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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 5 Mar 1924

DÁIL IN COMMITTEE. - OLD AGE PENSIONS BILL, 1924—COMMITTEE STAGE.

The Dáil will go into Committee according to Standing Orders.

I move Section 1, which is a definition section:—

In this Act—

the expression "the Old Age Pensions Acts" means and includes the Old Age Pensions Acts, 1908 to 1919 and this Act;

the expressions "the Act of 1908,""the Act of 1911,""the Act of 1919" and "the Act of 1920" mean respectively the Old Age Pensions Act, 1908, the Old Age Pensions Act, 1911, the Old Age Pensions Act, 1919, and the Blind Persons Act, 1920;

the expression "old age pension" means an old age pension under the Old Age Pensions Acts, 1908 to 1919 or an old age pension under the Old Age Pensions Acts, as the context may require, and in either case includes a pension under Section 1 of the Act of 1920;

the expression "the first appointed day" means such day as the Minister shall by order appoint to be the first appointed day for the purposes of this Act;

the expression "the second appointed day" means such day as the Minister shall by order appoint to be the second appointed day for the purposes of this Act;

the expression "the third appointed day" means such day, whether before or after or coinciding with the second appointed day, but not in any case more than six months after the passing of this Act, as the Minister shall by order appoint to be the third appointed day for the purposes of this Act;

the expression "the Minister" means the Minister for Finance.

I am in a difficulty with regard to the relation between amendments 1 and 2. Amendment 1 is really two amendments and in part it seeks to accomplish the same purpose as amendments 9, 10 and 13. The second part of amendment 1 has a connection with amendment 2, but I am not exactly clear as to what it is.

Amendment 1 stands in my name. I have not gone into the question of how frequently the general purpose of the amendment is achieved in further amendments, but inasmuch as it affects the entire scope of the Bill, and the other amendments are really incident to sections, I imagine that now is as good a time to deal with the essential matter contained in the amendment as any other time. I suggest the amendment has a wider scope. Do I move?

I would suggest that to deal with such a matter as is dealt with by Deputy Figgis in an amendment to a definition clause, might cause difficulties that we do not anticipate. I do not know at the moment what the effect of carrying Deputy Figgis's amendment might have on, say, sub-section 2 of Section 5. It would raise a question whether we exempt certain pensions from the scope of the Bill and from the revision, and I am afraid the adoption of the amendment might cause them to be revised.

On the whole I think it would be better to accomplish what is desired by the methods proposed in amendment "9" and other amendments. If that involves any amendment of the definition section that amendment could be made later. The second part of Deputy Figgis's amendment—to add certain words at the end of the paragraph—is better covered in amendment No. 2, which, I think, excludes blind persons altogether from the operation of this bill.

Of course there is a point in this amendment which is not covered by other amendments, and that is that if it was agreed to by the Dáil, as I hope it will be, those old people coming into pensions in the future who are aged 75 would come in under the existing rates.

Was that the intention of Deputy Figgis?

The intention was to achieve fundamentally that purpose, and seeing there is to be a deduction in old age pensions to make that deduction only applicable between 70 and 75 years of age, and any person passing out from 70 to 75 period into the period of elder age should automatically come back to the old rates that have prevailed and are prevailing.

With regard to the second part of the amendment to add words to the end of the paragraph, how does that stand with amendment No. 2? Is amendment No. 2 not wider than the second part of Deputy Figgis's amendment?

I did not expect we would reach this.

Amendment 2 by Deputy Johnson is to exclude blind persons. The second part of the amendment of Deputy Figgis is not as sweeping as that.

No. I had not Deputy Johnson's amendment before me when drafting mine.

Very well, I will allow Deputy Figgis to move his amendment, as follows:—

In line 23, after the word "require," to insert the words "payable to any person who on the passing of this Act shall not have attained the age of seventy-five years but does not include an old age pension payable to any person who on the passing of this Act shall have attained such age."

