In this lengthy article published in the Spring of 1959, future-Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald outlines the government debates regarding the Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill 1958, which sought to change Ireland’s electoral system from Proportional Representation with a Single Transferable Vote (PR-STV) to that of First Past the Post (FPTP).
A referendum on the issue held in June 1959 would see the proposed move to FPTP narrowly defeated. A second referendum on the same issue would be held ten years later in 1968, wherein the electorate resoundingly rejected FPTP in favour of PR-STV.
Published the year FitzGerald joined UCD’s Department of Political Economy, he stated his aim as being to outline “every argument used by the principal speakers on both sides [of the issue] in the Dáil, without necessarily confining myself to the case as presented by them”.
For more information on Garret FitzGerald, we invite you to visit his entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography.
Garret FitzGerald, ‘P.R.: The Great Debate’, Studies: An Irish Review, Vol. 48, No. 109 (Spring, 1959), 1-20. JSTOR link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30103524
The great debate in the Dáil has ended, and at the time of writing the Senate is discussing the Third Amendment to the Constitution Bill, 1958. Quite apart from the earlier and unusual First Reading Debate, the Dáil discussed the Bill on seventeen of the eighteen days on which it sat between 26 November and 28 January (there was a three-week Christmas break), and during these sessions a total of over 600,000 words was spoken by Deputies on the subject of electoral systems. Of 142 sitting deputies (the total excluding the four Sinn Féin Deputies and the Ceann Comhairle), no less than 71, or exactly half contributed to the Debate – one-third of those in favour of the Bill, and just 70% of those who opposed it.
Any review of the arguments for and against the changes proposed in our present electoral system must necessarily draw heavily on the record of this Dáil debate. In the course of this article I hope to refer, however briefly, to every argument used by the principal speakers on both sides in the Dáil, without necessarily confining myself to the case as presented by them…
Our present system of election at General Elections involves multi-seat constituencies, with the alternative or transferable vote. At by-elections the constituency is treated as a single-seat constituency, but the transferable vote is retained, and if more than two candidates stand at a by-election, then, as at a General Election, those who obtain the least votes are in turn eliminated, and their votes are re-distributed in accordance with their next preference as expressed on the ballot paper, until only two candidates remain. The candidate who at that stage has the most votes is then declared elected.
The system now proposed involves the creation of 100-150 single-seat constituencies to replace the present 40 multi-seat constituencies which return 147 deputies to the Dáil. In each of these single-seat constituencies the candidate who obtains the largest number of votes in the first instance will be declared elected. Voters will not be asked to state their preferences, as there will be no procedure for passing on preferences; they will merely be asked to place an X opposite the name of the candidate whom they favour.
This proposed system is the same as that in use in Great Britain, and in most other English-speaking countries, but is not widely used on the continent of Europe where different forms of proportional representation, or party-list systems of voting, in some cases involving two ballots at successive week-ends, are commonly employed.
In favour of the Government’s proposal it is argued that the P.R. system has not worked out well in Ireland, and that it has been responsible for the emergence of a multiplicity of parties, leading in turn to Coalition Government, which, it is said, has proved ineffective. It is said that the proposed system will tend to force the present opposition parties to unite, thus eventually leading to a two-party system, which would ensure effective government. Finally, it is stated that the proposed system has shown itself in other countries to have been most successful in building up democratic institutions, while P.R. has tended to undermine them.
Mr de Valera argued :
P.R. has not, in my opinion, in recent times worked out well. As has been pointed out more than once, and as the Leader of the Opposition pointed out when this matter of the Constitution was being discussed, it worked very well for a time, because there were issues so large in the public eye that they dominated all other issues, and, therefore, the people voted on one side or the other because these issues were there.
That continued up to 1938…but even during the War, it needed two elections to get the stability which was required. Some of this stability was acquired rather in spite of the system…The whole effect of the present system of P.R. has been to cause multiplicity of parties…each little group trying to get some support, knowing full well that they have not the slightest chance, independently, of being the Government…They can go out and promise…anything they choose.
They can get some votes for it – the extreme right on one side and extreme left on the other – and then, although they have been preaching quite contradictory policies, when the elections are over and the people can no longer be spoken to, they can come in and unite. Under the system of straight voting they will have to unite beforehand, not after. They will have to unite in front of the people.
