That being so, I presume I can follow. I desire to raise this question of the Personal Injuries Committee, which comes under sub-head D. This Committee was set up as a substitute for the law which existed, as enacted by the Criminal Injury Acts of 1919 and 1920. These Acts were repealed by the Damage to Property Act, 1923, whereby there is now no legal claim whatsoever for personal injuries in this country. But, at the same time, this Personal Injuries Committee was set up, and, I venture to say, that when this Committee was set up, which, admittedly, was not to deal with legal rights, because those had been abolished, but only with ex gratia claims, that still it was in the minds of the members of the Dáil at the time that this Committee would, by their investigations and subsequent decisions show that they had some regard, at any rate, for, if not the legal, certainly the equitable rights of people, especially non-combatants in this country.
I regret very much, for personal as well as for other reasons, that the Minister for Finance is not in his place to-day. I hope we will see him here soon again. This is a question with which he is intimately concerned. On more than one occasion I have put down questions to the Minister, as have other Deputies, complaining of the awards of this Personal Injuries Committee, and, after a considerable amount of pressure from various quarters of the Dáil, the Minister stated that if special individual cases were brought to his notice he would do everything to have them reconsidered and, if possible, give satisfaction. Since that statement of the Minister I have put down no less than half a dozen questions in regard to what I consider to be exceedingly glaring cases, and the reply I got in almost every case was the inevitable Ministerial answer, that he saw no reason to depart from the award of the Committee.
Take one case. I asked whether it was not a fact that a young woman was accidentally shot in the streets of Enniscorthy. It was upon the occasion when two National Army officers were coming out of the Cathedral, having heard Mass there. Shots were fired, and one of them hit this young woman in the thigh. Her thigh had to be amputated. She had to go to hospital. She had to pay for the amputation. She had to pay the hospital. She had to have no less than four operations.
She was led to believe by the setting up of this Committee that there would be some chance of getting something in the nature of fair compensation. I say she was led to believe, because it was on the strength of this committee being set up that she went to her solicitor and employed counsel. She employed medical and other witnesses and had to get a train of motors to proceed from Enniscorthy to Waterford, where the case was heard. When the result was made known, she was told that the committee had thought fit to award her the sum of £300. I say that this sum is nothing like adequate compensation to a young woman for the complete and total loss of her leg. Apart altogether from that, it has actually cost her more than £300 in medical treatment and legal proceedings. I further say that she never would have gone to the expense of undertaking these proceedings if she had not been led to believe—as we all were—by the setting up of this committee—that something in the nature of adequate compensation would be given. I think the treatment in that particular case is scandalous to a degree. I brought that case again upon paper to the Minister for Finance, and I was told that he saw no reason to depart from the conclusions arrived at by the committee. I followed it up by asking him whether he thought £300 was adequate compensation to a young woman for the loss of her leg, but he did not reply.
However, I put another case to him, that of a young girl of eighteen years, who was shot dead while walking in the streets of Limerick, her parents being resident in the County Waterford. The result of the claim for compensation was that her father and mother were informed that because they were not dependent upon this young woman they were not to get one penny piece by way of compensation for the loss of that young life. When I put a question as to that case to the Minister I got a similar reply.
I could go on giving instances of these cases, but I do not intend to do so, because we have heard enough already. Everyone in the country knows the method adopted by this committee so that the dissatisfaction that exists throughout the country is not at all to be wondered at. There is grave dissatisfaction. In the first place, people understood, and naturally so, that when the legal rights to compensation for personal injuries were abolished, as they were by the Act of 1923, and when the substitute was set up, they thought that it was to be a substitute of some sort or another and not a sham one. Everyone knows now that that is not the case. I do not believe that I am overstating the case when I say that if that was not in the minds of Deputies when the Act was passed last year if they did not think then that this committee was to be a genuine one, the Damage to Property Act would not have passed in its present form.
There are other complaints, and just ones, in regard to this Committee. Sittings were held in various districts in the country. I do not know why more sittings are not held. It may be said that the number of Commissioners is limited. I do not see why, for the sake of expedition, more Commissioners could not be sent out to other districts in the country to hear these cases. The cases must be limited, and they will all have to be gone into at some time. I suggest that the proper way to do it would be to send out more Commissioners to more districts, and not, as is at present done, to send out a certain number of Commissioners only to certain limited centres in the country. Take, for instance, the Committee that sat in Waterford. People had to go from the north of the County Wexford down to the City of Waterford to have their claims heard. Is that right? Why could not a Commissioner sit in some portion of the County Carlow, Wexford or Kilkenny? Instead of that, people had to go long distances at considerable expense, at great inconvenience, and then we know what the result is. I do not know from this Estimate how much of these claims have been gone into. I would like to know. I would like to know how much the £150,000 last year represented—what proportion of the claims. I would like to know how much that so-called increase of £122,000, which I quite agree is not an increase at all, in the proper sense of the term, represents of the amount of claims which have yet to be gone into. I would like to know, further, how many claims remain outstanding, and to suggest again that it would be a far better method to adopt to have more Commissioners at more places more frequently trying these cases than to be doing them in the dilatory manner in which they are being done at present. I do not know upon what principle these claims are being awarded. We know that they have no legal basis, but what other basis have they? There must be some basis. Is it the circumstances of each case? I doubt that very much because of the cases and such like which I have mentioned, and others which you have heard this afternoon.