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Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 25 Sep 1940

Vol. 24 No. 25

Establishment and Constitution of Parish Councils—Motions.

Debate resumed on the following motions:—
"That this House requests the Government to introduce legislation for the purpose of setting up parish councils in the rural areas on a permanent basis; such legislation to provide that the councils shall be elected by the heads of families in each area and that they shall form an integral part of the local government system of the country."—Senators O'Dwyer, Tierney, O Cuimín and Counihan.
"That this House would welcome a statement from the Government regarding the constitutional status, the method of election, and the powers of parish councils."—Senator Sir John Keane.

In the discussion we had on this motion on the last occasion, practically every speaker supported the idea of parish councils, but there was a difference of opinion as to whether these councils should be purely voluntary bodies or whether they should have statutory powers. Personally, I am in favour of parish councils, and I am convinced that if they are to achieve any results or to be of any value to the country, they cannot be voluntary bodies. I could probably claim that I have as much personal knowledge of voluntary organisations and of bodies with statutory powers as any member of the House, and while I appreciate the work done by voluntary bodies and recognise that some of them have accomplished wonderful things through the years, I still maintain that parish councils would be useless as voluntary bodies. If we look at most of the voluntary bodies, even those which have achieved things, we find that in many cases they did not cover the whole country, and that in cases where they did cover the whole country, where they had, so to speak, a nation-wide appeal and branches in every parish, they had not that continuity which is absolutely essential if parish councils are going to be of any use.

You will find, even in regard to those organisations which have lasted for half a century or more, a branch in one district very virile, very active, and doing very good work, while in the next district a similar branch is in a dormant state. Then probably a year or two afterwards, quite the reverse is the case, and you will find the branch which was active a couple of years ago dormant and the branch which was inactive most vigorous. That condition of affairs, to my mind, would be simply fatal to parish councils. One of the principal reasons for which I support parish councils is that with the introduction of the managerial system —and I say this as a supporter for years of the managerial system—there is a grave danger that people will lose contact with local government and cease to take an interest in it. I consider that that would be very serious for the country as a whole. That is why I think, if we are to make the managerial system the success we should like to make it, there will be a necessity for something like parish councils.

I will probably be charged with trying to revive the old district councils and, to an extent, I say "Why not?", although as a member of the Dáil in 1925 I supported the Bill—which you probably remember, Sir—which abolished district councils. I supported their abolition although I was chairman at the time of the largest district council in my county, and got rather into hot water for doing so. I took the view then that the membership of these councils was too large. I was a member of one council consisting of 17 members and, one day, we would have probably 10 members attending, and 17 members only on rare occasions when something particular had to be dealt with. At that period we had boards of guardians, and meetings of the district councils were held subsequent to the meetings of the guardians, with the result that things were done in a hurry. At that time the boards of health took over all the poor law work, and I was quite satisfied to give a trial to the system under which the board of health took over the work of the district councils.

I pay a tribute to the boards of health for the excellent work they have done in practically every county, but there is one difficulty which I have found in relation to them during the past 15 years. Their success was largely due to the fact that they were small bodies, consisting of only 10 members, and 10 men spending a whole day at it would achieve a lot. The trouble was that they all represented large areas and I felt that we would do much better work if there were in existence some types of advisory bodies like parish councils. No matter how anxious the members were to deal with all the detailed work such as home help, the building of cottages and the 51 other things which would be of advantage to the people who needed them, and especially the poorer types and with the requests from towns and villages for sanitation and water works, the members were not in immediate touch and there was a real need for some advisory body.

I recognise fully that one of the big difficulties in regard to parish councils is to set out what kind of work and what kind of statutory powers you are going to give them. Let me be quite clear. I do not agree with many supporters of the motion who suggest that they should get anything in the nature of large powers. I would give them very restricted powers. Some people say: "Let them work as a voluntary body and, as the years go by, we will discuss the possibility of giving them statutory powers". I say: "Give them some statutory powers, no matter how small, from the beginning, and, as the years go by, we can discuss whether or not we will increase them". There are many small powers at the moment which could be given to them. In passing, I might say—I am sorry Senator Johnston is not here— that from the experience I have, I certainly would not at all agree that they should get anything in the nature of power to strike a rate up to 1/- in the £. In fact, if they had any right to strike a rate at all I would not provide for a fourth of that figure and would stipulate that they could strike that rate only for some very necessitous work in the parish, and only after some means had been adopted to discover whether or not the whole parish wanted that work.

Take, for instance, some of the various committees that we have up and down the country at the moment. They seem to have been overlooked in the discussion we had here on the last occasion. Somebody suggested that they should have the right of giving old age pensions. I think Senator Counihan objected very strongly to that, and so would I. We have local committees, dispensary committees, working up and down the country, and they investigate and pass a pension, subject to the sanction of the Minister. If the local officer does not agree with that, he can appeal to the Minister, and likewise those local committees can appeal against the local officer's decision. Those committees are continuous, for the reason that if the secretary of the county council finds those people are not attending the committees he simply draws the council's attention to the matter, and some one else is co-opted. That work could be very easily done by the parish councils, and done much better. Those of us who are members of the county councils, and probably the clergymen of the various denominations, do not always know the people we are talking about, or the people who are before us. As I said, the work could be better done by parish councils, but I would not give them any more power than the dispensary committees have at the moment.

It is also, I think, provided in the Managerial Bill that some kind of committees could be set up under that Bill to deal with such things as home assistance. I think the parish councils could deal with that, in the sense that they could recommend to the home assistance officers the people who would be qualified, the people who would be deserving of home help. They might even be able to give other information which would be very helpful to the various home assistance officers. I also think they might be very helpful to the officers of the Labour Exchange on questions regarding payment of unemployment assistance, and on questions of finding work. There is also the matter of the care of cemeteries, which I certainly think could be handed over to them altogether. I think that in rural Ireland, anyway, there should be somebody looking after the cemeteries, and there might be some statutory powers that the boards of health already have which could be transferred to the parish councils.

There are many other things which they could do. For instance, at the present time if we are selecting a site for a labourer's cottage—that is a very important matter for the land owner and for the man who is going to live in that cottage—the procedure is that the engineer comes along, and he has to get two members of the board of health to accompany him. Incidentally, I might mention that the engineer gets 10/- for looking at the site, while the people who go with him do not even get their expenses, and they are not very keen on travelling around all day. Naturally, the engineer looks at the site purely from the engineering point of view, and it does not matter much whether it is suitable to the local committee, or whether it suits the person who owns the ground and is giving it, or very often whether it suits the man who is going to spend his life in that cottage. Surely the parish councils would be better able to deal with that matter than anybody else, because they would know the type of man who is getting the house, they would know the man who owns the land, and would have all the inside information that those two outside men would not have. They would not take purely the engineering point of view. They would simply ask themselves: Is it fair to the man who owns the land to build the house there, and is it equally fair to the man who is going to live in it?

I could enumerate many other things which are being done at the moment, and which could be passed over to those parish councils without giving them any great powers to which objection might be raised. As the years go by we would probably find many other matters which could be handed over to them. At the moment, there are certainly half-a-dozen things which they could do very effectively. We have county committees of agriculture working at the moment. They spend a good deal of money and are doing a great deal of good work, but very often the county instructor, not only in agriculture but in horticulture and various other things, lacks local support. The county committees do their part well, but I think the parish councils could do enormous work in popularising those schemes, and in popularising the lectures which the various instructors are giving up and down the country. The same thing applies to vocational education. From my experience of vocational education in rural Ireland, I think it is not anything like the success it should be, and a lot of the money involved has not been well spent. I very often feel that that is largely due to the fact that there is not sufficient local support and enthusiasm because the local people have no say in it. While I do not propose giving those councils any extra powers, I am quite convinced that if such councils were working the local people could be induced to take a bigger interest in those schemes, both under the county committees of agriculture and under vocational committees.

Would the Senator expect the Muintir na Tire organisation to continue to work along those lines?

I have not reached that stage yet. As the matter has been mentioned, I might say that I think there have been suggestions that the establishment of parish councils would interfere with the work of Muintir na Tire. I do not think so at all. I altogether agree that parish councils would be a great asset and a great help to voluntary organisations. I think they would do a great deal to spread the splendid idealism of Muintir na Tire. Another matter which would have to be dealt with is the method by which they would be elected, but the one thing I want to stress is that if those councils are to be effective they must have some sort of statutory powers, and we must see that they continue; we must ensure that, having worked satisfactorily for five or ten years, they do not fade out, have to be revived, and then move along for another five years; otherwise they would be useless. I do believe they would help organisations like Muintir na Tire; I believe they would help the ideals for which such organisations stand, and probably spread them much better than they could be spread by voluntary organisations.

