The two dates were brought close together by Fine Gael opposition and now to attain complete confusion, if it is possible, we have an election address going out containing election material dealing with both issues. That is the situation in regard to the election address on behalf of the Fine Gael candidate, but here is the instruction sent out to the Fianna Fáil election agents down through the country before there was any mention of this matter. It states "In regard to free postage, the Presidential election bulletin which will reach you during the next week is the only document circulated that can go through the free post. To obviate the danger through carelessness of referendum material being put into the envelopes, it is advised to have all envelopes filled under proper supervision at constituency headquarters." That is our effort to maintain and keep within the law.
The confusion brought about by the Presidential election and the referendum being held on the same day, which was caused by the Opposition, is being added to by this address, in an effort to confuse the electorate and to prevent them knowing what they are doing in the hope that they will leave things as they are. Senator Sheehy Skeffington asked was there any precedent in 1937 when two such elections took place, one a general election and the other the referendum to pass the Draft Constitution. I do not know of any precedent in that category. Not having been given notice of that point, I shall not confidently state there were none, but I shall say this: it is one thing to refer in an election address to some issue of national importance but it is another thing to exhort the people, in that election address, to vote a particular way in the referendum now taking place, and that is the real objection. That is what I take issue with in relation to the election address we are now discussing.
The suggestion has also been made —it was made yesterday by the Leader of the Opposition and it was made this morning by several other people taking their cues from their leaders—that this Bill was unnecessary. If it was unnecessary, it is amazing that the House should yesterday have accepted the Second Reading. When Deputy Costello was talking of its being unnecessary, and he put it quite nicely in his opening statement that it was unnecessary and quoted his own view and the views of some of his friends, he made the case in the same speech that the matter could be rectified by a very small amendment of the existing law and the existing section. He suggested that by deleting a certain word, they would overcome all their difficulties. How can he make a case for its being unnecessary and two minutes later, say that by deleting a certain word it could be rectified? He suggested an amendment after categorically stating his opinion, and the opinion of other legal people, that no amendment was necessary.
The question is here made quite clear and, without going into the legal aspects and getting legal advice, the ordinary reading by the ordinary man is such as to give him to understand that there was a clear contravention of the law in this case. Very magnanimously, we have come along to try to rectify that situation, to avoid the situation that might have arisen and would undoubtedly have been exploited in that being the Government, and being the nominators of the only other Presidential candidate in the field, it would be held and said throughout the country, if we did not amend this law that we were, in fact, preventing the candidature of the Fine Gael candidate getting a fair run. In fact, there was submitted to the Dáil office a motion in those terms, that we were discriminating against the candidature of Deputy MacEoin, the Fine Gael candidate.
We have gone a long way to avoid that situation and, in fact, we have given to the Fine Gael Party an advantage over the Fianna Fáil Party, in both these contests, in that we have already, as I have read out, made our arrangements for circulating the election address of the Taoiseach, one of the candidates in the election, in which there will not be any exhortations to vote in regard to the referendum in any particular way and we have also had our arrangements made, which cannot now be changed, wherein only that election address will go out to the electors under free postage. Therefore, if, in this election address, there is an exhortation or view expressed to persuade the electorate to vote a particular way in the referendum, Fine Gael have got that advantage and we in Fianna Fáil are giving it to them, and I do not like that, as I have said already.