Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 17 Jan 1935

Vol. 19 No. 12

Wexford Harbour Improvement Bill. - Irish Nationality and Citizenship Bill, 1934—Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister for External Affairs (the President)

This Bill has been very fully explained in Dáil Eireann. An official memorandum explaining its provisions in general terms was published in the Press. For members of the Seanad who have followed the deliberations in the Dáil and for those who, possibly, have read the memorandum, it would be unnecessary for me to enter into any detail on the terms of the Bill. There may, however, be Senators who have not had an opportunity of doing that and perhaps it would be better for me to explain the general provisions of the Bill. The structure of the Bill is as follows. Section 2 deals with the classes that are to be regarded as natural-born citizens. We have a number of sections following on that, dealing with the acquisition and loss of citizenship by certificates of naturalisation and by their revocation. After that we have sections dealing with the effect of marriage. There are sections dealing with the facilities which are to be granted to the spouse of a party who is an Irish citizen on marriage. Then we have the section dealing with mutual citizenship rights and, finally, we have the section on repeals. Sandwiched in various parts you have provisions which might be classed generally as miscellaneous.

That is the structure of the Bill and we took as the starting point the group of persons who became citizens under Article 3. You will find that Article 3, in a sense, and the date of the coming of the Constitution, form certain data from which the Bill proceeds. I would remind the Seanad that Article 3 of the Constitution was of a restricted type. It purported to incorporate a certain class of people as citizens of the State on a certain day. The people who were entitled to be regarded as citizens after the 6th December, 1922, were those who could claim, in the first instance, domicile in this country—domicile was essential. Those who were domiciled in the country on that day and persons either of whose parents was born in the country or persons who had been seven years ordinarily resident in the country before that date were to be classed as citizens of the State. You will note at once that there was the restriction of domicile and people who were born in this country or whose parents were born in this country and who did not happen to be domiciled here were not included in the class of citizens under Article 3.

There was a further limitation under Article 3 which confined the effect of the Article to the limits of the jurisdiction of Saorstát Eireann, so that it could be in a sense regarded as definitely localised in its operation. Now we propose in a Bill which has been introduced, a Constitution Amendment Bill, to delete that local limitation and to make Article 3 operate universally.

The next thing is to extend, where necessary, Article 3 by taking cognisance of the class of persons who were either born in this country or either of whose parents was born in this country and who were not domiciled here. That comes under sub-section (4) of Section 4 of the Bill. It is a provision for dealing with that class of persons by making it easy to give them certificates of naturalisation. We have been reconsidering that, and I propose to introduce at a later stage a slight amendment of that provision which will take it out of the naturalisation sections and put it into the natural born sections. As regards people who were born in this country, or either of whose parents was born in this country and who did not happen to be domiciled here at the critical date, the 6th December, 1922, we propose, with certain restrictions which will be explained to the House when Senators have the proposal completely before them, that they shall be deemed natural born citizens either on their return here or on registration abroad. However, that is not in the Bill as it is before you, but it is a provision that we propose to insert. I mention it now because I am trying to lead Senators along from Article 3, which envisages a certain set of conditions, to the amendment of Article 3 as affected by this Bill and by the other Bill in the Dáil.

Now, having dealt with those classes of persons who may be entitled to be regarded as citizens before the 6th December, 1922, we go on to consider those who were born after that date: who were born in this country, or who were born of a father who is a citizen. We have laid it down as a principle, or rather I should say we are acting on the principle that those who were born on our soil, no matter what their parentage, should be regarded as natural born citizens of our State. Those then who were born in this country after the 6th December, 1922, will henceforth be regarded as natural born citizens of the State: that is those born within our own territory. In addition to them, we have those who may be born on an Irish ship and, finally, we have those who were born outside our territory of a father who was a citizen. The children of such a father will be natural born citizens, when this Act is passed, automatically, if the father was a citizen in virtue of Article 3 of the Constitution. If the father was a citizen who was himself born in our territory, or if he was naturalised, then his child also becomes automatically a citizen, but if a father was not born in this country, the child has to be registered in a special book kept in those countries where we have Legations or High Commissioners, or if born in countries where we have not such Legations, then in a book which is to be kept in the Department of External Affairs. One of these books is referred to in the Bill as "The Foreign Births Entry Book," and the other one that is to be kept at headquarters, is called "The Foreign Births Register."

I think that, in the main, covers the sections dealing with natural born citizens. As I have indicated it is going to be amended somewhat. There are a few minor provisions with regard to the necessity for a child, on his becoming a citizen on registration abroad, and on attaining the age of majority, to make a declaration of retention of citizenship. There are also two minor provisions in sub-section (4) of Section 2, paragraphs (a) and (b), dealing with the cases of children of diplomatic and consular representatives that may be born here, but I do not think I need deal with that until we come to the Committee Stage.

The next series of sections has to deal with the issue of certificates of naturalisation. The principle running through these is that the Minister for Justice may, at his discretion, grant certificates of naturalisation to applicants who fulfil certain conditions. Senators will note that the person to decide is the Minister for Justice. We had a discussion on that in the Dáil, as to whether this should not be operated by the Courts rather than by the Minister. The Government attitude is that it is advisable that it should be operated by the Minister—by the executive authority as is done in a number of other countries. The Minister in prescribing forms, and so on, is entitled to ask for such information as he may deem necessary in order to satisfy himself that a certificate should be given to an applicant. There are certain conditions laid down which must be satisfied before the Minister is entitled to grant a certificate. The person, for instance, must be of good character; he must have resided continuously in Saorstát Eireann for a total period of five years: one year immediately before the application is sent in and for a further period of four years in the previous eight—that is a period of five years within nine years previous to the making of the application. The applicant must intend to reside in this country, and have his ordinary residence here. As I indicated he must apply on the prescribed form. There is a special provision here to enable the Minister to dispense in certain cases with the residence qualification.

In the case of a widow, it will be seen in the marriage provision that an Irish woman marrying an alien and proposing to reside outside the country will, if she has not indicated her desire to remain a citizen, forfeit her citizenship within a certain time, the time being a year, if she has, by the law of some other country, come to be deemed to be a citizen of that country, and acquires the nationality of another country on her marriage to an alien. One of the principles running through the Bill is that we are anxious to implement, as far as we can, the general intention indicated at the Hague Convention dealing with conflicting nationality laws, so that each person, as far as our law can effect it, shall belong to one State, and in particular shall not be Stateless. In the case of a woman, if that should result in forfeiture of citizenship by anyone who indicated an intention or desire to retain citizenship, it shall not operate, if the woman should thereby become Stateless. We have also a provision to dispense in certain other cases with residence qualification. In the case I mentioned about women, if a widow returns to this country she shall be deemed to have resumed her citizenship. The other special cases where residence qualification is dispensed with are those in which the Executive Council is satisfied that the person in question, or the father or grandfather of such person, has rendered distinguished services to the country. In Section 6 there is a provision for the issue of a certificate of citizenship to remove doubts. In all probability we shall have some detailed discussion on that on the Committee Stage.

There is an important provision in Section 7 for the issue of a certificate of naturalisation to a minor. The House will note that there is a special provision at the top of page 6 of the Bill pointing out that it is to be issued only on the application of the parent. That also has special reference to a person of Irish descent or of Irish association. I have in the main indicated the cases in which the certificate of naturalisation may be issued. We have a section dealing with the revocation of such certificate. It is hardly necessary to deal in detail at this stage with the cases where a certificate may be revoked, if it is wrongfully obtained; if the person ceases residence for a considerable period of time, or to have any material associations with the country. We come then to Section 15 dealing with marriage provisions. Marriage by itself does not affect citizenship but we desire to make it easy for members of one family to be citizens of the same State, of the same legal community. We make it possible in the first case for an alien coming here and marrying an Irish woman, or an alien woman coming and residing here and marrying an Irishman rapidly to secure membership of our legal community. On the other hand, for an Irish spouse marrying an alien residing abroad, the Irish spouse can remain Irish by a positive act indicating that desire. If no such desire is indicated there is a provision for loss of Irish nationality. We make the exception which I indicated, that it does not operate so as to render the person Stateless. There are some following provisions dealing with the effect of death or a change of citizenship on one of the married couple. These are consequential on the working out of the general principles incorporated in the marriage provisions.

The next important set of provisions are those dealing with mutual citizenship rights between Saorstát Eireann and other countries, beginning at Section 23. The idea there is that if our State concludes a convention with another State, by means of which our citizens are given rights in that other State, which are normally confined to its citizens, in return we agree to give corresponding rights in our country to the citizens of that other State. This Bill will automatically give effect to that once a convention is made, so that these reciprocal rights shall be recognised in our country with certain important exceptions. Secondly, where by the law of a country, without an express convention dealing with the matter, our citizens enjoy certain privileges and rights normally-confined to the citizens of that country, we shall give to the citizens of such country similar rights here. But in order to give effect to that an order of the Executive Council setting forth the rights and privileges to be enjoyed has to be made. Of course, any such order can be revoked when the circumstances which necessitated the issue of the order shall disappear. There are certain safeguards, and these are set forth in Section 23, beginning at sub-section (5) which sets forth three cases to which that right shall not extend; first of all in (a), where the Oireachtas by Act conferred certain privileges on a certain group or class, then, unless the citizens of the foreign State enjoy reciprocal rights here, the fact that they are citizens shall not operate to include them in that class, as against the provisions of the special Act of the Oireachtas.

There is a provision here also by which in the case of a woman, if she has not become a citizen, she may not by virtue of the fact that she may be deemed to be a citizen of another country through marriage with one of our nationals, require us to give her these reciprocal rights. There is also a special provision which provides that nothing in the section shall operate

to entitle any person to become or be the owner of a ship or of a share in a ship registered in Saorstát Eireann and having the status of a ship registered under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, unless such person is a citizen of a country between which and Saorstát Eireann or between the Government of which and the Government of Saorstát Eireann a convention exists and is in force by virtue of which citizens of such country are entitled to own any such ship or a share in any such ship as aforesaid.

There is a convention in existence by which certain privileges are accorded to Irish ships on certain conditions, and these conditions would preclude the giving to any such class as this general class, a class of persons or citizens of the State who were not included in the convention of reciprocal rights. With these exceptions, then, the general provision is that citizens here of other countries may be accorded rights similar to the rights which our citizens enjoy in these countries.

Finally, we have Section 30 which deals with repeals. The purpose here is to end the position in which, by Irish law, a person born here could be regarded as a British subject. If this Bill becomes law, Section 30 is designed to operate to end the position in which, by Irish law, an Irish-born person shall be deemed a British subject. The sub-section of the section is designed to deal with the operation of the common law in regard to British nationality so far as it is, either wholly or in part, deemed to be in force here. Senators will note that the words here are "in so far as it may be deemed to be operative" and so on, in all this section. That is because we did not find it necessary to decide a controversy on that particular matter. It is the right of the Legislature to resolve any legal doubts there may be and whatever little merit there might be on one side of the controversy, once we have the opportunity and know what is the difference of opinion on the matter, no matter what our opinion might be as to the weight of the opinion on either side, we can use our privilege here as a Legislature to end the dispute and to end the doubt. Section 30 is designed to do that and I think it is sufficiently explicit to do it.

The other sections of the Bill are of a more or less formal character with regard to fees, forms, entry books and so on, and I do not think it is necessary at this stage to bring these matters before the Seanad. I have not dealt with the necessity for this Bill, with its urgency or anything of that kind. I think that will be obvious to the members of the Seanad without any speech on the matter, even if they have not read the discussions in the Dáil. It is clearly right that the class of persons who could be regarded as our citizens should be as clearly defined as possible, both for internal affairs, municipal law, and also because of our international relations. If we are to have treaties with other countries and these treaties refer to rights of our citizens, it is obvious that whether a patricular person is or is not a citizen should be readily ascertainable. I think then that, at this stage, it is not necessary for me to say any more, except to commend it to the Seanad as a Bill which is already long over-due.

