I take it refusal of the Committee to pass this motion would not affect pensions. Inasmuch as I consider the proposal to pass an Act restricting old age pensions in the way that has been proposed is impolitic and not for the welfare of the community, I intend to oppose this motion.
The case that is made for the Bill is that a sum, first of £300,000, and lastly of £500,000 is required to be saved. And therefore it is intended that an enactment shall be passed which would deprive the pensioners of their present rates of pensions and substitute a lower rate of pensions. I think that is impolitic. I think it is not serving the best interests of the State. We see that while we are engaged in these operations of reducing the rates of pensions to the aged and the blind, in other countries adjacent the proposal is to remove the limitations that are at present operating, and to remove such penalisation of thrift as is proposed in the Bill that has been under discussion and for which this motion is proposed. The very fact that we are going in a retrograde direction while in Britain they are going forward in this matter is an added reason why we should hesitate. The Minister, in his last speech on the Bill, tried to reassure the Dáil that the pensioners over the Border in the Northern Area were too patriotic to be swayed by any considerations of the height of their pensions, and that no matter what may happen to their pensions they would still desire to retain their citizenship in the Free State, or to come into the citizenship of the Free State however it might befall them. I suggest to the Dáil that it is not wise to try that experiment too far.
There are quite a number of tendencies showing themselves in the proposals from the Ministerial benches to urge the deprivation of many of the reforms that have been passed in recent years benefiting the poorer classes of the community — a deprivation within the Free State area, and, as I believe, a prospect of an enhancement and an improvement in the Northern area, following similar improvements and enhancements in England. I say it is unwise to try too much the patriotic feelings and sentiments of the aged or of those who are about to enter into the years of pension. And the effect of this kind of legislation is not to be thought of simply in regard to the persons themselves who are affected, but in regard to all those who are in touch with such persons.
If the masses of the people in Northern Ireland look upon the tendency of legislation in the Saorstát and compare it with the tendency of legislation in their own area and across the water, they say "to come into the Free State is a deprivation of the present benefits of ameliorative legislation, and we prefer to remain in the position of advantage that we at present are in." Every one who spoke to the masses, as they have been called, in respect to independence in advocating changes in the political relations of these countries, put it to those masses that it would mean a chance of development and a chance of exercising their capacity for citizenship; to develop the country as a whole and the individuals in the country. Nine out of ten people believed that it would mean material improvement for the poor and that we would be saved from those excessive differences between the wealthy on the one hand and object poverty on the other hand. But what are we finding? We are finding in this Bill that is proposed that the tendency is to be the other way. We are asked in the same speech from the Minister to take from the pensions enjoyed by the poor and to prophecy that there will be a reduction in the income tax of the rich.