My purpose in moving this amendment is this. It has already been elicited that a good deal of the economy that the Minister for Finance is anxious to obtain has already been achieved and, therefore, there is no necessity to widen his original intention. The original intention of the Minister, announced last November, is indicated by the wider scope of the Bill now before us. In moving this amendment I wish to make it quite clear that the words used by several of us on Second Reading, myself included, were taken up by the Minister and responded to when he made the statement that Old Age Pensions were not the first things that he as Minister of Finance turned his attention to when he desired certain economy. That, of course, is true. One accepts that very fully, but the words that Old Age Pensions were the first to be turned to were used rather, if one may say so, as a rhetorical expression, meaning that old age persons should any how have been the very last to which any State should turn when seeking for economy. We are not the only nation at the present moment seeking to effect very drastic economy. A neighbouring nation is also doing the same at the present moment, and it is the unanimous wish of all parties, irrespective of party loves and allegiances, that wherever economies may be effected the Old Age Pension should not be touched. Last November the Minister indicated that Old Age Pensions were to be cut by 10 per cent. and that there would be certain further economies that might in the future be effected, and it is in answer to that that I brought forward and base this amendment. If there are to be any further economies that can be effected or should be effected, these economies should be searched out in the first instance before Old Age Pensions should be touched or tampered with. In November the Minister for Finance stated that he expected to achieve a 10 per cent. cut, and on the figures given in the last estimate that would have yielded, on his statement, an economy of round about £300,000. Under the Bill he told us, on Second Reading, the economies to be effected would amount to £500,000. That is considerably widening the scope of his original intention. I must come back now to that original intention. I say that his original intention, when first undertaken, was that this cut would effect an economy not higher than £300,000. In answer to a question put to him to-day as to what was the amount already economised, he admitted that these economies amounted to £100,000, and that that had been effected by the tightening up of administration. I venture to say that if administration were still further to be tightened up in the coming year that £100,000 could be increased to a larger figure still. However, here is the fact. In November, 1923, he tells us that after searching and seeing what economies that could be effected, he desires to save in fixing Old Age Pensions an economy of £300,000, and now, in the month of March, 1924, he informs us that, irrespective of any such cut, £100,000 has already been effected, so he is left, according to his original intention of last November, with the necessity of only a further economy of £200,000 to be effected. I have not the figures before me; the figures perhaps would be difficult to work out, even with the information available to the Minister with all the resources of his Department at his command. How far less can they be available to an independent Deputy having no such Department to which to turn. But I venture to say that a very great portion of the remaining £200,000 could be saved by making the Bill applicable not to persons over 75 years but between 70 and 75 years of age. The purpose of my amendment is this, and I do urge the Minister to consider it carefully, and I am sure he will, that the present rates should prevail for all persons up to and over the age of 75 that the new rates intimated in this Bill should apply only to persons between 70 and 75; that the effect, as has already been pointed by you, sir, that if any persons in the future passing from what I may call the interim period of 70 to 75 shall pass back to the scale of rates now prevailing.

I think it was Deputy Johnson who pointed that out.

And you admirably reinforced it.

An CEANN COMHAIRLE

No, I did not reinforce it. I simply allowed the point to be made.

I think the object of the amendment is one that will be greeted in every part of the House with sympathy, and even with sympathy, I am sure, by the Minister for Finance himself. I have been looking to see if the Chief Ministerial Whip had been present in the House, and I regret to see that he is not, because last Sunday he made a speech in the County Dublin, I do not know whether it was with the approval of the Minister for Finance or not, stating that at some time in the future it was the desire of the Minister not to decrease the pension from ten shillings, but to increase it to twenty shillings.

Hear, hear.

I am glad to see that the Chief Whip is here now. That course, however, is to be postponed for the future. Anticipating this millenium that is going to come in the future, we should at least diminish the present blow for those who are over seventy-five years. I speak with some feeling in the matter, because I know something of the conditions in the extreme West, and I do know a number of cases of persons who are wholly dependent upon their old-age pension, and who, as they get older and older, are thrown more upon their old-age pension, because they are not able to till the tiny patches of fields that they could have done at an earlier time. I therefore move the amendment.

I am sorry Deputy Figgis moved this amendment in the definition Section, because I am afraid it is liable to lead to a certain amount of confusion, and it would have been just as easy to have moved a series of amendments, if necessary, which would have dealt with all the points he wishes to cover. As it is, I do not really know what the total effect of the amendment would be if passed. I do see, however, that it would mean a certain stringency which is not meant to be applied to existing holders of pensions. This would be applied to them if they exceeded seventy-five years of age, and it would have the effect, in regard to one class, that a person seventy-five years of age, would be treated worse than the person under seventy-five. I would suggest to the Dáil that, from the point of view of clarity in legislation, they should refuse to accept this amendment moved, as it is, to a Definition Section. There has so far been no differentiation in the Old Age Pensions Act between old age pensioners of different ages. The view taken was that a person who had reached the age of seventy years should have a pension, and should have no more of a pension when he got to eighty or ninety years of age. There was a flat pension for all persons over 70 years, and I do not think we should begin now making a difference between people who are seventy-five and people who are seventy. There are questions of health involved, and it might very well be that people who are something under seventy-five would be a great deal worse off in reality than persons a little over seventy-five.

