Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 4 Nov 1931

Vol. 40 No. 7

Private Deputies' Business. - Old Age Pensions.

Debate resumed on the following motion:—

That the Dáil disapproves of the action of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health in refusing to allow Deputies to make representations in person to the Deciding Officer on behalf of old age pension claimants whose cases are on appeal whether at the instance of the Pension Officer or of the claimants themselves. — (Deputies Ward and Maguire.)

Mr. P. Hogan (Clare):

I cannot see any reasonable cause for the interdict of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health on Deputies having access to the deciding officers in cases of appeal on old age pensions. I do say that there is something to be said possibly in preventing offices from being disorganised and business being delayed, but I do not think that there is any real cause why the Minister for Local Government and Public Health should put his foot down absolutely and say that no Deputy is to have access to these deciding officers in these cases. Let us endeavour to trace the history of an application for an old age pension. Let us see what happens from its initiation until there is a decision by the deciding officers in the Local Government Department. There is an application by the particular person seeking an old age pension, there is a visit from the pension officer, there are a certain number of questions asked by the pensions officer of the old person, and I am not at all quite certain in my mind that enough explanation is given by the pension officers in asking these questions of the old people. That is a matter possibly which does not concern the Minister for Local Government so intimately as it would concern the Department of Finance. In the majority of cases the old age pension is granted when it comes before the Pension Committee and the reason why it is granted is because the members of the Pension Committee have local intimate knowledge of the conditions of the old persons seeking the pensions.

The Pension Committees are composed of public men, whether they are elected public men or nominated public men, and they are public men who are intimately acquainted with the lives and conditions of the people seeking these old age pensions. I do know what information some of these men on the Committee can give to their colleagues on these bodies. I am a member of a Pension Committee in Clare and I attend as often as I can. I do know in helping us in Mid-Clare to come to a decision in a case in West Clare, the County Councillor in West Clare would give us his intimate knowledge of the conditions of the applicant in that case. The Committee would decide the case on that information. But the pension officer goes on some information that he has tabulated, something which he has filled in on his form and he makes an appeal to the Local Government Department. Here is where we come against the crux, that a Deputy is not allowed to go to the Department and to amplify and explain what is the position as regards those people.

I wonder does the Minister think that there is not more in five minutes' conversation with a person on any matter in the way of explaining any difficulty than could be put in any number of sheets of writing. It is not so much what the Deputy says when he comes to the deciding officer, not so much at all what the Deputy says offhand. It is because of the points that are troubling the deciding officer. Let me, in passing, pay a tribute to the deciding officers. I want to say that as far as I know wherever there was a reasonable case made by the Deputies up to now, when I had recourse to these deciding officers, I always found that they were prepared to do what was just for the people receiving the pensions. But the particular points that are troubling the deciding officers, the very points that they want to have cleared up, are not put to anybody who can clear them up. If these points were known to those people who were sponsoring those claims for a pension, the deciding officers might very easily be put easy in their minds and the matter investigated.

I do not say that I should go down to the Custom House and go in and say that so-and-so from my County should get a pension without these matters being investigated by the Local Government Department afterwards, if the deciding officer considers they are worthy of investigation. But I do say that they should be in a position to endeavour to set at ease all doubts that they may have in their minds. These matters should be investigated by the Senior Inspectors of the Local Government Department. Here is where the great injustice is done when a case is decided against an applicant: The applicant applies again in six months' time and in nine out of ten cases the very same case goes up from the pension officer as went up six months previously. The old age pension claimant is not in a position to put his case as clearly as the pensions officer who sends up the appeal is able to make the case against it. The pensions officer sends up his old file and that file goes to the Local Government Department again. In nine out of ten cases it is decided on the first case made by the pensions officer, with out any advertence to the fact that the person making the application has no means of knowing definitely why the appeal for a pension has been turned down. The person is told that it is turned down on the grounds of means or on the grounds of age or of not satisfying statutory conditions. There are, however, particular points in all these things which could be met. There are things which could be cleared up. There are many things that could be investigated. There are points which are obscure in affidavits which could be made clear and these things could be made clear by a Deputy having recourse to the deciding officer.

