I move:-
That it is expedient to authorise such payments out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas as are necessary to give effect to any Act of the present session to amend the Oireachtas (Allowances to Members) Act, 1938.
Oireachtas (Allowances to Members) (Amendment) Bill, 1947—Money Resolution.
I oppose this motion on the grounds already fully stated here, that we are opposed to the proposals contained in the Bill.
I also want to oppose the motion. While I do not wish to travel over the ground already covered, I think it is worth underlining to-day the difference in the approach to the problem of the lowly-paid people and the approach to the problem of the relatively well-paid people. I had three questions on the Order Paper to-day, in one of which I asked the Minister for Local Government whether he was prepared to give favourable consideration to increasing the pensions of employees of local authorities, many of whom are to-day endeavouring to subsist on pensions as low as £1 per week. The answer I got from the Minister was that the matter was under consideration.
In a question addressed to the Minister for Finance I asked whether he was aware of the hardships endured by persons who retired from the service of the State with pensions as low as 20/-, 25/- and 30/- a week and, in some instances, even lower than 20/- a week, and I was told that the State cannot afford that Bill. I addressed another question to the Minister for Defence asking whether the State proposed to make, in 1947, some better provision than it made in 1923 for the widows of men killed during Easter Week, 1916, or who subsequently died as a result of their participation in the Rebellion, and the Minister said that he did not propose to introduce legislation to increase the rates of pensions for such widows, notwithstanding the fact that I quoted here on an earlier stage of this Bill the case of one widow who lost her husband as a result of his participation in the 1916 Rebellion and who is now trying to maintain some standard of respectability on a sole income of £30 per annum.
I want to direct the Minister's attention to the notable difference in the approach by him to the problems of the Minister, the problems of the Parliamentary Secretary, the problems of the Deputy and the problems of the judiciary and his approach to the problems of the lowly-paid pensioners, people subsisting on shillings per week. For those who get hundreds and thousands of pounds per annum, the Minister is prepared to grant increases of 30 per cent. but, when we come to the unfortunate people who have served the State for upwards of 40 years, who are subsisting on pensions as low as 25/- and 30/- a week, the Minister can find no money whatever to relieve their plight. I recently interviewed a deputation of mental hospital attendants, many of whom had given over 40 years' service, and who are living on pensions as low at 23/- and 24/- a week after 40 years' service and more in the employment of a local authority. Is it possible that, in a Budget which imposes taxation to the extent of £50,000,000 per annum on our people it is not possible for the State to make some provision for people in such an unfortunate economic plight?
The Deputy is surely going outside the Bill now.
I am not so far out at all.
I am just giving the Chair's opinion.
I concede that it is almost anomalous to discuss the plight of people living on pensions of £1 and 25/- a week in a House which can give them nothing, but which can give hundreds to those who have thousands per annum. That is the anomaly I am pointing out to the Minister. It seems to me that, while we have the problem of lowly paid pensioners and people subsisting on rates of income incapable of raising them above a mere subsistence level, the State is completely unjustified in introducing legislation of this kind to provide the increases for those who will benefit by this Bill and the associated Bills. I do not want to travel over the whole ground again, because the matter has been covered in principle already in the Second Reading discussion, but I say that the Minister is in a very odd position— whether the oddness is obvious to him, I do not know—in asking the House to pass proposals for legislation giving a 30 per cent. increase to those with thousands per annum, while saying that he is unable to give even a small increase to those living on pensions of 25/- and 30/- a week after having served the State for 40 years.
All I want to say to Deputy Norton is that I am not proposing to increase any of the pensions granted for service in the various posts with which this series of Bills deals. Deputy Norton could talk for quite a long time, and with his usual eloquence, upon the plight of certain sections of the community. He elects to-day to associate the plight of certain sections with the increases which I am proposing here for members of the Oireachtas. The only reason I am making the proposal is to ensure that the Irish people will get their work done in an efficient manner.
Deputy Norton objected last week or the week before to the granting of 30 per cent. on the allowances to Deputies, but he did not object to a very much greater increase for higher civil servants and for district justices. He did not say, in their cases, that we must not give these increases until we did this, that and the other for all sections of pensioners. He was wrong to say, too, in my recollection, that the widows of 1916 men got nothing since 1923. Their pensions were very greatly increased.
When?
In 1932 or 1933.
Pensions awarded under the 1923 Act?
They were increased in one of the Acts passed when I was Minister for Defence in 1932 or 1933. I could not tell you which one of those Acts increased the pensions. With regard to the other military service pensioners, those who got military service awards or ordinary service medals, are now guaranteed, under legislation passed here within the last few years, a certain income. Before that the only award granted to them was based on their service. They are being guaranteed a minimum income very much higher than the ordinary citizen is guaranteed under the various social services governing health, sickness benefits or destitution protection.
I am prepared to admit that, if Deputy Norton wants to ring the changes on what Deputies will draw under this Bill as against an old age pensioner or somebody who is living in dire poverty, he can do it and make a very effective speech, but I would ask him to bring into that speech quotations from his own statements in relation to the district justices who were, under legislation passed through this House—I do not know whether it is still going through the other House—granted £300 or £400 as against the £144 proposed for Deputies. He did not say that the district justices or the higher civil servants or ordinary civil servants should not get increases until the old age pensioners and the lowly-paid people are given some consideration.
