Léim ar aghaidh chuig an bpríomhábhar
Gnáthamharc

Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 5 Feb 1959

Vol. 50 No. 6

An Bille um an Tríú Leasú ar an mBunreacht, 1958—An Dara Céim (Atógáil). Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1958—Second Stage (Resumed).

Tairgeadh an cheist arís: "Go léifear an Bille don Dara hUair."
Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I was speaking yesterday evening about the purpose of this Bill being to remove the rights of minorities to representation in Dáil Éireann. It would be less than fair if I did not acknowledge that the majority had rights in this respect also and that they could, in fact, curtail the rights of the minorities in certain circumstances. They could do so if, in fact, it were found that government was impossible under the existing setup, if government were impossible because of the exercise of the present rights of minorities, which in effect deprived the majority of their rights of government.

Fianna Fáil have failed to show that the exercise of the rights of minorities, the right of representation, has in fact led to a collapse of government in the State. I know that Fianna Fáil do not like inter-Party government or, as they term it, coalition government, and I respect their views in that regard because they believe they themselves are the best political Party. They would hardly be in it otherwise, and I can always respect another person's point of view. However, I think it is wrong for a majority to say that simply because they do not like the prospect of being deprived of power, do not like the fact that by a combination of minority Parties previously, they were deprived of power, they will so alter the rules that it will not be possible, ever afterwards, for such a situation to repeat itself.

As a Labour spokesman, I think I should stress that the trade union movement is opposed to this move to abolish P.R. It is very important at this time that the trade union viewpoint should be made known. It is also particularly unfortunate that this move should be set on foot when there is the very bright prospect of the trade unions as a whole achieving unity, and, by unity, making a far more responsible and powerful trade union force. At the same time, we see a manoeuvre by a major political Party here so to arrange things that the united Labour movement will not have a hope of representation in Dáil Éireann, or a hope of joining in any future Governments. That is wrong and the trade union movement is protesting against that effort to deprive it of its rights.

The views of the Labour movement are perhaps best expressed in a resolution adopted by the National Executive of the Irish Trade Union Congress, which I should like to read for the benefit of Senators. They said:—

"The Irish trade union movement comprising the largest and most representative group of democratic organisations in Ireland has a special concern and a historic responsibility in securing that the democratic system of government shall be maintained. As P.R. is a system of election suitable to advanced democracies and as the system of the single seat constituencies diminishes the democratic authority of the electorate, restricts their freedom to select and change their public representatives in accordance with the requirements of a living and changing community and opens the door to domination by minority Governments, the National Executive of the Irish Trade Union Congress must regard the proposed abolition of P.R. as a retrograde step which the trade union movement must deprecate and oppose."

The Congress of Irish Unions, the other wing of the trade union movement, adopted a resolution which, I think, was circulated to Senators. It said:—

"Having considered the issues relevant to the proposal to amend the Constitution and discontinue the the present method of electing members to Dáil Éireann by the P.R. system of voting, the Central Council of the Congress of Irish Unions (1) is of opinion that justification for such action has not been established; (2) urges Deputies, Senators and citizens not to support or vote for any system of election which may result in a person securing membership of Dáil Éireann in a single-member constituency without having received a majority of the votes recorded in such constituency; (3) submits that such a method of election would not be in the best interests of the citizens of Ireland; would be in conflict with the sound democratic principle which is traditional to the trade union movement in Ireland, that is, that important issues should be decided by the majority vote of persons having the right to decide such an issue."

Those are the views of the two congresses of what I hope will soon be a united trade union movement. We feel it is particularly unfortunate that now, when unity in the trade union movement is in sight and when a more responsible, I hope, and more powerful trade union movement will result, a movement prepared to play its part in developing the economy of this country, the chance of political representation in Dáil Éireann should be snatched from it by an alteration in the system of election.

The Labour Party in this country has a democratic tradition of which I am proud, and, without wishing to hurt anybody's feelings, we have perhaps more reason to be proud of our democratic tradition than other Parties. I think we can rightly say that the Labour Party saved democracy here in the situation immediately resulting from the civil war. The leader of Fine Gael was kind enough yesterday to refer to the work of the Labour Party led by the then Deputy Tom Johnson. Not alone did we, in my view, save democracy at that time but we brought Fianna Fáil into Dáil Éireann. We preserved the Dáil until they, in their own good time, were prepared to come along and form a democratic Opposition. Indeed, the Labour Party—perhaps now there are some misgivings about it—did bring Fianna Fáil into the House as a Government for the first time.

I hope the Labour movement and the Labour Party will always abide by the democratic processes, but I warn Fianna Fáil that in fact what they are doing is pushing the Labour movement underground. I think that would be disastrous for the country. I hope I shall not have a part in that, but I warn Fianna Fáil that what they are doing is depriving an important minority Party of representation in Dáil Éireann and pushing it, with Sinn Féin, inevitably into undemocratic processes and methods. I hope I shall never have a part in that, but I am warning Fianna Fáil that it is inevitable, if they persist in their action of building up their Party as a powerful and permanent force in Government, with a weak Opposition and without a chance of the Labour Party developing as a political force and, as I would hope, eventually developing as a major political Party here.

For those reasons, I and my colleagues will vote against the Second Reading of this measure. We feel that if we voted for it or if we did not oppose the Second Reading we would, in effect, be giving approval to the principles in the Schedule attached to the Bill. We are against the abolition of P.R. We favour the P.R. method of election, as did the Taoiseach himself up to quite recently, and we believe it is in the best interests of the country and of Fianna Fáil and all the other Parties that that method of election should be preserved.

To some extent, I am in the same position as Senator O'Brien when he described himself yesterday as being in some sense an onlooker on the political scene, and more or less independent of the Parties in the House. It is from the onlooker's point of view that I should like to express my opinions on the Bill.

Two main arguments, I think, have been suggested against the Bill in this House and in the Dáil. The first is that it is designed to and that it will perpetuate one Party, the Government Party, in office. The second is that it will abolish, or at least greatly reduce, the chance of a minority—let it be a minority existing now or in the future —obtaining representation in the Dáil. With regard to the first point, I personally feel that the main Opposition Party must be taking a very pessimistic view of their future, their policy and the men in their Party. I cannot understand the Fine Gael Party and the remarks made by the Leader of that Party in this House yesterday. I took down fairly accurately, I think, a statement he made yesterday: "The Taoiseach is the head of a Party which normally heads the poll in most constituencies and may be assumed to continue to do so in the future."

I did not say "may be assumed," I think. The Senator is not right in that.

I think the Senator used the words "assumed" and "in the future".

If I were behind Senator Hayes in that Party, I would say he was taking a very pessimistic view of the Party's outlook. Other speakers have taken the same view in the Dáil and in the Seanad. I cannot see that any Party which is the main Opposition has any right to express that view. If a Government becomes unpopular, to whom can the people turn but to the main Opposition Party to form a Government? Surely they must realise that, sooner or later—and later, if not sooner—a Government will become unpopular or stale and the people will turn to someone else?

Since I have been invoked, may I say that nothing I said should be construed as being contrary to the view expressed by the Senator? Of course, I agree with that view.

The Senator does not agree?

Nothing I said should be construed as disagreeing with the view that a Government may become unpopular and be replaced by another Government. What I did say was that Fianna Fáil normally tops the poll and if that state of affairs continues this Bill will favour them.

I took it that the Senator was assuming otherwise.

I hope I am wrong, as I believe that the country demands at least two substantial Parties, one to be in Government and one in Opposition. I am not criticising Fine Gael or its policy and I am quite prepared to admit that there are just as good men in the Fine Gael Party as in the Government Party. I think they would, perhaps, have been the Government to-day if they had not formed a Coalition Government, but that is my personal opinion. I think they would, perhaps, have been sponsoring this Bill in the House to-day. If the single substantial Opposition has a policy, the history of Parties here and elsewhere shows that sooner or later the people will turn to them to form a Government.

I have a certain fear that, in the first election or two under this new system of election—new to us, in any case—strange results may be produced in some constituencies. We may have a lot of Independents or a lot of popular men and they may not be the most suitable men. In a constituency with a country town, if there is a popular man in that town and if he decides to stand or is put forward, he may be elected although he may be very unsuitable. However, I believe that situation would end after one or two tries, at the most. It is up to the Parties themselves, particularly the larger Parties, to see that that does not happen.

Under this Bill the Parties will have a better chance of selecting a candidate and asking a constituency to elect him. In that respect, I disagree to a great extent with the criticisms directed towards the English system, where the Party selects a candidate, brings him down to the constituency and asks them to adopt him and elect him. There may be a certain amount to be said against that, but at the same time there is an enormous amount to be said for it. In that way a Party can select a man they know will be useful in a Government and who might not have a very great chance of being elected in his own constituency, perhaps because there is another man there or because this man might not appeal to the public at an election meeting. If a Party could say that he was a very essential man, with experience in business or farming, and if they could ask a constituency to adopt him in preference to some local, but not very suitable, man they may wish to put forward, I have every belief that that would be a better system of election.

In passing, I should like to say— though it may seem wrong, coming from a candidate who has competed twice or three times for the Dáil—that I think the membership of the Dáil, generally speaking, could be vastly improved—not as to a very large extent but perhaps up to 40 per cent. I think that is an opinion held very largely in the country. It is up to Parties, particularly the larger Parties, to select more suitable candidates; and under this Bill they would have a greater chance of selecting them and having them elected than under a system of P.R., where the Party would have to introduce its candidate to the whole of a large constituency in each case.

I feel that by the method of election proposed in the Bill we can get away from the idea—and it is a very strong idea in the country—that a member of the Dáil is a delegate sent up from the constituency to ask questions about electric current or the old age pension. Instead of that idea, the electors would be put in a position to send up to the Dáil a person who, as Senator Stanford said yesterday, would improve Parliament.

The support given in the past to small minorities, especially over the last 20 years, has been indicative of a quest by the people, not so much for a new Party as a quest for new names in the political life of the country. That is borne out by the fact that when the same type of men were returned to the Dáil in some of those Parties, they were dropped in the next election. There is a demand from the country and the electorate to improve Parliament, and I believe there would be a greater possibility of doing it under this Bill.

I have directed some of my remarks to the Fine Gael Party; may I direct some to the Labour Party as well? I think Senator Murphy made a very pessimistic speech for his Party in the House. To a certain extent the Labour Party may, at first, suffer under this Bill, but they will not if they have a national policy. I think they have not had a national policy. They have had a policy which was purely and simply a policy for members of trade unions. If their policy were extended to small farmers, for example, who have no backing of a trade union to put their views to the country, the Labour Party would receive greater support than they are getting at present. If they had a more national policy they would be accepted by a greater number of people. The small farmers are far worse off than trade union members who have the support of a large trade union to fight their case.

Before I go on to the second point, I should like to comment on one or two remarks made by Senator O'Brien. He said, I think, that he distrusts a strong Government. He suggested that this Bill will bring us strong government. There may be a little to be said against strong government, but at the same time I think a strong government is needed if there is unpopular but very necessary legislation to be brought before Parliament. It must be strong to pass unpopular legislation—even legislation the Opposition sometimes regard as necessary; otherwise they can only dabble with the more important legislation, which might be very controversial if it had to be brought forword by a Coalition Government.

I do not agree with Senator O'Brien's suggestion that if this change is made now, it can never be changed again. I do not think there is anything to prevent Fine Gael and Labour here and now saying through their representatives: "If we are returned, let it be as a coalition or as single Parties; we will give the people another chance to vote on this question." I do not think it would be wrong to let the people in another ten years discuss and vote on this question again.

The second main argument used by the Opposition, here and in the Dáil, was that this will greatly reduce the chance of minorities being represented in the Dáil. It may be to a certain extent—and, of course, it is the Government's view—that it might not be a bad thing. To a great extent I must agree with that. I cannot conceive three, four, five or six architects trying to build a house. Sooner or later, one or other of those will say: "I want to build my room in my part bigger than yours. I want to build my corner higher than yours. If I do not get my way I shall take my bricks away. I do not care if the house falls to the ground." That has been the position in Coalition Government and it has been the position in Coalition Governments all over Europe. Sooner or later, one person says: "If I do not get my way on this point I am taking my support away." A Government with that threat behind it has great difficulty and must of necessity curb perhaps very good intentions. It must curb its drive, initiative and originality in legislation. In a way it is a pity to see a large Party, or even a small Party, with originality of outlook, drive and good men, curbed or restrained because they have formed part of a Coalition Government and some other section of that Government is restricting that drive and initiative.

Senator Stanford and others have said that the youth in this country are anxious to play their part in politics generally. I think the suggestion is that there is a vast section of thinking youth in this country at present who are rather restrained by the political Parties here. I am not sure I can altogether agree with that. They should be able to accept in some way one or other of the three main political Parties here—the Government Party, Fine Gael or Labour. It may be that they do not agree with the policies they offer, but surely if sufficient of the youth and sufficient of the people do not agree with the policies of those Parties, they can change the policies?

How is the policy of a Party ever changed? Surely it is by its members pressing the leaders, pressing those who formulate policy to change it slightly this way or that? Surely the youth of this Party can see in one or other of these three Parties an outlook for their point of view? It may be that they disagree to a certain degree. But at the same time I feel they have a fairly good choice of Parties in which they can play their part.

I know it has been said that the main difference between the two main political Parties dates from the civil war and things a long way back. But that feeling is gradually but surely dying out, and I hope in a very few years it will be gone for good. Surely there is democracy within a Party as well as within a Parliament? Whichever of these Parties they choose, surely these people will be able to make their ideas felt within that Party and eventually within the Government of the country? That is considering the matter from the point of view of the minority of which I am a member. You may call them Unionists, or Protestants, or whatever you like.

From the foundation of this State, there have been Independent members of this House of that persuasion and it must be admitted, in all fairness, that they have contributed to the best of their ability to the social and economic well-being of the country as a whole. I know they have been criticised for standing aloof to a certain extent in the beginning and for not joining with the then existing Parties. Personally, looking back on the situation with historical objectivity, I do not think one can blame them and I do not believe any member of this House does blame them now.

Remember, 90 per cent. of these people—ex-Unionists, shall we call them?—found themselves in a political situation to which they were bitterly opposed. For them to have turned around immediately and joined with their erstwhile enemies, so to speak, would have been wrong and, had they done so at that early stage, they would not to-day enjoy the respect they have gained over the years. As time passed, they were invited and encouraged by the political Parties in the State. They did not do so initially. I am sure most people here are aware of what happened down the years from 1922.

What has happened in relation to the sons and daughters of these people —the second generation? Have they not gradually but surely taken their place in the different organisations— political, agricultural, industrial? They have accepted the invitation, and they are surely, but gradually, taking their place in the life of the nation. That is their rightful position, and they should accept it. They have offered and are offering themselves, with all that they can contribute to the good of the country, to the different organisations throughout the country and to the various political Parties. They have been accepted.

To my mind, that is the proper way for a minority to take its place and the proper manner in which to express its views in this, or any other, country. The proper approach is within the framework of the organisations and Parties which exist. If they wish to influence these Parties and organisations, the correct way in which to do it is from within. That is the stable way, the adult way, in which to serve one's country politically, socially, economically. One should not expect legislation to leave the way open for every two or three people to get together and form a so-called Party in order to get into the Dáil and let off political steam. The Dáil is not the place for that and people desirous of doing that sort of thing should at least have a substantial say in a Party before they expect to be elected to the Dáil.

I am very happy that the minority of which I happen to be one have taken their place in the life of the country and I strongly recommend to another minority that they should follow the example we have set and take their place in the political life of the country through the medium of an already established Party, if that is their wish. If they wish to influence policy, then they can start within the framework of the Party, in a small way at first, perhaps, and with greater force and success later and, if their view is acceptable to the people as a whole, then they will eventually get their way and have their policy accepted.

Aside from politics altogether, one can agree in toto with the sentiments expressed by Senator Cole. Of course, Senator Cole adopts the proper approach to this Bill. He views it as it should be viewed, calmly, dispassionately, objectively. He does not take the view, and rightly so, that minorities will be eliminated under this measure. We have heard a number of arguments from those who oppose the measure that this Bill will sweep away minority representation. So far, I have heard only one or two make the case that a minority can be described as a smaller Party than Fianna Fáil. That is, indeed, a very vague description. It does not represent the true position and I am convinced that those who put forward that argument do not themselves believe in it.

When the Commission on Vocational Organisation was sitting away back in the early '40s, a questionnaire was issued to over 333 bodies of whose existence the commission was aware. Replies were received from roughly 150 bodies; 44 bodies could not be traced; no reply was received from the remaining 139. Oral evidence was taken from 174 organisations in all. These included State bodies, Government Departments and outside organisations. The sentiments expressed in the report are not in conformity with those expressed in this House so far in this debate.

We on this side of the House assert that, whether the present system goes or stays, minority representation will have its fair share in the Houses of the Oireachtas. Yet, Fine Gael, apparently, have taken it upon themselves to act as a buffer, as it were, between the people and the Referendum Bill. We, as a Party supporting the Government, are merely asking the people for a decision as to whether they want to retain P.R. as a system or to revert to the straight vote. We believe, and it is held by many other great organisations in the world, that the straight vote system, if given a chance, will give a period of stability.

For one Party.

We also believe that, if the Fine Gael Party have any faith in the future, they ought to be of one mind on this matter but we have heard and, indeed, until this matter is decided, the people will continue to hear various speeches from different members of Fine Gael and the Opposition Parties. What strikes me, listening to them, is that, somehow or other, they all seem to be in conflict. Most of the leading members of the Fine Gael Party who expressed themselves in the past and who are recorded in this House and in the other House as expressing themselves in favour of a straight vote system are now engaged in a wild campaign—it can be described as nothing but a wild campaign—in order to distort and destroy and to rob the people of their chance to vote on this matter.

One has only to look up the records of the Dáil to discover some of the conflicting arguments advanced by the members of the Opposition. I can recall—and I quote from the free Press—Deputy Dillon on 12th November, 1947, when he said in the lower House:—

"I think P.R. is a fraud and a cod and ought to be abolished. I believe in the single member constituency with the single transferable vote so that the man who gets the support of the largest number of people living in the constituency will represent the constituency."

Yes. That is all we want.

What do the Fine Gael Party want? Do they want P.R.? Do they want the alternative vote? Do they want a limited form of P.R. or do they want P.R. in a small constituency with the single transferable vote? So far, in this argument, they have not even made that clear and I must say that they have succeeded in confusing me on that issue, at any rate.

That could be easy.

I am thankful to Senator L'Estrange for his very sage remarks. Senator L'Estrange came down to Longford last Sunday week and spent an hour roaring at his supporters like a bull at a gate.

It seems to be a mixed metaphor.

That is the only manner in which I can describe it. We in Fianna Fáil do not subscribe to those tactics. We believe in letting each and every member have his say and we believe that that is what has kept us together as a Party and that is what will keep us together in the future as a Party.

Senator Cole rightly posed the query to the Fine Gael Party as to whether they wanted to continue as a separate unit or, on the other hand, whether they had lost faith in the future. If they have lost faith in the future, we cannot restore their faith but we can, at least, keep our own faith and, as in the past, we can continue to work for the aims and objects for which our organisation was founded.

In the course of my travels as a politician I hear a number of people deprecating the efforts of politicians. Some of those people have no experience of public life whatsoever but, on the other hand, I can sympathise with them because of the experience in listening to members of large organisations, like Fine Gael, who represent a goodly section of the community, some of whose followers have no more liking for P.R. than we have, some of whose followers in the past have condemned it as a system and some of whose followers to-day would be prepared to vote against it if they were allowed.

We assert that the intentions of Fianna Fáil as a political Party do not arise on this subject and that the matter of this referendum should be allowed to go to the people uncoloured, unadulterated and unbiassed and that is the very thing that is not going to be allowed to happen. The Fine Gael Party, as I said earlier, have taken it upon themselves to oppose the Bill at every stage. They are now saying, in effect, that the people must not be allowed to take an independent line on this matter. They are saying, in effect, that it must be discoloured so as to cause the greatest amount of confusion possible. As I have said, their attempt to act as a buffer in this matter is to be deprecated.

The system of P.R. has been discussed on many occasions. We are asked why we are introducing a proposal to abolish it now. The reasons are simple enough. The first is that the 12-yearly period for the review of the constituencies is due to expire and the second is that any alterations to be made in the Constitution should be put to the people at the same time. We are prepared to argue that there is nothing wrong about that. When Deputy MacEntee was Minister for Local Government in 1947, he had some doubts about what the results of P.R. as a system of election would be if allowed to continue. Speaking in the Seanad on the Electoral (Amendment) Bill, 1947, as reported in Volume 34, column 1031, of the Official Report, he said:—

"The Constitution does more than merely set up a Legislature. It also sets up an executive organ, the Government, and for these two arms of the State to function properly something more than an Assembly which will be a mathematical replica of all shades of opinion in the country is necessary."

