We are informed that this motion was put down by the Government on Friday last. We have the Parliamentary Secretary's word for that because, of course, for some reason none of us received a copy of the motion. The normal procedure in this House is that, when a motion is put down by any Member, whether a member of the Government or a private Member, the motion is immediately printed, or typed, and circulated to Deputies at the earliest possible moment.
Private Members' Business. - Allocation of Time: Motion (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:
That notwithstanding anything in Standing Orders
(1) consideration of Government business be not interrupted at the time fixed for taking Private Member's business on and from Wednesday, 9th July, 1975, until the adjournment for the Summer Recess;
(2) the proceedings on Financial Motion No. 3 of the Financial Motions by the Minister for Finance if not previously concluded shall be brought to a conclusion at 10.15 p.m. on Tuesday, 22nd July, 1975, by putting from the Chair forthwith the Question necessary to bring them to a conclusion; and a Member of the Government shall be called on not later than 9.15 p.m. on that day to conclude the debate;
(3) in the case of each of the following Bills where the proceedings have not already concluded the Question (s) necessary to bring them to a conclusion shall be put from the Chair at the time and on the day indicated; and the Question to be put from the Chair shall be (as the case may require) in relation to Committee Stage "That (all amendments set down by the Minister for Finance and not disposed of are hereby made to the Bill) the Bill (as amended) is hereby agreed to and (as amended) is reported to the House" and in relation to the Fourth and Fifth Stages "That (all amendments set down by the Minister for Finance, including any requiring Recommittal, and not disposed of are hereby made to the Bill and Recommittal and Fourth Stages are hereby completed and) the Bill is hereby passed":
Wealth Tax Bill, 1975—Committee Stage—2.15 p.m. on Thursday, 17th July, 1975, Fourth and Fifth Stages—10.15 p.m. on Wednesday, 30th July, 1975.
Finance (No. 2) Bill, 1975— Second Stage—9.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 23rd July, 1975, Committee, Fourth and Fifth Stages —10.15 p.m. on Wednesday, 23rd July, 1975.
(4) in the case of each of the following Bills where the proceedings on the Second Stage have not already concluded the Question necessary to bring them to a conclusion shall be put from the Chair on the expiration of one hour from the commencement of the debate on the Second Stage; and the proceedings on the remaining Stages if not already concluded shall be brought to a conclusion on the expiration of one hour from the commencement of the debate on the Committee Stage by putting from the Chair the Question necessary to bring them to a conclusion and the Question to be put from the Chair shall be (as the case may require) "That (all amendments set down by the Member in charge of the Bill and not disposed of are hereby made to the Bill) (the Bill (as amended) is hereby agreed to and (as amended) is reported to the House and (all amendments set down by the Member in charge of the Bill, including any requiring Recommittal, and not disposed of are hereby made to the Bill and) Recommittal and Fourth Stages are hereby completed and) the Bill is hereby passed:
Agricultural Credit Bill, 1975, Employment Premium Bill, 1975, Gaeltacht Industries (Amendment) Bill, 1975, Turf Development Bill, 1975, Nítrigin Éireann Teoranta Bill, 1975;
(5) the time to be allotted for consideration of the motion in the name of the Minister for Foreign Affairs relating to the Agreement establishing an International Energy Programme and the motion in the name of the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries approving the draft of the Elections of Conservators (Postponement) Order, 1975 shall not exceed two hours in each case; and if the proceedings in each case have not already concluded at the expiration of the allotted time the Question necessary to bring them to a conclusion shall be put forthwith from the Chair; provided that the provisions of Standing Order 123 relating to the postponement of divisions shall be applied to any division demanded;
(6) the time to be allotted for the consideration of the Supplementary Estimates for the year ending 31st December, 1975 for Agriculture, Labour, Industry and Commerce and Transport and Power, introduced on 4th July, 1975, shall not exceed one-and-a-half hours in each case; and if the proceedings have not already concluded at the expiration of the allotted time the Question necessary to bring them to a conclusion in each case shall be put forthwith from the Chair.
—(Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach.)
That matter has already been ruled on.
On a point of order, I bow to your ruling, Sir, but I understand the procedure to which Deputy O'Malley refers does not apply as it does to ordinary procedural motions. I informed Deputy Lalor last Friday of the gist of the motion and told him then that it would not be circulated and would not appear in print until the Order Paper was circulated on Tuesday.
It has already been ruled upon. The motion is in order and under debate.
I have not suggested, Sir, that the motion is not in order. I am just saying that, notwithstanding the fact that it is a motion without precedent in the history of this House and runs to two full pages of the Order Paper and covers nine different measures, the great majority of Members did not become aware of its terms until yesterday morning when they got their Order Papers for yesterday. It is not a very satisfactory situation, particularly for any Member who wished to put down an amendment or amendments in respect of which he must give two days' notice under the Standing Orders. Even allowing for these matters, it appears that Deputy Lalor was given some form of copy of this motion on Friday last. On Tuesday in the Order Paper a somewhat altered form of motion appeared. In today's Order Paper yet another altered form of the motion appears. We have, therefore, before us this evening the third version of this unprecedented omnibus guillotine which, of course, included the extraordinary provision that four Bills which have not yet been published will be guillotined although no Member of the House has seen the contents of them.
One would have thought that, after all that time, and the fact that three efforts were made to draft the motion, it might have been drafted properly, but we find in paragraph (5) of the motion a proviso at the end; "provided that the provisions of Standing Order 123 relating to the postponement of divisions shall be applied to any division demanded". Standing Order 123 relates to the question of Estimates and motions arising out of Estimates. The Standing Order is perfectly clear in that respect. It allows the postponement of votes on Estimates to 10.15 p.m. on that night if the House sits so long and, if not, on the next night on which the House sits until 10.15 p.m.
There is no way in my view in which Standing Order 123 can be applied to two motions of the kind referred to in paragraph (5) of this motion, namely, the motion to approve the International Energy Agreement which is one about which there is a great deal of disagreement and controversy and potentially this Agreement could be very damaging to our interests. I do not know what precisely the provisions of the Elections of Conservators (Postponement) Order, 1975, are, but whatever the provisions are, it clearly is not an Estimate or a motion connected with an Estimate. Notwithstanding that an effort, and a rather crude effort, is made even in this third amended motion which is before us now to relate the provisions of Standing Order 123 to these two motions when clearly they have no relevance to it at all.
We have, in addition, an effort made by the Government to confine the Second Stage debate on each of these five Bills, four of which we have never seen, to one hour and the debate on Committee and Remaining Stages to one hour. There is no limit, as the House knows, on Second Stage speeches. There is nothing to stop the Minister involved in each one of these five Bills making a speech lasting one hour——
I will personally undertake that that will not happen.
I do not refuse the Parliamentary Secretary's undertaking but I do not think we should have to accept the undertaking of the Parliamentary Secretary. I do not think that a matter such as this should be dealt with in this way and that the Parliamentary Secretary, even before the motion is passed at all, or fully debated, should have to undertake in this House personally that the terms of this motion will not be complied with. If the Parliamentary Secretary and the Government have no intention of ensuring that the House complies with these terms, why put them down here? Why move them? Why force the House to pass them if they are not going to use them in the way it is open to the House to use them? I do not think it is good enough that things of this nature should be forced on the House and then the Parliamentary Secretary says: "I undertake that we will not use them". I strongly suggest that we should not have to pass this kind of thing and the four Bills which, for all we know can be of very considerable importance, will be shoved through in this way, possibly without more than a few minutes contribution from this side of the House, without more than a few minutes dissent to something which may be very serious indeed.
Deputy Lynch and Deputy Lalor referred earlier to some of the likely or possible provisions of some of these Bills. I would like to refer only to one which impinges on the Department of Industry and Commerce, at least I assume it does, that is, the Nítrigin Éireann Teoranta Bill which is mentioned here. This Bill presumably will be to raise the capital of Nítrigin Éireann Teoranta and possibly to extend its objects and matters like that. One of the most important projects which Nítrigin Éireann Teoranta propose to undertake in the next year or two is the use of natural gas which has now been discovered off Kinsale, in County Cork, the use by Nítrigin Éireann in a new factory which they are about to build in Cork of that natural gas, for the purpose of making a form of fertiliser which is very conveniently and very cheaply made from natural gas.
This proposal brings up the whole question of the utilisation of natural gas. It is something that we have not been able to debate in this House even though we know there is, by Irish standards, a very substantial find of natural gas off Kinsale and, by European or world standards at least a moderate one, with a capacity, it appears at the moment, of about 100,000 cubic feet per day in the particular well. We understand also, from what we have been told, that only about 15 per cent of this gas can be used by Nítrigin Éireann Teoranta in this proposed new factory and that about 70 per cent of the gas, the balance that is used neither by Nítrigin Éireann nor in the Cork town gas system, will be given to the ESB for conversion into electricity. The conversion ratio of gas into electricity is 32 per cent. In other words there is a waste factor of 68 per cent of that gas. I would have thought that a Bill which deals with this very point is extremely important for this country and calls for a very full and a very thorough debate. How we can have that in one hour on the Second Stage and one hour on all the other Stages is beyond me.
It may well be that, in addition to these matters which have to be in the Bill or at least relevant to the Bill, there may well be a whole lot of other matters which can be very serious indeed. The same remarks apply to all the other Bills. The whole question of turf development at this time has taken on a very grave new urgency and importance. The turf industry a couple of years ago might be regarded as one that possibly had no great future because oil was comparatively cheap and it was the fuel everyone was anxious to use. The situation is totally different today. The whole question of the turf industry is now one of major importance. There is a Bill being passed which, no doubt, has important provisions in relation to that industry but that Bill has to go through this House in one hour on the Second Stage and one hour for all the other Stages.
