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 I do not quote that as an example against Wexford.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.