I beg to move amendment 35:—
In page 19, section 35, line 40, after the word "pension" to insert the words, "and also includes any employee other than an officer who has been employed for a continuous period of not less than ten years."
This amendment seeks to include within the superannuation provisions any employee of a local authority other than an officer, that is to say, a permanent officer who has been employed for a continuous period of not less than ten years. On the previous stage there was a very evident misunderstanding as to the intentions of an amendment which was put down from these benches regarding the case of a non-salaried employee, a wage-earning employee, who had served a local authority for a long period; an employee who became either incapacitated or who had reached the age of more than sixty-five years. The phrase occurred in the amendment, "three years," meaning that a person would not be able to qualify unless he had three years' service. Deputies spoke, particularly Deputy Gorey in his opposition, as though the intention was to pension any employee who had three years' service and upwards. Of course there was no such intention at all, and yet that misconception—no other factor, I imagine, could have persuaded Deputies to vote against the proposition in view of their records in the past—led to the defeat of the amendment.
Now this amendment seeks to make clearer still, even to give an absolute guarantee, that the employee in question is one who has served a long period. The period mentioned is ten years in the amendment, but it does not propose even to give a pension to a person who has served ten years. If a man has served twenty years with the local authority, and becomes sixty-five years of age, he may receive a pension if the local authority votes it, and the Minister approves. In the case of a person who has served ten years, and who has become incapacitated or infirm in the service, then he may be granted a pension if the local authority decides so, and the Minister approves.
Again, it is going to be a question as to whether we are to distinguish between the salaried class and the wage-earning class, whether we are going to place that dividing line between these two sections of the staffs serving a local authority. As I explained on the last discussion, many local authorities have, in fact, under the law as it was understood, granted such pensions, but by the exercise of a peculiar vigilance when it comes to wage-earners the auditors of the Local Government Department decided that the law did not allow such an allowance or pension in those cases. Now, the proposed amendment is specifically to allow local authorities to do in the future under the law of Saorstát Eireann what they were allowed to do under the old regime, even though it is now decided that there was a misconception as to what the law contained.
We are now asking the Dáil to agree that the new regime is going to be as fair to wage earners of long employment under local authorities as the old regime was. I say again that any Deputy who is a member of a local authority and who at any time in the past ever supported a proposition to give a pension to an old or an incapacitated employee, is bound to vote for this amendment unless he admits that he committed a faulty or a foolish act as an administrator in voting for such a pension. If he has ever done that and was wise in doing it, or thinks he was wise or justified in doing it, he is bound, I say, to vote for this amendment which proposes to allow public authorities to make an allowance or to give a pension to old or incapacitated servants who have served for twenty years and have reached the age of 65 years, or who have served ten years and have become infirm in the service. I accordingly move the amendment.