I want to give one case to illustrate what I have in mind. It was a most glaring instance of what I mean and has remained in my mind. I was interested in the case of the wife of a neighbour of mine who was looking for a blind pension. Her husband was interrogated by the pensions officer, who asked him what his weekly wages were and he said so much. Whatever income he said he had would accrue to him if he had constant work, but the man had not constant work. As a matter of fact, he had only about six or eight weeks' work in the year. I said to the man that there would be no difficulty in his wife getting the pension—that there was no case against her getting it, as she was totally blind. What did I find? In about two months' time that man came to me and said the application had been turned down by the Local Government Department. I could not believe it. I got a further claim made, as, of course, once a case has been decided they have to make a further application. An appeal was made against the second application on the pensions officer's file without further investigation. I had an opportunity of going to the deciding officer and putting the case to him showing him where the fallacy lay and the woman got the pension. That is only one instance. I am sure there are many other instances which could be quoted. For a Deputy to say, "I know such a person is 70 years of age," or "I know such a person has not the means," possibly would not make the case for the applicant. There are certain things operating in the mind of the deciding officer, certain doubts operating in his mind, genuinely operating and troubling the mind of the deciding officer, who is endeavouring to be fair, and if a Deputy had five minutes' conversation with the deciding officer, and the pensions officer put his queries and points, the Deputy could meet these queries and points. The Department need not take the Deputy's word. The Department could investigate the matter on the basis of the information given by the Deputy, and then there would be an opportunity of giving these people justice. I think there is no case for the interdict of the Minister, and I hope he will see his way to allow Deputies to have an opportunity of meeting the difficulties of the deciding officer in reaching a fair decision on appeals from pensions officers.

Mr. Doherty

rose.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy has already spoken on this motion and cannot be allowed to make a second speech.

Minister for Local Government and Public Health (General Mulcahy)

I want again to make clear that Deputies are not prevented from coming to the Department as they come to any other Department and make statements on any old age pensions case about which they have information. There cannot be any doubt about that.

Mr. Hogan

Not to the deciding officer.

General Mulcahy

They can come. All the machinery necessary is put before them so that they can dictate any statement they want to dictate with regard to the case about which they have information. The change in the procedure, that had been allowed to develop up to a particular point, is that Deputies are not allowed to approach the deciding officer. As I say, a practice developed by which Deputies came very often and in very great numbers to the deciding officer, and came with long lists of cases about which they had no firsthand information of any kind, and very often had little information passed on to them of any kind except a notification that a person had applied for an old age pension and the important work of dealing with old age pensions appeals was blocked and held up as a result. In many cases attempts were made to overbear the judgment of the deciding officer, not by facts, but by pleadings with regard to a particular case. Two things were made clear to me in connection with the matter. In the first place, the old age pensions appeals department was not getting a fair chance of doing its work; the work it was doing was being done on a wrong basis, and not necessarily on actual facts properly put before the deciding officer as they ought to have been put before him. On the other hand, I was put into this position in connection with the machinery which has been established for dealing with old age pensions, that sub-committees were being led to feel that it was pressure and representations at headquarters that were going to be most effective in deciding doubtful cases, rather than a thorough examination of the cases below.

I pointed out that the whole machinery for dealing with old age pensions was examined into by a Committee set up by this House which reported in 1926; that that Committee emphasised that the local sub-committee was the pivotal point in the whole machinery for considering pensions claims. After having examined certain other suggestions for dealing with appeals the Committee found that the machinery that existed for appeals was the most satisfactory machinery that they could suggest. At any rate, they could not better the machinery that existed.

