It may be convenient for the purposes of the discussion on the Bill if I give a very brief outline of its contents. The Bill is divided into six parts—five parts really, because Part 1 merely deals with definition. Part 2 bears on the question of the hours of sale in licensed houses. Part 3 refers to the question of endorsement, and Part 4 embodies a scheme for the reduction in the number of licences in the country. Parts 5 and 6 are of lesser importance. Inasmuch as the main purpose of the Bill is contained in Part 4, dealing with the reduction of licences, I might perhaps be permitted to take that out of its order and to give the scheme in outline to Senators. There are about 12,300 licensed houses in the State. The report of the Intoxicating Liquor Commission sets out in its schedule the detailed figures. The Commission which inquired into this matter was of opinion that that number of 12,000 odd premises permits of a very considerable reduction. I would not care to attempt anything in the nature of a precise forecast as to the reduction that could take place.
I am roughly of opinion that the public interest or the reasonable requirements of the public would not suffer on a reduction of that number by at least one-third. That would mean the extinction of four thousand licences. The general principle of the scheme is that the surviving licensees for a period of twenty years are expected to recoup the State for the money paid out in compensation for extinction. The area that is taken as the unit is the area that is, in fact, the area for licensing purposes at the moment, the area served for summary jurisdiction purposes by a particular District Court, not by a particular District Justice but by a particular court of a District Justice. There are 340 such areas in the State, and there will, therefore, be for the purposes of this scheme 340 units. There will be credited to each such unit in my department a compensation fund, and when licences are extinguished, compensation will be paid out of that fund and the levy process will commence on the surviving licensed holders of that area.
The process of extinction is that in the first instance a particular licence is challenged as redundant by the district officer before the District Justice. If the District Justice is satisfied that there is a prima facie case he refers the matter to the Circuit Judge. The Circuit Judge tries two issues really: (a) is there in fact redundancy in that particular licensing area, and (b) assuming that there is, is this the most appropriate licence to extinguish? If he finds affirmatively on these two issues he proceeds, with the assistance of a competent valuer appointed under the Act to assess compensation, and when he has arrived at his decision in the matter of compensation, that decision is communicated to my department and the payment is made forthwith. Over a period of twenty years altogether. with the licence duty, the State recoups itself from the surviving licence holders of that area. There was much discussion in the Dáil as to what would be the proper area to take as the unit— whether it should not be the entire State or a county or some area different from that which is embodied in the provisions of the Bill. If I had received from the organisation primarily concerned, the organisation of the licensed trade, a representation in favour of some other area, I would have given very serious consideration to such a representation, but in the absence of enlightment from that quarter I prefer the provisions in the Bill to anything else that has been suggested to me in the Dáil, because it keeps as closely as it is humanly possible to keep to the principle that the area which is to benefit should be the area of charge.
If I were to take even the county as the area there might be many extinctions at one end of the county and none at the other end, forty, fifty, or perhaps sixty miles away, and the people in that part of the county in which no extinctions were taking place might well ask for what they were paying or what benefit accrued to them by the extinction of licences forty or fifty miles away. The suggestion that the State might be taken as the unit and the compensation money collected from all the licensed holders of the State equally, really seems to embody the fallacy of regarding the licensed trade as an entity, as something like a religious Order, as a Deputy in the Dáil remarked. Of course they are not. They are simply a combination of persons engaged in the same calling who, for the purposes of self protection, propaganda and so on, found it convenient to come together in an organisation, and there is not that essential unity which would justify me in taking the entire area of the State as the appropriate area for this part of the Act. I adhere therefore to the principle of simply taking each of these little pockets, these 340 court areas as the unit. They are at present the unit for the purposes of licences and if licences are extinguished within any of those units, the compensation money should be paid by the surviving licensed holders in that area.
Embodied in the following provisions of this Act there is a small state contribution. It is not a very substantial or material one, and in fact it will do no more than cover to some extent the administrative cost of this procedure suggested for the purpose of extinction. We can go more fully into that at perhaps a later stage.
In the matter of extinction we will have to move with some care, and Senators may take it that it will not be left in the unfettered discretion or indiscretion of particular district officers but that there will be control from the Department, and there will be consultation and instruction as to how to proceed, because at one end there is the danger that if one goes too far or too fast in the matter of extinction it may give rise to the greater evil of she beening and great care will have to be taken in deciding what are the reasonable wishes of the public in this matter and how far one can go in the process of wiping out licences.
