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Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 1 May 1940

Vol. 24 No. 12

County Management Bill, 1939—Second Stage.

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

The purpose of this Bill is to extend the manager plan of local government to the counties. Within the last ten years, that plan has been adopted for the four principal cities and the Borough of Dun Laoghaire, and the people in these areas have had experience of the system under which administration is carried on by an elected council and a manager. It is considered the time is now ripe for organising county government on a similar model.

In this country, local government by representative bodies is comparatively modern, and the form in which it was set up was a close adaptation of the form of organisation as it existed in England. Forty years ago, when the Grand Juries were replaced by elected bodies, the new authorities then created corresponded both in their names and functions to local authorities on the other side of the Irish Sea. I recall these facts in order to remind the Seanad that we are not seeking by this Bill to uproot an ancient system that has been evolved in this country in the course of centuries. We are, in fact, continuing a process of reforming the system which we took over, a process which has been going on since the State was established.

The Bill has been criticised on the ground that it is undemocratic. This particular criticism arises, I think, from a mistaken idea that representative government in local affairs can only take the form in which the elected council is both a deliberative assembly and an executive body. The essence of democratic Government is that the people should have the final control. This Bill does not diminish the ultimate controlling power of the people, but it provides for the carrying on of public business in a way which is more in accord with the aims and principles of representative government, and certainly more in accord with common sense and the normal practice in the conduct of large business undertakings.

It cannot be seriously maintained that a council or committee of 20, 30 or 40 members, as the case may be, meeting at intervals, is the best means that can be devised for the management of the day-to-day business of an administration that involves multifarious details and large expenditure. The real function of the elected members should be not to perform executive duties, but rather to control expenditure and determine policy. Under our existing system, the responsibility for administration is spread over the whole elected body and for this reason is diluted, and sometimes dissolved altogether, so that no one man stands visibly before the public as directly and wholly responsible for what is done.

In some of the most democratic countries in the world—in the United States, in Scandinavia, in Switzerland —the system of management which places control of the details of administration in the hands of an individual has been adopted and is not regarded as undemocratic. I think, then, that much of what we have heard in the last six months of this measure tending to local dictatorship has no real foundation, and must arise either from ignorance of the provisions of the Bill or confusion of thought.

I have referred to this aspect of the Bill at perhaps more length than it deserves, but I think it is as well at the outset to clear our minds of some of the cant about stifling local government which we have heard in connection with the Bill. I am not seeking to justify this measure by theoretical considerations of the proper form of local government. Of themselves, these considerations, however cogent, would not afford sufficient reason for scrapping the existing machinery if it were working smoothly and to the general satisfaction. But it does not work satisfactorily. Fourteen years ago the Poor Law Commission, having taken evidence throughout the country regarding the working of the boards of health, recommended that they be abolished and their duties transferred to the county councils working through paid officials in entire charge of the poor relief services in the same manner as a county manager.

The present Bill implements that recommendation and extends it, as no doubt the commission would have wished to see it extended had their terms of reference been wide enough to cover the whole field of local government, by providing for the appointment of a manager for all services of the county councils and elective bodies. Nobody can read the evidence quoted by the commission and not be convinced that the boards of health were unable to cope successfully with the many matters that came up at their meetings for decision. The expansion of services and the growth of expenditure have given rise to problems of management that can only be handled by whole-time, experienced and responsible administrators. This Bill provides for the appointment of persons who will be competent to discharge the executive functions, and makes them responsible, and thus will ensure that side by side with a representative council and popular control there will be skilled management.

The tendency which has manifested itself in our times to combine scattered powers of different local bodies in single authorities is evident in this Bill, which will carry forward the process of unification of services administered by the county council. The functions of the boards of health will be transferred to the county council. It will be remembered that under the Public Assistance Act of last year, poor relief functions of the board will also be transferred as from the appointed day. The functions of the mental hospital committees except in joint districts will also be transferred. It has been thought advisable that on the abolition of committees of management of mental hospitals, visiting committees should be established to perform duties of visitation. These committees will have no powers with regard to management, but they can perform a useful function in hearing complaints and reporting to the county council. The county council will thus be charged with the administration of roads, public assistance, public health, mental hospitals and other county services with two exceptions. These exceptions are vocational education and agricultural services which will continue to be administered as provided for in the Vocational Education Act, 1930, and the Agriculture Act, 1931.

The Bill provides for the distribution of functions between the council or elective body and the manager. Certain functions set out in detail in the Second Schedule of the Bill are reserved to the council. The most important of these is the making of a rate and the borrowing of money. These together with the provisions in Section 24 of the Bill relating to the limitation of expenditure give the council or elective body ultimate financial control. Besides these there are a number of other functions reserved to the council, including the adoption and bringing into force of enactments, the appointment of persons on public bodies, the disposition of property under the Municipal Corporations Acts, the application for public inquiries in connection with boundary alterations, parliamentary and local elections, etc. All powers other than those reserved will be exercised by the manager who will have the control and supervision of the officials. The county council will retain the appointment of rate collectors.

There is provision for adding to the reserved functions, and there are important provisions in Section 28 under which the manager can be required to give effect to their wishes if the local body desire to have a particular thing done and make the necessary financial provision for it. The manager cannot, however, be divested of the control of the officers and employees, or of certain other executive functions mentioned in the section. He will attend meetings and see that the council have all the information, advice and assistance they require.

Every county will have a manager. There is no amalgamation of counties or provision for joint administration, but certain counties have been grouped and the same person will be manager for each of the two counties in a group. The counties grouped are shown in the First Schedule. In forming groups regard was had not only to size and population, but also to the number of towns, institutions, and geographical position. County managers will be appointed on the recommendation of the Local Appointments Commissioners, and there are special provisions with regard to the first county managers under which county secretaries and secretaries of boards of health will be considered in that order before other candidates.

The manager will not only act in county council business, but also in conjunction with every elective body in the county as defined in the first section of the Bill. These elective bodies include borough corporations, urban district councils and certain joint bodies. This will give the boroughs and smaller towns the same type of government as the county boroughs.

Provision is made for assistant managers in Cork, Tipperary and Dublin, but not elsewhere except where the Minister, after consultation with the council, requires the appointment. The Dublin City Manager will be appointed Dublin County Manager, and as such he will become Manager of Dún Laoghaire. He will have two assistant managers who will act both in the city and county. The present Manager of Dún Laoghaire will become a Dublin Assistant City Manager, and the Secretary of Dublin County Council will be given the same preference for a Dublin Assistant City Managership as he would have had for managership of the county if these special provisions had not been contained in the Bill. The position of Dublin City and County under the Bill is analogous to two counties in a group. There is no merging of the administrations.

I have touched on the main features of the Bill. The purpose in view is to make better provision for the government of counties, and I have no doubt this purpose can be achieved by elected bodies working in co-operation with competent managers. Provided popular control is retained, the people are mainly concerned in seeing that local government works efficiently, giving each community the services it is designed to give. This Bill, we believe, will enable local bodies to carry out their tasks more effectually and to the greater satisfaction of the people.

I think this Bill is a great mistake. I feel that, in a sense, the Minister can argue if he gets it and establishes the system which it purports to set in operation, he will be aiming at a state of perfection. That may be, but that is a very high standard to impose on a very imperfect world. I suggest that, if we are to have a counsel of perfection, it will have to be enunciated by some more perfect people than the present Government Party. I fail completely to understand how a Party, which talked so much in the past about the democratic rights of the people of this country, can, under the guise of a measure like this, go so far and so fast as to take away these rights from the people. The Minister says that there has been a lot of cant talked about the system of dictatorship which this Bill would set up, but, disguise it as you may, it aims at nothing else only a system of dictatorship. Whether that be the real aim or not is something which has not been disclosed, but the truth is that, when this Bill becomes law, local government in future in this country is going to be entirely in the hands of the managers in each county and the Minister to whom they are responsible. It is such an absolute confession of lack of faith in the people of this country that I cannot understand how the Fianna Fáil Party can get away with it, even with their own supporters. I may say here that I fail to understand the attitude of quite a number of those who voted for this measure in the other House not belonging to the Fianna Fáil Party. I think it was an error of judgment. In my opinion, the failure of a particular county council at a particular period is not an argument in favour of this Bill at all. You are now going to complete the job of establishing here a hierarchy of officialdom in local government affairs under which, when you have had it in operation, you will have the local people tied hand and foot in such a fashion that, although you have a local council nominally operating and advising a county manager, they have no real power other than to determine and levy the rate, and see that it is paid. There are local councils which have been failures. Some of them have been outstanding in the last few years in their incompetence and, one might say, in their corrupt methods, but this is not the way to put these people right.

I completely fail to understand how a system can be established on the basis of either inefficiency or corruption, which is going to give justice, straight dealing and efficiency at the top. If our people in local government to-day are not as efficient as they might be, why not try to examine the conditions locally in order to see what methods might be adopted or what new force might be injected into the system locally in order to make it more efficient? Some county councils are more efficient than others; some county councils are more just, more straight, and more fair in their dealings than others. Why not try to examine the characteristics of those councils, and those of the others that are so peculiar in their methods, with a view to trying to get the evil ones to imitate the good ones? Why not try to raise the people up generally to a higher level of citizenship by making them understand they are a free people, with rights and duties to perform, and that one of the most essential duties is to maintain the local services for the benefit and welfare of their own people locally, so that it will be a credit to themselves, and that it will be administered on the basis of justice and be efficient all round? Why not try to aim at that?

If our people cannot be efficient as local administrators, I cannot see how these same people can be any more efficient as farmers, as labourers, as business men or professional men. If this country to-day is so bankrupt in the spirit of citizenship that we are unable to call upon the services of such people as these to administer our local services, there is no hope for the future of this country.

I do not think it is anything like as bad as that or that the outlook for the future is so black. I am satisfied, however, that you can destroy all desire on the part of the decent citizens to have any contact or take any responsibility in administering local affairs, when they find that the affairs they are going to administer are in effect not being administered by them at all but by an official appointed, nominally perhaps, by the Local Appointments Commission but, in fact, perhaps, by the Minister, and in the last analysis responsible to him, and one who can be dismissed by him on his own, and in every way so tied on to the Minister in power at the time that the control of the local people is practically set at naught. Responsible men will not come in to co-operate with such a scheme of things. There are quite a number of responsible men in our local authorities who are sick to death of the methods under which the present system is operated. That, in my view, is not the way to set things right.

Now, we are going to set up this new scheme which people are to regard as something much more efficient than what we have got. What, after all, is efficiency in local administration? So far, this efficiency has not been marked by a smaller demand, in the places where these gentlemen have been operating, or by a reduction in the rates. It may be true in another sense and, perhaps, it may be argued, that there is a better return for the money. It is something which it is always very difficult to prove. I, for one, am very sceptical of the possibilities of greater efficiency coming from this new system. By establishing it and by taking the local responsibility from the local people—who have been exercising it with just as much efficiency in another sphere, with the limitations and so on, as the Executive Council in its sphere— I suggest that you are taking away more than rights, you are taking away liberties, and bringing about a lack of confidence in our own people. Fundamentally, that is the greatest fault in the Bill. Say what you like, no one round the country will be convinced that you are not just going to set up a manager on top who is going to be the boss responsible to some individual in the Custom House or in Merrion Street, and between the two plans— aye, some will suggest plots—will be laid, and the schemes will be made to operate. It is all very well if the man in the Custom House or in Merrion Street is noted for his justice, fair dealing and capacity to administer, but that is very vital in the whole scheme—it is imperative—and if you are not going to get that by this measure, you are going to do something more than just merely breaking up the local council as we know it. To a certain extent, I suggest that the administration of the local government system as it has been going on in quite a number of counties for a few years past, has done more to undermine the confidence of the people in central government than a great many other very grave steps and actions taken in the past.

The first essential for a free people in any country is to be satisfied, to be convinced that the people who govern and manage their affairs are just and fair, and that they will deal out what is fair to every citizen. Before these people will be satisfied that they are right in putting greater power, and giving greater authority, into the hands of members of the Executive, they ought to be satisfied on that point. There are counties in this country at the moment where I recognise that local government credit is at a minimum. It has not been efficient, but, above all, it has not been fair. I suggest to the Minister that, if that is to be the ground on which this Bill is based, and if he wants to pick out the county which is outstanding in maladministration—I will not say in incompetence, but I will say in dishonest methods—the place he needs to go to is the county from which his Parliamentary Secretary comes.

I know that there are people there who are backing this Bill and who want it, but they want it on entirely different grounds from those on which the Minister is arguing. They think that there will be another day when there will be another man in control and when things will be on a fair basis again. I know it is not very comforting to have to say that in local administration corrupt methods are employed. I know that, putting it on the higher plane, if our affairs nationally are to be conducted like that, we cannot get anywhere. It may be that our whole conception of the organisation of society is wrong, that we did not start out in the beginning with the point of view that it was the job of the people here to do their best to provide outlets and a living for all the people, and that what we set about doing was to fight with each other for the few posts there were, instead of trying to create work and opportunity for all our people. In that sort of struggle the man of the narrowest Party outlook insisted all the time that, apart from any question of fitness or worthiness, his Party followers ought to be placed in positions. That is what has been taking place in connection with certain county councils, but there is no county where that tune has been so consistently played as in the constituency represented by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister.

I am sure the Senator will realise that it is undesirable to mention people who are not in the House and who are not in a position to defend themselves.

Yes, Sir, I realise that, but the Minister, naturally, will defend his Department and the work of his Department. It does not give me any pleasure at all to point out these weaknesses. I am only arguing to the effect that, if you are going to try to convince the people of this country that this Bill will have the effect the Minister says it will have, you will have to satisfy the people that those at the top are just and fair as they have been in the past; because if you are going to put greater power into the hands of certain men in this country with regard to the conduct of local affairs, that is exactly what the people will ask. They will want to know what sort of protection a measure of this kind will give them, and how the weak and poor will be treated.

Only the other day, in the particular county to which I am referring, there was a sworn inquiry. As a matter of fact, there have been several sworn inquiries in that particular constituency, and these have resulted because a number of people there thought that they could get away with anything because a certain person was representing that constituency in the Oireachtas. Only two or three days ago there was an inquiry into the matter of complaints to the effect that certain gangers in control of road work in that county were levying 2/- and 3/- a week from people who were hoping to get work. Those were the supporters of the Parliamentary Secretary.

I suggest, Sir, that it is uncalled for that Senator Baxter should make such statements here. His suggestion definitely—with no ribbons tied on to it—is that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister will stand for any sort of bribery, corruption and robbery, provided that it is done by members of his own Party.

I think Senator Baxter should not pursue the line he has been following.

Very well, Sir, I shall only make a comment on what Senator Quirke has said, and that is in regard to what actually takes place. These are facts that I have given. I do not know what takes place in the county to which Senator Quirke belongs, or in the county which he has left. I may say that these things do not take place in my own county. It is possible that the county council there is, what one might call, practically half-and-half, and I should think that the chairman of that county council would be more or less a supporter of the Government. I could name a number of county councils where such things do not take place, but my argument is that, in certain cases, they have taken place, and that that kind of thing could not take place if the people at the top discountenanced that sort of thing happening. My argument is that we will have to see to it that decent public men will be enabled to try to establish decent standards, and, further, to see that when things that are not decent occur, they should not be cloaked. I think that the sooner we understand that matter, the better it will be for ourselves, and that the sooner we go about building up decent systems of local government, and try to do away with the kind of thing to which I have referred already, and the methods to which I have referred, the better it will be for ourselves.

Now, with regard to this particular measure, I think there is no doubt at all about the fact that if you had at the top men who would view every problem in a judicial fashion, you might be able to make an effort, through that form of local organisation, to bring about a tolerably good scheme of local government. That may be. I am not such an optimist, however, as to believe that people sitting either in Merrion Street or in the Custom House can ever get close enough to the conditions obtaining in this country to be able to make a good scheme. I am afraid that the truth is that we seem to be getting farther away every day from the actual conditions that exist in this country. However, I think that if we had, in our scheme of local government, such very impartial and competent people, and a very different spirit, such as has existed up to the present, and which still exists in some parts of the country, there might be something to be said in favour of this. I do not believe, however, that we are going the right way about it in this Bill.

I feel sure there is quite a number of people in this country who are more competent to deal with the matter of local government than the members of this House—men who have always been interested in such matters, from the point of view of their duty as citizens of this State. These people are members of county councils to-day, and it is due to the votes of many of these people that a good number of us were able to come into this House, but apparently such people now are to be regarded as not anything like competent to manage these affairs, or to be given an opportunity of having a say as to who may be called to be the manager of the county council concerned.

That may be the view of the Minister, but I believe that it is wrong. The Minister may think that it will make for more efficiency, but I do not believe that this Bill will give us a more efficient system. I believe that the power the Minister has with regard to the dismissal of the manager amounts to tyranny, and I believe that that power means putting the whole system of local government entirely into the hands of the Minister. If you want to put this matter under control of a dictatorship, I think that this is the best way of going about it. Go down to any local council, and you will find that it has no power over any official in that council. The manager may be a sort of a crank, or an individual who is only able to look at things from a certain point of view, or a certain slant, yet, according to this, he alone has the sole control over the staff. No matter what difficulties members of the staff may have to encounter, it would seem that they have not a right of appeal to the council, so far as this Bill is concerned. The manager has the staff completely in his hands—the county surveyor, the engineers, the gangers on road work, and so on. All these officials will be in the hands of the manager and, therefore, of the Minister. You have it from the ground up to the top here in Dublin. I think that it is the most complete form of dictatorship that you could get outside of Nazi Germany.

I admit that that may not be the aim of the Minister or of the Government, but I do hold that that is what will result once this scheme is put into operation. We are told about the experience that has been had already with regard to county or city managers, but it must be remembered that they have only been operating for a very short period. Now you have this thing of people who can be dismissed by a two-thirds majority of the council—that is, if the Minister sanctions it, but in other words it means that all the Minister needs is to have one-third with him, and then he is all right. Now, Sir, everybody likes to see good value being given for good money, and everybody would like to see things being run more efficiently in this country. Certainly, that would be a very commendable thing, but I, for one, am not satisfied that this new system is the kind of system that we want, the kind of system that will give proper efficiency for the money spent, or the kind of system to which our people will react favourably. I think it would be better to try to inculcate in the minds of our people an understanding of their responsibilities as citizens, with a view to getting them interested in matters of local government for the sake of making local affairs better and seeing that local affairs are better run. I think we should aim at educating our people to take their part in the management of local affairs. That, in my opinion, would be a very much better thing than what is in this Bill. If we could try to bring out an individual in that way and give him a place, and then enable him to graduate for a higher place, as a result of this Bill, then we might have something to say in favour of it.

Nothing has been given a fair chance, and I do not think this is going to be any improvement on the old. As far as I am concerned, it terrifies me. I do not believe that it is going to give us cleaner administration, and I believe further that you are going to set up a system where a few officials, collected in one house, perhaps playing a game of bridge and enjoying some of the good things that the poorer people in the country cannot afford, will determine the destinies of the people as far as they are concerned in local affairs. We are getting on to fairly dangerous ground when that kind of thing goes on for a bit. I suggest that the Minister's scheme in this is a mistake, and that even if you got to a certain extent some efficiency, it would have such drawbacks on the other hand that the game would not be worth the candle.

If the criticisms which I have offered at one point may have appeared to be more severe than I would be justified in making, I say that what we have to cultivate in this country above all, not only in national affairs, but particularly in local affairs, is the feeling amongst our people that those who have responsibility for administering affairs are themselves so just that they will deal justice all round. The people are not going to be ready to entrust their future to the hands of people when experience in the past teaches them that for the future they have cause to beware.

Notwithstanding anything which has been said by Senator Baxter, I rise to support the Bill. Before I refer to the Bill at all I would like to protest in the strongest possible manner against the personal attack made on the Parliamentary Secretary by Senator Baxter. I think it is entirely uncalled for, particularly in this House, particularly when the Parliamentary Secretary was not present, and particularly in view of the fact that Dr. Ward has succeeded in heading the poll at successive elections in his own constituency. It is quite obvious that if this or any other Bill is to be debated along anything like sensible lines, personalities must be eliminated. I think it is quite uncalled for that this Bill should be made the opportunity by anybody for an attack on any one county much less any one individual. As I say, I think it is deplorable that such a thing should happen, and I do not propose to reply in the same sort of tone to Senator Baxter. Rather than make the discussion on the Bill an opportunity for that sort of attack, I think it would be far more becoming and far more fitting for Senator Baxter or any other speaker to pay a tribute to the men who in the past have given their services freely to this country on the county councils and on the district councils, the men who, year in year out, travelled at their own expense to attend county council meetings and who took the responsibility which it is now proposed to hand on to the county managers. Referring to the "dictatorial attitude" of the Government in putting forward this measure, perhaps I might allude to the fact that the same thing was said when the Cumann na nGaedheal Government abolished the district councils. We all know that such an argument will not hold water. I think from the statement made by the Minister that it is quite clear that there is no such intention, and that in fact the intention is to work for greater efficiency in local government. Senator Baxter flew off the handle and made several statements which I am sure even he in his calmer moments would not stand over. In his anxiety to get in a few blows here and there at certain individuals, I suppose he let himself be carried away. Amongst other things, he said that if such a system were to be put into operation at all it would have to be brought in by some more perfect people than the present Government Party. In a non-political assembly such as this I think that is a deplorable statement for any man to make. Surely if we are to look at it at all from any sort of sensible angle, we must judge the Bill on its merits. We must not find fault with the Bill, and we must not completely wreck the Bill because it is introduced by the Minister for Local Government, the Parliamentary Secretary or the Fianna Fáil Government. We should examine the Bill on its merits. I am sorry to say that I feel very much inclined to think from his remarks that Senator Baxter did not have time to read the Bill. He said that the county manager was going to be a sort of local rajah with complete power and complete control over local government, with the co-operation of a few similar rajahs here and there, and that the plain people of Ireland would for all time be a band of slaves. Surely if Senator Baxter read the Bill he would know that that is not a fact, and that there is no possibility that any such thing could happen within this measure.

It is quite obvious that with the increase in various duties which would naturally come within the business of a county council some change would have to be made, and I think most people will realise the difficulty there has been in getting a suitable type of people who would be in a position to spend practically their whole time on this particular type of work. Up to, say, nine or ten years ago, the work was not quite so involved, but since that time it has become necessary to bring in various schemes which involve more work on the council and, as a result, it was quite obvious that something would have to be done to get more efficient working of the councils all over the country. I am referring to the various social services, if you like, all of which need attention. Men who have themselves acted on county councils will, I think, agree with me that the work was becoming out of all proportion to their capacity. They were being overworked. They were being asked to take on responsibility for things to which they really had not time to attend. We all know the case of the county councillor who goes to a meeting once a month. He goes there in his own time to examine things, and certain matters are put before him for his approval, and although he had not time to go into them thoroughly, he still has to take responsibility.

The existing secretary is the person who really goes through the thing and puts it up for the county council to sign. In my opinion, what is being done in this matter is to regularise the position. The existing secretary of a county council, if he is the proper type of man, with the proper personality for his job, has, for all practical purposes, been running the council. He had no responsibility, but under this Bill he will in future have to accept the responsibility. To say that the managerial system will be a failure, to say that there is no hope of its being a success, is to my mind nothing more or less than a wild statement. The managerial system has, in fact, already stood the test of efficiency in business concerns. We have all over the country big business concerns, departmental stores and other businesses being run by a managing director under the supervision, if you like, of the directors, but between times the managing director has full control. He is the person who carries on the business from day to day, and it is only at directors' meetings that he is or can be brought to book for anything he has done in the meantime. It has also been the experience of people in this country that the persons who get that type of job are those who will not do wild things in the meantime.

Senator Baxter, in his speech, also suggested that all these county managers were going to be put into their positions for the term of their natural lives—I think those were the words he used. If you read the Bill you would know that such was not the case, and I would like to refer him to Section 6 (2)—Suspension and Removal of County Manager. He will find that if the county council for any reason decides that the county manager should be removed, they have a right to appeal to the Minister. Sub-section (2) says:—

"The county manager for a county shall not be suspended or removed by the council of that county save by a resolution passed by such council for the purpose of such suspension or such removal and for the passing of which not less than two-thirds of the members of such council voted and of the intention to propose which not less than seven days' notice was given to every person who was a member of such council when such notice was given."

