As Deputies know, we are in fact proposing to ask the people to insert a provision for a Constituency Commission into the Constitution and, as I explained before, this provision obviously can appear only in one of these two Bills, two Bills introduced separately to please, as we thought, the Opposition. We are making a recommendation to the people to enable them to provide themselves with a more rational and a more appropriate system of election. We subdivided this proposal to please the Opposition. We will be asking the people to vote for both proposals.
I do not know what the Fine Gael Party will be asking the people to do. I find it hard to elicit exactly what they are in favour of and what they are not in favour of; whether some of them favour some of the proposals and others favour others I do not know. We will, in fact, ask the people to pass both these amendments of the Constitution. We expect the people will pass them because we are convinced of the good sense and intelligence of the people and their sense of fair play. We believe they will pass both these amendments and we, therefore, expect that this Constituency Commission will be provided by the people in the Constitution.
It was not our proposition that there should be two separate proposals. That was the proposition of the Opposition. The separation was made to meet the complaints of the Opposition that having both amendments in the one Bill was just too confusing for them; they could not understand them and it was at the behest of the Opposition that we divided the proposals into two. I did not know the Opposition wanted it divided into three or four until Deputy Barrett spoke. I do not know whether, in fact, they think we should have a separate question for each section and subsection in both these Bills. If we did that, we should certainly run out of colours for the different ballot papers and the Opposition would not be able to tell their supporters which proposal to support because a number of ballot papers would have to be the same colour. I cannot understand the suggestion that we should have all these different sections in each of these Bills voted on separately. That would seem to be what we are coming to; practically every day we have a new suggestion that we should have some particular aspect of what we regard as one single proposal decided separately. I was not here at the time of the debate on the Constitution of 1937. I do not know whether at that time the Opposition were making the case that each Article should be voted on separately. Had that been the position, had some been opposed and some not, we should have arrived eventually at a hotchpotch Constitution.
I am opposed to this amendment because it is objectionable in principle to put a hypothetical proposal such as this to the people for decision by way of referendum. Apart from that, I am advised that this hypothetical proposal is not in accordance with the procedure laid down by the Constitution for amending the Constitution. Any proposal to amend the Constitution must be a definitive proposal which, when approved by the people, becomes part of the Constitution. Deputy Fitzpatrick's amendment proposes to insert this hypothetical proposition into the Constitution and, in the event of a hypothetical situation arising, to have it repealed again automatically.
I am advised that the Constitution can be amended only by referendum. Deputy Fitzpatrick proposes the people should insert this in the Constitution and at the same time take it out again in the event of some hypothetical situation evolving. I am not a constitutional lawyer. I have to be guided by the legal advice available to me. The legal advice available to me is that this suggestion of Deputy Fitzpatrick would not be in accordance with the procedure for amending the Constitution. Indeed, I think any normally intelligent person will see that it would be ridiculous to do what is suggested by the Deputy.
We are asking the people to pass both these amendments. We believe they will do so and we have, therefore, every reason to believe that our proposal to insert in the Constitution a provision for a Constituency Commission will, in fact, be carried by the people.
I am also advised that amendment No. 2, as drafted, does not achieve the result intended by the Deputy. In fact, I am advised it would not be possible to draft such an amendment. Obviously the difficulty in which the Opposition find themselves in relation to this Commission stems from the segregation of the proposals, proposals which were originally intended to be incorporated in a single Bill. I confess myself unable to find out exactly what the Opposition want. When these proposals were together in one Bill, they were not satisfied. They could not understand them: they wanted them separated. We separated them and then we had to make the arrangement that the provision for the Constituency Commission should go into one Bill. Now they want them back again. The assumption, surely, was that if they wanted them separated, they were going to accept one of the proposals and not the other. Apparently, that is not the position. They do not know what their position is. They do not know whether they are in favour of one and not in favour of the other or if they are opposed to both proposals. I think it is clear that the Labour Party are opposed to both. If you are opposed to both, all you have to do is to campaign against both, and if the people accept your view, we will have the present position carrying on.
We subdivided these to oblige the Opposition. I admit we were trying to do the impossible. We were trying to eliminate the confusion from the minds of the Opposition and that has proved to be completely impossible. I suppose we were foolish to try to please the Opposition because that is something that cannot be done. All through this debate it has been a question of, "We want them separated", "We want them put together again." I do not think the Opposition know what they want.
When a decision had to be taken to divide the proposals that we were putting before the people we had to decide into which Bill this proposal for a Constituency Commission should go. The Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill is, in fact, doing no more, possibly doing less, but certainly, doing no more than re-establishing the status quo which existed up to 1960 when the Fine Gael Party took an action in the High Court to have the interpretation of this phrase, “so far as it is practicable”, that had existed up to that time, declared to be in breach of the Constitution. This Bill is proposing to re-establish the position that existed from 1922 until Fine Gael took steps to have it declared unconstitutional, in 1960.
On the other hand, the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution Bill proposes a fundamental change in the electoral system. It proposes to establish single-member constituencies instead of multi-member constituencies and it appeared to us that this was a more fundamental change and, therefore, this being a proposal that would require a complete recasting of the scheme of constituencies, that, when we had, in order to please the Opposition, to separate the proposals and put the provision for the Constituency Commission into one Bill, this was the more appropriate one into which to put it because, as I have said, the Third Amendment is merely getting back to the status quo that existed up to 1959.
It certainly seems to me to be more appropriate to put it into the other Bill because the purpose of the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill is to get away from the position which the Fine Gael Party arranged to have established here which required this operation of detaching from one county portion of the population and attaching it to another county and another constituency and, if it is possible to gerrymander in this country—and, personally, I do not think that it is; I certainly would not know how to go about it——