The Minister has made it very difficult for Deputies to discuss the proposal on its merits. Deputy Good has attempted to do so in a reasonable kind of way, and I would ask the Minister in replying to try and deal with the merits of the proposal and the Bill he is proposing to repeal. It is true, as Deputy Good said, that at the time the measure was originally introduced the estimate of the valuation of the then City of Dublin was about £1,200,000, and that the estimate made of the valuation of the premises that were uncovered by direct voting power until the commercial franchise was set up was approximately £600,000. Now the valuation of the city has been increased, by the extension of the city, to about £1,900,000. I think it would be desirable if we could have an estimate from the Minister as to what exactly is the valuation on which the commercial register in the new city is based.

The commercial register originally prepared was a register in respect of, I think, about 2,400 premises. The total local government vote, I think, at the present moment is about 140,000. If the position is that it can be verified that the commercial register in the City of Dublin at the present moment is over £600,000, we then have the position that one-third of the rates in the city will come from people who will have no direct representation in the administration of the city if the commercial register is wiped out. I should like the Minister to defend the position he proposes to create by which taxation will be raised to the extent of perhaps one-third of the total taxation of the city from members for whom there is no representation in the Council. The second merit in the proposal was, as Deputies said, that it did enable persons engaged in business in the city, as distinct entirely from administrative bodies, in which public business plays a very important part in maintaining the lives of the people, and particularly the lives of the people whom the public administration of the city is intended, to some extent, to look after, to take part in that business; and the integration by direct representation of the commercial community of the city on the City Council, with work every day carried on by the people of the city, and every day administered in the city, is a most important matter.

The commercial register did find an arrangement by which persons representing the commercial life of the city, who would not have to run the gamut of ordinary public election except in so far as they were elections amongst their own fraternities, could be elected to the City Council— men who would bring their business experience and their wide range of understanding to bear upon the affairs of the city. Such people are used to handling very large numbers of employed people in their business.

One of the things that is most pressed, at the present day, upon the representatives of the City of Dublin, from the Dublin Union Committee, is the case of maintaining a large number of additional unemployed men in the city. It is important, with that responsibility upon them, that they should have closely associated with them people without any political tinge, men ordinarily carrying on their business in the city, men giving employment who would be prejudiced in the giving of that employment if, as a result of non-representation on their part in city affairs, city affairs are either badly managed, of if sufficient attention is not paid to the fact that a considerable increase in the rates will prejudice their power of giving employment.

That representation is being swept away, and, it is a strange fact, in reference to the proposal to sweep it away, that we have had no criticism good, bad or indifferent as to the work of this representation upon the City Council. Deputies have spoken of the excellence of the work of such people on the City Council. I should like the Minister to say if in any way the work of the Council had ever been made difficult, or its excellence reduced in any way by the representation on the Council of the commercial community in this direct way. The Minister has not discussed the merits either of this representation or the services that this particular representation has given to the city. Deputy Good asked was there any other better way of giving it. If the principle is admitted that with a big valuation, or the consideration of the big amount of taxation that is raised from those people, should bring representatives into the City Council, I do not think that a better or more simple way could be devised than the commercial register. And that is so if only for this reason that it takes a number—an important section of persons carrying on their life in the city—a definite group in themselves, completely detached from anything like politics and entirely representing the commercial community and enables them in that way to express their views. The Minister has not examined the merits of any of these things. His proposal is, in fact, a kind of political sandbagging of administrative capacity and administrative capacity linked up with commercial experience of the objects from which these representatives are drawn. The Minister's aim is entirely, and I think he would admit it frankly, political in its objective.

I would not mind the Minister starting out to get wild animals if the Minister were a wild animal tamer, but I think he is setting out to create a force that he will not be able to direct. He introduces here the cry of class; he stigmatises the proposals embodied in the commercial register as class proposals. I want to stigmatise the Minister's proposal as a class measure and intended to start all sorts of class feeling. He is throwing to a certain section of the electorate a bit of imaginary meat. He is throwing them the commercial representatives on the Corporation, the representatives of the commercial community in Dublin, men who are there simply because they have money in their pockets. The electorate are going to be fed upon that particular type, and are not going to have anything that will enable them to work out their own political salvation, or to attend to their own administrative interests in a way that will give the community the best results of satisfactory administration with whatever resources they have.

The commercial register was not based upon wealthy representation. Many of the people on it, as Deputy Belton said, carried on business in the city and helped to give employment and helped to take people off the hands of the Dublin Board of Public Assistance, but were not necessarily wealthy in terms of the valuation of their premises, in which they gave employment. The representation given in this franchise is representation based upon the value of the fabric these people are maintaining, and the maintenance of which is giving ordinary employment in the city and maintaining the real life of the city. I say the citizen who thinks he is hammering down class barriers, and taking something from the hands of the wealthy and distributing it amongst the poor, when the Minister destroys that particular type of representation, is simply being fooled as to what he may expect in the future. Representatives of this particular kind are closely integrated to our commercial life, and the general carrying on of business in the city would be a greater guarantee for employment than the wiping out of this register, or the taking off the register of every single one of those people or of every single person who had a bigger income than £25 a year. The Minister is thinking and working upon entirely wrong lines in moving for the removal of this representation from the government of the city.