It would be ridiculous to suggest that any Government, even a Fianna Fáil Government, would do a thing of that kind, that they would suggest that a man would be put into a job for all time without the possibility of removal for anything he did. Surely, a Bill would not pass through the Dáil in that condition, even if it were presented to that House with a clause like that? Such statements can serve no useful purpose, except to try to confuse the ordinary people down the country.

I think I am as much in touch with the people generally all over the country as any Senator, and I have found, generally speaking, that this Bill will be welcomed. Here and there, of course, certain public bodies have objected, and here and there certain individuals have objected, but, generally speaking, the people of the country are in favour of this measure, and they believe it will result in greater efficiency in local government. When discussion was first started on county management I immediately felt that it was not a good idea, but the more I have studied it, the more am I convinced that it is the only solution for the present position, and the only way in which the amount of work which has been, and will be thrown on county councils in future, could possibly be handled. The fact that certain counties have been run by commissioners is another test. If you like, it it not the same thing, but, for all practical purposes, it is a pretty good indication of how things would work out under the county managers. I happen to know a number of counties where commissioners have been working. The commissioners, I must say, were exceptionally good and efficient men, but I do not know of any case in which an appeal has been made to the Government to remove a commissioner in any county in which he was placed. I do not know of any case in which the people of a county run by a commissioner would be glad to see the commissioner removed. That is an indication, as far as I can see, at any rate, that the thing is not quite so hopeless as Senator Baxter suggests. He goes on to say that the only alternative is that we should teach the people, raise the people up, teach them that they are a free people of a free country, and all that sort of thing which sounds very well on a platform, and which people are glad to hear at elections, but to come in here in a serious debate and dish us up that sort of stuff is unworthy of a man of Senator Baxter's standing.

The question of tyranny does not enter into the thing at all. The county manager will be in the same position really to the council as the Government is to the Legislature. Nobody has suggested that the Minister for Local Government is a tyrant, or that he came in to tyrannise over the people of this House, or the people of the other House. I think such statements can serve no useful purpose, and that it is regrettable that people in public positions should descend to personalities when the persons are not present, and to attacks on counties. I am quite sure that if the people of the County Monaghan, the county that was attacked, had an opportunity they would not be long in giving an answer to Senator Baxter, and I know that if he made a similar attack on Tipperary, he would get an answer from the people of Tipperary and from me.

Why had you to get a commissioner there?

I think there is a most important principle at stake in this Bill. There is more at stake than appears on the surface of the Bill and I trust that the Seanad will have due regard to what is at stake even if they will pass it. In my opinion, this Bill is a most—if not the most—retrograde measure that ever came before the Oireachtas. It strikes at the foundation of democratic government, and I do not know whether the Government of this country or the Oireachtas is concerned with democracy in this country or not, but it would appear to anybody who has made any study of this Bill that we are striking definitely at the fundamental principles of democracy which have guided the destinies of the peoples of these islands for so long and which principles are now being challenged ruthlessly on the battlefields of Europe.

It is all very well for Senator Quirke to tell us that this Bill is necessary because it will mean more efficiency. I doubt if we should so worship the god of efficiency—or the goddess, whichever it be—and be prepared to destroy certain rights, certain methods and principles of government for the sake of this alleged efficiency. Now, there is nothing greater in a country than the people of a country, and important and all as a Government may be, that Government, in the last analysis, can be no more than a reflex of the people of that country, and if a Government or a Parliament temporarily in power strikes at the growing capacity of a people to govern itself then it is aiming, in my opinion, and apparently consciously aiming, at creating a political state of affairs which shall maintain that Government permanently in power. That may not be the intention of those who have framed this Bill but ultimately that must be the result of a measure such as this which takes from the people their capacity to govern themselves in a local sense and, if they are deprived and rendered incapable of governing themselves locally, then it naturally flows and follows therefrom that they shall be rendered incapable of governing themselves nationally.

The fact that this Bill should come from the present Government amazes some of us who had listened to the protestations of democracy made by the representatives of that Party throughout the country in the course of the last ten or 12 years. One would have thought, listening to the advocates of that Party, that they would guard jealousy to the last degree every right of the people to govern themselves and would preserve that right to the last and smallest possible local detail. But, what do we find? Instead of maintaining that right and that capacity, they take it away in this manner and consequently leave the people politically emasculated. It shows that, despite the protestations of that Party at that time, they had no belief whatever in what they were saying, and their subsequent actions show conclusively that the whole trend and tendency of their minds, now expressed in this Bill, are away from democracy and towards bureaucracy.

Now, what is democracy? I could not help thinking of the definition of democracy when listening to Senator Quirke, who was prepared to take away every democratic right of the people provided that we got this thing called efficiency. Democracy, as I understand it, is government for the people, by the people, through the people, and surely that fundamental motto will now be destroyed when we take away from the people the right of administering even their own local affairs. That is, in my opinion, a danger to the continued successful government of this country, because if people are deprived of the means of governing themselves locally, they are rendered unfit for the greater responsibilities of national government. It was my pleasure and privilege to lecture in this city some time ago on local government, and in the course of investigations in preparation for that lecture I found that the British Government, during their period here, had not suppressed any local governing body, but it was amazing to find the number of local authorities suppressed since the establishment of our native Government.

Does that indicate an incapacity in our people for government? It is extraordinary to state that, during the time of the British occupation, although local authorities may have offended as they are alleged to have offended in the last 17 years—during which time a great number of them have been suppressed—not one single local authority was suppressed. Yet how many have lost their existence in the last 17 years? Now this Bill at one fell stroke will deprive them of any effective power to govern themselves, because the powers left to them by the Bill are purely ornate. The real, effective executive powers are given to a single individual who is to govern and control the local authority. People rate themselves in rates for their local administration, and surely they are entitled to administer those rates. If there is anything improper occurring, surely it is within the capacity of the Department to correct the irregularity. But instead of correcting the irregularity, the whole body is to be deprived of its effective executive powers. This discloses a complete distrust of the people, and what we should be concerned with is where this is going to end.

In 1924 and 1925 the boards of guardians and rural district councils were abolished, and there were brought into existence the boards of health and boards of public assistance, as we know them up to the present. The centralising efforts performed under the Act which abolished these bodies were not acceptable to a large number of people, despite Senator Quirke's statement that this measure is going to be received with open arms by everybody through the country. These small local governing bodies came into more intimate relationship with the people, and I cannot see where there has been any saving in rates, any betterment of administration, since the 1925 Act abolished these smaller bodies which were attached to the then county councils. Coming from 1925 to the present day, we find that all the powers are now to be vested in the hands of one individual, that that individual is to be appointed by the Local Appointments Commissioners and is to be at all times at the dictation, the control, and the direction of the Department.

The whole system of local government is ruthlessly thrown down and torn asunder in this Bill, and what is to be put in its place? We are to have in its place 24 or 25 individuals who are bound to accept the ukase of the Department. In that way and through that system the people come, as they must come, into violent conflict with the Department. Which is the greater authority? Which is the authority which should prevail, the authority which has right on its side, the authority which provides the money? The American revolutionaries said: "No taxation without representation." And the American States split from the British Empire as a result; but here it would seem that the people should shout through the country: "No rating without administration, not even if we are to get that greater efficiency which Senator Quirke says we will get." It is a poor substitute, indeed, having taken from the people the right to govern themselves locally, and to administer their own local affairs.

The danger, in its wider aspect, is that the moment you take from a people the power to govern locally, you lead naturally, if ungracefully, towards the stage when you take from the people the power to govern nationally. There may be reasons in the mind of the Government for this initial step in the destruction of democracy, but we have not been given those reasons. I do not know whether Signor Mussolini or Herr Hitler gave reasons for their marches on Rome or Berlin, but to-day we see those two countries— two countries at one time, and that not so long ago, governed democratically— governed in the most tyrannically dictatorial manner. The people have no right whatever to criticise the Government. To dare to do so, even to the extent of criticising a single individual, is immediately to merit internment or death. No doubt, the way in those countries, too, was prepared by the insertion of the thin end of the wedge. I hope those who are in favour of these measures of taking from the people the small authority they have in local affairs will realise that it is by starting in this manner that ultimately the whole system of democratic government can be destroyed, and that the way is easily prepared in that manner.

Whether the people of this country will calmly sit down and accept the destruction of their powers in local government, I do not know. Despite the lethargy with which we are told the people are taking this measure, on various occasions in history this people has asserted itself, and I feel quite sure that when you have closed down the safety valve sufficiently, then the boiler will explode. I hope you are not heading towards that, but you are dealing with a dynamic people. You are dealing with a people which has a great regard for its rights, a people which, like other peoples of Europe, feels the overwhelming shadow of war, and possibly feels all the difficulties that the war situation brings. This is not the time when a Government that calls itself democratic should be putting forward measures of this character, which show no trust whatever in the people of this country. That people will yet rise and assert itself.

You should beware of measures of this kind which interfere, as this measure violently does, with the right of the people to control and govern themselves locally. No case of maladministration has been made out for the purpose of taking these rights away from this people. If such a case were made, correction were better than decapitation. But the whole tendency of Governments to-day is to treat the people with contempt, to ignore the people, to sweep aside contemptuously their rights and to govern through bureaucrats. That may mean efficiency but before you get to that stage of efficiency towards which you think you are progressing, you may get something far different and of a far more contrary character. Burke said on one occasion: "You cannot indict a people." A people is sovereign. At election times you have to refer to the people for a renewal of the authority to govern the people. I trust and hope that when the next appeal is made, the people will realise what is being done, not only in this measure, but in several other measures going back for the last 17 years, to take away from them the power of governing themselves. A Government properly representative of the Irish people, and having regard to those Gaelic principles which we heard enunciated on platforms in the past, would be cultivating, fostering and developing every tendency in the Irish people to govern themselves locally and nationally. Instead of that, you have this measure here to-day which is developing not their capacity to govern themselves but developing the capacity in you to govern them bureaucratically as well as impossibly. It were well that we should not aim at too much efficiency, but rather attempt to develop the capacity of the Irish people to govern themselves.

I support this measure. I support it as a farmer, as a ratepayer and as a citizen who is anxious to see efficient local government in this country. I think Senator Baxter's speech is a very sound argument for this Bill. If many of the statements which he made are correct, the Bill should have been introduced long ago. I admit that this Bill is repugnant to the principles of democracy——

——but the principles of democracy are being overthrown by government legislation. To save local government from a complete breakdown, this Bill is necessary. I should also like to say that I believe the Government have introduced this Bill in the best interests of the country and that they are honestly trying to remedy the mistakes they have made in recent legislation. All the mistakes in local government legislation have not been made by the present Government. The last Government, the Cosgrave Government, blundered and the worst culprits of all were the Sinn Fein Party. Every one now admits that the Local Government Act of 1898, which was passed by the British Government, was a very efficient measure. It functioned well up to 1914, and the members elected to the county councils in those days would do honour either to the Dáil or the Seanad. But those bodies were not good enough for Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein in those days wanted to get control of the local bodies for their own purposes. They put the Party machine to work and ousted those worthy representatives for Party hacks of Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein was the first Party to introduce politics into local government affairs and that has been the cause of all the upset in local government since.

The Cosgrave Government made the mistake of abolishing the district councils and of centralising government too much, but—to give them credit—they tried to abolish politics in local bodies. I am sure they would have succeeded in doing that but for the opposition of Sinn Féin. During the Cosgrave administration, they established a business register under which a few business representatives could be elected to the Municipal Council of Dublin. I believe that, if the Cosgrave Government had stayed in power, they would have introduced a measure on the lines of this Bill. Fianna Fáil came into power before the Cosgrave Government had completed its work and—like the Sinn Féin attitude towards the British Government, that they should do away with everything that was introduced in the British time—Fianna Fáil, on the same principle, wanted to do away with everything which was passed during the Cosgrave régime. They brought politics back to local government and had the whole force of the Party machine at the elections to elect without any consideration whatever except that the candidiate belonged to the Fianna Fáil Party. They did away with the business register.

And justly so: it was a political register.

That may be the Senator's opinion.

It is public knowledge.

They extended the franchise and gave what I may term representation without taxation. Of course, the Senator approves of that, also. Every boy and girl in the country, unemployed or otherwise, who never paid a penny in taxation, had the vote and the right to elect a representative to spend the money the people had contributed. The Cosgrave Government saw that it was necessary to have some business people for the efficient working of the Dublin Corporation, but the Fianna Fáil Government did away with that. The Fianna Fáil Government have seen the error of their ways, and I believe they are honestly trying to rectify the mistakes they have made. Consequently, they are introducing this Bill, which I believe is a good one, one which will work efficiently and one under which we will have a better system of local government. For that reason, I am definitely and wholeheartedly in support of the Bill. There may be a few details, such as the separate county managers, which I would like to see changed, but it will be time enough however to discuss that in Committee. I am wholeheartedly in support of the Bill, apart from the terrible things which are going to happen—according to Senator Lynch and Senator Baxter—when it comes into operation.

Wonder on wonder, I find that day by day and hour by hour Senator Quirke's views on government are approaching nearer to my own. At the same time, I find myself on this particular occasion speaking against the views which Senator Baxter has expressed. The vicissitudes of this particular problem within the last ten years have been remarkable. Although I know it has happened often elsewhere in political assemblies, that does not explain the fact that the Party which has consistently opposed this principle in years past and which on one particular occasion used the local elections tooth and nail for political propaganda, now introduces this Bill whilst many of those who originally thought out the idea are now dividing against it. I except only one person—a fellow-Kerryman in the Dáil—and I propose to follow his example. I do so because my practical experience of local government and public bodies has convinced me that the present methods, to put it mildly, require very considerable alteration. I support the principle of the Bill and I have consistently advocated it as far back as the year 1929, when I persuaded the council of which I was then a member to forward to the Department a resolution which advocated this principle. Since then I have discussed the matter with various Ministers and I am quite satisfied that, were it not for the political repercussions which they anticipated, all of them would have liked to see the provisions go even further than they do.

The present position in the average county council is that a varying number of councillors come in from varying distances to deal with possibly 40 or more items on an agenda, some of which may have been postponed from the previous month; many spend half of the day travelling, their time is controlled by their return train, and their preoccupations preclude anybody staying overnight and finishing the agenda the next day. What with voting on resolutions and amendments thereto, some minor problem may occupy several hours, and the remainder of the agenda is often either skimped or postponed until the next meeting, possibly for a month. I have seen the yearly estimate passed in half an hour and have known the influence of one or two councillors to delay a particular decision on minor matters for a month or two. I have been the unfortunate witness of a snap division which sent the whole of the council back to their homes with a wasted day, without any busness having been done, simply because certain essential voters were found to be absent. The waste of time and the delays are often incredible, and the ratepayers in some of the councils do not get anything like value for the money they find it so hard to produce. There is little or no attempt to formulate a forward or long-term policy based on the capacity of the ratepayers to meet the cost, or to adjust the expenditure over the year to the income which can be expected from the rateable value of any particular county.

In particular reference to the boards of health—which are now being done away with, and replaced by committees appointed by the county councils in the various districts—the practice has been that, after the demand on the county council has been passed, fresh expenditure is incurred without any provision to meet it having been made. Each problem has got to be taken as it arises, and it is decided without examination of the effect of the decision on the whole yearly budget. As a result, the indebtedness of many of the councils is growing year after year, overdrafts are in the same way, and the rates have risen so high that in many places the arrears of large sums have become an endemic factor.

Elsewhere a great deal has been said about the question of corruption. Various statements have been made on this subject, ranging from those of irresponsible exaggerators to those of the innocent councillor who, in 50 years of public life, has never come across a case of it. I think that, to be fair, we must take a middle way, and admit that there is here, as elsewhere in every elective legislative body in the world, the use of patronage and influence—not so much for personal, as for political ends. In isolated cases, small sums of money pass, and I must confess that I am not blameless myself in the matter. For instance, on one occasion a young man, whom I had got into the Gárdaí a couple of years ago, came down from the mountain and insulted me by handing me a ten-shilling note; I put the insult in my pocket. However, the next day his father and I discussed the matter, and I was assured that the boy knew no better, as, in these days, everything, apparently, had to be paid for. Eventually, at any rate, the parish priest became the residuary legatee. On the whole, however, I must say that the effect of such things on the ratepayer's pocket is not a large one, and if corruption is on a large scale, then the Department itself must be privy to it, as their sanction for large items is always required. They have to examine all the details, and to sanction any item involving expenditure, whether large or small.

Now, the whole principle concerned in this Bill is this: In order that legislation passed by these Houses should operate to the greatest benefit of the people, it must necessarily be operated efficiently throughout the whole of the complicated body politic, and to that end, delays, obstruction, politics and petty peculation must be eliminated as far as possible from Local Government administration. The days of local councillors working entirely for their own districts, regardless of the general public welfare, and the various forms of patronage, must go. Not only will the managerial system, in my opinion, go a long way towards effecting this, but it will make for economy which, in view of the little money we have got, is perhaps the most important question in this country to-day. Our two chief authorities— the Oireachtas and the Elective Bodies—should be interdependent. As it is, they function to a great extent separately, and laws are made here, and taxes imposed, without due consideration of the effect they will have on local expenditure.

Only recently a Parliamentary Secretary was unable to give this House any estimate of the cost of a measure which he was in charge of, or even any approximate estimate as to the amount of the cost to the local bodies, and that is a thing that, I am sure, could have been found out by his Department quite easily. I am convinced that efficient managers in one way or another will help to lighten the burden. The opponents of this measure say, first of all, that it is a negation of democracy. Now, I think that I have a better definition of democracy than that which Senator Lynch gave us. I think that I may say that democracy has been well defined as a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people collectively and is administered by them or by officers appointed by them. The Oireachtas appoint an Executive to do their work, and this Bill, in the same way, delegates the executive functions of local government to a competent officer with a view to relieving the elected representatives of the people of work which in modern times their preoccupations make it impossible for them to carry out. This officer, who, it is quite clear, is under the control of the council which he serves, is in exactly the same position as the general manager of a company whose directors, elected by the shareholders, appoint him and can dismiss him.

He is not responsible to the people.

At any rate, the Bill provides that the manager must do any particular act which he is lawfully required to do and for which funds are made available. I think that that is a good definition of democracy, and I think that, rather than call this a "Managers Bill," the words "Business Bill" would be more appropriate, and, as the principle is already on the Statute Book in perhaps a more violent form, I cannot see that there is any new departure so far as the powers of popular control are concerned.

With regard to democracy, Senator Lynch quoted Burke. I, in turn, should like to give this House a little bit of Disraeli. Disraeli once said to the British House of Commons: "If you establish a democracy you must in due season reap the fruits of democracy, and you will in due season have great impatience of the public burdens combined with great increase of the public expenditure." I think that this measure is calculated, if it is properly worked, to keep democratic principles within reasonable bounds, or, in other words, it assists democracy by doing what any first-class business firm does —it introduces business methods.

There is another argument against the Bill, and that is that the proposal is an intensification of the modern tendency to centralisation and bureaucracy—that it is dictatorship in an embryo form. The tasks of modern government have become so complicated, and the demands for social betterment which are made by the people have become so immense and insistent, that some change of a radical nature from the system introduced, as an experiment, in 1899, is long overdue. Part-time volunteers can no longer compete with the spate of legislation which issues from these Houses, and few of the local legislators have even a cursory knowledge of the details of the Acts compiled by the Parliamentary draftsmen. It is hard to blame them.

There are several major questions in connection with the Bill which require consideration before the measure becomes law, and I hope that the Minister's answers to my remarks will obviate the necessity for putting down amendments at a later stage. To begin with, there is the method by which managers are to be selected. The success of the whole idea depends on the selection of the right type of individual. Not only must he be an efficient businessman, trained in the details of local government administration, but he must be sympathetic to popular feeling and tactful in his dealings both with equals and with subordinates, but all these qualities give second place to the quality of character. Having regard to the many additional duties which he will be called upon to fulfil, he has got to be a young man, an active man. I regret that a retiring age has not been specified for that reason and, for another, that you are going to create by the tenant-for-life idea which is included in the Bill, a block against the young men from the university or elsewhere who might offer themselves for service under local government in this country. There will be no candidates, no young school whatever coming forward. I think the manager must be prepared to move constantly about the whole of his county and to keep himself in touch with public opinion, the wants of the poor and the special requirements of the various elective bodies, of which there are going to be seven or eight in some counties, which he is now to supervise. I think that a short time ago the supply of persons suitable as managers was thought to be extremely limited. I doubt whether everybody realises the complexity of local government, and I seriously suggest that it should now become a profession which calls for training in a university, in the same way as the Civil Service, and as we get men from the universities to act for us as lawyers, doctors and surgeons.

I have got to presume that local knowledge was the factor which led the Minister to lay down in the Bill that county secretaries should have first preference in their own counties. I think that is a decision which is most regrettable and that a golden opportunity of creating a general list which would allow men to be moved from county to county has been missed. I think the gradual gain in experience and incentive to energy which the possibility of promotion and more responsibility and a more lucrative position would provide could not but be to the great advantage of the ratepayers. At the present time a local government official may well say: "What is my outlook? What is my future?" A man with character and ambition to bigger things will look elsewhere than to employment which, although it carries a pension, indicates little or no prospect whatever of further advancement and I think in this way we are going to lose to local government and, possibly, to the country some of the best brains instead of keeping them. That is, unfortunately, what we are always doing in this country.

As to those who accept these conditions, the county secretaries who are appointed as managers in their own counties, placed in one position for life, the tendency must be towards parochialism—again one of the curses, pitting Kerry against Meath, Kildare against Louth, and so on. It tends towards roots in local society and to form affiliations in one direction or another. They may be quite good, decent affiliations, but they help to keep roots in the ground, instead of their outlook being all-embracing and independent. Another point is that the secretary who is appointed manager in his own county will have difficulties which it would be very much easier for a stranger to overcome. He will now directly control many of the officials who hitherto have regarded themselves as his equal. I am sure there will be a considerable amount of friction in various places and, even with the best intentions on the part of the manager, I do not think it is going to be to the advantage of the public.

To return to the original presumption, in view of the fact that commissioners have often functioned effectively at a moment's notice, there seems to be little ground for supposing that local knowledge is an absolute essential for the first appointments.

It is also a matter for consideration as to whether one man can adequately supervise the whole of the elective bodies which he is now asked to take over as manager. I am of opinion that he can; but I think that the system should be introduced gradually first of all, in only one or two counties, and should be extended as experience is gained and really suitable personnel becomes available. In the meantime, I should suggest that individuals who are examined and recommended by the Appointments Commissioners and who are earmarked as prospective managers might be sent for training under some of the managers who are known to be really high-class administrators and outstanding men. As a result, they should be very much better when they took on their duties and their vision should be very much wider than if they just walked into and stayed in their own counties as is proposed now.

There is one point against the actual process of selection by the board. It is obvious that minor appointments could be made on the written qualifications of the candidate and an interview becomes necessary only in order that the board should satisfy themselves that there is nothing "strange" about a particular individual. When, however, the board have to deal with the selection of what might well be called an assistant Minister for Local Government, who, in my opinion, must possess all the qualifications which I have already enumerated—who will have to deal throughout his life with finance as well as general policy, and very serious finance, growing finance all the time—then I think a great deal more than an interview and a system of marking to the advantage of one and the disadvantage of another, is required. It is for that reason that I have suggested the festina lente method which I have just mentioned.

The last important matter I have to deal with is the proposed amalgamation of counties. I believe that I was the first person who suggested this many years ago, and I rejoice to see that a step, at any rate, has been taken in this direction, and I hope that in time to come the system will be developed to embrace and amalgamate a good many more areas to the advantage of economy and other things. I do not think that we can continue to afford to base local government on the 26 arbitrary areas which we call counties, regardless of their size, regardless of their rateable values or their population, instead of federating suitable areas under the control of a smaller number of local bodies. Moreover, if a commissioner can deal at a moment's notice with three or four elective bodies or a council, then it is arguable that a smaller elective body can deal with a larger area and do it with less expense.