Reference was made by Deputy Lalor to the remarks of various members of the Fine Gael and Labour Parties in this House in particular on 4th of August, 1971. It is no harm to remember that at that time a guillotine motion was moved in relation to the small remaining part of the Report Stage of the Prohibition of Forcible Entry Bill, 1970, which had already been before the House for four or five months at that time. The Report Stage had already occupied about 50 hours at the time the guillotine was proposed by the then Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Andrews. What it was proposed, in fact, to guillotine was the remainder of the Report Stage, a couple of amendments that were left at the time, and the Fifth Stage. That was moved early on 4th August, 1971. There were approximately six or more hours left at the time, if that motion was accepted, to debate the remainder of the Report Stage and the Fifth Stage.
It is interesting that the amount of time that was left on that occasion for the debating of the remainder of Report Stage, which had already occupied about 50 hours, and for the Final Stage of a Bill that had been before the House for several months, by that guillotine was longer than the total time that has been allowed by this motion for the entire debate on all Stages of all of four Bills that we have never seen. Any attempt, therefore, by anybody on that side of the House to make any comparison between the actions of the guillotine in those circumstances on 4th August, 1971, and the brazen effort to wipe out the elected Parliament of this country that is contained in this motion, is a dishonest one, and those who attempt to make it well know that it is dishonest.
Back to fascism again.
We never made any comparison. This is a new situation.
Among the numberous things that were said on 4th August, 1971—Deputy Lalor has already quoted several of them and I do not propose to repeat them—there is one other one that struck me. The reference is Volume 255 of the Dáil Official Report and this one is again for Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick (Cavan) at column 3527. He said:
Any Deputy who cherishes Parliamentary democracy must be deeply concerned by the introduction of the guillotine at any time and on any measure, but we are particularly concerned about it when we find it being applied to a highly controversial piece of legislation like the Prohibition of Forcible Entry and Occupation Bill, 1970. Rarely has a more controversial piece of legislation come before this House.
Mr. O'Higgins: Hear, hear.
Deputy O'Higgins, as he then was, was very strongly of the opinion that any Deputy who cherishes Parliamentary democracy must be equally concerned about the introduction of the guillotine at any time and on any measure. His views are ones that are not to be disregarded and not to be lightly passed over, because he is now Chief Justice of this country. He now presides over the Supreme Court at a salary of about £13,800 and something per annum.
That is beneath even Deputy O'Malley.
The Chief Justice's salary——
That is beneath even Deputy O'Malley, and that is very low.
The Minister for Defence referred to the last President and the Parliamentary Secretary said nothing about it.
We are now aware that the Chief Justice——
The Deputy may not refer to the Chief Justice.
He made a very long speech, reported here in Volume 255.
Acting Chairman
He was a Deputy then, he was not Chief Justice. The Deputy should not——
I could refer to him as Deputy T.F. O'Higgins——
(Interruptions.)
Is the Parliamentary Secretary ashamed?
Acting Chairman
We are not discussing the Chief Justice here. It is completely out of order.
I am discussing the speech made by Deputy T.F. O'Higgins on 4th August, 1971. It is very much to the same effect as the speech which Deputy Lalor and I quoted of the present Minister for Lands. In those circumstances and in view of your ruling, it is presumably not necessary to refer to it other than to say that I think the Chief Justice's views are well known on the use of the guillotine, and that guillotine——
Acting Chairman
Again, the Deputy is out of order in referring to the Chief Justice.
The guillotine that was used on 4th August, 1971, was used in circumstances which were totally different from those that are in use here tonight. I would invite the Parliamentary Secretary, if he proposes to reply to this debate, or whoever else proposes to reply, to give any precedent either in this country or in any western genuine parliamentary democracy, of the use of a guillotine by any government in respect of four Bills which were not even published, and force the passage of four Bills in a ridiculously short period of time when no Member of the House knows, even in an approximate way, what is contained in those Bills. We have had accusations by the Parliamentary Secretary in his speech moving this motion of deliberate time-wasting on these capital taxation Bills.
I would invite the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach, or anyone else who is interested, to look at the number of amendments which were not just put down on the Committee Stage and on the Report Stage of the Capital Gains Tax Bill—that is the only one which has been finished— but at the number of amendments which were actually made. I have not had the opportunity to add up the whole lot but it certainly runs into several dozens. There were 20 to 25, perhaps more, amendments made by the Minister, mostly at the suggestion of Deputy Colley and other Deputies at this side of the House, and there were about 20 amendments made on the Report Stage of that Bill. Those amendments were clearly necessary. The Minister agrees they were necessary because he would not have allowed them to be made if he did not.
Is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach seriously suggesting that a Bill which requires perhaps 40, 50 or more amendments, should not have been discussed at great length? Is he not already aware that there is a huge number of amendments down to the Wealth Tax Bill, even though it is a much shorter Bill, that many of these are in the name of the Minister for Finance and, presumably, even by the Government's own standards, are necessary?
I have the sheet that was issued today and it runs to six full pages but it only starts at section 6 because the amendments which had been dealt with before now, which perhaps amounted to 20 or more, do not appear on this sheet. Is he suggesting that a Bill which needs such enormous amounts of amendments as these two Bills, do not need through and full debate? I can recall the Minister for Finance saying that even though the debate on the Committee Stage of the Capital Gains Tax Bill was very long and tiresome, he thought it was useful and beneficial and that the Bill would be greatly improved by it.
The three Bills we have been discussing here, one of which is included in this motion, are by far the biggest changes which have been made in capital taxation since 1894, 81 years ago. A fundamental change is being made now. Whether it is for the better or for the worse is not a relevant matter. The fact is that it is a totally fundamental change. A lot of the old concepts are going and a lot of new methods are being used which are completely foreign to our methods of dealing with various matters up to now. It is being done in three Bills, all of which are very necessary. It is essential that all these Bills be discussed in a reasonable and rational way, that a full and thorough discussion, such as has gone on, should take place. The fact that 50 or more amendments were made to the Capital Gains Tax Bill is the greatest possible proof of that.
We have another Bill here which is just as important and it is proposed in this guillotine to put a stop to further discussion except for short periods at the discretion of the Government. One can make statements about democracy being damaged and so on. The Government will try to get people to laugh at these statements and say they are exaggerated and that they are foolish and untrue. I would invite those serious great ex-liberals whom we now have on the Front Bench of the Government for the time being to change their position for a while, to try to think, if they have any objectivity left, what their reaction would be if a Fianna Fáil Government were to guillotine at one stroke, nine measures four of which had not yet been published. I repeat my invitation to the Parliamentary Secretary or the Minister for Finance or whoever else wants to do it to quote for me precedents of four Bills or any substantial number of Bills that have never been published being guillotined through any Parliament other than one in some communist country or some protalitarian regime.
In other countries times are allocated by agreement when people do their business rationally. That is not the case here but it will be from now on, I hope.
Deputies
Oh.
Now we have all got to be good. We understand, Sir, that there is not much future in the House for further discussion on Government Bills because we will do what we are told. Whether it is right or wrong or whether we like it or do not like it or whether it is in accordance with democracy and the traditions of Parliament or not, does not matter tuppence. If Professor John Kelly tells us to do it we will do it.
Many an order the Deputy's party gave and everybody jumped.
I would have thought that even still there would have been some people in the Government or among those who support them from the back benches who would genuinely feel revolted by this sort of proposal. I would have no confidence whatever that any one of the ex-liberals who now sit on that side of the House, the people whose hearts bled for every cause up to two-and-a-half years ago, will do the honourable thing and what they know they should do and put a stop to this outrageous motion that is down here.
I would suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach, Deputy Kelly, if it should happen in perhaps 20 or 30 years' time some learned lawyer in this country will write a book the title of which will be "Fundamental Rights and Freedoms under the Irish Constitution"——
You are acting like a miserable little snake.
If any learned man in 20 or 30 years' time should write such a book, could he write it without referring to this motion, if it is passed tonight and without referring to the consequences of this motion and the innuendos of this motion and what this motion means for fundamental rights and freedom under the Constitution? There are ways of abusing the Constitution without being seen to go outside the law. It may be or it may not be that the Government and the Parliamentary Secretary think they are keeping themselves within the law and the Constitution and the respect for people's rights with this motion but, I can assure them of this and so can anybody else who has read this and has pondered on the consequences of it, that this is flying in the face of every right and every freedom that is protected by the Constitution and that is cherished by the people.
Any reasonable observer of the current scene and any historian in the future could form the view that the effectiveness of the present Opposition is in inverse proportion to the length of their speeches, the height of their feigned indignation and the wildness of their accusations. The truth is that the Opposition individually and collectively are delighted that the Government are bringing to an end the agony they imposed on themselves.
(Interruptions.)
In the corridors of this building they have been insisting privately to us in recent weeks their anxiety that the House might not rise in the near future.
Deputies
Name them.
And even today they have expressed privately their delight that at long last they can arrange their holidays. I was very interested that one of our national journals within the last few days said, very aptly I thought, that it is a serious thing to question the fitness of a political party to govern but still more serious is it when the nation has to call into question, as it does today, the fitness of the Fianna Fáil Party to oppose.
Deputy O'Malley made the point about the possibility of somebody in 20 years' time referring to this motion in a book to be called "Fundamental Rights and Freedoms under the Irish Constitution". I would expect any commentator writing in 20 years' time, or now, on fundamental rights and freedoms including parliamentary rights and freedoms to have regard also to the corresponding duties and obligations which go with those rights and freedoms. Any objective commentator endeavouring to assess whether the Opposition had discharged their duties and obligations would form the view that they had not.