(Dail Debates 171.8.994-997)
To this Mr Costello replied:
The Taoiseach says I agreed it leads to a multiplicity. I did agree subject to one amendment…that if the Irish electorate in this democratic State wished to have a number of Parties they were entitled to have them…When the Irish people wanted to get an inter-Party Government they were sufficiently intelligent to know how to achieve that. They did that in 1954 and when they wanted to give an overall majority again, they did so in 1957. They can do what they like within this system.
(171.8.1017)
(…)
Because of the multiplicity of parties into which the Opposition is divided, argued the Fianna Fáil speakers, the present system of election offers a Coalition Government as the only practicable alternative to Fianna Fáil. In their view the two Coalition Governments of the last eleven years were ineffective…These arguments were of course rejected by Opposition speakers, but there is no room in an article of this kind to rehearse the pros and cons of Coalition Government as such, which have been widely debated during the past decade…
…How do these speakers expect this two-party system to emerge in this country under the proposed electoral system? Mr Lemass appears to visualize each opposition party retaining its identity, and going to the electorate independently of the others…But other Government speakers are less sanguine, and seem prepared for a less radical change, limiting themselves to the belief that the new system will compel the opposition groups to:
Form a combined group before an election
(Mr Aiken 171.8.997)
The system of straight voting will compel that bargaining to be done in front of the people. There must be a candidate chosen who will be acceptable to all the groups and, therefore, the people, when they are voting, will know better what the candidates stand for, for whom they are voting.
(Mr de Valera 171.8.998)
To this argument the Opposition leaders replied that this in fact was happening already.
(…)
The main argument against the Bill took the following form: P.R. is fair, and democratic, because it ensures the representation of all political views, including those of minorities, in the Dáil. The new system would destroy the Opposition, or, alternatively, would involve more bargaining than at present, in the form of electoral pacts which might well deprive the people of their present opportunity to choose a one-party Government from the ranks of the Opposition should they wish to do so.
Governments elected under the proposed system would in many cases be minority Governments, and even where they were not, they would appear to be in a minority, thus weakening their moral position. By keeping new groups, such as Sinn Féin, out of the Dáil, unconstitutional opposition to the Government would be encouraged. Finally, whatever defects there might be in the present system could best be remedied by a study of the problem by an impartial commission, rather than by a hastily devised Government Bill such as that before the House.
The view that P.R. is fair was challenged by the Minister for Defence, Mr Kevin Boland, on the grounds that under the P.R. system the alternative vote unfairly favoured the supporters of the smaller groups, who are permitted to pass on their votes to other candidates, while those voting for the largest group have no opportunity to do so, as their candidate remains in the running right up to the end. If his second preferences were counted, argued Mr Boland, then a quite different Opposition candidate might emerge victorious…
…But the chief objection to the new system, in the Opposition’s view, was that it would destroy their strength in the Dáil, thus weakening parliamentary institutions. Mr Costello stressed this:
The net result may be – though I do not say it will be – the end of political democracy as we know it in this country because the results of the operation of this particular electoral system advocated by the Government will almost certainly, in existing conditions, have the effect of doing away with all except a very small section of parliamentary opposition.
Parliamentary democracy cannot work without an Opposition that is effective, that can make its will known and make its voice heard throughout the country, and that can stop corruption, injustice and inefficiency. Unless you have an Opposition that is capable of doing that job – and it is not capable of doing its job, unless it can form an alternative Government – then we will have nothing but arrogant Government tending to dictatorship.
(171.8.1017-8)
Everybody who has experience of organising a Party, of trying to keep a Party going, knows how difficult it is to get people to give the necessary money to carry on, and the great strain on the personal…self-sacrifice of every member of the Party combining to keep the democratic machine going. Unless there is some possibility or opportunity for such a Party to get into Government…the democratic machine cannot work.
(171.8.1020-1)
(…)
The Opposition speakers saw a further danger in the proposed system – the danger that it might on the one hand discourage organizations like Sinn Féin from following the well-trodden road to constitutionality, or on the other hand that it might make it easier for them to sweep into power on a wave of mass hysteria.