Dr. Gogarty

Might I ask where the President gets powers under this Section 30 to decide the citizenship of Irish people at the expense of the Commonwealth? This is a section of pure bluff, a fraudulent section. He has not got any powers to deprive us of our participation in that heritage. Nobody has the power in this country in its present condition to take away the common citizenship of these citizens with the 3,000,000 Irishmen in England and in the other parts of the Empire. I will give you an example of the anomalous position to which this country has been reduced. New Zealand put a tax lately on Jameson's whisky of 4/6 per gallon which excluded that commodity, made in Ireland, from New Zealand, because they said we were not in the Commonwealth by our own wish. When they wrote to the Department of Industry and Commerce the Department did not say that we were not a Republic nor did it affirm that we were still in the Commonwealth, so I call this section a bluff section. It may be a pious wish of the President and it may be more of his shadow-sparring which has ended in the pact we got lately— the coal and scuttle pact. At any rate the Government scuttled from its front line in the economic war. The professional animosity of the Government, instanced in this Bill, accounts for the sharpness of the bargain Great Britain drove. There is no power to take away the people's citizenship until this country becomes definitely separated once and for all from the Commonwealth and civilisation. It is not in that position but in an anomalous position which is costing the country its prosperity.

It is not a very wise or advisable thing for this country to separate itself from the traditions of the oldest Parliament in the world and from the example of justice, dignity and toleration which has emanated from that Parliament. I think that no country in the world, going through its present transitional state, is less able to afford separation from the reign of law that obtains over the whole Commonwealth and that is the reason I resent the petty trickery of Section 30. There are no powers in this country to deprive a citizen of his citizenship and there is no use pretending there is. It may be an excellent party pretence but it is no good, and, as I say, the result comes hard and heavy on us in the boomerang battle with Great Britain in which we get all the blows. That is only one of the reasons which explains the rather close bargain which has lately been made by John Bull with us—our staged animosity to him. It is a serious thing to nourish or to cherish your national life on hatred of another country. You cannot hate England wholly without hating humanity, fair play, and dignity. We severely suffer in our dignity by pretences such as Section 30.

Mr. Brown

This is an absolutely necessary Bill and, therefore, it is a welcome Bill. It is certainly welcome to me in so far as it is confined to a definition of our own citizenship and to all the means of acquiring it, preserving it and regaining it which are in the Bill. I think all those provisions are good and satisfactory. I know that there are different views in different countries and with different people as to whether the right to be a native-born citizen of this country should be derived only through the father, where the child is born abroad, or whether it ought not to extend to the mother, having been a natural-born citizen of this country. I think that in adopting the theory that it should only come through the father our Government have been wise. On the whole, I think the nations that have most experience of this question have done so. It is so in England. It is so in at least three of the chief countries of the Commonwealth, namely, Canada, Australia and South Africa.

There is one portion of the Bill that gives me peculiar pleasure and that is its reference to the married woman. In my own experience, while I was still practising at the Bar, I have known cases of great hardship where a married woman lost her citizenship of origin and, after her husband's death, was not able to reacquire citizenship in this country. As the President has told us, the matter has been discussed at the Hague. The question is dealt with in Chapter III of the International Convention on certain questions relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws, which was signed at the Hague on the 12th April, 1930. This country was a signatory to that Convention, and the Government, in the present Bill, have done all they can and they certainly will have given to married women the opportunity of not being absolutely denationalised. My only objection to this part of the Bill is that it mixes the question of nationality and citizenship. I think that that is likely to lead to confusion, but there it is.

If this Bill had been confined to the subject of our own Free State citizenship, even mixed with the question of nationality, I should not have another word to say. But unfortunately it deals in Section 30 with the subject of the status of "British subject" as now applicable to this country; and although admittedly it cannot affect that status as applied to this country outside its own borders, it purports to put an end to it as law inside the Irish Free State; and the President went so far as to say in the Dáil that, once Section 30 became law, it would be "an impertinence" for anyone, even outside the Free State, to say that the status of British subject still applied to the citizens of this country.

Now, with great respect to the President, I think that his desire to get rid of the status of British subject, and his assumption that he can do so even in this country, are due to a misconception of the nature of that status as applied to the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations at the present time, and a misconception of the power of any one member of the Commonwealth to discard that status without the consent of all the other members of the Commonwealth.

These are matters of vital importance, and, as they involve questions of Constitutional Law and depend on the accurate statement of principles and accurate quotations from statutes and public documents, I have committed what I want to say to writing, and trust that the House will grant me the indulgence of allowing me to follow closely what I have written.

Prior to the formation of the British Commonwealth of Nations, the status of "British subject" described the direct relationship of the citizen of each of the Dominions to the King as King of the United Kingdom. It was a relationship founded on direct personal allegiance, and it carried with it all the mutual rights and duties of the Sovereign and the subject. After the formation of the British Commonwealth of Nations, the status of "British subject" became a different one. It was still founded on allegiance to the King, but not to the King of Great Britain as such, but to the King of Great Britain as sovereign head of the community of nations comprising the Commonwealth. The distinction is a real one, and this new form of allegiance is the bond of the free association of the members of the Commonwealth, and it is the only bond.

In speaking on the Second Reading of this Bill in the Dáil, the President stated that any benefits which came to us as British subjects came, not from allegiance, but from "the fact of association" and from nothing else. With great respect again, that is not so. What creates the association? For it is not in the air! The answer is given by the adoption by the Imperial Conference of 1926 of the declaration, to which we were a party, that

"Great Britain and the Dominions are autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, through united by a common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations."

And the same clear language is used in the Preamble of the Statute of Westminster, 1931, passed at our request and with our consent. It says that

"Inasmuch as the Crown is the symbol of the free association of the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations and as they are united by a common allegiance to the Crown."

What language could be plainer than that? And the test of the matter is this: suppose some other British colony desired dominion status and entrance as a member to the British Commonwealth of Nations, could it get such entrance except on accepting the common allegiance to the Crown? And has any member of the Commonwealth the right to stay there, if it denies that this allegiance is what keeps it there?

Now this new common allegiance to the King of the United Kingdom as the sovereign head of the British Commonwealth of Nations involves a common status, which is still called "British subject", but which differs from the status of "British subject" when applied to the citizens of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The difference would seem to be this: the citizen of the United Kingdom as a British subject not only owes allegiance to the King as King of the United Kingdom, but is also bound to perform all the obligations arising from his allegiance to his own King, and to observe all the laws of his own country. The citizens of each of the other members of the British Commonwealth of Nations owe allegiance to the King in his capacity as sovereign head of the Commonwealth and in no other capacity. They have no other obligations to the King, except allegiance, and they are not bound, while outside the United Kingdom, to obey any law of the Parliament of Great Britain. There is surely nothing derogatory to the dignity of any of the Dominions in this common status of British subject; and it carries with it, not only the right to appeal as a British subject for protection all over the world, but also to claim in the United Kingdom the rights and privileges which are open to British subjects coming from the Dominions.

The only other matter to which I wish to refer is the right which this Bill seeks to exercise, as a single member of the British Commonwealth, to discard the common status of British subject even within its own borders. I have considered this question with the very greatest care, and I have formed the opinion that there is no such right. There is a declaration in the Preamble of the Statute of Westminster which is as follows:—

"And whereas it is meet and proper to set out by way of preamble to this Act that, inasmuch as the Crown is the symbol of the free association of the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and as they are united by a common allegiance to the Crown, it would be in accord with the established constitutional position of all the members of the Commonwealth in relation to one another that any alteration in the law touching the Succession to the Throne or the Royal Styles and Titles shall hereafter require the assent as well of the Parliaments of all the Dominions as of the Parliament of the United Kingdom."

This recital in the Statute of Westminster is not an enactment of law. No preamble in a statute has that effect. But it is a solemn statement of the fact of the agreed constitutional position of all the members of the Commonwealth with reference to the Crown, and no court could hold that it is not binding on each member-State of the Commonwealth so long as that State remains in the Commonwealth. And the agreement embodied in this solemn statement of fact has been accepted as a "declaration solemnly made"— those are his words—and therefore binding, by the President himself in speaking on the Second Stage of the Constitution (Removal of Oath) Bill in this House. He then pointed out that two common forms, of which the oath was not one, were enshrined in this preamble, and therefore could not be altered unilaterally. In his own words, one of these common forms was "that there should be no tampering with the succession to the Crown.... The other question was that there should be no change in the Royal Style and Titles" (Seanad Debates, Vol. XV, cols. 933 and 934).

In my opinion it follows from this declaration in the preamble that no change can be made in the common status of British subject, and a fortiori that it cannot be discarded, by the legislature of a single member of the Commonwealth. When it has been agreed, as a matter of their common constitutional position, by all the members of the Commonwealth that no change in the succession to the Crown shall be made without the assent of the Parliaments of all the other members of the Commonwealth, it follows as an inference of law that no change can be made in the common status of British subject, which is the result of the common allegiance to the common Crown, without the same assent of all the Parliaments of the Commonwealth.

There is an analogy in law which makes this more easily understood. I stated once before in this House that the British Commonwealth of Nations was in the nature of a legal Partnership at Will—a partnership in which all the partners had absolutely equal rights, into which they had entered freely, and from which they had the right to retire. But, during the existence of the partnership, none of the partners can take a step which runs counter to a vital condition in the case of the British Commonwealth of Nations being the common status of British subject founded on the common allegiance to the Crown, the thing that binds the partnership together.

If I am right in this as a conclusion of Constitutional Law, then Section 30 of this Bill, in so far as it seeks to put an end to the status of British subject as applicable to the Irish Free State, is inoperative not only in the United Kingdom and in the other Dominions, but also within the Irish Free State itself.

A question will arise at the Committee Stage as to whether those of us who object, as I do in law, to the section should move an amendment to delete it. Personally, I do not think we should. It would only lead to discussion which is not helpful to the kindly feeling which ought to exist between this country and its nearest neighbour.

Mr. Milroy

This Bill is sponsored by the President of the Executive Council. There are several other grounds for criticism of the measure. As introduced into the Dáil, as I think Senator Brown has indicated, the Bill was one to which no very great exception would probably have been taken when it reached the Seanad. Criticism would probably have ranged around minor details and, as the President has indicated, in his explanatory remarks here to-day, a measure on some such lines was foreshadowed in Article 3 of the Constitution. However, Sir, the Bill with which we are confronted to-day is not the Bill which was introduced into the Dáil. The measure has emerged from the other House materially altered from its original character. Amendments were grafted on it in Committee in the Dáil which I think will call for searching examination, not only on such points as those from which it has been viewed by Senator Brown but also from other angles. The President may challenge the accuracy of that allegation. I think he will find it very difficult to reconcile a denial of that allegation with the very concrete legal arguments which Senator Brown has adduced.

Not only the nature of these amendments to which I refer, but also the procedure through which this Bill assumed its final form in the Dáil, render the character of this Bill, as it comes to us, I think, the most eloquent, evidence we have yet had of the necessity, the vital necessity, for a Second House in the Oireachtas. Those who followed the discussion on the Bill through its different stages in the Dáil must have been very forcibly struck by —I wish to make no reflection upon the procedure of that House; it is not for this House to indulge in that kind of comment—but it did seem to me that a unique type of procedure was adopted there which should exercise our interest. I have read with the closest attention and scrutiny this Bill, the amendments tabled to it and the debates in the Dáil. Especially, I read with special interest the speech of the President on the Final Stage of the Bill. In my opinion that was the speech which should have been delivered on the Second Reading of this Bill in the Dáil, but that, I can see, was not practical because the matter which called for the most important declarations of the President in that final speech was not in the Bill as introduced and, therefore, could not undergo that review and analysis of principle and implication from either sponsor or critic of the Bill which is usual on the Second Stage. The consequence was, it seems to me, that an element bordering on what I might call topsy-turvydom pervaded the discussions and those sections, or that section, which vitally altered the whole character of the Bill, did not receive that adequate degree of examination which it merited.

We, in this House, are not in that position. We are not confronted with any such dilemma as I have indicated, which may have confronted Deputies. We have the whole Bill now before us and whether we can secure any revision or amendment, at least I hope that it will at least secure adequate, full and searching examination. Searching for some explanation of certain amendments to which I have alluded, I can only conclude that they came about something in this wise: that after the Second Reading of the measure the President, surveying the framework of the Bill, came to the conclusion that it was a very hum-drum, prosaic piece of legislation, that it lacked something in the way of spectacularity. With his instinct for the melodramatic, he determined to remedy that deficiency and so he clapped on two amendments in Committee which seem to me to be the equivalents of the comic and tragic masks which frequently decorate the dramatic stage. Section 5 I shall call the comic mask and Section 30 the tragic mask. I shall have more to say regarding these later.