I believe they would help the Gaelic Athletic Association, and help athletics generally in the country. I believe they would be a great help to the I.A O.S. in getting co-operative ideas spread up and down the country, and I believe they could do a lot for the work of the Gaelic League. If we had the right type of people, and I am sure we could get them, I believe they would make some effort to get the children in the schools and the children who have left the schools during recent years to speak the language, and bring the language into the life of the parish and into the life of the nation generally. The same thing would apply to our music and dances, and to Irish culture generally. I believe they could achieve a great deal of work in that way, provided they were put on a proper basis, that they would continue to work in season and out of season, and would be always there.

Another difficulty is the question of how they should be elected. Personally, I would be inclined to favour the view of the mover of the motion that there should be some kind of family vote. I do not think they should be elected on a vocational basis. I do not think there is much use in discussing an election of any kind of body in this country on a vocational basis until we get a report from the Commission on Vocational Organisation which is at present sitting, and until we know exactly what kind of vocational organisation we are going to have. I would like to say, if I might, as a warning, that I believe that any attempt to elect parish councils on a vocational basis might have the very opposite effect to what the people who are advocating that believe. I do not think it would be suitable to elect them on anything in the nature of a vocational basis because we have no such thing as vocationalism in our parishes.

Is not Muintir na Tíre organised on vocational lines?

I am giving my opinion. Vocationalism, as I said before, does not exist in this country, and I am afraid that instead of getting the parish councils organised on vocational lines we might simply get them organised on class lines which, I think, would be detrimental. If we had vocational organisation in the country, of course, it would be quite a different thing, but at the moment it is a very difficult problem, and I think it would be better, if parish councils are to exist, that they should be elected on some general lines.

During the various discussions here we have been told a great deal of what they did in England and Portugal. I do not think that we should go abroad to find what system of parish councils we want or what system of democracy we want. I do not believe that we should reject anything from any country, especially if it is good, but I think that we should try to model it on our own needs. While I am a democrat and stand for the democratic idea in matters of suffrage, I still hold that on the question of parish councils, even from a democratic point of view, we could adopt some better system. I still think we should give a trial to a system such as is in the mind of the proposer of this motion, Senator O'Dwyer, on the lines of a family vote.

I would like to say that I do agree with the Minister to this extent, that I do not think the time is opportune now to introduce legislation for the purpose of establishing parish councils but, personally, as one who is very much in touch with all kinds of councils, not only in my own county but here in Dublin, before the managerial system is in operation—and I am one of the people who are looking forward to seeing the managerial system in operation—I believe that we should discuss or consider very carefully whether we should not have something in the nature of parish councils. I think I can claim some experience and I feel that parish councils would fill a very useful part in our life but, if they are going to achieve anything, they must be some kind of elected body with even small statutory powers.

My object in putting down this motion was to try to get, at least in my own mind, some clarity out of the confusion that exists in regard to these parish councils. I think if one who did not know the country should suddenly come into the country, and read the effusions on the subject, he would be inclined to think we had discovered some magic method of regenerating society and bringing a sort of Utopia into the land. I think those who live in the country and who work on local bodies have doubts upon that subject. I have had a good deal of experience on local bodies and I have also had my salad days of enthusiasm when I hoped to get things done well and quickly. I remember, when I was quite a youth in my own village, I suggested we should have modern sewers. Immediately there was an indignation meeting, headed by the parish priest and the Protestant clergyman, protesting against the very idea that we should have modern sewers because of the cost they would entail. I think I would be in the ranks of the protestors now. We have got beyond that now and, I think, in the last few years we have got the modern sewers. I cannot say that we suffered during some 40 years by the old system of drainage. I think that perhaps the more primitive thought had a good deal to be said in its favour, and I think all of us who are ratepayers very much doubt that all this modern development and so-called efficiency and centralisation of local services have produced benefits corresponding to the very heavy burdens we have had to bear. I do not see how we can put back the clock. The tendency is towards centralisation and with the complications of modern life, and with the ease of communications I am rather afraid that is inevitable. I should like to see a much more primitive form of life. Perhaps the war and the impoverishment we are all threatened with will lead to a more simple and primitive life, and to that extent I would welcome the principle of the parish council and the setting up of a medium in which the parish council can function.

However, I think the immediate question before us is not so much the statutory powers we should give them but as to how these emergency committees are going to work. The Minister has told us that it is contemplated, in the event of the country being split up owing to war and communication becoming impossible, that a large portion of the local services and interests should be in the hands of these emergency parish committees, under the direction, presumably, of regional commissioners or county commissioners. That is, I think, on the right lines but what puzzled me was how these emergency committees were going to work in practice. I gather that they are going to be voluntary and, as such, I think there is much to be said in their favour, but how are they going to assert themselves and get the information they want on a purely voluntary basis? I still doubt that we have got that 100 per cent. element of goodwill and desire to assist authority that would enable a voluntary body to function adequately. I can see these emergency committees, without any statutory power, trying to compel people to lay in stocks, to compel people to give up what they have got for the benefit of others, and being met by a refusal. What is the next step? Are they going to call upon the regional commissioner or try to assert authority they have not got? If so, what would be their legal position and what view would the courts take of it? It is to have this point cleared that I put down the motion and I do not think I got full enlightenment from the Minister. If he said: "We rely on goodwill. We have not given these people compulsory powers and do not expect them to exercise any compulsory powers", well and good. I see difficulties in the case of a number of people not being satisfied with the methods they employed, combining to oppose them.

I am also a little puzzled as to the method of bringing these bodies into being. I wonder if it is quite satisfactory. I met a certain individual not long ago who said: "I am told I am on the parish council. It is the first I heard of it. Nobody ever asked me." I wonder to what extent you will get the necessary element of goodwill in bodies that have come into being in such a very haphazard way. I do not suggest that we should have all the complicated machinery of local government and election and all that, but I do think there should be some better organisation than is at present the case, when a sort of meeting is called and those who like to come may come. Many people do not know about it and out of such a meeting emerges a body of so-called representative people. I am not quite convinced that that is a method by which in times of emergency you are going to get goodwill to function freely. I am prepared to say that 90 per cent. of the whole business is goodwill, and if you have not goodwill you will not get very far even, probably, with a statutory body.

Apart from any emergency in the future, on the general question as to whether these councils should have statutory power or voluntary status, I think there can be little doubt that these voluntary bodies are the only things that will do good in the long run. Once you have statutory institutions, you have the dead hand of bureaucracy. I think it is that dead hand of bureaucracy that is responsible for the great diminution of interest in local government. Everything now seems to be taken out of the hands of the local people. In the old days, I do not know if there was such a great amount of bribery and corruption, but I do know that there was a great deal of local interest taken in various appointments, and I do not know you got a worse lot of men. It still has to be proved.

How can it be proved?

I can call to mind the names of certain people appointed under the old system, people who were thoroughly good in their positions. I can call to mind certain county surveyors and dispensary doctors who were appointed under the old system, and I can say there are no better to-day. I do not know in the long run whether this system of Appointments Commissioners, nice as it looks on paper and orderly as it may be, necessarily produces any better results. I do hope, if we are going to pursue this parish council idea, that it will be on a voluntary basis, something on the lines of the Muintir na Tire organisation. That is the only real way in which you will get any spiritual force behind the movement.

Once you get statutory powers it becomes dead and automatic and people will undoubtedly lose interest, because you will never get the central authority to leave these bodies to function freely. The minute there is any appointment or any departure from what the central authority considers the conventional method, they will at once come in and say: "We cannot have it that way." There may be mistakes sometimes in the process of educating the people in local administration, but the central authority will not be satisfied with that. That is one reason why I have little hope of what will come from statutory bodies. I would welcome the voluntary organisation, slow as it may be, as the only way to bring any real interest and spiritual force into the smaller groups in the country.

I welcome parish councils in one way, but I do not agree with the manner in which they are elected. Senator Sir John Keane is quite right when he says that there were numbers of people appointed on parish councils and they did not know they were appointed. That would show that the system of election is bad. To my mind the only hope for the parish councils, if they are to function successfully, is to have them on a voluntary basis. I would not be in favour of giving them statutory powers. They can do excellent work by coming together voluntarily and taking an interest in their respective parishes. Each parish council is supposed to concentrate its thoughts on its own parish, carrying out improvements and so on. They can inquire into several matters that might be of interest to the parish and, perhaps, to the country as a whole. For instance, they could investigate such subjects as the making of by-roads, local drainage schemes, derelict bogs, which are of considerable importance at the moment, and other matters such as the provision of new halls. Parish councils might also be very useful in an advisory capacity.

It occurs to me also that parish councils might be of great help to the Government and the various political Parties—the three Parties in this House and in the other House, for example. It would be of great use to them to have parish councils in this way. The followers of a particular Party might be anxious to have some work done in a locality. They make an application to have the work carried out, believing it to be useful work, but unfortunately that is turned down. If you had parish councils, all the Parties would be represented on those councils and they would investigate the application and see if the work would be useful—that it was not for the benefit of one particular Party, but for the good of all. This sort of thing would bring people together, and I am sure, after a year or so, they would find out the most intelligent people and they could form a committee for the parish which would have control over the carrying out of various works.