There is a very important point here of which I hope the House will take notice, that is, that the larger areas would have the effect of spreading the incidence of taxation more justly between the poor man on the small holding and his richer neighbour on richer land. I do not think it is generally realised that the average rateable value throughout this country varies between 5/- and 22/-, and that the population to be catered for is in inverse ratio to the rateable value, whereas the grants from the central source are, per contra, more or less in proportion thereto. Amalgamation on a bigger scale would enable all services to be administered on a cheaper and yet more comprehensive scale, and a definite policy could be carried on from which a juster distribution of the cost and a more facile collection of the rates would result.

Anyway, it seems incredibly extravagant that we are spending over £1,000,000 a year on the salaries of officials employed by county councils and boards of health, and that this figure takes no account of the wages of those and other elective bodies which are mentioned in the Bill. I am satisfied that the measure is a step in the right direction and, if it is cautiously introduced and carefully watched in its initial stages, it will be of the greatest possible advantage to the country. One thing I know, and that is that every responsible person in Kerry, my county, and all those who recall the day when the commissioner was there—he is now City Manager in Cork—one and all sigh for his return.

I wish only to state at this stage that I am in favour of the general principle of the Bill, and that I have been looking forward to such a measure for a great number of years, notwithstanding the fact that I have been a member of public bodies for the last 25 years and am still a member. In doing so, I wish to bear testimony to the public men who have given their time to public affairs on county councils and other bodies. They have given a lot of time, and their integrity, honesty and ability have been above reproach. I think that could be truly said of 98 per cent. of the councils that came under my notice at any rate.

Why this overworked word "democracy" or otherwise should be drawn across the path is beyond my comprehension. It does not come into question in this Bill at all. This Bill is purely a business matter, and I think those associated with public boards in the past, if they look into the matter carefully, would agree that you can find that there was a managerial scheme all along the line, but of a more incompetent kind. Councils meet once a month or so, and there is a rather loose discussion. Perhaps the chairman and a few other members of the council will take a close interest, but, otherwise, there is very little interest taken in the affairs of the council by the greater part of the members. Sometimes they could not tell you what took place at the meeting at all. Then the managerial system came into operation, and from that meeting until the next, the county secretary and the county surveyor were in complete charge. This Bill, to my mind, is merely a matter of tightening up the position and making the councils more competent.

If the word "efficiency" is objected to by any democrat, we will make the word "competent." It is in that light that it must only be regarded—that a manager with a council is an ideal body. I am sufficiently a democrat to say, at least, that, personally, I would not approve of a commissioner. I like a public body, and if I were given the choice of a council without a manager or of a manager without a council, I would definitely be in favour of the council without the manager. But with a manager and a council, there would be a more competent body, I think. We ought to have, then, the ideal body to run the public affairs of any county.

It may be said that a lot of people do not agree with this Bill. I have met a lot of councillors who do not—they like to hang on—but I think the general public and the ratepayers who are very harassed and depressed by the high demands of recent years are looking forward with keen anxiety to something that may bring them some relief, and anyway, it cannot be worse, because the rate demands all over the country are going very high, and there is a hope that this system, with its efficiency, will relieve that in some way. There have been various examples of managers and commissioners, and I think they have been a great success. In the city quite convenient to me—Limerick—there was a permanent manager appointed when, after some years, the rates had nearly gone beyond payment. Last year the new manager succeeded in reducing the rates by 1/- in the £, and this year he has reduced them by 2/- in the £, and I think that, in itself, is a great argument that the managerial system ought to be a success.

If I thought, like my friend Senator Lynch, that the voice of the people was being stifled in any way, I would not stand for any Bill that would go so far, but certainly I think that there is none of the democratic principles that we advocate touched at all on this Bill, and without going into details of the various sections, I wish to say that I am entirely in favour of the Bill, and I hope, like a good many others with great experience of public boards, that it will be a step in the right direction. Before I conclude, there is only one section I might refer to. It is probably due to a slip which can be remedied later on. Section 5 says:

"(1) Every person appointed to be the county manager for a county shall hold office until he dies, resigns, or is removed from office."

Surely, there is a time limit for every class of worker. All priests, teachers, doctors and others retire at a certain time and if the man who is going to govern, or partly govern all those people, is not to retire at any age, you can visualise him taken to his office in the morning in a bath chair or something like that. Surely I think there is some little slip there. None of us would like to see an old fogey of 80 or 90 years of age wheeled to his office in a bath chair in the morning. But before the Bill is passed, there will be many opportunities of discussing that and with those few remarks, having 25 years' experience of public boards, I wish to say that I am entirely in favour of the general principle of the Bill. As to details, we will have other opportunities of speaking.

I am very sorry, indeed, to be present in the House when for the preservation of itself, our publicly elected Government, to some extent, disfranchises the people in local administration and I am sorry to hear the representatives of Kerry and Clare agreeing that it is an absolute necessity. Mr. Counihan tells us from Dublin and holds out the hope that we can reduce rates and I think The McGillycuddy had something of the same optimistic outlook. I would be delighted to support the Bill if I thought that that was correct. As a county councillor of nearly 30 years' standing, I see, as regards the county which I have the honour to represent, absolutely no necessity for this Bill. I see no reason why it should be welcomed even if it is a necessity. If I were to explain myself more thoroughly, I should say that I would support the Bill if I saw that it was necessary but, candidly, for my part of the country I do not see it.

At the last election the former Minister for Local Government, speaking outside the City of Dublin, stated that among many other improvements the Government had given to rural Ireland were waterworks and sewerage schemes. It must be remembered, and Senators Counihan and The McGillycuddy should not for an instant have forgotten it, that two-thirds of the expenses of these schemes were paid by the local people themselves, and that the Minister deserves very little credit because of the contribution from taxation. The Government's contribution of one-third was held out as a bait to get the work done and the Department and the Minister advised the people that they should demand that the local bodies should carry out these schemes but he did not mention that two-thirds of the money had to be found locally and that only one-third had come from taxes. That, I think, should satisfy Senators Counihan and The McGillycuddy of the trend the administration will take in the future under the present Bill, where less publicity will be given to the doings of the manager that has been given to the activities of the council.

It has been stated here that some reform was necessary, and I think it was Senator Quirke who said that the late Government abolished rural district councils. Who authorised either the present Government or the late Government to think that in everything that either of them, or both of them, did, Rome spoke eternally with them? Will either of these Governments show me where they have given a greater grip to rural Ireland by any one thing that either of them did since they came into office? They have divided land and sub-divided holdings; they have brought in new laws of different kinds; but where has been the increase in rural Ireland's life? Where has been the greater brightness, and where has been the tendency to come down to live in rural Ireland? I have never yet met a city man, or a man in close touch with the city, who does not tell me that this Bill is going to revolutionise Ireland and make us all great people out in the country.

One of my great reasons for opposing the Bill is that I believe it is weakening the hold of the rural population on administration. That is the cardinal reason which prompts me to go to the trouble of opposing it, hopeless task though it be. I have often wondered why it is our administrators go so fast. The one great feature which these Houses of Parliament of ours should aim at is the unity of Ireland. Was this measure adopted in Northern Ireland? Has Northern Ireland considered it? If, to-morrow, Providence so ordained that Northern Ireland were to throw in her lot with us, would the fact that Dublin ruled eternally every penny popularise it in the eyes of the Presbyterian and Protestant people there? I am against it also on the ground that we in Ireland should not give too much authority to the one man.

Again, our Governments have established district courts and circuit courts, and I am by no means satisfied that they are very much of an improvement on the old system. I do not propose to go into greater detail, but it is impossible for the Department, be it ever so competent, and more impossible still for the Minister, be he ever so anxious, to devote attention to everything done by individuals beneath him. They will be loyal on the tongue so long as they think it suits themselves and their jobs, but when they go out to the poor people in rural Ireland their loyalty will be found to exist for themselves, and for themselves alone.

Senator Counihan tells us that he supports the Bill as a farmer and a ratepayer. I wonder what inspiration along these lines prompts him so to act? Which has gone up most in the case of the individual farmer and ratepayer—rates or taxes? Of course, I know that so long as a county council stands on an individual's toes, by reason of the rates it finds it necessary to strike, that council is blamed, and the blame is carried home to the individual members of it, although they may be doing their utmost to operate justly, and, therefore, people will run to the manager for relief. They forget, however, that the only possible relief the manager can give them is in the rate, and we are told that the rate is still in the hands of the locally elected members. I think that Senator Honan, in his closely reasoned speech, which was by no means as revolutionary as some of my conservative friends', might have gone a little further, and said what is the necessity for it, and why he welcomed it. He was almost going to tell us, but did not state it exactly. He said that, for twenty-five years there was so much being done that it was impossible for patriotic individuals to come in. I think he will admit that these are not the lines along which eagerly-awaited legislation should proceed.

There is an organisation in the State at present which tells us that we should go back to the parish councils. I am with them all the way; we should go back to the parish councils, and we should invest our county councils with authority supreme. I will not stand on the present Minister's toes—he is not long enough in the Department to know a great lot about it—but I often wonder if he thinks it is everything it ought to be. A public body writes to the Department to-day, and gets an answer in three months' time. That answer tells them that "the Minister says." The Minister says more than his prayers, according to the letters which public bodies get. If you come up here and meet the Minister, you possibly find that he has never heard anything about it. When the manager comes into operation, I wonder where will John Citizen be, because he will have merely a sort of nincompoop of a council to talk to and, of course, the manager can say that "the Minister said." Candidly, I should like to support any proposals which have regard to rural Ireland's needs and wants, but I do not see any such proposal here. In a word, if I did see that it was necessary, I would regret that it should be necessary.

As I say, I am putting these views forward as a local representative of nearly 30 years' standing. I have never asked a county councillor for a vote in my life and, please God, I never will. I am getting a little tired of it, and I sometimes think that the right type of citizen is not coming forward to ask for the votes of the people. At times, I am inclined to the opinion that that is due to the constant obstacles which the Department puts in the way of good administration. I am voting against the Bill. If I could defer it, or if I could influence the Government to go more cautiously in relation to this as in relation to much of its legislation of this nature, I would do so. As I have said, has there been any great influence, any great enthusiasm, put into rural Ireland by the administration of both the Governments we have elected?

Táim i gcoinne an Bhille seo. Is docha gur bhfearr dom labhairt as Béarla i dtreo go dtuigfidh gach Seanadóir mise.

I oppose the Bill. I understand that the spirit behind the formation of this Seanad was that the members would shed their political mantles before coming in. We have, unfortunately, to listen to political speeches on all occasions, but I presume that while I hold my own political views, I will be given the right to speak in accordance with the dictates of my own conscience. I oppose the Bill for several reasons. In the first place, I was nominated as a candidate for the Seanad by the Municipal Authorities Association. Last November, that association held its annual conference in the City of Cork, and was, I think, nearly unanimous, if not unanimous, in opposition to the provisions of the Bill. Before dealing with the Bill, however, may I be permitted to refer to the speech made by Senator Counihan. I am glad he is here because it is always better to speak in a man's presence. There is one point on which I am in agreement with Senator Counihan. That is, that, in my opinion, the speech made by Senator Baxter was one of the greatest arguments in favour of the Bill, although he meant to oppose it.

Senator Counihan, speaking here as a ratepayer and as a farmer, could see nothing good either in Sinn Féin or in Fianna Fáil. In his opinion it was the Sinn Féin Party who first introduced politics into local public administration. I do not know whether I can refresh Senator Counihan's memory or whether Senator Counihan had taken up residence in County Dublin in the early days of the Sinn Féin movement when, at every meeting of the Balrothery Rural District Council, certain resolutions were passed. Senator Counihan would remember if he had then taken up residence in the Balrothery Council area, when certain snowball resolutions were passed by the Balrothery Council. They were all, I need hardly say, in opposition to Sinn Féin. That is in answer to Senator Counihan's statement that political resolutions were first introduced into local public administration by Sinn Féin.

The Senator also made reference to the fact that the Fianna Fáil Party first introduced adult suffrage for local elections. He said that a number of people had votes who were not ratepayers. Possibly I do not understand Senator Counihan's mentality as to the position of a taxpayer. I look upon every citizen as a taxpayer.

Is there any difference between a taxpayer and a ratepayer?

Thanks for the correction. I meant to have said ratepayer. In my opinion every citizen is a ratepayer. The poor working man who is paying an exorbitant rent of 7/-, 8/- or 9/- for a room is as much a ratepayer as the landlord who pays the rate direct to the rate collector.

The occupier of a room was always on the register.

I do not think that Senator Counihan sees the point I am endeavouring to make.

It is the unemployed he is thinking of.

The point I am making is that the occupier of a tenement room, who pays an exorbitant rent, is as much a ratepayer as the landlord who pays direct to the rate collector, because it is out of the rent that the landlord gets from these poor people that he pays his rates. An dtuigeann tú?

Tuigim, go maith.

Further, in reference to the Sinn Féin Party, fortunately there are here on my left two Senators who were elected to the public life of Dublin many years ago. Senator Stafford and myself were elected in 1908, and Senator O'Neill was elected in the next year, 1909. We have, therefore a reasonable experience of public affairs. In those early days of the Sinn Féin Party, when a public position had to be filled, no member of the Party would vote for any of his own relations, lest it might appear as if the members of the Party were using their positions for their own advancement. If the Senator wishes to make any inquiries, he will find that the statement I am making can be confirmed. So much for Deputy Counihan's remarks about the early Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil movements.

I have been connected with public affairs in this city for many years. I happen to enjoy the confidence of my fellow members sufficiently to enable them to place me on a number of public boards. In my opinion, public men in this city have been doing their work reasonably well and I think it would be most unfair if anybody were to insinuate that they have been using their public positions for their own advancement. They have given their services freely, willingly and unselfishly on the boards on which they happen to be members.

To come to the Bill before us, reference has been made to Section 5 of the Bill. Section 5 of the Bill states: "Every person appointed to be the county manager for a county shall hold office until he dies, resigns or is removed from office." The Bill further states: "The county manager for a county shall, by virtue of his office, be the manager for every elective body of which the functional area is wholly within such county." Let me not be taken as having any personal animus against any manager. I am speaking here without reference whatever to any particular manager. I have nothing against the present city manager; we get on very well together. I had nothing against the last city manager, a man who was cradled in the municipal service. Therefore, I do not want to be misunderstood. We have a number of public boards in the city and if the manager, as is provided for in this Bill, has to attend all the meetings of those public boards, I do not think you will have to wait very long until the contingency provided for in Section 5 comes to pass. You have the Municipal Council itself, the Dublin County Council, James' Street Poor Law Board, the Balrothery Council, the Rathdown Council, the Grangegorman Mental Hospital, the Dun Laoghaire Council and the Cork Street Fever Hospital Committee. There are so many boards that it would be utterly impossible for the manager to attend to all of them. We have heard that this Bill is not to interfere with democratic usages. With that, I am certainly not in agreement. We have had the experience in this city that the representatives of the people have no say whatever in many matters. They have not the right to appoint a poor woman to clean the offices in Cork Hill. Neither would they have the right to allot one of the poorest rooms in Keogh Barracks to a deserving tenant. That is the position that the elected representatives of the people occupy under the managerial system. Of course, my experience has been gained more from the Dublin Corporation than from county councils and possibly I should leave this question of county management to Senators from the different counties. It is only fair, however, that I should try to show how we are fixed under the managerial system in the city and how the councils in the various counties will be equally situated in the very near future.

At the present time, all the public boards of the city and county are subject to the overriding authority of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health. Very little can be done without the sanction of the Minister or of the Minister's advisers. As I visualise the situation, when this Bill is passed it will centralise the whole local government of the country here in this city. The manager naturally will act under the Department of Local Government and Public Health; that is quite understandable. He will take his advice, naturally, from the Department of Local Government. People who have given service on public boards should realise that they will have no authority whatever—they will have authority to strike the rate, and if the rate is high they will be blamed, while if it is low the manager will get the credit, but they will have no other authority in the world, and will be placed in the position that the most junior official in one of the county council offices can, if he likes, treat a councillor with contempt, as he has no authority over him. I wish to put that view of the situation before the people who are here and who may have to face it to-morrow or shortly afterwards.

I was rather surprised to hear Senator Honan a few minutes ago explaining his experience of meetings down in his county, where some of the people who attend the meetings are not conversant with what takes place. Furthermore, he states that the ratepayers are looking for some change or some relief in the rates, and that in the City of Limerick, near him, the rates have been reduced to some extent since the manager took up office. The reducing of rates is a very easy matter.

Hear, hear.

It is a very easy matter, if public service is neglected. In 1924 the commissioners took up office here in Dublin. They reduced the rates during their term of office.

And the poor suffered.

That is just the point. In fact, when their term of office expired in 1930, before we came back to office again, some of the ratepayers presented them with motor-cars on the completion of their six years in office. One of them is back in office again as city manager, but that did not reduce the rates. I presume that Senator Madden knows, as I do, how it was done. They reduced the rates by inactivity, by letting the city go on much as it was. Let any citizen go out now and go around the slums of this city and see what has been done by the present corporation since it came back to office in 1930. Let him go as far as Cook Street flats, the D'Arcy Brewery flats, the Watling Street flats, the Marrowbone Lane flats; let him go to James's Street, Hanover Street, Townsend Street, to the cottages around Larch Hill and Ellenfield, to Crumlin North and South, or to Cabra, and let him see the money spent there and realise that that was not spent without the ratepayers having to pay it.

Did the Government not contribute anything from the Central Fund?

I think that is a reasonable answer to Senator Honan's statement about the reduction of the rates in Limerick City. I was in Limerick City a few years ago and it did not appear to me to be anything outstanding, in its appearance or otherwise. I think it has improved latterly, compared with what it was formerly. In the public life of this city and county in the past there were outstanding public men. The Cathaoirleach of this House, who was a member of his county council, is one, and the present Minister who is here to-day was another in his own native County of Mayo. I believe Senator The McGillycuddy spoke a few minutes ago. I think the chairman of the Kerry County Council has given public service for many years; is that not so?

I am afraid I did not catch what the Senator said.

I said that the chairman of the Kerry County Council—of the county in which I was reared—has given many years of public service to his county.

I did not say so.

At all events, the public men of these bodies have rendered great service. The nearest county to me is the County Dublin. There was a man there whom we all looked up to, and who was chairman of the Dublin County Council. He was also chairman of the General Council of County Councils, and is a kinsman of my friend here, Senator O'Neill, whom we all look upon as being an outstanding administrator. In my opinion, all this service was given nobly and well and unselfishly. Is all that service now to be cast by the roadside? I would be inclined to think that, if some change were needed in county council administration, the course to be adopted would be to call together responsible people in those counties. When I say responsible people I would suggest, of course, the chairmen of the different county councils, and, if it were thought wise, probably the secretaries also. They could see if some looseness existed and, if so, that could be tightened up without the operation of this Bill. If the secretary of the county council required more power, and if it were thought necessary to give it to him, that could be done; and the county secretary, instead of being manager over the public bodies, would be manager for the public bodies. He could be given whatever power was necessary to right matters. In my opinion, the public bodies have done well. Very few charges have been made against the public men in this country.

In this House last Wednesday evening a member called my attention to a case in a midland county which was reported in the Press. I do not know the merits or demerits of it, but certainly it did not look very creditable—to my mind, at all events. However, I think very few of these things occur in the public life of this country —very few indeed—and if anybody got into the public life of this country who might be anxious to utilise his position for personal or other advantages, I think there would always be a sufficient number of public-spirited men and women to check any advance in that direction. Many years ago we heard a good deal about the West Ham Guardians, but I think we may say that we have had very little of that sort in this country. Public life in this country has been very clean and very good.

In this connection, I should like to ask the Minister: where are we going to get these super-men who are going to act as managers of county councils? After all, the secretaries of county councils have had the experience of being trained in the county councils. Where are these new men to come from? They will not last always. Where is the institution in which they are being trained? Young men go to work in the public boards of this country; they get a training there from their senior officers, and in that way they get experience of the adminstration of public affairs. Might I also be permitted to say that the training of such young men in public administration in different counties, cities and towns of this country is a great help to them when they come, possibly, to discharge the more important business of the Oireachtas later on. I could understand the Minister for Local Government dispensing with the affairs of publicly-elected bodies altogether. If we are going to have county councils, or rather if we are going to have managers of county councils, why not go the whole way and dispense with these bodies altogether, instead of humiliating decent men and women who give their time freely to conducting the affairs of these local bodies? If it is necessary to put in managers, then why not dispense with the whole thing?

Senators

Hear, hear!

I think that that would be much better than placing decent men and women in that humiliating position. I cannot understand people voting in favour of this Bill and then going back to-morrow or the day after and asking for the confidence of the electors in their respective areas to be reposed in them. If we were to have an election in Dublin, let us say, next September, and if I were to vote for this Bill, I should have very serious doubts about asking the electors to vote for me, because I think that they would say to me: "Why do you expect us to have confidence in you, when you do not seem to have any confidence in yourself?"

Truth will out.

Well, it is the truth. If you cannot have confidence in yourself, how can you expect people to vote for you? I do not make many speeches here—I do not have much time for making speeches—and I am only endeavouring to deal with things as they arise; but again I should like to say that I wish we, in this House, would forget, at least to some extent, that we are politicians, and that we should try to abide by the spirit which informed the setting up of this Seanad, and look at all these matters from a detached point of view and endeavour to do our job from the point of view of the nation and not in any Party spirit.

If one were to talk about the principle of this Bill, I do not know that there is any sufficiently well-defined principle in it to enable us to take any very categorical side one way or the other. Senator Lynch spoke about the rights of the people, and referred to the slogan: "No taxation without representation". I quite agree with him up to a point, but it seems to me that, up to a point, what we want here is to have a complete reconsideration of the whole local government system. I believe, myself, that when you talk about rights, you imply, immediately, duties; and when you talk about power, you imply responsibility. Now, it seems to me that one of the troubles in the whole local government position here is that there is no defined power or responsibility. Senator Lynch talked about local authorities being responsible for raising the rates, and Senator Healy spoke about the blocks of buildings that have been erected all over the City of Dublin. Neither of the Senators, however, suggested that any part of the cost of these works, or of the money to be spent on such functions, came out of the Central Fund taxation. I doubt very much whether these wonderful blocks, to which Senator Healy referred, would be in existence at this moment except for two courses that have been followed— bad courses, in my opinion—by the Government: (1) the continual arrogation by the Government to itself of excessive powers of borrowing, and (2) the investing of other authorities with the power to borrow money. I should like to see the Government deny itself the power to borrow money and also deny the local authorities the power to borrow money. If that were done, then the people would realise that they would have to be content with the fruits of their own labour and would not be trying to put the future in pawn. As a matter of fact, however, the money dealt with by local bodies is not raised by them entirely in rates. I remember that, when the Free State came into existence, there was something like £600,000 in relief of agricultural rates in various districts granted out of the Central Fund. Then, somewhere about 1926, or perhaps later, that amount was increased, bringing it up, roughly, to £1,200,000. Then, in the last year of the Cosgrave Government, there was an additional relief of agricultural rates granted out of the Central Fund to the amount of about £750,000. In other words, in this matter alone, there was something like £2,000,000 coming from the Central Government. Apart from that— I have not got the actual figures at the moment—in connection with all these Housing Bills, which seem to have assisted us chiefly in making Dublin more hideous than it was before, and in enabling Dublin to spread its tentacles around so as to take in something like 80,000 people for whom the city cannot provide reasonable functions, a large amount of the money provided for these housing schemes has come out of central taxation.

Now, I rather dislike that system. I think that subordinate bodies or corporations in the country should have complete and absolute autonomy within their own spheres. At the present moment you have your county councils, borough councils, and so on, and you also have your Local Government Department. I should like the powers and functions of these local bodies to be limited, certainly, but I should also like to see that, within the limits granted to them, they should have complete independence. I think that the very existence of the Department of Local Government means that these bodies do not possess an actual autonomy, and so we are not really destroying something that already exists. You have, however, this position of divided responsibility which, to my mind, is always disastrous. I want in every aspect of life that when a man has a responsibility he shall have full power to fulfil that responsibility, and when a man claims rights he and everybody else will recognise that he has no rights whatever except with their correlative duties. That seems to be one of the troubles in this country. As I say, I feel that the whole question of local government requires to be gone into. You are not going to get anywhere as long as you have this undefined joint responsibility between the Government and the local body. The Minister derides the idea that this Bill indicates anything in the nature of a move towards totalitarianism, and Senator Lynch seems to postulate an antithesis between totalitarianism and democracy. My own allegiance to democracy over a number of years has become continually more and more attenuated because of my innate detestation of totalitarianism, and, as far as I have observed democracy, it seems that unless people's minds are rectified it leads almost automatically towards totalitarianism. When you talk about democracy as the antithesis of totalitarianism, just throw your mind back to the days of the Christian monarchs of Europe. Do you think any monarch would ever have dared to arrogate to himself the power that the modern democratic government—and eminently the democratic Government of this country—arrogates to itself? Do you think the people would have been so slavish as to submit to having their lives and their every mood dictated, and to having the continual interference of Government?

