Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 13 May 1926

Vol. 15 No. 14

GÁRDA SÍOCHÁNA ALLOWANCES ORDER. - DISAPPROVAL MOTION.

Major COOPER

I move the motion standing in my name:—

"That the Gárda Síochána Allowances Order be not approved by the Dáil."

I should like to make it clear that I am not referring to the Order mentioned by the Minister some days ago— the Gárda Síochána Disciplinary Order. I am referring to the Order fixing the allowances of the Gárda. In my experience in the past I have found that very often allowances were more important than pay, and that by ingenuity, particularly if you had an ingenious subordinate clerk, you could draw as much in allowance as in pay. I want to take exception to this Order on two grounds. The first is that of rent allowance. This Order fixes the rate of rent allowance; it fixes the scale and it fixes the individuals who are entitled to draw rent allowance. I take exception both to the scale and to the number who may conceivably be entitled to draw that rent allowance.

The Order mentioned during the discussion of the Estimates last week points out that a rent allowance shall be paid at the following rates to every member of the force for whom, or, if married, for whose family, suitable official quarters are not available:— Sergeants and guards from £13 a year in country districts—5/- a week—to £30 a year in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford. Those amounts will be paid as approved by the Minister. I had occasion to compare that scale with a certain scale across the water, the scale of the London Metropolitan Police. They are a very efficient body, a highly-paid body; they are regarded as the aristocracy of the police force in Great Britain. London is not a cheap city to live in; it may not be quite as expensive as Dublin, but I think it is more expensive than Limerick or Waterford. Rents are high; in fact, they are so high that civil servants stationed in London get an increased allowance to cover the cost of living there.

Our scale for Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford for sergeants and guards is 30/- a week. In the London Metropolitan Police a sergeant gets 18/- a week and a constable 15/6. Those are the figures given by the British Home Secretary in the middle of April this year. That scale is very substantially lower than our own. In the case of constables as against our Gárda it is virtually half, and I suggest to the Minister that our scale can bear some revision. I have no doubt it is a scale he has inherited, as far as Dublin is concerned, from the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and it may not be possible to make an alteration in the case of persons already enjoying that scale, though allowances are more akin to the cost-of-living bonus than pay, and they are subject to revision from time to time. If it is inexpedient to do so in regard to persons in the service, the new scale ought certainly be applied to fresh entrants.

I will turn from the scale to the people who are drawing it. The quotation I read from the Order mentions that rent allowance shall be paid to every member of the force.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

Before the Deputy passes from the scale, I would like to be quite clear in regard to certain figures. Where does the Deputy get the figure of 30/- a week?

Major COOPER

From the Order. It is pointed out that the figure can be increased at the discretion of the Minister for Justice. I have not got a copy of the Order by me. I left it in the Library because I thought other Deputies might want to refer to it.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I think the Deputy should have a copy of the Order.

Major COOPER

I am obliged to the Minister for the copy he has passed to me. The rent allowance is set out at £13 per annum and the Minister for Justice shall have power to increase this to a sum not exceeding a maximum of £18. Did I say 30/- a week?

Mr. O'HIGGINS

Yes.

Major COOPER

I am sorry; what I meant was £30 a year. I withdraw the argument as to the scale; the other argument still stands—the argument as to the number of people who may enjoy it. I am very grateful to the Minister for setting me right. The argument regarding the number of persons who can draw the allowance still stands. Every member of the force for whom, or, if married, for whose family, official quarters are not available, shall be made a certain allowance. There may be other Orders modifying that by restricting permission to marry. If the Minister can tell us that, my point will be met.

On the face of that Order it looks as if any member of the Gárda is entitled to get married and, if there are no official quarters available, he can claim for his family from 5/- upwards. Rent allowances increased in the current financial year from £15,000 to £21,000. Three hundred more Gárdaí are getting the allowance than in 1925, and there are 520 more getting it than there were in 1924. At present one-sixth of the force are drawing rent allowance. Is it possible for this process to continue? Is it possible for practically every member of the force to get married and draw rent allowance, except of course, those for whom quarters are available? If so, it is going to become a very serious charge on the taxpayer.

We are spending over £100,000 in the current financial year on the reconstruction of barracks for the Gárda. The possibility is that by the time these barracks are finished all the Gárdaí will have married and they will be living out except in those barracks where quarters are provided. There ought to be some restriction on the process of marriage.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

There is.

Major COOPER

Then we will hear of it from the Minister. I hope his standard will be that not more than one-third of the force are entitled to get married on the strength. Marriage does not altogether improve a policeman's efficiency. It renders him too content, too apt to seek the joys of his home and not pursue the malefactor about the roads.

