I am bound to admit that I have had great difficulty in being able to find out the exact meaning ensnared in this form of words. Perhaps the case Deputy Johnson mentioned is intended to have been included to meet the Government amendments that were moved on the previous occasion and ruled by you as being out of order. I have in mind a different kind of case altogether. To come back to the Bill, the position, I take it, is this. Pensions are intended for those who have served in the National Forces and who also gave service prior to the establishment of the Saorstát. Any person who had not given service prior to the establishment of the Saorstát and who had been serving in the National Forces after the establishment of the Saorstát is to be precluded from the operations of the Bill.
Now there are persons who served prior to the establishment of the Free State who to-day should not come under the operation of this Bill. There is not any question whatever about that, and the Dáil would be united in that connection because of the action that these men have taken hostile to this State. But between those two there is a certain body of men to whom I think the Ministry ought to give attention. There are persons who gave very courageous and self-sacrificing service in pre-Treaty days under conditions of very considerable danger but who afterwards did not join the National Forces for a variety of causes. I have come into contact with some of them. I give some instances that recur to me at the moment. I know one case, the case of a man who had been in employment. He was one of the active service units and because of the conditions that prevailed immediately after the Treaty his employer took him back. If he had not been in employment he would probably have joined up in the National Forces because he has been a strong adherent of the Free State from the very beginning. He did not join up because he happened to be at that time in employment, and he wished to keep secure in that employment. But because of the economic conditions that have since come about that man to-day is out of work and he is precluded from the operations of the Bill although he has been a strong adherent of the Free State from the moment of its establishment and had done the utmost that lay in his power to bring this State into existence. I hold that it is not fair to exclude such a man from the operations of the Bill in a case where a very genuine attempt is being made to deal with persons who have given the kind of service that this man has given to the State.
There are others on whom the President might not look quite so kindly but I think that they too ought to come within the operations of the Bill. I refer to the case of men who in the days of the Black and Tans gave very courageous and very fine service, and it is not against them that they should have felt disposed to give that service because it was a non-mercenary force that they were joining. These motives do influence human beings. When a paid force was established afterwards they felt that it ranked on a somewhat different basis; and in not joining they were not moved by any considerations of disaffection; they were moved by what we will call unworthy social motives, but these motives nevertheless did influence them. To-day these men are either in employment and not receiving much, or they are out of employment and receiving nothing. These are men who did give good service towards the establishment of this State, who have never done anything prejudicial to the establishment of this State, men whom nobody would claim to have been in any way disaffected; and yet because they did not happen to join the National Forces for the reasons I have given, they are excluded from any benefit under the Bill. Some of them, I think, will not altogether be glad to have their cases espoused in this way. Others of them whether they would or not, at another period, have been glad to have their cases espoused, would be glad to have them espoused now because they have joined the ranks of the unemployed. At the time when these men did great and good service there was no payment made for the work they did, and if there was any financial assistance given it was given merely to meet the conditions involved in moving forward from week to week and it was not given in the form of pay to an ordinary mercenary army.
I have two cases before me now in reference to men of this class that are being dealt with by charitable institutions about the working of which I happen to know something—the cases of two men who joined up with the active service units who lost their employment and yet who, when they were offered enlistment in the National Forces, did not join the National Forces, though in not joining they were not moved by disaffection. And I urge the President that such men ought to be remembered to-day and ought not to be excluded when we come to the moment of meeting in some measure the services rendered by men of this class.
If I correctly interpret the words now moved as amending the Financial Resolution, I take it that the particular cases I have mentioned would be excluded from any benefit under the Pensions Bill. If the Resolution would exclude such persons I urge the President to enlarge it so as to include them. I agree entirely that persons who have been moved by disaffection or who could be shown to have done acts prejudicial to the establishment of this State as established by the will of the people, should not be included. But I do say that to give pensions only to those who gave valiant service in days of earlier danger, and who, with that service, gave further service in the National Forces is to limit the arrangement too much. I urge that the motion be further amended. I am not prepared to state now exactly what form the amendment should take, but I do urge that some further amendment should be made so as to extend the operation of the Bill and to include the class of persons that I have mentioned here to-day.