What about the Tudors?

The Tudors claimed the divine right of kings, but I should say myself that if any of the Tudors tried to impose 7/6 in the £ income tax on everybody he would have to face a strong opposition from the people who supported him before. Not only that, I think that if the Tudors, or even the Bourbons of the Ancien Régime in France, had imposed taxation such as we at this moment are paying here on every article that is necessary for our consumption there would have been a bigger revolution than there was. You might say that democracy is a thing which does not cover a multitude of sins; it is merely made the excuse for a multitude of sins. I see it working: We were the Government. Another Party came along, never having had responsibility, and it looked into its own heart to see what cupidity and what meanness might reside in the Irish people, and they went out and said: "Vote for us and all that you want, whether it will be against justice or not, when you ask for it you will get it." If any Party were to go out to-morrow and say: "Vote for us and we will let you live your own lives; you will have to face your own difficulties, you cannot always be whining around Government departments and wanting to know whether they are going to build a house for you for which you cannot pay the economic rent, or take land from some other man and give it to you," do you think you are going to get votes that way? When we feel the burden of government upon us we cry out against the totalitarian tendency in government, but all the time we are demanding that the Government will put our own private good before any other consideration. It does seem to me that a local governing body, just like a government, is directed to a certain conception of common good. Knowing that our movement towards our own private good is much more eminent and much more urgent in us than that movement to the bigger and less immediate thing, the common good, surely it must be recognised then that if you have a system under which I as an individual am a direct beneficiary under an authority, its promise with regard to my own private good will have a greater appeal to me and will be more likely to win my support than consideration for the public good.

We do know when you carry democracy enormously that with its continual arrogation of government, it does straiten us morally and economically. We know there are many people who are immediate beneficiaries from the State and from local governing bodies. You have home help. You have State-paid-for houses. You have Ministerial employees. You have State employees. You have old age pensioners. I would like to see the man who would go out and talk to an old age pensioner and say, "Vote for me and I will rigidly examine to see if you are an appropriate beneficiary under the Old Age Pensions Act before you get it" or who would go out to, say, the Dublin Corporation employees and say "Vote for me and I will hold an inquiry to see whether any of you are living in houses paid for out of public rates and if I find you are, recognising that that is against justice, and that these houses were built for other people in need rather than for you, who are quite well paid, I shall take immediate steps." Do you think he is going to get votes? The immediate appeal for votes in this country in my own experience is based on a promise with regard to the person's private good and not with regard to the public good. Consequently, in these questions of democracy, the Government is elected by the votes bought or not bought, as the case may be. I am not going to say that the local governing bodies are any more corrupt—all humanity is liable to corruption—than the Government itself is, but I do not see any strong principle here. You have the Government already controlling the local governing bodies. You have the local governing bodies spending money which they receive from the Central Fund so that actually when it comes to considering this Bill—and there are many parts of it that I hope to see changed—I do not see that the question of principle comes in very much. I do think that this Bill, taken in conjunction with the Government's other extended activities, is really part and parcel of an enormous movement in this country towards totalitarianism. If you want to buy a piece of glass, can you buy it as you want? The Government there, I think, farms out its power. You have to go to the manager of a glass-making place and ask him for permission to import glass that he does not make. It is the same in a dozen other cases. The Government now in this country, by a definition, has extended its power and interferes in the life of the people more than any other country in Europe with the exception of totalitarian countries. Certainly that was the case before the war.

The Government also orders local governing bodies to embark upon activities which require to be paid for. We had, I think, in the last year or two an Unemployed Bill in which the Government commands local governing bodies to impose taxation upon the people, to impose the collection of rates for the support of the unemployed under terms proposed by the Government. Just a week or two ago here, we were passing a Fire Brigades Bill in which the Government took to itself power to insist that local bodies would have fire brigades and would pay for them. Consequently, in a way, you can say there is no such thing as undiluted local government; there is no such thing as autonomous corporations in this country.

I think this Bill, in one way, is working in the wrong direction because, faced with the muddle that flows from that divided responsibility, that divided control, it seeks to remedy it by taking more power into the hands of the Government. If you are to accept things as they are, weighing the good with the bad, it seems to me, as far as this Bill is concerned, that the element of good in it might to some minute degree exceed the bad, but that does not seem the way to approach it. It does not follow that because a divided authority between the local governing body and the central government leads to undesirable results that, necessarily, the solution is to vest that authority in the central government. I would rather see that the local bodies, the corporations—you can call them town councils, parish councils or county councils—it is a matter for consideration—should have a defined authority and that within that definition their authority should be a complete and absolute autonomy, and that they should not have a Minister and a Parliamentary Secretary and a body of civil servants butting in and telling them that they must not do this, they must do that or that they must raise this taxation.

Mind you, there is no other way, but the Government often acts in a manner which, I think, is fundamentally wrong. You have the Land Acts. Under the Land Acts, a farmer contracts to pay a certain annuity. If, for a reason good or bad, an individual farmer is not able to pay that annuity, the Government, which insists that the local governing body shall raise rates for a fixed purpose and justifies that by the purpose for which the rates are to be expended, then comes along and collects out of those rates the amount due from the defaulting farmer. I should say that the rates must be reduced by the amount of that default and the local governing body must, when it made its original estimate, have necessarily estimated for more than was actually justified by necessity.

It does not follow that when you put a paid employee in charge you are going to have complete perfection and lack of abuses or, if you like, a form of corruption. When Senator Healy was speaking, he talked about the Municipal Authorities Association. It reminded me that, at the time of the election of this Seanad, I saw a letter purporting to be written on behalf of that body. It was written by an employee, a town clerk, and it was addressed from a town hall. It was written on paper for which we ratepayers paid, and, I think, it was probably typed on a typewriter that the public paid for. It notified another municipal clerk that that body desired the election of a certain Senator— Senator Healy knows who he was— and they asked him to use his influence with members of his public body to get their candidate elected. Even a paid employee of a public body can depart from strict rectitude. He can use his position of trust as the employee of a public body to pursue an interest which is not the interest of the tax-payer and, of course, the same thing will happen with one of your managers.

This Bill is not going to create any perfect condition, and the present condition is not so perfect that we need get up and offer to defend it with our lives, but the condition when this comes about will be imperfect, just as it is imperfect now. The only suggestion I can make to remedy this is that where power is given there will be responsibility, and that where there are rights, there will be duties. If the local body has duties it must have the power to fulfil them.

I do not like this Bill, and I do not like present conditions. I hate to see local councils constantly appearing in the papers, writing to the Department of Local Government, and, according to their statements, waiting months and months without getting an answer. But, given the Bill altogether, and I am not dealing with it altogether with any enthusiasm, I am rather inclined to vote for it than against it. I think it is only an attempt to tinker with a bad situation, and I think you are not going to have any real or good condition of things in this country until, so far as secondary authorities are concerned, their power is defined. That is my opinion, but, just before I close, I may mention certain references which have been made to interference with local bodies when the Government of which I was a member was in power. They recalled something to me.

On one occasion, I was rather surprised that Deputy Little got up and denounced our Government and, in accordance with the ordinary habit of trying to use religion in the interests of a Party, alleged that the Government or the Legislature were acting against the doctrines of the Papal Encyclicals. I was rather astounded at that because I knew that he had not taken all the Encyclicals into consideration. As it happened, I had. He referred then to our interference with local authorities, and it is rather amusing to think that, full of Christian zeal and love of the Church, he denounced the Cosgrave Government for its anti-Christian and anti-Catholic policy, and that he is now backing the present Bill, which is, as I read it, going much further than anything contemplated at that time. However, those things are past. I have no power to insist on the Government reorganising the whole local government arrangement, but I have to consider the position as it is and, as one can reasonably hope, will follow this Bill on the whole, and, as I said, without any enthusiasm whatever I shall support it.

Just by way of explanation——

There is nothing to explain.

I did not like to interrupt the Senator when he was talking, but I want to say that I know nothing in the world about what he is referring to. I find it very difficult to follow his beautiful accent, but I want to say that I do not know a thing about what he said.

I do not think I have stated anything to annoy the Senator. What I thought he was going to say was that I suffered from "an optical delusion" when I saw the letter.

Leas-Chathaoirleach

I understand there is to be an adjournment at 6 o'clock?

I move the adjournment.

Mr. Hayes

Until when?

Leas-Chathaoirleach

From 6 o'clock until 7 o'clock.

Business adjourned accordingly at 6 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.

This Bill is a bad Bill. It is bad, not because it attempts to reform local government, but because it is based solely on the opinions, the knowledge and the experience of a Government Department. Since the Truce, no real fundamental examination has been made of local government as it should be administered in this country. The Government in office immediately after the Truce was very anxious for change, and you had all sorts of committees and commissions appointed. You had sitting on these committees and commissions people who had more enthusiasm than experience, and that was reflected in some of their actions and in some of the reports they submitted. You had men who were anxious to change only the names of institutions. To remove from the workhouse the stigma of poverty, they called it a county home, and they removed the name "asylum," and called it a mental hospital. They changed the names of all the institutions, but they invariably left the thing very much the same as they found it.

The Cosgrave Government abolished rural district councils and poor law guardians, and established boards of health. They did not abolish the work of the poor law guardians or the rural district councils, but they disproportionately divided the work between the county councils and the boards of health, giving at least 80 per cent. of the administrative work to the boards of health, with the result that the boards of health were cluttered up with work, while the county councils had comparatively little to do. The boards of health achieved the purpose they wanted to achieve by neglecting to do the work, and hence there is a good deal of arrears of work in the country that should be done by boards of health. Schemes of cottages, water supply schemes, sewerage schemes and various other schemes are neglected because of the impossible amount of work which the boards of health are required to do. That was practically what was effected under the measure which the Cosgrave Government introduced. Now this Government intends to base all its actions on that bad Act. It is basing this Bill on the experience and knowledge of a Government Department, and, so far as I know, it has not taken into account the opinions of those who administer local government throughout the country.

I do not quarrel with the Minister for attempting to reform local government. I believe local government is due for reform, but I believe it should be reformed after careful consideration of the opinions, knowledge and experience of both sides of the administration. That reform should be based upon the experience and knowledge of the Department and the experience and knowledge of those administering the various councils throughout the country. I confess that I am not prepared to weep very much over the abolition of county councils, as such. I think there is a field there in which the Government might very seriously consider a reform with a view to ascertaining whether county councils are unwieldy and whether the work they have to do might not be extended or curtailed. But when they tell me they are going to abolish boards of health as they exist at present, I am seriously perturbed. I am not at all satisfied that this manager, this administrative totem pole which you are going to put up in the centre of an administrative county and around which every bit of local administration will revolve, is going to do adequately or sufficiently well the enormous work that devolved upon boards of health.

Look at all the work the boards of health had to do; look at the dispensary services, the county medical services, home assistance, cottage schemes, water supply schemes and sewerage schemes, and imagine how all these things can revolve around this administrative totem pole, and be done well. I suggest to the Minister that it is a matter which should be considered because I cannot see how they can be properly attended to. I can imagine, in an administrative county, with this emasculated county council which is to be set up and the emasculated board of health which will be overridden by the manager, a poor woman in an area 60 miles away having a grievance in respect of home assistance, and I can imagine a poor man some 80 miles away finding it necessary to have a crippled child, or a child stricken with some disease, removed to a Dublin hospital.

I can imagine the difficulty there will be in making contact with that administrative totem pole in the middle of the county. I suggest that there is a necessity for some human mediation between that poor person and that administrative officer who will sit in the middle of the county. I suggest, further, to the Minister that that human contact should be established before he does away with the board of health. Full of enthusiasm, as I have stated, the Cosgrave Government set out to abolish certain local government institutions that were in existence when they came into office.

I suggest to the Minister that whilst a case might be made for the abolition or reform of county councils—a great many people say that the county council is only a kind of intermediate stage, in the passage of certain candidates to the Oireachtas, where people give vent to their political ideas in their best Sunday language and so graduate into the Dáil or Seanad itself; I do not know whether or not that is right but it is the general opinion—a better case can be made for seeing that you are not going to have this administrative automaton in the middle of the county, far removed from the human considerations which are so essential in the administration of the poor law system. He will merely bring the purely bureaucratic mind, the departmental mind, to bear on a consideration of the cases I have mentioned—the person in need of home assistance whom he cannot contact, the person looking for a cottage whom he cannot contact, and the person whose child needs special treatment in Dublin whom he cannot contact. I suggest that there is a need for some intermediary influence between that administrative automaton in the middle of the county and such people as I have mentioned.

If there is a case for the abolition of county councils there is also a case for going further. If the Minister wants to reform local government, a case might easily be made for the removal of national services from the control of local authorities. Much has been said, and with a good deal of substance, in reference to the fact that while the roads in the main are a local charge, they are a national service. I do not know if the Minister has paid any serious consideration to the fact that local rates are paying more than their just proportion for the upkeep of national roads. If there is a case for local government reform, there might be a case for the removal of road maintenance from the control of local authorities so as to make them a national charge, and so that you might have uniform treatment and maintenance of roads. There might also be uniform treatment of the unfortunate patients in the mental hospitals, if they were taken from local control and put under national control. Further, there might be a case for putting sanatoria under national control. These are matters, I suggest to the Minister, which he does not seem to have considered and which, if there were a fundamental examination of local government, might very easily suggest themselves to any commission setting out to consider the position.

If I were asked by anybody to give evidence before some such commission I would suggest—and I make this suggestion ad hoc without perhaps giving it the consideration it deserves—that you might remove these three services I have mentioned, roads, mental hospitals and sanatoria, from local control and put them under national control. I would further suggest that you should revive the rural district councils and make the members of them human intermediaries between your manager, if you wanted to have a manager, and the poor persons in need of consideration. I would re-establish the rural district councils and, if necessary, make them the rating authorities for the several rural districts, giving them control of such things as cottages, dispensary and medical services and such other items of local administration in their several areas. But at one fell swoop to come along and do away with county councils, boards of health and all other local bodies, without any case whatever, and to put nothing in their place to satisfy the needs that these bodies were filling in the past, seems to border very much on the autocratic.

As I said, I do not care very much if you abolish county councils. As county councils they serve a very useful purpose of administration. There may be a case for extending or restricting their activities, but there is certainly no case for the abolition of county boards of health without putting anything in their place. I suggest that that is reform merely for the sake of reform. I suggest to the Minister that before he goes any further with the Bill he should withdraw it and set up a commission that would be representative on the one hand of the Local Government Department, with all the experience and wisdom it has garnered since it came into existence, and that on the other hand he would ask the local authorities, county councils, boards of health and other such bodies, to pool their wisdom and experience, so that some system of local government could be evolved that would serve fully the needs for which the local government system was originally established.

On this stage of the Bill I intend to be very brief. I might say at the outset that I am opposed to the Bill because of the principle of the Bill, and because of what I conceive will be the working of the Bill in practice. Much has been said in this debate both for and against the Bill. I think that some of the criticism against the Bill has harped a little too much on the democratic or anti-democratic aspect of the Bill, and that the criticism has been a little too violent in that respect. To describe this Bill as the thin end of the wedge of Nazism, Fascism or any of these horrible "isms" against which we have so set our face in this country, is, I think, not quite fair. The Minister in introducing the Bill stated that it did not run counter to the democratic principle. I accept the Minister's statement as being sincere.

On the face of the Bill, it does not appear to run counter to democratic principles of local government, as the local county council will still be elected by the votes of the democracy. Therefore, in theory the Minister is correct: in practice, I think the Minister will be proved to be wrong. From the little experience I have had through watching a body which was elected by a democratic vote but, having been elected, was subject to ministerial powers, my observation is that it runs counter to democracy. What happens is simply this: the enthusiastic local administrator—when he discovers that the body to which he has ambitions has, in fact, no power—decides that he will not enter it. The same applies to the electorate. The electorate becomes apathetic about the corporation or the council in question, and nine times out of ten they do not bother to vote at all, with the result that you do not get by any means as fine or as efficient a body of men as one would expect and as most parts of this country are capable of providing.

Senator Baxter was rather hard on one council; my colleague, Senator The McGillycuddy, was rather hard on all councils. The situation as regards local bodies and county councils of all kinds is that some are better than others, but none are wholly bad. Senator Lynch quoted Burke, Senator The McGillycuddy quoted Disraeli: if I may be permitted, I should quote Carlyle who, speaking of democratic government, said that "the worst of all chambers is better than the best of ante-chambers". In this Bill what the Minister proposes to do is to substitute for the county council chamber the ante-chamber of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health or the ante-chamber of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health. I hope that neither the Minister nor the Parliamentary Secretary will think that I am referring to them personally. I am speaking of any Minister or any Parliamentary Secretary, in saying that any ante-chamber of any Minister or Parliamentary Secretary is definitely a retrograde step as a substitute for a properly elected council or corporation. If the Minister will not consider the suggestion that he should withdraw the Bill and set up a commission to devise something better, I hope that on the Committee Stage the Minister will agree to several very radical amendments.

I rise to support the Bill and to do so as strongly as I can find words with which to express my feelings in connection with it. With great respect for the other members of this House, I may say that, with many years of experience from 1914 up to the present time on the old board of guardians, rural councils, county infirmary committees, county councils, boards of health and mental hospital committees and several subsidiary committees in connection with them, I welcome this Bill wholeheartedly, in view of my experience in that period of time of the work of administration of local government. I think it is a great pity that members of a self-respecting Opposition did not apply themselves more to the principles of the Bill than to other arguments they put forward—if they may be termed arguments—against it. If the principle of the Bill is good, it is immaterial who the sponsors of the Bill are, to what Party they belong, and whether it is under the present Government or any other Government.

I must first draw attention to Senator Baxter's attacks on representatives from County Monaghan, particularly on the Parliamentary Secretary. It was not a question of the principle of the Bill: it was a question of making a personal attack upon a person who was not present here. If he had been present, I strongly believe that Senator Baxter would not have made that personal attack on him. He did it once before and came out second best. When he got the opportunity to-day behind his back, he thought it well to make use of some very ugly remarks in connection with administration in Monaghan.

Can the Senator not answer for them, and for the administration in Monaghan, too?

I hope to do so, and I will say this: if I were prepared to be as unparliamentary as Senator Baxter was to-day, I would bring a blush to Senator Baxter's cheek—but I am not prepared to be so. I know Senator Baxter since 1923; we were both members of an organisation since that time. I am not going into that now, but we were both members of the Irish Farmers' Union and attended a large number of meetings and conventions.

The Senator knows that that is irrelevant.

It is irrelevant, I admit. Senator Baxter made reference to something which happened in Monaghan three days ago. His first attack was that in the county which the Parliamentary Secretary represents—Monaghan—there were several sworn inquiries. There were some. There was a sworn inquiry into the administration of the local county hospital and county infirmary in 1924. The present Parliamentary Secretary was not a Deputy at all at that time. I was a member of the committee dealing with that. Certain irregularities arose in connection with the working, through the officials there, and I was the mover of a resolution calling for an inquiry, on the suspicion of certain persons. That suspicion called for an inquiry, which lasted four days, with the result that some of them were dismissed. Why should Senator Baxter refer to that incident as one of the inquiries, and charge the Parliamentary Secretary with being responsible? He charges him with being responsible in this way— that people at the top do not discountenance them. He was most unparliamentary, with all respect to the Chair.

On a point of order, has this got anything to do with the principle of county management? We have got the unfortunate Minister listening to all this bickering, which has nothing whatever to do with the principle. Senator Baxter was allowed to make his remarks.

And they were quite in order in making a comparison between the administration in one county and that in another.

I think I am quite entitled to answer charges made in this House. Senator Baxter made further reference to something that happened not fully three days ago, on Monday last. A certain question came up at the meeting of the Roads and finance Committee with regard to direct labour and the work of gangers in regard to direct labour, and, if my recollection serves me aright, it was stated that 2/- had been charged by gangers to direct labour workers getting employment.

That is an allegation which has been made.

Very many allegations have been made. If Senator Baxter had inquired beforehand, he would not have made that statement. The case is still sub judice.

The Senator will tell us about the board of health inquiry as well.

That cannot be permitted.

I will not be cross-examined by Senator Baxter. I let the Senator make his statement without question, though I may have interrupted once. I am not prepared to be cross-examined by him in this House or outside it. I claim that I have as good a reputation and that Monaghan has too, as Senator Baxter has or as his county or any other county similar to Monaghan has. The statement was about a charge being made against a ganger in regard to direct labour, charging direct labour workers a certain sum for getting employment. They were called in by the County Surveyor to substantiate the charge, and they tried to deny it. The matter was reported to the county council on Monday last, on the report of the Roads and Finance Committee. While many of the councillors were prepared to say that there was nothing in it, I moved a resolution calling on the said ganger to bring an action in court to clear himself.

I think the Senator may leave it at that.

Yes, I will leave it at that. In relation to the question of taxation without representation—referred to by some Senators— I fail to see where in the terms of the Bill there is taxation without representation. Under Section 23 the Council has full powers, when an estimate is submitted to them.

Section 23 begins:

(1) At an estimates meeting of the council of a county or an elective body or at an adjournment of such meeting, such council or elective body (as the case may be)—

(a) may (subject to the subsequent provisions of this section) by resolution amend, whether by addition, omission, or variation, the estimate of expenses required by this Act to be considered at such meeting.

If that does not give the local body full power in connection with the expenditure of the ratepayers' money, then I fail to see what these words mean. Now we are in the very same position with regard to county councils at the present moment. The county council submits its idea as to what amount may be required. That amount may be reduced, but it cannot be exceeded except in the case, let us say, of a county surveyor or some such officer being involved in an accident which would entail a serious injury, in which case a certain amount has to be provided for.

With regard to the discussion and criticism of this Bill, before it was introduced here, I should like to say that I have had a certain amount of experience in my own county with regard to local administration. I also have had some experience with regard to other counties, and I think that the greatest objection and the strongest criticism come, not from the people, not from the electorate, but from certain representatives of the people who think they might lose some patronage as a result of this Bill being passed into law. I find that in the case of many people with whom I have discussed the matter, in the case of both large and small ratepayers, the majority of the ratepayers are satisfied and delighted with this Bill.

I think that when we come to the discussion of this Bill we are rather handicapped by the fact that we have not got a complete picture of the kind of local government that the Government contemplates. It struck me, when Senator Hogan was speaking, that some of the points raised might have been more appropriately raised about a year ago in connection with a Bill which was then introduced for poor relief. I cannot remember for the moment the proper name of the Bill, but, at any rate, I do think it would have been more appropriate to raise these points in connection with that Bill. As I have said, in coming to the discussion of this Bill we are under a certain handicap, but some of us are under even a greater handicap in this connection. I, for instance, come to the consideration of this matter with a virgin mind. I do not know very much about local administration. I read the speeches in the Dáil, and as a result of the speeches I read there I shall support this Bill. In reading the speeches that were made in the Dáil, however, I was struck by certain points.

One was the attitude of the Labour Party in regard to the position taken by the Fianna Fáil Party when similar Bills were going through the Dáil. Now they say, in effect, that the people who opposed similar legislation in the past are now coming along and introducing a Bill of this kind. I should think that the obvious answer to that is that the thing has been tried out in practice in the meantime, that several examples of this kind of thing have been made use of, and that it has been found to work out admirably. At all events, the system has been found to work out so satisfactorily as to convert the former opponents of this principle of managership.

