Vol. 65 No. 2
I move:
Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £813 chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1937, chun Roimhíocanna Ilghnéitheacha áirithe d'aisíoc leis an gCiste Teagmhais.
That a sum not exceeding £813 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1937, for the repayment to the Contingency Fund of certain Miscellaneous Advances.
Has the Minister any information about the sub-heads because a word is usually said justifying payments from the fund.
Some of these sub-heads are items of common knowledge, for instance, No. 1, Stamp Duty remitted on deeds and other instruments for Public Departments.
Fortunately servants of the State do not die every year under the tragic circumstances which surrounded that of a Saorstát Legation official, and I think the Minister should give us the circumstances.
As a matter of fact, the custom until comparatively recently was for members of the Opposition, when this Vote was before the House, to direct the Minister's attention to specific items and ask him to deal with them. I am prepared to do that, and to deal with the item to which Deputy Dillon has directed my attention, but before doing so, I would wish to know if any other Deputy wishes to have any other information.
The Contingency Fund is a peculiar fund, as it arises as a result of Ministers in very grave emergencies making payments for which they have no special authority. A certain fund is set aside, an omnibus fund, out of which unforeseen expenditure is met. They have no particular authority to make disbursements, and in these circumstances, they turn to the Contingency Fund after which a Supplementary Estimate is produced to reimburse that fund for the sums spent. I suggest that it is easy to discuss these sub-heads under any Estimate, past or present, and that the Minister could run down the items one after the other, having a note of each case in which payments were requisitioned. We should like information as to the authority on which stamp duty was remitted on deeds and other instruments for public departments; what was spent on the equipment of a local building as a temporary place of worship following the malicious burning of Kilmallock Protestant Church; why was a plot procured beside the grave of Arthur Griffith; what were the expenses in connection with the Saorstát Legation official's funeral; and under what circumstances was bounty paid on the birth of triplets? Five minutes would suffice to tell us. There is nothing in this Supplementary Estimate that I can see that would in any way divide the House at all. I think all these payments were probably amply justified, and one at least greatly became the Government. It was a very graceful and proper gesture, and I do not hesitate to take this opportunity of complimenting them on the steps they took on the occasion of the obsequies of the late Senator Duggan. It much became them and was a graceful gesture. I think it would be a helpful thing if the Minister ran through the sub-heads and made a statement on them, and very possibly no further question would arise.
Deputy Dillon has referred to these funeral expenses for a Saorstát Legation official. He seems to know something about it. There have been periods during the year when I was not in a position to follow what was happening in the world and I do not know anything about this case. I think that in the normal way the Government does not pay the funeral expenses of officials. Is this a case of bringing a man's body home? It may be that it was in the newspapers, but I never saw it, and the Minister ought to tell us something about it. It is surely absolutely outside the ordinary line of Government expenditure to spend money on funerals.
What is the tarif on triplets?
It is rather a pity that Deputy Dillon is given to pontificating in regard to the Estimates because occasionally, just as the rest of us do, he makes mistakes. It is not true to say that the Contingency Fund is there to meet grave emergencies and thereby to imply that it can only be resorted to when the emergency is grave. As a matter of fact, the mere fact that the total provision made for the Contingency Fund amounts to £20,000 indicates at once that whatever else it is intended to deal with, it is not intended to allow Ministers to carry on in grave emergencies. The main purpose of the fund is to defray urgent and unforeseen expenditure which is not covered by ordinary Votes and for which it may be impracticable to seek the immediate approval of the Dáil. That is the main purpose and it has been modified somewhat in practice. For instance, if the amount taken from the Contingency Fund is comparatively small and one which is not likely to be contentious, and which does not raise any grave financial principle or any issue of public importance, the custom is to defer making the reimbursement to the Contingency Fund until towards the close of the financial year in which the fund has been availed of.
That is not the view of the Public Accounts Committee.
You are not on it now.
That is the view that has always been acted upon in the Department of Finance. It was acted upon by my predecessor, and it has always been approved of by this House.
And by the Public Accounts Committee.
And by the Public Accounts Committee.
Quite untrue.
The Deputy is only an apprentice on it at the moment.
The question has been raised by Deputy Dillon in regard to item No. 1 of the repayments which it is now proposed to make. That item is for a sum of £586 8s. 6d. stamp duty on deeds and other instruments for public Departments. It is an item which has appeared year after year since 1923, or since 1924, possibly, the position being that the Revenue Commissioners have had general authority to stamp free of cost to the parties concerned any deed or other instrument presented by a Government Department, the duty on which would otherwise become a charge on the Vote. As no power, however, exists for the remission of stamp duty imposed by statute, the amount of the duty on such documents is recouped to the Revenue Commissioners from the Contingency Fund, and the purpose of the Vote is to reimburse the Contingency Fund for the amount so paid out of that fund by way of stamp duty to the Revenue Commissioners. That has been the practice for many years, and it is quite obvious that, notwithstanding the dictum of Deputy Dillon, the payment of this stamp duty and the need for its payment does not constitute a grave emergency. It is merely a matter of administrative convenience, an arrangement which conveniences the Revenue Commissioners and the Government Departments concerned, and which has been approved of year after year by the Dáil, and which has not been questioned until Deputy Dillon rose to question it here to-day.
The next item to which attention was directed was the second item for £96 6s. 2d. for the equipment of a local building as a temporary place of worship following the malicious burning of Kilmallock Protestant Church. The House will remember that the church in question was burned in July, 1935. Immediately following this regrettable incident the Government decided that all the necessary repairs should be carried out at the expense of the State to render the church suitable for service on the following Sunday. The church authorities, however, preferred the alternative of equipping the school, which accordingly was done by the Commissioners of Public Works. It has been decided that the recoupment of that expenditure will not be sought, and accordingly provision has been made out of the Contingency Fund to reimburse the appropriate Vote in that connection. I do not think it is necessary for me to say anything in regard to the third item, which was the amount required for the acquisition and perpetual care of a burial plot contiguous to the grave of the late President Arthur Griffith provided for the remains of a former member of his Ministry.
The fourth item which has been questioned is the item of £21 7s. 3d. in connection with the funeral of a Saorstát Legation official who died on Legation premises. The circumstances of this man's death were tragic. It occurred on the Legation premises. He was found to be deeply in debt, and there was no possible way in which his burial expenses could be recouped, and he has been buried at the expense of the State in the country where he died.
Was he an Irish national, or was he a national of the country where he died?
He was, I assume, an Irish national. At any rate he was on the Legation staff at the time when we took office in 1932, and remained on it up to the time of his death. He was, presumably, an Irish national, serving at the Legation.
Was it the family's decision that he should be buried there? I know nothing about the case.
He was living there, married to a lady in the country in which the Legation was situated, and so far as we know he had no relatives, or no people at any rate who were in a position to assume responsibility for those funeral expenses.
He was married in France?
I assume that he was. Does the Deputy think that I have the same indelicacy as he has in those matters; that I pry into what a man's family affairs are; that, before the act of affording decent burial to a dead person is decided upon I proceed to investigate all the circumstances attending his death?
Does the Minister want an answer to that inquiry?
What I was satisfied did happen was that he died on the Legation premises; that he was found to be heavily in debt, that there was no person available who could or who would assume responsibility for his funeral expenses, and the State afforded him a decent burial. That is what this item is for. The fifth item is an item of £12, which makes provision for the bounties which have been paid in those cases where, the parents being married, triplets have been born into a family.