It is interesting to trace the origin and genesis of this Bill. This Bill is the direct offspring of the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act, 1914. Anyone who has examined the two Bills must recognise that not only is this Bill modelled on the British Act, but that whole chunks of the phraseology of the British Act have been embodied in the Bill. I make no adverse comment on that, but surely, when we are repudiating all association with the Acts of this criminal mother of Parliaments, we ought to try to secure a native basis for our statutes. While I think the draftsmen of this Bill were very wise in adopting the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act as their model, I do think that it is regrettable that in two or three provisions of the Bill they did not adhere more closely to their model. I had prepared a considerable amount of commentary upon several of the provisions of the Bill but in order to save time and to expedite my coming to the main parts I want to discuss, I think I shall draw attention very briefly to certain sections which I think could with advantage be amended and reserve full criticism for the Committee Stage. In Section 1 we have a definition of "citizen" which, I think, lacks the clarity of the definition in the equivalent section of the British Act. I think the definition in our Bill is extremely and bewilderingly hazy. Again, though in this Bill we are discussing to-day, the term "alien" is mentioned a number of times, there is no definition in the Bill of what an "alien" is. I think that it is essential that that omission should be rectified. Section 4 refers to the declaration of acceptance of citizenship which an applicant for naturalisation will take but there is no indication in the Bill of the nature or the terms of that declaration. I think that that should be embodied in a schedule to the Bill. I now come to Section 5, the section to which I referred as the comic mask. I have noticed that one of our humorous papers in Dublin has already discovered its mirth-provoking potentialities. It might be pertinent to examine these possibilities, which are so provokingly inviting, but I want to deal with these matters seriously. Perhaps I should deal in some detail with this question in order that the President may be convinced of the desirability of meeting my criticism on the Committee Stage. The President, referring to this section on Committee Stage in the Dáil, said:

"In cases where an applicant for naturalisation is himself a person who has rendered, in the opinion of the Executive Council, or, if a son or grandson of such a person applies for naturalisation, is it not right that the Executive Council—it is not merely the Minister in this case— should be in a position to grant that naturalisation without insisting on the conditions imposed elsewhere."

The President will realise that Section 5, as it appears in the Bill, has a much wider scope. If the Bill was simply intended to have that limited application, it should be drafted so as to confine its operations to such contingencies. I admit that sub-section (2) of that section would seem to bear out the President's contention, but it seems clear, from my reading of sub-section (1), as a layman, that the Executive Council could initiate the conferring of a certificate of naturalisation on a person without even a request from the person concerned. I think that that is an improper procedure and likely to lead to abuse. I leave that section for the present. I shall deal with it at greater length on Committee Stage.

Section 10 deals with the power of the Minister to revoke certificates of naturalisation. Here, again, I think that the British Act could have been followed with greater advantage. The President referred to that in his opening remarks to-day. I should like members of the House to refer to subsections (3), (4) and (5) of Section 7 of the British Act before the Bill comes up in Committee. I suggest that the procedure under the British Act by which the Minister is empowered to refer under certain circumstances, the question of revocation to a court of law is an improvement upon the procedure indicated by the President. Section 23 deals with the conferring of reciprocal privileges on the citizens of other countries. I regard that as so much legislative window-dressing. I doubt very much if the President himself takes it seriously. However, we can deal with that matter later.

Now, I come to the pith and marrow of the whole Bill—Section 30, which is the most controversial section. I should like to say, by way of preface to my observations on this section, that I wish to approach the issues it raises in no carping or acrimonious spirit. I do not know if there is any section or member of this House who will assent to what I am going to say now, because I have consulted nobody on the matter. I do think that there is something which someone in this State will have to say some day—and the sooner the better. I am going to try to say it now. The time has come, in my opinion, to face such matters as are involved in this section without heat or personalities. It cannot be gainsaid that this section raises in a very definite and acute manner the relations between Saorstát Eireann and the Commonwealth of Nations. In discussing that question, certain facts have got to be taken cognisance of. One of these facts is that the present Government and their supporters take up a certain attitude towards the Commonwealth and we, who sit on the opposite benches, take up a line towards that association which is substantially at variance with that of the Government Party. I have been exercising my mind for a considerable time on this question of whether or not it is possible to find some common denominator in regard to these matters upon which not only parties in this country can find common ground but upon which there can be found common ground between the Saorstát and the Commonwealth. My examination of all that is involved in this matter has forced me to the conclusion that, unless we are to reconcile ourselves to permanent hostility of relations with our neighbours across the Irish Sea and to inevitable bankruptcy and chaos at home, such a line of common agreement or common ground will have to be found.

I have referred to this section as corresponding to the tragic mask of drama, and it is without any partisan spirit that I say it indicates the tragedy of opportunity bungled, the tragedy of a bleak, sterile egoism deluding itself that it is sublime patriotism, of which, in fact, it is the complete negation, the tragedy of wantonly creating fresh sources of inter-State irritation and friction, and new obstacles to the reunification of Ireland. It reveals an attitude of mind which ignores several matters in regard to our relations with the Commonwealth which must be taken cognisance of if those relations are not to become more muddled and embittered in the near future.

On the 20th of last month a statement was issued by the Government Information Bureau explanatory of this Bill. The following citation from that statement is pertinent to this section:—

"The authority of the Oireachtas to repeal the British nationality law in so far as it may be part of the law of Saorstát Eireann is beyond question. The authority of the Oireachtas in this regard is recognised by the Statute of Westminster, and exists apart from that statute. It is founded in the Constitution itself. The repeal, moreover, infringes no existing commitment and conflicts with no theory of association with any other State which could be accepted by the Parliament or the people of this country."

It would be well for us to ascertain how far exactly the statement is accurate that this section infringes no existing commitment and conflicts with no theory of association with any other State which could be accepted by the Parliament or the people of this country. Sub-section (2) of this section says:—

"The common law relating to British nationality, if and so far as it is or ever was either wholly or in part, in force in Saorstát Eireann, shall cease to have effect."

That sub-section was inserted in Committee in the Dáil, and it forms, I take it, the machinery by which the President proposes to get rid of what is termed "common status" in the Saorstát in regard to the Commonwealth. I think I do not misinterpret the President's statement when I take it that he regards common status and common citizenship as synonymous terms.

The President

I do not think I used such words in any stage of the Bill.

Mr. Milroy

What words?

The President

The words "common status."

Mr. Milroy

I do not wish for a moment to misinterpret the President, but, speaking on this Bill on the 18th December, the President made a lengthy reference to "common citizenship" and "common status" from which I drew the inference that he regarded them as interchangeable terms. He said:—

"We are not going to accept a common citizenship. The idea of common citizenship is repugnant to our people, because by ‘common citizenship' they interpret ‘common nationality.'"

Later on we come to the question of common status, and he said there never has been an acceptance of what the British would call the legal basis of that common status, and so on. There are several other paragraphs on similar lines. He seemed to me to identify the two things as synonymous. I may be wrong, and if so I hope that the President, when he replies to my criticisms, will make it clear where he wishes the distinction to be made. Therefore I take it that when he said we are not going to accept common citizenship, he was repudiating common citizenship, and that he was, also, repudiating the idea of common status. If that is so we must see what implications are carried into the statement of the Information Bureau of the Department, that this section "infringes no existing commitment and conflicts with no theory of association with any other State which could be accepted by the Parliament of the people of this country."

The Parliament of this State in July of 1931 approved the report of the Imperial Conference of 1930. Dáil Eireann approved it on the 17th July, 1931, and Seanad Eireann approved it on July 23rd, 1931.

The following is an extract from that Report in reference to matters which are acutely relevant to the section of the Bill I am at the moment dealing with.

"That, if any changes are desired in the existing requirements for the common status, provision should be made for the maintenance of the common status, and the changes should only be introduced (in accordance with present practice) after consultation and agreement among the several Members of the Commonwealth.

"That it is for each member of the Commonwealth to define for itself its own nationals, but that so far as possible, those nationals should be persons possessing the common status, though it is recognised that local conditions or other special circumstances may, from time to time, necessitate divergence from this general principle.

"That the possession of the common status in virtue of the law for the time being in force in any part of the Commonwealth should carry with it the recognition of that status by the law of every part of the Commonwealth."

That is a commitment entered into by the Government of this State, approved by the Parliament of this State, and I take it binding upon the people of this State until there is some formal and authoritative act of its nullification by the Parliament of this State. Will the President, or any spokesman from the Government Benches contend that this section of the Bill does not infringe this existing commitment? To my mind it is a flagrant violation of this commitment, unless there has been in accordance with the provisions of the first paragraph I quoted "consultation and agreement among the several members of the Commonwealth" prior to the tabling of the amendment to this section in the Dáil. I think there is no doubt whatever that no such consultation was engaged in and no such agreement arrived at.

Now, Sir, there is another point to which I should like to refer. Is it the attitude of the Government or President that one Government in this State has no responsibility for the commitments of its predecessor? Is it the position that one Government can come in and ignore or repudiate the commitments of its predecessors in office while those commitments are amongst the conventions or statutes or engagements that the State has complied with? If that is so, what becomes of the theory of the continuity of government when there is a change of parties in office; and, if that idea was to prevail—that one of the functions of a Government is to ignore or repudiate the legitimate commitments of its predecessors—what is the possibility of having any degree of permanence of inter-State relations or arrangements? And yet, so far as I can read anything into the Bill, that is the theory behind that sub-section.

Now I come to a matter with which the President is very intimately acquainted. This repudiation of the idea of common status seems to be a departure from a certain line of policy of our President in a bygone day. I should like to draw the attention of the House to a very relevant extract from a document which bears the authority of the President himself. In 1921 he issued his well-known Alternative to the Treaty, which was later popularly known as "Document No. 2." I want to quote that part of this document which outlines the form of association which he then proposed. It is headed "Terms of Association," and runs to six paragraphs, which read as follows:

"That for purposes of common concern, Ireland shall be associated with the States of the British Commonwealth, namely, the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa.

"That, when acting as an associate the rights, status and privileges of Ireland shall be in no respect less than those enjoyed by any of the component States of the British Commonwealth.

"That the matters of ‘common concern' shall include Defence, Peace and War, Political Treaties, and all matters now treated as of common concern amongst the States of the British Commonwealth, and that in these matters there shall be between Ireland and the States of the British Commonwealth, ‘such concerted action founded on consultation as the several Governments may determine.'"

The next paragraph is one to which I wish particularly to draw attention. It reads as follows:—

"That in virtue of this association of Ireland with the States of the British Commonwealth citizens of Ireland in any of these States shall not be subject to any disabilities which a citizen of one of the component States of the British Commonwealth would not be subject to, and reciprocally for citizens of these States in Ireland.

"That, for purpose of the Association, Ireland shall recognise His Britannic Majesty as head of the Association."

There is not much repudiation of common citizenship there. If that is not an insistent demand for common status, well it is a darned good imitation of such a demand. The Statute of Westminster was invoked, by the paragraph that I quoted from the Bureau of Information, as warrant for this section. Senator Brown has drawn attention to certain words in the preamble of that Statute. There are two members of this Seanad on the Government Benches who, I hope, will take deep note of those extracts that Senator Brown quoted. I refer to Senator Comyn and Senator Lynch, two eminent Republican King's Counsel. I believe there is a legal maxim, well known to those gentlemen: that you cannot approbate and reprobate at the same time. That, however, appears to be precisely what the Government are trying to do at the present time with regard to the Statute of Westminster. Through its Information Bureau it approbates the Statute of Westminster and through this section of the Bill it reprobates certain important parts of that Statute. I should like the President to give his opinion on this problem, seeing that through his Information Bureau he bases himself upon the Statute of Westminster. If he is not exactly basing himself on it—I do not want to exaggerate—he at least is invoking the authority of that Statute for this section. I should like him to be clear as to whether he regards this section as approbation or reprobation of this Statute of Westminster. To my mind, it is very clear. It is nothing else but "pizen-mad, pig-headed," reprobation of the Statute of Westminster.

