I said on the Fifth Reading on 19th November, 1959, contained only one standard, a statistical one, that the constituencies were fixed so that there should be not less than one member for each 30,000 of the population and not more than one member for each 20,000; secondly, that the ratio between the number of members to be elected at any time for each constituency, and the population of each constituency, as ascertained at the last preceding census should, so far as practicable, be the same throughout the country.

In this House it has been asked: why should we break up county boundaries? The answer is that the Constitution does not say they should be observed. I am arguing that that must have been known to the Minister's advisers because at an earlier stage they had tried to amend the Constitution and referred to territorial and established administrative divisions, geographical features, and all the rest. There is much worse than that in this piece of legislation which was deemed to have passed both Houses. There is anxiety here that nobody should criticise the judges, that judges should have a free hand to decide constitutional questions. What did this propose:

No Court shall entertain any question as to whether the Commission shall have been properly constituted or any question as to whether the determination or revision of boundaries of constituencies set out in the report has been properly carried out.

What personage was going to preside over that Commission?

A judge. Because there was one judge there, you could not go to court to raise the question as to whether the determination or revision of boundaries had been properly carried out. That certainly was a great effort to stop the courts from looking in on what this Commission did. Again, successfully, the advisers of the Attorney General kept that from the knowledge of Mr. Justice Budd when he was trying the recent case.

The judge ruled it out of order and well the Deputy knows that.

The judge was bound by court procedure on an objection taken by a party.

Having considered it.

The objection was taken by a party but objection cannot be taken by that party here. I want to raise the point that the objection was taken.

The Deputy should not blame the Attorney General for something the judge ruled in court.

The judge ruled because the Attorney General asked him to do so.

It was because he probably thought it was correct that he so ruled.

The judge ruled it out when he was asked to rule it out.

Even though it may be wrong?

In the witness box, the Minister was asked if there was a map in his Department which was prepared in the time of his predecessor, and whether that map was extant. He said there was a map and that it was extant, and then he immediately claimed privilege for it. He did not want to have it known in the court how civil servants acted under different Ministers. The divisions of the constituencies were produced entirely from the gerrymandering proposals in the present Bill.

The Deputy is codding no one.

I wonder why the map was not produced. I want to ask another question. It is still extant, I believe. Why can it not be produced now? We are out of the court atmosphere. The case in court is over. There are no more legal controversies over this matter. Supposing there is a question of referring this Bill to the Supreme Court, as can be done—if An tUachtarán thinks it proper, the Bill we are discussing now can be referred to the Supreme Court—will the Attorney General's advisers go to the Supreme Court under the shadow of privilege? Will they bring the map in which apparently Deputy Loughman was asked to make some changes with which—in his own phrase—he reluctantly agreed?

There must be a terrible number of maps around.

There is one missing.

I should like to see the original Bill to find out what hacking was done by the Party. We are ostensibly debating the Second Reading of this matter but there were many steps before that. There was the introduction of this piece of legislation. There was then a map produced, and that map was apparently brought to the notice of the Party. That map was hacked about and today the result is that we have got the present divisions.

I should like to find out, and I am sure the Supreme Court would like to find out, what were the original divisions. How were these constituencies arranged after Mr. Justice Budd had made the declaration of what he thought was the line that might be followed. How was the map rearranged? What is the difference between that map as originally presented and the map we have now to consider? I suppose if there is any appeal to the Supreme Court in regard to this question, the Minister's advisers will follow the usual procedure and say: "We claim privilege for anything that has happened departmentally."

We will wait and see.

I have a lot of experience and it has taught me that if there is any refuge into which the Minister can crawl, he will avail himself of it. Surely it would be more bona fide if the step taken was that the Government would go forward to the Supreme Court and ask for a decision from that Court that this piece of legislation is constitutional. They should go with clean hands and the greatest degree of good faith, and that would entail the maps being produced from the Department. The changes made by the Party could then be seen.

That is the background of the action taken before Mr. Justice Budd. I asked that the judgment should be circulated to Deputies in order that they could follow the new proposal, and that advertence could be had to what the judge had said. Although there are copies in the Library apparently, they are not much read. I have heard more mistakes made in the interpretation of that judgment in the past couple of hours than I would have thought possible in connection with something clearly written and clearly spoken.

