I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. I think I can really be brief in my statement regarding this measure. As Deputies will remember, before we adjourned for the Recess in July there were certain moneys voted to increase the pensions of various classes of people who were drawing pensions from the State. There was token Supplementary Vote introduced by the Minister for Finance with reference to certain classes of pensioners and there was a sister token Vote introduced by myself dealing with pensioners under the Department of Defence who had a pension by reason of a wound or other disability.
At that particular time it was indicated to Deputies that, in dealing with pensions for wounds and disabilities, it would be impossible to follow the simple mathematical process that was applied to other pensions, namely, the lower the pension the greater the increase and the bigger the pension the smaller the percentage of increase. That was for this reason, that when dealing with wounds and disabilities the smaller pension represented the smaller degree of disability and, with the smaller degree of disability, you have a greater earning potential. Many of the people on a very low degree of disability are earning, and are capable of earning, full wages as workers in trades or in other walks of life. When you go higher up on the degree of disability you find, of course, the greater degree of physical defect and the less potential there is of earning a livelihood. For that reason there was not the ordinary simple mathematical process of increase that applied elsewhere.
There was another complicating factor in dealing with these types of pensions and that was the multiciplicity of different Acts that gave different rates of pension for similar degrees of disability. That arose out of the period when a particular Act was passed. You had situations where, say, if a man lost his leg he had a pension of X shillings a week. If another man lost a leg a few years later he had a pension of twice X shillings a week. We had to try with the money available to equate things so far as could be done and to try to measure up equal pensions for equal disabilities where the ranks were equal.
I think I might only make more difficult a rather involved Bill if I tried further to explain it verbally, but all these various Acts are down there to be read.