I have said earlier that this section raises our relations with the Commonwealth in an acute and vital fashion. I believe that we will be shirking our responsibilities if we do not face up definitely and courageously to what is involved in this issue and if we do not deal fully with it. Until it is dealt with I believe it will continue to be a canker in our relations with Britain, and also in our internal life in the Saorstát, creating continual embittered feeling in the country and poisoning the wells of public life in this State. For my part, I regard the Commonwealth as an association within which there can be the fullest expression of the highest form of Irish National development and culture and independence, plus something else, something else which is not antagonistic to or inconsistent with our national sentiments, our national aspirations, or our national economic interests. I think I am not misrepresenting the President—otherwise, I have misread the whole implication of his observations on this and other Bills —when I say that his aim is to eliminate that plus from the Saorstát. It is gravely doubtful, in my opinion, that if he succeeds in eliminating that Commonwealth plus from the life of Saorstát Eireann, he will not leave Ireland minus something that is of great and precious value to this nation, namely, the possibility of the oppor tunity of reunification of the whole of this ancient nation. I suggest that it is good business and wise statesmanship to get the last ounce out of the Commonwealth, at least as long as we are a member of that Commonwealth.

The problem with which we are confronted to-day is not one without parallel or precedent. Possibly, some Senators may think that I am speaking at undue length, but this issue is a very serious one. It is an issue that, as I have repeatedly stated, we have got to face. We have to deal with it. The members of the Oireachtas are responsible to the nation and what we do to-day may have a vital bearing on whether the future of this State is to be one of good or ill fortune. Therefore, I think the Seanad will make allowance if I deal with this at what I consider to be adequate length. This problem that we are confronted with is not one without parallel or precedent. I believe that the main essentials for a solution are courage on the part of those who occupy positions of authority in this State, courage to face facts and not to shirk them; to be unawed by words and, last but not least, to have a real desire to find a way out of the difficulties, out of this impasse.

I am inviting the President to-day to tell us, and to tell the country, if he has any other alternative, any other policy than one of stagnating inertia. I am asking that in all seriousness. I think he has a responsibility to this country to make it clear what other methods he proposes to adopt or what is the policy by which he proposes to bring this country safely and happily out of the present distressing embroilment in which it has been involved. I have said that this situation is not without precedent. A problem of almost identical character confronted South Africa within recent years. Factors almost identical to those operating here were rampant in South Africa. The solution of that problem was secured within the past 12 months. It is interesting to know from one of those who took probably one of the chief parts in producing that solution what was the means by which that solution was effected. I will quote from a statement by General Smuts, delivered on 7th November of last year. He was referring to the difficult position by which South Africa had been confronted arising out of the disputes in which different parties were engaged. He said:—

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, the dispute has passed. This prolonged duel had turned largely on two issues: one was an issue of race that arose in the distant past. You can imagine that we were not very far off the Boer War. The chief combatants in that political fight were Generals in the Boer War: the Parties, to a large extent, still contain veterans of those old times, and it was to be expected that there would be a persistence of the old point of view. The bulk of my fellow Dutch South Africans followed General Hertzog. I was followed by the bulk of the English-speaking South Africans, with a very good addition of Dutch South Africans also. You can see how in those circumstances the political divisions would easily assume a racial character, where the two Parties represented to a marked degree the two races separately."

I will ask the House to note the close analogy there is between our position and that of South Africa.

"Well, that was one ground of difference and difficulty between the Parties. The other was constitutional. We had the old Republican issue in South Africa, over which the Boer War was fought, and it had persisted in spite of all efforts to get away from the old issues. It not only persisted but it grew, and there is no doubt that the Republican issue might take even a more dangerous form, the form of secession. Both of them, you can understand, are dangerous issues; and when we came together, General Hertzog and myself, three years ago, we had to consider this question: how to get rid of this constitutional issue. There never would be real understanding and co-operation unless this constitutional issue—our relations to the Commonwealth, the relations of South Africa to Great Britain and the other members of the Commonwealth—was cleared up."

It is exactly the position we are discussing here to-day, if you substitute the word "Ireland" for "South Africa."

"The Prime Minister and I discussed the question very carefully early this year, and we decided that the time had come to have an Act declaratory of our status in South Africa, so as to put once for all a stop to all misunderstanding, and to give the quietus to the inferiority complex, if I may say so, which was at the bottom of this issue. As long as South Africans, especially the Dutch people, were under the impression that they had some inferior status in the British Commonwealth, this feeling, this inferiority complex, would continue to poison public life and to lead to such divisions as we had seen. We therefore decided to grasp the nettle and to settle this issue. In consequence the Status Bill of this year was introduced. That Bill raised a good deal of discussion in South Africa, and, I think, a little even here. When carefully considered there was nothing in the Bill that was revolutionary, or anything that might be resented.

The Bill as it was drafted, as it was amended and finally emerged from the House, had the following character. Let me recapitulate it briefly for your information. It set out in a preamble the proceedings of the Imperial Conferences since 1926 dealing with this matter of constitutional relations in the Empire. It recited the Balfour Formula. You know the Balfour Formula: the Dominions being autonomous units in the British Empire—equal among each other and masters in their own house—all bound together by a common allegiance to the Throne in the Empire."

And so on. He went on to say:—

"I will not go to the length of saying, as has been actually said, that we were suffering from a Crown Colony complex. Undoubtedly they have not appreciated the enormous post-war changes that have taken place in our Group and they have never realised that the Balfour Formula and the Statute of Westminster had to be taken seriously: that this Commonwealth, this worldwide Group, was in future to consist not of one dominant State and a number of satellites round it, but a number of equal States bound together only by the common kingship and the common allegiance to the Crown."

They put that through. They brought peace to South Africa. I would like to ask, has that statement no meaning for us and has what it says no application to Saorstát Eireann? I think it has. I wonder has it any lesson for those at present in authority here? Have they any reaction to this instance of statesmanship rising above Party politics, facing stubborn facts, and handling these facts in a manner which has brought lasting peace to a great people? I think that the moral of what has happened in South Africa is one which we should not lightly dismiss from our minds: that it is one which those who exercise governmental authority here should weigh well and consider carefully, and see if it does not offer some clue to a way out of the difficulties with which they are confronted.

I have but one other matter to refer to. At the beginning of this year there appeared in one of the Dublin daily papers, the Irish Times, an article of more than ordinary interest and suggestiveness. According to the leading article of that journal on the same date the writer of it was one who had been a lifelong Republican in politics. I have no doubt that Senators are aware of the article to which I refer. It was signed “Pacificus.” I certainly looked upon it as a welcome break in the murky clouds that have been gathering over the Saorstát. I welcome it, not because I give general assent to its proposals—some of them, I think, were impracticable in a very deep degree—but because it indicates a disposition of mind to search for a way out of the economic and constitutional difficulties which beset this State and in which we are sinking deeper and deeper as time goes on. I want to ask has the Government any reaction to this new indication of a fresh outlook on our political horizons? If they have, surely this is an appropriate occasion, when we are discussing a matter which definitely raises the issue of our relations with Britain and the Commonwealth, for them to give expression to their reaction to this contribution to political thought to which I have referred. I invite the President to take this House and the country into his confidence and to state clearly and definitely if he has any view with regard to this article to which I refer.

Many years ago I remember I used to hear the President—he was not President then—very frequently pronounce this dictum from political platforms: a people must live before they live in a particular way. I want to ask him, does he think that we can now reverse the principle behind that dictum, and that this nation must live in a particular way and according to a particular formula before it is allowed to live at all?

What is the situation at the moment? We find the Saorstát a headless State with Party antagonisms growing in bitterness and rancour: we find the strained relations with our neighbouring State, Britain, growing in rigidity and inflicting losses on this State which may prove fatal to some of our main national interests if continued indefinitely. We find the barriers between Northern Ireland and ourselves growing harder and blacker and uglier. It is a moot question for Irish nationalists of all shades of thought to ask themselves whether or not these unhappy conditions to which I have referred are to remain for ever as the symbols of what this generation secured in its valiant efforts to bring freedom to this land? I believe, however, that that melancholy outlook should not and need not continue. It is in the hope that the President will endeavour to show, when he rises to reply, that he and his Government have some practical means by which they propose to terminate the present wretched and unhappy wrangle with Britain, or at least that they will not frustrate or obstruct such a solution if it comes from some quarter other than the Government, that I have referred to these matters. They are of vital, far-reaching, national importance, economically, constitutionally, internationally and otherwise, and it is because of that that I have dwelt at such length with them. I have tried to deal with them without partisanship, and with a desire to provoke in the minds of those who are listening to me as well as in the minds of those who may read what I have said, that it is time to finish with the spirit of the faction fight. I am not suggesting anything in the nature of sinking internal political views. As regards the attitude that I have taken during the past few years in regard to the constitutional position of Ireland I have not a shadow of regret. But when I see the country in the present position, and the position that seems to be impending, it is not for those who made this State and stood by it when it was gravely menaced, to stand idly by when it seems to be going down, not under an alien military force but under the operation of economic cases which should be within our own control but which we seem powerless to deal with. I ask the President to regard what I have said in the spirit which I have tried to convey and to deal with this matter in that spirit, and if so, I hope we may see a break in the clouds.

Padraic O Máille

Am ar bith ariamh a ndearnaidh Eireannach gníomh mór fearamhail ar son a thíre, chuir an gníomh sin bród agus ríméad ar gach deagh-Eireannach sa mbaile agus i gcéin. Ach, ar an dtaobh eile, uair ar bith ar fheach aon duine de bhunadh na tíre seo beagán a dhéanamh de féin, nó den tír, chuir sé náire agus ceann-fhaoi orainn uilig.

Nílimíd a chur isteach san mBille seo ar muinntir aon tír eile. Táimíd ag seasamh ar son an chirt. Nach chóir saoirse a bheith ag muinntir na hEireann chomh maith le múinntír Shasana? Sé mo bharúil na bhfuil aon nidh san mBille seo i gcoinne múinntir Shasana. Do labhair an Seanadóir Mac Giolla an Rí ar cad a thuit amach san Aifric Theas. Do chuir sé stád na tíre seo i gcompráid le stád Aifric Theas. Aon duine go bhfuil eolas aige ar stair agus ar seanchus, tá fios aige go bhfuil Eire ina naisiún leis na céadta bliana. Ní raibh san Aifric Theas ach dream a chuaidh amach as Mór-shiar na hEurope le deanaí agus do thóg seilbh na tíre on tsean-dream a bhí ann ar dtúis.

Aon duine a sheasaigheann ar son a thíre féin, táim cinnte go mbeidh meas ag múinntir a thire féin air agus go mbeidh meas ag an dream thiar air freisin.

Mr. Blythe

I take a different view from that of the previous speakers. The difficulties of the Government in dealing with a matter like that covered by this Bill are, to a large extent, really difficulties that they created for themselves by their own actions and declarations in the past. The fact that these difficulties are there, and are real difficulties, is very liable to result in opposition criticism of a detailed character, having precisely the opposite result from what was intended. I am inclined to think that the criticism and discussions in the Dáil did not result in an improvement in the Bill— rather the opposite. It seems to me that it would be very easy to make too much of this Bill. When it was introduced into the Dáil there was little in it, except what might be called almost a formal extension of the law in certain respects. Even yet I am not sure there is a great deal in it. It seems to me that the main criticism of the Bill is that in doing what they wanted to do the Government proceeded in an inadvisable way; in a way which might result in damage or loss to the country. It has, perhaps, resulted in some minor loss or damage to the country. As to what is sought to be done in the Bill, so far as I can understand it, taking all the sections together, it does not seem to me that there is anything that need be taken objection to. Personally, I am very anxious for a continuation of the association of the Saorstát with the British Commonwealth of Nations. I think, economically, that it will be to our advantage, and could be greatly to our advantage. It is to our advantage from the point of view of national safety and security. Moreover, looking at it from the point of view of the Saorstát, it is essential, if we are ever to have a reunion of the whole of this country in one State and under one flag.