For instance, it was suggested that the judge laid down that there should not be a wider divergence than 1,000. He made no such comment. If he had, then this piece of legislation would fall. In these legislative proposals, there is a minus sign in front of Clare which is below the average of 833, and there are various pluses of 700, which means there is a divergence between the highest and the lowest of the order of 1,500 of population. If 1,000 were laid down—with which I do not agree—then of course those proposals would fall.

The present proposals have to be looked at from three angles. As I say, it is rather ridiculous to be discussing what I call an obvious attempt at gerrymandering in a sort of academic way as it was by busmen or civil servants or other people who discussed the old legislation, but we can discuss what happened in the courts to make our minds clear. That was a despairing effort by the Government to arrange the constituencies in a particular way. Whatever the Government have done, they have been caught out, exposed and condemned for it.

Let me get back again to an academic atmosphere with regard to the present proposals. Three points can be raised on the present Bill. The Constitution provides that the Oireachtas shall revise the constituencies at least once in 12 years. We have not done that and it is not possible to do it now. We just cannot meet that Article of the Constitution. There has been a flagrant breach of that Article and the only excuse that can be made is that it is not possible to do it. Of course one could go on and ask why certain precautions were not taken before a certain date in November, 1959. We know from the mouth of the Taoiseach that in some way he got advice that so long as they produced this piece of legislation in this House before that particular date towards the end of November, everything was in order. I do not think they adhered very closely to that, and as an opinion, I do not think they believed in it very much.

At a later stage the question was raised whether the legislation would be passed in time. The Taoiseach again said that he was not so much alarmed that he would bulldoze legislation through the House but, at the same time, it was speeded up, and resort was had in the Seanad to a particular provision in the Constitution which allows the President to sign a Bill earlier than the fifth day after it is presented to him. That procedure was used in order to get legislation passed before the date—I think it was 29th November, 1959. Here we are now in April, 1961, and we have not revised the constituencies.

That is a point which could be raised: "The Oireachtas shall revise the constituencies once in every 12 years." That has not been done and there is no way of getting over it unless the advice given to the Government to bring in a piece of legislation before a date in November, 1959, can be relied upon, which they did. We now have a new piece of legislation dated 1961 and yet staring us in the eyes is the obligation to revise the constituencies at least once in every 12 years.

The second point is that the ratio between the number of members to be elected for any constituency and the population has to be the same throughout the country and that ratio is to be determined on the basis of the constituency population as ascertained at the last preceding census. A census was taken on Sunday last, 9th April. The obligation is to have the ratio determined between the number of members to be elected and the population as ascertained at that census. The English phrase is: "as ascertained" and I am instructed that the Irish phrase says "taken"—"the census that has been taken". I do not care which phrase is used. There is quite a well-known legal standard to guide this matter.

Say, at an election, the polling day is 12th June. Say there are islands off the coast and constituencies where boxes are delayed in transit. Suppose there is a riot in any part of a constituency and the poll has to be put off in a certain area for a number of days. If there is a long drawn-out count and if the count is not finished until 19th June, the person elected was elected as from the 12th. The legal standard in all this is that once the poll is taken the result is in fact ascertained on the day of the poll. It may not be disclosed until later but it is ascertained on the day the poll is taken. That is shown by every possible clause in the Electoral Act of 1923 or the subsidiary ones.

Say a fatality occurs and the person who has been nominated dies before the morning of the day the poll is to be taken. The election is then off in that constituency. If he dies ten minutes after the poll is opened the poll continues. If he happened to get a number of votes he would be returned to whatever would be his position on the poll and a by-election would be declared at once. The standard all the time is the day of the poll.

The standard with regard to the census is the day it is taken. Whether or not it will apply to the Constitution, I cannot say, but, on the ordinary law, the census was ascertained last Sunday. Yet we intend to go along, neglecting that—in fact, turning our backs entirely on it.

When this matter was raised on the 7th of March of this year, when the first Stage of the Bill was being looked for, Deputy Norton asked some questions. I quote from column 16 of the Official Report of 7th March, 1961, Volume 187, No. 1. The relevant extract is as follows:

Could the Minister say if there is any intention to get this Bill through this House, and perhaps through the Seanad, within a particular period?

The Taoiseach: No.

Mr. Norton: How long will we get to consider the Committee Stage of the Bill? Is there any desire on the part of the Government to pass the Bill before the taking of the new census——

The Taoiseach: No.

Mr. Norton: ——or can the House deal with the Bill in the ordinary course, regardless of the new census?

The Taoiseach: You can forget the census.