The second thing that struck me, with regard to the speeches that were made in the Dáil, was the attitude taken by Deputies, some of whom I know pretty well, and who, I know, are very much interested in the matter of local government—Deputies whom I know to be devoted to the interests of the people, and who are actively concerned in the activities of local bodies and whose only interest would be to see that the work of these local bodies was done in the most efficient way. Senator E. Lynch spoke of this matter of efficiency, and seems to think that efficiency is a sort of goddess at whose shrine one must worship. I do not look at it in that way. I think that I am a "dyed-in-the-wool" democrat, but I also think that you must make it possible for democracy to survive by making methods more businesslike in connection with any of these activities. As it happens, I am engaged in a sort of work that is something similar to what is involved here—I mean the business of an insurance society. There are some 15 members of a committee, and we direct the policy of the company and control the expenditure; but we meet only about once a fortnight, and could not possibly attend to all the details; therefore, we leave it to our officials, over whom we have control. That is the way that I envisage the provisions of this Bill will function, and therefore I am wholeheartedly in favour of the Bill.

I should like to say, however, that the Bill, as it stands, needs, to my mind, certain improvements. I am speaking now with particular reference to Galway. We should like to have a manager for the City of Galway itself, but I do not think it would be possible for one man to manage the City of Galway, the County of Galway, the mental hospital, and a "the various activities that would be involved in connection with such a county. I think it would be very hard to expect one man to carry on all that, and therefore I think that is a matter that should be looked into. Another thing to which I object is this matter—if I have read the section aright—which would seem to make us keep on a manager until he died. Some Senator has drawn a rather tragic picture of a manager directing his duties from a bath-chair. I think that that is rather a misleading account of what might occur, but, at the same time, I should like to have some assurance from the Minister in that regard.

Now, I am particularly interested in the matter of the universities, one of which I have the honour to represent. I imagine that the universities will play a great part in preparing young men for the position of manager in future, but we cannot encourage these young men to enter themselves for such positions, unless something is to be laid down as to the conditions of their employment. Probably, it might be said that they would be leading a very healthy and open-air life, but I think it would improve the whole tone of the university if some indication were given as to the type of people who would be given an opportunity to fill these posts. It is as a representative of the university that I am very interested in the Bill.

Ba mhaith liom a rádh ar an gcéad dul síos go bhfuil mé go láidir ar shon an Bhille agus sílim go bhféadfaí a rádh go mbeidh muinntir na tíre go láidir ar shon an Bhille chó maith. Níl aon rud aisteach ag baint leis an mBille. Níl dheineann an Bille ach athruighthe go bhfuil an pobal ag súil leo le fada, ní dheineann an Bille ach na h-athruighthe sin a chur i ngníomh. Má cuirtear an Bille i bhfeidhm is cinnte go rialófar obair riaghaltais áiteamhail na tíre i bhfad níos éifeachtaighe ná rinneadh í go dtí seo.

I would like to say that I am completely in favour of the Bill. I think, if I remember rightly, the Bill passed by a very large majority composed of the two big Parties in the Dáil. I think that the majority in favour of the Bill there about represents the position throughout the country, that is to say, the vast majority of the people are in favour of the Bill. Here and there in the country there are, of course, people who do not like the Bill for one reason or another.

I was very glad that Senator Quirke to-day reminded the House that possibly our first duty should be to thank those councillors who have for so long and so well carried on the work of these local councils, and that in spite of very great difficulties and very great handicaps. I think it is quite right that from this House some expression of our appreciation of the services of these people should be on record.

There is really nothing revolutionary in the Bill. That is, as far as I can see and as far as my own study of local government goes. It is not the aim of the Bill to check maladministration. I do not think anybody has claimed that maladministration has been a feature of our local councils. Such has been suggested here to-day; the word has been used. The Bill does not seek to check maladministration because, in fairness, no such charge can be laid at the door of the vast majority of our county councillors. The aim is simply, as far as I understand it, to make the running of county councils and of the local authorities in general much more smooth, much more effective. I could go on for quite a long time showing the great complexity of local government in these days but I do not care to take up the time of the House in that matter. There is no use comparing the county councils of to-day with those of 25 or 30 years ago. No real comparison can be made.

Again, we have to remember the great extent to which local authorities depend on the central government for funds and for advice. There is need—at least I believe there is need—for the exercise of supervision, pretty strict supervision, by the central authority over the activities of local authorities. The social and economic repercussions of their activities have to be considered in relation to the country as a whole. There is absolute need for supervision, by the central authority, of the activities of local authorities and I think this Bill aims at bringing about a kind of supervision and co-operation between the local and central authorities. If the Bill does that it certainly is to be welcomed.

Criticism has been made of the Local Government Department. I was interested the other day when reading a report sent out by the Public Accounts Committee. I was particularly interested to notice that the Chairman, Deputy Dillon, and the members of the committee paid a very high tribute to the work of the Local Government Department. There was no ambiguity in their testimony. They stated definitely how glad they would be if it could be said that every Department of State was run as efficiently as that particular Department. I think that is a very high tribute coming from the man who made it in the first instance and coming from the committee which is charged with inquiring into the activities of the Department.

There was one point which was raised by Senator Mrs. Concannon which dealt with the possible inability of a manager to look after the whole county. That did occur to me in the beginning, and certainly I have in mind that in counties like Galway, Mayo and Donegal, where there is a peculiar type of area, particularly congested areas, Gaeltacht areas, that something might be done there to ensure that they get special attention. They are not quite on a par with the other areas, and I think they would require special attention, but, at the same time, I do not think that, on the whole, it is beyond the capacity of the manager to look after a whole county. After all, he will not have the responsibility of supervising every minute detail of the working of the various bodies under his charge. He will act as a manager. He will act in a general way as supervisor, and in that way he will have the assistance of an able and trained staff. I do not think that on the whole any great objection can be made in that regard except, as I say, taking County Galway in particular, I would like to see somebody with a particular sympathy and a particular ability to deal with the peculiar problems of that enormous area which we know as the Gaeltacht.

Again, it is worth while recalling that critics of the Bill, if they went to the trouble of inquiring among people in the country, would know that most county councillors themselves favour the Bill. I have met quite a number of them. I have met some county secretaries and a few of the county engineers, and it is surprising the extent to which both county councillors and officials agree that this Bill is a decided step in the right direction. County councillors realise the great complexity of their work, and I think that on the whole—though there are county councillors who do not like the Bill and oppose the Bill— you will find that type of county councillor who is generally interested in the smooth and efficient working of local government welcomes the Bill and is glad to be relieved of a responsibility which he is not in a position fully to carry out. As far as I have been able to find out, the objection to the Bill by those people who do object to it is based on the fear that the county council membership is going to be reduced. There is nothing in this Bill about that, but I have made inquiries and I understand that something like that is contemplated, and that appears to me to be the real source of objection. These people feel that the councils are going to be reduced, and somehow they feel that that is wrong. I do not know. But I do know that in connection with the running of anything, whether of a Feis or an Aeridheacht, a society or a business, the tendency is to delegate authority to small bodies because it is believed that they work more efficiently.

I was particularly interested in the speech of Senator Lynch. There was a certain amount of political philosophy in it. In the same way I was very much interested in the speech made by Senator Fitzgerald. To be quite frank, I could sit here all day listening to these people talking in the strain they did because it was so very interesting. Senator Lynch told us that he has made a particular study of local administration. He made an interesting point—that home Governments have been guilty of suppressing local bodies, whereas the British Government never suppressed one. It is all right to make that statement, but I think when a statement like it is made it should be developed to some extent. Were there reasons why the British Government did not suppress bodies? Were they sufficiently interested in one way or another as to whether our local bodies did the right thing or did not? Again, as to the suppression of bodies in this country, is it not true that councils——

If the Senator's argument developed on those lines it might not be relevant.

I will not develop it but I would like to mention this—on any occasion on which a body has been suppressed in Ireland or has been superseded by a commissioner or a manager, is it not true that either the council itself asked for that or that, because of the failure of the council to carry out its duties, a sworn inquiry has been held, and the result of that inquiry was to show that there was need for a change?

There was very little inquiry when the Dublin Corporation was suppressed.

Again, the reference by Senator Lynch to the suppression of the rural district councils was an important one. The point is whether changes, such as are contemplated in this Bill, are likely to lead to a reduction in the amount of the rates charged. There is a feeling that the effect of this Bill will be to increase rates. With regard to the old councils, I wonder would it be fair to measure the success achieved by superseding them, by considering whether the rates went up or went down? Rates certainly did not fall as a result of the changes that have been made in local government, but it is not enough to state that. We have got to inquire, if rates have not fallen, whether there has been a good reason for their not falling, and I wonder does Senator Lynch really believe that the reduction of rates would be a fair way of deciding whether it was right policy to supersede these bodies or not?

I made no statement of that kind.

I accept the correction if I have misinterpreted the Senator.

Good value was given for the increase in rates.

One other point —is there any attempt in this Bill to take their rights from the people? Where does that occur in the Bill? Is not the purpose of the Bill really to regularise a system that is already in existence? Is not the county secretary at the moment acting as a county manager?

Not at all; that is not fair. The county secretary is an employee of the county council, whereas the manager is not.

The Senator had the opportunity of making his case. Senator O Buachalla may proceed.

The duties of county councils have become so complex and numerous, that they have to attend to a great many more activities at present than in the past. If county councils were to do their work with anything like efficiency they would need to meet almost every day in the week instead of only once a month or so.

Nonsense.

The position now is that, in effect, the secretary is manager in the county. The councils cannot get through all their business in the time they have at their disposal, so they delegate most of their powers to the county secretary for the remainder of the month. The Bill to my mind does nothing revolutionary. I agree with Senator Fitzgerald that there is no need to expect anything extraordinary or revolutionary as a result of it but, on the whole, it will make for smooth working and greater efficiency. For that reason I am strongly in favour of the Bill.

As one who has been elected by the people in practically every phase of national and civic life over a period of 32 years, I am amazed at the lamentable ignorance displayed in the statements contained in many of the speeches here to-day. Senator The McGillycuddy, in his speech, showed complete ignorance of the powers and duties and jurisdiction of boards of health. He was absolutely talking wildly when he said that their estimates were submitted by the county council to the board of health and adopted, whereas it is really the board of health that submits its estimates.

On a point of correction, I never said that, not for a moment.

That is all right, Senator.

I would get to that point if he would only just wait. The estimates of the boards of health are submitted every year to the county councils for consideration. All these estimates get a very fair and impartial examination, and we take our time with the job, as we visualise that we have a dual, if I might say, many-sided, responsibility to the various sections of the community. We have a duty to the rural and general taxpayer, and we appreciate that fact in its true perspective in the exercise of our powers. But we have another duty, and a very important one, although it seems to be completely ignored to-day. It is the kindly consideration of that section of the community that we county councillors always consider from the humane point of view—that is, the poor, whom you always have with you. There was very little said about them or about the inconvenience and the hardships and economic exactions from them because of the attitude of our national Government—the previous one as well as the present one. I understood him to say, and I apologise if I misinterpreted the statements made by The McGillycuddy, that boards of health, after their estimates have received their imprimatur from the county councils, spend money afterwards without any authority or sanction. If I am wrong in that, I apologise and withdraw. We can spend nothing without the authority of the Minister, who has absolute power over every penny that is to be disbursed by both the county council and the board of health.

After 32 years in public service, in every avenue of national and local administration, I would be wanting in my duty to the dead and to the living, were I not to protest to-day against the intrusion on the democratic rights of the people which had been wrenched from the foreign invader in this country. No country in Europe ever endured as much as we did in the struggle for the recognition of national and local government in this country. We were denied every elementary right, even education, and then we were charged with being a rude, uneducated and inefficient people.

Some people to-day quoted Disraeli, some quoted Burke, and some Carlyle —may I be permitted to quote another, Asquith? When the Irish Parliamentary Party walked into the British House of Commons for the recognition of the right of the Irish race to local government and national government, and I speak on this, subject to the correction of some of the professors and historians here, Asquith said:

"But the one thing subject neither to eclipse nor to wane is the insistence and the persistence of the Irish race for the right to recognition of government of the people by the people and for the people, which is the very essence of democracy."

Is it not an extraordinary thing in the cycle of time to hear speeches to-day analogous to the ones that were being made by the enemies of this country in the days of the Irish Parliamentary Party? In the days of that Party, one of the commonest arguments against Home Rule was the low, foul, and contemptible slander that the Irish race were like Hottentots, and, by reason of some unknown and unnamed racial defect, unfit for local and national self-government. Has that very attack on the honesty, capacity, and intelligence of our race and people not reverberated around this House of the Irish Parliament to-day?

In 1898, we got a measure of local government, and I heard tributes paid, and rightly so, to the memory of the men of that period. One of the last things we heard was from Senator O Buachalla, who said that the thanks of this House should go to the men who carried on that work efficiently and well during those years. I would amplify his remarks and say that they gave disinterested service in the years anterior to Sinn Féin. They gave devoted, unremunerated service to the people and to the country; but what do we get for the service which Senator O Buachalla says they gave so well to the people?

On a point of order, I think I mentioned that, in view of the difficulties and complexity of the work they had to do, they carried on very well. That makes a very big difference.

And as the answer to their achievements and in recognition of that service, this Parliament introduces a Bill to give them the boot, to kick them out. I heard something said here against the Sinn Féin councils which succeeded these men. I was amazed. Would anyone attempt to besmirch the character and efficiency of that body of men who worked just immediately before our native Parliament was opened? They were great men, brave men, and unselfish men; they were men who took the risk; and I know that in my county they had to act as the exchequer, to look after and care for the finances of my county, and to go around, by stealth and in danger, with £40,000, £50,000, and £60,000 to meet all the commitments of national service, and attend to the wants and needs of the poor. These men in a great period of our national struggle added lustre to the names of the greatest who went before them, and even those who may succeed them.

After that, under a native Parliament, the first native council began to operate. What is the first thing we find that native Parliament doing? The entire mind of our native Legislature seemed to be inoculated and intoxicated with the idea of centralisation as against the very spirit of democratic institution. We found the Cosgrave Government, as at the touch of a magic wand, causing to disappear a system that served the people faithfully and well, and some men tell us to-day that it was done in order to bring about greater efficiency and economy. I repudiate that suggestion, having had practical experience of all the systems. We had workhouses—a horrible word to think of—but they served a useful purpose. Take my own county. There was a workhouse at Rathkeale; six miles west lies Newcastle West, and eight miles away was another workhouse. What purpose did they serve? Our rates were maintained at a low level; efficiency was high; and the honesty of the guardians could not be questioned. The local people, and particularly the poor, when they became maimed, or the victims of a visitation from God, or were suffering from the ordinary sicknesses and weaknesses of human nature, had only five or six miles to travel. In the hospital these poor people were nursed body and soul by those inspiring angels— the Blue Nuns. Night and day they gave their services to the needy, the poor and the suffering, and if they could not repair the damages of the body, they, at least, brought balm to the soul before its transition to a better and happier place. They were done away with, and the county home and county hospital established. The numbers of these angels of God with big humanitarian hearts who serve the poor now under the altered conditions under a native Parliament, are a minimum.

I have said that very little was said about the poor. Look at the picture to-day as a result of this spirit of centralisation. These poor people have to come 40 miles, shaking from some of those awful diseases, pouring along the country roads, up hill and down valley, until they reach the dissecting table after their last sleep. On Sundays, I see the parents, brothers and sisters of these poor people, with limited cash supplies, pass my door— sometimes wet to the very skin after cycling 30 or 40 miles to get a last glimpse of one of their dying. That is a little of the result of the centralisation policy started by the previous Government. This Bill completely mutilates and destroys the whole spirit of democracy and of the rights of the people. We were called Hottentots, and I was amazed to hear some of the statements by members of the Fianna Fáil Party. It ill becomes the present Government, it ill becomes the Fianna Fáil Party, who despised Home Rule and who considered the Treaty something that should be fought against, even at the cost of civil war, to embody and perpetuate that spirit in this Bill.

This Bill is the denial of the first right of the Irish people—government of the people, for the people, by the people. It discourages all that is best in the public life of the country. We are told that you will have greater efficiency, and somebody referred to the ever-increasing rates. I can speak for my own county. I remember the previous Minister for Local Government opening new houses in my county about three years ago, and he made the public statement that great credit was due to the board of health for the colossal amount of work it had carried through. We are pot the best county in Ireland but, nevertheless, we are very good. We realise our responsibilities to the people and our obligations of public service. Listen to what the board of health, with which I am associated, has done for the last seven years. In passing, I might mention that the board of health carefully considered this Bill. We were so interested in it that before we did consider it we asked that a copy should be placed in the hands of every member of the board. There was a full and frank discussion of the principle of the Bill and of every section of it. I want to say that the board of which I am a member supports, by a majority, the present Government.

The board of health, after discussing the matter at great length, expressed themselves as opposed to the measure, the voting being, as far as I can remember, 32 against and four for. Listen to a few of the things we have done. I may say, in passing, that a word of praise is due for the co-operation and help we got from the Local Government Department and the Minister for Local Government. Realising our duties and responsibilities go to the poor, we have built in ten years 1,040 rural cottages, each with an acre of land attached, creating a magnificent panorama. We have made arrangements for the erection of 501 houses in the towns and villages under a certain population, getting rid of slums and hovels—foul-smelling, disease-breeding hovels which were a legacy of an administration that boasts so much to-day about justice, fraternity and righteousness. The total expenditure by the board of health over that period was £344,655 The amount of money expended in putting into a proper hygienic condition the towns and villages that were so neglected was £128,656. When the system of mutilation and dissection was started by the previous Government, and when the whole machinery was thrown into chaos and disorder, we had to expend without any grant from any source £50,000 of the ratepayers' money to try to meet the exigencies and the demands made upon us. There is an achievement of practical, progressive, constructive work done by the county council and the board of health.

There is one lamentable deficiency in this Bill which was referred to by Senator Hogan. It shows a complete lack of the human touch in its provisions. Those of you who are members of county councils and boards of health know that you have almost to pull or drive with fixed bayonets a countryman or woman when it is a case of approaching an official. That is true of at least 99 per cent. of them. That is not so when it is a question of dealing directly with a member of a public body. They feel that they elected us, that we are part of the people, that we are one of themselves. There is a natural line of sympathy between us. That feeling is reciprocated by the members of the public boards because we feel that we owe a duty to these people. It was their votes made us public representatives, to serve them as efficiently and as conscientiously as we possibly could, within our limited capacities. That kind of sympathy, the human touch, is going to be completely destroyed by this Bill. How are you going to replace it? How is an official to supervise the various ramifications of the public health system? Take, for instance, primary poverty, which is due to insufficient money or wages. Take secondary poverty due to laziness, dirt, or excessive drinking. In the first case, the problem can be partially solved by home help. How are you going to remedy the second one? How is an official in the centre of gravity, 40 or 50 miles away, to know the circumstances of individual cases in remote districts? Public representatives are in constant touch with these cases, and if there is any ambiguity about the information supplied, we are in a position to determine the exactitude of the report that reaches us.

How is he going to do that? Does anybody tell me that you are going to change human nature? We are all made of the same human clay. I have seen men and women knocking at the doors of the county council offices for hours sometimes, the women with shawls pulled over their heads in very wet weather. When somebody at length answers them, they are asked: "What do you want?" The answer is: "I want to see the county secretary about getting work." Then they are told that is not a matter for the county secretary; that it is a matter for the county surveyor. And so they are sent from one official to another, after travelling perhaps 20 miles on the top of a lorry into the town. Even then they are sometimes treated in an unkindly, unsympathetic spirit. How are you going to obviate all that? It was stated here to-day several times that this Bill will lead to greater efficiency and economy. I want to put these facts before the House. Before 1925 the normal rate on land in my county varied from about 3/10 to 4/10. Then there came into being in my county a farmers' union—a very fine body of men, an intellectual body of men. They were out for the inter ests of agriculture, an object that was perfectly legitimate.

They were sending us resolutions from time to time that they thought that the public service should be maintained on a normal standard of efficiency at a rate of about 5/- in the £. The county council strove by might and main to try to maintain the services within that margin and to give to the farmers a large measure of happiness due to the lowering of the rate, and they achieved that purpose. In the County Limerick, considering all these commitments and progress, the rate was 5/1 on land. Our rate this year, with the immense increase in the price of provisions resulting from the world war, stands at 6/2 in the £, and that concurrently with a progress and development that I venture to say, subject to correction, no other county in Ireland can equal. The officials of the Department are here, and they can bear me out. The tendency to maintain public representation may not be judged on the question of administrative responsibility, but for the utilising of public services so that laymen may gain essential experience in the questions involved by meeting a normal administration of civilisation and democratic government. It is not a question of centralisation or decentralisation. That is a matter that anybody can arrange, but a maximum co-operation to solve the needs of the locality. There is one thing which must be repudiated: there is no analogy on earth between a manager over a city and a manager under the conditions that operate in a county.

Take my own City of Limerick. There is a manager in the city. Any official in five minutes can do the whole ambit and penetrate into any corner and see any case which needs immediate attention. Besides, there is a different class of people. The people in the city are an organised business community, subject more rigidly to the spirit of discipline by the essential work at which they are occupied. Then there are the trade unions, a thoroughly efficient and disciplined body. The people will not be neglected while they have the manager right at hand. Is there any analogy between that and the people living away from the centre of administration, and in an area where one may have to go 40 or 50 miles to see a case? There may be the case of somebody seeking to be taken at once to the county infirmary, where one hears knocking at the door and one has to get up at night, over a number of years. Thank God, I have done so, and perhaps helped to mitigate some of the evils. A manager, in my opinion, will only be a success when you can classify human beings like city dwellers whose needs and wants can be considered and determined beforehand, and remedies applied accordingly.

Will the House decide now as to how long we will sit?

I take it that the House is agreed that the Second Reading debate be finished this evening.

I will be very brief indeed. There are a few items in the debate which attracted my attention and to which I should like to refer. I am probably the only member of this House who has officiated in both capacities—as a public representative in a rural district and on a county council, and as one who is now an official of a local authority. As a representative on the county council, I can only say that I thoroughly appreciate some of the remarks passed by Senators who have spoken already, as to the services rendered by county councillors in those times during 1920 when we were really trying to tear down British local government in this country. I know a member, at present sitting in the other House, who cycled to a meeting of the Cork County Council much farther than, perhaps, Senator Baxter came in a train or motor car here to-day— practically 100 miles—to attend that meeting of the county council. I wonder if that same spirit is present in the county councillors of to-day. I am afraid that all the people of this country have got very materialistic, and that that same voluntary system is not as prevalent as it was then.

As I have said, at that time, the functions of local authorities were, to a great extent, to prevent British authority from operating here. Regarding Senator Lynch's remark, not only did the British suppress one authority but they suppressed every local authority at that time. The last speaker has referred to the local representatives meeting practically on the hillside. I think that should be an answer to Senator Lynch's remark about the British not suppressing any local authority. Having become an official of a local authority under a city manager, I must say that, to the local official who does his duty, it does not matter twopence as to whether he is under the control of the county council, the corporation, or the city manager. That is my experience.

Some of the speeches have been very irrelevant and in that connection I must refer to the speech made by my colleague, Senator Healy, who spoke at such length about all that the Dublin Corporation has done in building houses and so forth since the 1930 Act was passed. All that, however, was done under the managerial system and what he boasted the corporation was doing was actually done under the managerial system. Just as much as Senator Baxter's speech was in favour of the Bill, I think Senator Healy's was also in favour of the Bill. The only thing that affects me in this Bill is whether there is any truth in what Senators say—that democratic rights are being interfered with or are to be interfered with. The last speaker mentioned that any expenditure must be sanctioned by the Department of Local Government and then went on to explain that these rights were being taken away. Everything will still have to be sanctioned by the headquarters in Dublin, as at present. Where is the difference? I should like also to ask the Minister why this Bill is being introduced. Was it really on account of the failure of the public representatives or was it to a great extent on account of the failure of officials or county secretaries—the county secretaries blaming the councillors and the officials and local secretaries blaming the public representatives. I would like to hear from the Minister about the tightening up of the responsibility of officials of local authorities as well as the restricting, we might say, of the powers of the elected representatives. This Bill seems to give far greater powers to the county secretaries that are in existence in the City of Dublin at present. Senator Healy boasts of all that the councillors have done since 1930, but that was done under the city managerial system. Therefore, people need not be so distressed about the democratic powers that are supposedly being filched from them by this Act. Reading them, I can see that far greater powers are retained by the councils than were retained under the 1930 Act in Dublin.