Mr Costello put the latter alternative:
It is not beyond the bounds of thought, not to say imagination, that those people who are using guns against the North at the present time may, under the system proposed, get – which they could not do under the existing system – a swing on public opinion, and under the system of the non-transferable vote which gives rise to violent swings and changes, those parties could quite conceivably, in a condition of acute pathological hysteria in the future of this country, sweep the Government out of office and take control of the State. We can remember the mass hysteria that existed in Limerick on the occasion of a funeral there. All sections of the people were contaminated by it. Public opinion in the country was in a most dangerous condition.
(171.8.1023-4)
(…)
Next, we come to the irrelevant arguments, some simply abusive, and others merely off the main theme. Thus Fianna Fáil speakers attacked P.R. on the grounds that it was imposed on us by the British, and accused Fine Gael of opposing the Bill purely for Party purposes, or because of their lack of self-confidence. They asked what Fine Gael would propose instead of the scheme in the Bill, bearing in mind Mr Costello’s remarks about the defects in the present system, and they attacked Fine Gael for trying to prevent the people being given an opportunity to decide the issue. Finally, they argued that the system could be changed again, if necessary. This last argument was strongly rebutted by Fine Gael speakers. On the Opposition side it was alleged that the Bill was simply designed to perpetuate the Fianna Fáil Government, that it would lend itself to gerrymandering, that it would hinder the ending of Partition, and that it would give the towns too much influence in the election of T.D.s.
(…)
There remains one other major issue which was debated at some length on the Committee Stage of the Bill – the abolition of the alternative vote. It was argued by the Opposition that no case had been made for this second modification of the present electoral system, and that the first stage – the reduction of the constituencies to single-member seats – would achieve all the objectives set down by the Government, without involving any of the undesirable consequences which, it was suggested, would flow from the elimination of the alternative vote…In concluding the Debate on the Bill, however, Mr de Valera repeated the argument which had been introduced by the Minister for Defence, Mr Kevin Boland, at an earlier stage, and which has already been referred to earlier in this article.
He contended that the alternative vote might work out unfairly as between two Opposition candidates. In a three-cornered fight under the alternative vote system the candidate with the least number of first preference votes is eliminated and his preferences are distributed between the first and second candidates possibly bringing the second up above the first, and thus giving him the seat. Mr de Valera and Mr Boland argued, however, that the elimination of the candidate with the least number of first preferences might be unfair – because if the second preferences of the leading candidate had been considered, they might have pushed the last candidate into second place!
Clearly the Opposition speakers did not consider this complicated reasoning to be a sufficient argument against the retention of the alternative vote which, in their view, has the great merit of ensuring that a candidate opposed by the majority of the people will not be elected. Thus, it was argued, in a constituency contested by four candidates, one of them (e.g., a Sinn Féin candidate) might slip in with only 30% of the votes, despite the fact that 70″% of the people in the area were violently opposed to his policies.
It seems probable, indeed, that over the country as a whole a party obtaining say 39% of the votes would obtain a majority in an election under this system – even though 61% of the people in the country rejected everything it stood for. With the alternative vote on the other hand, while a party obtaining only 35% of the first preferences could obtain a majority of the seats in the House, it could do so only if it had the support, in the form of second preferences of a substantial number of people voting initially for other groups, who showed in this way their preference for this party as against the largest party. And no Party could come to power without outside support unless it obtained virtually 50% of the votes.
Mr M. J. O’Higgins pressed this point:
There is no question about it. Under the single transferable vote, the candidate who is elected ultimately represents and reflects the majority opinion in the constituency.
There is no good reason why the people of the country should be forced into the position that they must vote for the abolition of both of these separate and distinct items at the same time. It may be that many people would like to see the single-seat constituency who, at the same time, would prefer to retain the transferable vote. What opportunity, on the Government plan, will those people get of indicating what they want. We hear a lot of prating about the will of the people and of this question being left to the people to decide. Are the Government showing any regard or any respect for the will of the people in the particular type of question that is to be put to them in this referendum. Are not the people going to be forced into the position that if they vote ‘Yes’ in this referendum, they are voting not alone for the abolition of P.R. but also for the abolition of the single transferable vote.
(172.6.784-6)
This plea was not answered by any Government spokesman during the debate on this sub-section.
(…)