Even at that time, the Fianna Fáil Party had grave doubts as to the advisability of continuing P.R. as the system of election and at that time conditions for changing the system were not as favourable as they are to-day.

Hear, hear!

We have now, after many tries, a Government with an overall majority, a Government with a very good prospect of continuing in office for their full term. We have also a period of economic expansion, a period in which all the indicators favour the Government, after one of the worst harvests in history; our balance of payments situation looks all right; and our internal affairs are in order. On the political front, there is no unrest, at least on any big scale with which the Government are not able to grapple at any time, so that when Senator O'Brien said this is not an opportune time, my reply is: "When is the opportune time?" When, like the timid politicians in Europe, have the Irish people admitted that they will forgo their rights to be their own masters? What commission could be set up that would have greater authority to make a recommendation to amend our Constitution than the people? What commission could the Dáil or Seanad recommend to do the work that the people could not do better?

I was surprised to hear Senator O'Brien, who is a man of vast experience, expressing himself in so timid a fashion because it seems to me that the timid politicians of Europe were responsible for two-thirds of the dictatorships which we know to have cropped up in the past 20 years—timid politicians who refused to exercise their rights, refused to uphold the principles of their Parties and, in the long run, refused to uphold the principles of their countries. Since when have Party politics become so discoloured? What is wrong with being a Party politician? Is it not true that as the Trade Union Congress say, through unity they get strength, and if you have all shades of opinion represented in a political Party, is it not a much better means and a much better lever for getting work done——

That is our case.

——than a motley group who have no aims or objects in common? I pose that as a fair question to Senator O'Brien and others who are timid about this matter.

There must be 76 timid men in the Fianna Fáil Party, then.

That is an echo, a ghost. I said that timid politicians were the curse of the Continent of Europe and I hope that we in the Fianna Fáil Party will never fall into error in that regard. I hope we shall always continue to uphold what is fair and just and not be afraid to express our views either inside or outside this House.

The Leader of the Opposition Party, Senator Hayes, spoke here yesterday and expressed very strong sentiments in condemnation of our efforts to change this system. I shall not bore the House with quotations from the past, but Senator Hayes was not always as opposed to the straight vote system as he is to-day. For some reason or other in 1947, when the previous change was being made, as reported in Volume 34 of the Official Report, he said that the straight vote was preferable to the limited form of P.R. we were working. What has happened in the meantime to change his views so violently on that matter? We, as a Party, have had 36 odd years of seeing the defects of the present system. One of the things that strike me about it is that no matter what programme a political Party may put before the electorate, they must almost always have a second type.

That has obtained down the years from 1932 onwards and it would have obtained again, I believe, in 1948, but for the desire of the Parties opposite to try out an experiment. We all know that the experiment did not succeed and that it resulted or could have resulted in further splintering. They tried that experiment simply because the atmosphere was favourable to it. Suppose for a moment that they had not a strong Party in opposition and suppose that Fianna Fáil splintered into a number of smaller Parties, would that experiment, even in its limited fashion, succeed or would the Government of the day then run even for a course of three and a half years? I wonder. The experiment tried out was a limited one. It had a limited life but, nevertheless, it was bolstered up and helped by the fact that it had a strong single Party in opposition in the shape of Fianna Fáil.

The Leader of the Opposition in the Dáil, Deputy Costello, expressed himself many times regarding this matter. He is on record as making various speeches. He has this to say in June 1937 when speaking during the Dáil debates on the draft Constitution:—

"Earlier in these debates Deputy de Valera had expressed the hope that P.R. would not, in fact, lead to a multiplicity of Parties, but pointed out that, in any event, the Constitution could be changed by a vote of the people in any respect that might be found necessary."

Deputy Costello then gave his views saying:—

"As regards the abuses the President of the Executive Council fears from a grouping of Parties, or from the intrigues that might go on, as a result of a large number of Parties being returned by P.R., I think that, to a certain extent, is inherent in any system of P.R."

He then recognised that P.R.——

He does not say that is a bad thing.

I did not say it was a bad thing. I say that the Leader of the Opposition then recognised the inherent danger in P.R. He knew then, and for a long number of years even before that, that there was always the danger of splintering under P.R. He knew that it had a disintegrating influence and that but for certain safeguards it would have led to trouble here long ago. He knew that but for the power of dissolution which bolstered it up, the power of the people to amend the Constitution and the large group which opposed him in Fianna Fáil, certainly in other circumstances and in a different atmosphere it could lead to trouble in a far shorter period and that it could have put stresses and strains on our economy which were, as I say, not revealed by reason of the fact that it had so many helpful agents and elements in order to give it a chance to survive as long as it did.

Senator Murphy said that Labour is going to be wiped out as a minority. How Senator Murphy arrives at that opinion I do not know. Labour will get their chance. If Labour have a policy, if they pursue that policy and are not led into violent swings one way or the other by reason of coalescing with other Parties, and if they have faith in their policy, I believe that there is a place for Labour under the straight vote system—an even greater place than they have at the present time.

If we are to adopt the attitude that we can have it both ways, then we shall go nowhere. If we set out as a political Party with aims and objects, publish those and put a programme before the people, then I think we should be at least men enough, if you like, to stand behind it and let the Party stand or fall on that footing. No, that is not enough. Fine Gael, of course, have to say to Labour: "Look, Labour, you are going to be wiped out under this. We want you to come up here and toe the line with us on this matter and vote with us and strive——"

It is Labour who said they were going to be wiped out.

Yes, I am just after saying that but Fine Gael induced them along that line. Fine Gael said to them: "Look, Labour, you are going to be wiped out anyway over this thing. Stand in with us for a period until at least we are able to discolour this Bill sufficiently in order to get a biassed view on it from the electorate. If we are able to defeat it, we shall all take our chance afterwards."

At least we are agreeing on something.

I do not know if there has even been agreement on that point. It strikes me that in the welter of confusion there is some sort of line —I am trying to discover it—which the various Parties must toe. Labour is being pushed up to that line. We have in our Party as many representatives of Labour, organised or unorganised, or even more, than any other Party in this House. I think that the Fianna Fáil Party supporting their Government can be deemed to be the best Labour Government this Government ever had.

Standstill wages.

That is an old slogan. It has no political bite at this stage. As far as the standstill is concerned, we have drawn the Senator's teeth long ago on that matter.

It was mentioned in the course of the debate by some representatives of the universities how desirable it would be that universities should have representation and that the various graduates and those who attend universities should take an active interest in public life. I hope they do and I hope some of them will be weaned away from the idea that you can shoot your way into unity, because you cannot. That idea has been abroad in some of our universities. How it was generated there I do not know, but at this stage in our career it does not take a university graduate to discover that you cannot shoot your way into unity. That idea must die if we are to make any progress in the years ahead.

It was said that we wanted to shoot Sinn Féin under the carpet. We do not agree with that point at all. From my experiences in the 1957 election I want to make the point that Fine Gael are responsible for having an unconstitutional candidate elected to the Dáil.

That is wrong.

I will prove it on the figures. I want to make the further point that in a broadcast they condemned the actions of a certain illegal organisation and at the same time they went to the electorate in Longford-Westmeath and they discoloured the situation so much that the Fine Gael electors in Longford-Westmeath extended over 1,000 preference votes to a Sinn Féin candidate who would not recognise them. Is that not so? I defy contradiction on it.

On a point of order. I was director of elections in Westmeath and that statement is completely wrong. The country knows where we stood as regards Sinn Féin since 1921. We have been consistent in that. It was not 1,000 of our transfers that put Senator Carter out of the Dáil.

Senator Carter should be allowed to speak without interruption.

Senator Carter never mentioned the fact that he was driven out of the Dáil. There are no personalities in this matter. It is just a matter of principle. Senator Carter was prepared to take his chance, the same as any other candidate. I am making the point that the electorate were confused in Longford-Westmeath. Fine Gael supporters, ordinary decent men upholding the traditions of constitutional government, were induced to vote for a non-constitutional candidate by the slogan: "Vote for anyone except a Fianna Fáil candidate".

And, thereby, they became indecent?

Yes. You cannot have it both ways. Those who say we are sweeping Sinn Féin under the carpet should examine their own consciences. They should look under their own carpet and see what is there. As far as I know, the gates are open for them.

Sinn Féin are not unconstitutional. The I.R.A. may be.

Senator Carter, without interruption.

Whatever claims Sinn Féin may advance are not a matter of moment just now. The candidates returned as Teachtaí Dála do not recognise this Oireachtas. They do not give recognition to the Constitution. Certainly, they do not recognise the Fine Gael Party who were responsible for having some of them elected to the Dáil.

Fianna Fáil did not recognise it from 1922 to 1927.

That is some of the discoloration that is thrown on this Bill. That is what all this prolonged argument is about.

That is what all the young lads say to us.

It is an attempt by certain people to rob the people of their right to change their own Constitution.

I said that that is what the young lads tell us.

I do not want to turn this speech into an electioneering speech. However, when one has a certain amount of experience, one likes to hear common sense. One likes to have, even in politics, straight dealing. No Party can have it both ways.

I am afraid I shall be an anticlimax after so much eloquence but, if a timid Independent might be borne with by the House to express his views on the proposal, I should be grateful. The trend of political development in the past 20 or 30 years in free Europe has been to increase the political power of the people by extending the voting area. At first, it looks as if the proposal before us at present will limit the political power of the individual by decreasing his field of choice. That in itself is a thing that those of us who regard ourselves as individuals and members of the minority must examine closely. We shall proceed to examine it partly by referring to the debates that have taken place in the other House where the subject was discussed exhaustingly, if not exhaustively, and partly to the arguments put forward in our meetings yesterday and to-day.

My first difficulty in approaching this subject in a detached manner is that you are endeavouring to abolish P.R.; well and good, so be it, but what will you do instead? Instead, you are proposing to replace it by the single non-transferable vote. Unfortunately, the trend of the arguments has largely been towards emphasising the merits or defects of P.R. An adequate case has not been put forward for the alternative that we are being asked to consider. It is rather as if some well-meaning person said: "Tea is very bad for you. It tans the stomach and splinters the digestion. You must all drink coffee." There are alternatives to coffee." There is milk and there are other beverages.

It used to be light beer at one time.

So I believe. It is not enough to presume that the only alternative to P.R. is the single non-transferable vote. That is wrong. I should feel much happier if the proposed change were from P.R. to the transferable single vote. I feel we have wasted a lot of other people's time in stressing the merits or demerits of P.R. and in not having a case made out and examining the alternatives including the single non-transferable vote, about which I am not at all happy. However, I have many other objections to the situation with which we find ourselves confronted.

An argument advanced—it can sound a very serious argument—is that, in daring to discuss these proposals, we are interfering with the choice of our country, the choice of our people, to answer the straight question—in other words, that we are interfering with the proposed referendum. We are—because we do not see the need for the referendum. The major argument underlying that can be disposed of in this way. If that argument were to hold good then every year would be a matrimonial leap year. Imagine a man wondering whether he would pop the question or not and being told by a friend that he is interfering with the lady's right to reply. Before Caitlín Ní hUallacháin can reply to the question she must be asked it and in a clear way in which she knows exactly who is proposing what, why, when and where.

As a result of the proposals before us, it seems to me that three separate individual questions are being asked of Caitlín Ní hUallacháin. There is a hypothetical change; it was referred to yesterday by Senator O'Brien. The procedure which seems to me to confront the unfortunate individual elector with a very complicated and logical dilemma is: "If A. goes, B. follows and C. takes its place, will you agree?" Surely it would have been possible to devise a simpler formula? Surely it would have been better to say: "We propose to set up a non-transferable single vote instead of the present system; are you in favour of this?"

By the time you have worked out the full significance of P.R. you get so confused that you just have to look to your leaders for information and opinion. After all, P.R. is an extraordinarily confusing issue. There is a great deal to be said on both sides. Those arguments, by analogy, in relation to what has taken place and is taking place in foreign countries can be very misleading as analogous arguments can be misleading. To attribute the disaster of 1940 in France to P.R. is historically unsound. The disaster of 1940 and the so-near disaster of 1914 both stemmed from the disaster of 1870 when there was anything but P.R. in France, when there was the dictatorship of Napoleon III.

I happened to be in Paris in the 1920's at the time of a very violent French election. I would not have described the way it was carried out as P.R. P.R. misrepresentation might have been a more accurate term. I saw the posters of the various Parties, in colour. The nearest things they remind me of were some of the circus posters I used to see as a small boy.

Each one set forth the merits of the elephants and the acrobats of each Party. There was the most fearful abuse by opposing Parties. At one stage, I feared I should not be able to get out of France alive. I discussed it with my friends but they said: "Our politics are like that. The politicians take it seriously, but we do not." To argue that the operations of P.R. in France, our great and friendly neighbour, are in any way like the system working here is, I think, quite unsound.

Turning to the question of the Constitution itself, I regard the Constitution as something sacred and changes in it should be made only under the very gravest conditions of necessity. The method of introduction of the proposed change in the Constitution seems to me to raise many objections. First of all, it was not on a parliamentary programme. The proposed change came on us very suddenly. Coming on so suddenly it of course engendered a great deal more heat than would normally have been caused and I deplore that. The Constitution is such a precious possession that changes in it should not be made a Party matter. A decision on any changes should be made by the will of the majority in the Oireachtas and left open to a free vote.

As regards the timing of the changes, it would be more appropriate to make such a proposal towards the end of a season of Parliament. Then if the Party in power failed to get the proposal carried they could take it to the country. It is not right to bring it in at this stage and in this manner. As regards the arguments on the Bill I have heard no convincing arguments in favour of the single non-transferable vote. Perhaps we shall hear them later. The principal argument in favour of the abolition of P.R. is this danger of splintering. Surely the difficulty goes a bit deeper than that.

I should like to refer to what was said on this question of Parties by the Leader of this House, by Senator Carter and Senator Cole. I have pondered this question for a long time; I have raised it several times in the House and got no satisfactory answer, namely, what is to be the ultimate cleavage of the Irish Parliament? We believe in the parliamentary system. Parliament exists because men think alike. Governments and Oppositions exist because men tend to differ. I believe in a system which gives a strong Government and a strong Opposition. It is the duty of the Opposition to criticise the Government knowing that sooner or later the Opposition will be faced with the responsibility of assuming power itself. That exercises a check on the Opposition.

We all know of the cleavages in Parliament long ago. In Britain it was the Whig and Tory. There are other cleavages we could mention. In our country we had the isolationists and the associationists, two natural cleavages in connection with the major problem of our country, Partition. The isolationists would say: "We will make this country so desirable that eventually they will come home to us." The associationists would say: "We will make some kind of framework into which all of us can fit." That is one type of cleavage. Another type would be agriculture versus industry, representing two ways in which human effort and ingenuity can be channelled, each requiring the operations of a Party to safeguard its interests.

The two major Parties here, as we know, have arisen from an unhappy far-off event which is receding in time but which still casts its shadows. However, they do not now represent a rational division of political opinion. That we know, because so many of our friends, when we ask what Party they are voting for, will say: "I do not vote for Parties now. I vote for men. I vote for men I can trust and in whom I can have confidence." If we can eventually evolve a balance in the Parties I think the splintering danger will disappear. The principal fault in our present situation is our inability to divide into two acceptable, counterpoising Parties. What may come of it I do not know but I am reminded by Senator Cole of the words of Grattan who said: "You may change the Constitution but the character of the country you cannot change."

Whatever happens I still have every confidence in the sanity of my countrymen, in my own sanity and in the patience of this House. This referendum question is a rather complicated one. It is really not an issue to which you can say "yes" or "no." For that reason I do not feel I can honestly support the proposal.

It seems a truism to say the Seanad is one of the Houses of the Oireachtas but it appears to me to be necessary to say that. Article 15 of the Constitution provides:—

"1º The National Parliament shall be called and known, and is in this Constitution referred to, as the Oireachtas.

2º The Oireachtas shall consist of the President and two Houses, viz.: a House of Representatives to be called Dáil Éireann and a Senate to be called Seanad Éireann."

The reason I refer to these truisms is the editorial which appears in this morning's issue of the Irish Press. That paper in its editorial exemplifies the position in which the Fianna Fáil Party find themselves on this question. Having nothing but bad arguments to put in favour of their proposal they fall back on silly arguments. The article reads:—

"Having opposed the Bill providing for the referendum at every stage in the Dáil, they—"

meaning Fine Gael—

"—are now striving to hold it up in the Seanad. That was the sole purpose of Senator Hayes's proposal to keep the Bill there for 90 days, the utmost delay possible under the Constitution."

Then it goes on to say in the next following paragraph:—

"A more serious aspect of Senator Hayes's proposal is that it asks the Senate to act in conflict with its plain duty."

I think the first duty of the Seanad is to examine and scrutinise all Bills that come to it from the Dáil and, in discussing this Bill, it is doing no more than its plain constitutional duty. Furthermore, I would like to remind the leader writer in the Irish Press that under the British constitutional system, which is so much admired by the present Government that it is now proposing to introduce the British system of election, the House of Lords has delaying power and can delay a Bill, not for 90 days, but for two years and these Bills can never get to the people.

They have their flaws.

They were so much better in this country in devising our constitutional procedure than the British. The British never thought of devising a written Constitution as we have, and it is for that reason I would be glad the people would continue to use the Constitution they themselves have enacted and which they themselves adopted.

Senator Kissane yesterday brought us through certain sections of the report of the Royal Commission of 1908. I have been unable yet to trace the report of the commission in question but it seems more than strange that again, in order to bolster up the arguments in favour of the Government's proposal, we have to dig up the report of a Royal Commission that is now 50 years out of date. It is a very poor commentary upon the strength of the case made in favour of this Bill but, in any event, what I would like to observe on that report is that that report was talking about a theoretical position. We are not talking about a theoretical position in this country. We are talking about something of which we know, something that has been with us for 40 years or so. We know how P.R. has worked. As far back as 21 years ago the Taoiseach was able to say: "The system we have we know; the people know it", and we do not have to go back to a Royal Commission of 50 years ago to find out whether P.R. does suit, or does not suit, this country.

Professor Stanford, in his very lucid and able speech last night, said that the shift of emphasis should be from Party and Government to people and Parliament, and that is a point of view with which I entirely agree. As the Constitution provides, the Dáil is a House which is representative of the people. That is the fundamental property which the Dáil has, that it is representative of the people and, being representative of the people, it is provided in Article 28 of the Constitution that the Government shall be responsible to Dáil Éireann. In other words, it means that the Government shall be responsible to the representatives of the people, and the representatives of the people know the views of the people as well as any ten, 11 or 12 members of a Government and are, therefore, in a position to comment upon various measures that have been put through by the Government. That is the way by which the democratic system works properly when you have a Dáil, when you have a public House or a House of Representatives making the Government answerable to it.

It is extremely easy to point out what will happen in a general kind of way, to say that this system proposed by the Government will give a large majority to one Party and will give strong Opposition, eliminating small Parties and thereby integrating the opposition from three or four small Parties into one strong Opposition. I should like to put the point of view to the House that we should try to look at the proposed system as it would work out in practice. One of the great safeguards which the democracies have, and which totalitarian systems of government have not, is that under the democratic system the Government is daily answerable to the Dáil. Under the system proposed we may well find ourselves in a position where the Government will not, in fact, be answerable to anybody except to itself. That is the curious, paradoxical position in which we shall find ourselves because the Government will control the Party and the Party will act as the Government wants it to act. Therefore, you get into the curious situation where the Government can do what it likes irrespective of the wishes of the Party and, of course, irrespective of the wishes of the community.

Some people have forecast that under the proposed system it is possible that out of a Dáil of 140 seats the Government—whether it be a Fianna Fáil Government, a Fine Gael Government, a Labour Government or any other kind of Government—would have 120 out of 140 seats. That would leave probably an Opposition of 20 seats. If they want to work it out at 100 seats to 40 I am quite prepared to do so for the purposes of my argument. It seems to me it would be somewhere in the region of 100 seats. If that were not to be the case, there would be no purpose in saying that this system would give you a strong Government and, if we have that position, I want to ask the Taoiseach, who has on different occasions spoken of the necessity for strong opposition, to indicate how we are going to have strong opposition.