We are all sensible enough to know that, if you go to any State in the world, you will find that the people who have to take responsibility in politics, in industry or in the professions, get a reward commensurate with the responsibilities which they undertake. One State started off in our time with the idea that all people should be paid equally. After trying to work that system, their experience proved that there must be greater inequality between the people who accepted responsibility and those who worked at the bench or on the plot. There is now a greater difference there than in the fabulously wealthy State of America, where we always hear that the capitalist has such a huge income.
Compare the State I refer to when you take the man at the bottom, the man who is doing the actual physical work and the person who does the directing and takes responsibility. There is a greater difference in that country than there is in the United States and, of course, many more times a greater difference than there is in our community.
I do not think we will get the development that is necessary to increase the general standard of our people's lives by keeping Deputies in the position that they are unable to carry out the most important work that any set of men in this country could be engaged at. It would be unwise to prevent them carrying out that work efficiently. Everyone knows that the Dáil approved a certain level of allowances for Deputies in 1938. Deputy Norton, on other occasions, would say that that level of allowances has been cut in half by the upward movement of prices. I am proposing to add 30 per cent. to the 1938 level for the sole purpose of enabling Deputies to carry out their duties by their constituencies and their duties by the State.
I hope Deputy Norton will content himself with having made this type of speech a couple of times. I do not think it does any good to raise that type of issue so often as he has done. I could answer him, if I wanted to make a long speech, by quoting his statements showing that in his approach to this matter he is very inconsistent indeed.
The Minister made two points which require to be cleared up. He said the Army Pensions Act improved the position of a widow who got a pension following the death of her husband because of his association with Easter Week, 1916. That is not so. The Minister, if he looks up the Act, will find that his information is not correct. These were granted under Section 8 of the 1923 Act. Section 4 of the 1927 Act doubles the pensions of the widows of men killed in 1916, if they signed the proclamation of 1916, and only then. The Army Pensions Act of 1927 brought in the children of such persons. But the original amount granted in 1923 to widows of men who did not sign the proclamation still stands in 1947. The Minister wants to make some play with my advocacy on behalf of civil servants and their rights to get certain increases. Obviously he wants to bring in discussions which took place elsewhere.
Did not the Deputy support the increase for district justices?
I was not here when the district justices were dealt with.
But the Deputy's whole Party adopted a definite attitude on that.
I am prepared to take full responsibility for that.
Good.
When the Minister was discussing the civil servants, the main case against him was that in 1940 he abrogated a solemn agreement which had existed for 20 years and he did that at a time when, having extracted all the benefits of the agreement, he wanted to say to the civil servants: "Now, as the tide is likely to turn in your favour, and you may get some compensation for the rise in prices, I will prevent you getting it by abrogating the agreement." I pointed out to the Minister that he had interfered with a solemn agreement under which civil servants up to this were morally and legally bound, that he had exacted every pound of flesh he could get and took some of the bone away as well, and that in fact he was now being asked, since the emergency was over and since he had lifted wage controls in respect of all classes of workers, to do the same in respect of civil servants. The Minister knows I was concerned with lowly paid civil servants, not highly paid civil servants. In that respect, all the Minister was asked to do was to restore the agreement because the circumstances on which he had relied for its abrogation had ceased to exist. Is there any inconsistency in that? I know the Minister did concede some increase but he knows well he did not concede all that he knew was legally and morally due. My advocacy on that occasion was of the same type as I am making now. I argued the claims of the lowly-paid people and I am doing the same now.
I think Deputy Norton is right in his statement that the 1923 Act applied to the widows of the 1916 signatories and not to the others.
Question put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 54; Níl, 25.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neal.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Dan.
- Brady, Brian.
- Childers, Erskine H.
- Colley, Harry.
- Crowley, Honor Mary.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- De Valera, Vivion.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Humphreys, Francis.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, James.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Loughman, Frank.
- McCarthy, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Brennan, Thomas.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Burke, Patrick (Co. Dublin).
- Butler, Bernard.
- Carter, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Moylan, Seán.
- O'Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Connor, John S.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- O'Rourke, Daniel.
- O'Sullivan, Ted.
- Rice, Bridget M.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Mary B.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Shanahan, Patrick.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Skinner, Leo B.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Ua Donnchadha, Dómhnall.
- Walsh, Richard.
Níl
- Beirne, John.
- Bennett, George C.
- Blowick, Joseph.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Cafferky, Dominick.
- Coburn, James.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Coogan, Eamonn.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Dockrell, Henry M.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finucane, Patrick.
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Halliden, Patrick J.
- Heskin, Denis.
- Hughes, James.
- Keating, John.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, Timothy J.
- Norton, William.
- Sheldon, William A.W.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Kissane and Kennedy; Níl, Deputies McMenamin and Bennett.
Question declared carried.
Resolution reported and agreed to.