I am determined, in the first place, that the appeals section of the Department shall have an opportunity of dealing with appeals in the calm atmosphere of having the facts put before them and of deciding on the facts put before them, and not in the atmosphere that can be created by a number of Deputies coming and arguing particular cases. In the second place I am going to keep absolutely clear in the eyes of the sub-committees dealing with this important work in the country any suggestion of political influence of any kind or influence of of Deputies directly. I am going to keep the fairness and impartiality of the work of the Appeal Board perfectly clear in the eyes of the sub-committees dealing with these particular matters. Deputy Hogan really gives his own case away and the case for Deputies presenting themselves. He feels that in such cases the deciding officers have doubts in their minds which can be eased by Deputies coming in and probing their minds and finding out what those doubts and difficulties are and helping to resolve them; that Deputies have only to come in and say:—"So-and-so has sent in an application for an old age pension; the case was discussed by the sub-committee, and the pensions officer in the area put all the facts with regard to this person's age and means before the sub-committee, the officer disagrees with the sub-committee in their finding and has appealed to the appeal section of the Department against the decision of the sub-committee. We want to know what are the difficulties in this particular case." Without first-hand knowledge about that——

Mr. Hogan

I did not say that.

General Mulcahy

——they want to argue with the deciding officer that this poor fellow is such and such a kind of person and all that, and as Deputy Cassidy put it so beautifully the other night: "You are a civil servant with so many hundred pounds a year. Can you deny a pension to this poor feliow living on a small holding?"

Mr. Hogan

I cannot allow that misrepresentation of my statement to go. I did not say any such thing, and the Minister knows that. I said I knew there were genuine doubts in the minds of the deciding officers, and that in five minutes' conversation between a Deputy and a deciding officer, all the points that were obscure could be discussed. The Deputy could give all the information and the Local Government Department could investigate these matters. I never suggested there should be any wrangling or argument or pleading or anything of that kind.

General Mulcahy

If the deciding officer has doubts in his mind he does not want a Deputy to help him to formulate what these doubts are.

Mr. Hogan

Evidently.

General Mulcahy

There is machinery by which the inspector from the Department can be given the file and investigate the case locally. He has the machinery by which he can send back the inquiry to the local pensions officer or the committee with a view to clearing up any of his doubts. There are no doubts which cannot be settled either by a direct return to the local people or by sending an inspector down.

Deputy Ward submits in this particular matter that Deputies have a right to go into any particular Department and see that the work is properly done there. Neither Deputies themselves nor any other self-appointed people can walk into a Department of the State and see how the Department is run. The claim is made, that Deputies should be able to walk into the Department of Local Government and ask for the files with regard to old age pension cases and go through them. That practice never obtained and that practice never will obtain as long as I have any responsibility for dealing with this matter of appeal.

Mr. Corry

That will not be long.

Mr. T. Sheehy (Cork):

You are a false prophet.

General Mulcahy

We have got to this position that there are certain Deputies who want to make political capital out of old age pensions and old age pension claims.

Mr. T. Murphy

Who are they?

General Mulcahy

I shall tell you who they are—Deputy Cassidy is one of them. I decline to discuss the details of old age pension cases here whether by way of question or discussion on the adjournment.

Mr. T. Murphy

Will the Minister deny that a member of his own Party published in a newspaper in his own constituency a list of pensions he had obtained for pensioners and the correspondence dealing with those claims? Will he consider that matter in relation to Deputy Cassidy's attitude?

General Mulcahy

I do not deny anything of the kind. There are some Deputies, and they are not confined to any particular Party, who make a practice of doing that. That brings me to the position that I may be driven in the general interests of the proper administration of the Appeals Department, as I see it, to refuse to enter into correspondence with Deputies at all upon old age pensions.

Mr. Hogan

Go the whole way.

General Mulcahy

I decline to discuss questions of old age pension appeals here because this is not a competent place to discuss them. We have a sample of the lengths to which Deputies will go in the case of Deputy Cassidy the other night, who got up and abused some of us for our attitude towards old age pensions. He cited a case in which the question at issue was one of age. He made the emphatic statement that no certificate of birth being available and the only certificate being the marriage certificate, the marriage certificate made no reference to the age of the person in question, whereas in fact the marriage certificate does state the age of the person in question and does show the person to be considerably younger than 70 years of age. He was aware of that, because all the local people connected with the case, together with the sub-committee, were aware of that. Yet nevertheless he wants to be in a position to sound the poor old age pensioners' trumpet and to carry on a discussion here on that particular matter.

