WATERFORD CORPORATION AND BRIDGE BILL (BY ORDER.) (Hansard, 22 March 1906)

§ MR. T. L. CORBETT (Down, N.)
said he rose to move that this Bill be read a second time this day six months. In doing so he must confess that his interest in this Bill was very recent. It was the cruel fate which another Bill met with in this House a few days previously which led him first to take an interest in the fate of this Bill. Upon looking into it he found the county council of the North Riding of Tipperary very strongly objected to this Bill and had petitioned against it, and on that ground alone he hoped the hon. Member for North Tipperary would assist him in defeating it. They objected to the cost of this scheme which would do them no good and which only affected the City of Waterford. They said, perfectly reasonably and fairly, that if Waterford wanted this bridge at all let them pay for it. The nearest administrative point of Tipperary under the control of the North Riding County Council was forty-three miles from Waterford and the country between that district and Water-ford was intersected by very few roads Tipperary was in no sense in the neigh-bourhood of the borough of Waterford.

§ MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN
(Kilkenny Where is it at all?

§ MR. T. L. CORBETT
said that, the Members representing Tipperary in this House being silent and gagged, he was compelled to say something on behalf of the people of Tipperary. Waterford was not used as a market by anyone residing in the North Riding of Tipperary and the object to which this Bill was devoted did not benefit them to the extent of a single halfpenny. Why then should Tipperary be asked to contribute to the cost of an improvement local to Waterford?

§ MR. JOHN REDMOND (Waterford)
Not a single penny is asked from the people of Tipperary.

§ MR. T. L. CORBETT
said the people of Tipperary might be and could be called upon to pay for the freeing of this bridge. There was neither reason nor justice in the demand of the Corporation of Waterford. On what did Waterford rely for forcing through this unjust proposal? They relied on the Leader of the Nationalist Party in this House. Though the power of the hon. and learned Gentleman was very great below the gangway and upon the Opposition Benches, as was seen recently when a Second Reading was refused to the Rathmines Bill, the House would, he hoped, not allow him to carry this Bill. The North Riding of Tipperary was not alone in its plea for justice in this matter. The county council for South Tipperary had also protested against this measure, and in the petition which they presented against it, they described the Waterford Corporation as having been grossly unjust. Those were not the words of a Unionist district, but of Nationalist Tipperary, and he hoped the House would remember them to-night, and support him in his Motion to reject the Bill. He begged to move that this Bill be read a second time this day six months.

§ MR. CHARLES CRAIG (Antrim, S.)
seconded the rejection of the Bill. He said that there was only one bridge across the Suir at Waterford and it belonged to a body of Commissioners who objected to the Bill.

§ MR. JOHN REDMOND
Oh no, they are in agreement with us and support the Bill.

§ MR. CHARLES CRAIG
Because under it the compensation to be paid was to be decided under the Land Clauses Act.

§ MR. JOHN REDMOND
That has been arranged.

§ MR. CHARLES CRAIG
And they would suffer a very severe loss. If the Bill passed its Second Reading, he should put down an instruction to the Committee 698 to insert a clause providing that the compensation must be so measured as to give at least 3½ per cent. or the capital sum when invested.

§ MR. JOHN REDMOND
declared that the object and meaning of the opposition was explained in a paragraph in to-day's Times. At a meeting of the Irish Unionist Members, held at the House of Commons yesterday, Mr. Long presiding, a Resolution was passed expressing the opinion that the precedent created by the Rathmines Bill would paralyse the entire proceedings relating to Private Bills and that by way of reprisal on the Nationalists they would do all in their power to impede the progress of the Waterford Corporation Bill.

§ MR. CHARLES CRAIG
On a point of order. That is not the case.

§ MR. SPEAKER
That is not a point of order.