Deputy Booth, speaking in the Dáil, as reported at column 1191, Volume 171 of the Official Report, said:—

"Let the Deputy look up his facts and he will see that many times the Taoiseach has reflected on the absolute necessity for having a strong, virile, intelligent Opposition, which will query everyone. Let us forget about that."

I take that to mean: "Let us not forget about that."

"The new system cannot, will not, and must not wipe out the Opposition."

One of the restraints which is exercised upon Governments in a parliamentary democracy is the answerability of the Government to Parliament every day, and the means by which the Government is made answerable to the Dáil every day is the Parliamentary Question. Under the new situation you will have 120 constituencies which will be represented by the Government Party. Will anybody tell me that if there is a person resident in one of these 120 constituencies he is going to get his Deputy to put down a question of a kind that will embarrass the Government? Of course he will not and that means, as far as 120 out of 140 constituencies are concerned, the use of the Parliamentary Question will be completely nullified by this measure. I might say it is not so much at the moment that people can ask these questions that their rights are safeguarded. It is the very system of the Parliamentary Question which prevents abuses, and everybody knows that. It is the fact that something that is done or is not done, by a Government Department or by a Government Minister, may be made the subject of a Parliamentary Question which prevents the abuses which you have in totalitarian countries.

Mind you, in talking about abuses I am not saying that one Government more than another is likely to be guilty of gross abuses of any kind. These abuses just happen through expediency or through the desire on the part of a Government Minister to favour one more than another. They can arise in the granting of licences, in the making of grants, in the issuing of permits and so on, and so many of the rights of the people nowadays are determined by statute, and are in the hands of Government Ministers and Government Departments, it is of vital importance to the people that they should, at every stage, be able to question Ministers and call them to account in the Dáil for their activities. But as far as I can see the Parliamentary Question would be nullified for the vast majority of the people.

Since reference has been made so frequently to the British system I am given to understand, on good authority, that in Britain a member of the Government Party never puts down any kind of question that would embarras a Minister of his own Party. That is natural enough and quite understandable but you could have the Crickel Down affair in England and you can have other things that have happened since.

The Taoiseach spoke about a strong and virile Opposition. It will want to be an extremely strong and virile Opposition if half the number of Deputies will be able to perform the work now performed by the present Opposition. Will anybody tell me how an Opposition comprising as few as 20, or perhaps as many as 40 members, is going to deal with all aspects of Government business that will fall to be dealt with in the new situation? Every year on average we have from 30 to 50 Bills going through the Dáil. If the Dáil is not to become a mere rubber stamp—a kind of machine like a slot machine where you insert a penny and a penny stamp comes out— if it is not to reach that situation, we must have sufficient people to examine Bills as there are at the present time. I cannot see how, under the new situation, that will happen.

Then you have the votes for the different Estimates, in which, apart altogether from legislation, the policy of the different Ministers of the Government as a whole in relation to the different matters dealt with in the various Departments of State, is open to examination and criticism. The allocation of moneys towards different projects also comes under review. How does anybody think that you will draw from as few as 20 Deputies sufficient men who will have the time and the knowledge to examine the up to 100 Estimates which are contained in the Book of Estimates? Are we to have moneys voted without any adequate consideration by the Opposition of how these moneys are to be devoted?

Where are the 20 people to get the time to examine and criticise the Estimates? If they do not examine the Estimates and do not criticise them, then we might as well forget about parliamentary government because we will, in fact, have a Government putting through whatever it alone thinks is in the best interests of the people. We know very well what happened with Governments who thought that what they were putting through was in the best interests of the people. We had it in Germany and Italy; we have it in Russia, Yugoslavia, Roumania, Czechoslovakia and China. All these Governments think they are acting in the best interests of the people. That is what we are going to have in this country, a Government that will be able to put through any legislation that they want to because there will be insufficient people available as an Opposition to act as any kind of brake on the Government.

There has been a great deal of talk about Coalition Governments. I am glad that Senator Stanford, with his authority as a Professor of Classics, has pointed out that "coalition" is a neutral word and that "stability" is a neutral word, because I always thought Coalition Governments were a very good thing and I think that I am not incorrect in saying that coalitions did a great deal of good in this country. At least, they gave confidence to the people that should the Taoiseach pass from the political scene, lo and behold, there could be another Government that could continue the affairs of State for up to three years. That was one great achievement of the first Coalition Government. Deputy Dillon in the Dáil often states, and rightly so, that as a result of two periods of coalition government we have doubled the volume of our exports and trebled their value, and that is a fact.

Nobody can deny it.

Last year we had an increase in our cattle entirely due to the policy pursued by Deputy Dillon as Minister for Agriculture. The statistics are there. These statistics are collected by the Statistics Office, which is under the control of the Taoiseach; it was brought under the control of the Taoiseach so that people would be able to rely on the statistics. I trust that if people on the opposite side laugh because these statistics are quoted they are not in any way implying that there is anything wrong with them.

Another reason the Coalition Government of 1948 was to be welcomed was that it was a sign of the people maturing politically; it was part of the process of evolution which has made the British Constitution the Constitution that it is. As Senator O'Brien pointed out last night, a Constitution is an organic thing and, in many ways, a Constitution is as good as the way it is worked and the use made of it. Therefore, when within the framework of the Constitution, you had a Government truly answerable to Dáil Éireann —and you had such a Government in 1948—it was something to be grateful for and something to be welcomed, because it was part of the proper way in which a Constitution should be developed.

Apart altogether from the aspect of the Parliamentary Question, because that is only a safeguard which is there to prevent abuses, I also want to point out that the existence, and the need for, a strong Opposition have been recognised in this country over the Accounts Committee and the purpose of the Public Accounts Committee is to examine the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General on the expenditure of the moneys voted by the Oireachtas for Government services. The chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee is traditionally held by a member of the Opposition Party. That is another of the safeguards which have been recognised in this country, to keep the Government in check. Our whole constitutional system and our practice have been designed to keep the Government in check because it has been recognised by political theorists and practical politicians that a Government with too much power is dangerous. Would anybody tell me where, out of 20 Deputies forming an Opposition, having to do the work now performed by three times that number, we are going to get in future a chairman for the Public Accounts Committee?

At this stage I want to refer to the very serious flaw which arises from comparing the system of government which operates in Britain with the system we have here. It is all very well to say that the two-Party system has worked well in Britain and that therefore it should work well here but we must recognise that there are substantial differences between this country and Britain. Otherwise, we could not have separated from them. Apart altogether from philosophies or politics there are physical differences and economic differences. This country has a population of fewer than three million while Britain has a population of about 48 million and that makes a difference of 45 million. That is something of a difference when you come to talk about a political system and a method of electing representatives for the people.

As a result of that disparity in population you have of course a much higher number of seats in the House of Commons than we have here. Consequently when you talk about the two-Party system working well in Britain and of there being, as we know, a strong Opposition, you must have regard to the fact that it is possible to have a strong Opposition in Britain because you have a larger number of seats in the House of Commons than we have here, whereas when it comes to forming a Government the difference between the number of people necessary to form a Government in Britain and here is not very great and for that reason people are inclined to assimilate the two positions.

Since 1910 the lowest number to which the Opposition fell in Britain was 61 in 1931, but it is an entirely different thing to try to form an Opposition from as few as 20, or even from 40 people, as we are asked to do in this country. We are asked to brand that as a strong and virile Opposition.

Senator Ó Maoláin asked yesterday, if you had some instrument that proved defective, what would you do but bring it back to the people who made it. That is one kind of simile, but if I had someone who advised me wrongly in regard to the building of a house, somebody who said the foundations were all right when he had doubts about them, I certainly would not have that man to advise me again and I think Senator Ó Maoláin would adopt the same attitude. He would have nothing whatever to do with him. Now the country is to be asked to adopt the advice of the Taoiseach on this measure.

At column 993 of Volume 171 of the Official Report, the Taoiseach is reported as having said:—

"I have been asked why I did not incorporate it in the Constitution. When we took office, there was already a Constitution here. Subsequently my anxiety was to get the new Constitution through, and it was my desire to keep as close as possible to the system with which the people were familiar. I can also confess—I have no difficulty whatever in confessing—that, like many another thing, it looked all right on paper and I was affected by that. I was one of the first to say, in 1919, that although I knew quite well the fundamental reasons which urged the British to introduce the system, yet I felt that in our circumstances at the time it was not likely to do harm. On paper, it appeared to be a fair system. It was for that reason I retained it, but I said at the time that, though it had worked out all right up to then, if at any time it proved to be unsatisfactory, it could be changed."

The Taoiseach spoke to the same effect on the Final Stage of the Bill. I can only ask: Is the Taoiseach entirely satisfied, in the light of all the argument that he has heard, that the new system he is proposing is the best system? Bagehot, the political theorist, said: "There is no man as wise on any matter as a number of men after a good discussion." He was commenting on the British Constitution. I wonder if the Taoiseach still has doubts as to whether the new system is as good as he thinks it will be. I, for one, would not be inclined to adopt, and certainly do not adopt, the advice that he now gives because it is as clear to me as daylight that the new proposals if put into effect, so far from improving the lot of the people, would take away or endanger many of their rights.

I could also quote the Taoiseach on another occasion—in 1951, I think— after the first Coalition Government. The Taoiseach had been to America and had met some of the Red Indian chiefs. He came back with a homely proverb of which he gave the Irish people the benefit. He told them in 1948 these groups had got together and formed a Coalition Government and, of course, the country had been in a dreadful mess on account of that: "Let that not happen again. As the old Indians used to say: ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me'." The people were ill-advised in 1936 by the Taoiseach apparently, on his own admission; they ought not be ill-advised the second time.

There is no doubt that P.R. gives representation to Parties in accordance with the wishes of the people and it is for the people to decide who their representative will be. If, during the last 21 years, the people wanted a two-Party system they could have had it. They could have voted Fine Gael or Labour, but they did not want that. They could have had the two Parties, Fine Gael and the Labour Party but they did not want that. They could have voted Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael if they wanted to. As Professor Fearon remarked this afternoon—I cannot put it as well as he did—we can only have in political life what the people want to give. You cannot force the people into the straitjacket of the two-Party system. Anybody who reads history will see how difficult it is to effect changes in the minds of people or force them to go along a particular path.

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, 310 years ago, laid down the principle of cuius regio eius religio, by which it was intended that the people in a particular State should adopt the religion of their prince and, of course, it did not work. That is the teaching of history. Of course, it did not work because people have minds and wills of their own. If the Taoiseach thinks that this constitutional measure will change the views of the people, the people who always thought that Labour was right, the people who always thought that Fine Gael was right, the people who always thought that Sinn Féin was right, he must be ignoring his own experience and he is certainly ignoring the teaching of history.

As I say, the system of P.R. in our country has given Parties seats in proportion to the number of votes cast for them. That is all they are entitled to get. I have here some figures which I quote from the book Voting in Democracies by Enid Lakeman and James D. Lambert. This appears to be the first edition. I understand it is to go into another edition. On page 243, there is an appendix which shows that in the 1933 election Fianna Fáil got 49½ per cent. of the votes and 50½ per cent. of the seats. That is proportionate. Clann na Gaedheal—I take it that should be Cumann na nGaedheal —got 30½ per cent. of the votes and 31½ per cent. of the seats; the Centre Party got 9 per cent. of the votes and 7 per cent. of the seats; Labour got 6 per cent. of the votes and 5 per cent. of the seats; Independents got 5 per cent. of the votes and 6 per cent. of the seats and that is all the seats they were entitled to get.

In the 1951 elections—the figures for 1948 are also available—Fianna Fáil got 46 per cent. of the votes and 47½ per cent. of the seats; Fine Gael got 25½ per cent. of the votes and 26½ per cent. of the seats; Clann na Poblachta got 4 per cent. of the votes and 1½ per cent. of the seats—that is where P.R. does not necessarily favour splinter or small Parties; Labour got 11½ per cent. of the votes and 11 per cent. of the seats; Farmers got 3 per cent. of the votes and 4 per cent. of the seats; Independents got 10 per cent. of the votes and 9½ per cent. of the seats.

That is representing the people according to their wishes and that is the way the people are entitled to be represented, according to their wishes, but this measure proposes to say to the people: "You are not to have your wishes any more. You will vote the way we say is in the best interests of the country."

Before I go any further, I want to point out that, when it did come to amending the Constitution, the Government might at least have produced an amendment that will work from a mechanical point of view and will not require further amendment as it appears to me this amendment will require in a few years' time.

It is proposed to set up a commission. There are a number of people who think that the commission being set up under this Bill is something like the type of commission one ordinarily hears about, before which people will be able to give evidence, to which people who have been aggrieved by a decision of a previous commission will be able to make representation and get the commission to change the demarcation of the boundaries. As I read the Bill, there is no intention of giving the people any such right. The people are to have no rights, apparently, as to the way in which they are to be represented or as to the constituencies in which they are to be put. They will be deprived fairly effectively of any opportunity to express their view in Dáil Éireann because the report of the commission can be set aside or modified only by a two-thirds majority of the Dáil.

At any rate, it is proposed to establish a commission. I take it that it is intended that the commission should be able to function but it seems to me that in certain circumstances, which are not unusual circumstances at all. the commission will be absolutely unable to function and will reach a constitutional impasse where there will be nothing for it but to go back to the people to get them to amend the Constitution to get themselves out of the mess into which this amendment has got them.

It is provided that the commission will consist of seven people, three nominated by the Taoiseach and three by the Ceann Comhairle, with a chairman who will be nominated by the President. An extraordinary provision is that the President, for reasons which to him seem sufficient, may terminate the appointment of any member of the commission and, of course, such a decision cannot be the subject of any query by the courts. That may be strange, but there it is.

The important thing is that the quorum of the constituency commission shall be four and the commission may act notwithstanding vacancies in its membership. Any member of the commission, it is provided, may resign from office by placing his resignation in the hands of the President. Supposing there is a judge of the High Court or the Supreme Court who is chairman of the commission and he finds that the situation is so utterly impossible that he cannot do anything with it and he places his resignation in the hands of the President. There is no provision in this Bill for appointment of another chairman and, therefore, you could have a commission consisting of six people which, under the Constitution, may still act, notwithstanding a vacancy in its membership.

There is nothing in this Bill which says that there must always be a chairman. Supposing, then, that you have the six members of the commission, three from the Government side and three from the Opposition, each side at loggerheads for a period up to six months. Undoubtedly, they would fail to secure unanimous agreement or agreement by a majority. It is then provided in the Bill that the chairman shall, not later than seven months after the date of the President's request, present to the President a report setting out the boundaries and that will be the report of the commission, but, in the situation which I have instanced—and it is quite a possibility because there will be no obligation on a judge to continue sitting; he may place his resignation in the hands of the President; that is his constitutional right, which cannot be denied to him—we would have a commission that cannot agree and there might be no report of any kind, good, bad or indifferent.

That is the kind of Bill the people are being asked to implement, a Bill that will not work in a quite foreseeable contingency. There is always the President. It may be argued that the President might not accept the judge's resignation. I do not think the President can refuse to do so. Supposing, after the rigours of six months' arguing, or apart altogether from that, the judge who is chairman falls ill— and judges are as liable to fall ill as the next—and that six months have elapsed and seven months elapse and the judge is advised by his doctors that he ought to do no work. Again, in that circumstances, we will have the situation where we will have a commission that has not produced a report; there is no chairman to produce a report and we are into a constitutional crisis. If that is the way in which it is intended to establish a constitutional organ, it does not seem to me to be paying much respect to the Constitution to incorporate such a haphazardly devised system upon which it is expected this commission will work.

The Taoiseach and other members of Fianna Fáil in the Dáil and here have stated it is not intended to abolish small Parties. That seems to be a contradiction because one would imagine the whole purpose of the Bill was to abolish small Parties. Whether or not it is the intention, that, in the opinion of very many people, will be the result. As Senator Murphy pointed out today, the whole trade union movement is to be deprived of a political arm. I venture to think that the existence of the political arm of the trade union movement has been a very stabilising force in industry in this country. It is an enormous wrong to members of trade unions to impose a standstill wages Order, while allowing prices and profits to rise, but it is some satisfaction to members of trade unions to know that they have in Parliament people who will vindicate and defend their rights. If a situation of this kind were to occur again, or if any other kind of legislation were to be introduced by the Government and there was no political arm, no member of a trade union to voice the opinions of the trade unionists and protest on their behalf, that small safeguard that existed—the safeguard that people have at least been heard—will have been done away with. You would have what obtains in France, Italy and other countries—general strikes that would paralyse the whole economy. They had a general strike in Argentina the other day, and it required strong action on the part of the Government. We have no doubt that the strong Government would be able to take strong action, irrespective of the rights of the people concerned.

Those who voice their fears about the abolition of small Parties are, in my opinion, very correct. They have got a good view of what the attitude of the Fianna Fáil Government to minorities has been in the past. They have had no time for minorities. They have sought by legislative act to abolish these minorities.

In 1941, the Government put through the Oireachtas an Act entitled the Trade Union Act, 1941. Under that Act it was provided that a tribunal was to be set up. On this occasion, it was a tribunal, not a commission. Always set up somebody else to do the work you do not like to do.

Such as the commission you want to set up for this?

The commission I want set up is a commission that will inform and recommend, not a tribunal that will decide. Under the 1941 Act, the tribunal had the final decision. Under this Bill, the commission will have the final decision and Parliament will have to have a two-thirds majority to alter it.

The Trade Union Act provided that if there were a certain number of trade unions catering for members of a particular class of workman, the larger of these could apply to the tribunal to have the sole right of organising all the workers in that class. If the tribunal so decided, then for a period of five years, the other trade unions, the minority unions, would not be entitled and it would be an offence punishable by law to admit a new member. That is the way in which it was proposed to treat a free association whose freedom is guaranteed under the Constitution. Freedom of association is one of the personal and fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution. In the teeth of that guarantee, that was the way the Government proposed to deal with trade unions. It is much easier to talk to one big body and to make a deal with it. But the small unions can keep the bigger ones on their toes, and minorities can be troublesome. That is the attitude of the Fianna Fáil Government towards minorities. They have no right to exist—they are too troublesome. "We cannot be dealing with these people; get rid of the lot of them."

We have had a good deal of talk about what goes on in other countries.

Excuse me, Senator. You mentioned minorities. Would you give us more examples now? You said a Bill was passed which was to suppress minorities and that there were many cases where Fianna Fáil attempted to suppress minorities. Now give us more.

I shall make my speech in my own way. I will not be cross-examined or cross-questioned by Senator Mullins.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

If Senator Mullins has a point of order to raise or a question to put, there is an orderly way of doing it, and the Senator is quite aware of that.

I shall remember that, a Leas-Chathaoirligh, for other purposes, too.

I shall give the Senator another example. In 1953, we had the situation in which the Government had its own employees under its thumb. The Civil Service got an award at arbitration which gave them certain entitlement. We had the Government saying: "No, we will not pay that; we will not give you what is your right." That was a small minority appeal. In relation to the rest of the community, the Civil Service stands as a minority. That was the treatment meted out to them by the Government. The Government may have revised its position since then. That was an example of a minority with no power.

We have had a great deal of reference to what has been happening all over the world in regard to P.R. We have heard it said that it is not in operation in many countries. It might be well if we clarified our minds on what countries it has, in fact, been operating in and in what way it has been operated, with a view to having another look at this Bill. I have examined the Constitutions of 89 nations. Eighty of these have written Constitutions. There are two cases where there are no written Constitutions. These are Egypt and Pakistan. At present they are only formulating Constitutions. There are three of them which have interim Constitutions: Cuba, Indonesia and Nepal. An interesting feature of the Constitutions of the world is that most of them are of recent origin, 45 per cent. being less than ten years old and 56 per cent. less than 25 years old.

All these Constitutions, therefore, have been drafted in the light of modern experience and in the light of what happened in Germany, Italy, France and other countries. Sixteen of these countries have Governments of a federal type. Sixteen States are federal States—Argentine, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Libya, Mexico, Switzerland, U.S.S.R., Finland, Yugoslavia, U.S.A., Burma and the Union of South Africa. It seems to me to be wholly fallacious and absolutely wrong to draw comparisons between the Constitution of a unitary State, such as those with a heterogeneous population, and a country with different independent States within the State and with a wide diversity of people and population.

Another matter which has a bearing on this question is the form of Legislature which these countries have; 49 of them have a bicameral legislative system and 38 have a unicameral legislative system; eight have no elected representatives. These latter are small like Andorra and Liechtenstein.