One thing which may affect officials and the general public through the managerial system is that they will be subject to the idiosyncrasies and peculiarities of one individual. We will be more or less subject, without redress, to whatever idiosyncrasies one man may have or may develop during his term of office. Possibly that is the position in any city. I could not say for certain, but I think the general idea is that there will scarcely be very much change and there will be, perhaps, much more smooth working, if the public representatives hit it off together. If they do not hit it off together I think there will be difficulties.

The Bill, certainly, seems to restrict many, or at least some of the powers that public representatives had. As I have said, I do not know whether or not public representatives can be blamed for not attending to their duty, but I should like to agree with certain Senators who have spoken to the effect that local government, as a result of the various Acts that have been passed since this State was established, has become very complex and intricate—has become so complex and intricate that it is almost impossible for any county councillor to understand all of it. It is intricate enough even for the official concerned to understand one particular section with which he may happen to be dealing; and therefore it is much harder for an ordinary county councillor to understand these things, since there has been such a development in connection with local government. I myself know that, in connection with the veterinary section, the various provisions are so complicated and intricate that it is very hard for any of the officials dealing, even with one section, to be familiar with these matters, and to interpret the various sections as they should be interpreted. Therefore, as I say, it is very hard for a county councillor to follow all these various regulations and to be au fait with them all so as to ensure that the county secretary does everything according to the proper interpretation of the particular Act or Acts concerned. I believe that that is why this Bill has been introduced, and the only thing I should like the Minister to explain is how far or to what extent this type of legislation is going to go. I should like him to clarify that position. We all know that there is this idea of trying to pin the blame either on the officials or on the public representatives, whenever anything wrong occurs, but I should like the Minister to tell us to what extent this legislation is going. As far as I understand, this Bill is only a prelude to further Bills. The Minister mentioned, in his introductory remarks, that, in connection with Dublin City and County, there would be no merging of administration. I wonder where does that statement put the question of the extension of the city boundary? A commission was set up which inquired into the extension of the city boundary, and in the report of that commission the suggestion was made that there would be a much greater extension of the city boundary, and that that would mean a merging of administration. I fancy that, to some extent, that should mean the appointment of about three managers—a city manager, a county manager, an assistant manager for Dun Laoghaire, and, presumably, the secretary of the county council. Are we to take it, from the position that has been outlined here by the Minister, that the position is to remain as it is at the moment, or does the Minister mean to bring in a Bill dealing with the extension of the present city boundary, as outlined in the Report of the Greater Dublin Tribunal?

I took some notes of remarks made by Senators here, but I do not think it is necessary, at this late hour of the evening, to refer to them to any great extent. Senator Counihan did disappoint me—he was taken up on the matter by some Senators afterwards— when he referred to the ridiculousness, as I think he called it, of giving a vote to unemployed people, or people without property. Well, I think that "the people of no property" are entitled to vote, and certainly the Fianna Fáil Party believes in the extension of the local government vote, and I think that the extension of the franchise in that regard has been very much appreciated by the great majority of the people of this country notwithstanding what Senator Counithan has said. These are the only points that I wanted to make, but one question does come to my mind, and that is what has been said by certain Senators in regard to dictatorial powers being given to the managers in this case. I do think that, when a man is put into the exalted position of a county manager, as is contemplated in this Bill, he should be required to give some kind of pledge to the effect that he will give equal justice to all sections of the community and to all officials under him, without fear or favour. It must be remembered that one man can be influenced by outside persons or officials under his charge, perhaps more easily than, let us say, ten county councillors could be influenced. In the case of the county councillors there are, let us say, ten minds to be influenced, whereas, when there is only one individual in charge of a full council staff, it is quite possible that that one mind can be influenced much more easily and quickly than the minds of the ten councillors could be influenced. I think that, in fairness to everybody—the officials under the county manager and the public, in whose employment he really is—some form of declaration should be inserted in the Bill so as to ensure that, at least so far as is humanly possible, the manager will pledge himself to do equal justice to everybody without fear or favour. Of course, some people may say that the giving of a pledge to do equal justice, without fear or favour, does not bring us any farther.

A pledge against human nature.

What sort of a pledge has the Senator got in mind?

A pledge against human nature.

The kind of pledge I have in mind is something in the nature of the pledge that a district justice takes—to the effect that he will deal out justice impartially, without fear or favour.

Yes, but that is according to law. The district justice, in that case, has the law there to guide him.

Yes, I agree, but I am speaking of the criticisms that have been made both in this House and throughout the country with regard to this Bill. Here is the case of a man doing one job. Let us say that he is a man with Fianna Fáil sympathies or preferences, or with Fine Gael sympathies or preferences—that man, possibly, might give a preference to members of one organisation or the other; he might be a member of an organisation, whether secret or open, and he might give preference, in connection with the filling of appointments, to members of that organisation, whether secret or open. I think that, at least, a pledge should be asked from a man who is put in such a position to say that he will act impartially and without fear or favour. Of course, I admit that it may be said that pledges of that kind do not count for very much, but at any rate, to some extent, they are a public guarantee. Such a pledge in the eyes of the public, at any rate, means that a man appointed to such a position will carry out his duty without fear or favour to anybody.

In rising to support this Bill I would like to say that I am not an enthusiastic witness, but I support the Bill because I am convinced that the present system has outlived its usefulness, and I am quite willing to give this new system a chance. I, too, have had a great deal of experience of local government. I have heard many members here telling us to-day the number of years they have been serving on public bodies. I would rather forget, but I do remember that at one time I was known as the youngest councillor in Ireland, and that is certainly 30 years ago. Since that time I have been on every type of public body, and have been the chairman of most. I am quite satisfied that we have to make changes, and all the oratory in the world will not convince me that with the present system we can continue as we are. I would also like to join in the tribute that was paid to the men who manned the public boards 40 years ago. I know something of them, because when I first came into public life these men, who were pioneers, and who were getting old then, were running the public bodies I was attached to in County Wicklow and here in Dublin, and I would like to pay them every tribute.

I am also very glad that Senator Madden and Senator O'Donovan have paid a tribute to the men who took over control in 1920. I was one of them, and I would like to say that, as far as we are concerned, we have no apology to make to anybody, and we are very proud that we were allowed to take part in what I might describe as one of the most successful departments in the struggle for freedom. I think also, as one who has been active in public life ever since, that the men who carried on during the last ten or 20 years are also entitled to be complimented. They had to go through very difficult periods, periods when local government was continually changing, periods which were very difficult in this country, when there was very great depression. There was world-wide depression of agriculture which affected this country very much, and there was also depression in other businesses during some of these years. We must remember that the work of a council was extremely difficult.

I would like to stress the point the Minister has made that we are not trying to uproot something that belongs to the soil of this country. Local government as introduced here 40 years ago was an alien to this country and, to my mind, was never suited to the needs of this country. As I said before, I pay every tribute to the men who worked it. They deserve everything that we can say of them, but the system at no time was suitable to this country. We have also got to remember that in taking over and in establishing the county councils and the district councils of that time we were also handed over the poor law system that had been established 50 years previously, which had been opposed by the recognised leaders of the Irish people of that time— O'Connell, the Archbishop of Tuam, and anybody who had any authority to speak for the Irish people. We must realise that the administration of that poor law system had been, to say the very least, deplorable and, undoubtedly, the men who took it over, as Senator Madden has said, in 1899, or whenever they took it over, did a great service, certainly, to the poor, the old, the infirm, and the unfortunate people who had to go into those unions. Nobody can accuse the Second Dáil of not being a democratic body. They passed the legislation that did away with the poor law guardians and established the boards of health, because they believed that we had to introduce some poor law system with Christian ideals which did not exist certainly up to 1899.

We are told a great deal about democracy, and we are told that we will have no power under the new bodies. It has been stressed, I think, by Senator O Buachalla, that there is no analogy or comparison between the work of local government 40 years ago —or even 25 years ago—and the work to-day. The work has increased so rapidly that at the moment it is nearly impossible for any public body to do the work that is necessary. Let us go back and see what a council was doing at the time when I first became a member of a public body, and compare the work that the local boards of health and these other bodies are doing to-day. Consider the schemes that have been introduced in the country in regard to schools, houses, and other things. Day after day more work is being put on these councils, and unless you are prepared to have men who are willing to devote practically most of their time to it, it is utterly impossible under the present system to carry on. As far as I know, nobody who supported this Bill made any charge of corruption. During my time in public life, or on any public board, I never met any jobbery or corruption of any kind. I heard of one case only, which was not in my own county. I heard a lot about it, but I never came in contact with it. I think if such cases do occur, they occur only on rare occasions. I must say that, as far as the men who now man the boards are concerned, or those who did man them in the past, they have done their best under difficult circumstances.

We hear about county councils and all the powers that are going to be taken from them. What are the actual powers of a county council at the moment? We are practically a clearing house. We strike the rate and supply money to the boards of health and the mental hospitals, and to all these bodies; and remember, we have got to accept the estimate that they send us if they fulfil the obligations of the public bodies. We are told that we will lose the human touch. Why should we? Will we not still have our county councils and our committees acting as boards of health and committees of mental hospitals? What, after all, was the great human touch in the past? Someone came to you, and asked you to do something. You brought it before the board, or went to the county surveyor or whatever official was dealing with the matter, and you recommended it to him and used your influence that way. Surely you will still be able to do that.

I certainly do accept the principle in the Bill—and it is one that I had been thinking of for a considerable length before I even heard of the Bill—that if local government was going to continue in the country we would have to have some kind of executive. I am rather nervous of that. To be quite frank, I do not like the idea of giving the immense powers to one man that we propose under the Bill to give to any manager, and I rather visualised that we could have got an executive, say, either elected or selected by the council. But I see tremendous obstacles. I realise that if, say, half-a-dozen men were selected to be an executive, they would require, probably, to devote practically all their attention to it and, probably, you could not get men to do that or, if they did do that, they would possibly, naturally, be entitled to some remuneration which, probably, is not feasible or practicable either. I would prefer some system of that kind, and it is only with reluctance that I agree to a one-man executive. I certainly agree with the principle of having an executive because I am satisfied we have got to do that or something like it if local government is to continue in the country.

We talk so much about democracy. After all, have we not our democratic institutions here in the Oireachtas, and if we find that this system is not working, if we find that the managers are turning out dictators—which I do not believe for a moment—if we find that there is any jobbery in the system or that the system is not working for the benefit of the country and the good of the people, surely whatever people are in the Dáil and the Seanad, or whatever Minister would be in power, would immediately change the system to whatever they thought was suitable at the time? As I have said before, and I would like to repeat it, I am not in love with the Bill, but I certainly am quite satisfied after the long experience I have referred to, that at the moment the system is not working satisfactorily and I am quite willing to try this or any other change.

I rise, not so much to discuss the principles of the Bill, as to endeavour to get certain information about several points in it. There is, of course, a great temptation to discuss local government in general in terms of democratic principles. I disagree entirely with the people who think that local government here has not been a success or that it was an unIrish institution. No more foolish word was used in this country than the word "unIrish".

The Minister, for his own purposes, explained that he was not uprooting an Irish institution. Of course, there are no Irish local government institutions in existence at all. Even if the Minister and myself combined we could not uproot them. Nobody could. They are not there. The Irish system, if there was to be an Irish system at all, would be a monarchical, perhaps a dictatorial, system. I believe, and always have believed, that the introduction of the Local Government Act and its subsequent working since 1898 were an enormous help to the Irish people in working towards political freedom. For myself, like the people who have spoken before me, I cannot boast of any great acquaintance with local government. A year or two after I got my degree, I went for a teaching job in the Dublin Technical Schools, and it was an amazing experience. There were very distinguished people up for various jobs— the Taoiseach, myself and others—and I had to explain to 23 persons what I knew about French, although not one of them knew any. It was an extraordinary system, and I would like somebody to change it to something else; because if they got a good teacher, they certainly got him only by accident—of course, in my case, they did get the best teacher—but it was only by accident ! They might have got a person who was barely qualified, but who had a good pull.

My next acquaintance with local administration was in an internment camp, where I met a number of county councillors, Senators Madden and Byrne among them, and they struck me as earnest and patriotic people. I am not worried about the democratic principles of which we have heard so much in this debate. I cannot understand all that has been talked about democratic principles as if they were some kind of creed against which you could commit a sin that would remain on your national soul.

If this scheme was got to work, I would be in favour of it, in so far as I would be in favour of any scheme which would produce good results, not because it might offend democratic principles, but because it might work better than the present scheme. As it seems to me that it would bring an improvement, I would vote for it if there was a division. It does seem to me, however, to be another step in the direction in which, not only ourselves, but many other States, are tending, and which, in the end, might prove to be the undoing of their attractions.

Local government, as has been pointed out, has become much more complex, just as national government has become much more complex, and it will tend to fall more and more into the hands of officials and experts and to escape more and more from the hands of representative persons, whether local or national. Even before this Bill, the Central Government has had immense control of local government and, I think, the Minister will bear me out that he has immense control over local bodies and local officials. I think that the Minister has complete control over local officials at the present moment, even before the passage of this Bill into law, so that there is not such an immense change there. A great deal of the work of local government is done by officials and this Bill is extending the power of officialdom and, taken with other measures now before the Dáil, it is an extension of the impersonal official touch into every single department of our lives. You have it in the Hospitals Bill discussed in the Dáil yesterday; you have it, to some extent, in the Advanced Studies Bill, and I do not know that any political Party is to blame.

One of the things that interested me in the Dáil, I remember, was that on the adjournment every evening, for nearly five years, the Fianna Fáil Party lambasted the police up and down and abused them right, left and centre, but whenever there was a Bill brought forward dealing with forestry or some other subject like that, and the Government gave the police superintendents certain powers, in every case the Fianna Fáil Deputies, and I think the Labour Deputies also, wanted to give the police more and more powers, so that it is very hard to lay the blame at the door of any political Party. Nearly everybody is pushing more and more power on to various types of officials and this Bill also runs in that particular direction. I do not think it is a good direction and in this country it may happen that when we have travelled a great distance in that direction, we may violently start back after a period of years.

With regard to local bodies, several speakers have been saying that local bodies have not had a fair chance. Political matters were introduced into them long ago, as Senators will remember, as far back as the early Sinn Féin days. In that particular situation, every available channel was used and I think Senator Byrne was right in saying that. From 1922, it was the view of the Government of the first ten years that politics should be kept out of local affairs. Members of the present Government believed in introducing politics and when they came into office they extended the franchise to adults. That, again, was putting into operation a principle which had no previous parallel. You could have democratic government through a very restricted franchise in local bodies. The new development made them more and more political and now, having made them political, the same Government comes along and says: "Look where you are going—we have got to stop you," and they are, accordingly, going to take away, for all practical purposes, all their powers.

I would like to ask a number of questions regarding the Bill itself. With regard to the appointment of the county manager provided for under sub-section (2) of Section 4, certainly that clause contains a phrase to which I would like to draw the attention of the Minister. It says that the Local Appointments Commissioners shall recommend a person, and that those commissioners shall select "otherwise than by competitive examination." What does "otherwise than by competitive examination" mean? Does it imply a written examination? I would not be certain, and I would like the Minister to explain. I think the Civil Service Commissioners were advised on one occasion by the Attorney-General that a selection board which took candidates and put them in the order of merit was conducting a competitive examination, and if that is so, and I think it is so, this particular sentence of Section 4 prevents the Local Appointments Commissioners from resorting to the machinery of the selection board. I do not think that is what the Minister intends, and if it is not he ought to inquire into it.

Similarly I wonder what the position is about the dismissal of these county managers. That is provided for in Section 6. It says that two-thirds of the members of the county council are necessary to recommend to the Minister, in effect, that a manager shall be dismissed. Even then I take it that the Minister need not dismiss him. Is there any other power in the Minister to take action himself? I think there is under general law. Are we in the position that this county manager is appointed through the machinery of the Local Appointments Commissioners, that two-thirds of the members of the council can dismiss him, but that the Minister can dismiss him without reason stated and without inquiry held? Is that so?

It is never done, but he could.

Mr. Hayes

Yes, but he could. I appreciate, of course, that it would not be the right thing to do, but the position does exist. It is a new office, more important than that of county secretary, and more important than any ever given to any officer of a local body, and it seems to me that provision should be made that dismissals should not be effective, even by the Minister, except for reasons stated. It is not suggested that these county managers should get the status given to judicial persons, but if they are going to get all these powers, apart from what is a practice, they ought to have some legal hold over their jobs, so that if they are to be dismissed, they can only be dismissed for reasons publicly given. I think it is undesirable that they should have such powers and at the same time be subject to dismissal by the Minister without reason stated.

There is one other point about the managers themselves. Under the Bill, if the county secretary of a particular county is a candidate for the county managership, and is deemed to be suitable, the words "deemed to be suitable"—not "deemed to be the most suitable" mean that if in the judgment of the Local Appointments Commissioners he is a qualified person, he will be appointed. I take it that I am right in that submission. Without presuming, therefore, any special knowledge of local affairs and administration, it seems to me that the county secretaries are persons who have experience and who would be excellent candidates for the job of county manager but that the Bill puts them into the position that the county secretary of a particular county must be appointed in his own county. It is only when he fails to be appointed in his own county that he can be appointed somewhere else. Speaking for myself, I feel that if I were county secretary of Limerick, no matter how fond I might be of Senator Madden and his colleagues, I would prefer to be county manager in Tipperary than in Limerick. I think that is a point well worth consideration. I think the county secretary of Cavan might, if given the option, prefer to become county manager in Sligo-Leitrim, or some other county, and for that reason I suggest that the provision in the Bill which seems to make it mandatory on the Local Appointments Commissioners to put a county secretary in as county manager in his own county is not at all desirable.

There is a grouping of counties in the Bill which I find very difficult to understand. On what basis have these counties been grouped? For example, Carlow and Kildare combined are to have one county manager, but Wicklow, which, I take it, is a much poorer place—

Question.

Let me withdraw the word "poorer" in deference to Senator Byrne, and say that its rateable valuation is less than Carlow or Kildare.

Not Carlow.

Less than Carlow and Kildare combined. Wicklow is to have a manager of its own. That seems to be extraordinary. Kilkenny and Waterford are two rather large and prosperous counties with, I take it, a pretty high rateable valuation. There is a great deal of money to be spent in Kilkenny and Waterford and they pass, I think, for rather prosperous areas. They are to be combined, while Wicklow is left by itself, Louth is left by itself, Meath is left by itself, as well as Cavan, Leitrim and Monaghan. I am almost afraid to say Monaghan, but still Monaghan is left by itself. Perhaps that is the secret of it. I quite honestly do not understand the principle on which the counties were combined.

I thought at first that they were combined on the same basis as the parliamentary constituencies, but that is not so. Some of the counties grouped are large, and rates are spent in very great amounts in them, while counties which are smaller, with smaller rateable valuations and with less money spent in them, are left by themselves. It is not geographical proximity, because, if it were, we could all suggest a rather different grouping, so that I should like to know how the grouping arose.

I have grave doubts as to the extraordinary position to be occupied by the Dublin City Manager. His is going to be an astounding job. He is going to have Dublin City, the biggest city in the State, together with the borough of Dun Laoghaire and the very thickly populated County of Dublin. That is a pretty tall order for any individual. Provision is made, of course, for giving him assistant managers. I can understand the reasons for doing it to the extent that Dublin and Dun Laoghaire are so close together that their problems will be similar, but it is a very big job. With regard to the county managers generally, over 20 of them are necessary, and we have to get them from a certain class of official at present. It seems to me that what they need more than anything else is character, which is one of the things the Local Appointments Commissioners are not able to test. The person occupying the position of Dublin City Manager, even for Dublin City, without taking into account Dun Laoghaire and the county, requires to be a person of extremely good character. By that, I do not mean that he would not steal, but that he should have the qualities of resolution and determination, combined with tact. It is going to be extremely difficult to get suitable people and to get a person for the position of superman in Dublin City, Dun Laoghaire Borough and Dublin County is going to be very difficult indeed.

The Bill, I think, may prove difficult to work, and it is true to say that if anybody sets out to work it in a corrupt manner, that, to a certain point, can be done. There is, I think, also a step which, if derating were to take place in this country, would have to be taken. One of the things about derating which always struck me personally was that if you were going to relieve agricultural areas of rates, you could hardly give them a voice in the spending of money from other areas, speaking entirely of local bodies. One of the difficulties which I did not mention in regard to this question of the grouping of counties is that if you group two counties like Carlow and Kildare, and if the two county secretaries—I do not know anything about them personally, so I can speak quite freely—one of whom may be very young and the other old, are both candidates for the job of county manager, one will get it and the unsuccessful man will presumably have to work under the successful man. That sometimes happens and cannot be helped.

On the whole, if there is going to be a division on the Bill, I propose to vote for it, because I should like to see it working, and also because I feel the House would be very foolish to defeat on Second Reading any Bill of this magnitude which it is open to us to amend. If we have any amendments, I am sure the Minister will not be adamant in considering them. For that reason, I think the Bill ought to get a Second Reading, and I am prepared to vote for it, but I should like a fair amount of time for consideration of amendments, and I should very much like an opportunity of hearing the Minister to-night, whether or not we adjourn the debate until next week. I suggest that we should not take the Committee Stage until this day fortnight, but even if we adjourn the debate until this day week, I think that, on specific points rather than on a general defence of the measure, we ought to hear the Minister to-night.

Of course, the Minister will be concluding the debate if he speaks.

Not necessarily.

I have a lot of experience and I do not think there are any rules like that in existence. We can hear the Minister now, and we can hear him again, if we like, with your consent, Sir, and with no opposition from the House.

Notwithstanding all that has been said by the supporters of the Bill to the effect that the changes which it will make in local administration are of a formal character, I am not convinced that these changes will be for the better. We do agree that the present instrument of local government is not working, but I have heard nobody state where the fault lies—whether in the Act, in the administration staff, the officials of the counties, or in the central headquarters. There must have been very strong reasons to prompt the Minister to introduce a Bill of such sweeping character as this. There are councils still working effectively and rendering excellent service to the satisfaction of their people. How does it come then that a clean sweep is being made of those councils on the same lines as councils which have failed to do their duty? Was it not possible to apply some remedy to those defective councils so as to bring the weak spots up to the standard of those councils which were doing their work effectively?

A number of managers have already been appointed. Instead of doing that, why could there not have been new elections where councils had not proved satisfactory? The weak patches could have been analysed and remedied and if there were any officials of councils who were not doing their duty properly, such officials could have been removed. I believe that this sweeping measure has been rendered necessary largely because of the fact that certain officials were indifferent in the discharge of their duties and because the Government failed to remove these officials from their offices. The former Government tried experiments which were very difficult to operate, and I believe most of the failure of present boards has arisen from the difficulty of working the instrument put in their hands. I say there is not, and never has been, a fair division of services as between county councils and boards of health. The present boards of health almost find it impossible to discharge their duties effectively. I have seen the agendas of some boards of health and, to my mind, instead of rushing through the items on these agendas in five or six hours, it would take as many days to do the work effectively. The county councils on the other hand, who are the supreme bodies, so far as the voting of the money is concerned, get very little to do. I would say that the duties should be apportioned more appropriately as between these two bodies. That would go a long way towards remedying the difficulties in administration that are at present upon us. The boards of health have done marvellous work considering the amount of business that has been imposed upon them. Many of the services with which they deal might easily be transferred to the county council, the county surveyor or the county engineer and in that way you would relieve them of much of the pressure of work.

The one big objection I see to the Bill is that it will be the means of driving public-spirited men, men who have a strong desire to perform civic duties to the best of their ability, altogether from the arena of public life. I do not see how men of any standing or ability can be found who will be content to act as mere rubber stamps to the managers in every county, as they will be if this Bill becomes law. I believe that you will have a very attenuated attendance at the polling booths on the appointed day when it comes to the election of county councillors because men of ability and of standing, as I have said, are not likely to submit themselves to the degradation of being made simply rubber stamps.

How does the Senator say that they will be merely rubber stamps when they have control of the purse?