The Parliamentary Secretary was quite right in saying that the parliamentary system can work only if there is reasonable co-operation. That has not been forthcoming. It is some four months since the Opposition were approached and asked to agree on a time programme for, among other items of legislation, the ones for which I have principal responsibility, the three Bills dealing with capital taxation. On each occasion that an approach was made, agreement was refused. The reason it was refused was that the Fianna Fáil front bench came to the decision months ago to obstruct the passage of this legislation and to force the Government to bring in a guillotine motion.
That is why the Minister accepted 28 amendments.
It is interesting to note now the principal disappointment is that the Government did not bring it in earlier. The Government have given them fair notice that they can use the next three weeks to better advantage if they are serious about discussing the legislation before them. They can use it better than they used a lot of the time in the past.
As a parliamentarian in this House for some 16 years and having some pride in the traditions, records and achievements of this House, I pay tribute to the way in which the House has improved the Capital Gains Tax Bill and is improving the Wealth Tax Bill but I am convinced that the debate on both Bills could have been a lot better and a great deal more relevant and that many of the contributions might have been improved if they had been more pertinent and had had less emotion and less irrelevancies, if they had been directed to the specific amendments before the House and the specific sections on which they were supposed to be speaking.
Does the Minister mean like the Minister for Foreign Affairs this morning?
I am applying this criticism to every person who deserves it and that, on occasions when I was provoked, includes myself. But it points again to the reasonableness of our suggestion which some Deputies opposite agreed with—they were not allowed by their party to put into effect—and that is our suggestion that these Bills, which are mainly very technical Bills, whatever may be their broad effect, which were discussed on the Second Stage and on Fifth Stage, but which are primarily technical Bills for discussion and analysis by technocrats and experts on the Committee and Report Stages, should have gone to special committees of this House. I believe the best moments of the debate on the Capital Gains Tax Bill and on the Wealth Tax Bill have been when a small number in this House have behaved as though they were at a Select Committee, where they have respected one another as legislators and as adults and have got down to the merits or demerits of specific proposals and of the wording of particular sections and amendments.
That is a very difficult task to perform in this arena or forum of the Dáil, the very structure of which is such as to set people, as it were, against one another in a less-thancreative way. Of course the work of committees is not dramatic—the less dramatic it is the more effective it is; the less emotion you have in it, the more precision you will have in it; the less politics you have in it, the better will be the end result in the legislation. I would respectfully suggest, seeing that there are two of the principal gladiators of the Capital Taxation Bills present, we have ample time left under this Government motion tonight for an adult and effective debate on the Wealth Tax Bill which will enable us to complete the Bill in good time, both in its Committee Stage and its Report Stage before the House goes into recess.
A large number of amendments to the Capital Taxation Bills are as a result of discussions which we had on the Second Stage. A number of amendments from both sides of the House deal with the same topics; simply expressing the same thoughts in different words. A very large number of the amendments are procedural; several of them are already agreed and their number should not be interpreted in the mischievous way in which Deputy O'Malley interpreted it, as an indication either of the complexity of the Bill or of the fundamental issues of the Bill not being accepted.
Let us get rid of the histrionics; let us act like adults; let us observe what the commentators are saying about us. They have been saying, and I think very honestly saying, that there has been a great deal of time wasted in this House this year which has sat in 1975 to date for more days than the average number of sitting days for a full year for very many years past. Deputies who have been accepting the burden of work thrown upon them know that that is true. That being so, I think the time has surely come when we should accept that we would be better legislators if we accepted some discipline of time, some discipline on our contributions, made them direct and relevant to the business before us. If we did that there would be ample time left in this session for the completion of all the business before us.
The Government had a choice, either to give the three weeks' notice which is being given by this resolution or else to leave it to the last week and to bring the shutters down with a clang when Deputies would not have been put on notice. The Opposition knew for months past that this was going to come unless they gave more co-operation than they have given.
We have a crystal ball.
They were unwilling to apportion the time in a more reasonable way so that each particular item could have received a larger proportion of time than may now be possible.
The incompetence of the Government is being shown up every day.
The Opposition decided, as was their absolute right, not to give that co-operation, but to every right there is a corresponding duty and they have not discharged their duty in this House, their duty to co-operate, to see that the time available for us was used to the best advantage of the people who sent us here to process the legislation and to discuss the other issues which come before us from time to time. Never has the House been given such reasonable long term notice of the legislative programme ahead of it. There are three weeks to come and I suggest to the Opposition, if they wish to discuss other measures which are before the House this session, that the sooner we conclude the debate on this motion and take a vote on it the more time we will have to discuss the other important issues which the Irish people expect us to decide before we go into recess.
What about the Bills?
I would like at the outset to deal with the last point the Minister made. May I suggest to him that not even he could hope to persuade the Irish people that the Bills proposed to be guillotined through here are vital, fundamental matters, having regard to the state of our economy. There are very important matters in them but there is nothing coming through, if this guillotine proposal is carried and the business that is proposed to be got through in that time is got through, there is nothing emerging in all that that is going to cure our fundamental ills, and even the Minister for Finance could not hope to persuade people that there is.
I am concerned at the fact, which was evidenced from some of the remarks from the other side of the House and in particular from some remarks by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach, that on the Government side this question of the guillotine is regarded as a kind of a game. When Deputies on this side quoted some statements made by, for instance, the present Minister for Lands in 1970 or 1971 on a guillotine motion, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach indicated by his remarks that when the present Minister for Lands said that he did not really mean it, and no more, he contended, did we mean what we were saying. I regard that as disturbing because this is not a game. The remarks quoted were to the effect that the use of the guillotine in parliamentary procedure should be a very rare matter, a remark to which I would subscribe fully. Having said that, I freely admit that there are occasions when a Government must bring in a guillotine. It should be very rare and it should be done only with the greatest reluctance and when there is no other course open but there are occasions when it should be done. I suggest that this is not one of them. The occasion when it has to be done is when there is a matter before the House which is of vital importance, the passage of which is of major importance to the well-being of the people and when it is clearly being obstructed. That is the only occasion on which it is justified.
There have been suggestions here by Deputy Barry Desmond that the only thing involved in this is the Wealth Tax Bill. Of course if he looked at the motion he would see that that is not true. Let us take the Wealth Tax Bill since it is the major one picked out as the cause of this guillotine. I would suggest that the best way to judge whether a political party believes what it is saying is by what it does. As evidence of the fact that we believe what we have been saying in this regard there is the record of this party in government and the very few and rare occasions on which they used the guillotine. Compare that with the record of the present Government in their relatively short time in office and their use of the guillotine. Compare that with the purposes for which they propose to use the guillotine now. As I say, the major reason put forward and the only reason, by Deputy Barry Desmond and others, is the wealth tax.
As distinct from what may be said on either side of the House, what do the facts and the official record show? They show that the Government introduced three measures of capital taxation and some consequential sections in the Finance Bill. They show, in relation to the wealth tax, that the Government announced details of their proposals in a White Paper published on 28th February, 1974. They also show that the Wealth Tax Bill was circulated a year later, a year late. Now, five months after its circulation the Government are trying to guillotine it through this House. They took a year to produce the legislation but in the five months which have since elapsed we have dealt with all Stages of the Capital Gains Tax Bill, the Second Stage of the Capital Acquisitions Tax Bill and all Stages of the Finance Bill, which contain relevant provisions and, of course, a lot of other business. Nevertheless, the Government now feel justified in guillotining this Bill through after five months from the date of its circulation.
The Official Record also shows— this is the best part—that in the discussion on the Capital Gains Tax Bill, which was the first of the package, which went through last night, there was a long, detailed discussion on its provisions and on many occasions a tedious discussion. Here I might be permitted to enter a personal note. As one who has been largely involved very much in the debate on these measures, I make no secret of the fact that it is no pleasure to have to come in 12 hours a day, day after day and debate these measures and do the home work that is necessary on them.
Which is more than the Minister did.
Speaking purely from a personal point of view, it would suit me very well if the Government guillotined the Wealth Tax Bill through tonight. I could go home and relax if that happened. But there is more involved than the personal feelings of Deputies, be they Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries or anything else. The official record shows that that detailed, and sometimes tedious, discussion on the Capital Gains Tax Bill produced a Bill which has many defects but which is far superior to the Bill which was originally brought in here.
As has been pointed out, numerous amendments were made to that Bill. Most of them, particularly on the Report Stage, were amendments suggested from this side of the House. There is one particular part of the Capital Gains Tax Bill which I think illustrates precisely the point I wish to make. The argument in regard to the Wealth Tax Bill is that it can be shoved through and that the Government are allowing enough time for it. The Government's view, no doubt, was that far too much time was taken on the Capital Gains Tax Bill.
I invite anyone who is interested to have a look at paragraph 11 of what is now the Fourth Schedule of the Capital Gains Tax Bill—it was the Fifth. It will be found that as that Bill was introduced paragraph 11, which is a long and detailed paragraph, was in a certain form. As a result of criticism of its provisions on the Second Stage the Minister fundamentally amended it on Committee Stage, but the amendments he made were quite unworkable and unsuitable. When this was pointed out to him he then brought in another amendment on Report Stage which completely deleted the paragraph and introduced a totally new one. When we examined that on Report Stage yesterday, although it contained a number of improvements, it also contained some things which were very defective but one quite impossible provision, the effect of which was to deprive people in certain circumstances of their legal right to recover money due to them. We debated that point at some length across the floor of the House and yesterday, in the course of the Report Stage, that amended version was amended again twice. I do not say it is perfect but it is now a workable, tolerable paragraph, which it was not as introduced, as amended on Committee Stage or as amended by the Minister on Report Stage.