Great play has been made with the fact that the former Taoiseach had something to say about the form in which P.R. was put into the 1937 Constitution. Deputy Costello wished to have the position flexible. He wished to have the precise form of P.R. applied here determined by law. There would be no difficulty whatever in doing that here. On the other hand, the present Taoiseach, of course, has always struck out for rigidity. He argued for that in 1936 and 1937, and that is his argument on the present Bill.

The curious position is that of the 18 nations that have P.R. there are only two or three which defined in their Constitutions the precise form they have. If the Taoiseach had taken the advice tendered when the 1937 Constitution was being discussed we would not now be in the situation of having to put the country to the expense of a referendum on this issue. We would, rather, be in a position in which a large measure of agreement could be secured as to the best system of P.R. to be applied in our circumstances and in the light of our experience.

It is not valid, I think, to compare Austria with this country because Austria is a Federal State. However, the Constitution of Austria is the Constitution of 1920, amended in 1925 and 1929 respectively, and declared law in 1945 on the ending of the occupation. That Constitution provides in Article 26 that the National Council, which is the equivalent of our Dáil, shall be elected by the people of the Federation according to the principles of P.R. on the basis of equal, direct, secret and personal suffrage of men and women who have completed their 21st year. It is also provided that the Federal electoral law determines whether and under what conditions persons who are not citizens shall have the right to vote. Details concerning electoral procedure are determined by Federal Law. That is a country which has not got a precise form of P.R. tied up in its Constitution.

In Belgium, P.R. was introduced in 1921. There have been various revisions since then, but it has never occurred to the Belgian people that P.R. has caused economic chaos, political instability, emigration and so forth. It has not occurred to them that P.R. has been responsible for these things and that they should, therefore, abolish it.

Brazil also has P.R. I understand from Press reports that Brazil is founding a new Government. Its Constitution was adopted in 1946—adopted, I take it, in the light of the knowledge of the harrowing experiences we have had here as a result of P.R. One would have thought that Brazil, when drafting its new Constitution, would have regard to the disastrous effects into which P.R. has led us and be warned thereby. But that has not happened.

In Denmark, the Constitution of 1953 replaced that of 1920. Article 31 provides that the members of the Folketing shall be elected by general and direct ballot. Rules for the exercise of the suffrage are laid down by Act of Parliament which, to secure equal representation, shall prescribe the manner of election and decide whether P.R. shall be adopted with or without election to single-member constituencies. There, you have P.R. in single-member constituencies. Apparently, Denmark, when amending its Constitution as late as 1953, did not find in its experience that P.R. had wrought havoc and economic instability.

P.R. is also provided for in the Constitution of Ecuador. Its Constitution was adopted in 1946, P.R. is provided for in Finland, but the precise form of it is not provided for in the Constitution. That is dealt with by the Diet Act of 1928 which provides that representatives shall be elected by direct and personal suffrage. For these elections, the country shall be divided into electoral districts, with a minimum of 12 and a maximum of 18, and the rest of the procedure is laid down in the Act of Parliament.

I come now to West Germany. According to one of the speakers supporting Fianna Fáil, Hitler came to power as a result of P.R. As I understand modern history, Hitler came to power and then proceeded to abolish the Constitution. He got a clear overall majority and was able to form such a strong Government that he could abolish the Constitution and lead Europe into the situation into which he led it subsequently.

But the ordinary Parties were discredited prior to his rise.

Yes, they were all wrong except his Party. That being the position, if P.R. had wrought the destruction of Germany and brought about a world war, one would imagine that Western Germany, determined in its Constitution to adopt peaceful means for the solution of its problems and thereby contribute to world peace and so one, and remembering all the sorrows, destruction, pain and woe it had been through, would have seen that P.R. had brought about the rule of Hitler and had caused all the woes and sufferings they endured, and, in the light of that experience, would say that, whatever other form of government or system of election they adopted, they would not adopt P.R.

They have not P.R.

That, of course, is not the case, because Federal Germany has adopted P.R. I shall read for the benefit of the Seanad the relevant article from the Constitution of Western Germany:—

"38. The Deputies of the Bundestag shall be elected by the people in universal, free, equal, direct and secret elections. They shall be representatives of the people as a whole, not bound to orders and instructions, and subject only to their conscience.

"The Federal Convention which elects the Federal President consists of members of the Bundestage and an equal number of members elected by the popular representative bodies of the Laender according to the principles of P.R."

If Senator Lenihan wants to produce something which shows that Federal Germany does not employ the system of P.R., I shall immediately withdraw what I have said. I am not trying to pull a fast one; I am trying to give the House the benefit of some tedious research and I trust I am not being tedious in doing so.

Iceland has a Parliament which dates back as far as the year 900, the oldest parliament in history. It has P.R. They amended the Constitution there as lately as 1944 and they have not seen that P.R. has done them any harm.

They will.

Italy was another country mentioned by one of the Fianna Fáil speakers—Senator Ó Maoláin, I think. I quote from this book by Messrs. Lakeman and Lambert, to which I have referred already.

Would the Senator give the name again?

It is already in the Official Report.

I did not catch it.

I thought the Senator would be very familiar with it.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Senator is entitled to have the name of the book.

It is Voting in Democracies, by Enid Lakeman and James D. Lambert.

At page 189, they say:—

"The rise of Fascism was assisted by the ineffective policies and dissensions amongst other groups. By 1922, Mussolini was able to form a cabinet, based on a coalition of four Parties. He introduced a new electoral law"

—this is where Mussolini came to power—

"under which the country was divided into 15 constituencies, and each Party submitted national lists of candidates. The Party with the largest poll was entitled to two-thirds of the seats (356), while the remaining seats were divided proportionally among the other Parties."

That is, the P.R. applied, apparently, only as far as the sharing out of the minority of the seats went.

"As it turned out, the ‘premium' for the largest Party was not needed to secure a Fascist victory; they polled not far short of two-thirds of the votes, and the end of the first experiment in Italian democracy was at hand."

In fact, when Mussolini came into power after the election in 1922, he had been voted into power by nearly two-thirds of the voters.

Was he not in power when he introduced that law?

Yes, the same as you are trying to do now.

I would like, through the Chair, to ask the Senator was Signor Mussolini not in power when that amending Electoral Act was introduced?

He was only a member. He was a member of the Parliament, with a fairly substantial representation there.

Was he not Prime Minister?

He most certainly was not.

The analogy is not proved.

As far as leading Italy into the war was concerned, P.R. was not the cause.

Strong Government.

Too strong a Government. The only country I can find to date which sets down with precision the particular variety of P.R. that should be applied in its election is the State of Luxembourg—and anyone listening to the light programme from Radio Luxembourg will be aware that it is not a State of great consequence. It is not a large State; there are only 300,000 in it and therefore the particular system they have adopted is perhaps suitable to them. In any event, a referendum in Luxembourg is not the same thing as a referendum in a country ten times that size, as this is. It provides that Deputies are elected on the basis of universal suffrage, pure and simple, by ballot, according to the rules of P.R., in conformity with the principle of the smallest electoral quotient and under rules to be determined by law. That delimits the particular system to the proportional system.

Then how is it called P.R.?

Let me turn to the Netherlands Constitution. The Taoiseach has referred to the conversation which passed between the former Prime Minister of Holland and, I think, some member of the British Government. They have P.R. and, as far as my information goes, they have amended their Constitution —their Constitution is more easily amended than the Constitution in this country, as it is done by Act of Parliament—and they have not changed the system.

Likewise, in Nicaragua, the Constitution was adopted in 1950. They have a form of P.R. there. They have had experience of what happened in all the other countries for the last 25 or 30 years and they have thought well to adopt it.

In New Zealand, I am not able to say what the position is, as New Zealand has only whatever Constitution the British Parliament gives it. I think it is the British Parliament which determines the Constitution there. I do not know whether it is able to amend its Constitution so as to change its electoral system.

In Norway, the system of election is proportional. They say:—

"The rules to be applied hereunto, as well as the particular regulations concerning the elections, shall be determined by law, subject to the provisions laid down in the Constitution."

They have a system of P.R. also in Peru, where it is provided by Article 88 of the Constitution that the system of election shall give representation to minorities, with a tendency to proportionality. The details of the system are left to be determined by law.

The House is aware of the system which is in operation in Sweden and Switzerland. The Swedish system is operating under an Act of 1866. The Swiss system is operating under a Constitution which, I think, was last amended in 1874. The only other country I can find that has the same system is Uruguay, but again it does not go the length of determining in what precise form the system shall work under its Constitution.

The Senator promised to tell us something about Cuba and I was waiting for him to come to Cuba.

I did not make any promise to anybody to say anything about Cuba, but if the Senator was listening to me, he would have heard me say at the beginning that there were three countries which had only a provisional Constitution and Cuba was one. If the Senator does not listen to me, it is not my fault.

I did listen.

Some people do not like to hear the truth.

It is very tedious, you know.

The Taoiseach has always expressed his intense dislike of Coalition Governments——

He said he hated them.

——and he was even known on one occasion to have expressed his hatred for them, purely, of course, as a form of Government. If that is so, I find it extremely difficult to understand the point of view which the Taoiseach adopted in certain passages of his speech in the Dáil on this Bill. At column 337, Volume 172, of the Official Reports, the Taoiseach said:—

"Let us look at where the system we propose is working and see what is happening."

I have looked at the system all over the world and I find it works in 18 countries.

The Senator did not tell us what is happening in them.

I have indicated at any rate, that all the woes and evils that have been attributed to it in France, Italy and Germany exist only in the minds of the Senators opposite, or the Fianna Fáil Senators opposite. The Taoiseach went on:—

"I do say that it does not tend so much to create these Parties. What generally happens is that you have various sections of the community represented to varying extents in the major Parties, because it does tend to discourage the creation of a number of small Parties, which in most cases are purely artificial."

The small Parties are purely artificial.

"They do not represent any fundamental differences in the community."

Well, if the small Parties do not represent any fundamental differences in the community, and if they do not have any fundamental differences themselves, what then is wrong with forming Coalition Governments? Is there not a homogeneity of thought and of view among those people, so that they can equally well form a Coalition Government as a single Party can, if it is a Party consisting of people with minds and souls and wills of their own and has also these differences which have to be reconciled in some form of compromise?

At a later stage, the Taoiseach went on to say:—

"What happens is that somebody comes along and thinks, if he is able to get in on an election, that when he forms a Party, he will be assured of a seat in the Government. That is the temptation, allurement or urging for the formation of purely artificial Parties that have no fundamental point of difference."

"No fundamental point of difference" and still are not to be entitled to come together and agree on forming a Government.

So long as they do not break up.

They lasted three and a half years but two and a quarter is the average for a Fianna Fáil Government.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator O'Quigley.

I have not known of any Coalition Government being defeated upon a measure in the Dáil and then having to go to the country.

They did not wait to be defeated; they ran away.

They were able to put through their legislation and plan on the support of the Dáil. That is entirely in accordance with the constitutional position. If Fianna Fáil want to change that position, they should do so.

They did not run to the Park at midnight.

At column 338 of the same volume, the Taoiseach said:—

"Consequently, not having some big issue to divide the people, and to divide them so that they would be in two groups, the tendency will be to split up into these minor, artificial, small Parties."

That seems to be an attempt to force, people into the position where they will have to vote for one Party or another. The attitude he adopts seems to be: "He that is not with me is against me and those who are against me are one lot and should fall into one Party." That is not the way it has worked in this country and it is not the way it will work in the future. We have heard from the Fianna Fáil Front Benches great admiration for the British system of election. Of course, curious to relate, there is some growing body of people in Great Britain who are not at all satisfied with their system of election——

They get as far as Hyde Park corner; that is all.

——and it looks as if some improvements may come in time. The British have always been extremely slow to catch themselves on. That is part of their difficulty with regard to this country. If they had given us Home Rule in 1914 or earlier, we might have been satisfied with that for a long time, and they would have been saved a lot of embarrassment and a lot of the Empire might have been saved. They have been very slow to make changes, but they have made changes in good time and perhaps because changes have been slow in the British Constitution, domestically, they have been wise and have done well for themselves.

The Eonomist of 24th January, 1959, speaks about the selection of candidates under the two-Party system and the single member constituency, and is not at all pleased or satisfied with the type of candidate or the type of representation they are getting in the House of Commons. On page 298, it says:—

"Constituency associations are usually run by a small group of active and often extreme Party workers. Even in theory this small group is selected only by the few hundreds of local zealots who work for the candidate, not by the tens of thousands who vote for him; in practice, it is often personally dominated by two or three active enthusiasts who have time to spare. Yet, because of the device of nominating a ‘prospective parliamentary candidate' well before the election, this tiny and unrepresentative group has absolute control over the timing of what is in most cases the de facto choice of a candidate.”

We see where the two-Party system has got to in Great Britain, and where the single member constituency has got to in Great Britain, that the prospective Parliamentary candidate is selected by a small group—not even by a Party— within an association, who have time to spare to devote to these things, and who put up their man and get him put forward as the prospective candidate for the next election, and then when it comes to nomination, he is nominated.

The Economist goes on in a later paragraph to give this extremely interesting piece of information:—

"But, if the coming election comes up to current forecasts, this will be the third time in a row in which the turnover of seats between Parties will have been very small. This means that perhaps five-sixths of the seats in the country are currently regarded as safe. Their only focus of political interest as far as Parliament is concerned lies in the choice of candidate by the dominant Party."

It asks the question:—

"Should this continue to be staged managed, as at present in all Parties, by at most 50 or 60 people and often by two or three?"

That is the kind of system the Taoiseach wants to change over to where our candidates will be selected by a few people in a constituency and they will be safe, as is bound to happen under this system, in these safe seats and the people will be robbed of their choice of candidate, not to speak of representation in the Dáil.

Fine Gael candidates may be selected in that way, but not ours.

Oh, yes, yours.

I am not saying that Fianna Fáil would do that.

But they do it already.

The Senator must have a guilty conscience. I said Parties can do it. Fine Gael can do it, and if they do it, it is wrong, even though Fine Gael do it.

Business suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.

Before the adjournment, I was talking about the objections to the method of selection of candidates that exists in Britain at the present time and I had quoted from the 24th January issue of The Economist. Having posed the problems that exist in relation to this matter in Britain, The Economist then says and I quote:—

"The solution for a British constituency cannot be dogmatically laid down. The first requirement is that there should be much more public discussion locally and nationally about the processes of selecting candidates".

In that regard, I want to make this observation. In this country, we have had very little discussion locally and nationally on this subject. There has been a great deal of discussion in the past six months or so, but the people do not lend themselves to forcible feeding. It is only over a period of time that they can absorb the issues involved in an important matter like this.

I am also reminded about what I said in another place by what I have read just now. It is that P.R. has not become a matter of serious concern to this State for the 40 years it has been in existence. Despite the doubts and misgivings the Taoiseach had about it in 1936, I do not know of any other member of the Fianna Fáil Party, with, we now understand from the Minister for Health, the exception of the Minister for Health, who had anything to say against P.R. as a system of election.

Senator Carter this evening quoted from the Dáil Debates on the Electoral (Amendment) Act of 1947 in which the then Minister for Local Government, Deputy MacEntee, expressed certain doubts about P.R. as a method of election. It led to the formation of a multiplicity of Parties and the necessity, therefore, for Coalition Governments but Senator Carter did not, of course, read the whole quotation. If he reads a little earlier in the same volume of the Dáil Debates, he will find that the Minister for Local Government in those days had no difficulty whatever in accepting P.R. as a system of election for the Legislature. He said it was in the Constitution and was accepted as a principle for election, but he saw these difficulties. With that lone exception, I do not know of any other member of the Fianna Fáil Party, with the exception of the Taoiseach, who had any objection whatever to the system of P.R.

Is it not more than strange that all of a sudden all the members of Fianna Fáil should see the light and that this grave and serious disease which was gnawing at the vitals of the body politic should now become apparent to them? It existed all those years and they were quite unable to diagnose it. The reason is quite plain. They never thought there was anything wrong with it. The only person who ever saw anything wrong with it is the Taoiseach.

He never spoke about the deficiencies of P.R. except at times of general elections and, of course, what is said at the time of general elections is said for a particular purpose, that is of securing election. That is the immediate purpose of talking at an election. When the Taoiseach spoke about the deficiencies of P.R. in the elections of 1943, 1948, 1951 and 1954—I assume he spoke against P.R. in all those days —his purpose—it was clear to me when I read his speeches—was not to decry P.R. as a system, but to maintain one thing, that Fianna Fáil and the Taoiseach were always right. It was not that the people would have rejected them, if they failed to make a Government. That would not be the cause of Fianna Fáil failing to be a Government. It was the system of P.R. that was wrong and that is what would be the cause of their defeat.

We have also had the Taoiseach talking about the multiplicity of Parties which arises because small Parties can make extravagant and fanciful promises, knowing they will never be called upon to implement them and thereby attract a number of votes, and so you have a multiplication of Parties. The making of fanciful promises does not apply only if it does apply at all, to small Parties. At the last election, we had what did not then appear to the electorate to be a fanciful promise made by the Taoiseach. He undertook that the food subsidies would not be abolished. Likewise, the Tánaiste undertook that the Fianna Fáil Government would not abolish food subsidies—but they were abolished.

The Tánaiste in Waterford and the Taoiseach in Belmullet—both of them on the same night.

Do not ask me to produce the quotations. Senator Lenihan knows of them very well. I am sure he made some statements himself, too. Then the Taoiseach abolishes food subsidies and what, indeed, was the excuse given? It ran something along these lines: "Well, of course, we did not know the state of the national accounts until we got in."

When we got there, the cupboard was bare.

There was a deficiency of £60,000,000——

Assuming that that was so, how then could small political Parties that never had representation know how the national accounts were? Is it not therefore natural that they should make promises that are perhaps out of proportion to the performance?

The Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance and leading members of his Party were in office for a period of 16 years up to 1948 and then for another period of three years from 1951 to 1954. They were well acquainted with the way the business of government was conducted. Furthermore, they had access to all the documents issued in connection with the national accounts. More than that, they had it in their power at any time to put down a Parliamentary Question asking the Minister for Finance for this set of statistics, the Minister for Agriculture for another set, the Minister for Industry and Commerce for another set and the Taoiseach for another set. In that way, they could assemble all the information that would enable them to propound a policy they could fulfil. Either they wilfully abstained from doing that or they made a false promise. In either event, they were guilty of grave deception of the people. Therefore, it will be seen that it is not at all only small Parties, as has been alleged, that promise the sun, moon and the stars to the people.

While I mention the sun, the moon and the stars, I am reminded that the President of America promises the people they will soon reach the moon and will soon be circling the sun. I do not know what he is doing about the stars: I suppose they have those in Hollywood already. At any rate, a comparison has been made between the stability of government that has allegedly resulted from the straight vote in the United States and the straight vote in other countries and the conditions that can emerge from P.R. But that comparison does not hold water for a single moment because there is stability of government in the United States for a reason peculiar to the Constitution of the United States and similar Constitutions. The Constitution of the United States provides that the Government shall be there for four years. The President is elected for a period of four years and there is no question of his going to the country in the interim.

If strong government is wanted in this country, then it is not an amendment of the legislative provisions of the Constitution that we should be dealing with here, but an amendment of Article 28, which deals with the Government. Apparently the Government do not understand the provisions of the Constitution because if it is strong government they are after, then it is Article 28 and not Article 16 that they should be amending.

Another important factor about the situation in the United States—if we want to make comparisons with the United States, we might as well have all the facts—is that in the United States, as every Senator knows, there are elections for half of the Congress every two years. When you talk about having elections in this country every two and a half years, which has been the average, I would point out that in the stable democratic country of the United States, they have elections every two years. The result of these elections has been, in the case of the present holder of the Presidency in America, that, since 1954, President Eisenhower has had a hostile Congress. His Party has not had a majority in the United States Congress. As a result of the elections in November, 1958, he is in an absolute minority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The United States Government and country are concerned with issues of peace and war. They are concerned with a vast population of 160,000,000 people. The fate of the free world depends on the United States. In spite of the fact that the Government have not a majority in the Legislature, they are able to carry on and will carry on. Therefore, all this talk about the necessity for a Government Party to have an overwhelming majority in the Legislature does not, by comparison with the United States, bear any examination whatever.

Will the Senator now come to the other three that were mentioned?

Senator Lenihan has shown his ignorance of the American Constitution and he does not even read the Irish Press, because, if he did, he would know that what the President of the United States requires to operate his country has to be put through the Congress and the Senate, and he has on occasions had slices of the Budget cut out.