Senator The McGillycuddy, I always thought, was a man of very strong public spirit but apparently he has such a sad experience of Kerry that he is now content to be a mere rubber stamp. Things must have been very bad indeed in Kerry when a public-minded citizen such as Senator The McGillycuddy is willing to become a rubber stamp. However, those are the exceptions. Whether it was the Senator or other members of the council who was responsible, they could have been removed from office and the administration in Kerry could have been brought up to the standard that prevails in Kildare or in some similar counties where the work has been efficiently carried out. The great evil of the Bill, as I say, is the fact that it will mean the withdrawal from public service of public-minded men such as some Senators who have spoken here to-night. We have heard about the formation of parish councils, a matter in which the Taoiseach himself is interested but here the most important council in any county is being attenuated, dismembered and made the mere instrument of some supposed superman who is placed over it.

I should say that the manager is given altogether too much power by this Bill. If he were a managing director of a company, subject to the advice of the majority of the members of the board, then I could understand his utility. I can understand the great difficulty that sometimes arises when a council makes certain orders and puts on record that certain things are to be done. There may be some difficulty in the execution of that work. I could understand that somebody with the functions of a manager should then come in to speed up the execution of the work, whether it was a water supply, a sewerage system or even the erection of a pump in some remote locality. Difficulty is always experienced in getting such work carried out and I could understand the necessity for having some persons in the position of managing director who would speed up matters and who would get at the people who were supposed to do the work which is sometimes neglected for months. But that he should be manager of the council, instead of manager for the council, is I think one very strong objection.

If rural life is to be maintained there must be less concentration of public services. Rural and urban councils have always been centres of great interest for local communities. The members of such bodies have a knowledge of local circumstances that a manager could possess only after many years of experience and sometimes never. In the western districts, congested areas, where a perfect knowledge of individual circumstances is most essential, I cannot see that any manager unless he has been born in the area or lived in the area for a reasonable period, can have an intimate knowledge of the requirements of ratepayers and others in the poor areas of counties such as Galway or Kerry.

The local man has that knowledge. He has a sympathy with, and an understanding of, the psychology of the people of these districts that a manager who has been brought, perhaps from Cavan or some other northern county, can never have. I would strongly appeal to the Minister to give careful consideration to the Bill and only to place a manager over such councils as are not doing their duty. If the manager fails to bring them up to the required standard, then and then only should the manager be permanently appointed.

I believe there are many arguments for a manager of a council who will have control of the staff generally. I do not believe that in any county you have anyone in a position to link up the different services to the extent that would make them function efficiently, but whether there is a manager in the county at present, or whether he is imposed on the county in the future, I believe such a system is necessary for the speedy working of essential services in the country. I should say, however, that if the Bill becomes an Act, the Minister should proceed slowly and put it into operation only where the necessity arises. If we are to have anything like the evolution of parish councils or such bodies as Muinntir na Tíre or the "back to the land" movement, and if you destroy the important pivotal council in every county, the county council, there is very little hope for the ideas promulgated by the Taoiseach in regard to the establishment of rural parish councils, or little hope that the civic spirit so essential to the life of any nation will be preserved in the rural areas.

I do not suppose that even Senator Hayes could lay claim to less practical experience on this matter than I can lay claim to. I must be almost unique in this House in that regard, having had very little, if anything, to do with the practical work of local government. At the same time, I do not like to let this Bill go by, in view of the various important principles that arise in connection with it, and in view of many things which have been said in the debate, without trying to express such few thoughts as I have on the subject.

When the last Government put through their Local Government Bill— in 1924, I think—which abolished the rural district councils, I had a feeling then, though I was a supporter of the Government, that they acted rather precipitately without taking sufficient time to go more closely into the whole question of the organisation of local government and its needs than they did. I cannot help feeling a little the same about this Bill, although a great deal of time has been spent in discussing the problem since then. I have a feeling that it is a hand-to-mouth Bill and one which will not give us a permanent, sound and organic system of local government. One thing which induces me to think like that is the matter to which Senator Hayes has referred, the grouping of counties under a single manager. Senator Hayes pointed out, and I think it is true, that this is a subject on which a debate might go on for months on end. It is the question as to what is a suitable area for local administration. That is a question which is wide open for discussion and which cannot be settled by a Bill of this kind. Grouping together counties like Carlow-Kildare and Sligo-Leitrim is not going to solve that question in the long run.

The real trouble is that we are working under a system of local government which was handed over to us by the British Government. I was rather amused to listen to some of the speeches made here with reference to the Local Government Act of 1898. Several of the speakers seemed to look upon that Act as the palladium of our national liberties. It is odd that we should regard that Act, passed for our improvement by a British Unionist Government in Westminster, as the fundamental pillar of our local government and that we should regard any deviation from that Act as dangerous and bad. The real trouble is that our difficulties existed long before that. Centuries of English government left us with no local organisation in this country at all. Our problem still is, and will remain for a long time to come, the problem of finding some sort of organic local unit to which the people feel they naturally belong, not merely a unit by which the rates are struck and to which certain public health services and other functions are delegated by officials here in the Custom House.

This Bill does not seem to me to make any progress towards providing such a basis for local government, and I feel that until we get such a basis our local government system will continue to fluctuate, one hand-to-mouth Bill after another will be brought in, and our system this year will not work satisfactorily next year, and then another Bill will be brought in to unite Mayo and Roscommon, or Cavan and Monaghan, in spite of their present temporary disagreement.

We will have Bills like that coming along every now and then, and none of them will get us any nearer to our real goal. It is difficult to work towards it, as we are working on an uncharted area, so to speak. It is very difficult to say what is or what can be the natural unit of local life. I submit that there is very little use in thinking of a unit of local government unless you think of a unit of local life.

Several Senators spoke of the necessity of restoring the rural district councils. Although I entirely agree it is necessary to have some smaller local unit than the county, I do not believe the rural district council is the kind of thing that is necessary. To my mind, they suffered from the typical defect of English legislation: they grouped people around economic centres. I presume that the officials here in Dublin—or, perhaps, in Westminster—took a map of Ireland and a compass and drew circles around certain important towns. They grouped together half a dozen parishes around centres to which the people in their actual lives had no real allegiance and with which they had no real connection at all. The rural district council areas—like the constituencies, for instance, by which the Dáil is elected—were entirely artificial, and bore no real relation to the interests of the people or to their daily lives. That is why I, for one, am a believer in the idea of parish councils, which has been referred to so much. The only local unit which has an intimate relation with the people is the parish, and until we get, at the root of the local government system, some form of parish council, we will not make progress. It must be remembered that the English have that system and have always kept it for themselves, though they never gave it to us. Until we get such units, we will not have a satisfactory system of local government, and we will go on changing, adding, and subtracting counties one from another. We will probably also go further and further in the direction to which Senator Hayes. Senator Fitzgerald, and others drew attention—further and further in the direction of bureaucratic control.

Again, the county councils themselves represent areas which have no traditional or historical basis in the actual lives or thoughts of the people. It is always forgotten that in these counties we have, again, English institutions which were put together, very often artificially, in Elizabethan or Jacobean times. That artificiality has remained to this day. Areas which bear no relation to each other at all are grouped together. That reminds me of a point to which I would like to draw attention in relation to this Bill. Something ought to be done, when grouping together counties like Sligo and Leitrim, to separate districts like Connemara and Galway from each other. I am sure that Senator O Buachalla will bear me out in that In Galway two areas are linked together which are quite as different as any two areas anywhere in Ireland. It just happens that one of them. is the largest area in which the Irish language is still used for ordinary purposes and is still widely spoken. I suggest that while we are at this business of reorganising local government we should bear in mind the necessity for giving those areas where the Irish language is still widely spoken some form of autonomy. It would need a certain amount of subvention from the central Government, but there is no doubt that their problems are entirely different from the problems which face those working under the Minister for Local Government and Public Health in other parts of the country. When you are joining two counties together under one man, it is difficult to see why you could not divide a county in the same way. Special assistant managers could be appointed for these Gaeltacht areas.

In all that matter of counties, we have no real fundamental unit at all. The problem is to find a unit. I suggest that the unit will not be satisfactory if it is a purely economic or administrative one. One must look for something which gives an organic group of people, which links the lives of certain groups of families and brings them into some kind of organic unit. Something like the diocese or ecclesiastical province may be what is needed. Unfortunately, the county has been given a fictitious popularity by the activities of the G.A.A. One of the curious things they have done is that they have taken a purely English institution and based a kind of Gaelic outlook on it. These English-made counties do not represent —and they never did, until the G.A.A. came along—any fundamental, organised group in the lives of the people. It is for that reason that I think that, from beginning to end, this Bill is precipitate.

The problem is far too deep and fundamental for us to expect that this Bill is going to do away with all these difficulties. I do not see that there is any great objection to the Bill as it stands, and I propose to vote for it, but I am afraid that what it is definitely going to do is to increase the power of bureaucracy. The Local Government Department now is only going to have to lop off one head instead of many heads—there is now only one man concerned—and it must be remembered that in any case he will be under the control of the Department of Local Government, for the very good reason that the councils have long been under the thumb of the Minister.

As far as it goes, this Bill cannot be said to substitute an autocratic manager for a democratic council. The council will remain as an advisory and legislative body, and the Bill does not take away the advisory and legislative powers of the councils. After all, the Dáil is supposed to be the most democratic body in the country, but the Dáil, actually, has no executive authority at all. Therefore, I do not see why the county councils should have any objection to the managerial system. Provided that the manager appointed is a man of ability and good character, which, we must assume, he will be, I do not see what objection there could be on the part of the county councils to giving the executive functions into the hands of such a man. After all, county councillors cannot attend to all the details of such work. That is not the danger that I see. I think that the real danger is that this tends to even greater control by the central authority. Already you have an elaborate system of control involving the county councils and ensuring that there is not a single thing they can do without the sanction of the Minister. I suggest that, once you have dealt with the matter of distributing the legislative and executive functions of these local authorities more efficiently, as Senator Buckley put it, there should be some way of giving them a little more power and authority.

Let us remember, for Heaven's sake, that all this so-called democracy that we have, was handed over to us by the British Government. It was not an Irish system, and let us not confuse ourselves with the idea that the concept of democracy here is the same as it is in England. If we want to have a Gaelic civilisation here and, at the same time, to have the inheritance that we have got from England so far as local government administration is concerned, then we are looking for two things that are incompatible. When we had a Gaelic civilisation here, there were no Minister for Local Government or Ministers for Finance, or anything of that kind. Senators should try to take away their minds from these modern conceptions of democracy or dictatorship. The fact is that the more democracy you get the more dictatorship you get—that is, under the conditions handed over to us by England. What you really have had up to the present is only a development of the English Civil Service as it was during the last century. Many of these civil servants did very great and laudable work. Some of these men during the 19th century were among the greatest men of their time—men whose names now are hardly known, notwithstanding the great work they did—but although these men set on foot great improvements, undoubtedly, they were improvements that were suitable enough for English conditions, but not so suitable for Irish conditions. I think that, as a result of this mania for improvement and for seeing that everything is carried on perfectly by the county councils, we may only succeed in killing whatever life these councils have.

Somebody here suggested that these local bodies were great centres of interest to the people in rural areas. That might be so but, unfortunately, owing to the system operating here, they have ceased to have such interest. That is why it is so difficult to get people to take part in local government, and why there has been so much decay in the rural life of the country. I am not suggesting that it is the fault of this Government or of any other Government. All democratic Governments seem to suffer from the same complaint, and the remedy is, as Senator Fitzgerald suggested, to give local authorities certain limited powers—circumscribe those powers if you like, but within the circle of those limited powers, give them liberty, and do not have the county council or the county manager in the position that they cannot buy a spade, a bicycle, or a bucket, without writing to the Department of Local Government and Public Health for permission.

I myself, for instance, am often asked by people, in my own district in County Galway, to see about having something done by the Minister for Local Government in connection with their old age pension claims. I think it is ridiculous to expect the Minister to deal with such matters as that, and it is only the local people who would be really familiar with the circumstances. That is only one instance of the kind of thing that happens all over the country and I regard it as a pity that these duties are being put on departments. Over the whole field of local government the implication is that officials in the Custom House are better able to show the men down in a parish in County Galway how to live than those people know how to live themselves. There is an immense amount of that sort of thing going on, and I beg the Minister, in operating this Bill, to operate it in the direction of giving more freedom, more autonomy to those local bodies and these managers when they have been appointed.

I think I have covered everything I had to say on the Bill. I do not regard it as being anything very revolutionary, but at the same time I do not regard it as doing anything very fundamental to clear up the problem of local government. Still, I think it is an improvement, and an improvement which has possibilities in it if it is properly operated. Therefore, I propose to support the Bill.

Speaking on something which I do not quite recollect, Senator Tierney said that no reasonable person who had read the Bill would make certain strictures on it. I echo that with an addendum. The strictures that have been made upon the Bill lead one to suspect that those who spoke either had not read the Bill or had read it with very slight attention. The Asiatic eloquence, for instance, of Senator Madden was expended upon a horrible outrage that was to be perpetrated on the Irish people. They were to be deprived by the operation of this Bill of all the great advantages which he and other public-spirited men had been able to render to their fellowmen in their own districts.

I turn to Section 35 of the Bill and find that he read the first half and the middle of the second:—

"Every board of health shall, upon the commencement of this Act, become and be dissolved by virtue of this section."

He seems to have stopped there, and either he fell asleep or was called away and forgot there were other words in the section—

"the duties of such board shall, thereupon, become and be transferred to and vested in the council of the county in which the county health district of such board is situate."

There is a somewhat irreverent story of a Chicago merchant who died and went to his allotted place in the next world and his first exclamation was: "Phew, this is a hell of a hot place." Satan, who was passing by, remarked: "Well, what did you expect?" He said: "I may tell you, Satan, there is such a thing as overdoing it." I cannot help feeling that Senator Madden overdid his virtuous wrath against the Minister and all his works and pomps as expressed in this Bill.

I suspect, I repeat, that a great many of the critics of the Bill did not take the trouble to read it, and although I was immensely interested and pleased with the admirable speech of my colleague, Senator Tierney, I felt that he had yielded to the temptation that occurs to men of his avocation so frequently. With professors in literature—professors in journalism rather—the common trick as you know is, in criticising a new work, to find fault with it that it was not on something else that the author had written. For instance, he publishes his "Paradise Lost" and the critic regrets that, with all his qualifications for writing such a work, he did not write on "Paradise Regained".

Anyone reading this measure will see that it does not purport to be the last word in the evolution of a perfect system of local government in the Twenty-Six Counties. It modestly claims to be an Act to make further and better provision for the local government of counties and certain other areas and for the administration and management of the business of county councils. That is all it claims to be, and if when it is passed, it will do what it was intended to do, as Senator Tierney said, and very properly, it is a marked advance, it is an improvement. But what has been overlooked is that, first of all, nobody has alleged that the county councils of Ireland have been a failure. Not one syllable even distantly implying that was said on this side of the House. The only aspersions made upon the quality and character of local government by county councils were made by Senator Baxter. But Senator Baxter made so many aspersions on other things that we know are unfounded that it detracts somewhat from the value of his attack.

For instance?

Very good, I will give them. He was the high priest of democracy and alternately he was attacking everything in local government here and now in one of the counties that had incurred his displeasure and disapproval and, in the course of his attack, he referred in respect of this Bill to incompetence and corruption at the base... and the base is, when he comes to read the official report of his speech, county council government. Here is the allegation with regard to a Bill which takes away from the people's representatives their responsibilities. A similar charge was made by other speakers. Surely, anyone who read Sections 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24 and the Second Schedule of the Bill will realise that there is no responsibility taken away from the representatives of the people. Their functions are shared but the responsibilities are not taken away. One irresponsible speaker actually had the hardihood to say, while he posed as an intelligent man, that he could not discover very well the principle in the Bill. I dare say that was to make his excuse for discoursing on various things other than the principle of the Bill which is the subject matter of the Second Reading. The principle of the Bill is very clearly set out in the distinction between reserved functions and executive functions, and the executive functions are discharged on behalf of the representatives of the people on the council by an official named the manager. That distinction of function is made clear beyond the shadow of a doubt in the language of the Bill, but for months and months past orators have been going about the country assuring the people that the present Government is actually so lost to reason and so lost to justice and lost to all sense of the people's rights that they are substituting a managerial system for the local government system by county councils. Obviously, that is not so. We are making the administrative work of the county council the peculiar and exclusive—not quite exclusive—concern of an official who, presumably, is appointed because of his capacity to take over this type of work. It is not a removal of power, but, I say, a diversion of functions, between the councils as legislative, and the managers as administrative.

Now, will anyone who is acquainted with public life, even in slight measure, deny that administration is a business and that to discuss policies, to inaugurate policies and enter into the high philosophies of policies, are quite different from the actual humdrum daily task of administration and it requires special qualification for that and, therefore, it is ordinary commonsense to divide these functions? It is "aspersing the integrity of the county council"; it is making county council government more "efficient"—it seemed to be the line of some of our critics that it would be a crime to talk about efficiency. It was said that we are making a god of efficiency. I wish to Heaven we had regard for efficiency in every department of our national life. I quoted from my friend, Senator Lynch, in that last comment. Senator Lynch was one of those who attacked the Bill because it was uprooting and doing all sorts of villainous things to democracy.

Senator Baxter has said, in effect, something similar, but he was very careful to tell us why he stood for democracy. What is the thing that is being "undermined", "pulverised", and a lot of other things? Senator Lynch, who is always clear and explicit in his statements, defined democracy. He said it was "government of the people, for the people, through the people". His extreme exactitude destroys his own criticism. Government of the people, for the people, by the people, used to be the version given, but Senator Lynch very cleverly, and I will take the liberty of saying it, though it seems to be impertinent to praise him, very properly substitutes "through the people" because government of the people, by the people, has been extinct for centuries. It is "government of the people, through the people", now. The moment he conceives that version, it can be asked why should not the people be governed through an agency. He overlooked that, and he is a lawyer, which makes it strange. He overlooks the principle of agency.

How is it undemocratic for a Government to employ a lawyer as Attorney-General or as a law adviser? Why is it commonsense for a man who has become plaintiff in a case where his rights are disputed, to employ a lawyer or a whole body of lawyers? Is he demeaned, debased or degraded, or deprived of any of his personalities or his rights because he employs an expert in the matter to act on his behalf? Yet if a county council is to employ an expert in administrative work on its behalf, why the whole idea is declared to be "an attack on the rights of the people". It would seem that one of the fundamental rights of a people is to have their business handled by amateurs when there is an opportunity of having experienced, capable and competent men to do it. There has been a great deal of idle talk of this sort, missing the point, or discussing other and irrelevant things.

It seems to me that the man who, during the last European war, declared "Mesopotamia" a blessed word, has a great many counterparts in the House in those who suggest that democracy is a blessed word. All they have to say apparently is that a thing is "undemocratic" and the Government falls and the progress of the Bill is paralysed when we are told that it is "undemocratic". Senator Tierney happily tried to get over the difficulty of that stumbling block. He said he did not care a fig about democracy so long as the people's work was done. He did not care what "-ism" he conformed to. To support that, he called democracy a "catch-word". I do not believe in that. To me, democracy is a living reality, not a religion, but a philosophy of politics. Undoubtedly, if the Irish people were told that this Government were conspiring with others, even with so pure-minded and noble a public man as Senator Tierney, to do away with democracy, though the name and catch-cry associated with the greatest catch-cry of them all has out-lived its usefulness, I have not the slightest doubt that the Government would be swept away, because there are people still who have faith in the ideal that this is their country and that their business is, in part, the country's business and that they are all part of a great partnership, all equally entitled to demand that the interests of the country and of the individuals who are good citizens should be promoted in every way and protected by the Government of their choice.

I think it is premature to declare democracy a mere "catch-cry". Hitlerism, Mussolini-ism and Stalinism have not triumphed yet and so long as we have faith in democracy in this country, I think we should stand by it instead of declaring it to be an empty phrase. This Bill has the merit, as it is said, that it is not revolutionary. It is evolution, and evolution of a cautious type. The Government have waited until they had experience of the managerial system as it worked in a great city. After all, the managerial system was tried in the City of Dublin and subjected to a very complete test because a big city is colossal in comparison with the business of a county council. Its complex character makes it more difficult, no doubt, so that the work of the county council is, in its own way, simple by comparison. So, cautiously, the Bill proceeds step by step. It is because it has that character that it takes nothing from the people about which they were entitled to complain, it adds greater efficiency to the administration of county council work. It shuts no door against further evolution towards a full and complete type of civic government which, as Senators pleaded, would be more in harmony with the character of the Irish people.

I am sorry to find that Senator Magennis has not as good a knowledge of local conditions as some of the much more humble men who have spent their time on local councils. I am not at all impressed by the Senator's speech and it is strange that that should be so because, on other matters, I have a very high opinion of Senator Magennis's judgment. He says that democracy is not interfered with in these proposals, but the powers of the Dublin Corporation, on which you have 34 elected representatives, many of them Deputies and Senators, are so limited that they cannot appoint a charwoman or a tenant to a cottage. If they have that power, I do not know where it is. I cannot see how anybody can say that he is against this Bill and for it, at the same time. I oppose it and I intend to vote against it. My reason for doing so is that I am satisfied it takes all power from the local representatives, and that, no matter what others may say or think of it, it removes the one important thing, mentioned by Senator Madden, that is, the human touch, the connection and link between the plain people and their representatives.

Might I interrupt the Senator to ask, on that point, whether the Corporation members can advise the manager and whether he will take that advice with regard, for instance, to the occupant of a cottage?

My answer is that I am not a member of the Dublin Corporation, but I have heard it stated that the powers of the 34 members, including many honoured members of both Houses, are so limited that they cannot appoint a charwoman. If I am incorrect in that statement, I am sure some member of the corporation here will correct me.

What the Senator says is quite right. They cannot appoint to these minor offices. The manager has all the responsibility.

Then what is their responsibility?

It is set out in Sections 20 to 24 of the Bill. They have control over the making of the estimates and they can add to, subtract from, or amend the manager's estimate.

Another point which I should like Senator Magennis to remember when he speaks of employing an agent is that they have not the authority to employ an agent. Some other person employs him for them and all they have to do is to pay. The ratepayers of the city have no authority in the matter.

On a point of explanation, the Senator has misconceived what I said about agents. I spoke of a principle in connection with public matters and not with the duties, rights or privileges of the manager.

The citizens of Dublin, ratepayers or otherwise, have nothing to do with the employment of an agent. The agent is employed for them; all they have to do is to pay, and they must pay. I am sorry that it has come to the point that this Bill should be introduced at all, because, in the course of an association of very many years with public life in this and another part of the country, I have met men in public life who gave very honest service, and if they have been dishonest to anybody, it is to themselves, in the amount of time they have given without material gain of any kind. I say that the majority of these people did their work as honestly and conscientiously as if it were their own business, and I cannot see how a manager is going to do it any better because, after all, the manager is a human being like the rest of us. The citizens are at the mercy of the manager, no matter how we may look at it, or how people may try to suggest that the old system is an English system. I have never stood for any English system, and I deny any English right to do anything in this country, but I say that if it is an English system——

Nobody said it is.

Senator Tierney spoke of it as an old system, but I say that it is much to be preferred to the county manager system because the position we are reaching now is one in which there are officials at every turn. As a matter of fact, a person can scarcely do anything without some official coming along to tell him whether he is doing right or wrong. I am sorry that the Fianna Fáil Government, of which I thought so highly, has thought it wise to bring forward this Bill. It represents a great change from the attitude taken up at recent elections when it was stated that if it was not sufficient that the head of a house should have a voice in the election of local councillors, the franchise would be extended to the families. I think there is a duty on the Minister to state what has taken place to bring about that change, and I for one am not satisfied that anything has taken place which justifies it. It was one of the planks of the Fianna Fáil programme at recent elections that they would extend the franchise sufficiently to enable every person over 21 to have a say as to the persons who would represent them.

And so they have.

They have no say in regard to the county managers. To give the House an idea of how far interference by officials has gone, I may mention that if a man buys a holding in County Dublin and proceeds to erect a house on that land, bought and paid for by himself, under the many Acts in operation, somebody gets out of a car some morning and tells him: "You cannot go ahead with that because you have not submitted plans in connection with town planning." Where are we getting to at all with all this interference in small matters in respect to which there should be no interference? Another man is carrying on a successful dairy business for years and years, the factors contributing to his success being that he has always made a point of buying the best cows, giving the best milk and has never been convicted in his life. An inspector comes in to him and says: "You cannot carry on a dairy business any longer. There is not enough light coming in over the cow's head now."