While I do not think that continuance in the British Commonwealth of Nations involves, or should involve, anything in the nature of super-nationality, citizenship of the Saorstát must be the main thing. This Bill tries to provide for the practical needs of the situation by a sub-section in Section 23, and, as far as I can understand it, the intention in framing that section is that we shall say things are different, but that they shall continue to be the same. In actual practice, it is satisfactory that that section is in the Bill. It is meant to secure that our people shall have the rights and privileges that they have in Great Britain at the present time, and that we shall continue to give to the people of Great Britain coming over here exactly the same rights that they have at present. If the business were done by agreement, that would be quite as good a way as by what is called common citizenship, or what is called the status of a British subject. What we want in practical operation for the interests of our people is that when they go to England they can get employment, and be treated as the people in England are treated, and that in return when English people come here we shall give them the same treatment. If the matter were managed by agreement with Great Britain that would be entirely satisfactory. Of course it leaves out one thing, and that is—shall we say—the question of representation or facilities for protection in distant parts of the world. Obviously this State cannot afford to have representatives spread over the world in the way Great Britain has them, and as we are in the Commonwealth, it would be an advantage that our people should continue to have the assistance of these representatives. If that were done by arrangement then it would be just as well as if it were done on any other basis.

The only objection to what is sought to be done in the Bill is that there seems to be a basis of proceeding by unilateral action and, as far as some matters are concerned, we, more or less, rely on British generosity or on some desire of the British to do certain things in the interests of their own policy. As far as one can gather, I believe they will continue that, and therefore this Bill will do no practical damage whatever. I do not think it is a satisfactory method that we should go and do things and then hope that the ill results that might follow will not follow, because British generosity or policy will lead to the British taking a line of action they would not be bound to take.

I should like to read Senator Brown's arguments on paper. Presently it seems to me they are very thinly drawn out, and I fancy if I had them before me, and had time to study them, I would be able to find some sort of kink in them. At any rate, the general tenor of them did not make any particular appeal to me, and it seemed as if they did not go to the root of the question. They deal with certain theories that are very much up in the air and do not cover the actual facts of our association with the British Commonwealth of Nations.

Senator Brown talked about allegiance. In the present world, allegiance is a very tenuous thing, if it means anything at all—that is, in actual practice and in the minds of the people. There may be all sorts of legal theories about it but nowadays kings do not rule. They reign. The people in the country around them may have all sorts of personal feeling about them, but, generally, in any sense of having a feeling that will affect daily lives and political policy and serious affairs, I do not think allegiance is a thing that exists any longer and, therefore, I think that arguments based on talk about allegiance cannot have a great deal of force. Moreover, there was a statement that the Crown was the symbol of the free association, so that we have a very tenuous and worn-out feeling for what is a symbol. I think that the real link is the link of mutual interest and mutual desire for getting the best out of the world and for safety and so on on the part of all the constituent States.

I do see very great advantages in that link and very real advantages, in the present state, in the link being the link of the Crown. If we had association with the other States of the British Commonwealth, and if they were all Republics, I am afraid we would have actual binding regulations of various sorts laid down in the covenant of association which would be much more undesirable from our point of view than this present arrangement of common allegiance to a Crown which, in fact, means nothing at all except the acceptance of a desire to remain in the association. I think we must look at it that way, but to draw the serious conclusions from it that Senator Brown draws seems to me to be inadmissible. I should like to say, and I think it is in line with what the Government is doing in this Bill, that, although I am very strongly in favour of a continuance of membership of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and although, as I have said already, I think it is clearly to the interests of this country and clearly necessary if we are to accomplish a certain national objective which, I think, is common to the whole people of the country, I would not look forward to a position in which our relations with the other States of the British Commonwealth of Nations would always be special relations.

I think that in spite of the economic nationalism of the present day, in spite of the wars and threats of wars, the progress of mechanical invention, mechanical ingenuity and the reduction of space in the world is going ultimately to make for a rule of law amongst nations. The very terribleness of modern means of destruction seems to me to make it necessary that this rule of law amongst nations will be generally accepted. It is just as easy to point to the weakness and, often, the futility of a body like the League of Nations as to point to the growing up of tariffs and so on, but while those things may hold back progress for a while, I think that just as in what are now single countries, the warring factions have been done away with and a rule of law established, we may look forward to the establishment of a rule of law amongst nations. If we can have a rule of law amongst nations and if that comes within any reasonable time, the natural and the best way for us to enter into special relations with other States of the British Commonwealth would simply be that those special relations would become the same as the relations with all other States.

I used to hear people talk of the British Commonwealth as the British League of Nations. I should like to see all these reciprocal citizen rights extended to all nations. I do not see any harm in it at all. Generally, I should like to say that I think the disposition is to take this Bill much too seriously. As I have said already, I think what is wrong about it is just what is wrong about a considerable number of other items of governing policy. It is the method of doing it, the method of creating alarm and, perhaps, ill-feeling when the subject to be dealt with necessitates none of those. I do not think that even these last clauses are going to do any harm in actual practice and my own idea is that the Seanad should allow the Bill to pass without amendment.

There are one or two small matters that I should have liked to see somewhat different. For instance, there is the question of the acquisition of citizenship by an alien woman who marries a Saorstát citizen. It is provided that the Minister may, if he so thinks fit, dispense with compliance in the matter of residence. It seems to me that it ought to be the duty of the Minister to dispense with any conditions of residence unless there was a question of a crime or some special reason, and I think it ought to appear in the Bill that the Minister shall dispense with compliance, unless he sees some specific reasons for not dispensing with it.

I think it is regrettable that there is not in the Bill some recognition of the special position of Northern Ireland. The previous Government, in some Bills, at any rate, did give special recognition to the people of Northern Ireland. For instance, in the Civil Service (Regulations) Act people born and living in Northern Ireland were given the same right to compete at examinations as citizens of the Saorstát. I am not prepared to say what exactly I should like to see in the Bill in this respect, but I think there ought to have been some recognition of the special position in Northern Ireland. A big proportion of the citizens of Northern Ireland would wish, if they could, to be citizens of the Saorstát. Their position is that by outside force they are kept from being citizens. They are people who, we hope, some time may be citizens of the Saorstát, and I think that in their case, therefore, there ought to be some special regulation, some special, easy method, or some concession of some sort to mark that in our view the position of these people is different from that of Scotchmen and Englishmen.

Mr. Johnson

Senator Milroy; during the greater portion of his speech, desired, I think, to suggest a friendly approach to the subject under discussion. It is a pity, I think, that he did not restrain his habit of facetiousness barbed with cloaked insult in the first sentence of his speech when he said that there were other faults in the Bill than the fact that it was sponsored by the President of the Executive Council.

Mr. Milroy

I beg your pardon. I said there were other grounds for criticism, not other faults.

Mr. Johnson

That really makes the matter worse. However, the chief feeling that I had from listening to Senator Milroy was that right through, as it seems to me, the Bill as a whole is the logical sequence to the policy pursued prior to the Treaty, by those who accepted the Treaty in the spirit in which most of the people who advocated its acceptance spoke, and by the policy of the Government which preceded the present Government in extending the powers of this State to the point which almost inevitably led to this Bill or some such Bill. I think the only point of question of that attitude is whether the time is opportune, and that is a matter that could be discussed.

Senator Milroy, I think, is going back from the position that he and his Party have taken right up-to-date in regard to the principle embodied in the Bill. He quoted, rather unfortunately I think, General Smuts, on the Party arrangement come to in South Africa and the passing of a new Act there. It so happens that the Prime Minister of South Africa has a view regarding the constitutional position of South Africa to which a Bill of this sort is perfectly relevant and almost inevitable. I read from the "Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law" of November, from "Notes on Imperial Constitutional Law" contributed by Professor Berriedale Keith. Dealing with the status of the Union of South Africa and with the agreement between the Parties he says:

"Their agreement extended to the doctrines of (1) the divisibility of the Crown as regards the Union; (2) the right of Union neutrality in the case of a war declared by the Crown on the advice of British Ministers; and (3) the right of the Union to separate from the Commonwealth. It is clear that from these propositions General Hertzog has never swerved, and it is natural to find them implied in the Union legislation promoted to effect his purpose."

These three clauses quite clearly imply a different conception of citizenship from that which Senator Milroy appeared to build upon.

Mr. Milroy

Will the Senator point out where the difference is?

Mr. Johnson

If there is a right to declare neutrality in the case of war, surely the citizens of a country cannot declare for remaining citizens and yet be neutral in case of war? "The right of the Union to separate from the Commonwealth"—are they to remain citizens and still be separated from the Commonwealth?

Mr. Milroy

Are we separating? Is that the purport of the Bill?

Mr. Johnson

That is not the purport of the Bill. If the right to do so is there, and the right to do so is contained in the proposition of General Hertzog, it is quite inconsistent with the idea of common citizenship. More important, however, is the argument of Senator Brown, inasmuch as he has carefully written it down and writes it as a student of constitutional law—as a master, one might say. He raises certain questions in my mind that I cannot answer except on the supposition that he is dealing with this subject from the point of view of British Ministers who were speaking before 1929, or certainly before the passing of the British Statute of Westminster. I was rather surprised to gather from Senator Brown the view that he appears to hold that the British Statute of Westminster is a statute which binds this State. Am I right in assuming that Senator Brown makes that assertion or implies that the Statute of Westminster is the law of Saorstát Eireann?

Mr. Brown

Certainly not.

Mr. Johnson

It is not. Then, anything built on that assumption is without a basis at all. I think a good deal of Senator Brown's arguments did make that assumption.

Mr. Brown

No. With great respect, the only reference I made to the Statute of Westminster was to the preamble of the Statute as evidence of a certain fact of agreement which was therein referred to. It has no statutory effect. It is only a recital in the preamble, and that is the only reference I made to the Statute of Westminster.

Mr. Johnson

I think Senator Brown went on to imply that the Statute of Westminster was embodying in British law the agreement arrived at at the Imperial Conference in 1926.

Mr. Brown

No.

Cathaoirleach

Senator Brown says not, and I think, Senator, you must accept it.

Mr. Johnson

Certainly I accept it. On the legal position taken by Senator Brown, there is amongst constitutional lawyers quite clearly a distinct difference of opinion as to the effects. Again, I read from a letter which Professor Berriedale Keith wrote to the Manchester Guardian. Writing about this Bill and Mr. Thomas's comment on the effects of this Bill he says:—

"The Bill (clause 28) repeals for the State the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Acts of 1914 and 1918, and Mr. de Valera's view is doubtless that this is effective to eliminate from the law of the State the whole doctrine of British nationality. His argument, no doubt, is that the common law of British nationality was superseded by the Acts and is not revived by their repeal. The State courts, whence appeal now lies to the Privy Council, may easily support that view, so that the Bill must be held to purport to remove from Irish law as part thereof the category of British subject. There is no dissent from that.

"In any case the Bill is certainly effective to deprive of British nationality in the State all persons whose status as such is merely statutory and does not rest on the common law. Such persons have British nationality in the State only in virtue of the legislation which the State has an absolute right to repeal under the Statute of Westminster; this point Mr. Thomas has clearly overlooked.

"The case of persons whose allegiance is natural by common law is undoubtedly open to argument. Mr. Thomas it appears contends that the bond of allegiance between the Crown and persons born on Free State territory cannot be severed by Irish Act, even if such an Act purports to make this provision. He denies, in short, that secession, which includes essentially the severance of allegiance, can be effected by unilateral Irish legislation."

I think that is Senator Brown's position.

"He challenges, therefore, General Hertzog no less than Mr. de Valera, and he passes into a sphere where the law courts cannot act effectively. But the responsibility for this situation rests with the Parliament and Government which passed the Statute of Westminister without, apparently, realising the effect of its own action and which deliberately refrained from safeguarding from elimination by Dominion Act the doctrine of allegiance and made no provision for the settlement by an inter-Imperial court of disputes as to the effect of the Act."

Now these two authorities, Senator Brown and Professor Berriedale Keith, clearly differ as to the powers of this Parliament to legislate in the sense that is aimed at in certain sections of this Bill. It was stated by Senator Milroy that the Bill that emerged from the Dáil had been amended in a very vital way from the Bill as introduced. I think the suspicion—the very thing that Professor Berriedale Keith has said—that there was a question open to argument in the Bill as introduced, led the Ministry here, following the practice of their predecessors, when Professor Berriedale Keith showed that there was a doubt, to fill up that gap. They always tried to take advantage of any question raised in that way by having it settled definitely. I think it was Mr. McGilligan, the then Minister, who pointed out how thankful he was to Professor Berriedale Keith for opening up doubts and inquiries as to the real position in Constitutional affairs. Always, when such an authority raised a doubt, it was availed of by the last Government to ensure that the doubt would be resolved in favour of the interpretation that they had made. So here we have an amendment introduced in Section 30 to make sure that there would be no doubt any longer on this matter. I think that is the effect of the introduction of the amendments which Senator Milroy referred to as being introduced in the later sections of the Bill.

