The main purpose of this Bill will be found in Section 3, which is designed to remove doubts in regard to the application of Part IV of the Ministerial and Parliamentary Offices Act of 1938 and to extend the scope of that Act so as to bring within it persons whom, beyond any doubt, the Oireachtas would have desired that the terms of the Act would have covered when it was first before us. That is to say, the main purpose of the Act is to ensure that certain former Ministers of the First Dáil Éireann or their widows may be eligible to receive pensions.
The House will remember that the Act of 1938 was enacted following the report dated 24th November, 1937, of a committee of inquiry into ministerial and other salaries which had been appointed in June of that year. This committee recommended, inter alia, that Ministers of State should be eligible to receive pensions and that service as a minister prior to the 6th December, 1922, whether under Dáil Éireann, which, as the House will recall, was the Parliament of the Republic, or under the Provisional Government, should be reckonable for pension purposes.
When the Act had been passed and cases came to be considered under it with a view to determining the issue of eligibility for pensions, doubt arose as to whether the phraseology of the statute covered the office of director under the First Dáil. According to the definition of "ministerial office" in the Principal Act, an office in the First Dáil could be held to be a ministerial office only if it was an office of a member of the Cabinet or the office of Cheann Comhairle or Chairman of Dáil Éireann. The House will, of course, appreciate that in the circumstances under which the Government of the Republic functioned from 1919 until the Truce in July of 1921, the exact office held by certain persons might become a somewhat difficult matter and therefore provision was made in the Principal Act—by Section 18, in fact, of that Act—for the reference of any questions arising as to the holding of a ministerial office before the 6th December, 1922, to a committee which was to consist of the Taoiseach, or some person nominated by him, the Chairman of Dáil Éireann or some person nominated by him, and the Leader of the principal Opposition Party in Dáil Éireann or some person to be nominated by him.
One question of eligibility under the Bill in respect of service as a director of a Department was referred to this committee. Unfortunately, however, no record exists of the report by the committee and I am presuming that no report was made for the obvious reason that, in accordance with the general spirit of the Act, services rendered to the nascent State in the most critical period of its existence ought in justice to be regarded as pensionable and to be reckoned accordingly; while, on the other hand, a strict reading of the Act would appear to exclude it.
I am not satisfied—and I am sure that those members of the House who can recollect the circumstances of the time will agree with me—that a person who held the rank of director of one of our State Departments could be held beyond doubt to be eligible to come within the terms of the Act of 1938. The term "director" is not one with which we who have lived through the 30 years of the development of native parliamentary institutions are accustomed or are familiar with, but it was used to designate the ministerial head of a Department in the First Dáil which, as you know, existed from the 2nd April, 1919, to the 26th August, 1921.
Article 2 of the Constitution of the First Dáil is relevant in this connection and it may be of value to place some of its terms on the records of the House. The Constitution of the First Dáil Éireann was adopted on the 21st January, 1919. It was, shall we say, expressed in Irish only but it was subsequently amended in English. The passages which I am going to read are a translation in English of the original terms of the Constitution.