This is a Bill which, in the main, gives effect to the Minister's earlier announcement regarding the postponement of the inevitable—that is the postponement of the local elections for 12 months from June of this year until, as the Parliamentary Secretary has said in his opening remarks, June, 1973.
The danger I see in a course such as this—this is the third time such a thing has happened in relation to the last two local elections—is that it has resulted, on each occasion on which it has happened, in a downgrading of the status of local authorities. This results in a feeling among the general public that local authorities must not be all that important if the Houses of the Oireachtas see fit to postpone the elections for membership of those authorities. This is the main fear which will be expressed by Members of this House, or of the other House, in speaking on this Bill.
This occurs at a time in the development of our State when all of our democratic institutions need every support which can be afforded to them by those in public life, and their importance and their status is in need of being unheld and emphasised. For that reason it is, perhaps, unfortunate that the Minister for Local Government, through his emissary here today—his Parliamentary Secretary— has asked us to accept a Bill which will postpone the elections to those great democratic institutions which have given such sterling service to the State since its inception. We all know —and many of us have served or are still serving on local authorities—of the very great contribution which they make to the way in which this State is run and has been run. It would be unfortunate if the feeling were to get abroad that we, in the Houses of the Oireachtas, cared so little for them that we were prepared lightly to postpone the very important business of giving the general public the opportunity of deciding who should be the members of the local authority for their area. It is no harm to remind the House that originally the elections for local authorities took place every three years. Some considerable time ago that was extended to five years. In my opinion, three years is probably too short a period in which to ask anybody to serve as a member of a local authority.
In 1965, a Bill, somewhat similar to this, was introduced in the Oireachtas, which postponed for a period of 12 months the elections which were due that year. Before that period of 12 months had elapsed another Bill was introduced postponing for a further 12 months the local elections, which were scheduled belatedly for 1966. Now the following elections, which should take place five years after the local elections of 1967, if this Bill is agreed to, are to be postponed for a further period of 12 months.
How are we to be sure, how are members of local authorities to be sure, how are the administrative staff of local authorities and, most important, how are the general public to feel happy in their minds that, if this Bill is agreed to, the local elections which they would like to see taking place, will in fact take place in 12 months time? We all know that there are at least two, and probably three, further local government Bills which will be brought before the Houses of the Oireachtas during the next 12 months. Any of those will give the Minister an opportunity of further postponing the democratic process of allowing the general public to excercise their franchise and elect members to the local authorities.
In his opening remarks the Parliamentary Secretary said—and indeed the explanatory memorandum also says —that this Bill will have the effect of postponing the elections until June, 1973. I cannot find anywhere in the few short sections of the Bill any mention of the month June. The Bill itself says that the election should be held in the year 1973 and quinquennially thereafter. I should be grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary, in his reply, would explain to the House how we can take it as being very definite, from the wording of this Bill, that the elections will take place in June. My reading of the Bill is that the elections could take place in November or December of 1973. Perhaps the explanation is in the fact that the elections of 1967 took place in the month of June, probably on this day—28th June, 1967. Perhaps that is the reason the Parliamentary Secretary can feel so sure that June, 1973, is the date on which the postponed elections might now take place.
I have serious doubts as to whether those elections will take place in that month. The Parliamentary Secretary gave as one of the two main reasons for the postponement the fact that the White Paper on Local Government Reorganisation envisaged major changes in the structure of local authorities and that legislation was now being drafted to give effect to some, if not all, of these changes. I do not believe that half of the changes which were suggested in the White Paper are to be given effect to in one piece of legislation, which will obviously be of a very controversial nature. I do not believe that that legislation will be drafted and will have passed through Dáil and Seanad Éireann and be signed by the President in time to allow the local elections to take place, even 12 months from today.
I am quite sure that when the Parliamentary Secretary rises to reply he will disagree with me. I hope sincerely that the Parliamentary Secretary will be the person to be proved right. It would be very wrong if he or his Minister has to come back to this House within the next 12 months to seek a further extension of the period. Certainly, there has been no sign yet of the piece of legislation which might be termed the "child" of the White Paper.
The second reason given by the Parliamentary Secretary for the postponement is that it would be undesirable to have held the local elections this year on a date which was so close to the date of the referendum in connection with this country's entry into the EEC. It was therefore suggested to postpone it for 12 months from this month. Let us consider what the Members of this House and of the other House and everyone involved in public life face in that 12-month period. As we all know, there is a by-election pending in one of the southern counties. There is a referendum to take place in the autumn on whether or not people of 18 and over should be entitled to vote in Dáil elections. Within the next 12 months it is almost certain that a general election will take place. According to the Department of the Taoiseach, the presidential election will take place some time between April and June of 1973.
Yet the second reason for postponing the local elections from this year was that it would be undesirable to hold them on a date so near to the referendum. Instead, they are to be held in a year in which we shall have, in all probability, four other occasions when we as public representatives and politicians will have to go to the hustings. It does not seem to me to be a very valid reason for postponing the elections in 1972—a year in which there was only one other occasion on which the public were asked to cast their votes—and decide to hold them in a 12-month period in which there will be four other such occasions.
It is probably much more likely that it was not unacceptable to the Government, per se, but unacceptable to the political party which at present form the Government, that the local elections would be held in June, 1972, at a time when their stock in the country and their reputation on local authorities is not, to put it mildly, at the highest. In addition, it would be at a time when their performance, if those elections had been held, might not be as politically advantageous to them as would otherwise have been the case. I suggest to the House that the reason we are being asked today to postpone for a further period of 12 months the local elections for the Twenty-six Counties is because it is not at present politically suitable to the Fianna Fáil Party to go before the electorate.