The same sort of thing applied in the co-operative movement some 30 or 40 years ago. Bodies of farmers gathered together and they elected a certain number to carry out work in connection with a local creamery. At the end of each year this committee retired, and there was a new body elected. If the farmers thought that the old committee was doing the work reasonably well, they did not make any change. The same could apply to the parish councils, and in that way they would have the confidence of the people. If the people thought that members of the councils were not doing their work well, they could elect a new body. I would like to see these councils functioning in the country, but I would not like them to have statutory powers.

I cannot say that I see too clearly what this motion may lead to. At the same time I am convinced that there is room for these parish councils throughout the country. I rather imagine when, in parts of Ireland, we suggest ideas that are very fine and beautiful, the different political Parties and the Press take hold of these things. They send their representatives out and the majority of the people, with their eyes shut and their mouths open, gather round the political platforms at election times, vote for these things and forthwith they become law. The power of the Press and of the political Parties seems to grow with the years. I should like these parish councils directly and immediately to connect the homes of the people, and particularly the heads of families, with the Government. The Government, through these organisations, could feel the pulse of the country and would know how fast or how slow, as the case might be, they should proceed.

These parish councils would curb any tendency to revolt and revolution and would make for stability. Obviously if proposed reforms were more thoroughly digested before they reached the Legislature, it would lead to better administration and would obviate those unsatisfactory results which arise when new measures are enacted without that thorough consideration that they should receive. Sometimes local bodies receive orders from Departments which cannot be justified. In my own county the wages of county labourers were raised by 2/- last September, to meet the increased cost of living, but the State now objects to the payment of this increase.

I have seen too many revolutions to be enamoured of them. I do not know that they lead to the victories that are sometimes claimed for them. Nevertheless, I have reason to know that very many enthusiastic members of the Local Security Force disappeared out of that force when this order became operative. When their wages were reduced by 2/- these men said: "Well, we will not bother. Our 2/- increase has been stopped but Senator McGee gets his salary and Deputies and Ministers have increased their salaries". I think such imprudent acts—I do not wish to exaggerate them but they are imprudent—would be curbed and perhaps squelched absolutely if you had a prudent and well-chosen parish council. It is quite easy to choose such a council by a procedure such as was adopted in my own town, where the farmers went into one room, the labourers into another and the businessmen into a third to choose their representatives. The six or seven rooms that formed the local school were all occupied and, as a result, a splendid parish council was elected. These parish councils furnish the means of connecting the homes of the people with the Government. They bring home to the hearth of each family an idea of the part they should play in the life of the nation. They are a connecting link between the humblest cabin and the most stately mansion in the land. The parish priest or rector is generally chairman, though I do not think it is absolutely essential that a clergyman should always be chairman.

I think it desirable that these bodies should have statutory power. I was rather struck by the statement of the Minister here that it would not be judicious to give them power to strike a rate as it would not lead to their popularity. I am delighted that we have a Minister to advance that theory because, after all, our Ministers have struck rates in their day, retained their popularity and are flourishing just as well as ever. I think that no public money should be extracted from any townland unless with the support and approval of some such institution as the parish council. I think it absurd that a demand should issue from say, the City of Dublin, that a certain rate should be struck on a certain townland, regardless of the life that may be lived in that townland. It is, in my opinion, impossible to judge the circumstances in the distance. "Out of sight, out of mind". How can any official or any citizen up in Dublin, no matter how well-meaning, form a judgment of the life that is lived in the different homes throughout the country?

It is impossible to do that. It is equally impossible to decide what rate should be struck on an individual working his plot of land, large or small, without having that local knowledge which is derived from immediate contact with people of any particular district. Families with six, seven or eight children are living on farms of 20 or 30 acres of land but they are debarred from all the social benefits of the Medical Charities Act. The failure of one small crop may place that entire family in jeopardy. I think it would be well to suggest to the Legislature that there the parish council should come in and that it should not permit any authority to take out of a townland something which it cannot afford. Charity begins at home, and it is the duty of every family to protect itself first. It has no opportunity of doing so now, with the result that you have so many instances of derelict farms, flight from the land, and a want of sympathy with the people who reside on the land.

At a recent meeting of Muintir na Tíre in Cavan I observed that there was some severe criticism of the government of our State for the last 20 years, and I was glad to note that one gentlemen advocated the necessity for credit for our farmers. I am rather sorry that Senator Quirke has left the Chamber because my mind goes back to one evening when I suggested here that something further should be done in that matter. I mentioned a case of which I was aware, in which an application had been turned down for some reason and the Senator, who is a member of the board, stated that the Agricultural Credit Corporation never gave the reasons as to why an application for a loan was turned down. To my mind, a parish council should be informed of the reasons why a frozen loan exists in its area. Some means should be found by the State that would enable the people of that locality to have that frozen loan melted and thawed. I might suggest to the Agricultural Credit Corporation that they, like every other institution in the State, are part of Ireland, and no greater than the poorest part of it will permit.

Leas-Chathaoirleach

I do not know that criticism of the Agricultural Credit Corporation has anything very specially to do with the question of parish councils.

I am not criticising them. They are a very excellent body of men. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to be anything but kind and apologetic to them.

Leas-Chathaoirleach

I do not think this is the place to criticise or discuss them.

I am not discussing them. What I am stating is that, to my mind, when the State has created an institution for the benefit of the people, the people should not be debarred from having a voice in the control and management of it. I do not wish to criticise the corporation.

But the parish councils will.

No, sir. I suggest that these parish councils should be given sufficient authority, and should have sufficient means at their disposal to discover what are the real needs of the people, and that they should be provided with means to supply these needs if they cannot be supplied otherwise. I do not think I could make the position clearer. I ask the sympathy of the House, and also its pardon if I have transgressed in any respect. It is not fashionable and not right to claim that we are poor. I do not want to urge the "poor mouth" eternally, but if parish councils were given statutory powers over every aspect of Irish life, and particularly over the expenditure of money extracted from the different townlands, something could be done to instil some vigour and some life into whole districts, and parents could see what they might do for their children in the future. I do not want to criticise the very excellent institutions that have been established, beyond saying that they should have been given more power. Centralisation has been a direct cause of the loss of interest by the people in public affairs.

The Press writes up certain schemes and the Party leaders do the same regardless whether the people require these schemes or not. I am not so interested in the appointments that have been made by these bodies. I am sure a scheme could be hammered out so that appointments would be all right. In my part of the country excellent appointments were made by the old bodies. We have had surveyors, secretaries of councils, doctors and others who stood the test of time. We have had the same experience with the new bodies.

What I would like to lay emphasis on is the importance of connecting these questions with the homes of the people, the abolition of class interest in every area, as well as the welding together of the entire community. That must come if parish councils are chosen and elected in a just and commonsense manner, so that every class will be given its rights. I want a sort of blending together of the community for the good of all. I am not so foolish as not to know that we are up against vested interests. Appointments have been made and a lot of power has been given to certain parties and organisations and they are not going to let that power go without an effort. We are not going to have the whole system of giving pensions and jobs done away with. These things would not have passed if the people had been consulted. I am not uneasy about that, but I consider it would be for the good of the country if the whole basic power of the State had its source in the homes and then conveyed through parish councils. The power of the Press has a wonderful effect on the people. But very often what one reads in the morning newspaper has a different meaning in the evening. I am not so anxious about appointments because I believe that question could be fixed by some method. We could have a more stable nation if the whole people, and especially the heads of families, had a greater voice in the affairs of the country than they have now.

Having listened to part of the debate a few weeks ago, and read it with a good deal of interest I cannot but think that we are hampered in coming to a decision by taking together two motions which are really not very closely connected. It seems to me that by taking them together the logical order was reversed. The main one was discussed in very interesting and able speeches while the other motion was only formally introduced. It was not until I heard Senator Sir John Keane to-day that I realised what the query in his motion meant. He announced to-day that he was thinking of the emergency councils which have been established in the past few weeks, and he made very proper inquiry as to what their powers, functions, and method of election would be. When I read his motion before, I thought he intended to inquire what the Government had in mind with regard to local councils, a question which is at present awaiting consideration by the Oireachtas. Taking the motions as they stand, it seems to me that it would be logical first to ask for information, and then, having got it, consider it. Having the information and taken the trouble to consider it, the House might then proceed to make a positive demand, such as it made in the other motion. Senator Sir John Keane simply asked for information on some points.

It seems to me that it would be more logical to get information first, and then consider what positive proposals we would make to the Government. There are several points in the motion of Senator O'Dwyer, some of them are associated, while others might stand by themselves. The demand is to have these councils on a permanent basis, so that they might form an integral part of the local government system. There is also a demand for a special and rather peculiar form of election. I think the House was entitled to a little more specific information than it got in the debate a few weeks ago. The debate has done good in some respect. It has clarified the minds of the people against a confusion which was very general, a confusion about the different forms of parish bodies that have been talked and written of in recent months. Parish guilds, as proposed by Muintir na Tíre, we have learned a good deal about in recent weeks from the very interesting meetings that have been held. There are then the local councils which are adumbrated in a Bill before the Oireachtas, and the emergency councils which the Government has already established.

