I think this particularly brief Bill raises far graver questions than have been clearly dealt with by the Minister. By implication, some of us could read into his remarks the full gravity of this Bill. In effect, what this Bill means is this: that people are, retrospectively, to be deprived of their legal rights which existed prior to its introduction. Anybody reading the Bill, without hearing any prior explanation of it, would see that there was some background to it which required an explanation. Take a section in it like this:—
"The pension shall be deemed to have been continuously in existence during the period beginning on its commencement and ending on the date on which is was granted."
I read that section half a dozen times and, on the first few occasions that I did so, I wondered whether I was either stupid or mad, or whether the man who drafted it was either stupid or mad. When I read it about the seventh time my mind registered the fact that sometimes when a pension is granted it is payable from a prior date —the date of commencement is before the date of granting—which superficially appears to be contradictory. However, I understand the position is this, that there was a flaw in the drafting of the Act and that flaw was not discovered by generations of pensioners— it was not discovered until quite recently—and that people, some civil servants entitled to pensions under the 1934 Act, claimed full pension from the date of its commencement to the date on which it was granted. That claim was resisted. They got legal advice and they were advised that under the law, as it stands at the moment, they were entitled to draw that pension.
If there is any doubt about the law, there are the courts of the country to decide the rights and the wrongs. But I think it is not playing the game fairly by citizens of this country when, through a mistake in our legislation, a citizen finds that he is entitled to something from the State, the State anticipates a legal decision by bringing in a Bill to say: "The law is as defined here." Where it is the other way about, where people may be suffering under hardships because of a mistake in the law or extreme pressure of the law, in no case is the application of the new legislation ever made retrospective; but when it is the State against the individual, then it is retrospective. It is a thing that is unheard of in other Parliaments.
The precedent for this form of legislation dates back to the tug-of-war between this country and Great Britain with regard to an appeal to the Privy Council. A Bill was introduced and enacted here anticipating an appeal to the Privy Council, stating that "The law is as laid down here". That particular appeal was spiked. That was a perfectly legitimate piece of tactics in an immense field of international strategy. But that was accepted as a precedent, and every time the State found that a citizen was entitled to get anything from the State because of an act of omission or because of an error in its legislation, then fresh legislation was introduced to deny that person his legal rights or to prevent those rights being tested in the courts of this country.
I have always held to this simple creed, and I think it would be advisable if we all subscribed to it, that every citizen of the State is entitled to his full rights under the law, whether those are punitive or beneficial, and if the law standing on a certain day gives an advantage to a citizen, that law may be altered with regard to to-morrow, but not with regard to yesterday. Unless we all subscribe to some simple principle such as that, we can never attain the desirable end of having universal respect for the law. The law cannot be used as a matter of jockeyship between the State and the individual, between Government Departments and a helpless individual.
Let us take an example from an older Parliament. When a body of Irishmen were interned on the other side of the water, they sought legal advice and they found that they were illegally interned, that a mistake had been made by a great Government Department over there. The authorities of that country could have introduced a Bill that evening making the internment legal and repairing the omission or the mistake in the previous legislation. They realised that the law was more important than the individual; respect for the law was of more importance than a Government Department saving its face at the expense of people regarded as lawbreakers. Every one of the Irishmen was released and a commission was established and very heavy compensation was paid to those Irishmen. The law was then altered for the future.
Here a small group of civil servants found that, under the law, there was no legal right to deprive them of an earned military service pension between the date the pension commenced and the date on which it was granted. They sought legal advice and they found the Department of Finance was wrong, and that they were entitled to that under the law. We are now asked to subscribe to a Bill to rectify the law retrospectively and to deprive them of rights they had prior to this evening. I think the big thing in this matter is not the amount of money involved; the big principle is that Government Departments as well as humble citizens must learn to have respect for the law, and if legislation is clumsily introduced and passed through this Parliament without proper examination, and mistakes are made, with the result that it gives some little advantage to a group of citizens, no matter how large or how small, until that law is amended they must get their full rights and, if it is amended, it should not be and must not be amended with retrospective effect.
The Minister quite plausibly says to the Dáil that the effect of this little piece of legislation will be to bring about equality with regard to pensions, to ensure that no group gets more than any other group. I do not know whether the Minister put forward that argument seriously. What he is really doing is legislating to ensure that one small group will not be treated like the vast majority. The vast majority of pensioners are not State employees; they get their full pension, even if their salaries were £300, £500 or £10,000 a year; but the very small minority that happen to come into State employment have the whole of their pension denied them if their salary or income from the State amounts to £500 a year.
As I understand this matter, a very small group of people discovered that their pensions were being illegally withheld, and they were prepared to go to the courts and ask the courts to give them their legal rights. We are asked to degrade the courts, to deprive the few individuals of what were their legal rights—whether that was the intention of the Act or not—to jockey them out of their legal rights. I deplore that. I think it is wrong. There are only hundreds of pounds involved here, but even if there were millions involved, the saving is going to be too dear if the cost be disrespect for the law and the undermining of confidence in the sense of fair play. A headline should be set at the top, which would permeate to the middle, and work down. If the only rights persons in this country are going to have are to be rights laid down by the Department of Finance, and if that Department finds that it has been acting illegally, and that the courts will find accordingly, and if the Department is then in a position to press a button so that a Minister can come here with the majority behind him to see that people are tricked out of their rights, then I think that damage which cannot be counted in £ s. d. will be done to this State and to the respect that there should be for Government and for the law.
