I move amendment No. 85 :—
In sub-section (1), page 44, line 52, after "Minister" to insert "with the consent of the man".
An enlistment paper is a contract and where there is an error not of a material nature the section empowers the Minister to amend the error. Here there is a contract between two people, the Minister and the man, and the Minister should give notice of this intention and obtain the man's consent.
There is a difficulty. You might have a man in the permanent force or the reserve for years and one fine day he or some other bright person on his behalf might discover that there is a technical error in his enlistment paper and then he can thumb his nose.
You would have the Army tied up in legal arguments.
Where a man's name is misspelt or a wrong address is given it would be foolish to have to look for the man's consent.
It might invite some men to take the easy way out and avoid commitments which they would have to meet if they were getting out in any other way.
You could have a man from Galway named McDonagh (Coleman) which should be McDonagh (Early). That would not be a material error but a mistake. I have always been very anxious to see that contractual documents are not altered without consent. An attestation paper is an important document, evidence of a contract with the Minister and the man signs the contract himself. It is very hard to see what in fact would not be a material error, although I know that there would be slight little things which would not. I do not think that there is any great difficulty in sending out the enlistment paper because it is in duplicate. The reason for insisting on "with the consent of the man" is to show how serious we consider this contractual document.
There can be an immaterial error——
That does not go to the root of the contract.
If the man signs it, the intention, the actual guts of the contract, if I may put it like that, is there. His signature should be enough to show what he meant. The fact that it carries his signature should prevent an error in the name. I would have a lot of sympathy with Deputy Cowan's amendment if the words " not being a material error " were not inserted, but these words make all the difference.
The Minister may think that something is not a material error while the man may think it is.
Leave in those words and add the amendment and you are leaving the door wide open for the abuse I mentioned earlier.
I have very little reollection of seeing errors in enlistment papers so the loopholes would be very few. The Minister may be advised : " this is a material error " or " this is not a material error and we advise you to make this amendment." I think that it should not be done without the knowledge of the man. Under the section it can be done without the man knowing a thing about it.
I am putting it on the record that the error would only be an immaterial one such as the misspelling of the man's name or the recording of a wrong address. I have already said that and I repeat it.
If a wrong height were entered, the man would have to be found to sign a document to change that.
I will not press it to a division.
Is the amendment withdrawn ?
Say " defeated ".
Amendment No. 85 put, and negatived.
Amendment No. 86 falls with amendment No. 84.
It does to a large extent, not quite, but the same type of principle is involved. It is again a question of extending the provisions to reservists.