I want to ask the President if he will explain a bit more clearly what the effect of this Bill will be on the citizens of Northern Ireland. I am glad Senator Blythe raised this question, because it seems to me that it requires clarification. Citizens in the future will include what I may call the first category—those who became citizens by virtue of domicile and other factors on the 6th December, 1922. Then there will be the natural born citizens and naturalised citizens. These will all be citizens. I suppose I am right in assuming that citizenship will include all these categories. First of all, I should say that Saorstát Eireann was, and has been assumed, on 6th December, 1922, to be the Thirty-Two Counties of Ireland, and that any person who had been domiciled in either of these Thirty-Two Counties and complied with the sections of the Constitution touching this matter, was a citizen and, I presume, is still a citizen of the Irish Free State. I say I presume that, and I do it with this fact to back me in that presumption: when the question was raised as to whether it was possible for a citizen of the Irish Free State who was a citizen by virtue of his residence in Northern Ireland and domiciled there up to 6th December, 1922, to be eligible for membership of the Oireachtas, it was declared departmentally that that was so. I think we have always gone on the assumption that a person who complied with that portion of the Constitution and who was domiciled in ques-Northern Ireland on the dates in question was a citizen then and, presumably, is a citizen now. If that is so, Sir, then I would like to know what would be the position, or whether I am right in asserting the position to be as follows. Paragraph (e) of (1) of Section 2 reads:—

every person who was born outside Saorstát Eireann on or after the 6th day of December, 1922, and before the date of the passing of this Act and whose father was, on the day of such person's birth, a citizen of Saorstát Eireann, and,

Paragraph (f) of the same sub-section reads:—

subject to the subsequent provisions of this section, every person who is born outside Saorstát Eireann on or after the date of the passing of this Act and whose father was, on the day of such person's birth, a citizen of Saorstát Eireann.

From that it follows that the child of a father who was a citizen by virtue of his residence in Northern Ireland on 6th December, 1922, and whose son was born in Northern Ireland that that son becomes a natural born citizen of the Irish Free State. In that case when the son comes to manhood, being a natural born citizen of the Irish Free State, under paragraph (f) of (1) of Section 2 that child becomes a natural born citizen provided he becomes registered. Now that is what I read and what I hope is the intention of this Bill. If it is not so, then considerable emphasis will have been placed upon the partition of the country. Following Senator Blythe's suggestion about some distinction in the machinery of the Bill, it occurred to me that it would be very desirable that the grand-child of the Northern Ireland Article 3 citizen ought to have an opportunity of registering and being registered in a Northern Ireland register. It seems to me there would be no difficulty in marking the distinction such as Senator Blythe hinted at and that it would not interfere with the general scheme of the Bill. In view of this any fault in the matter would be very easily remedied. The point whether those citizens who are referred to in the definition who continue to live in Northern Ireland and who were citizens on 6th December, 1922, remain citizens, is an important one. It is specially important because of the effect of the passing of this Bill on the children of those persons and upon their grandchildren. I hope that I can be assured that the interpretation I have read into this particular section will prove to be the correct one and that some means may be devised whereby registration of the grandchildren of that original citizen can be made in a distinctive register from that of the registration of a resident of, shall we say, Patagonia.

Mr. Douglas

I was a member of the Constitution Drafting Committee, and I find myself in general agreement with most of what the President stated in introducing the Bill, as to the necessity for the Bill and its general effect. When Article 3 of the Constitution was drafted, it was anticipated that this Bill or some such measure would be introduced, certainly within two or three years. At that time we never had any idea that anything like the long period that has expired, would elapse before the introduction of the measure. I do not propose to go at any great length into all the difficult points that have arisen. I agree largely with Senator Blythe. My greatest disagreement with him arises from the fact that he seems to have read into Senator Brown's speech the idea that Senator Brown thought something worse was going to happen as a result of the Bill whereas my reading of Senator Brown's speech was that he did not think anything of the kind. I disagree with him in his references to Senator Brown because I do not think he fully understood Senator Brown's speech.

To my mind if this Bill, even in its entirety, had been introduced at a time in which there were not certain strained relations with Great Britain in regard to other matters, we would have practically none of the scare that we have here at the present time and very few people indeed would have been alarmed by it. Whilst I, like Senator Johnson, have read the letters that Professor Beridale Keith has written and while I agree with Senator Johnson as to his usefulness on several occasions, in helping us to correct errors and to strengthen our independence, I still find it difficult to understand him. In no case have I found it more difficult to understand than in regard to the particular letter which Senator Johnson read. I read that letter, but I did not understand it nor do I now understand it. Senator Johnson did not explain what it meant.

Mr. Johnson

It raised a doubt.

Mr. Douglas

It did, I agree, but not to my mind a very serious doubt. I, personally, am not able to get excited about this Bill. I cannot see that it is going to do any harm to people like myself who want to stay inside the British Commonwealth or that there is anything in it about which we need be unduly alarmed. Perhaps it is unfortunate that there has been no agreement inside the British Commonwealth with regard to phrases because different people using the same phrase may attach a very different meaning to it. One person may mean one thing by a phrase and another person means a totally different thing. We have had in various Acts and in various documents issued in connection with the British Commonwealth, phrases with clearly different meanings and the result is that it is extremely difficult indeed to know what is meant by certain phrases such as "common citizenship,""British Constitution" and "British nationality." I believe that a considerable number of the criticisms that have appeared and a considerable number of the misunderstandings of the President's speech, that have arisen, are due to the fact that on this occasion a different meaning is attached to words from that which they had on another occasion.

As an illustration of what I mean let me say that I do not believe that there was ever common citizenship in the British Commonwealth in the sense that we speak of common citizenship. It was a complete misnomer. I do not think that it meant anything like what we mean by common citizenship and if it did mean it, it was wrong. I am in a difficulty because I do not know the exact phrase, but it seems to me that while we remain in the British Commonwealth and do not exercise what I believe to be our undoubted right to secede, if we want to, every individual in the State retains that common status. I do not read the President as saying—he will correct me no doubt if I am wrong— or I cannot read into his speeches which caused a good deal of misunderstanding, any statement that he thinks that this Bill abolishes that common status. Whether he believes that or not, I cannot see that it does as long as we remain within the British Commonwealth.

For instance, some people are afraid once this Bill is passed that when they travel abroad, they will not have that common status or whatever it may be called. Whatever it is, I have, personally, no doubt in my mind that the passing of the Bill will make no difference to me when I go abroad with my Irish passport, if I find it convenient to call on a British ambassador in order to seek his protection. I do not believe that it will make the tiniest bit of difference, assuming that we remain within the British Commonwealth. I do not think the Bill intended that it should or that it purports to do so. I say this deliberately because I have thought a great deal about it. I think a great many people have got unduly frightened. Certain people, who are Irishmen, value membership of the British Commonwealth because of the common status which it confers, but there is nothing in the clarification of Irish citizenship which need necessarily affect that common status. One of our difficulties is that there should be, but is not, in the British Commonwealth a recognition that British nationality is something that is British, that Irish nationality is something that is Irish as Australian nationality is something that is Australian, and South African nationality something that is South African. Nationality cannot, by the very essence of it, be common and it should not be, but it does not prevent the possession of something else, by virtue of association with the British Commonwealth as the President would have it or by virtue of allegiance as Senator Brown says—that something which you can have in common and which is not infra dig.

To my mind the clearer you define the nationality of the different States, the easier it is to define that common status. That is what I have always believed and it is what I have always stood for. I believed it at the time of the Constitution Committee and I believe it now. Anything which endeavours to clarify the independent position of this State inside the British Commonwealth I am going to support. I have differed with the President and with his Government whenever I thought they were making a mistake but I have never wavered in that idea. I not only hold that but I believe that both the possibility of our remaining inside the British Commonwealth and the possibility of our eventually persuading our own people and the people of Northern Ireland to work peaceably together, will be realised when we recognise that there is no barrier to our independence. I have tried to avoid exact legal phrases. I have very little doubt that Senator Brown is correct in his strict interpretation of the law when he says that the individual is still called a British subject, in other words, that he is a subject of the Crown. In Ireland, he is only a subject of the Crown by virtue of association with the Commonwealth. Therefore, to my mind, it does not matter very much—I am dealing with actualities—what you call him.

I should not for a moment set myself up against Senator Brown. In any event, I agree with his statement. I had a chance of reading it while the Senator was speaking and I agree with it, almost to the full extent, as a legal statement. But if there is one thing that is clear in connection with the British Commonwealth, it is that many legal statements do not represent the actual facts as we know them. The President's speeches, to my mind, were not perfectly clear. He is generally very clear on these points but, whether he was clear or not on this occasion, a number of people have been frightened and misled. I should like to dissipate those fears. I agree with scarcely anything that Senator Milroy said on this occasion. He sees in this Bill things which I do not believe exist. I should be inclined to go further and say, as regards friendly agreement or recognition by the British Government, that everything done by the Government's predecessors was not done with complete British assent. We did not get it to the Constitution even in its ultimate form. That does not mean that there was hostility but this country has to progress.

I now come to Article 30, which is the Article which has mostly frightened the people. Here, again, I am in a difficulty as to exactly what it means. Speaking not as a lawyer or one with a knowledge of constitutional law, but as an ordinary layman, I do not believe that the common law British nationality which, in so far as it affected us, is to be repealed, existed here after the Treaty. We had this common status. We were still in the Commonwealth. But while we might, perhaps, be called British nationals before the Treaty, from the time of the Treaty onwards we were not British nationals. If we were, then I have been labouring under a misconception. There is nothing to cause alarm in the Bill in this regard. With regard to these other Acts, there are certain technical difficulties. The action here, which is rather vague, does not carry us very far. I do not honestly believe that this Bill is a breach of the Treaty or a preliminary to secession. I refuse to treat it as such. The whole question of secession from the Commonwealth presents a different problem altogether. If I were convinced that a Bill of this kind to make provision regarding our own nationality was a step towards secession, I should not believe in the Commonwealth, because I am an Irish nationalist and I do not believe that the assertion of our own position is necessarily a step towards secession from the Commonwealth.

There is one flaw in the Bill from the Commonwealth point of view. Here I should like to refer to a few things from the Irish point of view. I do not think that the flaw is necessarily a serious matter because, as Senator Blythe stated, it may be dealt with under another section. We do not give any specific privilege to Northern Ireland or to those who have common status by giving them a shorter period for qualification. We could not do that as easily in the Free State as it could be done in Australia because there are a large number of our people in the United States. I realise that there are difficulties. Even when the Constitution Committee was at work, these difficulties were appreciated. At the same time, I am not sure that we might not have avoided a little hostility from the other side by doing something in that direction— not because I believe we must do it but because it might have been a wise thing to do.

Changing altogether from the matters to which I have been referring, I should like to put the President a few questions with regard to certain other Acts. To clear up possible difficulties, the Government would be well advised, once this Bill becomes law, to bring in a short Bill amending certain Acts which claim to set out what an Irish national is. We have a special definition of "national" for manufacturers of tobacco. We have a similar definition, though differing in certain respects, for importers of cinematograph films. Under the Moneylenders Act, we have a pretty clear definition. The definition in the Agricultural Produce (Cereals) Act is practically identical with that. The definition in the Control of Imports Act is similar. The Control of Manufactures Act has two definitions—one of a "national" and the other of a "qualified person." The probability is that the Government do not want to give specific privileges under each of these Acts to everyone who may become a national under this Bill, in which event I suggest to the Government that they should alter these Bills and substitute "qualified person" for "national." Otherwise, we shall have references in general talk to persons who are Irish nationals but not Irish nationals for the purpose of holding shares in companies. To remove that absurdity, it would be worth while to introduce a small Bill. When we do not want to give all our citizens these privileges, we should call the people to whom we desire to refer "qualified persons" and thus get over the difficulty. In that respect there is something in the present state of affairs that is not satisfactory.