Is a single member of the American Executive, a member of the American Parliament, of either of the Houses of Congress?

If the Senator requires that information, he ought to read the Constitution of the United States. I do not intend to educate him. I understand that, before we rose, he felt extremely tired.

It is time the Senator came away from the Constitution of the United States.

With respect the Government of the United States has been quoted as an example of stability.

It is quite in order to refer to it but it is hardly in order to examine it in detail.

With respect, if we are to make comparisons with the United States, important details are necessary.

Senator O'Quigley has been talking now for only the past three hours.

The President of the United States has to secure the agreement of Congress in order to get his Budget through. He is in an absolute minority in Congress at the moment, but we do not expect that he will retire and go to the country. That does not happen and never has happened in the United States.

We have had talk about coalitions and bargaining. At column 1285, Volume 172, of the Dáil Debates of the 28th January, 1959, the Taoiseach said:—

"It is very much better that they——"

the Coalition Parties

"——should bargain before rather than after the election. We want their bargaining to be put to the test before the people."

He goes on in the same context. Later on, at column 1289, he refers to one thing the new system definitely does:—

"One thing it definitely does is to compel Parties, if they intend to bargain, to do the bargaining beforehand."

Bargaining between Parties is all right if it is done according to the rules laid down by the Taoiseach and it is all wrong if it is done according to rules laid down by other people. I cannot see any difference between bargains—taking the Taoiseach on his own ground—if they ever existed, which were made after an election and bargains made before an election. The Taoiseach apparently knows a great deal about what went on at these meetings of Parties that formed inter-Party Governments in this country, about the bargains that were made and the Ministries that were offered. He does not, of course, give to the people who are going to be the judges in this matter anything like the kind of evidence they would require in being asked to judge this matter.

The Taoiseach himself may have some experience of bargaining. I am not old enough to remember what went on in 1927 but I understand that the Taoiseach in those days was not above the formation of a Coalition Government and making a bargain with a person who is a member of this House and who could give his own point of view.

I remember those days and there is no truth whatever in that statement.

It is absolutely true.

A Senator

Ask Senator Baxter.

The Taoiseach made a bargain in 1927.

With whom?

With Senator Baxter.

That is not true. Senator Baxter made the offer that the Cumann na nGaedheal Party and——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator Ahern should resume his seat.

The Taoiseach could not get Coalition Governments to work in those days. He could not form one and therefore they are bad. There has been talk about the representation of minorities and I have no doubt at all in my mind that it is much easier now for a religious minority to be nominated than it will be under the proposed system. We have had a long experience in this country of being in the position of a minority. The whole nation was a minority when it formed part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It is for that very reason, because deep down in our character and in our minds we were always a minority, that P.R. is the system which suits us. There was a time when we had no representation in the only Parliament in which we might be represented, and it is now proposed under this Bill to deny the people that representation to which they are justly entitled under the Constitution, and to change over to a system which has no application whatever to our traditions or to our way of thinking.

One would imagine that there was something wrong about people uniting as an Opposition or as a Government. The Taoiseach would have everything carried out by individuals. It is an extraordinary thing that in the ordinary affairs of life, in the business community, for instance, people come together and, instead of running a business as a family business, run it as a company. People have different views on how business should be carried out —the work of Government is very much a matter of business—but they are always able to agree within the rules of their company how they will carry on their business and improve their position.

The Taoiseach does not believe in that kind of thing. He does not believe that you can have such a thing as a Coalition Government, a number of people with different points of view having common objectives and being able to pursue those common objectives. I am reminded in that context of the fact that when it comes to one company with which the Taoiseach is associated he has to have the controlling voice in it. That is the kind of mentality and outlook that has led to the introduction of this Bill.

Is that dirt or argument?

It is fact.

There is no dirt in it.

What dirt is there in it unless you know more than we know?

I do not believe this Bill is for the benefit of the people. No political leader who has ever wrested power from the people has done it except on the pretence that it is in the interests of the people. We know too much about what strong Governments can do. We know the constitutional system for strong government that you have in countries like the Argentine at present. There they can have a strong Government, a President, but a Government will only be as good as the people who constitute it and if we have not had a good Government and the stable Government that the present Government thinks we should have, the fault lies not with the system but with the people in the Government who are charged with the duty of governing the people.

I am opposed to the abolition of P.R. because I believe it to be a most democratic method of electing a representative Government. I do not intend to speak for long. When I first learned this matter was to come before us I gathered a lot of statistics which I intended to use but, from reading the Dáil Debates, I have learned that most of them have already been used, though some of them were not presented as I would prefer them to have been and some of the points were not as well made as I think I could have made them. Still they have been made and reiteration, I fear, has a tendency to become boring rather than convincing. Therefore, I have decided to leave statistics alone. By doing so I leave myself open to the charge that I base my opposition on sentiment. I willingly accept that charge if the old meaning of the word is taken, a judgment based on feeling. Feeling comes from the heart and so does my opposition to the abolition of P.R.

Many years ago, when I was a young girl in my teens, and while the fundamental principles of Labour and Irish Republicanism were being inculcated in me, I attended many meetings where the principles of P.R. were explained and extolled. That was a long time ago, long before there was any hope or prospect of its coming to Ireland. I found those principles so entwined with the fundamental principles of Labour and Irish Republicanism that I find it difficult to disentangle them and I can no more readily forgo one than the other.

It seemed to my young mind that P.R. was so just, so truly democratic a method of electing a Government, that I added it to the list of just things which I wished to win for Ireland and the Irish people. All the years of its usage in our nation have done nothing to change that opinion. I have been told that I so hailed P.R. in my youth because all the movements to which I then belonged, and in which I then worked, were minority movements. Perhaps so; that could be true, but, even so, there is nothing in that fact that reflects discredit on those minority movements or on my opinion.

All great movements in this world, all down the years of history, have begun as a group around a germ of truth or ideal, and who are we in this generation to deny any germ of truth or an ideal its chance or its right to the fullness of its growth? We are a young nation in so far as being a self-governing nation and I do not think that sufficient time has elapsed, or that the time has yet come, to attempt to set it in a firm mould. After all, 40 years is no more than a breath in the life of a nation, and I fear there is a great likelihood of its being more prematurely set in that mould if we revert to the single member constituencies than if we retain the method we still have.

I do not believe that the best ideas for that firm mould will come from my own generation whose minds are sometimes swayed by old antagonisms, as I often find my own, and whose minds, no matter how much we might exalt and rejoice in the advances which have been achieved in our time, still are conditioned by the remembrance of old standards. Therefore, I do not think that from those minds the best ideas for the firm mould will come. The best ideas, I believe, will come from the minds of the present generation and onwards, from those who have been reared in a time free from foreign rule, who take and enjoy freedom as a natural right as they do the present standards in social amenities, and who also consider the hopes, the fears and the activities of my generation as things comparable in time with movements such as those of the Fenians, the Land War, the Young Irelanders, or even things more ancient. The best ideas, I believe, will come from that generation and that which follows it. It is from those generations that the shaping of free Ireland is to come. I believe that the abolition of P.R. will make their task more difficult.

I know it is generally deplored that the youth of the country is apathetic towards taking part in its political activities, but is that to be wondered at since they consider our ideas so ancient that they find none of the political movements that we have shaped completely satisfying, and are reluctant to accord any of them their full support? Still, under P.R., we have had evidence that there is a stirring in their minds towards taking part in the shaping of their country by the numbers of them—not splinters of any Party—who have offered themselves and their ideas to the electorate. That they fail to secure election is not important. What is important is that they give evidence that they are dissatisfied with what is on offer from us, and that the germ of the idea of taking part in the shaping of their country's future is in them.

The hope is that new, young ideas can more readily be achieved through P.R. If we abolish P.R. how can we know what movement of great beauty or utility we have prevented from coming into being, and which may be lost to us and to the country? I do not think there should be any attempt to be little that possibility because that possibility must have its beginnings in a minority group. Have not all the national movements in which we take such great pride, and to which we pay such homage, had their beginnings in minority groups?

It is because I remember the history of my country's struggle that I fail to understand—I simply cannot understand—this objection, this disdain, this fear of minority groups that is expressed by those who approve of the abolition of P.R. I was not reared in the belief that God and Truth are solely on the side of big battalions, nor can I more easily believe that God and Truth are solely on the side of big parliamentary Parties.

There has been much play about the word "stability" and the need for it in our Government. The abolition of P.R. has more or less been practically the only view we have of achieving and maintaining it. I consider that nonsense. I cannot readily think of any country, any democratic country in Western Europe, which has had a Government more stable than ours. Stability is essential to good and efficient Government, but may I ask does, or can, stability of itself ensure good and efficient Government? That question answers itself. Stability is but one prop of good and efficient Government; the greatest prop to good and efficient Government is an electorate satisfied that no unnecessary obstacle has been reared against electing a truly representative Government and that assurance to an electorate can only, I maintain, be achieved through P.R.

There is one more point to which I must refer. When I receive my ballot paper in the referendum I will vote "No", but this Bill has placed me in a most difficult position. Although I am apposed to the abolition of P.R. I would not care that any action of mine should have even the appearance of wishing to deny my fellow citizens their right to have their say on so important a matter since it has been raised, and therefore I must vote for the referendum. I only hope and pray that a majority of the citizens will, like me, vote "No" and thus retain for the country a truly democratic method of electing its Government.

Like the last speaker, I hope to be brief because over the past three months we have read so many long speeches on this matter. For the past two days we have heard almost a repetition of those speeches. There is no doubt that long speeches, which ramble away from the point and bring in many extraneous matters, are tedious to listen to. I can quite understand the impatience of many Senators and their not being able to listen to all this repetition and these long tedious speeches. For that reason, I hope to be very brief and to make just a few points as they occur to me.

This Bill, as every Senator knows, will not really do anything; nothing will actually become law as a result of the passing of the Bill here. Neither can a refusal to pass this Bill prevent an Act of the Dáil from becoming law, so that whatever we do here, with regard to this Bill, we shall have the referendum. It has been charged by the Opposition that the people have not had a sufficient opportunity of examining the pros and cons of this matter. After three months' debating in Dáil Éireann, after all those debates have been published in much detail by the daily papers, the bi-weekly and the weekly newspapers, after all the references to them on Radio Éireann every day and every night, and all the references made to the matter at meetings of the different political Parties, surely there is no foundation for the complaint that it has not received sufficient publicity or that the people have not received sufficient notice of it?

Of course, if the Opposition get their way in requesting that this Bill be not passed by this House the people will have an opportunity of examining the matter for a further three months. Perhaps the longer the people get to consider it the better. I think it is anyhow. I am quite satisfied that the people will have had sufficient time to decide the matter, but what troubles me most is that it is suggested that the people should not be permitted to decide it. Of course, while I shall vote in the opposite way to the last speaker, I think that is certainly wrong. We have had, over the years while Fianna Fáil were in Government, members of the Opposition calling on the Government to consult the people on this, that and the other matter—matters of ordinary administration. Yet, here is a matter which all agree is a very important matter, a matter which nobody else can decide except the people, and it is sought to deprive the people of an opportunity of deciding the matter for themselves. That is wrong.

One of the reasons given for not permitting the people to decide this matter is that there has been no demand for it. Quotations ad lib. have been given both here and in the other House from Dáil debates, and from newspapers, showing that Leaders of both sides of the House have demanded this measure periodically over the past 20 years. I have no intention of producing any of those quotations. I merely give my own ideas on this matter and I have been associated with elections for just over 40 years. I was associated with only one election before the introduction of P.R. but ever since the introduction of P.R., up to the last election, I have met people during my electioneering work in every election, saying: “My goodness, when are you going to abolish P.R. and give us a chance of knowing how we are voting and what we are voting for?” I have met people protesting against this method of election everywhere.

It is remarkable that at every election you have many votes marked with an "X" for the candidate of the voter's choice, instead of No. 1. Of course, we have had spoiled votes with two and three "X's" on them. It is the rule that where a voter marks an "X" opposite the name of the candidate of his choice, if there is no other mark on the paper, that vote is allowed as a No. 1 vote for that candidate. I hold that that is another indication that people would like to go back to the straight vote. I think that applies to local elections as well as to national elections. Another reason given to me by people I meet is that they did not understand, or were unable to follow, or at any rate did not follow the distribution of a surplus during an election. They found it hard to understand how the votes are counted again, and a proportion established and how so many are added to this name or to that. They found it somewhat easier to understand the distribution of votes where the candidate is eliminated. By and large, the system is not generally understood by most of the plain people whose votes decide elections.

It is suggested that this is not an opportune time to decide this issue but I have not yet heard any suggestion as to what would be an opportune time. I believe this is an opportune time because we must revise the constituencies this year, as we are bound to do under the Constitution. It is opportune to decide before the constituencies are revised according to population and other considerations whether or not they should also be reformed into single member constituencies.

On thing that gives me great satisfaction is that neither in the debate here nor in the other House does there seem to be any real objection to single member constituencies. So far, the debate has centred around the question of the single transferable vote and the straight vote and it appears there is very little contention regarding single member constituencies.

I am very much in favour of single member constituencies. I have been a candidate in national and local elections for the past 38 years. I have been a candidate in local elections under P.R. in an eight-member electoral area and in a five-member area. I have been a candidate in Dáil elections in five-seat and three-seat constituencies and my experience over the years in the different areas has been that, whether there were five or eight seats and six or ten or 12 candidates, I always found that each candidate had some area or stronghold of his own, so to speak, on which he depended to get his quota or almost his quota.

In practice where there are eight candidates elected for eight seats, if you examine the situation you find that each candidate had a part of the constituency to himself on which to depend for votes. A candidate who succeeded and became a member catered more or less specially for the needs of the people in that particular area. We have seen in county councils how a candidate from part of an electoral area which he claims as his own bailiwick always tries to get roads improved and all possible amenities for that part of his area as against other parts of the area. Therefore it was more or less looked on as his "single member constituency."

The same applies to Dáil constituencies where each Deputy has a stronghold on which he depends for a certain number of first preference votes. He gets second and third preferences from other candidates in other parts of the area. Similarly, when he goes into the Dáil—taking the case of a Deputy in a five-member constituency—he is particularly concerned with the people in a particular part of the constituency. I think the return to the single member constituency is a great idea. It is good for the people and it is bound to be good for Parliament.

My experience over the years has satisfied me that where a Deputy in any constituency has worked for his people, giving them good honest satisfactory service he need have no fear of going back to the people in his special stronghold to seek re-election. There are many examples of this in every Party and I do not know how it can be said that if this Bill is passed there is no hope of a strong and virile Opposition in the next Dáil. I cannot see that. Knowing the country, the people and the Deputies of all Parties, I am satisfied there are Deputies in every Party in the House who will be re-elected by their own strongholds.

Some Senators seem to fear that many sections of the people will be denied representation if P.R. is abolished. As against that, many sections have been denied representation because of P.R. One cannot have it both ways. A few examples come to my mind. We have the example of West Galway, where a Fine Gael candidate, the sitting member, headed the poll in the three-member constituency and failed to be elected.

They were not denied representation, as the other candidate went in.

I hold that that is a clear case where 4,206 Fine Gael people were denied representation, because of P.R. We had another example where a Fianna Fáil candidate finished with 6,000 votes and failed to get elected and a man who got only 2,000 first preferences was elected over him. These are freak results of P.R. They are on record and they are true. In my own area, a Fine Gael candidate, who was second highest in the poll, failed to be elected over three people under him. That deprived 6,000 Fine Gael people of representation there. That candidate stated publicly that he was not beaten by the people. He was unfairly defeated by a monster called P.R.

Did he say that?

Yes. Against Fianna Fáil, there was another freak result. In North Kerry, Fianna Fáil polled 500 votes in excess of two quotas and got one seat. I hold that there again 7,000 Fianna Fáil people were deprived of representation by P.R. These are just a few examples which occur to me, without any research or worry about them. They are in my mind over the years.

Whether the Seanad passes this Bill or holds it up, it is the people who will decide. Is it not terrible that, in this democratic country, where the referendum is enshrined in our Constitution, we are making an attempt to prevent the people deciding? The people have seen for themselves and they are in a position to decide. They know what has happened in all those countries of Europe where P.R. has led to disaster. They know that, even in our own country, the Government here was brought down by just one man.

Many quibbles have been made by learned professors here on the word "stability," but the people understand what stability means. It means economic security and national security for our people.

They are not getting that.

This must be decided by the people. It is their privilege. Why should we deny the people their privilege?

We cannot deny them the privilege.

Obstructing them.

We are seeking to do so.

No, we are not.

Pardon me. I will correct myself, with your permission, a Chathaoirligh, and with that of the Leader of the Opposition. We cannot deny them their rights.

Hear, hear! We cannot.

But it is sought to deny them their rights.

Obstruction.

Let the Taoiseach go to the Park to-night, dissolve the Dáil and have an election.

It is bad business for those opposite if they have to fall back on quibbling about words, trying to obstruct me, instead of making their case.

We cannot deny the people the right to decide.

I am amazed at the Leader of the Opposition. I listened to him, patiently or impatiently, as the case may be. I must submit to you, a Chathaoirligh, that he is giving a very bad example. We should expect better from him. At any rate, we cannot make the decision. Whether we like it or not, the people will make it. I appeal to this House not to obstruct this Bill or put anything in the way of the people making a decision on this matter.

I rise to oppose this measure, the purpose of which we know by now is to abolish the P.R. system of election. It was quite apparent from its introduction that the Government were determined to avail themselves of their numerical strength in the Oireachtas to abolish the democratic system of the single transferable vote. If they succeed in their design, this action will silence the voice of a very considerable section of the community who feel that neither of the two big Parties represents their particular point of view.

The Government quite frankly admit that it is their desire to avail themselves of their present position of near-dictatorship to endeavour to impose their wishes on the people. They are anxious to push on with this proposition now, because they feel that a general election under P.R., and perhaps without their present leader, would find them very much a minority Party. Their statements concerning their anxiety to allow the people to decide this matter—a subject which we all know never occurred to the people's minds—are rather ridiculous, to put it as plainly as possible.

The attitude which the Government Party are adopting would, no doubt, be admirable were this legislation, which they are forcing through, in furtherance of a project designed to improve the deplorable position of the country, by making employment available to our workless citizens or to raise the standard of our indigent and handicapped people. But when all the energies of the Government are centred on putting through a piece of legislation that will not produce one extra job or bring back one single emigrant, but on the contrary is designed to disfranchise a large section of the people, it is nothing short of tragic.

Government spokesmen say that the abolition of P.R. is necessary to produce a stable Government; but the present Government, elected by P.R., with its comfortable majority, is a stable Government. There is practically nothing standing in their way should they wish to put into operation schemes of full employment or anything else calculated to improve the lot of the people. What, then, does the Government want to do that they fear the votes of the citizens under P.R. might prevent their doing? Their whole attitude confirms the belief that they feel the disappearance of the present Taoiseach from the political scene would, under P.R. and with the present constituencies, mean also the disappearance of the dictatorship of their Party. For that reason, they feel it imperative that the representation of our considerable minorities be eliminated by a recasting of the constituencies and the reintroduction of the British system of the single non-transferable vote.

Throughout the debates in the other House, we have heard reiterated the need for a strong Government. Are the present Government not a strong enough Government? Have they not shown that they can ignore the wishes of the people in such matters as food subsidies, which have been already mentioned? Any Government stronger than that which we have now could be a dangerous dictatorship. There is a lot of truth in the statement made in the Dáil that if the present strong Government could have devised a way to abolish P.R. without bothering to consult the people by way of a referendum, it would have been abolished already.

All this talk on strong Government should sound a warning to our citizens. Why do the Government seek to abolish P.R. and entrench themselves even more firmly? What schemes do they propose to apply to the country that it is necessary to stifle the voices of large sections? It cannot be merely to give us what we already have, that is, stability, for our Government is quoted as an example of stable Government. In the current issue of the Daily Mail Year Book we read at page 24:—

"Both Houses in the Republic of Ireland (‘a country,' pronounces Professor Nicholas Mansergh, ‘remarkable... for her exceptional stability of Government') have enjoyed the single transferable vote system since 1922. The Tasmanian Lower House has employed it since 1907. The House of Laity of the Church Assembly, the Congregational Union, the Liberal Party, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the National Union of Teachers, the Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union, and the John Lewis Partnership all practise the single transferable vote. In 1949, the Australian Senate substituted the single transferable vote for the alternative vote. The Legislative Assembly of Gibraltar introduced it in 1950."

