The Constitution (Amendment) Bills, 2, 3 and 4 affect membership of the Dáil. The first section of this Bill reads: "The Constitution shall be and is hereby amended by the deletion from Article 51 thereof of the words ‘not more than seven' and the insertion in that article of the words ‘not more than twelve,' in lieu of the said words so deleted." The effect of that will be that whereas now we have seven Executive Ministers and a certain number of extern Ministers, you absorb the whole margin for extern Ministers by increasing the number of Executive Ministers from seven to twelve. That is a proposal that infringes on the prerogatives and privileges of members of this House because if you refer to the Constitution and to certain articles of it affecting the privileges of members of this House, you will find that by Article 52 these Ministers who form the Executive Council must all be members of the Dáil. By Article 55 of the Constitution other Ministers, not members of the Executive Council, may be appointed on the nomination of the Dáil. Nothing in the Constitution makes it incumbent on those Ministers—extern Ministers so-called—to be or to become members of either House of the Oireachtas. Since the Saorstát was established, however, no extern Minister has been nominated who was not a member of the Dáil. The Bill that is now before the Seanad leaves Article 55 of the Constitution untouched, but purports to amend Article 51 by increasing the maximum number of Ministers of the Executive Council to twelve. As, under Article 55, the total number of Ministers, including members of the Executive Council, must not exceed twelve, this Bill, if passed, will make it possible for all the Ministers to be members of the Executive Council. In such a case no Minister would fall to be appointed under Article 55, and every Minister would necessarily be a member of the Dáil.
It may be well to draw attention, by way of conclusion, to the provisions of Section 7 of the Ministers and Secretaries Act, 1924. Under this section the Executive Council may, on the nomination of the President appoint persons, being members of the Oireachtas, to be Parliamentary Secretaries to the Executive Council or to be Executive Ministers. The total number of persons in receipt of salaries as Ministers or as Parliamentary Secretaries at any one time is not to exceed 15. At present there are three Parliamentary Secretaries in addition to the Executive Ministers and to the extern Ministers. There is a Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, a Parliamentary Secretary to the President, and a Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence. Now, under this Bill which proposes to increase the number of Executive Ministers to twelve and with the three Parliamentary Secretaries, the limit of 15 which is laid down in the Constitution would be exhausted and it would follow that the provision for the appointment of extern Ministers under Article 55 of the Constitution would become a dead letter as the margin for the appointment of extern Ministers would have been absorbed. When we come to amend the Constitution in this proposed way we have to consider that we are here as a Seanad. I take exception first to the way that the Dáil and the Government have approached this matter. They have done so without any reference to this House, and I might say that we are an integral portion of the legislature and of the Constitution.
Any amendment of the Constitution would affect us equally with the Dáil. The Oireachtas is based on the Constitution, and the Oireachtas is composed of both the Dáil and the Seanad. Any amendment or alteration of the basis upon which the legislature is founded is a matter in which this House is equally interested with the Dáil. The approach to these very serious amendments has been in this way, that a Committee of the Dáil was set up, and there was no previous inquiry made, I take it, as to whether this House would like——