I do not much like the alteration in the title of the Bill to "Irish Nationality and Citizenship Bill." The Bill was not changed to any extent. Does the President regard Irish citizenship and Irish nationality as interchangeable terms? If so, I can understand the change, but I am not sure that it is a wise change. If the President does not so regard the terms, I do not quite know what the object of the change of title was. There is hardly any reference to nationality in the Bill. It relates almost solely to citizenship. I wonder if we are not getting muddled, especially when we have references to "national" instead of "citizen" in other Acts. With the general effect of the Bill in providing for Irish citizenship, I agree. It seems to me to be pretty well done and I have no criticism of it. My principal reason for rising was to support Senator Brown, though I have put things in a different way from that in which he put them. A number of people who believe in the value of the Commonwealth association have been frightened by speeches and by foolish newspaper articles. I believe that they have been frightened quite unnecessarily.

Mr. Johnson

May I ask whether I was right in understanding Senator Brown to say that Section 30 was invalid and inoperative?

Mr. Brown

If it purports to take away the common status, which is described by the term "British subject," it is invalid and inoperative. That cannot be done by unilateral legislation. My argument was based on the preamble to the Statute of Westminster, to which the President gave his adherence in so far as it dealt with the two subjects of succession to the Crown and the Royal Titles. Once you admit that these two things cannot be altered except by legislation of each one of the Parliaments of the Commonwealth, you admit that the common status, which flows from allegiance to the Crown, cannot be touched by unilateral legislation.

Mr. Honan

Acting on my own knowledge of the subject and on what I have heard from previous speakers, I rise to support the Bill—sections, subsections and paragraphs from A to Z. I recognise the fact that the Bill is being introduced to establish the nationality of the Irish nation. The various details that have been touched on by previous speakers are matters of routine appertaining to the principle of the Bill. The Bill, as I understand it, has been introduced specifically to raise our status from a dual or hybrid nation to that of a distinctive Irish nation. Without going further into the matter, and speaking on behalf of everyone in the country that I know, I desire to say that I shall support and stand by this Bill which is intended to establish the nationality of the Irish people.

Mr. O'Neill

As representatives of every Party in this House have spoken it may not be out of place if I say a few words on behalf of the Party I have the honour to represent. We started off with Senator Gogarty, with his usual flippancy, which I am sorry to see is getting rather thin. We then had Senator Brown who certainly relieved my mind when he told us that the Bill was an absolute necessity. Such a statement, coming from Senator Brown, has great weight with me, at any rate, and I am sure it will have great weight with every section of the House. A stranger coming to this House, for the first time, and hearing Senator Milroy indulge in one of his periodical outbursts, would come to the conclusion that he was a very vicious and vindictive man. I know Senator Milroy for a great number of years and I know that the very opposite is the case. In private life he is a cool, calm, good-natured man, and no one would go further to help a lame dog over the stile than Senator Milroy. But Senator Milroy, like all great men, has a bee in his bonnet; and the particular bee in Senator Milroy's bonnet is, I am afraid, for what reason I do not know, dislike of the President. I am sure the President harbours no ill-will towards Senator Milroy. The President, I am sure, remembers Senator Milroy and his great performances in the past. He remembered the days when Senator Milroy appealed to the young men of Ireland to do their duty by the country. I often heard Senator Milroy say that he and those associated with him would never rest satisfied until all traces of British domination, British interference and British propaganda were banished out of this country. His speech to-day was a sad reflection upon his past record. I had my mind made up—I will be perfectly frank—to give Senator Milroy and Senator Blythe a good castigation for something that happened in this House quite recently, but Senator Blythe redeemed himself, in my opinion, when he stated that the Seanad should pass this Bill. Senator Douglas, with his usual foresight, and carefulness, put before us many arguments, but the principal one, to my mind, and the one that pleased me most, was that in which he agreed with Senator Brown that this Bill was almost an absolute necessity.

I think the last Senator who has spoken hit the nail on the head as far as Irish nationality is concerned. I quite agree with him when he implied that this Bill goes somewhat to redeem the nationhood of this country. This nation is one of the oldest in Christendom, but in recent years one would have thought it was some part of the desert of Sahara. This nation, older than England, is, as I once heard the late Mr. T.M. Healy say, a nation separate and distinct. One of the reasons why I heartily support this Bill is that it goes some small way to redeem that nationhood, which if—I do not like to use strong expressions—some of our "shoneens" had their way would not exist. If I may touch upon a delicate question I might tell the House this: I had a conversation some five or six years ago with no less a person than a British Cabinet Minister. He said to me: "You are a queer people in Ireland." He need not have told me that because I knew it myself. I happened to be Lord Mayor of Dublin at the time. He continued: "We have the greatest admiration, up to a point, for those men who are anxiously and courageously fighting to redeem their nation. You may take it from me," he continued, "that the heart of the English people is sound and sincere in the wish and hope for friendship with your country. What we are up against," he added, "is the insidious work of many of your own people, and it is they, and they alone, that advise the taking back of your nation."

The President

The main criticism of the Bill has been directed to Section 30. Some of the points have been raised and, perhaps, before I deal with Section 30 and the criticisms of it, I should refer to these. It has been suggested that the Bill was very radically changed in the Dáil. I do not think that is so. There were certain amendments inserted to meet views expressed by the Opposition and I am satisfied that, if the Bill is not improved, certainly it is by no means worsened by the introduction of these amendments. Perhaps I should say that, on the whole, in certain points the Bill has been improved. I would have been willing, even if I could only say that the Bill was not worsened by doing so, to accept amendments if I thought such amendments would meet a viewpoint and that there was nothing to be lost by accommodating the Bill to meet that viewpoint. The Bill was amended in any character that would be regarded as vital, solely because there were misunderstandings of the scope and nature of the Bill.

We had criticisms of the Bill in the Dáil, on its introduction, which were childish; but because the public, and more even than the man in the street, might be influenced by these and might not understand the character of the Bill, I thought it better to meet the childish criticisms by introducing here and there something that would make clear the scope of the Bill and remove it from the misinformed or uninformed criticisms to which it had been subjected in its introduction. There was no doubt, for instance, I think, that it had reference to our relations with international law as well as municipal law, and that it would be recognised internationally as well as here at home in our own law; but that was one of the criticisms levelled at it in its introduction. In order to meet that, we put in one place that its scope would extend not merely to municipal but to international law. That, for instance, was one type of amendment that has been suggested as being radical. The other was this amendment with regard to the common law. Now, Senator Johnson's suggestion is not based on fact. What I mean is that he is wrong in his conclusion that it was because of Professor Keith's views that the change was made with regard to the common law by the introduction of some particular section dealing with its possible operation here. As a matter of fact, that matter was under consideration long before the Bill was printed. There was a difference of opinion, and I was anxious to try to get that difference of opinion, as to the extent to which it might operate, more fully considered and better crystallised before we dealt with it in the Bill. Consequently, as I knew, or at least expected, that the Bill was going to take a considerable time in the Dáil, I held my hand with regard to the insertion of that particular thing until it came before the Dáil. It did happen, however, in the meantime, that this expression of opinion by Professor Keith was published, and I think that the public believed, as Senator Johnson apparently believed, that our change was due to that. It is not so, in fact. However, it did this: It indicated that we were on the material point, let us say.

The next point is with regard to Northern Ireland. The position of the people in the Six Counties, our Irish citizens in that area, was naturally something that should concern anybody introducing a Bill of this sort. Naturally we would like to extend privileges to them, but the trouble in a Citizenship Bill is that it is rather difficult to extend privileges without seeming, at any rate, to impose obligations, and there were difficulties in the matter. There was one privilege, however, to which they were obviously entitled, and any obligations that might flow from it and which they could possibly fulfil; and that is that, as they were domiciled in the area of jurisdiction of the Free State on the 6th December, 1922, and there was a judicial decision that the territory of the Saorstát on that date did extend to the whole of Ireland, consequently they were already citizens or, at any rate, those of them who were domiciled in that area were citizens by virtue of Article 3. The conclusions and the inferences which Senator Johnson drew from that fact are all, I think, justified, and I think they were expressly stated by me in the Dáil in answer to some question with regard to the position of citizens of the Six Counties and their children and grandchildren. First of all, they are continued as citizens by this Bill; that is, those of them who are citizens by virtue of Article 3. We have not narrowed the scope of that Article. In fact, wherever we are touching it, it is by way of expansion and not contraction; so that those who were domiciled in the Six Counties and who were citizens already by virtue of Article 3, are retained as such by this Bill. The children who were born in that area—that would be paragraph (e) I think—the children of fathers born in that area will automatically become citizens, and then, in the case of the grandchildren, so to speak, the child of a Six County citizen who was himself born outside our area can become a citizen on registration. That registration can be effected here in Dublin directly under foreign births registration.

I am not quite sure, but I think that Senator Johnson's suggestion was that we should have the registration book arranged according to outside States in which the children were registered. That may be the position. I am not sure. They may be in a set of different registers for the different States, for all I know. In any case, however, I think there should be no difficulty in having a special book for those who would come from Northern Ireland, in which the children who are registerable, and who must be registered in order to become citizens, should be entered. As I said in the Dáil, there is no immediate change at any rate, and my hope is that long before this will operate with regard to the third generation, it is possible that the need for a separate register may disappear.

I do not remember any other of the points that have been raised, but I shall look carefully through the debate and we shall probably have them in relation to the separate sections when we come to the Committee Stage.

Mr. Douglas

The question of amending other Acts—other Acts which define nationals—will not come up on the Committee Stage.

The President

That whole matter was raised in the Dáil. In fact, we had been considering it and it is still under consideration. We will try to get the best solution we can for that difficulty. As a matter of fact, it is creating a special group of persons really. The terms that were used in that were used probably because a Bill like this was not in existence at the time. Somebody made the criticism, I think it was Senator Milroy, that we had no definition of "alien" here. We have an Aliens Bill. The Bill now before Senators is one of a set of three Bills. It is to be followed by two others; one, an amendment of the Constitution, to which I referred earlier, extending the operation of Article 3 so that it will not be confined in its operation merely to the territory of the Saorstát; the other is a Bill dealing with aliens. Generally, of course, an alien will be defined as a non-citizen. I think that is the most natural definition of an alien, and it probably will be defined in that particular way.

I think I have met all the rather minor points that were raised. The main criticism of the Bill has been directed against Article 30. I listened to Senator Brown with very great care. Like Senator Blythe, I would prefer to speak in detail, to criticise the arguments in detail if I had them completely before me. It seemed to me that if Senator Brown was right, then all those who have been talking about equality of status and other things and our rights to do certain things here were all wrong. I would like to know whether Senator Brown would seriously contend that it is not within our competence to pass any Act, whether it is a repeal of any British Act or a repeal of the common law. That is the question that it seems to be narrowed down to—is it within our competence to pass an Act to repeal a British Statute?

Mr. Brown

The Statute of Westminster.

The President

Is it within our competence to repeal any Statute? The Statute of Westminster sets out certain things very clearly. I know there is a difference of opinion and I do not want to go into certain controversies as to whether the Statute of Westminster was necessary to secure a certain position for us here. It is generally held that we held that position prior to the Statute of Westminster, but I am not going into that at all. But if we do take the Statute of Westminster, it seems to me that it very clearly sets out that there shall be no restriction to the competence of the Parliament to repeal any Imperial Act and, it must be clear also, to annul or end the operation of the common law. If we take that fact to start with, we could get some agreement upon it. I cannot see any flaw in this, at any rate, that it is competent for this Parliament to repeal any British Act whatsoever and to end the operation of the common law here if we so desire.

That is what is in this Article 30. It ends the operation of certain laws to whatever extent they may be held by anybody—by Senator Brown if he chooses to hold it, or perhaps Senator Douglas; of course, Senator Douglas may not agree with that at all and we are not entering here into the question of which of them is right —to be unnecessary or undesirable. What we do say is that if any court deemed that British nationality Acts applied here, that that should end from the passage of this measure; and also, if it were held that the common law operated to any extent here— again, I am not going into that and I am not proposing to discuss it— then, to any extent to which it might be deemed to operate, we would cause it to cease to operate as from the passage of that Act. Again, I repeat that that is surely within our competence. It would appear to me that Senator Brown, relying on the preamble of the Statute of Westminster as indicating certain agreement, wants to suggest that this agreement would preclude us from doing what we propose to do here. He says, in fact, the preamble is not law. Therefore, the preamble does not do it. It is not the Statute of Westminster itself that purports to do it. He must show me somewhere where we have definitely contracted to exclude this question of nationality from the competence of our Parliament. We have not done so anywhere; I cannot find it anywhere.