In addition, there are constant and persistent rumours from various parts of the country that certain members of local authorities, inevitably—probably by coincidence—being members of the Fianna Fáil Party, have in their possession draft schemes to revise the electoral areas for the local authorities; in other words, to revise the many constituencies which go to form the local authority area. Before we have another local authority election one of the things we will see is the redrawing of many of these local electoral areas throughout the country. This will not be done to enhance the prospect of those candidates who do not happen to possess a cumann card.
I want to turn now to what I regard as the most serious fault of this Bill. That is contained in section 1 where it is outlined that
any person who has reached the age of 21 years and over shall be entitled to vote in local authority elections.
Recently the Government have reluctantly agreed to the long standing proposals of other political parties that the vote at 18 should, if possible, be extended to the public. As an addition to the Parliamentary Secretary's script, he said that the Bill to allow the referendum on this to take place was apparently introduced into the Dáil only this morning.
There is no need to hold a referendum to extend to those of 18 to 21 years the right to vote in a local government election. It merely requires a simple amendment to the local election code. Since this Bill happens to be before the House at present this is obviously the most suitable time at which to correct this anomaly. The excuse the Parliamentary Secretary has given for not having so done is that he would prefer to wait to hear the views of the Irish people following a referendum, which is to take place in the autumn, on extending the vote to those of 18 and over for Dáil and local elections. I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary and to the House that the great likelihood is that that referendum will be carried by the Irish people and, if this is so, then this Bill will have to be amended before an election is held, because of certain provisions contained in the Bill. Would it not have been more reasonable to have, as an expression of intent, the word "18" rather than "21" inserted in section 1 so that when, as it is almost certain, the people agree that those of 18 years and over be given the right to vote in Dáil elections, there will be no need for a further amendment to this Bill?
We are being asked to agree to a Bill which will ensure that no local election will take place for 12 months; nevertheless, the Parliamentary Secretary is suggesting that he will have to come back some time within that 12 months to amend section 1 of the Bill now before us. It would have been a far simpler thing to have made provision in section 1 to allow those of 18 years and over the right to vote in local government elections. If, to the surprise to all of us here, the people decided not to agree to the referendum proposal in October, the Minister could validly come back to the House then and ask to have section 1 amended to read "21 years". It is the intention of my party and myself to table an amendment to section 1 which we will be debating vigorously and will pursue to the end on Committee Stage.
There is a further point in relation to this. If this Bill, as passed, contained provision for people of 18 years and over to vote in local authority elections those who compile the electoral registers in September of each year would then automatically include on their lists all persons of 18 years and over. The referendum on votes at 18 in Dáil elections will not take place until October, by which time the compilation of the electoral registers will already have commenced. If, as we expect, the referendum proposal is agreed to, there will be the double task for those who compile the electoral register of having to go back once again to every household in their area and recheck in each house whether there is anybody between 18 and 21 living there. It will require their printing a second set of draft electoral registers and virtually double the amount of the work involved in the compiling of electoral electors throughout the country. By the simple expediency of putting the word "18" instead of "21" into this Bill that would automatically be attended to and all those of 18 and over would have their names inserted in that original draft electoral register.
There is also a grave omission in this Bill, in the explanatory memorandum and in the Parliamentary Secretary's opening speech—the omission of any reference to the strange anomalous position which exists in Dublin and Bray. If elections have had to be postponed for valid or other reasons in the other local authority areas, there is absolutely no reason why special elections, which can be held by ministerial order, should not have been held in Dublin city and Bray this year. Whatever the reasons the democratically elected councils in those two places are no longer there, I think we all agree that that situation has obtained now for far too long and that if it was originally intended as a punishment for the supposed sin of the members of those authorities, the punishment has now been meted out in severe measure. The punishment has been meted out not to the members of those local authorities but to the ratepayers and the general public in those areas. I suggest that the Parliamentary Secretary should examine this position with a view to arranging for special elections in Dublin city and Bray.
If this is not found feasible and if the commissioners have to be reappointed, probably around this time, it is suggested that by the device of appointing 45 commissioners, they being the people who were originally the members of the Dublin City Council, the Minister could to some extent at least restore democracy to the Dublin City Council. With some little reservation I agree with the provisions of section 1 which allow that—
a person shall only be entitled to vote once in any local authority election.
With the situation which pertains in the county it is important that we should be seen to adhere strictly to the principle of one man, one vote. We had the strange position whereby somebody could vote in the local authority area in which he lived and also vote in a different local authority area if he happened to be a property holder there. I have a minor reservation in relation to it.
A person in that position will argue that he is paying high rates on the property which he holds in that second area and consequently should be entitled to a say in the running of the local authority which administers it. That brings us to a situation not involved in this Bill and into which I do not wish to go in great detail. If the rating system were changed, nobody could feel he was entitled to have a say because of the considerable amount of money he paid.
We should adhere as strictly as we can to the principle of a person voting once at election time. I am in agreement with the provisions of section 2 which remove what were, in my opinion, penal clauses which operated against members of local authorities who were unfortunate enough to be in financial difficulties. I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to explain why in paragraph (b), subsection (1) of section 2, the period of five years is mentioned, when in another part of this Bill we are extending the life of the local authorities to six years.
The position still obtains whereby part-time employees of local authorities are precluded from standing for election to the local authority in which they serve. The example was given in the other House of part-time firemen, who are in no way involved in the administration of the authority or in its day-to-day running but who provide a service to their local community often at considerable expense to themselves. This is an anomaly which should have been corrected in this Bill. The person involved is not expected to make major administrative decisions, but he makes a contribution to his community and, by so doing, might turn out to be one of the most suitable men to serve on the authority.
I am disappointed that the opportunity to provide the vote at 18 years of age was not availed of and that the introduction of this Bill was not coupled with the announcement of the holding of special elections for the restoration of the Dublin City Council and Bray UDC.
