Deputy Colley was in the chair. There were other Fianna Fáil members and nobody suggested that we were to have a change or that we must agree to make some recommendation on it. The only discussion was on the question of the single transferable vote and on PR. There were arguments in favour of both. If Deputy Seán Lemass were not the type of man I think he is, I should accuse him of deliberately introducing that statement for the purpose of disarming the people on the Committee who were opposed to the change. I should accuse him of attempting to and of succeeding in stifling any argument against the straight vote system. He made the statement and, as I have said, all of us there had respect for him and agreed that he must have been speaking with full knowledge of what the Government intended to do, particularly in view of the fact that he had been so recently Taoiseach and had set up the Committee—that he himself only came on it when Deputy Davern was promoted to the position of Parliamentary Secretary.
Is it any wonder, therefore, why those of us on that Committee are angry when we find people like the Minister for Local Government attempting to use the report of the Committee to bolster up the weak arguments in favour of the change to the straight vote system? The Committee, having met during a considerable period, were requested just before last Christmas by the Chairman, Deputy Colley, to bring in a report. He was very anxious the report should be brought in quickly. I knew Deputy Colley before he came into the House and I believed he was dealing with this in an honourable manner. He said it was necessary to bring in the report immediately because the Government were considering certain changes of the Constitution. He impressed on us the urgency there was to have the report brought in. We sat hours after this Dáil had concluded its business, for the purpose of considering fully the report on questions which the Government had no intention of considering at all. Deputy Colley was a member of the Government; Deputy Lemass was not, and Deputy Colley as Chairman of the Committee requested us to bring in the report quickly because the Government wanted to consider it.
At that time it must have been known that the Government intended to try to change the system of election and at that time we had long passed the portion of the report which dealt with the system of election. I feel very strongly that an attempt was made by the Fianna Fáil Party, the Government of this country to make fools of Members of the House by getting them to sit on a Committee, acting as stooges, as fools, preparing a report which they knew they would not use, or any part of it, unless it was favourable. When it was not favourable, they knew they would ignore it completely and bring in these two changes in the Constitution contrary to what was recommended.
This is a matter which strikes at the roots of Committee work in this House. If Members of the Dáil who genuinely believe they are doing work for the House are to be used in this way, I want to make it very clear that as far as the Labour Party are concerned, we will not be involved in this kind of thing again. We attempted to get the Committee together again when the real evidence had come out. Could we get it? No. There was no danger of the chairman calling the Committee together because there were hard things to be said and it was decided it would be better to leave the saying of the hard things until this matter before the House was being dealt with. It does not matter whether it is all over. We have got a lesson in duplicity that we will not forget for many a day.
All sorts of weird statements have been made by Government spokesmen. It started with the Minister for Justice, in a television discussion with Fine Gael Senator, Garret FitzGerald, and me. He made the statement that it was quite a simple thing, that all we had to do was to produce one paper dealing with the whole lot. It was dead simple, just like that. The Government had made up their minds. Either the Minister for Justice was flying a kite or was badly caught out. It would be difficult to find out and it does not really matter now. The fact is that public opinion became so strong against the Government proposal to have a package deal—two entirely different things tied up in one, salt and sugar—that the Taoiseach announced he had decided to change. I do not know if the Taoiseach was sure about whether a decision had ever been made to have the two together. It is just an example of what would be tried if the public were not alert.
On that occasion on television I produced quotations, which I propose to produce again later in the debate, in which the present President of Ireland, Mr. de Valera, then Leader of Fianna Fáil, and the man who followed him as Taoiseach, Deputy Lemass, both stated that PR was not alone the best system of election but that it was the only safeguard of democracy in the country and that anybody who suggested it should be changed would only be doing so for sectional purposes, for Party political purposes. They said they were not proposing it in the best interests of the country.
What a change. That was pooh-poohed by the Minister for Justice on that occasion who said it was a long time ago. It is a long time since Moses was given the tablets of stone but they are things that should not be forgotten. There are people in this country and in every country who believed that what was written then is still the law, that what was said then is still the law. What Deputies de Valera and Lemass said then is still true. We echo it here tonight. Those who want to change from proportional representation want to do so only for Party interests and thus, in fact, preventing— if they get away with it—a system which will protect democracy in this country.
As reported at column 1957 of Volume 232, No. 13, of the Official Report, the Taoiseach stated:
There have been demands from certain Deputies that the order of names on the ballot paper should be determined by lot rather than alphabetically on the grounds that candidates higher up on the ballot paper tend to receive more votes than those in a lower position. If there is such a tendency, it is, of course, aggravated by the long lists of candidates inevitably involved in the present system.
Let me point out that my name has consistently been at the bottom of the ballot paper, but, thank God, equally consistently, at the top of the poll. That answers that argument pretty neatly. In addition, the long list of candidates described by the Taoiseach simply does not exist in most cases.