Coming to Part 3 of the Bill, dealing with endorsement, Senators will remember that in the Act of 1924 certain offences were set out in the schedule, and convictions on any of these offences involved the automatic endorsement of the licence. I have no apology to make for that particular provision in the Act of 1924. During the years 1922 and 1923 there was considerable laxity in the matter of licensing laws, as in the matter of other laws, and exceptional laxity can only be corrected by exceptional stringency. That exceptional stringency was provided in the Act of 1924, and I am satisfied that it has had excellent results. One can afford now to mitigate some of the severity of the Act of 1924 and, consequently, the provisions with regard to endorsement in this Bill are substantially less severe than the provisions that the Act of 1924 contained. There is, for instance, new ground broken in the matter at present of attaching a lifetime to endorsement, the idea of reform comes in. The first point I should, perhaps, make clear, is that no endorsement prior to the passing of this Act will be operative towards the extinction of a licence. The first endorsement after the passing of the Act will have a lifetime of five years; the second will have a lifetime of seven years, and the third and any subsequent endorsement will have a lifetime of ten years. If a holder of a licence has three live endorsements at any one time, then he goes out of business. But let me take a specific case. Let me suppose a man, within a few months of the passing of this Bill, is convicted of some offence which warrants the endorsement of his licence. That endorsement has a lifetime of five years. Let us suppose three years after he is again convicted of one of those major offences, then that man will have two dangerous years—quite dangerous —in which another endorsement would put him out of trade. But if he gets over the five-year period safely his first endorsement dies, and so on, and the second endorsement after the passing of the Act lives for seven years, and the third, and any subsequent one, for ten years, three live endorsements together putting a man out of business. This is a wholly new concession, because in the past if a man was convicted of one of the offences that required endorsement that endorsement stood for ever against his licence, and if joined by two others the licence was forfeited.
Further, the Bill provides a limited discretion to the District Justice to withhold endorsement if he is satisfied that there are circumstances that render the offence trivial or purely technical in character. One can imagine some circumstance which would render an offence wholly trivial. A man's clock might work five or seven minutes wrong in the course of the day. He might have taken the correct time from the Post Office in the morning and if the clock was faulty it could work a bit wrong and he might find at ten o'clock that night that it might register five or seven minutes false. There might be an offence of selling during prohibited hours, but the circumstances would have rendered it trivial in character and it should be within the discretion of the District Justice not to endorse the licence. Together with that limited discretion I ask for an appeal for the officer of the Gárda Síochána. If he is satisfied that an over-indulgent view is taken as to the particular occasion, he may go to the Circuit Court Judge and ask whether he considers that the attendant circumstances of that offence were sufficient to reduce it to trivial proportions not warranting an endorsement of the licence.
If there were an accident outside a licensed house after hours and stimulants were required, if there was a sale there you would have a technical offence, but few people would I think suggest that it was an offence warranting endorsement of the licence, warranting even that the licence holder should be put to the expense of appealing to the Circuit Court to get the endorsement withdrawn.
It is to meet cases of that kind that this limited jurisdiction is vested in the District Justice and as a check and safeguard, I ask that the right of appeal should lie with the district officer. If he considers too lenient a view is taken in a particular case, he may go to the higher court with the case and get the opinion of the Circuit Judge.
There is a new provision also which enables the holder of a licence which is endorsed to sell a clear licence provided that the sale is bona fide. That is intended to meet a point of view put to me on the question of endorsement. The complaint was made that the credit and the borrowing capacity even of traders who are running their shops quite correctly, who are not breaking the law in any respect, who had no convictions against them, and were not likely to have any convictions against them yet their credit was affected. I agreed that if that were the actual position, it was a serious position, for which a remedy ought to be sought. No one wanted, by a provision in our legislation, to penalise people keeping the law strictly and running their establishments quite correctly, yet it was suggested that was happening. Perhaps it was. With the provision of the Act of 1924 in existence a bank might well say to the holder of a licence seeking to borrow on the security of his premises: "We have no guarantee that this year you may not break the law and be detected and convicted and get a sufficient number of endorsements to wipe out your licence." This new provision in this Act purports to meet, so far as it is possible to meet, that plea. It enables the holder of a licence who may have received an endorsement, perhaps two endorsements, to sell to the purchaser an absolutely clear licence provided the court is satisfied that the sale is open and above board and not a mere bogus transfer to a relative for the purpose of clearing the slate. If it is a bona fide sale the purchaser can get a clear licence. That does meet the complaint to some extent, because a man borrows on the ultimate security of what his place would fetch in the open market if sold, and this provision enables a man who is unfortunate and gets two endorsements to get out of business, giving to the new purchaser a clear licence if there is no suspicion in the court that the sale is simply a bogus one. So much for endorsement.