Mr. Corry

Did anyone ever hear of a woman giving her right age in a marriage certificate?

General Mulcahy

In the interests of the old age pensioners I want the sub-committees to do their work. Sub-committees throughout the country are in many cases doing their work and realising their responsibilities very well. Deputy Hogan says in the majority of cases they recommend pensions because they know the facts. There is no fact of a case brought out in examination by the local pensions officer that the sub-committee has not before them when they examine the case. Deputies suggest that the local pensions officer does not appear before the sub-committee. The local pensions officer is required by his instructions to appear before the sub-committee when they want him and my information is that he invariably does. There is no meeting of the sub-committee at which the pensions officer will not be present if the committee want him. There is no use in Deputies getting up here and trying to persuade other Deputies that facts are put before the Department of Local Government for the purpose of appeal that have not been before the sub-committee, and that there has not been an opportunity of arguing out face to face between the local sub-committee and the local pensions officer in the presence of the claimant for the pension.

Mr. Everett

I cannot agree with the Minister. I have been a member of the pensions sub-committee for a number of years and I never saw the pensions officer present.

General Mulcahy

Has the Deputy asked for the presence of the officer?

Mr. Everett

No. The pension officer will value a few fowl and a calf very highly and that will never come before the pensions committee.

General Mulcahy

That is not so.

Mr. Everett

I have reports which I can show.

General Mulcahy

Surely the form on which the old age pension officer makes his report contains an estimate of the value he puts on the holding and the income from it. That report is before the sub-committee.

Mr. Everett

The pensions officer will put a value that will be different to that put on by the local committee that know the circumstances.

General Mulcahy

Does the Deputy suggest that having put a value on the holding, which he put before the local committee, the pension officer changes the value when sending his report to the Local Government Department?

Mr. Everett

I do not say that he changes it, but he sends a report which does not come before the local committee. He places a value on the holding which is not put on it by the committee.

General Mulcahy

The Deputy does not suggest that the local committee is prevented from controverting that value.

Mr. Everett

When the local committee gets a report back in such cases they go no further in nine cases out of ten. They say that it is hopeless to do so when the Local Government Department has refused the pension, in face of the report sent up by the pension officer.

General Mulcahy

There are pension committees throughout the country whose responsibility it is to examine thoroughly the facts, and to decide the income from such examination, after consultation with the pension officer.

Mr. Everett

I am glad to hear that from the Minister.

General Mulcahy

The Deputy is a peculiar member of an old age pension committee if he is waiting to be told that by me here.

Mr. Everett

I was never aware of it. I know that in some cases the officer may come to the meeting. My point is that where a committee awards a certain pension, on what they consider to be the means of the applicant, a report is sent up by the pension officer disputing the amount of the award. The officer disputes the award and puts a very high value on a cow, an ass or a few drills of potatoes. That prevents old people from getting the pension. I can get proof, if the Minister requires it, to that effect. If the Minister consults local committees he will find that I am stating the facts.

General Mulcahy

I can assure the Deputy that my object in this matter is to get him to do his work properly as a member of a sub-committee in the interests of the old age pensioners. He can do the work much better as a Deputy than by going to the appeal officers in order to have matters decided on his personal representations rather than on the responsible examination of the old age pensioners' conditions.

Mr. Everett

I very seldom go near an old age pension officer and I have seven or eight years' experience of the work. I have had complaints in my county from various sub-committees in rural areas that the pension officers go out of their way to place a very high value on the means of the applicants. Where there is a half acre of land with a cottage the pension officer places too high a value on it, much higher than the local committee would place on it, and the pension officer's case is always upheld by the Department. If the Minister states that pension officers will go before local committees in cases where there is a dispute and come to an agreement, and if the decision is sent to the Department I will accept that. It has not been the general practice.