I mention this point specifically because it is a clear example of the benefit to be derived by this long, tedious, unglamorous work which goes on in this House and has gone on on that Bill. I suggest to the House that if the Wealth Tax Bill is subjected to the same tedious—I stress that word because from my point of view it is very tedious and I am sure it is from most people's point of view —process, that lengthy process, there is no doubt that, despite the fundamental error, in our view, of introducing a wealth tax at this time, at least the Bill will come out a far better piece of legislation than it has come into the House. The official record of what happened on the Capital Gains Tax Bill is sufficient evidence for that. Yet the Parliamentary Secretary, on behalf of the Government, is telling us that he is able to judge how much time is needed to complete the Wealth Tax Bill. I could not judge that. I suggest the Minister for Finance could not judge it.
Nobody could.
It all depends on how the debate goes, on the points that are uncovered and how they are dealt with. Anybody who pays any attention to what has happened on the Capital Gains Tax Bill will verify the truth of what I am saying. One cannot escape the conclusion that what the Government propose to do is to ram the Wealth Tax Bill through, no matter what defects it contains. Of course, it contains enormous defects as did the Capital Gains Tax Bill.
That brings us to the question of the long delay in producing these Bills and even after that long delay, the tremendous defects which have appeared in these Bills. Many of these defects have been remedied— not all of them by any means—in the Capital Gains Tax Bill. There are many in the Wealth Tax Bill. I am absolutely certain that if this motion is carried many of those defects will remain in the Wealth Tax Bill.
The Parliamentary Secretary and other speakers on the other side of the House referred to the fact that he sought agreement on the package of these Bills but did not get it from Fianna Fáil. That is true. I venture to suggest that the agreement which the Parliamentary Secretary got in regard to the conclusion of the Capital Gains Tax Bill, and to which he referred, and how it operated shows why we were quite right not to offer any agreement in relation to the Wealth Tax Bill, or the earlier Stages of the Capital Gains Tax Bill. The Parliamentary Secretary knows that what happened—not I admit all the time after the agreement was made but for a good deal of time after the agreement was made when there was a definite closing time for the debate—was that the Minister for Finance, on a number of occasions, simply ignored the arguments put forward and did not bother to reply to them. Whether he was going to accept them or not, at least we feel entitled to get a reply to the arguments put forward, and we did not get it, until, eventually, I was obliged to protest in the House at what the Minister was doing or failing to do, and obliged to warn him that in future he should not directly or through his Whip, seek an agreement with us in relation to legislation he was putting through this House because he was abusing that agreement.
Then, last night, again, we had a further abuse of that agreement by the Minister. There were 15 minutes available for the Final Stage and the Minister for Finance, in the words of Deputy Desmond, hogged those 15 minutes, to prevent us having any say whatever on that Final Stage. The lesson is quite clear: if there is an agreement by us, it will be abused by the Minister for Finance. That is what the record shows. We may assume that, if this motion is carried and there is a definite time limit fixed, the Minister for Finance will treat us in the same way. He may do so, and he may think that it is to his advantage, but I want to assure the Government and the Minister that it will not be to his advantage in the longer term.
The Wealth Tax Bill is a very important measure and to rush it through this House without adequate debate, such as the Capital Gains Tax Bill got, is doing a disservice to the people. I have already referred to the fact that the Government delayed enormously in bringing forward these Bills. Now they are trying to take out that delay on us by rushing it through and preventing us giving adequate discussion to it. We are entitled to ask why must the Government have the Wealth Tax Bill by the end of this month. What is the compelling reason that prevents the Government allotting sufficient time to enable it to be properly discussed as the Capital Gains Tax Bill was? We are entitled to ask that and we have not been given any reason for it.
We are also entitled to ask why is it that the Government does not care about getting the Capital Acquisitions Tax Bill through before the summer recess. It is not included here and it has been made clear that it is not proposed to bring it forward for Committee Stage before the summer recess. That is of some significance because the Capital Acquisitions Tax Bill is the major Bill, replacing receipts for death duties. It is the one that is of most importance to the Exchequer, but the Government do not care about that one. They want to get the Capital Gains Tax Bill and the Wealth Tax Bill through. The estimated receipts from both of these together do not go anywhere near the estimated receipts from the Capital Acquisitions Tax Bill and yet the Government do not care about the Capital Acquisitions Tax Bill.
I think we are entitled to ask for the Government's version of why this is so and why this should be done. We have our own theories as to why this should be so, but perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary would do us the honour of explaining the Government's great rush to get the two minor Bills, in terms of revenue, through and to forget, for the moment, about the major Bill in terms of revenue at a time when the Government certainly need all the revenue they can get.
I suppose we should not be too surprised by the Government's efforts to sweep this under the carpet. They have never been very happy about having their capital taxation proposals objectively assessed and the other side of the argument, apart from the propaganda we have got from the Government side, put forward, so that people could begin to see the reality of what was proposed to be done as distinct from the propaganda measure about abolishing death duties— which were not abolished, and about the great relief for a whole lot of people who have been subject to death duties. The small print, of course, of these measures gives quite a different picture and it is understandable that the Government do not want this to be highlighted. Nevertheless, it is something that has to be done.
It is a duty which rests on any responsible Opposition to go into the small print, to draw attention to the effects of what is proposed and to try to have the defects in the Bills remedied. That is precisely what we have been doing; that is precisely what we propose to continue to do. If the Government do not like that, then the responsibility for that is on the head of the Government, not the Opposition.
Let me also point out, since a point has been made on the other side about the length of time we have spent on these Bills, that there is a very good reason for that, because now we have an Opposition which is doing its job. The fact is that when the people over there were on these benches they did not do their homework. There is a lot of hard work to be done, whether you are in opposition or in government, and whatever about the work they are doing at the moment, whether it is hard or easy—I am not commenting on the effectiveness or the ineffectiveness of it—it is incontrovertible that most members of what were the Fine Gael and Labour Party front benches on this side of the House did not do their homework and were not prepared to embark on the kind of hard, slogging, unglamorous work that we have been prepared to do. If, as a result of the Opposition doing their job, longer time is spent in debating Bills than in the past, that is to the credit of the Opposition and the discredit of the Government, and not the other way around.
Does the Deputy say that in relation to section 2?
Section 2, as the Parliamentary Secretary knows, is the charging section.
Would the Deputy say that this small print applies to the contributions of——
Would the Parliamentary Secretary say that the debate on section 2 could be described in the same way as the debate on all the rest of the sections?
Does the Parliamentary Secretary know that his own deputy Whip spoke for an hour on section 2?
And guillotined it too.
A Second Reading debate had already taken place and Deputies were sent in one after the other to keep this House 18 hours on one section and nothing new was heard.
The record speaks for itself as to the work done by this Opposition in relation to this type of legislation, the value of that work and the paucity of similar work done when the present Government parties were in opposition. The record shows what happened.
I have been dealing so far with the wealth tax element in this motion, but of course, there is a great deal more to it, and I must say that I find it incredible that any party purporting to be concerned with democracy would come into this House and propose to guillotine through four Bills which have not yet been published, which we have not seen. If one stands back for a moment and looks at that proposition, how can one reconcile with democracy a proposal to guillotine through Bills that have not yet been published? It is an incredible proposal and yet, we have seen pseudo-liberals over there supporting it. They are a bit uncomfortable about it and the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, when tackled about it tried to get out of it by saying that the Parliamentary Secretary had indicated that if necessary time could be stretched a bit if there was some difficulty. That is not good enough. Does the Parliamentary Secretary realise what he is proposing? A guillotine on Bills that have not been circulated.
Would the Deputy give way so that I can explain? The Government is not afraid of debating these matters. The trouble was that if we put in the Wealth Tax Bill alone and did not take account of these other items, which are essential, there was nothing to prevent them being talked out so as therefore to wreck any programme we had for the Wealth Tax Bill. Therefore any bit of business which needed to be done by the end of July had to be taken account of in the motion. That is the only reason. There is nothing more sinister in it than that. If I could have a guarantee that that would not be done, a guarantee I could rely on, these items would not have figured in that motion.
The fact is that these items do appear in the motion and the Parliamentary Secretary has to accept responsibility for that.
Certainly I do.
It is a motion in his name purporting to guillotine through this House four Bills which have not been circulated. He can give any explanation he likes but that is the fact, that is what he is proposing to do. Then the question immediately arises that if these Bills and the Estimate, and so on, are essential why then does the Parliamentary Secretary think that the Wealth Tax Bill is essential? He said because one is essential the Opposition might keep talking on the wealth tax and he would not get the other, what he calls essential, business.
It is the other way around. You could have talked all day on the Nítrigin Éireann Teoranta Bill.
Whichever one it is, perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary would explain why in that case the Wealth Tax Bill is essential in the sense that I understand him to mean the others are essential.
These are all political judgements and the Deputy understands that very well.
I understand that what we are asked to do is something which has never been done in this House and, as Deputy O'Malley said, I cannot say this with certainly but with a great deal of confidence I say that I do not believe that there is any democratic parliament in the world which has ever had a guillotine motion in respect of Bills which had not been published. It is an incredible proposition. If the Parliamentary Secretary could stand back from that proposition for a moment and look at it he would agree and he would amend this motion. There can be no justification or excuse for such a proposition.
I do not want to dwell unduly long on this but I would like to invite Deputies to consider the implications of this and the extensions of this. If you can guillotine through a Bill that has not been published what is the next step on the road?
He does not want to vote except by agreement on fixed dates. Do away with Parliament next.
It is frightening. The implications of that proposal to me are frightening. I would suggest that the Parliamentary Secretary, with whom I have had a number of disagreements but for whom I have respect in regard to his regard for Parliament and constitutional procedure, must have an uneasy feeling in the back of his mind about the proposal. If he has not I would be very disappointed in him. It is a proposition which should never have been put to this House. It is going to create a very dangerous precedent. However, it is before us. We want to record our total opposition to it, our detestation of such a proposal and our concern at the precedent which is being created.