In any case, if you not merely exempt people over 75 from the cut, but also from the revision of means, it would involve a very great difference in cases that were otherwise exactly similar. For instance, in the case of a person who was only a month under the age, and in the case of another person who was a month over the age, a man might be just a month under seventy-five and another man might be a month over that age, and if both were persons with a certain amount of private means, that is to say, more than the lowest figure on the scale, the figure entitling to a full pension, there might be perhaps a difference of three or four shillings as between these two cases, which I suggest would be an anomalous situation, and which would cause a feeling that it is not desirable to create. Deputy Figgis went into a number of matters which had been raised here from time to time, both on the original discussion in November, and on the Second Reading. We have tightened up the administration as far as possible, but I do not want to pursue the line of tightening up administration too much. There are many people who say that it might be desirable to relax administration just a little in this matter, in the proof of age, for instance. I think you could do a great deal of damage by tightening your administration too much. You might make it too harsh, and refuse even to allow the pensioner the benefit of the doubt, and you might get too much inhumanity by too much tightness in your administration.

I mentioned the figure £300,000 to be on the safe side. The reason why we introduced a revision of means scale was to allow of an economy considerably greater than £300,000, as we do not want to be holding over the heads of the old age pensioners the prospect of a further reduction if the cost of living figure, say, were to go down by another fifteen or twenty points. We do not wish to deal with this matter any further as regards effecting economies: that no matter how great a difficulty we might have to effect a Budget balance, no matter what stress we might be put to to get down to a figure of expenditure that it would be necessary for us to get down to, that still we would be in a position which would enable us not to have to touch the old age pensions any further. What we have been prepared to do in that matter and what we have done, even if it means very great hardship and very great dislocation, is to drop a service or get rid of items of expenditure in order to cut down our expenses rather than to touch the old age pensions any further. If we had merely effected a cut of a shilling and had done nothing more, I, for my part, would not feel able to say that we would not interfere any further with the old age pensions. If the Bill is passed in the form in which it is put up, including both the cut and the revision of means, I feel that I can rightly say that no matter what else we may have to do we will do nothing more in the matter of the old age pensions, and that was why we revised the means. I would suggest that we could, on subsequent amendments, discuss the application of the cut for the persons who are over seventy-five, and the revision of the means scale in the case of people over seventy-five, and that we should not adopt what is brought forward here as an amendment to a definition section.

So far as the principle of moving amendments to a definition clause is concerned, I am bound to say I appreciate fully the line of argument the Minister took and I think that it is particularly desirable that amendments to definition clauses should not be moved. It is not with any desire of laying any unction to my soul that I say there are seven amendments to this definition clause, and I am only one sinner amongst the seven. I move the amendment primarily with a view to getting a decision on the fundamental point. How that is to be achieved, whether by change of wording in the definition clause or by moving addenda to various other clauses as they occur throughout the Bill, is a matter on which I am quite indifferent. I notice there are amendments to various clauses throughout the Bill. I had been asked by one Deputy, who has returned here, to move an amendment on his behalf. I do not want this point to be put aside on a technicality as to whether the amendment should or should not be moved in the present place. The intention it is sought to achieve is much more important than the form of words by which it is sought to achieve it. I am quite prepared not to press my amendment if, when we come to amendments 9, 10, or 11, the debate will not be prejudiced by the fact that I am withdrawing this amendment now, and the matter will not be regarded as in the nature of a chose jugée.

One thing strikes me about the moving of amendments to definition clauses, that in the case of Bills which begin with a definition section one could forestall all amendments by moving amendments to the definition clauses. If this amendment were voted on and defeated, it would raise a point as to whether certain other amendments on the paper are in order. For my own part, I would prefer that this amendment should not be decided upon now, so that no point would arise which might prevent numbers 9, 10, and 11 from being moved.

If I do not press this amendment now, it will not, I. take it, prejudice the matter later The discussion will be open.

