On the Fifth Stage I should like to say that I was disappointed with the attitude the Minister adopted concerning certain members of the staff. On Committee Stage the Minister undertook to consider an amendment between then and Report Stage which would cover certain members of the staff who were not already covered and whose service was insufficient to qualify them for full pension on retirement. He did introduce on Report Stage an amendment which, while it might apply to a case of two, in no sense meets the requirements.
In passing legislation of this sort it is not sufficient to say that the proposed amendment gives the same conditions to other members of the staff as it gives to the two members of the staff who are provided for ad hoc in the section of the Bill which makes special provision for them. Nobody in any way wishes to question the propriety of covering them and I referred to that on Committee Stage, but it is not a correct description to say that added years are being given, more especially when it concerns members of the staff who might be described as being in the lower ranks, who will ultimately retire on much smaller pensions and who have given long, loyal, efficient and satisfactory service here but who, because of the peculiar circumstances in which they were recruited, find that they are not entitled to full service although they may have spent their entire period in the public service of this country and, because of the manner in which they were recruited, or the technical manner in which they are established, will be ultimately short of a year or a few years for pension purposes. I suggested that it might be possible to consider giving them, where necessary, up to a maximum of five years' additional qualification period—not more than five years—and if some people were still short, that would be their misfortune.
It is most unsatisfactory for the Minister to have brought in an amendment and purport to confer a benefit by equating their terms of service with people who are provided for specificially in this legislation and, because it happens to suit, to suggest 26 years in the case of these lower members of the staff merely because 26 years was the period decided upon or considered appropriate in respect of the Superintendent and the Captain of the Guard. That is what I regard as a bureaucratic approach to a question of this sort.
This Bill legislates ad hoc for two particular cases. These were exceptional cases, exceptional circumstances, and they justify the exceptional provisions which were made in the Bill for them. That applies also to the cases of other members of the staff, who might be regarded as lower down in the hierarchy of the officers of the staff of the Houses of the Oireachtas, who probably had not the same opportunities of presenting their case to the Minister and consequently are not getting the same treatment. I want to urge the Minister to reconsider his attitude and to reconsider it sympathetically so that the treatment that is being given to two members of the staff will be translated into concrete terms for inclusion in this Bill in regard to other members of the staff.
This situation will not arise again. There is no fear of comparable cases arising in other sections of the Civil Service because the Houses of the Oireachtas are peculiar in that the terms of employment, the conditions of work, the circumstances of recruitment, and so forth, all make it a special and entirely separate part of the State service. Consequently there is no reason why similar problems should arise or why it can be in any sense regarded as a precedent. I know that the Minister and the Establishment Section of his Department would be worried about precedents or comparable conditions being claimed for other members of the Civil Service who are short of service and who would be anxious to get added years.
