A great many of the speeches we have heard on this Bill really dealt with the administration of the existing law. There were not, although they purported to be, pleas for changes in the law, but pleas for more sympathetic administration. I have already said in the House that for some time past the old age pensions code has been more sympathetically administered than previously. A greater attempt has been made to give the applicants the benefit of the doubt where that was possible. But we are always bound to have complaints about administration unless we are prepared to remove the means qualification altogether, and to give the old age pension to any persons over 70 years of age irrespective of whether they have means or not; and unless, in the second place, we are prepared to accept as having attained the age of 70, any person whose case is passed by the Old Age Pensions Committee, until and unless the contrary can be proved. If we did that I think we would have an end of the complaints about the way the Act is administered. But unless that is done I think we are bound to have these borderline cases in which there is some difficulty about the facts and some obscurity, in which appearances to some extent belie the real facts, and in which, perhaps, real errors occur.
If we were to try to alter the law so as to make impossible these complaints then we would be adding anything from one-and-a-half to two millions to the annual cost of old age pensions. I do not think we could afford to make a change which would involve an annual cost like that. If we are going to keep the means qualification and if we are going to still exact proof of age then we are going to have these complaints and these difficulties. When many thousands of applications have to be dealt with annually, cases scattered all over the country, very often, as Deputies said, cases put forward by people not always very well able to present the facts, then we are going to have some cases turned down which ought not to be turned down, and some cases accepted which ought not to be accepted, because there cannot be, and it is not desirable that there should be, a sort of investigation that a court might make. It is always possible to consider how to modify the administration if a great number of hard cases, of some particular kind, are brought to light, because of some rule of administration or some difficulty in the method of administration. As I say a great many of the speeches I heard were directed to questions of administration and not to the Bill at all. Two or three speakers spoke about the proof of age which is not dealt with in this Bill at all. Other Deputies spoke about the estimate of the means made in the case of an applicant who owns a small farm of land —a case not dealt with by the Bill at all. In fact, the first night this was discussed nearly all the individual cases cited were cases that would not be affected in the slightest by the passage of this Bill. There were cases by way of criticism of the administration of the existing code.
Although we heard a great lot of talk about hard cases a discussion in this House does not really give a true picture of what is going on in connection with old age pensions, because when somebody applies and gets a pension with fair amount of promptitude, nothing is heard about that. Nobody comes to Deputies and informs them, and in fact that sort of a case is left out of account when we are discussing any aspect of old age pensions administration here. If the administration were as rigid as it is alleged to be, if it were as harsh as many Deputies say it is, then I do not believe that we would have anything like the expenditure on old age pensions which at present takes place. I know that the proportion of old people in the population of the Saorstát is higher than in Great Britain, and I know that the proportion of old people destitute, or nearly destitute, is greater. Nevertheless, there is a very striking difference between the amount payable in respect of old age pensions here, and that on the other side of the Channel. I think the Minister for Local Government and Public Health referred to that to some extent. The money paid in old age pensions here works out at 18s. 5d. per annum per head of the population, as compared with Great Britain, where old age pensions represent only an annual 10s. 11d. per head of the population.
Deputies referred to the widows and orphans pensions, and to old age pensions paid in Great Britain. As a matter of fact, the total cost of pensions in Great Britain, including those extra pensions, is 15s. 4d. per head of the population, as compared with our 18s. 5d. per head of the population for old age pensions here alone. When we look at it in another way, the cost of old age pensions here is a much higher proportion of our total tax revenue than it is of the total tax revenue in Great Britain. The cost of old age pensions amounts in the Saorstát to more than 2s. 7d. per £ of tax revenue collected. In Great Britain it works out at only 8¾d. in the £ of tax revenue collected, so that in every way the old age pensions charge here is a considerable charge. I think myself that if it were not true that in the main—there are always exceptional and difficult cases—Old Age Pensions Acts are liberally administered here, in spite of the somewhat different conditions we, nevertheless, would not expend as largely as we expend at the present time.
The Bill that Deputy Ward introduced proposed changes of which the minimum cost would be £250,000. The actual cost would be much more likely to work out at £300,000. I think that if this House decided that it ought to spend £300,000 a year more on old age pensions it ought, nevertheless, to reject this Bill, because I think that if we decided to spend that much more on old age pensions we could find better ways of spending it than the way set out in this Bill. The Bill would help none of the poorest people who receive old age pensions. Of the very poorest people who receive old age pensions none will get any benefit if this Bill is passed. I believe if we decided that we ought to spend £300,000 more, we would get better value for the money from a social point of view and do more good to the people if we made the pension a maximum of 11/- rather than 10/-. The really hard cases, so far as old age pensions are concerned, are the people with no means of their own and who have no relatives with any means. The people who have nothing but the pensions, or practically nothing but the pensions, are really the hard cases, and they are numerous. These are the cases for whom nothing would be done as a result of the £300,000 extra that would have to be provided if this Bill were passed.