My second point is in regard to boot allowance. The boot allowance of the Gárda is 1/6 per week. I am not saying that the Gárda ought not to get a boot allowance, and I am not saying that too many men are getting it; but I would like to know if the men employed at clerical work in offices get boot allowance as well as the Gárda patrolling the roads.

In Northern Ireland the police get 1s. 6d. per week, but in England, as the Minister told us, the scale has been reduced to 1s. per week. The Minister may take an example from Northern Ireland. There they can afford all kinds of luxuries. I was reading the leading article in a Belfast paper, and it pointed out that each member of the Cabinet in Northern Ireland costs the taxpayer £700 a year more than a Minister of the Executive Council in the Free State. Incidentally, I do not expect to see that article quoted in one particular Dublin newspaper. In Northern Ireland they can afford expensive shoe leather, but I suggest that the time has come here for a revision.

The London pavements will wear the soles of a policeman's boots just as well as the Dublin pavements. I do not know if the tariff on boots has sent up the cost of repairs to such an extent as to justify an allowance 50 per cent. more than is given in Britain. It may seem a small thing, but 6d. per week per man amounts to £9,000 a year. I believe we can save that £9,000 without imposing an undue hardship on the police force. This Order should be reconsidered and a new Order brought in. I do not want to abolish this allowance altogether, but we should endeavour to restrict its issue both in regard to amount and the number of people entitled to draw it.

Mr. ALTON

I, formally, second the motion.

AN LEAS-CHEANN COMHAIRLE

took the Chair.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I do not want to avail of a technicality, but the Deputy is a day late for the annulment of this Order.

Major COOPER

I postponed it yesterday at the request of the President.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I was not aware of that, but in any case I am quite willing to discuss the Order in detail on its merits, and if there is a feeling that it should be amended steps can be taken to that end. The rent allowance is challenged now, not on the scale, but merely on the question of the number of beneficiaries or possible beneficiaries. The Deputy quite fairly admitted, I think, that there would be less force in his argument if there was a restriction on marriage within the Gárda. The position, of course, is, as the Deputy will notice, that the disciplinary order to which he referred in passing deals with it.

Major COOPER

Is marriage a matter of discipline?

Mr. JOHNSON

Yes, afterwards.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

Sometimes. For want of a more convenient method of dealing with it, the matter is disposed of in that disciplinary order to which the Deputy referred. Members of the force may not marry without permission. The Commissioner and Senior Officers use their discretion as to whether or not, in a particular case, that permission will be given. For one thing it is not given until there seems a reasonable certainty that a man will remain in the force and that he has reached a standard of competence which is satisfactory, and that he is likely to be permanently in the force. It is a matter of policy to discourage marriage on the part of men who are still on probation, and who might be dismissed simply on the ground of conduct or general lack of suitability for the life. Efforts are made to provide official quarters for married members, and it is possible in many stations throughout the country to arrange for accommodation of that kind. I do not think we need envisage a case of the Gárda entering on a venture of matrimony simply for the sake of getting £13 a year extra in his pay.

Major COOPER

It would not be a bad bargain.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

But taking the thing broadly you cannot recruit six or seven thousand men like that, and take the line that they must not marry or be allowed to marry. Some limitations are imposed, but just as in the Army or in the Civil Service, or any other career if a man marries there must be some accommodation for him and for his family either in official quarters or else he must get some small allowance of this kind to live outside. £13 a year is not, I think, too liberal an allowance, and the discretionary power invested in me to increase that sum is not lightly exercised, and not exercised without very full examination of the merits. So I am not in favour of any alteration of that portion of the Order. Passing to the only other portion of the Order challenged, that dealing with boot allowance, the position is as the Deputy has stated. There was a boot allowance in 1914 to the R.I.C. of 6d. a week, and the Desborough Commission recommended an increase in that to 1/6 a week. In England and Scotland that has since been reduced to 1/- a week. Here and in Northern Ireland it remains at 1/6 a week.

The fact that that allowance had been reduced elsewhere did not escape notice. But the Minister for Finance did not press for a reduction here to 1/- a week on the ground that a reduction of pay had taken place here which had not taken place in the neighbouring police forces. As I pointed out, in dealing with the Estimates, we are between 14 and 15 per cent. lower in our rates of pay than the neighbouring police forces. If we felt that the pay was too high, or taking it generally, the remuneration, in one form or another, received by the Gárda for a period of a year, was too high, I would prefer we faced reduction in pay rather than approach it along the lines of reducing this allowance. It is something we have allowed to stand in view of the substantial cut in pay which has been carried out.