On the question of hours. We come for the first time, and in a limited application, to the principle of the break in the day. This, I think, is a very desirable reform. It exists in Great Britain, and I think it is generally agreed that it is a desirable reform, and a good thing to clear out the house even for a short space in the middle of the day. The hours in the Dublin metropolitan area, and in the cities of Cork, Limerick, and Waterford are as follows:—From 10 a.m. to 2.30 p.m.; from 3.30 p.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays other than Saturday; on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2.30 p.m., and from 3.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. There is half an hour earlier closing on Saturday nights than on other nights. On Sunday and St. Patrick's day 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. In the urban county districts, with a population exceeding 5,000, the hours on ordinary weekdays are:—10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. Elsewhere the position is 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. summer time, and from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the remaining portions of the year. On Saturday 10 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. summer time, and from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for the rest of the year.
The Sunday hours now require some comment and explanation. It is proposed to restrict the hours for the sale of intoxicating liquor to bona fide travellers to the hours of from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the non-summer time period, and alternatively, from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m., or from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the summer time period. There will be a discretion to the District Justice in a particular area to grant the 2 to 9 rather than the 1 to 8 if satisfied that there is any particular cause for the change.
Now, the bona fide traffic is something of a growing problem. I think it has changed enormously in its character for the last ten or twelve years. The mobility of the individual in the first instance owing to the introduction of the ordinary push bicycle and later to the motor bike and motor car, and now the charabanc, and so on, has increased considerably within our own recent memory—within the last ten, twelve or fifteen years. I certainly would welcome complete abolition. I invited the Dáil to discuss the question as to whether it would not be an improvement to grant a limited opening throughout the State on Sunday afternoons and abolish entirely the bona fide traffic.
The predominant view in the Dáil was wholly against uniform opening throughout the State. I suppose the explantion of that is that the abuses which arise from the bona fide traffic are not felt uniformly throughout the State but seen and noted only in particular areas. This provision in the Bill is not exactly my own idea, but I consider it a distinct improvement on the existing prohibition whereby if a man once covers the statutory distance he can drink from 1 p.m. until the small hours of the next morning. I am not sure whether his statutory concession ends at midnight or not, but from the Act of 1924 it seems to me he can drink the round of the clock. In the Act of 1924 we took out from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., and it is now proposed to restrict it to six hours in the non-summer time, that is, from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., and in the summer time from one to eight or two to nine. I do not think many people will cavil at that.
It seems a proper and reasonable thing to take a substantial slice off the end of the day as in 1924 we took six hours off the early part of the day. I think seven or eight hours are quite sufficient to meet all the requirements of the so-called bona fide traveller. There was a proposal to double the distances. I put that to the Dáil without any great enthusiasm or conviction. It seems to me that to the user of the motor car or motor bicycle it is a small matter to tell him that he must travel six miles instead of three in the country or ten miles instead of five near the four cities. The effect of it would be to wipe out one set of vested interests with a stroke of the pen and create new ones. In so far as the change leaned against anyone it leaned against a man who is perhaps the most genuine traveller of the whole, the pedestrian who goes out for a walk from the town on Sundays, while it made no difference to the man who goes by motor cycle, car or bus. So I did not feel particularly aggrieved when the Dáil voted out the proposed changes in the distances. I do not think there is anything in it myself, and I think it would be simply wiping out, in a rather arbitrary fashion, one set of vested interests and creating new ones without achieving anything substantial from the point of view of temperance reform. That is how the matter of Sunday stands at the moment. I think perhaps the time will come when, with the extension of motor traffic through the country, many more people than at present seem inclined to support the proposal will support the abolition of the bona fide traffic in exchange for some uniform limited opening throughout the State. But for the moment these proposals in the Bill hold the field.
There will be points of detail that can be gone into on another occasion. A certain amount has been said and written on the modification this Bill underwent as between its introduction in and its final passage through the Dáil. As a matter of fact, these alterations were quite slight matters, the most substantial ones being reduction and the break in the day from two hours to one hour. It is unnecessary to stress that the important thing was to get a break to get the publichouses cleared, and it was the fact of their clearance rather than the length of the break that really mattered. I am quite satisfied to have established, for the first time in legislation here, the principle of some break in the day, and I hope, after some reduction has taken place in the total number of licences in the country, and after some greater measure of prosperity is felt among the survivors, that someone will propose to the Oireachtas an extension of that principle over a wider area than is covered by the proposal in the Bill.