It has been suggested here that there has been some change in practice in regard to maintenance, or what people in this debate called charity, as compared with what was done when the British were here. There has been no change in practice. The original Act laid down that all means were to be taken into account, whether that means consisted of maintenance given by relatives or others or of cash income. According to the Acts it had always to be taken into account, and always has been taken into account. The suggestions made here that a change has been made since the setting up of Saorstát Eireann in this respect are without foundation. There are cases in which it seems to be somewhat hard to take that maintenance into account, but there are a large number of cases in which any Deputy would agree that it is the proper thing to do. There are cases of people who are maintained in conditions of great comfort, in conditions even bordering on luxury, by relatives on whom they have no legal claim. There are people maintained on very big farms in the country and in big houses in the suburbs of Dublin by relatives on whom they have no claim. And it seems to me it is not reasonable to ask the taxpayers to spend substantial sums of money merely for the purpose of providing pocket money, shall we say, for those people, already well maintained and well supplied, or sufficiently supplied. These cases would be very numerous indeed.
Of course conditions have changed since the original Old Age Pensions Acts were passed. At that time people like those would not have applied for, and would not have taken the old age pensions, but all that has passed away and people, no matter what the conditions in which they are supported, would now—the great majority of them at any rate —claim to be paid the pension and would take their £26 a year, which would have to be paid, to which the very poorest people living in the very worst slum in Dublin would, through taxation, have to contribute their share. It does not seem to be reasonable that we should propose that maintenance be not taken into account. There are cases which we may admit to be hard cases, resulting from counting maintenance as means, but I do not see that we are not going to create really worse anomalies if we alter that. So far as maintenance in a working class family is concerned, it is not a bar to the pension. Maintenance, on an equivalent scale, is not a bar to the pension. Sometimes the value of the maintenance provided would be actually sufficient to make it possible not to give the full pensions, at once, but if only a pension of 6/- a week were given it would be possible for a person paying something for maintenance to get the increase, and the result is that to avoid repeated applications, following a contribution given, by a person who gets the pension, for maintenance, where maintenance is on the scale of what I might call a working-class family, the administrative practice is to give the full pension at once.
There has been a great deal of talk about people who have to live in the county homes, and the desirability of having to pay them pensions. The object of the Old Age Pensions Acts is not to give relief to the local rates. It is to enable people who have reached seventy years of age to exist without having to go into those institutions. The relief to the local rates is an entirely different question. There is no reason why the proposals for rate relief should be brought into an Old Age Pensions Bill. If there is going to be rate relief let it be dealt with on its own merits. The principle in the Old Age Pensions Acts from the beginning, and very strongly in them, was contrary to what is proposed. As a matter of fact, in the beginning a person who had been in an institution or receiving relief was disqualified for a certain length of time, and there was no idea at the back of the Old Age Pensions code of relieving the local rates.
With regard to people who have to go into those institutions for medical treatment, and have been obliged, for the sake of completing that treatment, or because they were, apart from the question of treatment, feeling unable to go out, to remain in for more than three months, in a great many cases that has now been met by administrative adjustment. In a great many cases, I think in the majority of cases, it is arranged if the pensioner will give a few weeks' notice of his intention to leave the institution, if he is to get the old age pension, he will get it. Generally he can get it if he makes his claim in time. He is helped in making his claim. It is, in that way, arranged that he can get his pension back immediately on going out of the institution. I know that that is done in a great many cases. If there is anything preventing it being done in other cases, if there is any further adjustment required to enable that to be done, and if any cases of that kind spring up, we can look into them. I know that at one time a great period clapsed before the person who came out of the institution got the pension again. But as a result of that and the discussion that took place in the House following the report of the committee that was set up some years ago, a change was made. Now in the majority of cases the pension is available immediately the person leaves the institution.
There is a proposal with regard to the review of cases where two old people receive the pension, and the husband or the wife dies. The Bill proposes that there should be no change in the amount of a pension to an old person because her or his wife or husband who also had a pension, has died. But if that proposal in the Bill became law, new anomalies would be produced. We would have the position where one woman was, say, in receipt of £1 a week in cash, and was getting a pension of 6s. a week. And we have another case where, because the husband had died a month or two before he would be entitled to an old age pension, his widow, who had the same income, would get no pension at all. That would produce further anomalies, persons who would live on perhaps seven or eight years being refused a pension, though their means were exactly the same as those who were in receipt of one. Whether they got the pension or not would depend solely on the fact that the husband or wife lived on until he or she got the pension. In the other case the husband, dying before he could get the pension, his widow would get nothing. The anomaly is seen most clearly when we talk of a cash income. But it applies in other cases, too, where there is a question of getting assistance, say, when the wife dies and the husband has to get some assistance. That is a matter that is taken into account when a review takes place. It does not follow that the whole of the joint income is, on review, reckoned as being the income of the survivor. The income of the survivor may be reckoned as perhaps two-thirds of the joint income. There may be cases where it would be reckoned as only half of the joint income. So that on the actual facts of the case the pension would not be interfered with. But to adopt the proposal in the Bill would really be very undesirable, for the reason that it would mean that people whose means were admittedly identical, would be paid pensions at different rates. That would not be any improvement on the present position. It would be rather the opposite, and it would give new grounds for discontent, and rightly so. It seems to me this is a proposal which has not been thought out. The Deputy has based it, perhaps, on the feeling one might have in the case of a person who was, as the Deputy remarked. 80 years of age. One can see that it is not a desirable thing to make an alteration in the rate of pension for somebody who is 80 years of age.