I do not know whether the Deputy raised anything else. If there is a feeling that simply because the rate of the boot allowance was reduced in England and Scotland it should be reduced here, Deputies will have to weigh up that, having regard to the fact that we effected a substantial reduction in pay which has not taken place elsewhere. Personally, I am not in favour of reducing, this year, the boot allowance, and the Minister for Finance, considering the case on its merits, and having regard to the reduction in pay that has taken place, did not urge it on my Department.

Professor THRIFT

I think there was some point in what Deputy Cooper said. If I understood the Minister aright, his suggestion was that he would prefer diminished pay and keep up allowances. I doubt if that is a good plan to work upon. The particular point I am concerned about is in reference to the boot allowance. Would it be fair to assume that this is really one of the cases in which we are drawing from one pocket and paying into another, that because of the Customs duty on boots we are maintaining the boot allowance? I think it ought to be considered in reference to such allowance that it is not to be regarded as the sum necessary in order to provide a particular article. If an extra sum be required to provide a particular article owing to the use that article is put to, that is the meaning of the allowance. Everybody spends money on boots, but if we allow a man 1/6 extra weekly because we assume he uses his boots more than anyone else, and that it costs him that much extra, that seems to be, roughly, the way to look at the allowance. The amount seems very high.

Major COOPER

I agree with Deputy Thrift. I do not think it is a sound principle to maintain the allowance while reducing the pay. I think the first pruning should be made on the allowance rather than the pay. The Minister has met me very fairly and answered most of my arguments, sound and unsound, but I would urge him to fix a definite standard for the number of married men. Otherwise it puts any officer who has sympathy with his men, and who is anxious to help them, in an almost impossible position. He cannot very well refuse a man whom he likes and knows to be a good policeman who comes to him and asks to be allowed to get married. If there is a definite scale he can say: "I am afraid there is no vacancy." If you have not that scale the officer is almost forced to put up the case and recommend it strongly. I would urge the Minister to adopt a fairly liberal standard, more liberal than we have at present, because you must allow for a certain amount of married men in a force consisting of young men, most of whom have less than three or four years' service. I consider there should be a definite limit fixed. Considering each case on the merits may sound ideal, but it cannot be ideal because some people are more stony-hearted, while other people are more accessible to pleas of sentiment. I believe that the fixing of a standard is the only way. At the same time the Minister has met me and explained many things not previously clear to the general public, and I ask the leave of the Dáil to withdraw this motion.

AN LEAS-CHEANN COMHAIRLE

Deputy Cooper asks the leave of the Dáil to withdraw his motion.

Mr. CONNOR HOGAN

I object to the withdrawal of the motion.

Motion put.

The Dáil divided: Tá. 5; Níl, 48.

Tá.

• John Conlan.
• Connor Hogan.
• Tadhg O Donnabháin
• Mícheál O hIfearnáin.
• Domhnall O Mocháin.

Níl.

• Earnán de Blaghd.
• Séamus Breathnach.
• Seoirse de Bhulbh.
• Próinsias Bulfin.
• Séamus de Búrca.
• Máighréad Ní Choileáin Bean
• Uí Dhrisceóil.
• James Dwyer.
• Séamus Eabhróid.
• Desmond Fitzgerald.
• Thomas Hennessy.
• John Hennigan.
• Seosamh Mac a' Bhrighde.
• Donnchadh Mac Con Uladh.
• Liam Mac Cosgair.
• Séamus Mac Cosgair.
• Seán MacCurtain.
• Tomás Mac Eoin.
• Pádraig Mac Fadáin.
• Patrick McGilligan.
• Seoirse Mac Niocaill.
• Pádraig Mag Ualghairg.
• Martin M. Nally.
• John T. Nolan.
• Michael K. Noonan.
• William Norton.
• Peadar O hAodha.
• Seán O Bruadair.
• Tomás O Conaill.
• Parthalán O Conchubhair.
• Conchubhar O Conghaile.
• Aodh O Cúlacháin.
• Eoghan O Dochartaigh.
• Séamus O Dóláin.
• Eamon O Dubhghaill.
• Peadar O Dubhghaill.
• Eamon O Dúgáin.
• Aindriú O Láimhín.
• Séamus O Leadáin.
• Fionán O Loingsigh.
• Domhnall O Muirgheasa.
• Tadhg O Murchadha.
• Séamus O Murchadha.
• Pádraig O hOgáin (An Clár).
• Seán O Raghallaigh.
• Máirtín O Rodaigh.
• Seán O Súilleabháin.
• Caoimhghín O hUigín.
• Seán Príomhdhall.

Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Connor Hogan and Vaughan. Níl: Deputies Dolan and B. O'Connor.

Motion declared lost.