The Senator realises that this is not relevant.

I know it is not, but it is no harm to mention it. These are the matters with which I am in contact every day. Where are we getting to?

You are beside me now.

I was not referring to the Senator's work which is good and necessary, and which should be carried on. We are going very far in this matter, so far that, instead of elected representatives, a county manager is to be appointed, and I am satisfied that that is a bad day's work because, where you have elected representatives, if a person is not pleased with, for instance, the raising of rates, he can discuss the matter with the local representative who will tell him that he has done his best. That is some kind of consolation, but this proposal severs the link between the local people and the local representatives, and I am not satisfied that it is a good proposal. The people elect the local councillors and there are members of local councils who are also members of both Houses of the Oireachtas. If the people are not capable of electing councils to administer local affairs in County Dublin or any other county, then it cannot be said that they are capable of electing members of either of these Houses to govern the country. After all we cannot have it both ways. It is the same people who elect the county councils and the Dáil. If they are not fit to elect persons capable of carrying on the smaller job, they are not fit to elect persons capable of carrying out the bigger job. That is the way I look at it. I may be wrong; I hope I am.

There are many other points on which I should like to speak, but all of these points have been touched upon already by other Senators. I shall not delay the House, however, beyond saying that I am going to vote against the Bill and that I hope it will never become law. Of course my hopes will never be realised. I can see that.

You are a real pessimist.

If it is to become law, I should first like to see it amended in certain directions. It has been said that there is nothing in common between certain parts of the country and other parts. That is quite true. The City Manager in Dublin is also to be the manager for the county yet there is nothing in common, as far as local government administration is concerned, between Grafton Street and Balbriggan. Neither is there anything in common between the Connemara end of Galway County and the City portion of Galway County. In my opinion, the manager will not be able to come to a fair decision as between the conflicting interests of these areas. The local representatives who were constantly in touch with the people in their several areas understood their needs and were able to cater for these needs. As I have said I am sorry that the Bill has been introduced. I think that there is a far more pressing need for legislation which would be of benefit to the nation. If I thought that the ratepayers or any section in the community were going to benefit by this Bill, I would support it but I have not heard of any section, the farmers, the labourers or the unemployed who are going to gain by it. The only result of it, in my opinion, will be that you will create another host of officials. The managers will need assistants and the assistants will need other assistants and in the end you will have as many assistants as you had councillors. Again, I hope I may be wrong but that is my view.

Before dealing with the main question, I should like to refer to a few minor points that were raised by certain Senators. Senator The McGillycuddy raised a question about the retiring age of officials. As the law stands with regard to the officials of local bodies, there is no legal provision or regulation which requires officers to retire at a certain age. The Department some years ago issued a circular asking local authorities themselves to move in the matter and to endeavour to secure that officials over 65 should be made retire. I think the local bodies could insist on retiring officials by reason of age or infirmity. An unsatisfactory position in that regard has obtained and obtains up to the present. The Local Government Bill, which I hope will be introduced in this session, will give power amongst other things to fix a retiring age for officials of local bodies. It will deal also with county managers. What the retiring age should be, will be a matter for decision.

Senator The McGillycuddy also raised a question, which was later referred to by Senator Hayes, as to whether a secretary for one county might be appointed manager in another county. Under the terms of the Bill as it stands, the secretary of the county council, say in Limerick, could not apply for the managership of the county council in Kerry until the secretary of the county council and the secretary of the board of health in Kerry had been interviewed and had been deemed unsuitable for the position. As the Bill stands, it is only in circumstances such as these that the secretary of an outside county could be considered. I do not know whether it would be an advantage to get a native of one county as manager for another. To me it looks too much like putting them in the same position as officials who are paid out of the Central Fund—a position analogous to that of a superintendent of the Civic Guards whom you can change from one area to another. I think that that is undesirable in this case. In the case of a number of positions that have been created, the people appointed to them have been assigned to a definite county and have been left there. District justices, for instance, are left in a definite area and no powers have been sought to transfer them.

I do not know that it would be any advantage to have the power to appoint a native of one county to another county unless you had also power to change these officials about, because after all a county is not a very big unit. It is certainly not like a city, and in a very short time you can get to know most of the people in a county. Perhaps if you are a person open to prejudice you will have your prejudices and your preferences. Human nature being what it is, one has to think of all these possibilities. It would take a very short time for a man who was not a native of a county to which he was appointed to acquire the same knowledge of local circumstances as a native of the county would have. I know there are secretaries of county councils who are reluctant to take up positions in their own areas if there is any alternative open to them. I can see that position. They will find themselves in the position that there may be relatives or friends of some sort looking for posts under the council.

It may be that these people are just as qualified as others for these posts, but the secretaries of the councils feel that they have to stand against them as it always creates suspicion if a relative is appointed to such public positions. Some of these secretaries would like to be transferred to other counties, but I think a manager will be in a different position from that of secretary. The manager has greater responsibility, and he undoubtedly has more power with regard to staffs. He will have absolute control of the staff —as he should have—as chief executive officer. With these additional powers, I do not think that any good manager will have any difficulty whatever in standing up to any pull or interference that might be attempted in regard to the filling of such posts.

Senator The McGillycuddy expressed a desire that only professional persons or persons who had attended universities should be appointed to these posts.

I do not know how that could be operated. The successful applicants will be those who are considered by the Appointments Commission to have the best knowledge and the most experience of local administration. I do not know whether any advantage would be gained by any departure from that method of appointment nor can I see how it would work out. I do not think it would be quite satisfactory to appoint to such a position a person who had no practical knowledge or experience of local affairs.

I think it was Senator O Buachalla who raised a question as to whether it was contemplated in some future legislation to reduce the membership of councils. That is the position. In the Local Government Bill, which, as I have already said, I hope will be introduced in the present session, the membership of councils will be reduced but not to a very great extent. Looking at it in that way, perhaps you could take five off one county council and six or seven off another, but I do not think you could go much further, so far as that Bill is concerned, at any rate. I do not think there is any future Bill contemplated with regard to the constitution of county councils, and there is not going to be any drastic reduction in the number of county councils.

Senator Mrs. Concannon mentioned the position in Galway. The position in all these counties is that the duties are not going to be so onerous on the managers as Senators are inclined to imagine. Under him the manager will have the secretary of the county council. The secretary of the board of health is being transferred, if he is not appointed as the manager, to the county council offices to look after the work which he was looking after while he was secretary of the board of health. The board of health will be abolished. The manager has under him his county surveyor—who is responsible for the roads; he has the chief medical officer of health, who is responsible for public health; he has the heads of the various sections and departments working under him. It would be his business to see that they work efficiently. He has to see that these various sections and departments are working efficiently and effectively and I do not think the size of the county will make any difference.

We are amalgamating certain counties and Senators have asked why this is being done. First of all, it is being done on account of the size of these counties, the population, the geographical situation, and because there are certain institutions common to the two counties. In Carlow-Kildare, for instance, the mental hospital is a joint hospital for both counties. There is a lesser number of urban districts in some counties than in others. In Sligo-Leitrim, for instance, there is the position that the mental hospital for both counties is in Sligo. In Tipperary North and South there seems to be a natural unit.

Have Cavan and Monaghan the one mental hospital?

I do not know. It is a question of the size, the population and the number of local authorities within the area. I was asked why Wicklow is not included with Dublin. Dublin County is being put in with Dublin; Wicklow could not be put in with Wexford and it would be impossible to add it to Dublin.

Senator Hayes asked whether there was power to make these appointments by selection boards without competitive examinations. In Section 9 of the Local Authorities (Officers and Employees) Act of 1926, it seems perfectly clear that the commissioners can dispense with the examination and have a selection board. I am grateful to him for raising the point and I will look into it, though I do not think there is any doubt. He has also questioned whether the manager can be removed. The manager will be an officer, just the same as any officer of the local authority and, while there is nothing in the legal position to say that the Minister cannot remove him at any time, I am advised that the Minister cannot remove an official of a local body without an inquiry. The Department is sometimes reluctant to state the reason; sometimes it is obvious and there is no necessity to do so. When a man is arrested for embezzlement, there is no necessity for an inquiry as well as an investigation in the courts. It would only be necessary to send somebody there to inquire how the man got into that trouble.

Would it be a sworn inquiry?

When the Minister said "arrested", presumably he meant "convicted".

Yes. When a person is arrested, he is suspended; but he is not removed actually until after he has been convicted. I am advised that there is not the right to remove him without inquiry as to why the person is regarded as unfit for the position. Sometimes the reason might be quite obvious and possibly the person concerned would not be very grateful that we should go into the details as to the cause of the removal.

Mr. Hayes

I suppose he always gets an opportunity to make his own case before he is dismissed?

Certainly, except in the case where he has been convicted. There was some question about merging Dublin County and City and as to whether three people were sufficient. The Dublin City Manager will become county manager as well as city manager and, if he is suitable, the secretary of the Dublin County Council will become an assistant manager. That has been brought about in this way. The Greater Dublin Tribunal recommended certain methods of amalgamation. We do not think that the present time is a suitable one to proceed with that scheme, but we are taking advantage of this County Management Bill to lay the foundations so that, if it were necessary or desirable afterwards to bring about an amalgamation, the machinery would be there but it is not contemplated at the present time.

Certain difficulties arise from time to time which, I believe, would be lessened under a system where the manager for Dublin County would be manager for the city as well. Recently there was complaint about the delay in providing meals for children at Crumlin. The difficulty arose through the children from the city attending a school which was outside the city boundary and there was difficulty in getting co-operation between the two bodies. Dublin County does not want to pay for the city, and so on. There would be a quick way of meeting such a situation by extending the boundary. Some other Senators asked if two assistant managers and a manager would be able to carry out all the work. That is the position at the present time. The Dublin City manager is manager for the city and the secretary of the county council is able to look after the affairs of the county. He is an executive officer at the moment. The man in Dun Laoghaire is able to look after Dun Laoghaire. I should rather err on the side of not appointing too many than on any other, so that we could see how it is going to work out.

We now come to the major argument advanced against this Bill. I do not wish to argue the principles of democracy. All we want to do here is to decide whether the rights of the people as far as voting and control are concerned, are being taken away from them or not. Senator Lynch was unfortunate in quoting the phrase "government by the people". That phrase, of course, came from America and I believe that they have always lived up to it as they interpreted it themselves and as we all believe it to be properly interpreted. What is the position in America? We are told here about being dictators, anti-democratic and everything else, but America, which is supposed to be one of the most democratic countries in the world, has 600 of her cities being run under the managerial system and under the same principle that is proposed in this Bill. You have the same system in Scandinavia, in Switzerland, and in other democratic countries. You have it in France. Why do we start coining phrases which, apparently, are designed to get it into the heads of the people that their rights are being taken away? If anybody reads the Bill, he can see what is in it, and why should we be coining phrases in order to put it into the heads of people who, probably will not read the Bill, that their rights are being filched? That is not the position, and everybody knows that it is not the position.

There has been talk about the boards of guardians being gone, and that that is to be regretted, but let us remember that when that system was brought into existence, somewhere about 1838, it had to be enforced on the people because, whilst provision might be made for children or for widows to get relief, an able-bodied man could not get relief unless he went into the workhouse. That operated down to about 1923. The Viceregal Commission, also known as the Micks Commission, of 1903 had condemned the workhouse system, and I do not think anybody regretted its passing. Now, there has been talk about the powers that exist under the Local Government Act of 1898. Certain powers, undoubtedly, exist, but they are limited by the sanction of the Minister or the Department. Certain powers are gone, but with regard to the making of appointments there are very few positions to which people who are competent would not be appointed or in which there would be any interference. Mention has been made of the appointing of gangers and workmen on road work, and so on, but that is a matter that has been in the hands of the local surveyor. Of course, it is possible that he may be subject to local pressure, but he need not be, and then, with regard to relief grants, there is always the condition attached that the men must be employed through the local labour exchange, even though they are taken on by the county council concerned.

I think it is a foolish argument for any Senator to make that all powers of county councillors are being taken away in this Bill. That is not the position. The position is that the manager is responsible for the absolute control of the staff. Senator Tunney sneered, in his speech, about not being able to appoint even a charwoman. Certainly, you could not. There is a man there to see that the charwoman does her work, and he must have a certain responsibility in connection with such matters. So far as the control of staffs is concerned, that rests with the manager, and he is responsible for dismissals or removals, within the law. Nobody has referred to Section 25 of the Bill, where you have certain powers set out, or to Section 28 or the Second Schedule of the Bill. The powers of the county council are set out in these two sections and the Second Schedule. They can go in there and strike a rate for a particular purpose, and the manager must accede to their request and do that work. If there is any particular job that they decide upon doing, such as making a road, and so on, as the Bill stands, the council has absolute power to make provision for that special work to be done, and the manager cannot stop them. If that is not sufficient power, then I do not know what is meant by the word.

Certainly, so far as the staff is concerned, that is really within the power of the manager, but I think it would be an impossible position to have the manager in the position that, if he wants to employ a man or to dismiss a man, or if the county surveyor wanted to employ or dismiss a man, the council were to be able to say that he could not do that. I think that that would be an entirely impossible position. Efficiency is essential in these things. After all, it must be remembered that county councils at the present time are administering for the whole Twenty-Six Counties, I think, something like £6,000,000, and £3,000,000 of that comes from the Central Fund. Now, that is a big sum of money to be administered, and I think it will be admitted that it is necessary to have efficiency and co-ordination in the administration of such a sum of money.

It has been suggested that we are taking away the human touch and getting away from the poor. I think it was Senator Hogan who said we were getting away from the poor people. In that regard, there is a section in the Bill enabling a county council to set up committees, and when I put that section into the Bill I had definitely in mind the idea that the councils could set up some committees—perhaps in distant or remote parts of the county—in order to be able to deal with poor people in such parts of the county. The manager, of course, would be responsible, but you can set up committees for any purpose you wish. The section goes even farther than that and provides that, with the consent of the Minister, duties and responsibilities can be assigned to these committees. What Senator Tierney had in mind, with regard to giving these people responsibilities and duties, is already there in that section, and provision is made for such responsibilities and duties to be operated.

Some Senators seem to think that something terrible must have happened because this Bill has been introduced. Nothing terrible has happened in this country. I wish to join in the tribute which has been paid to those people who served on councils in the past, and I hope that they will give as useful service in the future. I have made no case in the Dáil—and I have not made it here—that there has been maladministration in the country. It is not necessary for me to make such a case as I have nothing of the kind in my mind, even if I were trying to make one. I am keeping away from that line altogether. I have not inquired in any detail about it, as it was not necessary for me to do so. These people have served well and have done valuable work, and I think the whole country must appreciate that.

We know what the position has been regarding the work of the boards of health. Their duties have been particularly onerous, and the councils and the boards of health have not been able to perform them effectively. I have been on boards of health myself —I have been chairman of one of them, and of a county council for some years—and I am sure that the experience of anybody who has been on any of those bodies since 1926 or 1927 is that you had to attend at a county council meeting until 4 or 5 o'clock in the evening and then the secretary of the board of health was waiting to rush you over to the board of health meeting opposite, to find an agenda there of 30 or 40 items. Everybody can understand that such a position could not continue.

As has been pointed out, the opinion was: "We simply did not know what we were doing; we could not know and one had to take the secretary's word for it." That was quite true; if the secretary were a reliable official, one could rely on his veracity in regard to any question, but if there were an official on whom you could not rely, you would be there for that day and for a few more days before getting the business carried through to your satisfaction. It must be remembered that members of boards of health and of county councils are people who have their own jobs to mind and who have their own work to do. It is very hard for them sometimes to find time, to get even one day in the week or one day in the month free. The job was so onerous and the duties so multifarious that it was impossible to keep in touch with them or to keep a grip on the things which were being done.

That was shown clearly in the Report of the Commission for the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor. I quoted this in the Dáil and do not wish to hold up this House by quoting it again. Evidence was given there by various secretaries of boards of health and chairmen of boards of health. Anybody who refers to it will find that it shows that it was absolutely impossible for them to get on with the work. Let me give the following quotation from the Report:—

"Dr. P. O'Daly, a member of the Mayo County Board of Health, in answer to a question whether the board of health are able to get through their work, stated:

"‘I think they are not.... The meeting starts at 10 or 11 o'clock. You are in the place until 3 or 4 o'clock, and you get fagged.'"

Mr. Lynch

What area would that be?

Mayo. I will quote a number of others:—

"Mr. John Kiersey, Chairman of the Waterford County Council, states:—

"‘As a member of the Board of Public Assistance I say that under the present rules and regulations it is almost impossible to carry on the duties'.

"Mr. M.J. Hassett, Secretary of the Limerick County Board of Health, says:—

"‘It is difficult for the board to get through all their business'.

"Mr. E. Kelly, Chairman of the Monaghan County Board of Health, says:—

"‘We find that we are not able to carry out duties without reverting to the system of district committees. I would be in favour of asking these district committees to do the same work as the old district councils and boards of guardians'.

"Mr. Michael Flynn, Secretary of the Waterford County Board of Public Assistance, says:—

"‘The board are always complaining of work. The meetings sometimes take a very long time, up to five or six hours'.

"Mr. P.C. O'Mahony, Secretary of the County Kerry Board of Health, is of opinion that:—

"‘No elected body could adequately deal with the volume of busi-of a board of health and avoid choas'".

They are all officials, I presume?

They were secretaries and chairmen; three secretaries and two chairmen.

Two chairmen in seven counties.

I have quoted Mr. Kiersey of Waterford, Mr. Kelly of Monaghan, and others.

Cork is a fairly large county. Is there any reference to it?

There is:

"Mr. D.L. O'Gorman, T.D., chairman of the Cork County Council, was of opinion that a body of ten was too small for the work the board of health had to do, and advocated a reversion to the system of direct election."

A number of other people expressed opinions. The commission was appointed on the 19th March, 1925, and consisted of Mr. Charles H. O'Conor (chairman), Alderman R. Corish, T.D., Right Reverend Monsignor Dunne, P.P., V.G., Sir Joseph Glynn, Dr. Thomas Hennessy, T.D., Senator Sir John Keane, Bt., Reverend M.E. Murphy, Major J. Myles, T.D., Senator Mrs. Wyse-Power and Padraig O Siochfhradha.

Their recommendation was:—

"The Abolition of the Board of Health and Public Assistance.

"282. We are unable to formulate any plan which by merely altering the constitution or methods of procedure of the board would be calculated to lead to more efficient administration, and we are inclined to the view that the work of the board of health (we are restricted by our terms of reference to its duties as poor law authority) would be better performed by a paid whole-time official working under the control of the county council.

"283. This would mean the abolition of the board of health, so far as public assistance is concerned. It has already been recognised by the Oireachtas that a measure on somewhat similar lines might at some time be necessary as under Section 73 of the Local Government Act, 1925, it is enacted as follows:—

"(1) A county or borough council may, with the consent of the Minister, delegate to such person or persons as the Minister shall, from time to time, appoint for the purpose all or any of the powers, duties, and functions (including all or any of the powers, duties and functions of a board of health) and such powers, duties, and functions shall thereupon be exercised and performed by such person or persons until the holding of the next triennial election of county councillors.

"(2) The remuneration of any person appointed under this section shall be paid as part of the general expenses of such council.

" It will be observed that the effect of Section 73, if ever put in operation, would be to give to a paid officer or officers all the powers and duties of the board of health in so far as they were delegated; this paid officer would be entirely independent of the county council; and the maximum term of his appointment would not extend beyond three years.

"Our proposal differs somewhat from this as we recommend the abolition of the board of health and the assumption by the county council itself of the control of poor relief working through a paid official whom they would place in entire charge of the poor law services of the county in the same manner as a general manager of a company under the control of a board of directors. By this means the control of the county council over finance would be retained, but the administration and responsibility for the good management of the institutions and the care of the poor in the area would be placed in the hands of a paid official."

That indicates what the experience at the time was. Following up that system there was the managerial system so far as the city is concerned. That is being followed out now, more or less on the lines of that report, except that it is extended to the councils.

I am surprised that Senator McGee suggested that this might be something to prevent the unity of the country. I would recommend him to read the Report of the Departmental Commission on Local Government Administration in Northern Ireland in 1926. He will find there some of the reasons why committees and councils are not operating effectively. They talk about the dilution of responsibility, of patronage, of interference with officers of lack of co-ordination and of the loss of control by the responsible authority. I have gone into this fairly fully in the Dáil and I do not think that it is necessary for me to cover the same ground here. I do want, however, to contradict the statement that was made here, in case the idea would get into people's heads, that once those powers are given to the manager there will be nobody going up for local elections. The most recent proof we have had is in the City of Waterford. There were elections there a few months ago and out of a total vote of about 14,000, 10,000 were recorded. In Dublin City, there is always quite enough of candidates and nobody gets a walk-over. I think there is always a good turn out. In the Cork City Management Bill, they have not the same powers as in this one-they have no Section 28, as we have here.

In a Bill like this, a lot depends on the manager, as Deputy Davin pointed out in the Dáil, speaking on the Estimate in 1938, when he was lecturing somebody to the effect that he did not know much about city management. He said he had experience of the managerial system in his area in Dun Laoghaire and that it all depended on the manager. He said that he himself believed in it, and he quoted an example of a director of a railway company running around interfering and doing things which one of the employees of the company could do far better. It would be impossible to run a railway or a public concern like that, but that is the system on which local administration is run at present. It is impossible to work this scheme as it is at present. It is impossible to get the work efficiently done unless you have a person who is responsible for the control of ordinary administration and who has not to be subject to another control when that control is not there all the time to assist him.

On the question of what might be said about what is democracy and what is not, I am not going to weary the House at this stage. Some people quoted Disraeli, Burke and Carlyle, and when I heard them I was very nearly tempted to quote John Stuart Mill on representative government. However, I am not going to inflict that on the House at this hour of the night. I am satisfied that this Bill will work efficiently. There was a suggestion that it should be brought in in parts, but I do not think that there is any advantage to be gained by experimenting with one county. I think it is much better to get it into operation at once, and I think it will work efficiently, and that councils will find they will have much more powers and that co-operation between them and the manager can be got. It will be in the manager's own interest to co-operate with them, and they will find that the system will work very satisfactorily from their point of view and very efficiently from the ratepayers' point of view.

There is only one word more I want to say. Reference was made here to my Parliamentary Secretary. I am very sorry it was made, because I do not care to hear such references made here. It is demeaning to have to say these things but I am quite satisfied that there is no foundation whatever for any charges that have been made. Charges of that kind should not be made, I am firmly of the opinion, under the shelter of the privilege of this House. Such charges can be made in some other place where they can be dealt with in one way or another.

Question put.
The Seanad divided: Tá, 25; Níl, 11.

  • Byrne, Christopher M.
  • Concannon, Helena.
  • Conlon, Martin.
  • Farnan, Robert P.
  • Fitzgerald, Desmond.
  • Goulding, Seán.
  • Hawkins, Frederick.
  • Hayes, Michael.
  • Hayes, Seán.
  • Johnston, James.
  • Kehoe, Patrick.
  • Lynch, Peter T.
  • MacCabe, Dominick.
  • McEllin, Seán.
  • McGillycuddy of the Reeks, The.
  • Magennis, William.
  • O Buachalla. Liam.
  • O'Donovan, Seán.
  • Nic Phiarais, Maighréad M.
  • Quirke, William.
  • Robinson, David L.
  • Rowlette, Robert J.
  • Ruane, Thomas.
  • Stafford, Matthew.
  • Tierney, Michael.

Níl

  • Baxter, Patrick F.
  • Butler, John.
  • Campbell, Seán P.
  • Cummins, William.
  • Doyle, Patrick.
  • Healy, Denis D.
  • Hogan, Patrick.
  • Lynch, Eamonn.
  • McGee, James T.
  • Madden, David J.
  • Tunney, James.
Tellers:—Tá: Senators Goulding and Hawkins; Níl: Senators Campbell and Cummins.
Question declared carried.
Committee Stage ordered for Wednesday, 15th May, 1940.

The Advanced Studies Bill has been received from the Dáil and there may be another Bill, though I am not sure. I suggest we meet next Wednesday.

The Seanad adjourned at 11.10 p.m. until Wednesday, 8th May.

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