The Deputy knows whether I am replying to him in the proper way or not. The criticism was made in respect of cases. The maximum was paid in respect of his trumped case. No application was made to me that the four instalments should be paid in one. If the Deputy chooses to get up here, and let his constituents know what a great man he is, it is no affair of mine. I was in Geneva last year where something like 52 nations were assembled, and in the Department of Labour, which is one of the most important institutions in that place, this Act was cited as a model, and a great Act. It does not come up to Deputy Byrne's expectations. When he is President he can produce a better Act, perhaps the greatest Act that will ever be passed.
And if he can find money for it when he is President I will say that Deputy Byrne is a great man. With regard to these officials who are complained of in this case, I may say that I have examined the cases that have come before me, and I have a little knowledge of this particular Act, and I do not think that there is any more painful duty than dealing with those cases. The officials who deal with them cannot exercise their wish in the matter; they must exercise their functions according to the Act, and not according to Deputy Byrne's wishes in the matter. They cannot regard a case which is only a case of dependency as a case for a pension, and if Deputy Byrne does not know that up to to-night, I think that it is only fair, in the interests of his constituents and of himself, that I should give him that particular instruction under the Act.
Dependency must be proven. If a man has £3 or £4 a week, and his eldest son is killed, and he cannot prove dependency upon that eldest son, I should like to know whether the Deputy's contention is that the Committee or the body or the tribunal dealing with this particular Act has a right to say: "We will drive a coach and four through the Act." They must take the cases as they are, and they must deal with the facts as they are before them. And if Deputy Byrne will only denounce the Ministry, and will not assist the Ministry by helping his constituents to make up their cases before they go before the tribunal, then it is, perhaps, because those constituents are not properly represented. Just as bad a case as that mentioned by Deputy Byrne has come before me, but I did not bring it here to the House and complain about it. I saw the friends of the person in question and advised them as to the best way of dealing with the matter, but I told them at the same time that I was not sure whether or not they would be successful. I was not looking for an advertisement. Deputies may complain about the amounts. I admit that the amounts are small, but they are not at the option of the Committee. The Committee simply regards £100 as the maximum allowance for dependency in the case of a soldier, and they have to graduate below that according to a certain percentage. Recently I have not sanctioned any case at a lesser sum than £50. There were some sums lower than that some time ago, but recently there has been no lower sum awarded, I think, than £50. The Committee is bound to establish some sort of scale of dependency. When you get out of the dependency scale into the other scale there is only a particular pension to be awarded. In the case of a mother or a wife, and, in some cases, of a sister the sum is set down. I think it is 17s. 6d. for a widow and 15s. for a mother in the case of soldiers; and in cases of officers £90 for a widow and £50 or £52 a year in the case of a mother. Within those terms the Committee are bound.
A case was raised here by a Deputy who, I think, is not now in the House. He asked why it was, in a particular instance, that a person only got paid from the 1st January, 1924, and why it was that owing her £104 we did not discharge that debt. Now, we did not owe it. It was a line-ball case in which there was a difficulty in seeing whether or not she was a dependent, but they decided to give her a pension, and that the pension should start from the 1st April, 1924.
That is one of the few cases where, properly speaking, it was probably a dependency case, and more than likely the Auditor-General would be entitled to challenge that particular payment. I read every single one of these cases from the beginning to the end. The Civic Guard or the D.M.P. make reports in the cases in the area under our jurisdiction. In other cases we get reports from the police in England and Scotland, or from some charitable organisation which can be dependent on. All the facts are there, and it is not a question of the whim of an official. He has no more right to act on his whim than Deputy Byrne has. He is bound by the circumstances and facts of the case, and has to give his decision accordingly. There might possibly be a miscalculation to the extent of 10 per cent. or 15 per cent. as to whether or not there was partial dependency to the full extent, or whether it was only semi-partial dependency. Deputies will understand that when there were two sons in the Army and two sons at home, it is a fair case for saying that it should be distributed broadly among the four. In that case, they would not be entitled to make a case of absolute dependency. It should be only partial. Deputy Byrne is wrong in his figures with regard to tuberculosis. It is one of those cases where every possible attempt is made to discount the Government, and to say the Government has money in its pocket and will not pay it out.