The Parliamentary Secretary has told us that these matters are being put in because they are urgent. Does the Parliamentary Secretary recall some months ago the Minister for Justice introducing a Bill in this House—the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill—and assuring the House that it was urgent? If it was urgent why is the Parliamentary Secretary not making provision in this for the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill?
I would if I possibly could. I would if I could without making the rest of the business impossible.
Either it is essential to get it through or it is not. Is the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill as urgent as the Wealth Tax Bill? And if it is not, why is it not?
Perhaps the Deputy is above noticing such trifles but that Bill has not yet passed the Seanad.
I am aware of that but if the Parliamentary Secretary is suggesting that it cannot be got through the Seanad before 30th July, which is the date dealt with here, I would not accept that suggestion.
If Senator McGlinchey has his way it will not. There was a hullabaloo in here which lasted a whole day because we sent the Bill to the Seanad to get on with it.
How many days did the Seanad meet when you did not bring it to the Seanad for discussion?
You had every opportunity to——
How many days did you not give it to the Seanad for discussion since you brought it to them? Stop your bluffing.
If it is that urgent why not have it guillotined in the Seanad and bring it in and guillotine it through here? The implications of this are very serious. Any Government in future will find itself with a precedent for bringing in the most controversial legislation and guillotining it through and telescoping all Stages together. If this motion passes tonight there is a precedent for that and the Parliamentary Secretary, whose name will be to that motion, will not be proud in the longer term that his name is to this motion tonight.
I make the Deputy a present of this. I think it would be very undesirable if the entire business of the House was dictated by motions of this kind. I would like to see allocations but allocations by agreement.
I will not comment on that. I might be pursuing a hare and I do not want to stay too long on this matter.
A hare you will not catch, I am afraid. That is the reason.
Is the Parliamentary Secretary really inviting me to pursue it?
(Interruptions.)
If the Parliamentary Secretary's idea is, and it appears to be, not just tonight but from his previous performance, that he gets agreement from the Opposition, that means we agree to precisely what he wants otherwise we are un co-operative and we get a guillotine motion. That is how it works. As far as we are concerned that is not the way it is going to work and if this Government want to guillotine business through in this way they can take the responsibility for it. We are not accepting any responsibility for what is being done here this evening.
The Parliamentary Secretary knows that at no time on this side of the House did we ask for a summer adjournment. At no time did we say that we were not prepared to sit on to complete the business. On the contrary he was told that we were prepared to sit on.
I was told that the Government would be given the Capital Gains Tax Bill and I took that to mean that——
(Interruptions.)
Does the Parliamentary Secretary deny that he was told more than once from this side of the House that we were prepared to sit on to finish whatever business the Government wanted to bring forward?
I take that about as seriously as it was meant, namely not seriously at all.
The Parliamentary Secretary does not take it seriously but would accept it if it were serious, is that what he is saying?
No.
You want your shilling each way.
I said, and I think the Parliamentary Secretary was out of the House at the time, and I want briefly to repeat it because it is of some importance in this matter, I was very disturbed at something the Parliamentary Secretary said earlier when there were quotations from the Minister for Lands and some others about what they said on a previous guillotine motion. The Parliamentary Secretary indicated that he considered this whole matter was a game and that when you were in Opposition you said this kind of thing and opposed it and when you were in Government you said the other. I do not regard this as a game. I think it is an extremely serious business with grave implications. I want to disabuse the Parliamentary Secretary of any idea that so far as we are concerned——
This is a game.
I want to disabuse him of any idea that we are not prepared to sit on to deal with the business of this House. Let him stand on his own feet. He and the Government decided they must get the Wealth Tax Bill through. They decided they must adjourn at the end of July. They are the Government's decisions. They are not the Opposition's decisions and the consequences are set out in this motion with all the grave implications that I have adverted to——
Hardly a day passes that an Opposition Deputy does not stop me somewhere in the House and ask me, in the name of God, when are we going to give him his holidays.
Name one.
And your own Deputies are going around the House laughing at you.
Order. Deputy Colley, without interruption.
I notice in this motion also that the Parliamentary Secretary appears to have built into it a provision whereby approximately ten hours of debate will be devoted to dealing with Estimates and motions which will not be voted on when they conclude. If a vote is sought it will take place only on a Tuesday or Wednesday at 10.15 p.m. I think I am interpreting it correctly in that way. The point I am making is that this great determination on the benches over there to get this urgent business through, to sit long hours, does not extend to being present to vote on these things, say, on a Friday. That is the meaning of that provision.
Sure, he would not be able to get them in on a Friday.
He is making damn sure in this motion that he does not have to and that, I think, reveals the seriousness, or otherwise, of the alleged effort by Government Deputies to do serious business and get it through this House. They are not prepared to come and vote for it on certain days.
And it contravenes Standing Orders.
Of course, it does. Incidentally, the Parliamentary Secretary will recall that he suggested we might sit on Tuesday of this week before three o'clock because he thought we would have enough time in the rest of the day to complete the Capital Gains Tax Bill. I demurred: I said: "No"—we needed the time.
One second—under Standing Orders, without any consultation with the Opposition the House would normally have sat at three o'clock. The inquiry I made of Deputy Lalor was whether, in view of the fact that of the 41 amendments to the Capital Gains Tax Bill we had succeeded in disposing of 34 in two sitting days the Opposition required this unusually long day. I did not propose to order a shorter day if the Opposition felt that that was going to be in breach of the spirit of what we had agreed. Deputy Lalor said it would be in breach of the spirit and that was the end of it.
Agreed.
I thought an ordinary Tuesday sitting might have been enough to dispose of the rest. The Deputy said "No" and that was the end of it.
I am not suggesting for a moment that the Parliamentary Secretary was either trying to breach the agreement made or trying in any way to curtail the debate, as agreed, on the Capital Gains Tax Bill. What I am suggesting is that he felt that, if the sitting from three o'clock on would be sufficient in our view to complete the Capital Gains Tax Bill, the Dáil should not sit until three o'clock. The point I am at is with all this urgency and guillotining, why give up half a day that was available? He was telling us about hours lost here and there in his speech. Why throw that time away? Why not use it?
The Deputy, like myself, represents a Dublin constituency and the fact of the matter is, and the same goes for the Deputy's side as well as for mine, Deputies who live a distance away, such as Deputy Brennan and Deputy Cunningham, find it a severe inconvenience to be here at 10.30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, unless they come up on a Monday night.
Or early on Tuesday morning.
I am well aware of that.
It is a severe inconvenience. Monday evenings are traditionally used for branch meetings, for clinics, and so on. This is just an attempt to pull the wool over the people's eyes as to what this Dáil really does and what the people who are in it really do.
The Parliamentary Secretary cannot keep his cool. He cannot get his people here.
There is nothing wrong with my team. My lads are here.
Order. Deputy Colley, without interruption.
I am simply pointing out the inconsistency of the approach of the Parliamentary Secretary and the Government in providing a guillotine for this alleged urgent and essential business when they contemplated throwing away a valuable half-day this week which could have been devoted to some of this business. That is all I am pointing out. As for the inconvenience to Deputies, of course I am aware of that, but I also pointed out earlier that, on a personal basis, all of this business is of great personal inconvenience to me and it is no joy to me to have the Wealth Tax Bill stretching on into August and September. As I said earlier, from a purely personal point of view I would be very happy if the Wealth Tax Bill were guillotined through tonight, but we do require to have regard to more than our personal convenience in this House. I suggest that our public duty requires a great deal other than what is proposed in this motion.
I would also point out to the Parliamentary Secretary that he was asked repeatedly, on at least two occasions and maybe three, to give the reason why the Finance Bill No. 2 had to be passed before the summer recess and, to the best of my knowledge, he has not yet given it. He certainly did not give it in his speech today. We are told that these unknown, unpublished Bills which it is proposed to guillotine through in the way I referred to earlier are simple non-controversial Bills. I wonder does the Parliamentary Secretary recall that description being given not so long ago to the Traffic Wardens Bill.
I do, yes. I was wrong about these things. One can be wrong.
If the Parliamentary Secretary is wrong about these four, where do we end up?
We will make time, by agreement.
Should not that be a warning light to the Parliamentary Secretary?
I know this whole thing is a minefield. The Deputy is here at an historic moment. This is an historic moment in Dáil history. We are trying a major innovation in the conduct of business. It is not an attack on democracy; it is an attack on footling, and infantile, irrational wasting of time.
That is what Parliament is as far as the Parliamentary Secretary is concerned, is it not?
I dealt earlier with that allegation and I will let the record speak for itself.
I do not accuse the Deputy in person.
I am speaking in connection with the proceedings of this House; the record of the proceedings of this House in relation to the Capital Gains Tax Bill shows the value of the work that was being done and could be done on the Wealth Tax Bill. I am not going to pursue that. I simply want to say that the Parliamentary Secretary says this is an historic moment because it is an innovation in the approach to the procedure of this House. It is an historic moment all right. I want to tell him, if this is the beginning of a procedure which the Government propose to follow in future, it could be the beginning of the end of democracy here. To guillotine through measures which have not yet been published is, as I said earlier, an incredible proposition as far as I am concerned, but it is made ominous now when the Parliamentary Secretary tells us it is just the beginning; this is the way it is intended to do the business in the future.
That is not so.
Am I misrepresenting what the Parliamentary Secretary said?
No. I appeal to the Opposition to give this thing a chance to see how it works and, if it works, we may get an agreement in the future to allocate time in lots of three or four weeks at a go. There has to be flexibility. I completely agree that, if some snag appears in one of these four or five small Bills, we will have to look at the situation again. I completely agree about that. I ask the Deputy to put himself in the position of a Government with a very, very heavy legislative programme and in the position of a Government which is expected, because of the conventions of this House, to put up with endless free-wheeling on the part of the Opposition. I have done it myself on our side when I had to.