Certain possible things appear to me and I want to deal with them one by one. I have dealt, first of all, with the question of our competence to pass any Act, and I say that the only reason why we should not be competent is if we are excluded by some contract or other. I hold there is not a contract which excludes us. There was a Report of an Imperial Conference which was brought before the Dáil. There was certain agreement in regard to it and it was accepted, at any rate. There is another question raised immediately. What is the validity of these Reports when they are received and passed through the Parliaments of the various countries? I have a very big question mark in my mind as to the extent to which these can be held to be a binding contract between the two countries, a contract or agreement which it would be impossible for the Parliament of any one of them to override. But I will admit that on the face of one of the Reports there was one suggestion, and to a certain extent the Statute of Westminster and its preamble seemed to suggest the same thing, and that was that there were things that were specially mentioned. My recollection was that one was the question of secession, and the other the royal style and titles. These two things were picked out and specially mentioned because the whole tenor of the discussion at the Conference seemed to suggest that there was absolute liberty, but that some arrangement might be convenient as regards these two things. Allegiance is not one of them, and there is no such thing anywhere as a suggestion that there was a common status as interpreted by the British.

I am quite willing to admit that there is some one thing that might be said to exist in regard to the individuals of a number of States that work together. There is something in common among the citizens of the States that are associated together in the League of Nations, something that is common to themselves that is not common to the citizens of a State that is not a member of the League of Nations. You can call that common status if you wish—that they were all within the League of Nations and each one of them belonged to a State which had certain obligations because of that State being a member of the League. I have tried to look up the history of this in the minutes of the various proceedings of the Imperial Conferences, and right through, from the beginning, there has been a constant denial, a refusal to accept, on the part of the Irish representatives of that British interpretation of common status. It has not been accepted and will not be accepted, I believe, by any Government that comes into office here. Certainly, this Government is not going to do it. Our predecessors did not accept that interpretation. We do not accept that interpretation of common status or the inference from that interpretation which, in my opinion, is the real basis of Senator Brown's argument.

To us the fact that the citizens of this country, the citizens of Great Britain, the citizens of Australia, the citizens of South Africa and so on are part, for the moment at any rate, of a certain association: that each of them has entered a certain common relationship which is different from that which they would have, say, to citizens that are not in that group, imposes certain obligations. It confers certain privileges or benefits. The material thing is these obligations or benefits and not some legal theory or basis such as Senator Brown would wish to construct the whole thing upon. There will be no agreement as to, so to speak, the basis upon which these things have been built and originated. I think that as a practical people it is quite sufficient for us to face the facts as regards the obligations, duties and privileges which this common association gives.

Now in one of these reports there was something further. First of all, there was a long discussion about this question of nationality. The reason this matter was discussed was because of the fact that it was admitted that each of the States could legislate on this matter as it pleased, as it would be undesirable, from the point of view of giving privileges and having perhaps certain obligations, but mainly from the point of view of privileges, that there should be admitted into the classes of those who would be regarded as citizens in one country people who in another class would not be so admitted. There was agreement, as far as I can find here, that before there was, so to speak, a widening of these classes to an extent that would cause difficulty and clash in the administration of the law in regard to them, there should be consultation. There, again, you have a recognition of the fact that it is the practical things that mattered: that the desire was as each State could admittedly do what it pleased in this matter, each State would have regard to the effect of doing certain things on other States— of admitting classes of people, for instance, to whom from the point of view of other States they did not wish to accord the privileges that they were prepared to accord to the citizens of the States as they stood. It says "in the new position if any change is made in the requirements established by existing legislation." Clearly what they were anxious about there was, that if there was any change in the requirements that were necessary for the admission of the citizens of any State there should be consultation.

I fail to find anywhere that the allegiance, as it is put by Senator Brown, of individual citizens to the Crown has been accepted anywhere as being the common status—that is the status of allegiance as I think Senator Brown would put it. That is, if I understand his argument. We do not accept that, good, bad or indifferent, and it has not been accepted. An attempt has been made to get us to accept it, but it has not been accepted by any representative of this country so far as I have been able to find out from the minutes. Again I say it is not going to be accepted now. Now, there may be this basis of legal theory for some such idea, but it is quite inconsistent with the present position as we conceive it, and we would not accept it. We believe there is no court in the country if asked to interpret this Bill when it is passed that would not find that no person in our country is, by the fact of being born here, a British subject by our law. I take it then that the whole question for us is this: is it competent for us to do this or not? We hold that it is, and we therefore intend to proceed in this way. We hold that there is no contract that precludes us from doing it. We hold that there is no theory of association that can be held to stand in the way of our doing it. I would prefer very much to have had the opportunity of replying to Senator Brown's speech after I had seen it in print. I am simply answering the points that he seemed to me to be making.

There is another matter that I want to deal with. There is, it seems to me, a constant misreading even of this preamble. There is a difference surely between the member-States of the Commonwealth and individual citizens of a State. I am not going to pretend to interpret this preamble, but looking at it as a layman it seems to me that a number of people who are trying to draw conclusions from the preamble are doing so by mixing up what seem to me to be two totally different things, namely, what is called the allegiance— it is a rather strange term—of a State to the Crown or King, and the sort of allegiance which an individual citizen is, according to Senator Brown's theory, supposed to owe to the King. It seems to me that there is no reference whatever in the preamble to the latter, which is the point that Senator Brown laid stress on. There is a reference to this other queer sort of thing, allegiance of the State to the Crown, but there is no question of the allegiance of a citizen in one of these States to the Crown, which is the matter that it seemed to me Senator Brown was referring to.

As I said before, I do not wish, and the Government do not wish, to create a sensation by the introduction of this Bill. There was no such thought in our minds at all. This Bill has been long overdue. Everyone knows that. I first learned about the need for a Bill of this kind when I was in America some five or six years ago. I was asked then how a person could possibly become a citizen of the Saorstát. I was asked that by a woman who was interested in the subject, who was studying the whole question of nationality in relation to women. She said that she had written to the Department of External Affairs and was told that there was no law dealing with it. I was aware that "citizen" had been defined in Article 3 and that it was clear from that Article that legislation would follow. It then seemed extraordinary to me that no such measure as this had been brought forward. It was necessary then. There was nothing extraordinary in it. Any fears that have been raised in regard to it, certainly have not been raised by me. If anything I said raised any particular fears that was not the intention on my part. I did not make a great deal of this Bill, except that it was a piece of pioneer legislation, and that I was proud to be privileged to introduce a Bill of this sort. Further than that there was nothing in what I said that could fairly be construed as attempting to give the Bill undue prominence or to excite fears in anyone. What I hold it does is this: it puts an end legally in this country, by our law, to the appellation of British subject to an Irish citizen. It is true that we are unable to take off the British Statute Book any Acts that may be there, which confer upon our citizens certain privileges, if they are regarded as privileges. I would prefer by far that, so long as this State is in the association of the Commonwealth, that our relations to each other would be determined by agreement, giving mutual rights and privileges, than by any other method. I think if it is to last for any length of time, it is only by going in that direction it can possibly last.

I agree with Senator Douglas that those who think there are any advantages in the association should really be glad to see the aspirations of the Irish people met, in so far as it is possible to meet them consistently, with association. The difficulty up to the present has been this, that it is not clear to the Irish people the extent to which they can or cannot be met. There has been a controversy about it for a long period. I admit quite frankly that I would have said while in opposition that this Bill would not be put through by the previous Government. I may have been wrong. The previous Government asserted that we had certain rights. We will know, according as we try to give expression to our ideals and aspirations, whether we have these rights or not, by doing just as we are doing here. Then the question would be knit, and we would know very definitely whether the rights and privileges which it is said we have in this association, are real, or whether there are people who hold theories, such as Senator Brown apparently holds, who would tell us: "Although you may say you can do these things, the fact is that you cannot." The moment you want to do the things such as this, and are met with opposition— not on the part of our own citizens, such as Senator Brown, because in a sense that does not matter when we have majority rule—the moment an obstacle is put to the assertion of a right which some people believe they have, we will have a clear issue, and the people will be able very definitely and without any misunderstanding to make up their minds. I am sure they will have no hesitation in doing so. Any one who holds the theory that this association is fully consistent with the rights of the Irish people to develop in their own way and at their own will, should, I think, really be glad that proof will be given by such action as is taken in this Bill. I think Senator Douglas was wise in saying that statutes like this should be welcomed by the people who hold his views. A number of individual points were mentioned, but as amendments can be put in, I can only assure the House that they will be examined in the same spirit as they were examined in the Dáil, and if anything can be done to improve the general quality of the Bill I shall be happy to assist.

Mr. Brown

May I be permitted to make a personal explanation. I am satisfied the President has not caught the real ground of my argument. I was careful to say that the preamble of the Statute of Westminster has no legislative effect at all. I used it because it contains a recital in which it is stated there was a solemn agreement, and that no change could be made by unilateral legislation.

The President

If the Senator is referring to the Statute we had better have the actual words, not an interpretation.

Mr. Brown

Yes.

"And whereas it is meet and proper to set out by way of preamble to this Act that, inasmuch as the Crown is the symbol of the free association of the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and as they are united by a common allegiance to the Crown, it would be in accord with the established constitutional position of all the members of the Commonwealth in relation to one another that any alteration in the law touching the Succession to the Throne or the Royal Styles and Titles shall hereafter require the assent as well of the Parliaments of all the Dominions as of the Parliament of the United Kingdom."

That recital, I said, was recognised by the President, when speaking here on the Abolition of Oath Bill, as a solemn statement of this agreement and it did exclude these two matters from anything in the shape of unilateral legislation. That puts a limit to the Statute of Westminster itself which says that any Dominion can repeal any British Statute. It excludes from that power these two matters, and once you have those two matters excluded from the power of repeal by a single Dominion you have excluded from that power of repeal any interference with what I have called, and what is called all through, the common status, because you cannot have the allegiance to the Crown, which is set out solemnly in that recital, without the common status. It creates the common status, and you cannot have allegiance to a State. It is, in constitutional law, purely the personal relation of a person to a person.

Mr. Johnson

Then we are all rebels.

Mr. Brown

Perhaps I will be allowed to read a line or two which puts the ground of my argument.

Cathaoirleach

It is scarcely allowable to refer to the subject of a new debate.

Mr. MacEllin

When Bills come before the House, the Second Stage is taken and certain statements can be made. When does the Second Stage finish? Can a member of the House speak a second time on details of the Second Stage or is Senator Brown raising Committee matters?

Cathaoirleach

Not by any means. He was misunderstood and I allowed him to make his point clear.

Mr. Brown

I do not want to trespass and I do not intend to go any further. I have simply tried to explain that the President did not really quite follow the ground of my argument. There was one thing I was very glad to hear him say, when he said that the effect of Section 30 was to abolish the idea of British subject founded on allegiance in this country.

The President

We shall probably have an opportunity of going much more fully into this on the section itself. The only point I wish to make is that I do not want to be regarded as an authority in the interpretation of this particular section. I doubt very much, if the Senator looks it up, whether he will find that he has interpreted me quite accurately, but even if he did and it should happen to prove his case, and if I should find that my interpretation was not, in fact, legally sound, I would not have any hesitation whatever in saying that my interpretation was not going necessarily to settle the matter. I should like also to point out that the phrase is "would be in accord with." That is a rather curious phrase. There is no suggestion of "shall or shall not do such and such." It is a purely pious aspiration, it seems to me, but I do not want to make any point about that. I think that what I was referring to, and I think the Senator will realise that if he looks it up, was rather the Conference Report, in which two things are specially mentioned. I do not think that in that Conference Report, allegiance, as such, came in immediately at all in connection with the Royal Style and Titles. However, as I have said, we can deal with this very much more fully, and after more mature thought, at least on my part, when we come to the next stage.

Question put and agreed to.

Cathaoirleach

Will it suit the convenience of the House to take the Committee Stage next Wednesday, or should we postpone it until Wednesday week?

The President

I think the sooner we get the Bill finished the better, as the Seanad will have other work.

Committee Stage ordered for Wednesday, 23rd January.

The Seanad adjourned at 6.55 p.m. until Wednesday, January 23rd, at 3.0 p.m.