Mr. Dillon: It might be convenient to clarify one matter. Deputy Norton has referred to the Constitution with reference to the census. I gather from the Taoiseach's reply that he is quite satisfied that even though the new Bill has been introduced and is under discussion here at the time the census is being taken, it will create no constitutional problem. That is the Taoiseach's opinion. Does he propose to take the precaution of clearing this matter with the Supreme Court in the event of our consideration of the Bill extending beyond the date on which the census is taken?

The Taoiseach: The final figures from the census will not be available until next year and clearly we must have an Electoral Act before that.

It is not the most precise way of relating the Constitution to the legislation. At Column 18, the Taoiseach would up the series of questions by saying: "If I thought there was any danger of that, I would postpone the census." He has not postponed the census. It has been taken. I suggest, from a reading of cases in connection with electoral law, that the critical date on which the census is taken is ordinarily not the day on which the results are issued to the public.

I should imagine it will be accepted in this House by people who have any realism in them that the population of this country has suffered a serious decline since the last census. The electoral Act that has been repudiated was based on a population short of 2,900,000— about 12,000 short of that. The Registrar General reports the statistics with regard to births and deaths. The statistical information, meagre and all as it is, with regard to emigration clearly indicates a very serious decline in the population. I have had estimates proposed to me and argued about which put the population below the 2,800,000 mark. In other words, a decline will be shown in the census returns of between 90,000 and 100,000 people.

On the basis of the constitutional provisions of not more than one seat for 20,000 of the population, that would mean that the total membership of the Dáil should not be more than 140 Deputies. Yet, it is proposed to go along with a piece of legislation which gives us 144 Deputies, divided among certain constituencies. I have not travelled the country and therefore I am not personally aware of the full position but it is quite clear that if there is a decline of a significant type in the total population it will be found to have hit hardest the western seaboard counties. Donegal, Galway, Clare and Kerry will certainly be found to have lost many thousands of population and a loss of those thousands will require a further adjustment in the electoral provisions before us.

It is apparently proposed that we can forget about the census and that if there were any danger the Taoiseach would postpone it. I suppose he got the advice on which he relied in connection with the Act disowned by the courts. The point is the ratio. The ratio must as far as practicable be the same throughout the country. Here is where, naturally, Deputies are in difficulties. Nobody can shift around townlands to make new constituencies. One has to have the information. One can gather it from the statistical material available but it is a work of some magnitude to investigate these points. The officials of the Department are quite aware of all these matters.

Mr. Justice Budd said that on examining the situation,—he did not say, the most critical examination—it was quite clear the electoral divisions of the country were built up, as far as districts outside the urban areas are concerned, on townlands. He took the population outside the urban areas and said that in his calculation there were so many townlands and the average population to a townland was about 60 people. If that is what one has to play around with, if you can move areas around on the electoral map and throw in divisions of 60 or 100 or 250 people it is certainly possible to get much nearer the same ratio in one area of the county and another than is in the legislation before us. I hope nobody will attempt to do anything except maybe correct outrageous things that have been done and glaring errors.

This House should get information that has been sought on all hands. We want to know the position on the map prepared in Deputy O'Donnell's time as Minister for Local Government. We want to see what changes were made in that by the first map produced with the 1959 Electoral Act and what is the appearance of the first map produced by the Department in connection with the present Electoral Bill.

This matter was discussed to a slight degree on the 23rd March of this year when the question was raised as to when the Electoral Bill was likely to come to our hands. The Taoiseach said, as reported at Column 1179 of the Official Report of Thursday, 23rd March, 1961, Volume 187, No. 9:

Mr. Norton: Could the Taoiseach say more about when we are likely to get the Electoral Bill?

The Taoiseach: It will be available before the weekend.

Mr. Corish: This weekend?

Mr. MacEntee: Is the Deputy apprehensive?

Mr. Norton: Is that a guess?

The Taoiseach: No. The position is that the proofs are being checked and they require a great deal of checking.

Mr. Norton: There must be a nice amount of multilation done——

I want to see what manipulation was done. I would direct my attention to a place such as County Dublin where I know that all the area of Ballyfermot has been taken from the City and handed over to the county. It is suggested that that is because the present Minister for Defence will be in a parlous condition at the next election if left with his own constituency. I do not suppose he had anything to do with it; it must have been Santa. I should like to see the map so as to ascertain how the original map was cut down and mutilated to what it is now. I move the adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned.
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