General Mulcahy

I would not like to think, and I feel that the Wicklow sub-committee are not as neglectful as the Deputy suggests, that when the facts are presented to the Department by local pension officers they are not able to argue effectively when too high a value is placed on the income from holdings. I must say if we are to accept that, the committees are chargeable with very serious neglect of the interests of the old age pensioners in Wicklow, if they have failed to make the necessary representations to the Minister for Local Government on that position.

Mr. Corry

I have been a member of an old age pensions committee since 1925, and it is only recently that the committee learned that they were entitled to have the pension officer present at their meetings. I have only seen pension officers present at two meetings. I am here to make representations to the Minister about the value placed on the holdings of applicants for the pension. In one case the officer valued the profit from an acre of ground in a rural district at £30. He told the committee that that was all cut and dried in his instructions, that the amount was fixed and that he could not reduce it. The valuation and other particulars were there. I know that one of these gentlemen spent three weeks going around after a labourer, over 70 years of age, who had worked all his life on the land. He had no Treaty rights under Article 10 so that he would get a decent pension. No special cost-of-living bonus is allowed to him by the farmer and he has none of the perquisites that the pension officer will be entitled to in his old age. The officer spent three weeks going after the applicant to find out where he cut furze and weeded turnips here and there. The officer even included the price of half an ounce of tobacco that he got on Saturday night. He made out that the board that the man received from farmers was worth 17s. 6d. a week. That was mentioned in the appeal that was sent up and that was allowed by the Appeal Board.

The Minister tells us we are trying to make political capital out of the old age pensioners. I have only been in pension offices twice within the last five years and I won the two cases that I was interested in. If I had not gone in the applicants would not have got the pensions yet. These unfortunate people are not in the position of officials with whom the Minister has been in touch within the last eight or nine years, and from whose point of view apparently he cannot now separate himself. These people have no pension rights under Article 10 and no fat pensions to fall back upon. I maintain that any man who has worked on the land until he is 70 years of age is entitled to a pension, and is much better entitled to it than gentlemen who served three or four years in a "buckshee" army and who got a couple of thousand pounds.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

There is nothing at all about that in the motion. Look at the motion.

Mr. Corry

I brought two cases before the Department and I won them because the arguments I put up could not be contradicted, despite what was in the list. The regulations are pared too tightly and come very badly from a Government that gives £200 a year to a man with a salary of £1,500.

Mr. Everett

There is nothing to prevent the pensions officer and the committee coming to some agreement on the question of the valuation of any property that the old age pensioner might have. Assuming that that took place, will the Department sanction the agreement arrived at between the two parties?

General Mulcahy

If there is agreement between the pension officer and the sub-committee locally then there is no point upon which an appeal lies to me and I do not come into it.

Mr. Everett

Have you sent any instructions to pension officers as to the valuation they are to put on certain articles?

General Mulcahy

I have no function in that matter.

Mr. Everett

Are you aware of any instructions being sent to any officer as to the valuation to be put on drills of potatoes, a heifer, a cow or some fowl?

General Mulcahy

In so far as it is possible to lay down a line that would be applicable to the country as a whole, a certain kind of direction has been given to pension officers. That is, the facts have to be made up by the local pension officer and the committee.

Mr. Corry

An acre of land worth £30.

Mr. Everett

I do not wish to make any political capital out of this matter. My concern is to protect the old age pensioner and to ensure the proper working of the Department. The local pensions committee is a body of men who devote a lot of time to this work voluntarily, at great inconvenience to themselves. I do not wish to hear the local committees criticised, and the Minister may take it from me that I have never seen the pensions officer at any meeting of the committee.

General Mulcahy

That is a criticism of the committee, not from me but from the Deputy.

Mr. Everett

It is not a criticism of the committee. It is an instruction sent to the officer. The local committee are not aware of the valuation which the Minister for Finance tells the pensions officer to put on certain articles. Why should he not give this valuation to the local committee so that they would be in a position to know what they would do in all these cases? What is the use of wasting their time sending up all these cases to Dublin when they find that the valuation which they put on these articles is much less than the valuation which the Minister puts on?

