IRISH SENATE

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 April 1934, Page 5

IRISH SENATE

ABOLITION BILL INTRODUCED

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LONDON, April 18

In the Dail Eireann, Mr De Valera moved the second reading of the Free State Senate Abolition Bill. He said that the Senate was not a representative chamber. It had prevented the representative chamber, the House, from carrying out the people’s will. It had opposed the major measures since the Fianna Fail Administration took office, though it had not previously clone so. A cheaper and a more useful revising House could be provided, if one became necessary. The members of the Dail Eireann were the best judges as to what the people wanted.

Mr Cosgrave opposed the bill as being one interfering with the independence of the judiciary. Its enactment would give the Free State constitution a death blow. The pretext of the expenditure involved was invalid because the Government had spent in one day on the Anglo-Irish economic dispute what would keep the Senate for a year.

Mi* O’Sullivan (Opposition) said that Mr De Valera, was drifting towards a dictatorship. The Bill had been introduced because the majesty of the President-Emperor, Mr De Valera had been piqued. Mr O’Higgins said that the Government wanted the Senate to be a mere body of “yes-men.” Mr Norton (Labour Leader) announced that the Labour Party would support the bill. The debate was adjourned.

REPUBLICAN ARRESTED.

LONDON, April 18.

Tom Barry, a prominent Republican leader in Cork, has been arrested on a charge of having illegal possession of a machine gun with 384 rounds of ammunition. He will be tried by the Military Tribunal at Dublin.