The distinction between them has now been made clear. Certainly, the distinction between the first two which I have mentioned should be clearer now than it was before. We have had a very definite statement from Fr. Hayes, that he wishes to have nothing to do with the sort of council which Senator O'Dwyer and his colleagues demand. The one thing he wants to be saved from is any statutory basis. We have had from Senator O'Dwyer and his colleagues a declaration that voluntary bodies are, if not no good, at least next to no good. I will come back to that in a few minutes. The distinction between these two, therefore, should be clear in the minds of those who have listened to the recent debate or who have read Fr. Hayes' statement in the press.

The statement made by the Minister on the last evening as to the functions and powers of the emergency councils has cleared up the matter as to their possible status. We have to keep our minds fixed on those distinctions. I am not criticising the bodies which the Minister has thought fit to establish, or the purpose for which they have been established; but few things could be worse for such bodies than that they should have any claim to continue as statutory bodies when the emergency has passed. It is quite clear that the machinery which has been designed—and, perhaps, very ably designed—to deal with certain matters during the emergency has not necessarily, and is unlikely to have, any particular suitability for carrying on work in more normal times. Therefore, while I am not criticising them in any way, I hope that when these emergency councils have done their work they will pass into a grateful oblivion.

When we come to consider the case that was put so persuasively before us a few weeks ago by Senator O'Dwyer, I think we are entitled to ask some questions which have not yet been answered and draw attention to some doubts which have been raised in our minds by some of the speeches made in support of his resolution. He made a very persuasive speech and evidently took great care in its preparation; and I am entitled to accept it as the best case that could have been put before the Seanad at present in favour of his resolution and the sort of councils it seeks to establish. He has stated to some extent the objects he has in mind for such councils, but he has stated very vaguely the powers which he thinks the councils should have. We must make a distinction between objects and powers, as an object may be very desirable, but the body designated may not be the best to entrust wise powers to work towards it. With a great deal that Senator O'Dwyer said I am in full sympathy, and I draw particular attention to his statement of the general purpose he has in mind in proposing these councils. In these matters it is important to quote the actual words he used. He said:—

"The main object of the formation of these parish councils would be to engender a spirit of independence and a sense of cohesion and of co-operation amongst the people of the rural communities."

We all agree with that, and whether we think his councils are the best means of promoting that or not, I think we are in full sympathy with it; and with some of what the last speaker has said on the same lines. Senator O'Dwyer goes further, a little lower down in his speech, and points out that the mere establishment of such an organisation is more important than the functions that the organisation would carry out. He says:—

"The organisation of the rural community on the lines I have indicated would itself be more important than any function that the organisation could carry out."

It is not easy to understand that the establishment of an organisation could be more important than the function it is designed to carry out. If an organisation is designed to carry out certain functions and the functions are not important, it would be a waste of time. However, that may be rather hasty criticism. I believe that Senator O'Dwyer has in mind there that the establishment of some organisation engaged in useful work would show in itself a spirit of co-operation. Whether such organisations could not be established by other means he does not discuss. He comes to the question of powers, and the suggestions he makes are comprehensive but vague. He says:—

"As regards the powers, naturally the parish council would carry out the ordinary local government functions which are performed by all local bodies, such as relieving the poor and dealing with other matters of that kind."

That is given in column 2134 of the Official Debates. That statement may be as comprehensive as you like, but it certainly is vague. In his reply here the Minister dealt with that in a very definite way. He pointed out that certain functions at present carried out by county councils for the whole county covered such matters as roads, public health, and some other main services, and he asked—and the question is worth repeating—whether it was suggested by the supporters of this resolution that these powers should be removed from the county councils to these small local bodies. The Minister said that at present £7,000,000 is being spent by county councils on the four essential services—roads, county services, health and public assistance. These cover the whole county. Is it suggested that they should come back to the parish councils? If not, what are the powers to which Senator O'Dwyer refers? The last speaker did not suggest that the control of such services should be referred back to the parish councils and that the county council should get rid of them but, so far as I could understand him, he did think that any taxation or expenditure on such purposes should receive the veto, not of each parish but of each townland. One of the supporters of this motion feared he might be regarded as reactionary and even mediæval, but it seems to me that the Senator was going back, as far as national economy is concerned, to a state of primeval chaos. Except in some small points, those who followed Senator O'Dwyer were no more precise.

The next point I ask about is this: Why is there such determined and unanimous condemnation amongst several speakers of voluntary bodies— not of the spirit behind them, but of the possibility of their success and of their utility? Senator O'Dwyer was very definite on that point. In column 2130 he remarks:

"I should like to show that it would be impossible to found a system of parish councils that would be of any permanent value on a voluntary basis. It would be contrary to universal experience to expect such a system to work efficiently."

A few minutes further on, when he threw his mind back to his own experience, he spoke differently. In column 2134 he went on to say:

"It may not be realised how powerful an instrument such an organisation could be, but if one looks at many parts of Ireland, particularly in the South, where co-operative societies have been functioning, it can be seen what a material revolution these societies have made in their districts and what great industries, some of them running into hundreds of thousands of pounds, are being and have been built up by the very people who would be called upon to form these parish councils."

Apparently, they have succeeded already, though a few minutes before the Senator had declared it impossible that they should do such permanent work. But although universal experience would seem to indicate, in one part of the Senator's speech, that voluntary bodies were capable of doing very good work, in another part of his speech he seemed to hold the contrary view. At any rate, the Senator did draw the attention of the Seanad to the amount of valuable work that could be done by voluntary societies. There was a good deal of insistence on the question of permanency. The last speaker insisted that these bodies must be permanent and said that voluntary bodies could not be. Senator Johnston was very insistent that unless they were permanent they were likely to be very useless. Speaking at column 2149 on the 28th August, 1940, the Senator said:

"I do think that while enthusiastic propaganda and voluntary associations are admirable things in their way, organisations of that kind are liable to become somewhat flabby and invertebrate if the intial enthusiasm should disappear, or if the leadership which they have enjoyed in the first instance should, in the course of nature, not be replaced by equally effective leadership."

It occurs to me to ask him, could not the same thing happen the statutory bodies which he is anxious to have? Even if they have a legal ground to stand on, could not the same thing happen there? If these bodies have lost their vitality, what is the use in trying to keep them alive? If that has happened to the voluntary bodies might it not also happen to the statutory bodies? The unfortunate corpse remains. Instead of burying it, what is the use of trying to put life into a dead body? That is beyond anybody's skill. If interest in these bodies is gone, and if they are not likely to serve any useful purpose again, then the sooner they are out of the way the better.

I am rather puzzled by the peculiar franchise which is being demanded for these parish councils. We have had a lot of—I hope I may refer to it without offence—loose talk about the link of the family. It has been suggested to take the head of the family, where there is a family, and to make him an elector of the parish council. It seems to me that it is almost impossible to decide who is the head of the family. Certainly, I know some families in which a discussion on that point might lead to very unfortunate family friction. Even the neighbours may not be able to decide in some cases whether the grey mare is not a better horse. This talk of family franchise seems to me to be very vague. There is no indication given as to what is meant by it. I notice that some supporters of the resolution were not as fond of it as others. Senator Counihan, in fact, frankly ran away from it, and suggested that he did not care what sort of franchise there was provided it was a restricted franchise. He said that he was convinced "that the parish council should have statutory powers, that it should be elected on a vocational basis by the heads of families, by householders, or by ratepayers". Of course, that is running away from the resolution. He went on to say that it should, at all events, be a restricted franchise. It, therefore, appears from what Senator Counihan said that he has not any strong convictions in favour of a family franchise. If he has, he did not give the Seanad the benefit of any clear ideas on that, or as to what it means. But, so long as it is not a general franchise, he, at any rate, will be satisfied with it. I do not want to tie the Senator to the actual words he used. He made it clear, however, that he wanted a restricted franchise.

The first comment I would make on this question of representation for the heads of families is this: that apart from the almost certain family friction that it would give rise to it has this distinctly unhealthy aspect about it. The activities of Muintir na Tíre, and of many other good, thoughtful people in the country, have been in the direction of trying to make life interesting for the young men: to interest them in what is going on in their parish, in their neighbourhood and in their county. Here it is suggested, so far as this new organisation is concerned, that the young men, unless they happen to be the heads of families in rural Ireland—and, mind you, a young man is not very young when he becomes the head of a household in rural Ireland— should be debarred from taking part in these elections.

They may, no doubt, give advice to their fathers or mothers who are the heads of families, but advice is not always taken in the best spirit by elderly parents from their youthful and less experienced sons. I think the suggestion is distinctly retrograde inasmuch as we should all like to see the young men of the country take a responsible and intelligent interest in the country's affairs. It surely would be a retrograde step to debar them from doing that in their own neighbourhood and to persist in this demand for a family franchise.

