When the motion was adjourned on Wednesday night last I was trying to impress on the Minister the great similarity between the employees of local authorities in this country and the employees of the forestry section of the Department of Lands. One of the points made during the debate— I think by Deputy O'Hara —was that there was no general demand from forestry and Land Commission workers for any type of pension scheme. I think Deputies were speaking from experience in their own constituencies when saying there was no demand. I can claim to have experience in every constituency in the country where there is a forestry section, and the trade union I represent has had repeated demands from its members all over the country. Let there be no doubt at all in the Minister's mind that there is as great a demand from the forestry workers for the protection of a superannuation scheme as there was from the employees of local authorities before such a scheme was introduced.
For that reason I think it would be most unfair if those workers were deprived of the benefits of such a scheme for a further period. The statement was also made that it was impossible to work such a scheme where Land Commission workers were concerned. On Wednesday evening I referred to the Land Commission gangers in particular and I said that, because of the fact that there was a relatively small number of them and they were almost in permanent employment, there should be very little difficulty in putting a scheme in operation for them. In this morning's post I received a letter from the secretary of the supervisors' association in which he stated there were 38 permanent supervisors employed by the Land Commission. While some of those people have up to 40 years' employment with the Land Commission they have no superannuation scheme. That is an injustice which should be rectified at the earliest possible time, and I think that time is now.
