It is valuable to direct the attention of the Minister to the fact that these are matters which require definition if unseemly disputation is not to take place thereafter and the perfect appearance of gerrymandering to emerge with a circle with a long bulge in it to take in some particular place where the Parliamentary Secretary is living or something of that kind. It is not an easy task, I freely concede. Although I endorse wholeheartedly what Deputy Lindsay said about flexibility, I could never see that there was any unreasonable restraint on flexibility if Ministers had power to make orders which had statutory effect unless cancelled by a resolution of this House.
We all know in our own experience there are hundreds of statutes whereunder a Minister can make an order which has statutory effect unless cancelled. In my experience of this House, which now goes back 35 years, I do not suppose I have heard a dozen of such orders challenged by resolution. Nevertheless, the right to challenge such an order by resolution within 21 days does retain the ultimate control in Dáil Éireann. On certain occasions which I distinctly remember it has proved a useful check on the imprudent exercise of excessive discretion by a Minister for the time being. Therefore, I would suggest that the Minister would determine how he will define these areas outside of which people would be entitled to the supplementary grant and inside which people would be entitled only to the residential grant.
The second thing I want to say is that I believe all schemes of this kind are rendered better if they can be implemented without creating a local sense of grievance. Very often these grievances, looked at from the angle of Oireachtas Éireann, are microscopic but looked at from the point of view of the county or the area where they exist, they become chronic sources of irritation which make people sour about the whole scheme.
I think the Minister has made a very great mistake in freezing the current contributions made by local authorities and requiring these contributions to be made hereafter annually. It has the ridiculous effect of imposing an annual charge on a relatively poor county like Monaghan 50 per cent greater than that which County Kildare will have to pay or a county like Offaly. These are two counties in which there is some of the best land in Ireland, whereas Monaghan is a county with predominantly small farms where the productive quality of the land is relatively low, the average holding small and the average income small.
There again I think the Minister would do well to think again and see if he could not procure the general goodwill of all by a uniform poundage charge, if he does not consider raising the £230,000 or whatever it may be by taxation and simply wiping out the local contribution altogether. I doubt very much if this device of the arbitrary freezing of existing contributions is a prudent procedure for it would seem to warn local authorities hereafter that they should not be enthusiastic in implementing optional schemes because, if they are, should the policy change they will simply be called upon to bear permanently a heavier burden than the less enterprising local authorities who have in the past hung back and failed to co-operate as enthusiastically as County Monaghan has done in this case and as other counties may have done in regard to other schemes.
We are passing this Bill from Dáil Éireann to the Seanad. One of the objects of this Bill is to make university education available to a wider section of our people. As far as we on this side of the House are concerned, as I had the privilege of saying at the Ard Fheis of our organisation five years ago, our ultimate aim is to make available the best we have in primary, secondary and university education to all our children without regard to the income of their parents. That is a structure that cannot be developed in a day, but it is the aim, the goal, towards which we wish to move.
I think it is a mistake to allow an occasion of this kind to pass—we are on the Final Stage and it is not appropriate to dwell on things we think ought to be in the Bill but we are considering now what is in the Bill— without making comment on what the consequences of this Bill, as it now stands after the Committee and Report Stages, are likely to be. Its most important function is to multiply the number of university students in Ireland. Now, I know, and I knew before I spoke, that in the discussion on the Estimate for External Affairs in this House I had certain things to say which I thought necessary to say. I do not want to withdraw or qualify one single sentence that I then spoke. I do not want to mitigate the abrasiveness of the language I deliberately chose. But it is necessary that young people should know and understand what their elders are saying and thinking. I fully appreciate that in dealing with these matters I caused many young students to feel that I and perhaps others of my generation were out of sympathy with their praiseworthy impatience for reform.
I want to make it quite clear—and it is necessary to make it clear so that the truth can be made to prevail—that I know the student body fairly well personally and vicariously. The vast bulk of the student body of this country will, I would interpolate, Sir, never vote for me because they will never have the chance; by the time they have grown to voting age or to participate in public life, it is highly unlikely that I will be seeking the suffrage of any voter; so there can be no suggestion that I am seeking to pacify future voters. But I think it right that the truth should be made manifest to them.
They will be quite mistaken in believing that the senior members of this Parliament of Ireland do not understand their yearning for reform, and their hopes to make this country a better country in which to live. They will be quite wrong in thinking that any responsible member of this House believes that the majority of Irish students are irresponsible rowdies. They will be quite wrong in believing that any senior member of this Parliament of Ireland looks upon the student body of Ireland as reckless, or irresponsible, or capricious.
They would be quite wrong if they did not understand that we who have watched liberty totter to the edge of extinction time and again in our lives, have got a high duty at whatever cost to warn the young that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance and that the road to servitude invariably leads through anarchy. If in this House we speak out against those who would channel the glorious energies of the young on the road to anarchy in the hope that this will lead to Utopia, we must from our experience say: "The road to anarchy leads not to what you hope for, but to the opportunity for unworthy men to impose servitude upon you."