In the speeches delivered by some Senators on this resolution I detected what seemed to me to be a certain hostility to democratic methods. We are all disappointed with democracy. It has not brought the millennium or even what our more modest hopes might have expected. But has anything better been introduced into government in the history of mankind? When I say "better" I am thinking particularly of the effect on individuals, and I am not regarding man in the mass or man in the group or man in the State. I do not join in State worship. But I think the most that one can hope for in any system of government is that it will give an opportunity to the individual for the expression of his free will and of responsibility in the society of which he is a part. I suggest that our democratic methods, faulty and all as they are, and open to criticism as they are, and they are certainly open to criticism, to judge by the results that have been got from them, have proved more effective than any other methods that have been tried. I think there is a real danger that in our disappointment with the results, a disappointment very often due to our own faults and to our exaggerated hopes, we may be led to say that we had better get rid of the whole thing and try something else. Words, almost synonymous with these, were in fact used in the debate. We had a certain disrespect shown for manhood suffrage and for woman suffrage. I do not mind people having views on these matters. All that I do say is that until we see clearly what is going to be substituted for them, we should be slow to make any demand on the Government to introduce a different system of suffrage.

One of the signatories to the motion, Senator Tierney, has a particularly interesting theory as to what should constitute the institutions of the State —an intriguing theory. He said that the present institutions do not represent the natural organic grouping which the people might adopt for themselves if they were allowed, and he added:—

"When I say that, of course, I know I am in danger of being accused of wanting to go back to the Middle Ages, and of being reactionary. A great many people have the idea that the best thing we can do is to take what we have got and to make the most of it. I do not at all share that view."

As an alternative, he suggests that we should get as close as possible to the system that would have grown up naturally if we had not now to be reconstructing, as a result of historic circumstances. I do not know to what era Senator Tierney wants to go back in order to lay the foundations of his building. Is it 300, 400 or 800 years? We should want to know fairly accurately what the conditions of civilisation in this country were before these institutions were interfered with to any considerable extent by what I may call hostile external influences, as I do not think that anybody wishes to exclude the natural influences due to civilisations other than the native civilisation. To go back to the period before any hostile influence was brought to bear on our institutions of government, we would want to know what the conditions then were. Having done that, I cannot imagine how any mind could be wise enough or comprehensive enough to tell us how the institutions would have developed during the past three, four, seven, eight or ten centuries. Perhaps I may give a parallel example. Look at the fine house in which we are sitting or at any similar house. We may say that these are due to some external influence and that we ourselves would have developed differently. Are we to say: "Let us pull down this house and see what sort of house we would have if native influence had been allowed to develop?" I do not say that that is an exact parallel, but I do express the opinion that what has been suggested to us is not more practical than the idiotic suggestion I have just made. We are to discover the living foundations from which the State has developed, whether under external influence or not, go back to that as the starting point and try to see how these living institutions would have developed. If I may say so, that seems to me too great a reaction, due to disappointment with democracy.

I have complained that those who brought forward this motion were not precise enough regarding the functions and powers of the sort of council they recommended. We had some hints of further activities which I confess did not attract me. Rather they made me feel a bit uneasy. It was suggested that the administration of old age pensions should be handed over to these bodies. I should like to be living in a country parish in a few years if the parish councils are to have charge of old age pensions, because I am quite sure that I should have no difficulty in persuading my neighbours to vote me a pension, knowing that the moneys were not going to be levied on the parish. We had another suggestion which made me feel even more uneasy —that the parish council should control the amusements of the neighbourhood. I was rather startled at this suggestion, because a great deal of Senator Tierney's speech had been devoted to demanding greater freedom for the people of the countryside. Anything more irritating to the people of the countryside than having any parish body controlling their amusements, I cannot imagine. I should be very uneasy about the measures those councils would take. Another suggestion interested me even more—and not unnaturally. There was a certain feeling in the minds of Senator Johnston and Senator Tierney that these bodies might curb the undue activity of the medical profession in public health matters. Senator Johnston told us of the terrible disaster brought to certain parishes in his neighbourhood by the desire, presumably of the health authority, to prevent the sale of, possibly or probably, contaminated shellfish, It turned out, the Minister told us, that this did not happen at all. It was due to the carefulness of some English medical officer of health that the export of possibly contaminated shellfish from Louth was stopped. I am sorry to hear that, because I should like to give the local authority credit for having stopped that pernicious trade. Senator Tierney includes public health in a regular litany of evils that need cure. He said:

"I do suggest, although it may sound extravagant, that you can have too much public health, too many tourist resorts, too much cleaning up of beaches, and too much interfering with the people because they have buckets lying about."

Senator Tierney and Senator Johnston were in agreement in a great part of the argument, but they have fallen out about the buckets. Senator Johnston was very annoyed because, at a certain seaside resort which he visited, he found the same bucket on the beach that he had seen there four or five years before. He thought that the parish council, if it had been in existence, would have removed that bucket.

This is what the Senator said:

"I am aware of one of these resorts in which a tin bucket was rotting and decaying on the sand, with many broken bottles, years ago. I recently visited the same seaside resort and the same tin bucket was to be seen in a more advanced state of decay than before."

If Senator Tierney and Senator Johnston were colleagues on a parish council, we may be sure that the parish would be divided for years over the fate of that tin bucket.

I have made a quite honest and serious attempt to understand the case put up for the motion. I have every sympathy with voluntary activity and with the voluntary associations which Senator O'Dwyer told us about in his opening speech. I should like to see them active in every rural area and I should like to see all the people of the locality working together for the common good, but I think you will destroy that chance when you give them legal status.

I think they will be useful and that they would continue to work as long as they would be useful, but if they are given a legal status they may be encouraged to meddlesomeness, and certainly would continue in action whether they were fulfilling useful functions or not. I do not think that a case in favour of parish councils, whether with such powers as have been suggested or not, has been made, and I do not think the Seanad should be pressing such a demand on the Government as is proposed in the motion, and I cannot imagine anything more undesirable than that the Government, at the present moment, should commit itself to a revolution of this sort, or to any revolution. During a time of national and international emergency we must carry on with such machinery as we have, except where it is necessary that certain machinery must be designed to meet the emergency. To decide, however, on what the proposers of the motion have rightly described as a revolution, in the middle of the present emergency, when our minds are fully occupied with other matters, would be, I think, a rash act and I do not think the Seanad should invite the Government to take such action.

I do not intend to speak at any great length. Senator Dr. Rowlette has summed up, in the last sentences, what I might take, perhaps, 20 minutes to elaborate here. I do sincerely hope that the Government will not be influenced by the discussion that has taken place here based upon the introduction of the motion on the utility of parish councils. I do hope that they will move cautiously and slowly. We ought to learn by mistakes, and I am sure that the Government will have learned primarily by the mistakes made by the previous Government in their treatment of and completely breaking up the parish councils in a larger administration, called district councils, shortly after the advent of our national Parliament. The district council were a representative body, carefully selected by the people. They were an intellectual body of administrators and they served the people well, and particularly the poor. The area which they administered was limited, and they were of great advantage, particularly to the sick poor, because of the proximity of the local hospitals to their homes where they could be accommodated. The Government, however, came along and, I would say, without giving due and proper consideration to the matter, and practically with the touch of a magic wand, terminated the good, efficient, democratic system of local administration which obtained in this country at the time. Not alone had you the local rural district councils operating in a manner something analogous to that in which we are told the parish councils will operate, if and when they get statutory powers, but the chairman of each of these rural district councils had a seat on and representation in the county councils; so that the matters that were locally discussed in a circumscribed district were analogous to the duties of the proposed parish councils. They instructed their chairman, who had a seat on and representation in the centre of gravity, the county council, and he conveyed to the centre of gravity, the county council, their views and wishes in connection with schemes for development and progress, schemes for remedial legislation for the poor, and so on. In that way, they were very helpful, and in that way I say, as one who sat on one of these councils for nine years, you had a miniature parliament.

Why were these councils abolished? Why was that done? We were told then that it was done in the interests of efficiency and economy. Did it accomplish either? I stand here, after an experience of 25 years in both, and say that it accomplished neither, but it inflicted continuing and daily hardships even to the present moment on that section of the people, the extreme poor, who can least afford to bear them. No one can deny that. That was the result of hasty and ill-considered legislation without due and proper regard to the circumstances and to the purposes these bodies served. Ought not that be a lesson for this body to-day—to seriously consider any motion that may influence the present Government to embark upon such a condition of things, when we have before us the disastrous results that have accrued from a similar attempt about 18 years ago?

There is terrible confusion at the moment. I was really amazed and I cannot understand why, at this most inopportune time, when the whole world is in the vortex, you might say, of a ghastly European embroilment, we should embark upon such a scheme and introduce a motion here to influence the Government to retrace their steps and change the whole system that is operating, at the present time at least, beneficially for the people generally. We had a Bill here a few months ago by which the whole system, fundamentally, of local government in this country will be changed. It is law now, but has not yet been put into operation. We were told by the Minister that it will be put into operation in September, 1941. Under that Act membership of the county council is reduced and the board of health is completely done away with, and I welcome that because it throws the greater, or at least the great, responsibility of public administration under local government on the reduced county council, which would be less than the board. Now, how will the parish councils conform to that new Act, if and when it comes into operation?

