THE IRISH DAIL

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 77, 27 September 1924, Page 16

THE IRISH DAIL

AFTER ITS FIRST YEAR'S WORK.

The Dail, which adjourned in July for the summer recess, has now practically completed the first year of its existence, a period sufficiently long to enable us to estimato with some approach to accuracy its merits and defects as an Assembly, says the "Irish Statesman." Though armed opposition to the Saorstat had ended by the time the elections were held in August of last year, the new Legislature could not hope to escape the blighting effect which revolutionary upheavals exercise upon representative bodies. Those who prophesied that an Irish Parliament would be fiercely individualist, a clash of' competing 2)ereo"~lliWes, proved to be wholly wrong. The Dail was disciplined quite as rigorously as the old Nationalists used to be at Westminster. With all allowance .for abnormal conditions, it is not a healthy sign that inside twelve months," though, measures of the greatest importance have been under discussion, no private member has acquired prestige in the popular. eye by the display of Parliamentary gifts. The conduct of na^ional affairs is now the business of the Dail, but Deputies might easily do more to bring this fact home to their constituents. It is a; nice question if members of the Dail are not as.much isolated'in Dublin as were the old Nationalists in London. ' Nothing has been more startling than the fact that inside the last few months, while several Deputies have changed their party allegiance and combined into a new group, none of these has thought fit to call a meeting of his constituents to explain his action and secure a new mandate. That the voters concerned have made no general protest against this sort of treatment at the hands of their representatives is more ominous to the prestige of the Dail than if Mr. M'Grath and his followers had insisted upon a series of by-elections to test opinion in the country upon their policy.