If it is withdrawn, the whole thing remains open. If it were voted upon, a point of order might possibly be raised.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

I move Amendment 2:—

In line 23, to delete the words "and in either case includes" and to substitute therefor the words "but does not include."

The amendment we have been considering, but which has been withdrawn, does not seem to have regard to the fact that Section I of the Act of 1920 is a Blind Person's Act, which gives the pension to blind persons at the age of 50. I have not heard any good reason adduced, so far, by the Minister for making this Bill apply to blind persons, and I think there are very good reasons why they should be excepted. It was thought when the Blind Persons Bill was passed—the Act of 1920—that those who would be eligible for the pension at the age of 70 who were sighted would come into pensions at the age of 50 if they were blind. The purpose of the amendment is to secure that no change shall take place in respect of the age as affecting blind persons. No figures have been really adduced by the Minister to tell us what the effect of the Bill in respect of blind persons would be, but I gather that there were in 1911 only 3,054 totally blind persons in the whole of the country over the age of 55. There would be somewhat more than that over the age of 50. How many more we cannot find out and have not been told. But I imagine that there is a considerably less than 3,000, if we are to take the 26 Counties; possibly there are not more than a couple of thousand.

Might I intervene to give the figures the Deputy requires? The number for the Saorstát is 3,513.

The effect of the amendment would be to maintain 3,500 people in receipt of their present pensions, instead of reducing them by 1s. and subjecting them to such other, shall I say, "de-benefits," as are proposed in the Bill. I think blind persons in Ireland particularly have reason for special consideration. They have not the opportunities of earning a livelihood or of being supported by institutional treatment, and have not the opportunities of earning a living that they have in Scotland or in England. We have an extra obligation to them because of our failure to provide the treatment which even the law insists should be provided. Section 2 of this Blind Persons Act imposes obligations on the County Councils with regard to institutional treatment which have never been put into operation, and the County Councils have not been obliged by the Local Government Authority to put them into operation. In fact, the Government has allowed the County Councils to disobey the law in that respect.

Section 2 of this same Act requires that County Councils shall make provision for the welfare of the blind in their districts. That is a compulsory Section, and it seems to me that that alone gives one good reason why we should not disable still further the blind in Ireland. The blind man or woman at 50, who has not an income and who is not able to earn a living, is in a very much worse plight in Ireland than a similar person in any other country. We have made it more or less an obligation that they should become beggars on the roads and that they should be forced to solicit charity and alms—sometimes not so much charity. I think we might at least show a little leniency in respect of the blind in this matter, and not deprive them of the 1/- in the case of the 10/- pensioners. As a matter of fact, they should be exempted from this Act altogether, leaving them in the position they have been in up to now, which was not as good a position as they should have been placed in. Even as it was, the Government did not enforce the provisions of that Act. I would ask the Minister to give a little consideration to this case, and to allow an amendment to be passed which would save the blind from this penalisation.

The amount involved in this matter would not be large; but heretofore, the blind person has been treated in all respects in the same way as the old age pensioner, except in the matter of age. It would create a certain amount of difficulty, and would cause a certain amount of extra work and trouble in offices if you made any differentiation. The machine moves a good deal better if you have the same scales of pension and the same scales of means for both old persons and blind persons. I do not think that it could be contended, really, that the blind person who is fairly able-bodied, is more in need of money than the absolutely helpless old person. I agree that something should be done to provide training for the blind and to assist them in doing such work as blind persons can do, but I do not think that the blind person who is helpless through blindness, is really any greater object of charity than the sighted person—if I may use the word—who is helpless through age and infirmity.

Again, certain difficulties would arise owing to the fact that the Blind Persons Act is a recent Act. There are a number of blind persons who are aged, perhaps, seventy-three or seventy-four, who got their pensions, not under the Blind Persons Act, but under the Old Age Pensions Act. There is nothing to distinguish them as blind persons. They got the pension because of their age. They would be cut and have their means reviewed, while younger blind persons, if this amendment were adopted, would not suffer the cut, but would have their pensions remain at the present level. That is a difficulty against it. On the whole, I think while you can make out a case for any particular class of people, we should let the situation remain as it is at present: that there should be a flat pension for old persons, and that the people who are blind should be on the same scale as persons over seventy years of age. It is a question really of requirements, and we should not be influenced by the pity that even a blind person who is not in any way in want of money or want of comforts that money can bring, must excite. I think we are prone to be led away by that feeling of compassion which really has nothing to do with the question of the amount of money involved. We pity even the wealthy blind person.