Mr. Reynolds

Would there be any chance that instructions would be sent out to pensions officers on account of the failure of the potato crop not to be so severe in estimating the value of property this year, and that some more leniency should be shown in regard to granting the full pension?

Mr. T. Murphy

The Minister has said that the deciding officers are enabled to send back files dealing with all cases to the pensions committee.

General Mulcahy

Inquiries, I said.

Mr. T. Murphy

Does the Minister know of any inquiry of that kind addressed to a committee? Is the Minister aware that we have been discussing the standard valuation put on, that in cases investigated by certain officers where a valuation was fixed on certain means open to the claimant, on the claim again being investigated by another officer, there has been very often a big difference in the valuations as between the two officers?

General Mulcahy

None of those questions bear upon the matter we are discussing. I am prepared, in my attempt to get sub-committees to stand up to the work that is theirs, and that can be done by no one else except themselves, to deal with any communications with regard to general matters and with regard to difficulties under which sub-committees suffer at present. It would be as a result of representation from sub-committees with reference to specific difficulties arising from their actual experience, that solution of these difficulties can come rather than as a result of question and answer here. I think Deputies will admit that what the report of 1926 really emphasised was that the sub-committee had work to do and that in some cases it was not doing it properly, that nothing in the machinery could fill the place of the sub-committee. I could not say that I have received a single representation from any sub-committee in the country or from any county committee with regard to any particular class of difficulty under which they suffer as a general rule. I do feel certain that if these were difficulties on the part of the committees which they could classify and discuss in that way, we would have heard about them. I wish sub-committees would refer to the report made in 1926 and to the difficulties which that report mentioned and follow up that report as to the improvements that could be introduced into the system to enable the work to be performed satisfactorily.

Mr. Hogan (An Clár):

Would the Minister consider the possibility of discussing that at the next meeting of boards of public health and to the bodies which he met recently?

Mr. Everett

On the sub-committees there are clergymen of all denominations. They meet once a month. The proof that these men cannot be aware of their powers is that they plead ignorance of their powers. They feel that once the pensions officers make up their minds and that a claim is taken to the appeals officer, it is useless taking up the matter again. If the Minister would send out a circular notifying committees of their powers I am certain that he would get a larger number of complaints.

General Mulcahy

I would suggest that the Deputy instead of going in to the appeals officer, should try to awaken sub-committees to a sense of their responsibilities.

Mr. Corish

I think it only fair to say that I have been chairman of an old age pensions committee for 11 years and that on any occasion on which we asked the pension officer to come to a meeting he came there and we had an exchange of views which often resulted in agreement being arrived at. I want also to say in fairness to the Minister that on many occasions we appealed against the decision of the pensions officer, and as often as the pension officer got through, we got through. What I take it this motion is concerned with is that where you have an officer who will refuse to listen to reason and where he appears before the sub-committee——

General Mulcahy

That point has never been made.

Mr. Corish

My reading of it is that where we are up against a situation of that kind, a Deputy should be permitted to approach the Minister concerned in order to secure that justice will be done to the claimant.

General Mulcahy

Surely if a local pensions officer who is an officer of the Ministry of Finance is doing his work in such a way that it is right to complain about him, the complaint should be made to the Ministry of Finance.

Mr. Corish

It is not a question of a complaint at all. It is a question of where you find officers giving a wrong interpretation to the Old Age Pensions Act. It has been proved time and time again that that has been done. Nobody likes to have a whole State trial about it. I think the Minister should understand quite well what I mean when I say that.