I was at a meeting of an emergency committee the other night, as I happen to be one of the selected members, and I asked the commissioner there what were the powers and duties of the committee? He said that he was acting under the Minister for Supplies and that it was the duty of that emergency committee to get vouchers and to supply the poor with these vouchers for food. I asked him who were to guarantee the vouchers? I said: "Our names will be to the vouchers, and when they are presented at a business place, the figure may be £50 or £100 or more, and the merchant may tell us that he wants money to carry on; who, then, is to honour the bill?" He told me that the central Government here would honour it.

We had another meeting a few nights afterwards for the formation of a parish council, and the gentleman who organised that meeting said that he was organising and operating by the authority of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, and the duties he defined were something analogous to those indicated by the speaker a few nights before on the question of emergency. I said: "Good heavens, where are we? If the two bodies perform the same functions and have the same duties, where is the need for two of them?" I asked this gentleman the same question about the vouchers: "Who is going to honour these vouchers for the purchase of food, should the central Government cease to function or be unable to function because of war conditions that may eventuate?" His answer to me was a complete contradiction of the answer given by the other man. He said that the parish councils must collect the nucleus of a fund for the purchase of these commodities, and that the central Government would not be responsible. I asked whether the board of health would not be the proper authority, knowing all the circumstances of the county, having statutory powers and, in my county at present, budgeting for £20,000 for the poor? These are some of the confusions which exist at present, and is this the proper time to invite the Government to introduce legislation designed to discard the present system of administration and to create parish councils?

I should be very sorry to think that voluntary bodies have not got the power, the inspiration, the industry and the initiative in themselves to do good, useful and essential work in a parish, but I have this misgiving, that the day you give statutory powers to a local, circumscribed committee in a parish, that is the day you ruin the whole spirit of the parish. Once you give statutory powers, once you give the power to make a rate and collect money, once you give the power to a small committee to elect an executive officer with salary and pension rights, that is the day you drop an administrative incendiary bomb which will destroy the whole spirit of voluntary effort and make the whole thing a matter of "Paddy is going for a job to-night, and you are on the committee, so you had better go up there; but isn't Tom Brown going, too? and I do not know what the devil to do between the two of you." Is that not what is going to happen, and is that not our experience in the past? Will that not tend, if anything tends, to destroy the splendid unity shown by all Parties in the country to-day?

There are some points in favour of parish councils. There is the question of decentralisation. I think the whole spirit of both the previous and the present Government was centralised bureaucracy, and through the whole country the people were suffering from this constant irritation on the part of the central authority, which showed no confidence in the people and certainly gave them no responsibility. That is an aspect which I appreciate and realise, but I hope that in this matter there has not been any inspiration to throw responsibility back on the people and to say: "In the establishment of parish councils, we have done a great thing for you. We are creating an administrative interest in your own bailiewick and you can no longer say that Merrion Street is a centralised bureaucracy which despises the very name of bureaucracy because it has no confidence in the people." Let us be careful that that inspiration is not there.

The Government is not sponsoring this motion.

I did not refer to the Government. I was very careful to say that I hoped there was no such inspiration because I am speaking not of the present Government but of the Governments in office since a native Government first came into office. I do think, from experience, that the moment is most inopportune, and I have not been convinced by any of the speeches I have heard. I was sorry I was not here for Senator Sir John Keane's speech, because I was impressed by his suggestions. I think they were appurtenant and preliminary to the discussion initiated by Senator O'Dwyer, and I would have learned much had I been in the House while he was speaking. Not having heard his remarks, I give my own view. It is: move slowly and let us learn from the experience of the past, which shows us a colossal blunder which reacted on the rural ratepayers, on administration generally, and particularly on the poor, who are crying from that day to this about the hardships, the disadvantages and the strain which it has meant for them and for their limited purses.

Firstly, I think this motion is ill-considered. What does it say? The substance of the motion is that the Government should bring in a Bill which will say: "Fiant parish councils and let the members of the councils be elected on a family vote.” That, to my mind, is a perfectly ridiculous motion to bring in because, if the Government is going to create such bodies, it must be for a reason, that these bodies shall embark on a certain work and that the Government will vest them with certain powers in the interests of those functions. En passant, I want to refer to the question of family vote. Senator Rowlette seemed to assume that the family would have to have a sort of vote in itself as to who would be its representative in the voting for the parish council. I may say here right away that I have understood the idea of family vote as perfectly natural. The natural head of the family is the father, and the State and national society is really a combination of families and not of individuals.

Therefore, I quite agree, not that I think it will bring about any miraculous change in our life in this country, that, in the natural order of things, it is right that, as society consists of that unity of families, the head of each family should be the operative member in its relationship with society, whether that society be nation or local. Therefore, the head of the family, the father, should be the voter, if there be parish councils, for parish councils, and also the voter for the national authority of the whole national society. That seems to me to be perfectly natural, and I do not think there need be any friction in families, because the natural order of things is that the father is the authority in the family.

Senator Rowlette implied that the grey mare may be the better horse.

That would be a departure from the natural order of things, and legislation should recognise that the head of the family, independent of any legislation this Government brings in, is the father, and that society is the unity of families and, therefore, the father should be the operative member.

A sort of mental laziness, a sort of desire for an easily-obtained Utopia is prevalent all over the world to-day and in every aspect of life. Everybody likes to think that, without any mental operation, without any discipline of oneself, without overcoming one's natural desires, a perfect order of things can be obtained by a simple mechanical process. We hear people talking about democracy and dictatorship as though one or the other, by its own nature, would necessarily bring about perfection. You are not going to have perfection. The trouble in our society in Ireland, as in every other country, arises from the natural tendency to evil in the members of that society, and whether they be grouped according to parishes or counties is not going to overcome that tendency. It will operate or not operate according to the persons or individuals forming society.

I quite agree that it may be that, on examination, it will be found—and I think there is a prima facie case to show it—that the first territorial organisation of society should be according to the parish. Mind you, the old rural district councils largely coincided with the parish arrangement, and it just happens that, as we live in the country here, the one place where people meet, the centre of the area, is the church. Therefore, there is a certain interflow, a certain relationship between the members of one parish which unites them as distinct from their relationship with other parishes. Therefore, I would quite agree that if one were overhauling our whole system of control the parish might naturally suggest itself to one as the natural unit there. But here we are going to create a new governing body. In the case of voluntary bodies, I am entirely in agreement, but we are asking the Government to create new bodies with statutory power to control people in defined areas. Now, anybody who ever bothered listening to me here knows that I am dead against further interference by the Government, and the greatest condemnation I can see of this proposal is that, when people begin talking about parish councils, instead of setting about trying to get them to come into operation by the natural will of the people nobody thinks of anything else but invoking the Government to come along with more legislation to tie us up in more rules.

I would be dead against any proposal that the Government here and now create a new and additional body for controlling people's operations. As I think I have said here on previous occasions, I am quite satisfied that the whole local government arrangement in this country requires to be totally overhauled. I have not made up my mind—I should like that matter to be examined—as to whether that reorganisation should aim at giving the local bodies more power or less power, that is to say, whether the local territorially organised bodies should have more power or less power. One of the troubles in this country at the moment, as I have pointed out, is that if you elect people locally, and give them power, they are not only the people who impose taxation in the way of rates but they also have power to pawn the production of future generations, they have power to commit and bind and impoverish future generations by their power to borrow. In regard to any local body I would deny them the right to borrow, and I would also like to deny it to the central Government. We have not the right to legislate to rob or to tax generations that remain to be born. That is what our local bodies are doing here, and that is what our central Government is doing.

Here we are asking the Government to do something. We know perfectly well that the Government cannot just bring in a Bill which will say: "Fiant parish councils.” They can bring in a Bill saying that there shall be parish councils elected in this way, and they shall function in such a way and be vested with such powers, that is to say, they will create additional bodies with additional powers to control the unfortunate people of this country who are already over-controlled. This afternoon we had this Mines Bill. What is the explanation of that?

The explanation of that is that the people forming our society individually are so utterly inferior that the wealth lying under the ground of this country remains undeveloped if it is left to the people who own the land; that if there is any hope of development of the mineral resources which may or may not exist in this country we must have the Government butting in. Here again we come along asking the Government to legislate. I think three sorts of parish councils have been talked about. There are parish councils being started, I think, in various places in relation specifically to what is called the present emergency. Yesterday or the day before somebody—I cannot remember who it was—came to me and said there had been a sort of hand-picked parish council elected in his district, and it was having a very bad effect on the shopkeepers, because those people were already telling the shopkeepers that, in the event of anything emerging out of the emergency, they would promptly come along and seize the shopkeepers' goods. I do think that, in view of the possibility of a shortage of necessary food stores in this country, it is quite legitimate that there should be local committees with certain powers, and I quite agree that the handiest way—possibly the most efficient way—of getting together a suitable body of people is by hand-picking.