I would suggest again that the record shows that what the Parliamentary Secretary describes as "endless free-wheeling" on the part of this side of the House has had a much more constructive purpose and effect than the endless free-wheeling in which Deputies opposite engaged when they were on this side of the House.
Some of them.
The fact is that, whatever the reasoning, whatever seemed to the Parliamentary Secretary to make it plausible to propose to this House that we should guillotine four Bills we have not seen, this is one of the most dangerous and disgraceful proposals ever put to this House. It makes me wonder if a good point was not made by those who observed at a Fine Gael Ard-Fheis, not so very long ago, the group who were raising their arms and shouting "Up the Blue Shirts".
I should like to add a few words to those already expressed by my colleagues in relation to this unprecedented procedure we are witnessing here this evening. I want to remind the Parliamentary Secretary that I had occasion, as Chief Whip to the Government, to arrange the Adjournment Debate and to arrange the package of legislation to be taken before the adjournment of the House. On many occasions I sat down with the late Deputy Sweetman and we went through the Order Paper and decided what we could leave over and what we would take. I can assure the House —and it is not necessary to give an assurance because the record will show it—that not for one moment did we ever contemplate putting into a package something that was not yet introduced in the House.
The Parliamentary Secretary has made the astonishing statement that he is trying out an innovation on procedure, as he says, to prevent free-wheeling. A former Deputy, Deputy Dillon, used to wax eloquent on the importance of democracy and its preservation. He said that every Deputy has a right to speak on everything brought before the House. That is what he is sent here for by his constituents. This is depriving every Deputy of the opportunity of discussing important legislation. Nobody can defend the action being taken. I remember at a council meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, one of the principal items for discussion was the power of Parliament over Government. There are many instances where Parliament does not meet frequently and the Government proceed to do the work. The council were unanimous that this is a definite step in the wrong direction, a step towards the destruction of democracy.
I remember early one July, Deputies making a very strong attack on the Government—I was a Parliamentary Secretary at the time—for having too much business on the Order Paper before the recess which was then fixed for early August. That was the year when the Dáil had to be recalled to deal with legislation in connection with the power strike in the ESB. The speeches from this side of the House were convincing. Nobody could deny they had sincerity. The only thing we found wrong about them was that they were talking about something that was not going to happen. There was no intention of preventing debate on any of the legislation on the Order Paper. There was no intention of unduly curtailing any debate, and any proposed legislation listed on the Order Paper was postponed until after the recess. We took what we agreed to take and brought it before the House by arrangement. It was not easy to arrange. I know the Parliamentary Secretary's difficult task.
Why, at this time, is this device being used? Not only are we establishing a precedent here but we are creating a new device to circumvent Parliament. The Parliamentary Secretary says it is an innovation, and he is going to try it out to see does it work. Deputies from the different constituencies are expected by the people who send them here to show reason why they have come here. Their primary duty is to discuss legislation, and their constituents have to see that they do that. They have to be seen to be doing it. This is depriving them of that opportunity. We, as an Opposition, can do nothing about it. It will be steam-rolled through the House. If we did not protest in the strongest possible terms against the action being taken here, the people who sent us here would think that we were a very poor outfit indeed.
I will not repeat all the examples given of how the then Opposition behaved whenever an attempt was made to curtail in the slightest way any debate during our time in Government, nor will I instance all the occasions when there was free-wheeling by the then Opposition, in relation to important matters. Reference was made to the Prohibition of Forcible Entry Bill on which the present Minister for Posts and Telegraphs then devoted, as reported at columns 2841 to 2998, Volume 255 of the Official Report of 29th July, 1971, six hours to——
You should have closured him.
That was on an amendment on Report Stage.
That was not the only time he should have been closured.
I thought then, I still think, that was an absurdity on his part.
He was ably abetted by the present Minister for Foreign Affairs.
The Government then were not doing their job.
He should have been chastised.
He devoted practically six hours to the definition of the word "enforcement". If that was not filibustering, or free-wheeling, I do not know what you would call it.
He does not yet know the meaning of the word.
They thought so well of him that they brought him into the Government.
He may well be reprimanded now in retrospect by the Parliamentary Secretary who has to say mea culpa. He knows he was wrong on that occasion. If there was any pique about lack of agreement on this side of the House on the part of those who are anxious to arrange their holidays, I could understand the Government bringing in the guillotine to deal with legislation which had been before the House for a long time. There might be some justification for that. But they rolled into that package a number of things not yet published. We are discussing a guillotine relating to matters which we have not seen.
Jackbootism.
There are four Bills we have not even seen. I accept the Parliamentary Secretary's assurance that we will get some chance of saying something on them, but the fact remains that we may not. There is only an hour allowed for Committee Stage and for Second Stage and this hour can be consumed by the proposer, by the particular Minister who is piloting the Bill through the House. Two hours are allowed for the International Energy Programme motion, two hours for the Elections of Conservators Order, one-and-a-half hours for Estimates. What about the Industry and Commerce Estimate which I understood was to form the Adjournment Debate? Is that to be taken now in the one-and-a-half hours?
It was offered to you twice, as Deputy Browne will confirm, and on neither occasion did it suit you to take it.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce curtailed discussion and the Chair very suitably acquiesced, originally in connection with another proposal dealing with the IDA.
Hear, hear.
The Minister curtailed the debate on the IDA Bill on the ground that we would have ample opportunity for as long as we liked to discuss these matters on his Estimate which was to come before the House shortly. That assurance was given a few days ago.
Three weeks ago.
Two days ago when the Minister for Industry and Commerce curtailed discussions on the IDA Bill.
It is only a few days ago.
I was the first speaker after the Minister and Deputy Tunney was acting as Chairman and he stopped me in my tracks and said another time. I refrained from discussing the matter on the assurance from the Minister we would get an opportunity of discussing it on the Estimate.
The Deputy was offered the opportunity twice and he would not accept it.
I do not know what we were offered, but if democracy is to prevail every individual in this House has a right to speak on every matter coming on the Order Paper for discussion in this House. We are being deprived of that right. If anybody can attempt to defend that I do not know where the defence is, if we are going to keep within the framework of what we have come to know as democratic procedure in Parliament. I think it is a disgrace, and I would be doing less than my duty if I did not say a few words in the strongest possible terms to condemn what the Government are doing on this occasion. The Parliamentary Secretary must feel very uncomfortable. He has to face the music and do what he has been ordered to do in this connection. I am not accusing him of doing it.
Democracy will not thank him for it.
He has to come in here on the orders of the Government to compel the House to pass through a number of important items. They are introducing the guillotine at a time when some of the matters have not yet been seen and we only know what the heading are. We are not even being given the long titles to the Bills in question. This is no defence. When the Christmas recess comes around there is nothing to stop the Government bringing in another guillotine and putting legislation through the House, if the innovation works now as the Parliamentary Secretary hopes it will. There is the precedent for another Government in another day. Another Government in another day will go a step further and we who have been Members of this House for a long time know how much precedent is claimed on matters of procedure in this House. When the Ceann Comhairle has not the written Standing Orders, he goes on precedent established in the House. Any Government from now on have an established precedent to do this heretofore unprecedented act of rounding up a lot of legislation, whether it is circulated or not, and having a guillotine motion to ensure that it is steamrolled through by a particular date. Parliament will not have a chance to debate it or make any attempt to amend it or make it better than what it is. If that is not totalitarian Government I do not know what is. No matter what we say it will not change it. The Deputies will likely vote for it and the only excuse is that they want to get their holidays early.
We have had an excellent summer up to now and the rains have come. From now on it is immaterial how long we sit. The best of the year has gone. It would be far more important for this country that we would stay here and deal with matters that affect the country at a time when it is going through one of the most difficult periods in its history. Anything we could do by way of screening legislation coming before the House would be our duty. I do not suppose there is any chance of the Parliamentary Secretary withdrawing this omnibus guillotine motion, but I would ask him to reflect and to say at some future stage, if not now, that he is sorry he ever introduced it.
I should like to apologise at the beginning to Deputy O'Malley for expressions I used in the heat of the moment over the last couple of hours which would have been better left unused. I apologise to anyone wounded by anything I said.
I ought to remind the House that even the shortest look back through the debates of this House will show that the Dáil has been getting more and more prolix and more wordy over the years rather than less. The entire Dáil debate on the 1937 draft Constitution in this House—the other House had been abolished by then as it did not suit the then Government to allow two Houses to function, so one had to go——
What has that to do with a closure motion?
The entire debate in the Dáil on the 1937 draft Constitution is contained in one single volume, not even a big volume, of the Dáil Official Report along with a lot of other business, questions, Bills about drainage and Bills about bonds and so on. I would advise Deputies to consider that if this Government were to introduce a Bill to amend the Constitution by replacing it with a new Constitution with the new wordiness which we have become accustomed to in the debate it would take ten volumes, and even they would not hold it.
Is this what is behind it? Is it in preparation for using the guillotine on a constitutional debate?
That is what is being done.
I apologised for using rough language and do not get me on to it again.
(Interruptions.)
I know there are Deputies on the Opposition side who do their work and do it very well. I do not want to be condescending or patronising in saying that, but I know perfectly well that Deputies who bore the brunt of this financial legislation on the opposite side have been putting their backs into it and worked very hard. But their efforts have been nullified, so far as getting the work of this House done expeditiously is concerned, by a few episodes which leave this Government with little confidence that any kind of certainly can be had in regard to the disposing of future business.
If all the financial legislation this year had been treated in the rational and useful way that was seen here over the last three days with the Capital Gains Tax Bill, there would have been no need for this motion. I accept what Deputy Colley said that the Capital Gains Tax Bill is a better Bill now than it was when it came into the House. I am equally prepared to agree that a serious Committee Stage debate can make of any Bill a better measure than if the Bill is simply accepted. Deputy Colley's description of his own job, and I must pay him the tribute of recognising that he has been very hardworking, though the Minister has had to do the whole thing single-handed, whereas if Deputy Colley wanted to sit back and rest for a few minutes there was somebody else to carry on the work——
What about the Minister's holiday trip to the Middle East?
