On a previous occasion, I remarked, in the course of the discussion on the Government policy towards these forms of social service, that it seems to have been the experience that, if only we kept hammering long enough, we eventually got the Government to see a little reason in the matter and achieved several improvements. We have achieved that in the case of allowances to soldiers' dependents, in the case of food vouchers and now we are promised an improvement in regard to the supply of boots for children of necessitous parents. It seems to me that the motion we are considering now is something of the same character, that we are trying to set before the Government a human standard they have fallen very far short of, but which, in the course of time, they may eventually reach.
We have heard the Minister on a number of occasions expound the viewpoint of the Government in relation to any suggestion for an increase in old age pensions or the easing of the application of the means test in regard to them. Of course, it always reverts itself into a question of money, into a question of the percentage of aged people in our population, the poverty of the country and the effect of putting so great a burden on its resources. It seems to me that there is another approach we might consider. Amongst the ordinary decent men and women there are certain standards which we should hold, regardless as to what the cost may be. If we are not in a position at the moment to keep those standards fully, we should go as near to them as we can and should take into consideration what can be done to put us in a position of achieving those standards. When we come to deal with the treatment meted out to old age pensioners, we are dealing with a human problem in which there are involved standards obligatory on any man or woman who has a conscience or who has any understanding of the principles about which we hear so much at present—the principles of social justice and equity.
The problem we are faced with in regard to old age pensioners is not a problem confined to those who reach 70 years of age, but a problem of the lives of those people. During all the days of their lives, they are affected by the conditions under which they have had to live. When they reach old age, they are carrying, not merely the burden of old age and physical infirmity, but the burden of the system of society under which they have been forced to live.
Let us take the average life of the ordinary man or woman in this country. They leave school and generally have the unfortunate experience of spending some time unemployed, a burden on their families, running around the streets and very often getting into trouble. Eventually, they are lucky enough to find a job, which usually pays such a low rate of wages that, instead of contributing to the upkeep of the family, they cannot meet the ordinary commitments which should be met with regard to clothes, food, shelter, and so on. Even though employed and giving service, they are still a burden on the family.
Because of our peculiar conditions, that burden continues very often until these people, not only reach adult age, but even until they take on family responsibilities. They still continue to live under costs and charges not adequate to maintain a single person. If they are lucky enough to attain to a higher standard of wages, they still have to maintain a family on a wage that is barely sufficient even in normal times, as Deputy O'Higgins pointed out, to meet ordinary everyday commitments. How many of them, because of our failure to live up to the standard that we talk glibly about, must, in addition to family commitments, bear the burden of maintaining their parents or their brothers or sisters or other people who have given service to the community over their lifetime and whose claims on the community are still denied? That burden very often comes on during the early years of married life and is very often carried into middle age. The result often is that a man who has been in constant employment for all the years of his working life never has had an opportunity to put by anything for his sustenance in his old age. He has had to overcome, possibly, periods of unemployment, when debts have accumulated and have taken years to pay off. He has had to meet the expenses of the education of children, supporting them until they obtained means of livelihood and very often has had the added burden of aged parents or invalided brothers or sisters. He has no margin to work upon and so, when he in turn comes to old age, he is completely bereft of any resources to fall back upon. Those people have given a lifetime of service to the community, yet because we required them to work under difficulties which prevented them from putting by resources for old age they are completely at the mercy of the community and their service to the community and claim upon it is measured at the rate of 10/- a week, plus this 2/6 at the discretion of the home assistance officer, less any paltry income which can be calculated by the investigation officer.
It can be readily realised that there is an item of finance involved but surely, if there is any one issue on which we can leave aside political differences, it is on the issue of our responsibility to those who have carried on the community before us, who have carried on the national life and who, in their turn, are now dependent on our recognition of their services. Whatever else may be stinted or whatever other sacrifice may be called for, we should recognise that these people, in the last few years of their lives, are entitled to a modicum of comfort, security, protection and freedom from the harassing they are subject to now by our system of red tape and bureaucratic treatment.
In the motion it is suggested that we should accept as a standard that the old age pension should be not less than £1 per week. I do not want to traverse the ground covered by Deputy O'Higgins, because he has approached the question from a much wider viewpoint. We are dealing not merely with the question of the amount needed to recompense old age pensioners for the rise in the cost of living; we have also the feeling that even under normal conditions £1 per week is not an outrageous sum to ask or to expect for these old people. When we come to deal with the provision in regard to calculation of income, we are dealing with the very basis on which a great deal of the misery and unhappiness which fall to the lot of these aged people has its source. First of all we have the fact that the present system of calculation, involving, as it does, a minute and detailed inquiry, and embracing almost every item of income that can possibly arise, raises an immediate difficulty, and one which the Minister on a number of occasions promised to consider, namely, that the existence of the present regulations governing the calculation of income has become an obstacle not only to personal thrift on the part of the individuals concerned, but has become an obstacle to the introduction of what is now recognised as a proper and established feature of ordinary industrial life—the provision of superannuation and pension schemes to which a contribution can be made from the profits of industry. Only a few weeks ago I had experience of a case in which this question of the introduction of a pension scheme was raised with a certain company. Quite rightly from their point of view, they asked why they should be required to contribute towards the financial relief of the Government. They pointed out that if there was a system whereby they and their employees could operate a scheme under which the full benefits would be given to their employees when they retired, they would join in it, but they could not see their way to do so under present circumstances. That matter has been brought to the attention of the Minister on various occasions by a number of organisations, by the Trade Union Congress, and by a number of individuals speaking in this House from time to time. I feel that if the provisions in regard to the calculation of income were amended to some degree in order to allow liberty of action in respect of superannuation schemes, that would bring into existence many schemes of that kind, and not only make it possible for many thousands of industrial workers and workers in commerce to make provision for their old age, but would generally help to develop those qualities of thrift for which the Minister has such high regard. Surely, even within the bounds of the present regulations, it should be possible for the Minister to issue instructions to his subordinate officers that, in their approach to the applicants for old age pensions, they should at least treat them as human beings, and that where a line-ball question arises, the doubt would be determined in favour of the applicant rather than in favour of the Exchequer. We have had cases such as that mentioned in the House recently in which an applicant who had no known source of income, who was not employed, had no money put away or no weekly income, yet managed to secure by some extraordinary means one or two meals a day.
These two meals were calculated by the investigation officer to be worth so much per day, per week and per month until a figure was arrived at which made him ineligible for a pension. When we have a situation like that and when that situation is persisted in even against repeated representations of the old age pension committee, we find that provisions which were inserted for the protection of the Exchequer and of public money are being extended to a point where not only are they becoming absurd, but are becoming intolerable and should be checked.
In the debate in the House on this motion yesterday, reference was made to what has taken place in other countries. I do not think we should follow that line particularly, because it is not a very happy line for us to pursue. The examples placed before us were so far removed from even a conception of what we have at present that they do not bear any sense of reality to what we are discussing. We should take some positive or definite action. Not only private individuals and political groups, but leaders of the Government here have frequently expressed their belief in the principles of social justice, of equity and of ordinary fair dealing between man and man, and at least in regard to this one item we should expect the Government to put these principles into practice. I feel that the Minister will find it impossible to argue that the sentiments expressed in the motion are not sentiments to which expression should be given here and, in so far as the argument will resolve itself solely into a question of how the finances are to be provided, I suggest that he would, because of the sentiments expressed in the motion, make it an instruction to his Department that steps be immediately taken to find in what way the resources of the country can be so drawn upon as to meet what we feel is the responsibility placed upon us as representatives of the community to give protection and security to these aged people.
