I move amendment No. 1:—
In page 5, before Section 5 to insert a new section as follows:—
Section 5 of the Act of 1934 is hereby amended by the deletion of sub-section (2) and the substitution of the following sub-section:—
(2) The Government shall as soon as may be necessary after the passing of this Act and thereafter as occasion requires appoint on the recommendation of the Minister a person who held high rank in the Volunteers in the period 1918 to 1922 to be the Referee, and any person so appointed shall hold office during the pleasure of the Government.
I want the House to realise that the Minister when speaking in support of this Bill pointed out that the board was weighted in favour of the applicants because there were two high officers of the Old I.R.A. or Volunteers on the board. I contended, against that, that the proportion was three to two—the Referee, a representative of the Department of Defence and a representative of the Department of Finance—and that under no circumstances could the board be regarded as being weighted in favour of the applicants. I want, by this amendment to give concrete effect to the Minister's assertion that the board was so weighted.
Before doing so, I want to say that I am perfectly satisfied that the existing and previous referees have discharged their duties faithfully and well. They have been fully impartial in their administration, and this amendment is not to be taken in any way as a reflection upon them either separately or collectively. I submit, however, that with all their legal training and knowledge they have no knowledge of the conditions under which our people operated in the years 1918-1920, 1921 and 1922, and that, although they are judges and experts in what constitutes evidence, and although having the best intentions in the world, they have not been able to judge accurately the services which people rendered at that time. I maintain that, by having the type of person suggested as a referee, the board would be weighted in favour of the applicant who would get a fairer or more sympathetic hearing.
It is true that the applicant has been expected to fill his form of application accurately and to give in great detail the service he rendered. He is also expected to have the gift of being able to explain his service. That gift is very rare, and in soldiers particularly. They can say in a broad way that they did so and so, but to give the details is not an easy matter for them. If a senior officer were the Referee he would, of his own knowledge, be able to assess himself what type of service an applicant had given, even without the applicant proving it. If an applicant said he was a section commander, a first or a second lieutenant, a battalion O.C. or a battalion adjutant, that officer would be able to assess, with a fairly definite idea in his mind, the type of service which that applicant had rendered without forcing him to give details of the duties that he performed whilst serving in one or other of these ranks.
This proposal of mine has the further advantage that it would leave the applicant with more confidence in the Referee. He would be able to explain quite freely the service that he had given to one who, he would expect, would be sympathetic towards him. He would be able to do that in a more clear way when speaking to an officer than he would to a judicially-minded person such as a Circuit Court judge, a district justice, or a barrister of ten years' standing. Therefore, what I am proposing is that the section in the 1934 Act which makes it obligatory on the Government to appoint to the position of Referee a High Court judge, a Circuit Court judge, a district justice or a barrister of ten years' standing, be repealed, and that this proposal of mine be substituted for it. The Miniforme ster may repeat the argument that be used on the last occasion, namely, that justice has been done to the I.R.A. I contend that is not so. Justice has been done to the number of people who have qualified, but not to the 5,000 or 6,000 who have not qualified, largely because a judicially-minded Referee first surrounded himself with a set of rules and regulations defining active service. If I may use the expression, he tied himself up in such a knot that he could not go outside those rules and regulations. The result, as I have asserted here before, was that the Referee had to alter his procedure. I have here a memorandum sent out from the Referee's office, in which we have set out the number of changes that took place in the set of rules prepared by the Referee himself.
The Minister played a good deal on the 28 days' notice which was given to the brigade committees. I would remind him that, at a certain stage, the 28 days' notice was withdrawn. The justification given for the withdrawal was that the brigade committees did not co-operate. I dealt with that before, and pointed out that the brigade committees were not even part-time bodies. They were voluntary bodies, without any statutory authority, working in country districts, and could not, in the time at their disposal, deal with 300 or 400 cases, or even with 60 or 80 cases in a period of 28 days. Therefore, I contend that if you had as Referee a person of the kind described in my amendment he would have such a clear appreciation of the duties performed by each applicant, that the obligation of proof for every detail of service would not rest on the applicant.
I do not know if the Minister is prepared to accept my amendment. I have no hesitation in saying that any high ranking officer who was in the Volunteers in the period 1918 to 1923 would know what constitutes service, and what it would be reasonable to expect from an applicant. The Minister himself knows that even the records are not accurate. Some of the brigade records that are extant were hidden away in 1918, 1919 and in 1920. There were alterations made in some of them between 1920 and the 11th July, 1921. I am aware myself of a case in which a divisional O.C., in giving a certificate for 1922, described himself as a brigade O.C. If he were before the Referee to-day one of the first things he would be asked is this: "How did you come to describe yourself as a brigade O.C. on the 30th June, 1922, if you were a divisional O.C." The answer would have to be that we were not too particular in our descriptions of ranks in those days. The point, however, is that at this stage these records can be challenged. I think that if the Minister were to examine the matter he probably would be able to identify the person who gave the certificate I have referred to. Referees, of course, will not appreciate the difficulties under, which records were kept in those days or the designations that were given to men serving. I am prepared to admit there was a good deal of carelessness in the description of ranks and appointments held by men at that time. I ask the Minister to accept the amendment as something that will tend towards doing what he himself wishes, something which he said already exists but which I hold does not exist.