(Interruptions.)
It is quite true to say, as Deputy Colley said, that the work is dull, tedious and unglamorous but this brings me to what this whole debate is about. Should the Dáil, the full 144 Members, be engaged on this kind of work? I notice that not one of the speakers from the Opposition here this evening, neither the Leader of the Opposition, Deputy J. Lynch, nor Deputy Lalor, in his excellent contribution, nor Deputy O'Malley, nor Deputy Brennan, nor Deputy Colley, mentioned the question of the special committees which this Dáil was full steam ahead for in the public Press and the mouths of the publicists like Senator Lenihan over the last months and years. Not one mentioned this question.
I want to quote briefly; I did not do it at the beginning of the debate as I did not want to raise the debate at its outset to a high temperature. I want to quote from page 13 of the 1972 report of the Informal Committee on Reform of Dáil Procedure. This committee had a Fianna Fáil majority, actually, presided over by Deputy O'Malley, who spoke here this evening. Deputy O'Malley and his merry men said:
We note that the present Standing Orders contemplate the Committee Stage being taken in Committee of the whole House or in some other Committee. It has, of course, been the practice to take practically all Committee Stages in Committee of the whole Dáil but it is a practice which should now be changed in order to ease the pressure on the time of the House.
A few lines further down they say:
We recommend that the Bills to be referred to Special Committees should be selected by the Whips and we do not consider that they need to confine their selection to Bills of a purely technical nature.
Now, these Bills were crying out for treatment in a special committee. If that had been done, if the Press were bored by it, and nobody could be blamed for being bored by the details of financial legislation, unless one was an economic or fiscal expert, they could have stayed away and it has been very evident to me that the Press have been bored by the deliberations of the Dáil day in, day out. That, needless to say, is not a reason why the Dáil should do anything except carry on in the way it feels it is right to do. But it is not, perhaps, a bad index, in some ways, of the way in which the Dáil does its work when you find that the Press and the commentators, to a man, are bored to death with what goes on in here. No wonder the House is not only half empty but almost entirely empty most of the time. It is because it is boring. Apart from the boredom, which is a very small and unimportant aspect when we are dealing with some very important questions like the ones here at present, it is an index of the frustration anyone, either in the Dáil as a Deputy or anyone working for the Dáil or around the Dáil must feel at finding day after day that there are something like 120 or 130 grown men and women around this House, sweating in the hot weather, filling in time as best they can, to the detriment of their health, to the detriment of their work. For what? —to be put like sheep through a gap when the bell rings at the end of a section. That is not a rational way of doing business and the right way of doing the Committee Stage of these three Bills was as we originally proposed.
The Parliamentary Secretary has an amazing view of the way things work in this House.
I am sorry Deputy Browne did not come in here and say that to the Minister when Deputy Colley was talking about sitting here through the summer and asking why did we not sit on Fridays.
(Interruptions.)
Need we chop straws about this? Everybody knows that a Deputy here is regarded by his constituents as having one job more important than any other and that is to look after them. Since I came in here I have received hundreds of letters from constituents asking me to do this, that or the other. I am still waiting to get a letter from a constituent to say: "Please go into the Dáil and make a speech." I am still waiting for the first letter asking me to go in and make a speech.
(Interruptions.)
Deputies must get on with their other work, which is what the people who sent us here regard as being valuable. If the Dáil is losing its relevance as a deliberative, legislative Assembly, part of the reason is the way in which it does its work.
This afternoon we had a debate and we rarely were without a quorum and the reason was that it was interesting. It was a procedural rather than a substantive motion and the result of the motion itself will not make a difference to what happens in the country but it was interesting and you could listen to it and you could feel that here was something being discussed, the way the Legislature does its business. That is what the full body of the Dáil should be for. But the small print work should be done in special committee. That is what Deputy O'Malley and his merry men recommended three years ago. I fully subscribe to the recommendation and so does the entire Government. But despite all the recommendations the only one of substance which has been put into effect, with the agreement of the Opposition, since this Government came into office, was one which benefited itself, namely, an enormous increase in the amount of time given to Private Members' Business but when in the Committee on Procedure and Privileges it was suggested that we might put this into effect, we got no cooperation at all.
We agreed to sit for 20 additional hours every week and we have been doing that for weeks past and all we are getting out of it is three hours for Private Members' Business.
The truth is we have been sitting extra hours for much more than six weeks because we have been sitting early every Wednesday morning since about Easter, perhaps even further back. That had to be done because the Government were feeling the loss of the three-and-a-quarter hours every week.
The Government got three hours instead of that.
We were being castigated at various times in our first year in office because we were not introducing enough legislation. We said to the Opposition, you will get your fill of it yet, and they are getting their fill of it now. The Government must take a grip of their programme and make sure that that programme is put through.
The necessity for a motion of this kind is regrettable. It could have been avoided if the Opposition had agreed to send these Bills to committees. I have been waiting since four o'clock to hear one word about why the Opposition would not agree to that.
Tell us about the Bills.
I will tell you about what were the reasons and nothing else.
(Interruptions.)
The special committee would have been able to sit in public, yes; with the Press, yes. It would have been able to sit at hours not dictated by the main Dáil and it could have sat over the weekends. It could have sat during the long vacation.
Thank you very much.
It could have held sittings in a relaxed atmosphere and Members could even have smoked if they wished. That proposal was rejected and the reason for the rejection was that the Opposition intended to make the work of this Dáil as difficult as they could for the Government. That is the conclusion I came to and it was reinforced when the Opposition Chief Whip, Deputy Lalor——
(Interruptions.)
Could we have one voice at a time, please?
(Interruptions.)
He does not mind, in fairness to him.
I do not mind if I am allowed to finish.
(Interruptions.)
My belief and the Government's belief is that the determination of the Opposition was simply to stonewall this legislation. This was confirmed when their Chief Opposition Whip told me perhaps four weeks ago: "You will get the Capital Gains Tax Bill before the summer and that is all you will get." Those were more or less his words. I took that to mean, as anybody would take it to mean, that the Opposition were going to use all and every means—I am sorry Deputy Colley is not here to contradict this—to prevent the Wealth Tax Bill going through, no matter how long we sat.
(Dublin Central): Can the Parliamentary Secretary give any good reason why the Wealth Tax Bill must go through the House before the recess?
I will. It is a political reason. This Government have been committed to a certain course of action with regard to capital taxation since before the election. There has been enough delay already. The longer the delay goes on the greater will be the public uncertainty, and the Government cannot permit that indefinitely. The Government made a political decision, which I entirely support, that this Bill would have to pass before we rose.
Is it not true that we offered to deal with the Wealth Tax Bill every Friday for the last number of weeks?
We cannot have a question and answer session.
That is unrealistic and Deputy Browne knows that very well. Not only is it unrealistic but, even if the Government were so foolish as to let themselves go in for such a thing, there would still be no certainty that it would not be soldiered indefinitely. I said today, when opening the debate, that I asked Deputy Colley, Deputy Lalor and Deputy Browne in the presence of each other how many hours or days they wanted. I asked them to name how many hours or days they wanted and provided the thing had got some relation to reality the Government would agree. I asked them to name their own time, and I could not get them to agree. I know Deputy Colley feels able to say: "When we see the way we are treated when we have agreement we cannot be expected to agree." I will not comment on that. Whether I agree or disagree it has got nothing to do with it. The point is that agreement between Government and Opposition is very frequent and usually works all right. Deputy Browne will not deny that.
Why not sit on Fridays?
I am hearing now for the first time about why do we not sit on Fridays. If I were asked that two months ago, if Deputy Browne, Deputy Lalor and Deputy Colley came to me two months ago and said: "You will have your Wealth Tax Bill provided we sit a full working and a full voting day on Fridays" I would have gone back to the Government and said: "Can we sell this? Can we persuade the Deputies who are having a stint of a kind that never existed before——
(Interruptions.)
I am sorry to interrupt the Parliamentary Secretary but is it not true that when we agreed to finish the Capital Gains Tax Bill in three days the Minister sat back and did very little about it?
The Parliamentary Secretary.
Deputy Browne knows very well that, leaving aside that particular incident, which I know Deputy Colley complained about, rightly or wrongly, an enormous proportion of the business of this House is done by agreement. It gets on very well with no bother at all. I naturally do not expect the Opposition not to fight but the sequence of business, the length of time it will last is done by, if you like, hand to mouth ways, but it is done reasonably and in a friendly kind of way, which is beneficial to everybody. That is what I wish to see. I am certain, if this thing works well, the Opposition will, as well, wish to see it extended not merely from day to day but over a period of weeks or, let us say, up to a month. I do not care for this way of doing things especially when I find the Opposition are so disinclined to accept it.
This may seem naïve but I actually hoped the Opposition might agree to this motion, that they might make an act of faith in our goodwill and agree to this motion. I was not without hope that that might be done. I see now that, whether sincerely or otherwise, they are opposing it. I suspect they are delighted the thing is being introduced and the last thing they wish is to see it defeated. If by any chance a couple of my Deputies got stuck in a lift there would be a cheer for a moment but they would go home with very long faces.
If there was one thing more than another which got a hammering here today from the Opposition benches it was the question of these four Bills which have not yet been published. I explained in interruptions twice the reason why all these items of business appear on this motion. There is nothing sinister about it. I originally thought of devising a motion which would have mentioned only the Wealth Tax Bill, but as soon as I started to think about it I could not think of a way of doing it. If we simply built this motion around the Wealth Tax Bill, and only that, and were then required by Minister X, Minister Y and Parliamentary Secretary Z to come along and feed in this motion or that Bill that motion or Bill would not have been covered by the allocation of time motion and there was no other way, short of producing another such motion for a closure or preventing the Opposition from talking out such a thing and wrecking the allocation of time for the Wealth Tax Bill.