The publication continues:—

"Of the electoral systems outlined, only one, the single transferable vote, conforms to the demands of natural academic justice. To the now well-established usage of ‘one man, one vote,' it adds the rider, ‘one vote, one value.' It would end such gross injustices as have persisted in three successive South African Elections, where the Malan-Strijdom Nationalists piled up crushing majorities because three quarters of their M.P.s slipped in with small majorities (3,000 down to 47 in 1953), while three-quarters of the Opposition M.P.s suffered vote-wastage by amassing large majorities (8,500-3,000)."

The system which has resulted in the strong Malan Government in South Africa is hardly one that Ireland should adopt. It has produced in South Africa a strong Government, to which Senator Stanford has already made reference. That strong Government has been able to implement and keep in operation an inhuman system of racial segregation that has reduced the native population to the status of slaves; and to put into operation a policy which has closed the Christian mission schools set up by missionaries of various denominations for the education of native children.

Under P.R., such a state of affairs could not remain for long and our people should think carefully and spurn the overtures of a Party that would delude them into voting against P.R., the just and democratic system of voting which enables all sections to have a voice in the government of their country and which will ensure that no minority Government will attain a position where the votes of the majority cannot remove them from office.

I have listened to almost all this debate, which has been fairly lengthy so far, and I have read most of the debate in the Dáil. I heard the Taoiseach putting his case both in the Dáil and Seanad. I should like to say at the outset that P.R. with the single transferable vote seems to me to constitute a vitally important element in our whole democratic society. It represents a vital safeguard of liberal and democratic thought and government.

In his opening remarks here, the Taoiseach said that small Parties might be irresponsible and might "promise and pretend" to the electorate. I think Senator O'Quigley dealt with that well, because it is quite obvious that small Parties are not the only ones to promise and pretend. In fact, they are less likely to get away with it because they do not get the power the bigger Parties get.

The Taoiseach said something else which seemed to me to be revealing. He said that in such Coalition Governments as we have had, the Ministers were forced to report back to, and were under pressure from, their Parties. I personally see no objection whatever to the concept of Ministers reporting to their Parties and being responsible to their Parties. I regard it as revealing that the Taoiseach thinks that would be, in itself, a bad thing; that he regards a Cabinet Minister as being in some way separated from his Party, and having no responsibility to it, as soon as he is elected to a Cabinet seat.

I hope to deal presently with the question of stability. The Taoiseach made the point that in countries where you have single-seat constituencies, you had greater stability. I would simply deny that. I do not think you can make any such generalisation. Most of the countries in South America have such a system of election, and South American countries are far from being regarded as being essentially more stable in their government than others.

I am sorry the Taoiseach is not here. I do not say that in complaint, because I recognise that he has given us a great deal already of his time in this House, which I think we appreciate, because he has obviously heard most of these arguments before. I am sorry he is not here just to put the question —possibly the Minister for External Affairs will answer or put it to him— as to whether he would have liked in this country greater "stability" in the period 1927-1932, greater "stability" because the Government then would have had a bigger majority. At that time, of course, as was pointed out by Senator Hayes, P.R. was giving a pretty fair show to the Republican Party, the Party that subsequently became the Fianna Fáil Party, and I think that should be recognised.

One point in Senator Hayes's speech that I found disappointing—this applies to all Fine Gael speeches so far, and also, indeed, to the Labour speeches—is that we have had no indication from them as to whether if they get back into power, either singly or together, it is their intention, if P.R. is now abolished, to take steps to have it restored. It seems to me that it would be a good thing now if, on that particular point, Fine Gael and Labour were to make their attitude clear.

Senator Ó Maoláin, in making what I hope he will forgive me describing as the single transferable speech, which we subsequently heard two or three times here, and which was made two or three times in the Dáil, made the point that the 1925 Agreement would have been rejected by the people had they been given a chance to have a referendum on it. I have talked a good deal about that on previous occasions, and here I would simply point out that the people, having seen that agreement, signed, agreed, approved and ratified by the Dáil and Seanad, kept the Government, which had brought about that agreement, in power for seven more years after 1925, and that seems to me to make nonsense of the contention that, had the people been consulted, they would have rejected the agreement. They were consulted in successive elections and they kept in power for seven more years the people who had entered into that agreement and had it ratified.

Senator Ó Maoláin was not the only speaker but he was, I think, the first here to refer to conditions in France. I could say a good deal about France, and I might well be tempted to do so, but it seems to me that the situation there is quite irrelevant. P.R. was introduced for the total of the general elections for the first time in France in 1945. I do not know whether this House remembers who became the first Prime Minister after that. I do. It was General de Gaulle, and I do not now know whether he must consequently be regarded at that time as a symbol of instability and as a symbol of stability to-day. However that may be, the system was applied in France only for the six years up to 1951. It did not in fact apply before the war, or since then, and even in 1945-51 they had P.R. by lists. You voted for a Party by list, and if your Party list contained ten names and you got enough votes to elect four of them, it was the Party and not the voter who decided which four of that list would be elected. One of the factors in that was that only the same and safe Party man towards the top of the list was elected. That situation would obtain even more so with a Party with only one candidate in a constituency. Inevitably, there will be a good Party man who will do what he is told—the sane and safe back-bencher who will give no trouble. That, in fact, is one of the major arguments against the abolition of P.R. here.

I should like to refer now to one more point made by some of those who support the abolition of P.R. Senator Carter contends that Fine Gael will benefit by this change, and that the Labour Party will benefit by this change. He rather left me wondering whether Fianna Fáil was going to get any extra seats at all as a result of the change, because, if Fine Gael increases its representation under the new system and the Labour Party also, it seems to me one might as well leave things as they are, as far as getting stronger Fianna Fáil Government goes.

One thing that dismayed me was the way in which this matter came up in the first place. I may say I was shocked by what I can only term the casual manner in which the case was stated in the Dáil for the abolition of this electoral procedure by the Taoiseach, a process which we have had for so many years in this country. I was shocked by the almost casual way that the implication, as it were, was made that the onus was not on the Government to show why it should be abolished but rather on the Opposition to show why it should not be abolished. I felt that that casual approach was not a helpful one. I noted—it has been mentioned—that there was a decision at the Fianna Fáil Árd-Fheis. I should like to ask subsequent Fianna Fáil speakers what kind of debate there was at the Fianna Fáil Árd-Fheis on this subject. I did not see any report of such a debate.

It was reported.

I did not see any report of a discussion or any report of a single critical voice raised. I am open to correction. Senator Lenihan says there were people apparently in opposition.

I said there was a discussion, and that discussion was reported in the papers on the following day.

When I say "discussion", I mean discussion from both points of view. I do not mean discussion which consists merely in saying "yes" in a loud voice. Discussion to me means argument. I hope there was argument in the Fianna Fáil Árd-Fheis. Senator Lenihan assures me that there was discussion, but I wonder does he mean, by "discussion," argument for and against, or merely approval of the Executive decision? I am aware, of course, that the Executive of Fianna Fáil is a very stable Government. It governs the Party in an extremely stable way. One result of that stability was a unanimous vote for the abolition of P.R. I accept the assurance that there was vigorous debate. I have no doubt Senator Lenihan was one of the most vocal in criticism of the official view, before actually voting in favour of it subsequently. But in the reports I saw, I saw no evidence of criticism, of heart-searching, of scrutiny of conscience—just total acquiescence!

Now, Senator Carter said that in Fianna Fáil every member can have his say. But what does he say? He says, "yes", "yes", "yes". Now, on such an issue as this——

No. It is only the pink brand of politicians who say "yes, yes, yes".

No. Let him talk. This is very amusing.

I welcome this difference of opinion between Senator Carter and Senator Lenihan, and I hope it is the germ of future individual thinking within the Party, thinking I certainly would welcome, because I find it disturbing that a big Party like Fianna Fáil, a big and democratic Party, with its record, should be so controlled that not a single voice was raised, as far as public report goes, or individual vote cast of dissent, or apparently not even a query raised on such a vital issue as this. One is reminded of a sort of Communist Party meeting in Russia, or a meeting of Russian scientists such as took place in the Lysenko case. When the Lysenko case came before 700 scientists in Russia, they voted by 698 votes to two in favour of the Lysenko theory; of those two, one of them miserably withdrew his opposition that very night and the other, Professor Zdanov, published an object apology in Pravda the next morning, and said his vote was due to “vestiges of the deplorable university habit of thinking for oneself”. My hope is that that habit, which I do not regard as deplorable, has not been completely and ruthlessly eradicated in Fianna Fáil. I hope there are some who are prepared to think for themselves and, if they are not, I still hope that there is independent thinking in this Seanad, and that it is not quite dead from that point of view.

I hope, then, that this question will be considered in the light of what is good for the nation and not merely on grounds of Party advantage. The trouble is that many in Fianna Fáil, and to a notable degree the Taoiseach himself, are deeply and, I think, sincerely convinced that what is good for their Party is necessarily good for the country. They allow themselves to be guided by what I would call politician's intuition, which I would define as "that strange instinct which tells a politician he is right—whether he is or My own feeling in this matter, which is one I regard as being of great gravity, is that the Taoiseach, in sponsoring this rejection now of P.R., is letting down himself, his name, his reputation, his country, and, in the long term, even his own Party. I am no adulator of the Taoiseach, but I recognise in him certain very fine qualities. I think I speak for everybody here when I say that we have all had our moments of pride in having such a man at the head of Government for his personal dignity, his resolution and his courage. But, to me, the high repute deriving from these high qualities will be besmirched in history's record by this penultimate political act of a departing leader.

I shall feel sorry, but, I am afraid, not surprised, if history records this leader, as Goldsmith painted Burke as a man:—

"Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind

And to Party gave up what was meant for mankind."

The present proposal I regard as a major betrayal, consequently, of one of the best elements in our democratic system, an element which gave fair play to minority views, religious, political and sectional in any sense. It was a thing of which we could be proud, of which we can still be proud if we retain it. It was, in fact, and has been a show piece for the world. It is just and fair; it is a finely balanced, sensitive and faithful recorder of the people's will.

I should like to quote from a letter written in June, 1938, by Rev. Canon Luce of Trinity College, in which he wrote:—

"It would be a thousand pities if a Party in a fit of impatience were to scrap this well-tested instrument of enlightened democracy, an instrument to which we all, irrespective of creed, class and Party, owe far more than we sometimes realise, and which can do for our children what it has done for us.

P.R. has been a healing force in our midst. Old political feuds are dying; public spirit is replacing faction. Our elections are well-conducted. The voice of reason is heard, and the gun is silent. P.R. deserves much of the credit; for P.R. produces contented and loyal minorities, whereas the other system breeds muzzled, silent, discontented minorities, predisposed to doctrines of violence.

P.R. has been a unifying force, and unity is strength. The other system antagonises majority and minority, accentuates the differences between them, and, therefore, weakens both. How, then, can some say that P.R. fails to give strong governance? A contented minority is a strength to the majority, while a discontented minority and a bullying majority are a weakness to the whole body politic.

Since the establishment of the Free State we have lived under several administrations, every one of them elected by P.R. Every one of them has been a strong Government, judged by the true strength of test. Their legislative output has been large, yet most of the grave measures have been carried by the slenderest majority. The scale only just turned, but there was consent behind it, and, whether we approved or disapproved, we all accepted the decisions loyally and cheerfully and made them our own; for we have been able to say to ourselves: ‘It is the will of the people, ascertained under the fairest electoral system ever devised by the wit of man.' We shall not be able to say that if P.R. goes. If P.R. goes, the feeling of enforced submission will banish the freeman's feeling of glad consent to the law which he, through his representative, has helped to make. A Government with a majority of six under P.R. is infinitely stronger than a Government with a majority of sixty elected otherwise."

Part of that was quoted in the Dáil, and it was unfairly suggested by interjection that perhaps since 1938 Canon Luce had changed his mind about that. I am permitted by him to say that he most emphatically has not changed his mind, and that if the referendum is taken he proposes to cast his vote in favour of the retention of the system which he praised in those terms.

My contention, therefore, is that P.R. is an excellent instrument. Why then—the question is legitimate—has it not produced a better Parliament so far, and better. Irish Governments down the years? My answer to that would be: Because the people, whether through ignorance, credulity or under-education, so far have not willed such a Government; they have got, in fact, the Governments that they have chosen. There has been a large measure, I am afraid, of credulity. The feeling was at first: "Let us try ten years of strong, stable Government, 1922 to 1932" and finding it did not satisfy them, the people then said: "All right. Let us try a real Republican Government" and they tried that for 16 long years until 1948.

Then they thought: "All right. That has not satisfied us. We still have not got what we were promised in 1916. Let us try a coalition of the best brains of all the other Parties". That was tried for three years and that did not satisfy. Then they said: "Let us give Fianna Fáil another chance", and they did for three years until 1954. Then they tried a coalition again for another three years, and now Fianna Fáil again. At this juncture some people are saying, and Fianna Fáil are in the van: "Now let us try altering the electoral system". None of these people, apparently, considers that it might be a good idea to alter their policy, and would prefer to change anything rather than the policies they have been applying or misapplying.

There is a wild hope suggested by this Bill that if we abolish P.R. and smash this sturdy, yet finely balanced, electoral apparatus we shall in some extraordinary way save the country. I have been asked, arising out of this Bill, do I think that the abolition of P.R. would really make such a big difference. My answer to that is that in the immediate future, perhaps, it would not because most of the Parties, in fact, put much the same kind of highly-conservative and anti-progressive policy before the people, and most of the people are still being fooled most of the time. And many of those who have ceased to be fooled have left the country. But let us not blame the electoral machine for bad political policies or bad results from such policies.

In my opinion, to feed such a shoddy collection of Party policies into this finely-designed electoral machine and expect it to produce dynamic and progressive Governments, is like feeding sows' ears into a high-powered loom and expecting it to produce a steady supply of silk purses. To harbour such an expectation is folly enough, but to think that the end-product of such a machine can be made intensely beautiful simply by smashing the machine, is a mark, in my submission, of the higher lunacy.

I want that machine to be preserved. I want it to be saved from the wreckers who want to smash it. I want it to be preserved for the day when our electorate will be sufficiently educated to use it and to use it as it can be used.

On a point of order, is the Senator permitted to read his speech as he has been for the last ten minutes?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Senator is entitled to refer to notes. He is not entitled to read his speech but is entitled to refer to notes.

I did read at some length an extract from Canon Luce's statement. I am not reading, I am afraid. I am sorry that it seems to disturb Senator Lenihan. At the same time, I have no doubt that such stimulus is intellectually valuable and may be fruitful, but I can assure him that I am not reading now.

I want this machine to be saved, then, for the time when the electorate will be sufficiently educated, as I said, to use it as it can be used and to good purpose. By the single transferable vote, in my contention, P.R. offers a system which ensures that political Parties and political ideas will be represented in Parliament, in this House and in the other House, in proportion to the voting strength they command among the electorate. Such a system is eminently just, and to desire any other system, even for Party benefit, seems to me to desire to derive Party benefit from electoral injustice and disproportionate representation.

Senator O'Quigley has already given the House figures about the proportion between the percentage votes got in recent elections and the percentage of seats secured and it is quite apparent in the 1933 elections, in the 1948, 1951 and 1957 elections, that on each occasion the big Parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, were the only ones that got more than their proportionate share. In other words, our present system, with many three member constituencies, does, in fact, in practice, encourage and favour the bigger Parties.

I shall not weary the House by giving the percentages, unless somebody is prepared to deny that contention, because it can be shown for each of these elections that the only two Parties that on each of those occasions got more than the percentage of seats to which their percentage of votes entitled them were Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the two big Parties. To deny that, I suggest, is impossible, and I do not believe anybody will challenge me to produce those figures which I am quite happy to produce if anybody does.

The present case against P.R. seems to fall under three main heads: first, the multiplicity of Parties which it is said to produce; second, Coalitions which I may call ad hoc Coalitions, made after the election and, third, that it produces weak unstable Government.

To deal with the first objection first, that it leads to multiplicity of Parties, if we, in Ireland, look at other countries, that seems to be manifestly untrue. There are just as many Parties in Northern Ireland, in the Six-County area, as there are down here. They have the Unionists, the Independent Unionists, the Nationalists, the Labour Party, the Irish Labour Party, Sinn Féin and a number of Independents. They have precisely the same kind of pattern as we have here, although they have not got P.R. —which personally I regret—but the real fear here is not that there will be a multiplicity of Parties, but that there will be competing groups offering much the same policy, but commanding perhaps greater or less public confidence, arising out of their promises, from the electorate.

There are, in fact, very few Parties in this country and most of them derive not from P.R., but from the fact that the people have observed the failure of the bigger Parties, when in power, to keep faith with the electorate. In my opinion, Clann na Poblachta which was the only new Party in recent times which reached anything like fairly large representation, got into power, got into prominence, by taking the 1927 Fianna Fáil policy and promising to implement it. I would defy anybody to find a difference between the Clann na Poblachta policy which they put before the people in 1947-48 and Fianna Fáil policy in 1927. The difference which the people thought they saw was that Clann na Poblachta at least was going to implement it.

What produces the multiplicity of Parties and the subdivisions, is not P.R. but dissatisfaction with the failure of the big Parties to implement their policies. P.R. does not create divisions; it reflects them. It reflects the existing ones, and the single member constituency system merely allows one to pretend that such divisions do not exist. It seems to me that to smash the machine which reveals divisions that are still there, on the pretence that you are getting rid of the divisions by smashing the machine that reveals them, is like thinking that the cure for an unpleasant face is to smash the mirror in which you have just observed it.

The second objection is that it produces ad hoc Coalitions—Coalitions after the event—Parties of widely differing policies coming together after the election. I recognise that there is a modicum of truth in this objection. I think it is fair to say—so far as I understood him—that the Taoiseach's main objection was made under this head. I say that there is a modicum of truth in it. There is a tendency to have post-election inter-Party bargaining. I believe, for instance, if we had a really effective Labour Party in this country, it could never imagine itself taking part in a Coalition with the highly Conservative Fine Gael Party. They might in certain circumstances have said: “So far as your legislation is progressive, we will support you,” but to take office with them seemed to me to be a negation of Labour Party policy. That is my personal opinion but it is obvious that certain bargains were struck, perhaps because the Labour Party is not a very real Labour Party at all. Nevertheless, if the public wanted it, and if the differences are so small in fact between the Parties, why should they not come together, and who is the Taoiseach to tell them that they must not?

We have, in fact, in this country five Tory Parties—Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party, Clann na Talmhan and what remains of Clann na Poblachta—five Tory Parties with five Tory policies—sometimes looking a bit more progressive at election times, but when solidly entrenched in power, looking very Tory indeed. Why should we not have a five-Party Tory Coalition? I do not see why not. I think it would be a pretty clear reflection of the will of the people.

The main Fianna Fáil objection to that, and to joining with any other Party, lies in the fact that they would have to share the power, would have to share the kudos, and perhaps would have to share the spoils of office, but it would also—and that is one value I would see in such a coming together of all the big Parties who really have the same policy—expose, once and for all, to the people the failure of that policy, whether it is called Fine Gael policy, Fianna Fáil policy or whatever Party policy you like. It would expose to the people that the policy itself was wrong, and not the electoral system, nor indeed the T.D.s or the Ministers.

James Connolly saw that long ago. In 1897, he said: "If you could remove the English Army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of a Socialist Republic, your efforts would be in vain." That was Connolly's view of what it would mean and I believe the failure of the successive policies of Irish Governments so far would be shown up, if these five Tory Parties would come together.

It is objected also under this same heading that the electorate—and the Taoiseach said it here in this House— are not told in advance that there is going to be a coalition, and so do not realise that there would be a coalition, and that therefore it is not fair. We must recognise, in so far as it concerns 1948, there is some validity in that point. I did not see any suggestion before the election in 1948 that there would be a "get together", a "rallying together", a coalition against Fianna Fáil. I think there is something in that suggestion, but it has no validity at all in relation to 1954. The people knew perfectly well what would happen if they voted inter-Party in 1954. Therefore, that objection is quite unsound in relation to 1954. The electorate knew exactly what voting for the inter-Party would mean and they knew also—and I think this is significant—how they could increase or diminish the weight of each Party element in the potential Coalition Government. They also knew exactly what the alternative was, and they threw out that alternative—and that alternative was a Fianna Fáil Government.

Furthermore, even in 1948 before the election, Fianna Fáil had an over-all majority in the House, and their Government had 18 months to go, but they were irritated by losing two by-elections, so that instead of going ahead with their policy which they had power to implement—it was not upset in any way in the House—they went to the country and asked the country for a bigger majority, for what was called "a clear majority". That was the main issue in the 1948 election, and the people requested to pass judgment on that main issue in that general election gave the answer: "No", and threw Fianna Fáil out of office.