Mr. Allen

A strong case has been made why the Dáil should approve Deputy Ward's motion. From my experience down the country of pension cases I found the poorer persons were the harder they found it to get a pension. They have no friends to work for them, and they fail to get a pension. Many pension officers are very fair with regard to old people getting a pension, but there are more who are the exception. I found some pension officers very much opposed to persons who had no friends to work for them. Every Deputy in this House is aware that from time to time the Minister for Finance or the Department of Finance send down to the pension officers in the country very definite strict instructions. The pensions officer is under the Minister for Finance. It is his duty to delay all pensions, and to try and prevent as many people as possible from getting pensions. That is my experience.

We understand the reason is that they are trying to save the Exchequer a certain amount of money each year. We find that in a number of cases old persons, justly entitled to pensions, cannot get their pensions because they cannot find their certificates in many cases. In other cases the pensions officer puts a certain valuation on means which they have got. When old people employed all their lives on a farm come to the age of seventy and look for a pension, because they are maintained on the farm and are unable to do any work, a certain valuation is put on their maintenance. In several instances they are deprived of half their just pension.

A case has been made why Deputies should be allowed to see the appeals officers. In many instances pensions which were turned down on several occasions by the Department were granted after Deputies had seen the appeals officer. I am sure that the Minister has every confidence that his officers will not be subject to influence, but when they hear the case put up on behalf of an applicant for an old age pension in many cases they grant the pension. It is the only State Department where Deputies are not allowed to plead the case of their constituents. The old age pensioners have very few to plead their case for them and if their representatives are not allowed to go and have the final word it is very harsh. I would like the Minister to state whether he has found that since the Fianna Fáil Party came into the Dáil the pensions bill has gone up. I suppose that is why the Deputies were kept out of it. Another reason is the Fianna Fáil Deputies were more energetic in getting pensions for people down the country than the Deputies opposite.

Mr. Reynolds

You only think so; that is imagination.

Mr. Allen

A good many of them woke up. The Minister knows also that members of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party objected because members of the Fianna Fáil Party were active in getting pensions. That is one of the main reasons why Deputies were shut out. The Minister will not admit it I know, but it is one of the reasons. Objection was taken by members of Cumann na nGaedheal who were too sleepy and would not work and look after the interests of their constituents.

No other Department of State has been closed against Deputies. Deputies can go into any other Department except the Minister's Department and plead the cause of their constituents. There is far greater reason why a Deputy should be allowed to plead the case of an old age pensioner. Many cases of old age pensions have been turned down for flimsy reasons. I think the Minister might change his attitude and that people when they come to the age of seventy and who are justly entitled to pensions should get them without the trouble they have to go to at present. If this House would sanction pensions for all persons of seventy years and upwards it would be a good thing and save a lot of money.

Mr. Everett

What about pensions for Deputies?

Mr. Allen

I would give them nothing at all. A good case has been made for Deputies being allowed to see the appeals officers. A case can be explained better personally than by means of writing. A large number of people who were entitled to the pension did not get it until a year or eighteen months after they became entitled because their representatives were not allowed to go to the Department and explain their cases to the appeals officer. I ask the Minister to reconsider his attitude.

Mr. S.T. O'Kelly

I notice that Deputy Reynolds suggested that the Minister should issue instructions to the officials of his Department to deal with old age pension claims more leniently.

General Mulcahy

I have nothing to do with that, good, bad or indifferent.

Mr. O'Kelly

There is an idea abroad that definite instructions have been given to the officials and that they are furnished with a list—I do not know anything about the matter myself—by somebody in the Department of the Minister.

An Ceann Comhairle

Not in the Department of the Minister.

Mr. O'Kelly

This list is furnished them from some Department and certain valuations are placed on matters likely to come within the purview of the official dealing with the matter. A certain valuation is put on land held by the claimant, fowl, value of board and so forth. I take it from Deputy Reynolds's question that he is aware of this. This list is carried around and the report states that the farmer claimant has so much land or so many fowl and a valuation is placed on these according to the instructions of the Department—I presume the Department of Finance. I should like to know if the Minister has any knowledge, officially or otherwise, of the existence of such a list and if it has ever been brought to his notice that the valuations contained in that list are very high.

Dr. Ward

I move the adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 o'clock on Thursday, 5th November.