I do not know whether any member of the Dáil is prepared to support this suggestion or amendment, which would make some exception in the case of the blind. I can quite understand the attitude of the Minister. He is naturally voicing the views of the people of his office who look upon rows of figures, dates and amounts in a severely logical manner. They tell you that blindness of itself is an affliction and should excite pity, whether the blind is old or young or rich or poor, and no matter how the blindness may have been caused— but they remain severely logical and adamant. I ask the Dáil to consider the humanities of this case, and to think of these 3,500 people in the position they are in. They must be people who are not in receipt of an income of ten shillings per week. Most of them are not in receipt of any income at all, except such as they are able to obtain by indiscriminate asking for alms or by charity, or through the support of their friends. They are particularly helpless. They usually require somebody to accompany them, and that in itself is an extra charge upon their pension. They are more helpless than the man of seventy who has his sight. In very many cases it means the keeping of two people because of helplessness, and special care has to be taken and special expense has to be incurred in looking after the blind man or woman. The Minister says, of course, that the pensioner over seventy who is blind and has received his pension on account of the Old Age Pensions Acts prior to 1920, would be placed in a disadvantageous position.

I think the Dáil could find ways and means of altering this Bill before it finishes with it, to bring even those people into the better position that the blind would be placed in if my amendment were accepted. I suggest that it is not good enough for the Minister to put forward as an objection in a matter of this kind that it would cause extra trouble in the office. If that is the attitude of the Minister in regard to these things, I think it ought not to be allowed to weigh with the Dáil too much. Let us remember that he is speaking now from the official standpoint, that it is a nuisance to have to make discriminations. It is very much easier to have automatic work in the office; the bureau will do its work very much more simply and easily if we do not make exceptions. That is naturally the official attitude in the matter and particularly the attitude that the Minister for Finance may be expected to adopt.

It is not the attitude that the Dáil should adopt. We are supposed to be in touch with the people of the country and to express the views of the people of the country on matters of this kind, and to bring, in opposition to the bureau, some of the feelings and thoughts of humanity. I submit that in this case the Dáil would be failing to respond to the desires of the country, whatever they may say about old age pensions as a whole, we should be failing to respond to that desire if we bring the penalties that this Bill involves upon the aged, who also happen to be blind. I will ask the Dáil to express itself in this matter, and to agree with me that this Bill should not include blind persons who have come in under the Act of 1920, from 50 years upwards.

I am going to support Deputy Johnson in his amendment. He has made out a very good case. I do not think he even went far enough. I think there are no more helpless beings in God's earth than the blind, because they not only require someone to look after them, and to prepare their food, but they cannot go out to get sticks to keep up their fire, and if they have any intelligence they require someone to let them know what is being done in the Dáil here, and to keep up their interest in public affairs. One of the saddest things is to see these people in the streets and roads and lanes in the country begging for sustenance. I have no justification, perhaps, for saying it, but I have been told that a great many people were put upon these lists who did not deserve to be upon them. As far as the actual blind were concerned, I think the Dáil would be acting in the case of humanity in continuing to give as large a pension as they could. For this reason I support the amendment.

Deputy Johnson justly chided the Dáil for not having expressed itself, but he covered the case so well that he left very little for others to say. He is in the habit of expressing himself very completely on behalf of a silent party, and no one must complain if he expresses himself on behalf of silent Deputies outside his own Party. Nevertheless, there is one point which he did not make, and I draw attention to it now. We are talking about economy. What is the value of the economy that is effected if Deputy Johnson's amendment is defeated? What will be the extra expense incurred by the State through Deputy Johnson's amendment being adopted? A difference of £9,000 per annum on the figures given by the Minister himself. The thing, from a monetary point of view, is absurd. From every other point of view, from every right human point of view, Deputy Johnson's case is complete. I shall support it if he presses the matter to a vote, as I hope he will. It is perfectly true, as Deputy Sir James Craig has said, that certain persons are being put in receipt of this blind person's pension who are not entitled to it. There is, unfortunately, in this, as in other matters, a certain conspiracy to defraud the State. These are the kind of cases to which I have referred so frequently, and recently, when I spoke of tighter administration. By all means see that no one who is not entitled to receive it, does receive this pension. But having done that, for the sake of £9,000, do not inflict this hardship upon persons who are blind and helpless, and who, only since the passing of this 1920 Act, received the benefit which they were entitled to receive from the community long before.