That is one type, only in relation to the emergency, and an emergency can cover quite a multitude of sins. Another type is the voluntary body. I am quite in agreement with the voluntary body which will have no powers over the people except such as the people themselves may voluntarily give to them. That is another type. The first we will put up; the other would be desirable if the people have sufficient initiative to get going, and also sufficient intelligence and other qualities to make those bodies effective for good. Now we have other people coming along demanding that there be parish councils. We have the Government, and we have county councils, and we have all sorts of bodies, and the only solution we see for our ills is to create additional ones.

As I have said, the family vote, I think, would be an improvement upon this division of society which we have now, in which there is only the Government and the totality of society without the natural division in between. From the things I have read and heard about parish councils there seems to be a suggestion that they would lead to the establishment of corporations and the delegation of the powers and the authority already arrogated unjustifiably by the State to itself in economic affairs; that those bodies might come about who would have the control within their own vocational spheres. People quote Papal Encyclicals on this. I admit here and now that I have not read Quadragesimo Anno for a good long time, and I may not be quite exact in my references to it, but as far as my memory serves me there is in Quadragesimo Anno a description of the arrangements made with regard to corporations in Italy. There is set down there among other things the view that although you do not necessarily have to be a member of those corporations you have to pay your subscriptions anyway. The late Pope follows on that—I repeat, it is quite a number of years since I read that document—and says that many people feel that this is an unwarrantable arrogation of powers by the State to itself, and also it is hard to see how membership can be said to be free for the individuals when it is also stated that they have to pay their subscriptions.

In relation to those parish councils, what money are they going to spend? Are they going to spend money? If so, where are they going to get it? I do not think that by some arbitrary mechanical device you are going to get exact justice from some new subdivision of society. Somebody mentioned, or I heard somewhere, about the possibilities if factories were wanted in a district. What has happened for many years past? Everybody came rushing along trying to grab a factory for their own district. What do they want? If you are going to start a factory for making anything you like, say door knobs, the T.D. is dashing around saying: "Why not have it here? Such a place has a factory for boots, and such another place has a factory for cloth." What do they want? They want an arrangement made whereby everybody in this country who buys a door knob will be robbed, if you like, by the Government; will have to pay more for that necessary commodity, and that money must go into that particular district. If the people in a district want factories, or if they want new mines, let them get after them themselves. Do not let us have another body with statutory powers able to butt in.

This seems to me to be an admission of impotence amongst the people. If the people want parish councils, let the people create them. When they function, I should then like to see the Government reverse what has been done in the past. I will not say that the Government of which I was a member was perfect; it is only a matter of degrees of guilt; we were a little less guilty than the present Government. It would be quite right, when we see them working voluntarily, for the Government to take from itself certain of its present powers and hand them over to those councils. If I can see into the minds of the people whom I hear talking about statutory parish councils, they will want money. It does not follow that, because they are elected in the parish and by the fathers of families, a just system will prevail. Anybody can be unjust, whether he be a member of my parish or whether he be the father of a family. One of the things that has played the mischief with the people of this country—it was a necessary thing in the first place—is this land division. Take a parish where the average farm is 25 acres, and where there are three men with big farms. Mind you, those big farms might, in their present big state, be quite a good thing in the economy of that district and in our national economy.

A parish council might have power to decide with regard to division of land. You have 72 heads of families with 25 acres each and you have three heads of families with 500 acres each. It is a question of land division. Somehow or another, in this magic word "parish", or in this magic word "council", is something going to operate that they are going to be moved with no other object but exact justice or are they going to be moved, as our society is so enormously moved, by envy and cupidity, and say to themselves: "We have the majority here, we will take those men's lands from them and divide it amongest ourselves?" What virtue is there in this which is going to prevent that? Therefore, in handing over powers, I want to see that they will be circumscribed so as to operate within natural justice. I have no belief in any of our local bodies, in central government, and, you can sub-divide or multiply as much as you like, I do not believe you are going necessarily to get justice. The only way you protect yourself against government is by limiting its powers.

I consider this particular resolution particularly inept. It is merely asking that some sort of statutory bodies be created, not saying anything with regard to the work they will do, the functions they will fulfil, but only talking about the way they will be elected. It is just like this talk about democracy. People think that democracy is necessarily free and anything else is not free. I am free to vote for A or B. Am I any better off for it? The purpose of voting is to get an authority, to create an order in which I will be able to attain to my natural perfection in the most straightforward way. Whether that authority comes about by all of us sitting down and voting, it does not follow it is going to do that. What we want is to consider what the Government exists for, what it is going to do, and how it is going to do it. The way you find out whether your society is healthy or not, whether your State is a good State or not, is to see whether the thing for which government exists is appropriately and aptly attained, but it is not necessarily brought about by the fact that everybody votes. We can look around certain statutory bodies and see some of the people who are in them and see if they are so perfect that just order necessarily flows from them. All we are interested in in this resolution is how they are elected.

I like the proposal with regard to the election, because it is in accord with the natural order in which the father is the head of the family. The relationship between society and men is not directly between the individual and society; it is the family and society. Therefore, the father should be the representative of the family, the organ of the family, in its relation to society in general. There I am quite in agreement. I think the parish would probably be the best subdivision, but I do not believe that we should here and now, without any consideration as to what the functions of these bodies are going to be, create new bodies to have new power over things. What I would like is a reconsideration of our whole local government position. I think that any body in this country which is going to spend money must itself be totally responsible. I do not know what the Government gives at present, but I remember when we went out of office the central taxation handed over to local bodies, for them to spend, roughly £2,000,000. On the strength of that the Government claims control over the activities of those bodies. Under those circumstances it is quite right. You are not going to have free local government until you have liberty and responsibility. If you have the Government collecting the money and the local body spending that money, the local body has no right to demand to be totally free of Government control. I think the parish councils can do quite good work; they can add to the unity of society, in the flow of good between individual and individual in the parish. The parish is, therefore, a natural division inasmuch as it is already established and has a centralised life, centring around the church and school. There I am quite in agreement.

In regard to money, I think if such bodies were created I would vote against their ever receiving any penny from the Government. I mean that they should not cost the Government one penny. If inspectors are necessary I think each parish council should bear its proportionate costs of each inspector who is involved in their operation. I would insist upon that. Secondly, before these bodies are created I want as far as possible—I admit I am not urging this—that they should be able to collect no money in the way of rates or subscription from anybody except on a voluntary basis. If they are going to have statutory power to raise any local levy then the control over them and the consideration of their creation must be very closely gone into before any such power is given. If we think that such bodies are going to be socially good in this country, I believe the proposal that they should be created by Government action is thoroughly wrong. I refer again to the question of corporations. As far as Papal pronouncements are concerned, time and again it is stated that the only form of society is corporational, and yet in Quadragesimo Anno I can read nothing but a condemnation of what was done in Italy where the Government, using this power that it had arrogated to itself, comes along to impose a control upon the people through corporations. I do not purport to be an authority, but it does seem to me that if we want a perfect society here we can only do it by getting people to act upon their own initiative. To think that by the Dáil passing a Bill, by that Bill coming before the Seanad, being duly sent by the Government to the President for signature, we are going to create a society in which the flow of charity from one section of society to another and one individual to another is going to be such that the angels looking down will be rejoiced to see it is perfectly futile. The goodness in society is the goodness of the charity which unites the members of that society and that charity is not a thing that can be created by Act of Parliament.

Muintir na Tíre, which I do not pretend to know a great deal about, may or may not be doing good work and be quite successful in promoting the formation of parish councils. I do agree that as far as I can judge—but a closer examination might change my point of view—the parish is a natural unit for the minimistic territorial section of society. There I am quite in agreement, but as far as this resolution is concerned, we know perfectly well that if we want statutorily created bodies it means that they should have statutory powers and we do not say one word as to what the statutory powers are going to be although the statutory powers that are given to such bodies may make all the difference between their being beneficial institutions through the country or being malevolent tyrannies through the country. I think we rather stultify ourselves by coming in and passing vague, general resolutions. If you are going to pass a resolution which proposes something in the nature of legislation to the Government then that resolution should come as near as may be to the actual drafting of a Bill. If the Bill were there we could examine its various clauses and bring our judgment to bear upon it. It is futile to think that because we say: "Let there be parish councils" and the Government with its almighty power, its creative word, comes along and establishes parish councils, we can go home and rest because everybody in the country is going to be perfect from now on, that there is going to be marvellous unity amongst ourselves. There is no unity except through the operation of love.

I think that in the parishes all through the country there is an enormous amount of cupidity and envy. If you could get rid of those two things you would do a great deal to solve social evils. I hear so many people talking as though by merely passing a Bill you are going to have a new order in the world. I have a horror of new orders. With the order we have they can find faults, but something we have not got is going to be perfect. In regard to the present war, when I hear people talking about the new order that will be created out of it I get quite depressed. You have the Communist going around telling us of the marvellous conditions that could prevail. I know perfectly well that they can point out to us all the troubles that exist at the present time. We cannot do that with them in relation to whatever conditions might exist under their ideal form of government, because that is something that is going to come. We can see what is wrong at the moment, but we cannot make any comparisons with them.