Accordingly, I do not dissent from Deputy Lynch's description of this motion as cumbersome, and I do not know whether or not it is unprecedented. It may be unprecedented but I want the House to understand that there is nothing sinister about any of these Bills so far as I know. I would have phrased it differently if I thought the Bills were anything more than ones which in the normal course would go through the Dáil in a few minutes.
The reason why all these items are detailed in the motion is because if they were not the introduction of such an item with no time limit attached to it might have provided an opportunity for wrecking the time allocation in regard to the Wealth Tax Bill. That is the reason and there is no other reason. If I could, even now, get an agreement in regard to the Wealth Tax Bill that it would be finished on the 30th July I would abandon this motion and, provided it included the passage of the other items, we could take out these things and put them in by agreement according as they fell due but on the understanding that they would not be used to torpedo the time programme for the Wealth Tax Bill. That is the reason for it and there is no other reason for it.
I said in my opening statement that if difficulties emerged about these Bills the Government would be prepared to extend these times by agreement. That remains the case. Deputy O'Malley mentioned the importance of Nítrigin Éireann Teoranta, from which I do not dissent. Whether the whole affairs of Nítrigin Éireann Teoranta ought to be debated for a day or two on a twosection Bill, which has a very limited purpose, is quite another matter. I need not go into the details of that but I do not see the necessity for doing that and I do not think that the Government, who are in difficulties in regard to time, have any obligation to make the Dáil into a forum for a day or two on a very large issue for which there are other opportunities of debate, merely in order to secure the passage of a Bill with a limited purpose like this. I do not see that the Government have any obligation to do that at all.
That is more or less all I want to say about it except, that in the year we are moving into, and I do not care if we change sides next month, or as Deputy Lalor thinks, in September, or whenever he thinks an election will be —perhaps there will be and perhaps in October we will have changed sides if we are here at all—I believe the same problem will face Fianna Fáil if and when they are back in Government. There is no doubt they will be sooner or later. We are moving into an era—this is a banality and everybody knows it—of increasingly complex life and the legislation which goes to regulate life. The days of freewheeling and of open-ended debates on large measures and so forth may not be over now but if they are not they will be over tomorrow. I do not believe, in spite of the generalities uttered on the far side that there is a single Parliament in Western Europe which does its business like us, in which all debates are open-ended except for Private Members' Business and in which no Government are able to foresee when a particular item will come to an end. I do not believe any other Parliament does business like that and I do not think the same principles, if applied to private business, could possibly make that business flourish.
(Interruptions.)
People across the floor of the House have spoken today about jackboots, fascism and all the rest of it. Any Deputy who has something to say must be allowed to say it but there comes a point, which is, I know, subjectively judged by the Government side, when a genuine point of view is giving place to mere talking for talking's sake; and when that time comes, a Government which has a difficult job and a heavy programme is entitled to draw the debate to a conclusion. I freely admit that that attitude is open to abuse and I hope this Government will never be guilty of such an abuse.
In conclusion, I appeal to Deputies on the other side, if this motion passes tonight, to try to make sure over the next month that this will work. Let us give it a chance. It might be seen to be in the interests of everybody. It might easily be—from our point of view I promise as much flexibility as I can possibly deliver—that if this thing works, when the heat of today is forgotten and when we come back in October, the Opposition Whips and myself, if we are still in our respective jobs, will be able to agree allocations, at least rough allocations, of times for a few weeks ahead. I believe that every Deputy would benefit from that and for that reason, apart from the fact that we must get this business done, I genuinely recommend the motion to the House.
Before putting the motion, I have one or two questions to ask. The Parliamentary Secretary made reference to the four Bills that have not been circulated and he said, or implied, that they were trivial. Is there an urgency about these?
I have to be guided by the Departments in that. I circulated these Departments and I asked them if I might have an absolutely rock-bottom list of legislation which they judged to be necessary before the recess. The rock-bottom is what is here.
How many million pounds are involved in the other Bills?
I do not know off-hand.
The Parliamentary Secretary suggested that even now if he got an arrangement on the Wealth Tax Bill, he would withdraw this package.
What I said was that if I could get it by agreement now, the essence of what we are trying to get through a motion, there would be no need for the motion.
The other question is that there was some prior arrangement about regarding the Industry and Commerce Estimate as an Adjournment Debate. Now that that is rolled into this package, what happens about the Adjournment Debate?
I think Deputy Brennan's understanding of it is not correct. There was no agreement to take that Estimate as an Adjournment Debate. Certainly this is the first I have heard of it. What we promised to do was to have one Estimate debated in consideration of the Opposition's passing all the Estimates en bloc two weeks ago, which they agreed to do. The Opposition selected an Estimate for debate and the one they selected was Industry and Commerce. The Minister for Industry and Commerce duly introduced a £10 Estimate and on two occasions we offered to put it on and—I make no point about it—on one occasion it did not suit the Opposition to take it on the day I suggested and on the other occasion they said they would rather go on with the budget debate.
Does the Parliamentary Secretary not appreciate that any opposition worth its salt cannot possibly agree to take Bills they know nothing about and to agree to time limits on them?
I accept that. You will not find me making a casuistical case for doing something ludicrous here over the next month. What I was afraid of, and Deputy Brugha will not deny that we have grounds for that fear, was that if we had fixed time merely for the Wealth Tax Bill, we might have had, say, the Nítrigin Éireann Teoranta Bill, which in the ordinary way might have passed through all Stages in about ten minutes, talked out, deliberately to torpedo the other. That is the reason. Experience over the past couple of years does not suggest that is impossible.
Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 71; Níl, 68.
Tá
- Barry, Peter.
- Barry, Richard.
- Begley, Michael.
- Belton, Luke.
- Belton, Paddy.
- Bermingham, Joseph.
- Bruton, John.
- Burke, Dick.
- Burke, Joan T.
- Burke, Liam.
- Byrne, Hugh.
- Clinton, Mark A.
- Cluskey, Frank.
- Collins, Edward.
- Conlan, John F.
- Coogan, Fintan.
- Cooney, Patrick M.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Costello, Declan.
- Coughlan, Stephen.
- Creed, Donal.
- Crotty, Kieran.
- Cruise-O'Brien, Conor.
- Desmond, Barry.
- Desmond, Eileen.
- Dockrell, Henry P.
- Dockrell, Maurice.
- Donegan, Patrick S.
- Donnellan, John.
- Dunne, Thomas.
- Enright, Thomas.
- Esmonde, John G.
- Finn, Martin.
- FitzGerald, Garret.
- Fitzpatrick, Tom (Cavan).
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Gilhawley, Eugene.
- Governey, Desmond.
- Griffin, Brendan.
- Harte, Patrick D.
- Hegarty, Patrick.
- Hogan O'Higgins, Brigid.
- Jones, Denis F.
- Kavanagh, Liam.
- Keating, Justin.
- Kelly, John.
- Kenny, Henry.
- Kyne, Thomas A.
- L'Estrange, Gerald.
- Lynch, Gerard.
- McDonald, Charles B.
- McLaughlin, Joseph.
- McMahon, Larry.
- Malone, Patrick.
- Murphy, Michael P.
- O'Brien, Fergus.
- O'Donnell, Tom.
- O'Leary, Michael.
- O'Sullivan, John L.
- Pattison, Seamus.
- Reynolds, Patrick J.
- Ryan, John J.
- Ryan, Richie.
- Spring, Dan.
- Staunton, Myles.
- Taylor, Frank.
- Timmins, Godfrey.
- Total, Brendan.
- Tully, James.
- White, James.
Níl
- Allen, Lorcan.
- Andrews, David.
- Barrett, Sylvester.
- Brady, Philip A.
- Brennan, Joseph.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Ben.
- Brosnan, Seán.
- Browne, Seán.
- Brugha, Ruairí.
- Burke, Raphael P.
- Callanan, John.
- Calleary, Seán.
- Carter, Frank.
- Colley, George.
- Collins, Gerard.
- Connolly, Gerard.
- Crinion, Brendan.
- Cronin, Jerry.
- Crowley, Flor.
- Cunningham, Liam.
- Daly, Brendan.
- Davern, Noel.
- de Valera, Vivion.
- Dowling, Joe.
- Fahey, Jackie.
- Farrell, Joseph.
- Faulkner, Pádraig.
- Fitzgerald, Gene.
- Fitzpatrick, Tom (Dublin Central).
- O'Malley, Desmond.
- Power, Patrick.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Timmons, Eugene.
- Flanagan, Seán.
- French, Seán.
- Gallagher, Denis.
- Geoghegan-Quinn, Máire.
- Gibbons, Hugh.
- Gibbons, James.
- Gogan, Richard P.
- Haughey, Charles.
- Healy, Augustine A.
- Herbert, Michael.
- Hussey, Thomas.
- Kenneally, William.
- Kitt, Michael P.
- Lalor, Patrick J.
- Lemass, Noel T.
- Leonard, James.
- Loughnane, William.
- Lynch, Celia.
- Lynch, Jack.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacSharry, Ray.
- Meaney, Tom.
- Molloy, Robert.
- Moore, Seán.
- Murphy, Ciarán.
- Nolan, Thomas.
- Noonan, Michael.
- O'Connor, Timothy.
- O'Kennedy, Michael.
- O'Leary, John.
- Tunney, Jim.
- Walsh, Seán.
- Wilson, John P.
- Wyse, Pearse.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Kelly and B. Desmond; Níl, Deputies Lalor and Browne.
Question declared carried.