I am under a certain amount of difficulty in this matter, because I may say my heart is with Deputy Johnson, and my head is with the Minister for Finance. I think that that principle will be the difficulty underlying a fair consideration of this Bill. Deputy Johnson makes a case for the blind. Surely none of us will, in any way, take away from his arguments. Blind people are very specially to be pitied, but what in essence does this claim amount to? The Minister for Finance has come along, and he has based his cut on the old age pension first of all on the necessity of the needs of the country. He has also pointed out that the present old age pensioner in receipt of 10s. a week, which was put in operation some years ago, is no worse off at 9s. a week to-day than he was then at 10s. a week.

I say he is in no worse position at 9s. to-day than he was then, when it was put into operation on 10s. That is to say when the pension was increased to 10s. the cost of living was so much higher than it is now that 9s. is more than equivalent to the 10s. he was then paid. Now, another argument, and a very proper argument, is that the amount of money involved in this question of the consideration of the blind is not large. It is not large. But cannot you logically carry your argument right through the Bill on that basis and make exceptions in various directions, which will, as far as the administration of the Act is concerned, do away with any economy altogether? In other words, none of us like this question of cutting the old age pensions. I do not think the Minister for Finance brought it forward with any great pleasure, and he said so. He brought it forward as a matter of necessity. But to differentiate between different classes of persons in connection with old age pensions and blind pensions is going to open up a vista of administration which is going to make the administration of the Bill even very much more difficult than at present. Rather I would put it to the Dáil that the amount of money that is going to be saved, should be put aside, so as to help the blind people to be better able to take care of themselves and to learn trades and to be put in a position that if a man or woman gets blind he or she may be in a position of being self-supporting, and not have them coming under this at all. I would rather see three times the amount of money spent in that direction than in this way of making exceptions to them as a class of individuals that are different from their neighbours in any way. I appeal to the Dáil, much against my will, not to accept Deputy Johnson's amendment on this ground.

I do not know whether Deputy Johnson was in need of the present of Deputy Hewat's heart or what use he will make of it. But I congratulate the Minister on being presented with Deputy Hewat's head. I hope he will keep it very carefully and will consult it when framing his Budget. I must say in this case both my heart and head go to Deputy Johnson, who does not want them. He certainly does not need them.

I do not think the Minister has made a case: the saving to be effected is so small and the position of the blind is so exceptional. You cannot compare a man or woman of seventy or seventyone, who can read their papers and smoke their pipes and have a minor enjoyment of life, and sometimes perhaps do a little work, to a person to whom all is darkness. I cannot help feeling that for the sake of saving £9,000 we may be doing an injustice greater than we really intend. The Minister in framing the Bill budgeted for a margin. He mentioned something like 10 per cent. He has realised more than that, and possibly out of that margin he might be able to meet the case of the blind. If the Minister is prepared to accept, with Deputy Hewat's head, the suggestion that he should spend three times the figure— £27,000 or £30,000—on ameliorative lines, and is prepared to give a pledge to that effect, I will vote with him against the amendment; but, if not, I will support Deputy Johnson.

I appreciate Deputy Hewat's head and Deputy Hewat's suggestions very much. The position is that blind persons were put on the same level as the aged, when the Blind Persons Act was introduced. Everything that can be said in favour of giving people who are blind more than those who were merely old, could be said, even if this Bill were not being introduced. It is an argument that these reductions do not affect in any way. I would say, apart from the compassion one must feel for the blind, that bed-ridden, infirm persons of seventy years are in need of any money that can be given to them, just as persons who are blind. The helplessness is as great, and, perhaps, in matters of food and other comforts, the need might be greater. I feel that anything that can be done by the State in the way of providing facilities for tending the blind, so that they may be able to work and help to support themselves and to have the happiness and interest they would get from being able to work, would be very sympathetically considered. I would not say that three times the amount now to be saved should be spent in that direction. I have no hesitation, however, in saying that if a practical scheme were put up I would certainly agree to the expenditure of the £9,000 that has been mentioned here, on some system of training for the blind.

But would the blind get it?