I should like to ask: did Fianna Fáil learn any lesson from either of those defeats? Did they say: "We must recognise that for some reason the electorate has rejected us. Why did they reject us? Is it because of our policy, because of the way we have been implementing our policy, or is it because we have not yet implemented our policy after 16 years of unbroken power?" I think it legitimate to expect a Party in such conditions to put that type of question to itself.

I have suggested already that the coming into being, into prominence, of Clann na Poblachta was due to the fact that they took the 1927 policy of Fianna Fáil out of cold storage and promised to apply it. Yet after these defeats, what Fianna Fáil, in fact, said was: "No; there could be nothing wrong with us." I am afraid that is the attitude of Fianna Fáil—maybe it is the attitude of any politician who has been in power for a long time. It is not to be found solely in Fianna Fáil, but it is very obvious in Fianna Fáil. "There could not be anything wrong with us, so what is wrong? It must be the voting system, the electoral system. We shall have to change that." The Bourbon family in France were thrown out, and when they came back, it was said of them that they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. That was due in their case to inordinate pride, and it came before a very big fall.

Now, I should like to say something briefly about the two Coalition Governments for which, I have made it sufficiently clear, I had no immense or passionate admiration. But let us look fairly at what they were, what they did and compare them and their results with one-Party Government results, forgetting for a moment which Party was more arrogant or which Party talked most about what it had done.

In fact, the first Coalition Government was very interesting to observe, because it was composed of the Ministers of different Parties. It is true to say that each one of these Ministers was on his toes to show that he, his Party and his Party's policy could achieve results and bring things about. For a considerable period they did well. That cannot really be objectively or impartially denied. For the first time great strides forward were made in many Departments; though, admittedly, they were strides that could have been made long ago during the 16 years that Fianna Fáil were in power.

That is one of the things that most irritate the present Government. It irritated them when they were in opposition that the Coalition Government did things relatively easily which could have been done long ago.

There was then his healthy rivalry between ministerial colleagues. It remained for quite a time a friendly rivalry. We all know that that friendliness broke down in the end. But within the terms of Tory Government—and that is the only kind of Government we ever had since we got self-Government in this country—they did a reasonably good job. Fianna Fáil may not like that; I view it objectively and I am not a supporter of Coalition Government—they did a good job, both at home and abroad.

In one field in particular more was done in three years than had been done in 25 years before. Ask any T.B. patient, sick person, ask old people, people in the workhouse, the rich or the poor, what was achieved by the then Minister for Health, who was, in my contention and in the belief of many people in this country, the most dynamic and consistently effective Minister we have yet had in any Department. He is not the Minister of whom the Coalition is most apt to boast. Yet he was a Minister with a brilliant record of action. The record of several others of that time in Government stands up to critical examination. Viewed fairly, it will be found that the first Coalition brought the country at least a little further on the road of progress until it smashed itself up when it ran into an ecclesiastical road-block.

Yet, how wrong the present Taoiseach was in his judgment of that first Coalition Government when it came into power, because on the 9th February, 1948—I am quoting from the Irish Times—the present Taoiseach is quoted as saying:—

"The Coalition would fly apart and we would be forced into another general election within a few months."

He was wrong. It ran for three and a quarter years which is just a bit over the average life of British Parliaments since 1918.

The second Coalition Government— I do not want to dwell too long on it— was, I think, less courageous and a less effective Government. It was elected, though, by the people who knew exactly what they were doing. Those people had been consulted by Fianna Fáil when Fianna Fáil had an overall majority. Fianna Fáil went to the people, and the people had said: "Give us back the Coalition again." Though it failed to solve the problems of poverty, unemployment and emigration, its successor to-day, with an equally overall majority, has not been conspicuously more successful in any of these fields.

The third objection to P.R. was stated to be that it does not give strong Government—stability. I should like to ask this question. Does the single seat constituency really give stronger majorities? I should like to give two quotations. The first of these is from an article in The Contemporary Review in 1948 by John Fitzgerald. This article is about the Irish general election in 1948. Mr. Fitzgerald says this about it. One is a remark of his own and the other is a quotation from the Irish Times. The facts he mentions are significant:—

"...In bidding to become the Government at its first general election the Clann——"

—He is referring to Clann na Poblachta—

"ran 93 candidates. It secured 14 per cent. of the total poll, but only 7 per cent. of the seats (173, 166 votes; ten seats). In many constituencies its candidates between them polled well below a quota, and failed to secure representation. Thirty-one of them forfeited their deposits. Some candidates of other parties, including Fianna Fáil, also lost theirs. Fianna Fáil (de Valera) secured 42 per cent. of the votes, and 46 per cent. of the seats."

The second quotation from this article is one from the Irish Times:

"The election results have proved that the system of the single transferable vote makes for stability rather than chaos.... The threat to political and economic orthodoxy, constituted by Clann na Poblachta, has been largely removed by the electorate."

I suggest that that is proved, supported and confirmed by the figures that Mr. Fitzgerald quotes before that.

The second quotation is also from Mr. Fitzgerald. This is about the British election in 1951 and is from The Contemporary Review of December, 1951. This is in relation to a British election under the single seat constituency system. This is what he said:—

"After more than 18 months' experience of continuing his Government in office with the minute majority of six in the Parliament elected in February, 1950, Mr. Attlee secured a dissolution and asked the country for a renewal of confidence with ‘adequate' parliamentary support."

In other words, he went to the country. He had a majority of only six, and he asked for "a clear majority" under a system which the Taoiseach tells us will give good, strong, clear majorities. Mr. Fitzgerald goes on:—

"The votes cast on October 25th, however, show the country still very evenly divided and the new House of Commons is only slightly less closely balanced than its predecessor ...Although there were only four unopposed returns and nearly 83 per cent. of the citizens voted, in the 621 constituencies fought by 1,376 candidates only 27 changes in party representation arose. Though small, the changes were vital, Labour suffering a net loss of 20 seats to the Conservatives. Mr. Attlee therefore resigned, and Mr. Churchill, with a majority of 17, now leads a Conservative Government."

With this wonderful system which ensures stability and strong majorities, you switch from a Labour majority of six to a Conservative majority of 17 out of a House of 625. That, I submit, makes nonsense of the contention that you are necessarily going to get big majorities out of the single seat non-transferable vote.

On the question of stability, I should like to remind the House that we had this stability, that is to say, if you judge stability by what the Taoiseach seems to mean, and what the Fianna Fáil speakers seem to mean, the big power of the Government. We had it very strongly here between 1922 and 1927 because the minority in the Dáil was minute, 20 or 30 members. Mr. Cosgrave had a very big majority. Is the Taoiseach or Fianna Fáil happy that the country was in a better state or better governed because of that big strong majority with the tiny Opposition? Do they think that the country became less stable in 1927 when Fianna Fáil were in the Dáil between 1927 and 1932, in other words, when the Opposition was made bigger and more effective? Will Fianna Fáil contend that that made for less stability and less good government? Was it better when they stayed out, and when strong Government could tend to do what it liked, and snap its fingers at the Opposition? Was it improved by the increase in the size of the Opposition by the coming into the Dáil in 1927 of Fianna Fáil? The answer is obvious.

One of the dangers about strong Government is that it becomes arrogant in power, and fails after a time even readily to discuss parliamentary amendments, much less accept them. It grows in arrogance as it grows in power. Govment strength. Strength to do what? What is it precisely that the Government has to be strong to do?

Do the supporters of this Bill want the Government to be strong enough to be able to implement its policy, or to be strong enough not to have to bother? I am afraid it is the latter. If your Government is really strong and in office for a long time you do not have to bother so much. There is not so much urgency about applying your policy. That is what happened in the 16 years of Fianna Fáil power.

What was said in relation to the Fianna Fáil paper could be said about the Party. It was said in The Bell, in an article by Dr. Vivian Mercer, that “the Irish Press started with high ideals and a big overdraft. The two diminished side by side down the years until now it has no overdraft”. I am afraid that that is what happened to the Fianna Fáil Party. It started with high ideals, to which many of us who were young at the time looked with hope. It grew in arrogance with increasing power—and arrogance which it has not unlearnt, even after being defeated twice.

I believe, on the contrary, that there is great public benefit to be derived from a situation where the Government is not strong enough to be able to snap its fingers at public opinion, and where if it fails to keep its promises it can be thrown out.

How many remember what in fact the Fianna Fáil aims were? I will refer to them. I will refer to their policy when they had just been elected to these 16 years of power. I should like to quote some words of the Taoiseach on that point. He said:—

"That the whole basis of production, distribution, finance, and credit requires complete overhauling is amply evident from the reports of the various committees which are summarised so admirably in the Secretary-General's report."

I am quoting, by the way, from collected speeches of Mr. de Valera, Peace and War, page 13:—

"If we shirk any item in this task, if we fail to make the radical changes obviously necessary, if we fail to organise our economic life deliberately, and purposely to provide as its first object for the fundamental needs of all our citizens so that everyone may at least be reasonably housed, clothed and fed, we shall be failing in our duty, and failing cruelly and disastrously."

He added:—

"But it must be a will that will seek effective action no matter what interest is crossed——"

We have the best housing conditions in the world.

Senator Lenihan has just interjected to say that we have the best housing conditions in the world.

The Commissioner for Housing for New York City.

I would be very tempted to go down that by-path and perhaps lead Senator Lenihan into Fenian Street, Townsend Street, Francis Street and the rest of them. Remarkable advances have been made in housing by Fianna Fáil, I recognise that, but the stumbling block has been the so-called "economic rent". Consequently, those who most need rehousing are still in the slums.

I have quoted what the present Taoiseach said on the 26th September 1932 when he was President of the Council of the League of Nations, and he said that in Geneva. I think it is fair to put the question: if that was what is put forward as the view of the head of the Government, coming to power for the first time in 1932— the very year he came to power— perhaps Senator Lenihan would tell us if the whole basis of distribution, production, finance and credit has been completely overhauled.

We have more nationalised industry than any country outside the Iron Curtain.

Have we radically changed our entire system in order to provide first for the needs of our people and not first for the greeds of the new Ascendancy? If we have in fact radically altered our whole system of production, distribution and finance, which I deny—we have not radically altered them——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Are we to have a debate on that issue to-night?

I am making the point that the Fianna Fáil Party, in supporting this Bill, are asking for more power. I am asking— power to do what? Why did they not do it when they had the power? I think it fair to mention to the House what it was they said they would do. I made the accusation already that they have failed to implement their policy. I should like to indicate that it is on these points they have not done so. I shall not dwell on it, but I should like to put the question: if in fact that has not been done, this radical overhaul and radical change, and so on, who was it that branded such future failure as cruel and disastrous? I would ask what is the penalty which political Parties and politicians must pay for such cruel and disastrous failure? I suggest it is loss of power. But that penalty is not mentioned in the present Bill. What is asked for is a reward— more power. I do not regard that as equitable. The reward asked for now, after 21 years of power—not 16—is more power, bigger majorities, disproportionate representation.

One other point on this question of strong government is that, when you have a strong Government and a fat majority, when you know you can do exactly what you like with Parliament, not only is effective opposition in Parliament gravely diminished in its effectiveness, as Senator O'Quigley has demonstrated, but any critics who may exist within the Party—people critical of the official line, such as Senator Lenihan, within the Party—are rendered powerless because, whereas with a small majority anybody critical within the Party has a certain measure of influence. I may be wrong, of course, in crediting Senator Lenihan with critical powers within the Party; I may be unfair to him. However, if there be any critics of the official line within any Party with a colossal majority, I submit that those critics are rendered practically powerless if that majority is colossal, whereas if the majority is small then it is one of the points that may be made in favour of Coalitions——

On a point of information, please. I am trying to follow the Senator's reasoning. Did he make the case that the straight vote system would bring very small majorities—17 in the case of one British Government? Is he now trying to make the case that there will be vast majorities?

That is a legitimate question. If I may be allowed to answer it for the enlightenment of Senator Ó Maoláin I shall be happy to go back over that point. I gave an example of the 1951 situation in Britain that it is untrue to say that you are necessarily, from the single seat constituency system, going to get a big majority. I think I have proved that that is simply not true. Therefore, one of the major reasons for asking for the abolition of P.R. falls to the ground, if you admit that. I said it is not necessarily true. My second point is that, even if you achieve a colossal majority, which does not necessarily follow from the other system, but it can follow, and it did follow in Britain in 1935, and even more so in 1931—if you achieve such a situation with a colossal, complacent government majority then you render nugatory all criticism within the Party which may arise. I should like to quote the figures in 1935 for the British situation. They are not very complicated. The British National Government polled in 1935 12,000,000 votes and for that they got 405 seats. The Labour Party polled 8,500,000 and they got 121 seats. The others polled 1,250,000 and got only 21 seats, the others being mostly Liberals. The Government seats represented, each of them, 30,000 voters; the Labour seats represented 60,000 voters each, and the others each represented 70,000. That is the kind of pattern you may easily get in the single seat constituency system.

I see a danger, too, that strong Government may become immovable Government, and that immovable Government—the Government you cannot shift—may become a motionless Government, a Government that does not create any legislative product or any implementation of policy. I suggest that the talk about "stability" really comes from a desire to rule whether you have the people's authority behind you or not; in other words stability by majorities disproportionate to their voting strength in the country. Parties and politicians under such circumstances are encouraged to mistake power, which they have got by disproportionate representation, for authority given to them by the people, whereas in fact it has been given to them by a bad electoral system.

I should like now to turn to the question as to what was the correct interpretation of the electorate's failure on several occasions to grant any Government in this country a clear majority. What was the correct interpretation of the will of the people in those circumstances? I know that Fianna Fáil in the '30's, at times when they were depending upon the Labour Party for continuance in office, became very irritated, but supposing they had interpreted the people's will as desiring a Fianna Fáil policy with Labour support, a Fianna Fáil policy with Labour leanings, what in fact would have happened? We would have had Irish shipping at a much earlier stage. We would have had far better social welfare before the war. We would have had electricity from turf long before the war instead of having to wait until 1946 for the idea to germinate. We would have had the fairly progressive Government the people were asking for by slanting the grant of power in that way.

If, however, Fianna Fáil were to have considered that, on the whole, Fine Gael was nearer to them than Labour, then you could have had a good, strong, anti-progressive coalition on behalf of the new forces in power in the industrial and commercial fields of wealth and privilege, but Fianna Fáil did not want either type of support. It seems to me that it would have been legitimate to interpret the people's will thus: "We want a Fianna Fáil Government, but as they have made very slow progress we want them to be in the position where the Labour Party can goad them into progressive activity."

That would have been a legitimate interpretation of the people's will, but pride refused that interpretation and two or three times in the '30's and in the '40's though complaint is frequently made by Fianna Fáil itself that there was a multiplicity of elections, many of them were forced by Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil went back to the people and implored them to give them an over-all majority, which the people did. Then the war situation came along with many pressing problems, which could have been solved far earlier during seven years of Fianna Fáil power, as yet untackled.

It has even been suggested that the security of the county might have been in danger during the war because Fianna Fáil had not got a uniformly stable majority during that period.

That suggestion is balderdash. The British Government, from 1931 to 1940 was about as stable as you could get. They had the most colossal majority they ever got in November, 1931, which was two years before Hitler came to power. That Government remained stable from two years before Hitler's coming to power until the battle of Narvik in April, 1940. The real danger to internal security in Britain at that time arose from having an all-powerful Government complacent in its unshakable power. Its colossal stability, in fact, led to colossal conceit and to the very brink of total disaster.

How was that disaster averted? By a Coalition Government. I think that is not without significance. In Ireland during that period all the Parties supported Fianna Fáil very loyally during the war in their main attitude on all major constitutional or security issues. I can think of only one constitutional or security issue on which Fianna Fáil was not so supported; that was when the Government deemed it necessary to alter the rules of evidence in order to execute George Plant, who had been acquitted by the courts. They were not supported in that by Fine Gael and Labour, though it is true that they had the support of Deputy Dillon in the Dáil. That is the only instance I can think of during the war when they failed to win the over-all support of the Parties.

It is nonsense to say, therefore, that our security might have been jeopardised because we had not got a stable war-time Government. In fact, under P.R. in both peace and war, and even in civil war, we have had one of the most stable Governments in Europe. I should like to quote the Economist of the 6th September, 1958, which says:—

"The reasons that Mr. de Valera advances to support a change are that P.R. has caused instability of government and promoted the rise of small Parties. They are hardly reasons which seems to accord with the facts. Since 1922 only three men have formed Governments; Mr. Cosgrave, Mr. de Valera, and Mr. Costello. But this austere standard, the administration of the United States is dangerously unstable and British politics as positively Balkan. The first Irish Government lasted ten years; the second 16; the third, fourth and fifth, three years each. The sixth, Mr. de Valera's own, is now in office with a clear majority. Certainly minor Parties have come and gone: but only three have shown staying power—Mr. de Valera's, Mr. Costello's and Labour."

That seems to me to be fair comment on this question as to whether in peace and war, we would not have stable government. To support that further, I should like briefly to quote from the Manchester Guardian of the 2nd September, 1958, which said:—

"Under P.R. the Irish Republic (formerly Free State) has enjoyed about the stablest Government in Europe. First Mr. Cosgrave's Party had a run of ten years. Then Mr. de Valera's Party had a run of 16 years. Since then the pendulum has swung more evenly but not with uncomfortable rapidity; each side has had about 3 years at a time in office."

Therefore, it seems to me to be true that not only have we not had instability but we have had one of the stablest Governments in Europe, due to the first-class system we have had, a system which is now being besmirched and attacked, and which it is sought now to throw out.

I have endeavoured to examine the case that has been made against P.R. My conviction remains strongly in favour of it for the simple reason that P.R., as opposed to the single-seat constituency with the non-transferable vote, puts effective power on political decisions into the hands of the voter. That is where I want political power to remain, and that is where power should be in a democracy in the hands of the electors, power, real power to express effective preference between Parties, preference between individuals inside Parties, preference between individuals and Parties. That is the power that Party bosses and Party leaders do not like to leave in what they regard as the "irresponsible" hands of the electors. That is the power given into the very hands of the voters by this system of P.R., the power which has given us all the Governments in this country since 1922. Under the one-member system, on the contrary all the voter has to do, all he has a right to do, is to plump for one candidate and, under that system, we shall be coming back to the split vote, and the three-cornered contest, all of which are very bad.

I am afraid it is obvious that Fianna Fáil looks forward to many of those three-cornered contests, but I suggest they are unfair to the electors. They are bad in principle; they are bad in Britain. Furthermore, they have the effect that this misnamed "straight vote" system is often productive of a compromise vote. Many Liberals in Britain to-day vote either Tory or Socialist as a "second best", so as not to waste their votes but, if given the chance to express their preference, they would vote Liberal first and only secondly either Labour or Conservative. The system in Britain does not show a clear picture, since there are many, perhaps thousands, of these "compromise" votes, so, therefore, it is not a straight vote system.

There is one point I wish to make in detail. I take it that we shall come to a Committee Stage, but this is one detail I want to make in case not. That is, in relation to paragraph 3, sub-section (6) on page 12 of this Bill. The section reads as follows:—

"No court shall entertain any question as to whether the commission has been properly constituted or any question as to whether the determination or revision of the boundaries of constituencies as set out in their report has been properly carried out."

I suggest that that proviso is repugnant to the Constitution and I suggest, if the Bill is passed in this form, it will be possible to have that point tested in the courts. It will not be possible, in fact, to hold this referendum at once because the Constitution says, Article 46, Section 4:—

"A Bill containing a proposal or proposals for the amendment of the Constitution shall not contain any other proposal."

This, I would submit, is another proposal. It is a proposal to prevent the courts from having a power which, apparently they would have normally; from exercising a power, from continuing in possession of a power. That is quite a separate issue. It has nothing to do with P.R. It has nothing to do with the whole spirit of this Bill. It is a totally new principle—the taking away by this sub-section of power from the courts to entertain a question as to whether the commission has been properly constituted or as to whether their work has been properly done. I say "take away power" because if the courts have not that power vested in them at present, the sub-section has no meaning at all. But, if that power is so vested in them now, this article is introducing a quite separate and new principle into the whole constitutional situation, which Section 4, Article 46, of the Constitution precludes, and so I suggest, on that one point of detail, it is a very dangerous sub-section. I shall speak further upon it if and when we come to the Committee Stage.

