What pensions are being covered by this? What number of people in receipt of pensions are to be covered by this?
Committee on Finance. - Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) Bill, 1959—Committee Stage.
Sections 1 to 12, inclusive, agreed to.
SECTION 13.
Question proposed: "That Section 13 stand part of the Bill."
It covers, in actual effect, three types, those covered by the general employees superannuation scheme whose pensions are calculated as a percentage of salary. Sections 13 and 14 provide for the increase for this group, and included also are those covered by the manual workers superannuation scheme whose pensions are expressed as fixed sums. Section 15 provides for those groups. In fact, there are two groups, not three. They correspond to the increases in pensions made available to civil servants under the two Acts in 1959 and 1960. They follow exactly along the same lines.
It may be a floating population but is there any estimate of the number of people involved?
We have not exact information on the numbers involved.
Even a rough estimation? What is the gross? What is the total number likely to be served by this?
It would be very hard to say without getting the actual figures.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 14.
Question proposed: "That Section 14 stand part of the Bill."
In respect of what people is this different from those covered by Section 13?
This section provides for increases with effect from the 1st August, 1960, in the pensions for general employee pensioners of the Board, corresponding to the 5 per cent. increase proposed for public service pensioners, whose pensions were based on salaries in the period between the 1st November, 1948 and the 1st November, 1955. The relative E.S.B. salary increase was effective on the 1st December, 1955, and the pensions increase under this sub-section is scaled down over a period of one year from that date in the same way as other increases.
This is a different group of people from those catered for by Section 13?
It refers to the same group of people but the retirement dates are different.
The same group?
General employee pensioners.
I mean the individuals. Is the Minister not able to segregate the number of individuals? It may be the same classification, I admit.
I am afraid we have not got the number involved.
Has the Minister any idea of the number?
It would be very hard to say because this arrangement was made to follow exactly on the lines of the Civil Service increases and, as the Civil Service increase was passed by Dáil Éireann it being mentioned at the time by the Minister for Finance that there would be a Bill introduced to cover increases for E.S.B. pensions, I did not feel there was likely to be any controversy or anything requiring definition.
There is no controversy. I am only seeking information. Sections 13, 14 and 15 refer to pensions for servants of the Board and I want to know has the Minister any idea of the numbers catered for by these sections.
The only thing we can say is that the approximate total number would be 200 persons.
The total would be 200 covered by all three sections?
By the section covering general employees.
Two hundred people by Sections 13, 14 and 15?
The sections covering the general employee group cover 200 people.
Potentially how many would be covered? What is the number of the Board's servants at the moment? Roughly 8,000?
It is about 7,000.
8,000 odd. Are they all potentially covered by these three sections?
Of course it includes a very great number of different classes of persons, engineering grades and so on. I have not a complete breakdown. The difficulty is that this section of the Bill applies only to those who retired already. It applies to persons who have retired whose E.S.B. pensions are being increased.
People who retire after a certain date are not catered for at all by this?
They get the benefit of it.
Surely, therefore, they are being catered for?
I meant at the moment. It applies to those who have retired.
The whole of the 8,000 may eventually come under one of these three groups?
Those who have pensionable positions. Of course, in the meantime, the Deputy will appreciate, their salaries go on increasing by increments.
I am speaking of the three sections which deal with pensions, Section 13, Section 14 and Section 15.
As I have said, it applies to those who will retire in the future. They will get the benefit of this pension scheme. At the moment it applies to those who have retired.
What is the figure of 200 related to?
It relates to the number of persons who will be affected immediately.
Question put and agreed to.
Section 15 agreed to.
SECTION 16.
Question proposed: "That Section 16 stand part of the Bill".
This can apply only to a very small number of people?
Yes, at the moment it applies only to the Chairman of the Board. He is the only wholetime member.
The only present wholetime member?
Yes.
This is not to apply to wholetime members who are no longer on the Board.
They are already covered in the 1942 Act.
This will not relate to them at all?
No.
This is a paragraph relating to one person only at the moment?
Yes. I do not think there is likely to be any change in the policy at the moment in regard to wholetime members. I imagine that the remaining Directors will be part-time members.
Does the Chairman carry with him his Civil Service pension rights?
Under the Bill he will carry his pension rights and the length of his time in the Civil Service will be counted for the purposes of his pension.
This makes provision for extra to the Civil Service superannuation terms?