The expression of the Minister's willingness to support something in the way of assisting the blind to earn their living in some manner better than they are able to do, is very acceptable. Of course, the provision of such a scheme rests with another Department, and judging by the conduct of that Department in the matter of the Blind Persons Act, we have not much to hope for in that direction. So I am not going to urge the Dáil, in view of the promise that something might be done in future in that respect, to take that promise in exchange for the suggestions in the amendment. When that promise has been fulfilled and something of practical value is done, then of course we might willingly consider the alteration of the Bill in bringing the blind into the same position as the rest of the community. But let us wait until that has become effective, and not exchange something tangible for something which may arise in future. At present the position is that the blind will receive their present pension. We are now asked to alter that. I ask the Dáil not to agree to any alteration, and I propose to go to a division.

May I say that I thought I was at a meeting between employers and employees, when listening to Deputy Johnson's last speech, because we are consistently met on these occasions with exactly the same argument.—"Bring down the cost of living and we will consider the question of bringing down the cost of wages." He displays a great want of faith in these matters.

I would like to ask the Minister one question. I would ask him would he give any promise that savings made at the cost of the blind will be expended for the benefit of the blind? Would he give that as a definite promise?

I could not make it so definite as that, but if a scheme is put up to me, I will not withhold sanction as Minister for Finance.

That is an offer that we would have expected from the Minister even if this discussion had never arisen. We hope, in any circumstances, if a proposal were put before him for the benefit of any section of the citizens, he would give it his beneficent attention. It did not require his protestations on this occasion to give us that assurance. He mentioned an argument here, the validity of which I question. He stated it had hitherto been the principle that there should be no differentiation between persons who were old and persons who, in addition to being old, were also blind. There has been a differentiation. It is perfectly true there has been no difference in regard to the money they should receive, but there has been a difference in regard to the age at which they begin to receive the money. There has been that difference, and it is only an extension of something that prevails at the moment. If that difference be carried into this Bill, if this Bill becomes an Act, and those of old age have their pensions dropped, those who are of age and are blind shall not have the same treatment.

Amendment put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 23; Nil, 39.

Tá.

  • Seán Buitléir.
  • John J. Cole.
  • John Conlan.
  • Bryan R. Cooper.
  • Sir James Craig.
  • John Daly.
  • Seán de Faoite.
  • Darrell Figgis.
  • David Hall.
  • Connor Hogan.
  • Séamus Mac Cosgair.
  • Tomás Mac Eoin.
  • Risteárd Mac Fheorais.
  • Patrick McKenna.
  • James Sproule Myles.
  • Tomás de Nógla.
  • Ailfrid O Broin.
  • Tomás O Conaill.
  • Aodh O Cúlacháin.
  • Liam O Daimhín.
  • Domhnall O Muirgheasa.
  • Tadhg P. O Murchadha.
  • Pádraig O hOgáin (An Clár).

Níl.

  • Earnán de Blaghd.
  • Séamus Breathnach.
  • Seoirse de Bhulbh.
  • Próinsias Bulfin.
  • Séamus de Burca.
  • Máighréad Ní Choileáin Bean Uí
  • Dhrisceóil.
  • Patrick J. Egan.
  • Henry J. Finlay.
  • Desmond Fitzgerald.
  • John Good.
  • John Hennigan.
  • William Hewat.
  • Tomás Mac Artúir.
  • Seosamh Mac 'a Bhrighde.
  • Domhnall Mac Cárthaigh.
  • Pádraig Mac Fadáin.
  • Pádraig Mac Giollagáin.
  • Seán P. Mac Giobúin.
  • Eoin Mac Néill.
  • Liam Mac Sioghaird.
  • Liam Mag Aonghusa.
  • Seoirse Mag Craith.
  • Pádraig S. Mag Ualghairg.
  • Peadar O hAodha.
  • Criostóir O Broin.
  • Proinsias O Cathail.
  • Aodh Ua Cinnéidigh.
  • Séamus N. O Dóláin.
  • Pádraig O Dubhthaigh.
  • Donchadh S. O Guaire.
  • Aindriú O Laimhín.
  • Séamus O Leadáin.
  • Fionán O Loingsigh.
  • Séamus O Murchadha.
  • Seán M. O Súilleabháin.
  • Caoimhghín O hUigín.
  • Seán Príomhdhail.
  • Liam Thrift.
  • Eamon S. O Dugáin.
Amendment declared lost.

I move that we now report progress, and ask leave to sit again.

Question put and agreed to.
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