§ MR. JOHN REDMOND,
proceeding, said he therefore asked the House to judge of the bonâ fides of the proceedings. He reviewed the history of the bridge, showing that a Commission had recommended that a new free bridge should be built and that the courts of law had held that the Bridge Commissioners had exclusive rights to have a bridge over the Suir. A wealthy citizen had left a legacy, a new through railway had contributed £15,000, and they had obtained a promise of £33,000 from an old fund in the hands of the Treasury towards the freeing of the bridge; and they now came for permission to buy out the old toll bridge. They could not do so without asking the permission of the British Parliament, which had never even heard of the bridge. The Commissioners objected to the method adopted for fixing the price, and suggested another method, which they had adopted. The Commissioners had therefore withdrawn their opposition, and were in favour of the Bill. 699 The hon. Member for North Down had said that they were making a demand for contributions from Tipperary and other neighbouring counties. They did nothing of the kind. There was hot a syllable in the Bill as to levying a single contribution upon anybody. The promoters were simply asking to be allowed to buy the bridge. It was an aggravation of the conduct of Members who came down to the House to oppose the Bill in retaliation for something with which it had no connection, that they had not read the Bill. This was not a question affecting merely the city of Waterford. It affected the whole of that part of Ireland, and he had had the pleasure to-day of meeting representatives of all the counties concerned, and not one of those counties was asked for a penny under the Bill. There was no power under the Bill to levy a sixpence on any of the counties in question or on any living being. Under these circumstances he thought it was an abuse of the forms of the House, that hon. Members, having publicly announced that they were doing it for the purposes of retaliation, to offer this opposition. He did not know whether the hon. and learned Member for Trinity College was interested in this, but he would like to tell him that it had been agreed to withdraw the provision in this Bill dealing with the fixing of price under the Land Clauses Act, and to substitute the Bridges Act. In that way the Bridge Commissioners had agreed to the Bill. There was no provision in the Bill to levy any contribution on the neighbouring counties, and all the representatives of those counties were in favour of the presentation of the Bill. All that the Waterford Corporation were asking was that they should be able with their own money to carry out the purchase of the bridge, and thus remove from that part of Ireland a great bar to its prosperity.

§ SIR EDWARD CARSON
said from his earliest recollections he knew a great deal about this bridge, and he was rather inclined to say that he wished the bridge had been bought up before, and that there had been some greater facilities for passing over it. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford had appealed to him in reference to this Bill. 700 Might he Say that his view was that all these private Bills ought to be allowed to be examined by Committees of this House upon their merits alone, and he rather anticipated that a good deal of the objection that had been raised had really been raised because in the past that which he had laid down as the proper principle had not been accepted by hon. Gentlemen below the gangway. Some of his friends still had rankling in their minds what happened on the Rathmines Bill. [Laughter]. It was all very well to laugh, but it was a very serious business to leave a district without drainage because it happened to be a Protestant district. [NATIONALIST dissent]. It was the only reason put forward.

§ MR. CLANCY
Nobody gave any such reason.

§ SIR EDWARD CARSON
The hon. Member for Dublin gave it.

§ MR. CLANCY
I absolutely deny it. I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to quote a single sentence to that effect.

§ SIR EDWARD CARSON
I can assure the hon. Gentleman I do not carry his words about with me.

§ MR. CLANCY
It is not the first time you have been offensive.

§ SIR EDWARD CARSON
said that neither was it the first time the hon. Gentleman had said that to him. He really had been accustomed to him all his life. He wished English Members knew the hon. Gentleman so well. [Cries of "Order."] He did not feel the slightest ill-feeling towards the hon. Member—they were extremely good friends. After all, whatever might be their feelings about the Rathmines Bill, and whatever might be the irritation felt by the hon. Member for Dublin towards him, he hoped it would not last very long. He only hoped that in future Bills which might affect districts in which they were concerned would be considered by the House upon the merits alone. They could leave all these questions outside the pale of Party politics. He earnestly hoped the bridge in question would be freed, and 701 with that object the Bill should go to a Committee.

§ MR. T. L. CORBETT
asked leave to withdraw his Amendment.