asked the Minister for Finance whether he has received from the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union, on behalf of the employees serving in the Irish Lights Service as seamen, firemen, cooks, stewards and lightshipkeepers, claims for improved service and rates of pay consequent on such conditions and rates of pay having been granted to the employees of the Trinity House and Scottish Lights Services; whether the British Board of Trade, who will pay the increases, have asked that sanction be given to grant those conditions and rates of pay, and whether he is aware of the growing discontent in the service consequent on the delay in the claims being granted, and if he will state whether a decision has been come to in the matter; further, if it is a fact that the representatives of the employees on March 28th, 1925, asked the Minister to receive them in deputation, and that no reply has been given to that request.
CEISTEANNA—QUESTIONS. ORAL ANSWERS. - IRISH LIGHTS SERVICE.
asked the Minister for Finance whether he is aware that by a decision of the Industrial Arbitration Court (British) on May 25th, 1925, the Trinity House and Scottish lighthouse keepers obtained 6d. per diem increase in their basic wage, and that the above increase would have been paid as such to the Irish keepers instead of by way of a non-pensionable "Gratuity" but for the intervention of the Saorstát authorities; whether he is further aware that there is now much and growing discontent in the Lighthouse Service by reason of the action of the Saorstát authorities, and whether, in view of the fact that the Lighthouse Service is still maintained from British Funds, the opposition to the Board of Trade and the Commissioners of Irish Lights granting the Irish keepers the same conditions of the Industrial Court Award as were granted to the Trinity House and Scottish keepers will be withdrawn and thus allay the discontent manifesting itself in the Service.
As stated in my reply to the Deputy on 14th instant, the proposals in regard to pay referred to in these questions have been under investigation in my Department, and I am now able to state that the application to employees in the Irish Lights Service of increases in rates of pay equivalent to those already granted in Great Britain, are being agreed to, the increases to operate from the same dates as those from which the rates in the other Services apply. A proposal that the increase of pay referred to in the second question should be treated as pensionable in the case of individual employees in the Irish Lights Service retiring from the Service under existing conditions, has also been agreed to.