Proportional Representation

At one stage during dinner Mr. Acheson turned to me and said: ‘I see you are having trouble in Ireland with Proportional Representation. Why did you adopt it?’

I said that it was adopted in 1922 as a guarantee to the religious minority that they would get a fair share of representation in the Dáil. I added that the authors of the Constitution of 1922 also had in mind that Proportional Representation would be an invitation to our fellow countrymen in the Six Counties to join us. We had kept the Privy Council for a time for the same purpose: but actually no case involving discrimination against the minority or minority rights of any kind had ever gone to the Privy Council between 1922 and its abolition in 1933. The only religious case that ever went to the Privy Council was an action by a parish priest of the Diocese of Kerry and his Bishop, which Lord Haldane threw out as being a case for final decision by the Irish Courts.

Mr. Acheson said that Proportional Representation was a bad system. It inherently tended to create a multiplicity of parties and a consequent lack of coherence in national policy. ‘We couldn’t possibly have Proportional Representation in the United States’ he said. ‘If we had, the country just couldn’t be governed at all’. He referred to the endless number of groups in America racial, religious, class groups of every kind. If a large number of these groups as such secured separate representation in the House (of Representatives) there would be constant bargaining and coalitioneering to get measures through. And there would be a constant nibbling away at the substance of measures. The policy of the Administration would be deflected at every turn perhaps defeated at crucial times.

Mr. Acheson felt that in a country like Ireland where the minority is not persecuted, constitutional guarantees were unnecessary to safeguard their rights. Irish public opinion was the best safeguard the minority could have.

The two Party system and the single member constituency system were uncomplicated and forthright systems which gave you a chance of finding out what the electorate were thinking on the issues put before them by the Parties. You got a straightforward ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ result and a clear cut majority one way or another.