At this stage of our development, we should be able to count up to nine or ten. The ballot paper which contains the names of more than nine or ten candidates in a Dáil election is rare indeed. In most three-seat constituencies, there are the names of five, six, seven and, on rare occasions, eight candidates on the ballot paper. The Taoiseach is suggesting that we get mixed up because of the long list of candidates. That might possibly be an argument in relation to the lists of candidates at local elections but, to judge by some of the speeches made here over the past couple of weeks, it is not the intention of the Government to alter the system of election of local authority members. Therefore, this proposal is simply something which is introduced for Dáil Members.
I assert that it does not matter where the name of the candidate appears on a ballot paper and I have proved it in my own case. Secondly, I assert that the long list of candidates the Taoiseach talks about does not exist.
I have an interesting table here of the percentages of the electorate who voted at each election and of the invalid votes cast. To those who claim that proportional representation confuses people, that they do not know how to vote, that the "straight vote", as they call it, would be so much easier to understand, I would ask them to bear the following particulars from that table in mind.
In the 1922 election, 62 per cent of the electorate voted and the percentage of invalid votes was 3.08; in the 1923 election, 61 per cent of the electorate voted and the percentage of invalid votes was 3.66; in 1927, there were two elections, in the first of which 68 per cent of the electorate voted and the percentage of invalid votes was 2.6; at the second election in 1927, 69 per cent of the electorate voted and 1.86 per cent of the votes was invalid; in 1932, 77 per cent of the electorate voted and the percentage of invalid votes dropped to 1.6; in 1933, 81 per cent of the electorate voted and the percentage of invalid votes was 1.05; in 1937, 76 per cent of the electorate voted and 2.1 per cent of the votes was invalid; in 1938, 79 per cent of the electorate voted and 1.2 per cent of the votes was invalid; in 1943, 74 per cent of the electorate voted and 1.2 per cent of the votes was invalid; in 1944, 68 per cent of the electorate voted and 1.04 per cent of the votes was invalid; in 1948, 74 per cent of the electorate voted and the percentage of invalid votes was .98; in 1951, 75.3 per cent of the electorate voted and the percentage of invalid votes was .89; in 1954, 76.4 per cent of the electorate voted and the percentage of invalid votes was .94; in 1957, 71.3 per cent of the electorate voted and .93 per cent of the votes was invalid; in 1961 70.6 per cent of the electorate voted and .96 per cent of the votes was invalid; in 1965—the last election— 75.1 per cent of the electorate voted and the percentage of invalid votes was .91.
Where, then, do we get the idea that the system of proportional representation is confusing, that people spoil their votes, that people do not vote properly, that they do not know how to vote? I have read out the figures for the House. They answer the Taoiseach's argument pretty well.
We have also heard arguments about the number of elections which were held. One must be sure of one's facts. One of the arguments by Fianna Fáil on this issue is that the straight vote system will create a more stable government and, in fact, that the Government will remain longer in power— for very obvious reasons. Since proportional representation was introduced in this country in 1923, the number of elections which occurred here, as compared with the number which occurred in Great Britain, where the straight vote system is in operation, shows that there was one election more in Great Britain in that period than there was here. So much for the argument that proportional representation produces an unstable government.
For anybody who is interested in the figures, the life of the 1923 Dáil was three years and eight months. Cumann na nGaedheal, the then ruling Party, got 39.2 per cent of the votes and 14 per cent of the seats.
In June, 1927, Cumann na nGaedheal received 27.4 per cent of the votes and won 30 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted two months.
In September, 1927, Cumann na nGaedheal got 38.4 per cent of the votes and 40 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted four years and three months.
In 1932, Fianna Fáil got 44.6 per cent of the votes and 48 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted ten months.
In 1933, Fianna Fáil got 49.7 per cent of the votes and 50 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted four years and four months.
In 1937, Fianna Fáil got 45.3 per cent of the votes and 49 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted ten months.
In 1938, Fianna Fáil got 52 per cent of the votes and 55 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted five years.
In 1943, Fianna Fáil got 41.9 per cent of the votes and 48 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted 11 months.
In 1944, Fianna Fáil got 48.9 per cent of the votes and 54 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted three years and seven months.
In 1948, Fianna Fáil got 41.9 per cent of the votes and 46 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted three years and three months.
In 1951, Fianna Fáil got 46.3 per cent of the votes and 47 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted two years and ten months.
In 1954, Fianna Fáil got 43.4 per cent of the votes and 45 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted two years and eight months.
In 1957, Fianna Fáil got 48.3 per cent of the votes and 53 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted four years and six months.
In 1961, Fianna Fáil got 43.8 per cent of the votes and 49 per cent of the seats. That Dáil lasted three years and five months.
In the last election, Fianna Fáil got 47.7 per cent of the votes and 50 per cent of the seats. There is a question mark as to the lifetime of this Dáil.