There was a great deal of misrepresentation in the discussion on Section 4 of the Bill, and Deputies have suggested that the official view is that money might earn, or is supposed to earn, 10 per cent. It is not really a question of what the money will actually earn. As a matter of fact, before the Act of 1924 was introduced at all, any property in excess of £400 was taken at the 10 per cent. rate, and the 5 per cent. rate applied only to property below £400. Let me give just one or two illustrations of the effect that the change proposed in the Bill would have. A bachelor with £250 in bank and no other means has now his income assessed at £22 per annum. He is therefore awarded a pension of 7/- a week. Under the proposed change his means would have to be estimated at only £11 5s. per annum, and he would draw a pension of 10/- a week. It is not supposed that on the £250 a man will get 10 per cent. interest; but the point of view that is taken is that if a man has as much as £250 in cash in the bank it is unnecessary to give him a pension of 10/- a week. That would be the effect of the amendment proposed in the Bill, and it seems to me that his case is far less necessitous than many other cases for which we propose to do nothing. Under the Bill a man with £425 in bank or in National Loan would have his means assessed at £20 per annum and would get a pension of 8/- a week. I cannot really see the necessity for altering the law to give a man who had £425 in bank or £425 in War Loan or National Loan a pension at very nearly the full rate.
There has been a good deal of talk about penalising thrift, and, as somebody said, encouraging rascality. The idea that has been at the base of the administration of old age pensions from the beginning has not been the reward of virtue or the punishment of guilt, but simply the relief of necessity. There were old-fashioned people or reactionary people who argued against having old age pensions at all on the ground that it encouraged rascality and encouraged people to think that they need not save, need not work and need not be careful because an old age pension would be provided for them. The question of whether we are going to encourage or discourage thrift really does not arise on the matter of old age pensions and should not be taken into account. The point to be considered is whether a person has or has not means to live without the pension. If the person has means to live without it, then that person is not entitled and that is the principle of the whole code.
If we abolished the means qualification—and all this argument about discouraging thrift and encouraging rascality is an argument in favour of abolishing the means qualification—there is no logical stopping-place for us, and the cost of abolition would be, at the minimum, £1,250,000. It might be £100,000 or £150,000 more than that. I do not think that we can abolish the means qualification. If we cannot abolish it, then, to some small extent, the operation of the Old Age Pensions Act may be a discouragement to thrift, but I do not think that that matters. If a man works his farm and retains it, it is of a certain value, and he is disqualified from receiving a pension. If he neglects his work, drinks, loses his farm and reaches 70 years of age, he is going to get a pension. Leaving farms out and taking house property or money, I do not see why we should have a different ruling. If a man has £450, £500 or £600 in the bank or invested in shares or house property, I do not think it is any duty of the House to say that he must not be obliged to break his deposit receipt, that he must not be obliged to sell £10 of stock. There is no suggestion of a person being able to earn 10 per cent. The point of view really taken is that it is unnecessary to alter the law in order to enable a man with £425 on deposit receipt to be able to get an old age pension of 8/- a week.
[Deputy Fahy took the Chair.]
With regard to Section 5 of the Bill, the Minister for Local Government explained that there was a certain amount of confusion as to the effect of the existing provision. The provision was intended to indicate that property not assigned before 67 years of age should always count for the purpose of assessing means under the Old Age Pensions Act. From the passing of the Act of 1924 until 1928 that interpretation was acted upon. In 1928 the question was raised and legal opinion was obtained. I am leaving out cases where it could be clearly proved that the assignment was for the purpose of qualifying for the old age pension, and I will deal with an ordinary assignment in the case of the marriage of a son or daughter. The effect of the legal opinion was that if a man assigned a farm at the age of 67, the value of the farm assigned did not count when he had reached the age of 70, and when his means were being assessed for the purpose of a pension. If he assigned at 68 years, the value of the farm was counted as part of his means until he reached 71 years. If he did not assign until he was 70, the value of the farm counted until he was 73. When legally examined the section was found not to have effected what it was intended to effect, and there was, perhaps, some confusion. The original interpretation having been quite the opposite, there was perhaps some confusion as to what it actually did mean. It is perfectly clear now that the meaning of the section is that for three years after assignment the value of the farm is counted as part of the means of the applicant—that after the expiry of three years the value of the farm assigned is no longer taken into account, and there could be no question of any person being permanently disqualified simply because he happened to apply before the expiry of the full three years.
Section 5 of the Bill proposes in effect to change the present figure of £10 to £13 10/- in the average case, because the £10 includes the value of buildings. The £12 in Deputy Ward's Bill is exclusive of the value of buildings. The average valuation of the buildings would be about 30/-, so that what Deputy Ward proposes to do in effect is to alter the existing figure of £10 to the figure of £13 10/-. The effect of this section would be to add a very substantial amount to the cost of old age pensions, and I do not think that it would remedy any hard cases.
