I recently read a book published in 1972 about practices of the Seanad which noted that, in 1961, a joint committee on electoral law recommended that existing legal disqualifications should be removed in respect of the Dáil and the Seanad. The committee said that electors must be regarded as mature enough to elect representatives of the type they want, and to take the consequences should the persons elected become incapable of acting during the period of office by reason of imprisonment, mental instability, bankruptcy and so on. That same committee wanted to remove the disqualifications in respect of civil servants wishing to seek election. The committee members wanted to move forward. They had an idea of voters being mature enough to make their own decisions about who they would like to be their public representatives. They wanted to remove disqualifications in order to open up our democracy. This legislation is doing the reverse, and it is a bad precedent. Instead of the philosophy of trusting voters, it is the philosophy of telling the people what the Government thinks is good for them. That is a backward step.