The Minister is, of course, right in saying that no matter what hours are suggested, nobody can say with certainty that they will be regarded as being correct in, say, five years' time—that the particular hours chosen will be the hours which will be most suitable to most people. However, there are some ways in which one can assess whether particular hours are suitable or not.
I approach the question of the Sunday opening hours very much from the point of view from which Senator Miss Davidson approached the whole Bill on the Second Stage. Hers was a very well-constructed, well thought-out and courageous approach. Much of what she had to say is extremely relevant to the Sunday opening hours. Sunday is, for many people, the only day on which the family have any opportunity of getting together; it is the only day on which fathers can be associated with their young children. In this connection, whatever one may have to say about trade unions being able to get proper compensation for the longer hours their members have to work, there is nothing trade unions can do with the hours as they now stand to enable fathers of families who are engaged in public houses, either as employees or as proprietors, to associate with them during the ordinary day-light hours on Sunday.
The position as I see it will be that you will have opening hours from 12.30 p.m. to 2 p.m. and it will be at the earliest 2.15 p.m. before the man gets out and gets home. If you take a Sunday afternoon, the earliest hour at which he will have finished his mid-day meal will be 3 o'clock and as the Bill stands he will be back on duty again at 5 o'clock. I cannot see how the publican or the barman can ever look forward in the future to being able to go out on Sunday afternoon anywhere with his family. When we come to consider these people, we must have some regard not alone to their rights but also to the rights their children have to the society and company of their parents, and that is something trade unions cannot win for the publicans and the barmen.
I recollect that the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, addressing the Television Authority the other day on the inauguration of the Authority, very properly referred to the provisions of the Constitution—which I regret to say are far too infrequently referred to— in regard to the family, and said that the Television Authority should bear in mind that the people of Ireland had enacted in their Constitution that the State was guaranteeing to protect the family in its constitution and authority as the necessary basis of social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the nation and of the State. That was the Minister's directive to the Television Authority in regard to what kind of programmes they should have on the new television service.
That statement of the Minister was clearly relevant to this Bill, for not alone are we dealing with the families of the publicans and the barmen but we are also dealing with the family of the man who has a particular weakness for having a drink on Sunday. He, like the barman, would be home to have his meal about 3 o'clock and he will be in no mood to go out until sometime around 5 o'clock. If he does, he will probably start drinking again when he goes out and his wife probably will not be able to get him home until 9 o'clock. This problem exists, despite what Senator Ó Maoláin says about my not knowing anything of what goes on in these public houses. This is the kind of thing this Bill is promoting, because once a man has from 2 p.m. until 8 p.m., as Senator Burke suggested in his amendment, it is a fairly good stretch in which he knows he cannot get a drink, and he can do something better for himself and his family for the whole afternoon.
There is a further objection to the word "five" as it appears in the subsection. I do not understand how anybody can say that drinking hours which straddle the normal mealtime hours meet the public demand. What the section says is that there is a large public demand that people should be taken away or lured away from the ordinary mealtime into a public house, that they should be able to drink from 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. in winter time, which straddles the normal tea hours. I know of no such such demand, and this is certainly a case where time will prove that this Bill has not properly gauged the public requirements or the public reaction.
There is in this country something which is again recognised in the Constitution, a practice as important as going to attend G.A.A. matches. That is the family Rosary, which is said in many houses after the evening meal, particularly where there are young children. The tea meal takes place between 6 p.m. and 7.30 p.m., and then the Rosary is said. If it is not said then, it is not said so far as the young children are concerned, until probably after 10.30 p.m., at the end of the news on Radio Éireann on Sunday night. That is an institution as important as any other, and the point of view of people who crusade on behalf of the family Rosary is as important as any other.
No regard whatever is paid in these hours of 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., or 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. in wintertime, to that longstanding institution that is associated with all that is best in our history. No regard whatever is being paid to the family Rosary, and instead of that, at a time when there are so many attacks being made upon our way of life and our philosophy, it is being made much easier for people to get away from those good customs which have made us the people we are today, whatever we be.
I see no reason whatever why the Minister or the Government, if they had that consideration in mind, could have decided that still there is a large public demand for having drinking hours all over the country in the interests of uniformity, and that the hours should be from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the wintertime and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the summertime.
Again, apparently with some kind of an eye to the people who go to football matches, whether G.A.A. or soccer, or to any kind of athletic gathering, who on any particular Sunday constitute a minority of the citizens, this hour of 5 p.m. is pitched at that level to accommodate the needs of those people. I do not think we ought to change the whole pattern of social and family life in the interests of what still remains a minority, however big it may be.
Senator Burke has rightly referred to the fact that this business of going into public houses after football matches is conducive to too much drinking and more road accidents on Sunday afternoons. The Minister takes obviously an optimistic view of human nature and of the people he knows, and nobody can blame him for that. He thinks that people will have a few drinks and then be about their business. But that would not happen, particularly coming from a match. If there is one time more than another when people begin to talk at great length, it is after football matches, as to whether the man was in the parallelogram before the ball went in or not, and there will be a most heated long-winded discussion on topics of that kind.