I am afraid that this motion has been subjected to a rather severe bombardment. There was one comfort, at any rate, when the attacking planes, as it were, seemed to come into collision, especially on the question of the family vote. I may be to blame, inasmuch as I did not perhaps explain the motion in a clearer manner. There still seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding regarding parish councils and what they mean. For example, Senator Fitzgerald referred to the question of land division and he seemed to think that a parish council would have power to confiscate the land of persons in the parish.

I merely gave that as a sort of instance.

Nobody suggested that those councils should have power to acquire any property compulsorily; there was no such proposal. Senator Fitzgerald also said that the people of a parish could establish a council if they wanted one. Of course, it is only the Legislature that can give the authority.

They could set up something practically the same. The only trouble would be the statutory powers that they are going to exercise. You could start a parish council at the moment in any parish.

There would have to be some authority. It would be futile for the people of a parish to have a council if they had no powers. Without powers they could do nothing at all. The impression seems to have gone around that parish councils would mean Government interference and certain restrictions. That would not necessarily follow. Our contention is that the establishment of those councils would bring about a sense of cohesion in every parish and would prove a charter of liberty for the small rural community.

Senator Rowlette, although he seems to have arrived at some wrong conclusions, has done much to clarify the position. He and Senator Fitzgerald complained that I did not go into details regarding the powers of the proposed parish councils. The fact is I did not like to prolong the debate by going into details. I do not know that it is very necessary at this stage to go into details as to what the actual powers would be. I think that would be more a matter for a debate when whatever measures may be necessary are going through the Legislature. I think it would be sufficient for the present if the principle of the parish council for a rural community was accepted. Its exact powers could be debated afterwards.

Senator Rowlette questioned the wisdom of saying that the establishment of a parish council was of more importance than any functions it could perform. At present you have numbers of families in a parish without any sense of cohesion, without any power of acting together or pooling their intelligence and resources. We propose that these families should be organised in parish councils. The potentialities of such a body as a parish council would, indeed, be very great. The formation of such a body would be in that sense more important than any work it might do, because the potentialities, especially in the way of parish improvement and development, would be immense.

Reference was made to the taking of certain powers from the county councils and handing them over to the parish councils. That was not suggested when the acceptance of this motion was advocated. What was suggested was that the parish council would be useful to the board of health and to the county council. As regards the distribution of outdoor relief, the parish council could give great assistance to the board of health by reason of local knowledge. The parish council could also give considerable assistance in the matter of housing and local improvements generally.

Senator Rowlette thinks that he discovered some inconsistency in my remarks when I said that it would be impossible to base the system of the parish council on voluntary organisation and, at the same time, pointed to the success of co-operative societies. I pointed out the work that voluntary organisations have done in the case of co-operative societies and I do not think there was any inconsistency in my remarks. So far as the voluntary organisations are concerned, we do not say that they have not done good. I know they have done and are doing great work, but the great objection to them is that they are not permanent. Nobody can deny that, in the course of time, whether it be a year or 20 years, these societies tend to disintegrate.

Co-operative societies, as I pointed out the last day, have done a lot to develop the country. We may regard them as somewhat similar to parish councils because they are formed of one section of the people who would be called upon to form a parish council, but we must remember that a co-operative society as such is a different body from a voluntary society organised to carry on public services. A co-operative society has an incentive in so far as it manufactures goods. It has the incentive of the profit that is made arising out of its work and the material advantages it confers on its members. That is one reason why co-operative societies will continue to exist so long as they are financially sound. The incentive of material advantage is there. That incentive would not exist in the case of voluntary organisations endeavouring to carry on public services. It may be recollected that the previous Government had to bring in an Act to provide for the compulsory purchase of proprietary creameries that were in competition with co-operative societies. The co-operative societies could not retain the enthusiasm and cohesion which marked their earlier existence in face of the competition of the proprietary creameries, with the result that the Government had to step in to purchase the proprietary creameries and practically, in a measure, give statutory powers to those societies. They fixed a certain area within which no other creamery would be allowed to compete. Even in their case, therefore, the purely voluntary system was not a success. That is why I say that the experience of the co-operative societies confirms my contention that a local body entrusted with functions of a local character cannot be permanently carried on, on a voluntary basis.

Some objection to the principle of the family vote was raised by Senator Foran and Senator Rowlette. I am afraid that in that instance also there has been some misunderstanding, because people seem to have in their minds conditions such as exist in a city when a corporation has to be elected. The situation is quite different in a small rural community where there are only a few hundred families concerned. The parish council, as I say, is a sort of super-family and there can be no objection to its being elected by the heads of families. It will be quite understood that the situation will be completely different from that which exists where a Dáil vote or a corporation vote is concerned. There is no question as to retaining adult suffrage for Parliamentary or corporation elections. As a matter of fact, Senator Rowlette seemed to have forgotten that, up to about five years ago, the local government bodies were elected by the heads of families. Husbands and wives as the heads of families were the sole persons authorised to vote in local government elections. As Senator Fitzgerald said, the family vote would be really the natural system to adopt in the election of these councils. The objection has also been put forward that young people would be excluded from these councils. That need not be so, because young people would be eligible for election on parish councils and the parish council would utilise the energy and enthusiasm of the young people in the promotion of many of their schemes. The young people, on the other hand, would be more concerned with the lighter side of life and in providing amusements. The heads of families have a greater sense of responsibility and they would be more suitable for the administration of local affairs than very young people. I quite agree with the Senator who spoke about the advantages of democracy and I think it can be said that in setting up this system, so far from injuring democracy, you would be setting up a firm basis for the democratic institutions of the country.

I think it might be well if I were to explain what our proposal really means because there seems to be great misunderstanding on the question. The essential points of difference between the parish councils that we propose and the other bodies—the voluntary bodies and the emergency committees of the present time—are that the parish councils would be elected by the family vote and that they would be established by statute. We propose that each parish or community group should be as self-governing as possible, that the local council should be elected on the family vote, the council to consist of ten persons in addition to the clergy of all denominations of the parish. There would then be an annual assembly consisting of all the heads of the families in the parish so that, so far from taking over control of the administration from the people, you practically make every family in the parish a part of the parish council. I am sure that Senator Rowlette realises the effect that the establishment of that system all over the country, and its continuance for a number of years, will have upon the whole future of the country.

The powers and the authority of the council would fall into three catagories. In the first place, it would have such powers of local government as are visualised by the Local Government Bill, which contemplates the setting up of small committees similar in a way to those parish councils. These powers would include the distribution of outdoor relief, the repair of by-roads and all these small functions that would be performed by such committees. Outside of these local government functions, in regard to which it would act under the supervision and authority of the county council, the parish council that we visualise would be an independent body and would be free to embark upon any schemes of development such as a co-operative society might embark upon. It would be perfectly free to embark upon such schemes of development.

We must remember that councils consisting of heads of families would have great moral authority in the parish. They could supervise cinemas, literature and any other happenings in the parish. A parish council would be an ideal body to deal with unemployment. There could be a local exchange at which the unemployed in each parish could register. In dealing with the unemployment problem there would be no such thing as malingering if a parish council was in existence. Such a council could also provide openings for the provision of work. It could purchase land, secure allotments, arrange loans for drainage and for agricultural purposes, provide transport facilities, marketing, and arrange the establishment of suitable local industries. Our proposal would, in effect, set up a co-operative society in every parish. In some countries, such as Czechoslovakia, parish councils have local police and local courts somewhat similar to the old Sinn Féin courts. I do not suggest that they should supersede the State courts or the State police force, but it might be possible to have here also a voluntary parish police like the Security Force and parish courts for settlement of local disputes. I mention these things to indicate the powers that might be given to such bodies and to show the great possibilities of parish councils. The Minister stated that in the new Local Government Bill provision has been made for the establishment of parish councils, but I understood that they are to be voluntary and do not provide for election. I consider that the parish councils should be set up statutorily. It has been said that the present moment is inopportune.

France, which has passed through a terrible crisis, is at present considering the re-establishment of parish councils. This includes the reorganisation of rural districts. There is no reason why we should not take advantage of the present opportunity to carry out a great reformation, for great revolution can only be effected in times of stress and emergency. The emergency bodies that have been established have not been very successful because their functions were not clearly defined and they have no powers. We all know that at this moment there is a great danger of this country being involved in the war. Even if we escape there is the possibility that we might be involved in a financial crash after the war. It is to meet such a situation that it is necessary to have local committees because they would have the confidence of the people. I suggest to the Government that the emergency councils should be elected by the family vote in the different localities, and in that way provide the Government with responsible bodies in each parish. Having raised this question of the establishment of parish councils, I think I can safely withdraw the motion now, and leave the whole matter in the hands of the Government.

As the two motions were discussed together, I take it that both motions are now being withdrawn.

Agreed.

The Seanad adjourned at 8.10 p.m. sine die.

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