I shall conclude, then, just on this point. The question may be legitimately put and has been put: "Why, if you feel so strongly, not leave it to the electors to decide?"

We in the Seanad can do no more than hold it up for 90 days. The worst that can happen to the elecorate is that they will have to think it over for another 90 days, and I do not think that that will do them serious harm. After all, the system has been in operation since 1922. But, if this has to be submitted to the electors, it is going to go to them, to the electorate, without my approval and my sponsorship. It is not going to them as a Bill that has been passed with the help of my vote. Why do I do that? Senator Mrs. Connolly O'Brien rightly put it on the list of "just things we have won for Ireland," and I am not going to cast a vote in favour of its abolition. I am going to vote against the Bill. So I shall resist by my vote this retrograde measure. I think it does little credit to its sponsors, and if the people were to be cajoled into accepting it, it would deprive the electorate of a valuable degree of discriminatory control over its representatives.

If this Bill goes through, that power of discriminatory control will pass into the smooth hands of the Party bosses, but, however, if the referendum does go to the people, the result may well surprise Fianna Fáil, because many voters who have lately voted for Fianna Fáil, because they have seen Fianna Fáil being just a shade less supine in face of certain pressures than Labour or Fine Gael have proved to be—those Fianna Fáil voters will not vote, as Fianna Fáil asks them, for the abolition of P.R., but will preserve in the hands of the electors all the valuable discriminatory powers which P.R. at present enables them to wield.

I think, before discussing this Bill, it might be no harm to mention that it is a very fundamental and important measure—that is, it is the first opportunity since the foundation of the State that the most democratic of all processes has been invoked, namely, the process of the referendum. A good deal of talk has been bandied about here by some of our university professors and by our opponents in regard to this measure. The allegation has been made that it is an undemocratic Bill and that it will be hurtful to democracy in Ireland. Yet, the very Bill itself envisages that a practical Article in our Constitution is being invoked for the first time, and that the people will get an opportunity of making their decision known in free and open franchise under that Article in the Constitution. It is perhaps no harm to mention that that has been done 21 years after the Constitution was enacted, when the Constitution has come of age.

We are very proud of the fact that the Constitution enshrined the fundamental liberties of our people here. Free of the trimmings in the Constitution, the people can now exercise that free franchise. We are very certain the Bill will go to them despite the obstacles it has met in the Dáil and the further obstacles here in the Seanad. I think the very people who created those obstacles have shown themselves to be anti-democratic. We have taken over the referendum from the cradle of democracy, from Switzerland, where the idea originated, and we are very proud to have it incorporated in our Constitution. Now, when the Constitution has come of age, we are very glad to ask the people to make a simple decision in regard to whether they are in favour of a very simple matter.

Senator O'Brien took the Government to task on the basis that this issue was not being put in a simple fashion to the people. I could hardly see, and I fail to imagine, what he thinks could be simpler. The people are being asked to decide a very net point—whether they want the single seat constituency and the straight vote in that type of constituency. They are being asked to say "yes" or "no" to that. I agree there is the question of the commission wrapped up in that but that really, as far as the people are concerned, is not important. The important point is basically whether they are in favour or are against the system of election that operated up to now, or whether they are for or against the straight vote system in single seat constituencies.

In regard to the question of the attitude of the Seanad to this matter, I think the most correct exposé of a proper attitude in regard to it was made this evening by Senator Mrs. Connolly O'Brien. She expressed herself very well, in a more dignified manner than other Senators opposed to the Bill expressed themselves, and she made her case quite plain. She was opposed to the measure, but that, however, did not deter her from expressing quite clearly her democratic belief that, in spite of opposing the Bill she was going to vote for it in order not to prevent the people from expressing their views in a referendum as speedily and as expeditiously as possible. Now, in the particular context of the Seanad's function in regard to a measure of this nature, it might be no harm to refer to an attitude adopted by the Fine Gael Leader in this House on a previous occasion in regard to another similar measure. I refer to Senator Hayes——

On a measure similar to this? There never was one.

It is a reference made by the Senator to the Electoral (Amendment) Act, 1947, on which he spoke and on which he adopted a certain attitude in regard to what the Seanad should do. If I may quote from Volume 34, column 1035, of the Seanad debates, his reaction on that occasion was that he felt:—

"...we ought discuss the general principle, but that the particular matter of the constituencies was something which was peculiarly a matter for the Dáil. We have a constitutional right to deal with it, but it is rather a matter for the Dáil to settle its own business than for us to endeavour to settle it for them."

In other words, as the Senator pointed out in that contribution, he recognised that, although he had, technically, a fundamental right to deal with the Bill, it was peculiarly something for the Dáil to deal with, in that it appertained to the readjustment of the constituencies. Putting that principle further, is it not more apposite in regard to this measure in that it is a matter for the people to decide on the method of election to the Dáil and although technically, under the Constitution, we may have a right to delay it, I think it is an excessive user of that right to frustrate the people from deciding, as expeditiously as possible, the method of election to the Dáil.

The reality of the matter is that this is not a fully representative assembly compared with the popular House. The popular House has passed this measure and I feel that it is an excessive user of our right to frustrate the people from making their decision. For that reason, I applaud the very democratic attitude adopted by Senator Mrs. Connolly O'Brien. Although she definitely stated she would vote against this measure when she came to cast her vote, she decided, in a proper democratic manner, that she would vote for this Bill in the House, in order not to prevent people from making their own decision on the method of election to Dáil Éireann.

As regards the proposal generally, I should like to say that the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party have disappointed me in that they have been unable, seemingly, to face up to the challenge incorporated in this Bill. In my view, there is no doubt that, the straight vote system will always enable the pendulum to swing decisively one way or the other. It will, in other words, enable the people to express a particular wish decisively. When the people do express their wish and decide against a particular Party, that wish, as well as having a negative effect of putting out one Party, will put in another.

Fine Gael and Labour have not faced up to the challenge in that idea. They have failed to face up to the very definite challenge: "You can be the alternative to this Government, for the full statutory period, if you put your policy and views before the people so that they give you their support and reject the Fianna Fáil Party". That alternative Government idea is inherent in this proposal, of enabling the people not merely to express their view in a negative fashion by merely rejecting one Party, but to put in another to govern for the full statutory period.

Another allegation made, in particular by Senator Sheehy Skeffington, was that this decision was not arrived at democratically by the Fianna Fáil Party. There was an Árd-Fheis of that Party held some months ago in Dublin. There were various resolutions from various Cumainn of that organisation, from all parts of the country, on the agenda for the Árd-Fheis, all proposing that P.R. as a system, as a mechanism of election, should be abolished. There was a full debate on that matter for half a day, occupying nearly one-third of the time of that Árd-Fheis and the resolutions suggesting that this method of election be abolished were passed after full debate and a full report appeared in all the daily newspapers——

Inspired ones.

——of that freely-made decision by the democratic people in our Party. It is now being incorporated into this legislation by the Executive of that Party, in the form of the Government and is being put to the people——

Were there any speeches against the abolition of P.R.?

There was a full discussion on it. If the Senator picks up his Irish Times, or Irish Independent, or Irish Press for, roughly, the middle of October last year, he will see that. It was fully reported.

Were there any speeches against its abolition?

Every delegate rose and applauded it, the Irish Press said.

In addition to that point raised by Senator Sheehy Skeffington, there is another matter to which I should like to refer before going on to the main argument. I must say that certain supposedly independent-minded Senators have disappointed me over the past few days, in particular——

We know that.

——Senators traditionally regarded as vocational Senators. Most people who intelligently read the reports of Oireachtas proceedings, and most people who know what transpires in both Houses, can be satisfied that over the years, two of the most independent and valued Independent members of the Oireachtas are Deputy Russell of Limerick and Deputy Sheldon of East Donegal. They have no particular axe to grind in regard to this matter; they are not under any whip, any alleged whip, of the Fianna Fáil Party; they are not members of our National Executive; and they do not attend our Árd-Fheiseanna. Yet both of these men, in my view, made some of the most valued contributions during the various stages of this Bill in the Dáil. Both of them are independent men who adopt an independent attitude in the Dáil which contrasts favourably, in my view, with the attitude that could, and should have been, adopted by some members of this House.

However, I will go on to the main question which is the Bill before us and which we are seeking to induce Seanad Éireann to pass and to let the people make a decision on it. First of all, I should like to discuss this question of P.R. We have had a particular form of it for a number of years, a particular species, and the system that we have operated for the past number of years is working in only three other areas of the world at the moment—I could hardly refer to them as countries —Tasmania, Malta and Gibraltar. The particular system which we have operated operates only in those three provincial areas. In no national Legislature in the world does our particular brand of P.R. operate. There are various other types known as list systems; but they all have one common factor in that they place emphasis on the mathematical representation of all shades and colours of opinions in Parliament. That is the principle behind the P.R. idea. Call it what you will, that is the basic principle, that there should be as near mathematical representation as possible in Parliament.

The Taoiseach was a professor of mathematics and apparently he put it into the Constitution.

That is a rather unnecessary remark. The Senator spoke for over two hours and we listened to it.

Not without interruption.

The Senators opposite did not have to listen to stuff like this.

The alternative to the various types of P.R. we have had all over the world is what is known as the straight vote system, the system which operates in the two oldest democracies in the world, the United States and Britain. It also operates in Canada and New Zealand in particular. The point has been made—and I think it was a very dishonest point coming from a man of the calibre of Professor Stanford who has in many cases made excellent contributions to Seanad debates—that there was a parallel between the Union of South Africa, the Six Counties and here in regard to the system of election. I personally throught that very dishonest because everybody in the House knows that in both areas the whole system of political organisation and the whole way of living in those areas are bedevilled by secretarianism. That is an unfortunate thing and we regret it very much, particularly in regard to the north-eastern portion of our country.

To say that because those two areas where sectarianism may have held monolithic parties together and to say that these monolithic parties are maintained because they use straight voting and that that condemns straight voting is a highly dishonest argument without reference to other countries such as Canada, the United States, Britain, and New Zealand where straight voting operates and where it enables the people properly to express their views. It is highly dishonest to quote the Six Counties. The whole foundation of the Union of South Africa is bedevilled by the apartheid question. There is a sharp division of opinion on that. We all know the situation in the Six Counties where Orange antipathy bedevils the situation. That would operate no matter what system of election was there. The plain fact of the matter is that P.R. did operate in the Six Counties for a few years after 1922 and when they introduced the straight vote system some time in the middle '20's it did not make one whit of difference to the representation of the various groups in the Stormont Parliament. I have not the figures before me but I have read up on the matter and my recollection is that changing from P.R. to the straight vote did not make a whit of difference to Nationalist representation in Stormont. Constituencies are gerrymandered outside the electoral system and the same sort of political gerrymandering is operated in South Africa in order to give a large majority to a particular sectarian group whose primary purpose is the suppression of the people of one colour. It is highly dishonest to try to draw any parallel between the situations in those two parts of the world and compare them with what might happen here under a similar electoral system. It would be far more honest to use for comparison purposes Great Britain, the United States, Canada or New Zealand.

The idea behind P.R. is the question of exact statistical representation and I do not think that should be confused with democracy. The idea we want to get across here for the people to study is that representation cannot be equated to democracy. They are entirely different factors. The idea of P.R. originated with a certain Liberal thinker in Britain in the last century. It was the invention of a man called Thomas Hare. It was followed up by John Stuart Mill and the British P.R. Society was instituted to propagate it.

What is wrong with that?

In Britain certain people were dissatisfied for years with the straight voting system as it was operated on the basis that it did not give statistical representation, as if that was the object of society. The P.R. Society, sought with no success whatever, to force their own Government to adopt the system——

Do you admit that straight voting does not give statistical representation?

I fully agree that exact statistical representation is not given by the straight voting system but I would say that is not the object of social organisation.

I am glad to have that admission.

My proposition would be that the object of organised society is to provide a system which can guarantee an effective Government and in a democratic system that Government should be a Government that takes cognisance of the important liberties and freedoms which we cherish so much and which are protected by the fundamental law in the Constitution and given effect to by the courts that are given independence under the Constitution. The question of exact statistical representation is irrelevant to the main purposes of society. It is a fact that there should be as good representation as possible in Parliament consistent with those ends, the provision of government for the people and the preservation of the ordinary liberties of the subject.

This idea of mathematical representation was developed in Britain by the P.R. Society and although there has been a lot of argument and debate about it it may be no harm to put on record that it was incorporated in the Government of Ireland Act, 1920 which was vehemently opposed by the Irish people at that time.

And supported by the Taoiseach in 1919.

The first time the views of the Proportional Representation Society were given effect to was in that Act which was abhorred by 90 per cent. of the people, the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. The British, of course, are very sensible in one way. Right through the last century, they proceeded to encourage nationalism in every country in the world. They encouraged revolutions in all the countries of Europe, but they made very sure not to encourage nationalism in this country. But while the British imposed the P.R. system in the Government of Ireland Act, and while the Proportional Representation Society may have exported its views to half the Continent of Europe after the first World War, they made very sure not to adopt it in their own country.

Who incorporated it in the 1937 Constitution?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Senator must be permitted to make his speech.

The point is that the British in their own country are careful not to have any system which would artificially create minorities. They let minorities create themselves artificially outside Hyde Park cornor, if they want to do so, or inside Hyde Park, but they make very certain not to let them into Parliament.

The idea was exported to various continental countries and despite the arguments that have been made, there is no doubt that it is historically true that after the first World War, democracy broke down in both Italy and Germany, two major countries that contributed so much to the Christian tradition and to the European way of life. Democracy broke down in those cases primarily because of this system of P.R. in their Parliaments which made way for a multiplicity of parties and prevented government. Democracy was brought into disrepute, political Parties were discredited and the way was prepared for two of the modern world's greatest dictators, Hitler and Mussolini.

When democracy gets into disrepute, the way is made clear for that type of dictator. The old Greeks, who formulated the ideas of political philosophy, said that the great danger in democracy was that it would always be followed by totalitarianism. They had a school of thought which held that when democracy was discredited there was a tendency towards dictatorship and this tendency in fact caused the downfall of quite a lot of the democratic Greek City States which succumbed to dictatorship.

Democracy, if it places its house in order, can strengthen itself. If democracy disintegrates what follows is totalitarianism. Surely our objective here should be that democracy does not disintegrate. The major purpose of this Bill is to ensure as far as it can be done that democracy does not disintegrate.

Does P.R. do that?

The purpose of the Bill is to see that a system will develop, which can easily develop over the years, whereby the people can be assured of democratic government, whereby democracy can be preserved and whereby democratic Parties will not fall into disrepute or be discredited. One thing is certain, democracy is brought into discredit by the chaos of too many individual Parties and ineffective government.

If democracy is to withstand the challenge of the world to-day, the important thing is to work democracy and in particular to see that democracy can give itself a strong executive.

In regard to that particular aspect, I have already stated, and it is undeniable, that this chaos engendered by P.R. systems gave rise, in two major European countries, to two dictatorships in the 1930s. I do not intend to deal with the disastrous effects of those two great dictatorial régimes. However, after the war the Western German Government thought fit to strengthen its democratic structure. I agree that they did not go the whole way, in having a universal straight voting system. The position at the moment in the Western German Parliament is that half the members of the Parliament are elected on the basis of straight voting and on the basis of the single seat constituency. The position in Germany is rather confused by the fact that the country is divided into Leander or federal areas and that for the purpose of these areas there is P.R. voting. But, as regards the universal voting, apart from the federated areas, the voting is on the single seat basis and with the straight nontransferable vote.

Western Germany, with its knowledge of its experiences under the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, saw fit in its Constitution after the recent world war, to strengthen its position. As a result of what they did at that time, Western Germany is to-day a bulwark or bastion of the free world which every country in the world can see. Furthermore, Western Germany is easily the most prosperous country in Western Europe. The position there is that there are two Parties which have developed in the country, the Christian Democrat Party and the Social-Democratic opposition. The Socialist opposition is not concerned with having socialist clashes but is a moderate Socialist Party. In other words, there are two main Parties, one in government and one in opposition, in Western Germany. Western Europe would not suffer one whit if the Christian Democrats were beaten in the next election and if in their stead the Socialists were put into power in Western Germany.

In the other country, Italy, Signor de Gaspari—before be died some years ago—introduced in 1953 and electoral law at the time to mitigate the P.R. system in Italy. That enabled Italy to get out of the chaos which existed in the country in 1953 and stagger along for a few more years with parliamentary government. Unfortunately, Signor de Gaspari in 1953 did not go far enough. In that particular electoral amendment law of his, although he frustrated a lot of the worst features of P.R., he did not go far enough. As a result, Italy to-day is again in a chaotic situation, without a government. The manoeuvrings and bargainings and intrigues which are going on in Rome to-day will probably continue for weeks on end, before Italy has a Government capable of governing.

Surely these arguments should lead one to think that the sort of development, two or three Party development, giving people a clear choice at an election, enabling them to make a clear choice and give decisive government, is a very desirable one. I think the argument is coercive in favour of that sort of system. I think that our Government —and I am proud to be able to say it —are giving a lead in this matter. They have taken their courage into their hands and are giving a lead. Everywhere in the world to-day we find that this crazy notion of P.R., this crazy notion of giving exact statistical representation in parliament, is on the run.

Our Johnny is the only one in step.

That notion is on the run in Sweden and I venture to suggest that the same will occur in Holland. It has caused constitutional crises in Holland in recent years, which must be very annoying to that very stable people. Everywhere it is on the run and I venture to forecast that within our own time we will see it disappear as a method of election throughout the world.

Only recently, again coincidental with this Government measure, we have seen the situation in France resolve itself. No matter what anyone says, what the French had over the past number of years was a system of P.R. It is called the French List system. One may call it whatever one chooses, but it is a fancy system of P.R. In other words, it embodies the principle of exact statistical representation in parliament. It was a system of P.R. That system has been abolished recently in France and France has got stable government now, effective government for the first time in generations in that country.

That is an oversimplification.

What has been done by the Government in this country is part of a general pattern which is emerging. I submit it is part of a general idea abroad among democratic peoples, that now is the time to strengthen democracy. There is a challenge in the form of the Communist type of State where they are able to give effective government and long term planning; and this challenge must be taken up by the freedom-loving peoples of the world. The democratic answer to that challenge is to strengthen its own institutions and see that the democratic institutions can give effective government and effective leadership while preserving the Christian idea and the essential liberties denied by Communism.

What our Government is doing is merely following out that general pattern which has emerged in Western Germany, and recently in France, and which will emerge in Italy, Sweden and in Holland, I am certain, because of their present constitutional difficulties. What we have seen in this country is our Government taking a lead in the matter, not referring it to any commission or anyone else, but taking a lead and asking the people to make a decision.

I believe there is unanimity on the fact that our present system is unsatisfactory. Anyone who read closely the recent Dáil debates would find that the one patent fact which emerges is that nobody is satisfied with the present system. I quote Deputy J.A. Costello's own words, as given in Volume 171, No. 8 of the Second Reading debates on this measure in the Dáil. He said there were many defects in the present system. I think everyone would agree with that. I think that Deputy Costello's only real disagreement with the Government is that he wanted this matter submitted to a commission. If that were done, a commission would probably come out after weeks and weeks of discussion, having arrived at the same decision as has been arrived at by the Government. The Government did not give it to a commission in France or Western Germany. I venture to say that, when Italy gets out of its present crisis and if any dominant Party emerges in Italy, it will get rid of it also and will not submit the matter to a commission.

The people in the Fine Gael Party, and in particular the leader-writers in the newspaper which supports that Party, the Irish Independent, have been very fond of denouncing commissions and the delaying tactics of commissions and inquiring into wasteful Government expenditure on commissions.

As far as I can see, the only disagreement which Deputy Costello and the Fine Gael leaders have is that of not submitting the question to a Government Commission. As Deputy Costello said, there are many defects in the present system.

He never mentioned a commission in his speech.

I would say that, when Deputy Costello said that, he made a vast understatement. Apart from Deputy Costello's own attitude in the matter, we had the Leader of Clann na Talmhan, Deputy Blowick, who came very near our ideas in the matter. Clann na Talmhan, which is based at least in rural Ireland although it is a splinter offshoot had the common sense to see that the single seat idea was a good one and an amendment was put down by them, which was debated on the Second Reading, to the effect that the Government should adopt the single seat system.

I move the adjournment of the debate.

Cuireadh an díospóireacht ar ath-ló.

Debate adjourned.
The Seanad adjourned at 10 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 11th February, 1959.
Barr
Roinn