I move amendment No. 1:
To add a further subsection as follows:
"(7) This Act shall continue in force until 31st December, 1966, and shall then expire".
As Deputy Cosgrave made perfectly clear yesterday, we in Fine Gael felt that, in the crisis which the dithering of this Government allowed to develop, it was necessary that there should be powers to protect the community as a whole. He made it clear that we in Fine Gael had in mind the people whose lives and whose livelihoods would depend on a continuance of electric power: those who were in iron lungs in hospitals, babies in incubators in hospitals, people about to undergo urgent operations. On the other hand, we had in mind the farmers who are committed to milking machines and who would not be able to milk their cows in the absence of electricity, and who, as I am sure many Deputies are aware, found themselves in grave difficulty when power was cut off some three weeks ago. We also had in mind the necessity to keep perishable goods in cold storage so that they would not rot and that food would not be lost. We also wanted to ensure that the 180,000 people engaged in industry depending on electric power would not have their livelihoods taken away from them.
For all those reasons we felt, even though this crisis had developed because of the dithering of Fianna Fáil, it was necessary that even at this late hour, there should be power to cope with it and to ensure that damage would not be done. Yesterday Deputy Cosgrave made it clear—and we want again to reiterate it today—that this is not the time, at a moment of crisis, at which permanent legislation should be enacted to deal with what is undoubtedly a delicate problem. We believe this matter should be considered in the calmer atmosphere that will, we hope and trust, prevail when this crisis has passed. We believe it should have been considered by the Government in the calmer atmosphere that arose after the 1961 crisis, and in the five years which the Government had to deal with it since. So far as anyone can see they did nothing whatever to deal with it in that period.
Accordingly, we suggest that the proper way to deal with the situation is to give this power to the Government —and it is only to the Government that it can be given—for the moment, but to ensure by limitation on that power in point of time that the Government will come back to the Dáil and put before it and the country a proper comprehensive scheme to deal with these problems, as they should have done in the past five years.
A time of crisis is never the time to deal with a matter such as this. A time of crisis begets necessarily in our view, certain guillotine arrangements for the purpose of discussing and putting through a Bill to deal with these difficulties, but certainly under the threat of a guillotine motion, and in the circumstances in which we have had two days for discussions on this Bill, is not the time to enact permanent legislation to cover such an intricate and delicate aspect of labour relations.
The two days, yesterday and today, during which the discussions took place were perhaps the maximum period that could be allowed in the difficulties of the moment, difficulties which, as I have said already, are of the Government's own making. It is nonsense to believe that something thrown up suddenly to the Dáil as its first business, with a guillotine motion hanging over it, will be discussed, considered and examined home in the manner in which permanent legislation should be examined home.
The amendment gives the Government six months grace. Personally I doubt if they deserve that grace after their fumbling futility over the past five years, in the words of Deputy Cosgrave. Someone must be given power to bring to the House a proper comprehensive scheme to cover our labour relations, and to give the Taoiseach, for example, an opportunity as he indicated to the House yesterday of going back in black and white on what he said previously against a Ministry of Labour which, incidentally, was one of the things we put forward in our policy a year ago.
