It is not all that will have to be said. We are asked to vote a sum of £20,347 provided under three heads of extra charge, and one item of optimistic anticipation of appropriations-in-aid. It would be interesting to know under the first sub-head—"additional allowances and gratuities in respect of establishment officers"— how much of the £4,000 was required because retirements have been in excess of anticipation, as opposed to the fact that deaths have been in excess of anticipation. As to the item under sub-head (C), "Compensation allowances under Article 10 of the Treaty of the 6th December, 1921, £13,000," I do not know why the phrase in excess of anticipation should be used there. I do not suppose there was anybody in this House round about May, when the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Bill was going through, who did not believe that the compensation allowances under Article 10 of the Treaty would be greatly increased. When that Bill was under discussion, in so far as any discussion of it was allowed, an amendment was moved to exempt civil servants generally, and, consequently, to exempt transferred officers as that class of civil servants are known. The argument was put forward based upon justice, depending upon the circumstances surrounding the Civil Service as a whole, for exempting the Civil Service generally. It was pointed out that civil servants were on a decreasing scale for years, that their bonus payments had been going down, and that they had a contract. As far as the transferred officers were concerned it was a rigid contract, for the rest of the Service an implied contract which almost made it a rigid, narrow one. It was pointed out that people who came into the Civil Service were people who, in the main, opted for security, and, because they opted for security in their lives decided to accept in the security of the Civil Service less money than what their talents entitled them to believe they would get outside.
It was pointed out that the operation of the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Bill was to break the security civil servants had. The particular argument used, as counter to that, was that the breach was only a small one, and should not matter. Of course, the counter to that again was that once a breach was effected it could be easily widened, and that if a small cut was in operation one year, and the principle of security gone, it was a very much simpler matter, in the second year, to introduce either a continuance of the first cut or else to increase the amount lopped off salaries. The transferred officers argued, not merely was the basis totally different but they pointed out that they would suffer year by year owing to the decreasing bonus. The argument with regard to security and breach of security was as weighty in their case as in the case of the Civil Service body as a whole. It was pointed out that transferred officers had a special case; that they had been guaranteed their rights; guaranteed them under the Treaty, and that although on a certain occasion the Treaty as an appendix to a Constitution Act was being removed, there was a statement made by the President that there was no suggestion or could be no suggestion of a lack of good faith. Deputy Norton, relying on the President's statement, said that the rights of transferred officers, as such, had, in the Transferred Officers (Compensation) Act, 1929, been
"safeguarded in a much more definite fashion by this legislation than they are safeguarded under the ordinary meaning or even by the legal meaning of Article 10 of the Treaty."
We asked the Minister for Education, who was at one time in charge of the measure, if he was prepared to give a guarantee that a particular clause in that Bill would not be used to defeat the transferred officers' right, but he refused to give the assurance. He was questioned whether that meant that the Government had not made up their minds that the attempt would be made on these people, or whether they had made up their minds aggressively to attack these officers, and we got no reply. The Act was passed. The Minister for Finance assured us that all the rights transferred would still remain to them: that these rights would not be infringed in any way, only in the matter of pay, and that, in any event, there was always the Compensation Tribunal to resort to. He also refused to give an assurance that the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Act would not be waved in the face of the Tribunal, as guaranteeing any and every cut. He refused to give an assurance and, in due course, the cuts came, and in due course civil servants applied—some for retirement, and some urged that the cut being made gave them the right to have the added years' provision of the Act of 1929 brought into force by the Treaty operating in their favour. Finally one test case was taken. The financial disadvantage to this country—not by reason of the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Act—is a matter that should be discussed by itself. The disadvantage to this country is—not by reason of the scandalous conduct of the Minister for Finance in relation to these civil servants—also a matter that deserves separate comment. The Minister will, no doubt, remember the Lisney case, where, in order to bring this matter definitely before Judge Davitt's Tribunal, a transferred officer made application to have the Minister decide in relation to him, in either of the alternative ways allowed under the Transferred Officers (Compensation) Act.