The Deputy will have to read the exact terms of it. It is based on a pension of 1/80th of the retiring salary for each year of pensionable service in the Civil Service and with the Board, subject to a maximum of one half or 40/80ths of the retiring salary and a gratuity based on 1/30th of the retiring salary subject to a maximum of one half or 40/80ths.
That is the Civil Service regulations?
Yes.
Is this merely coming in place of years that might otherwise have been spent in the Civil Service and counting as service spent in the E.S.B., or is there any improvement on the Civil Service terms?
It is really an enabling scheme to enable us to provide pensions.
Is the Chairman to be put in a better position at the end of five years' service with the Board than if he remains in the Civil Service for 5 years?
It is more or less on Civil Service lines. I do not think he will be in any better position.
It is just the same as if he remained in the Civil Service for 5 years?
Approximately, yes.
Question put and agreed to.
Section 17 agreed to.
SECTION 18.
Question proposed: "That Section 18 stand part of the Bill."
Is Section 18 any more than what has been given already to local authority and civil servants?
No. It provides similar facilities for whole-time members of the E.S.B. It corresponds with the Superannuation Act 1956 enabling a civil servant retiring on pension, otherwise than through ill health, to surrender part of his pension to secure a pension for his wife and dependent relatives nominated by him.
I presume on the same terms, on the same actuarial calculation?
Yes.
What the person loses may be given to his wife and dependants?
On exactly the same actuarial calculation.
It costs nothing to the State.
No.
Question put and agreed to.
Sections 19 and 20 agreed to.
SCHEDULE.
I move amendment No. 1:
1. In page 10 to delete paragraph 3, lines 22 to 30, and insert the following paragraph:
"3. If a person who on ceasing to hold office as a member of the Board has been granted a pension or a pension and a gratuity by the Board dies at a time when the amount of the payments made to him on foot of the pension from the time of such cesser to the date of his death or the combined amounts of such payments and of the gratuity, as the case may be, is less by any sum than the amount of the death gratuity which would have been granted to his personal representative if he had died immediately before such cesser, the Board shall pay a gratuity equal to that sum to his personal representative."
This is purely a drafting amendment.
Is it of importance?
No.
Amendment agreed to.
Question proposed: "That the Schedule, as amended, be the Schedule to the Bill."
What are the main matters, as set out in the Schedule, that have to be provided for in schemes by the force of Section 17?
It would be rather difficult to give it very briefly. The Schedule to the Bill specifies the various matters that must be provided for in the superannuation schemes made in pursuance of Section 16 of the Bill. Those are, in fact, the standard provisions of the type common to superannuation schemes for members of State-sponsored Bodies. They are so designed to be applicable to members appointed without any previous superannuation entitlement in respect of service with State or semi-State bodies. They are also designed to cover, in respect of the present Chairman of the Board, service in the Civil Service for the purposes of superannuation on retirement from the Board. These are purely the standard procedures. There is nothing exceptional in them. They are in line with the superannuation arrangements made under the Superannuation Act, 1956.
Did I hear the Minister say they are more or less similar, even identical, to those provided for other State sponsored bodies?
State or semi-State sponsored bodies.
Does a State body include the Civil Service? Does the phrase as used include the Civil Service? May I put the point another way? If these are the terms, so to speak, regarded as appropriate for semi-State sponsored bodies, are they any improvement on Civil Service terms?
I do not think it is correct to describe it that way. It gives the right to the Minister to define what the Bill provides for. That is roughly what it is.
In the Civil Service there are people of the professional type who come into the service rather late. There are provisions to enable service outside to be counted. Are these on all fours with those other provisions?
More or less, yes. They are on the lines of the general Civil Service procedure of that kind when people come late into the service. There is no differentiation. They enable the Government to make these provisions for people who come late into the Civil Service or a State Body.
In a semi-State Body is there any advantageous position in contrast to the State?
I would not say so. I would say they have been very much in line with the State position.
Question put and agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported with amendment.
Next Stage?
Could we have it now?
Oh, no, there are some questions that I particularly want to have disposed of. Questions were asked on the Second Reading in regard to the surplus generating capacity of the Board and the replies given do not seem to me to meet the points at all. It may be possible to get questions down in time to get information before the next Stage. It will certainly be possible to get them down before the Fifth Stage. The Minister could expedite matters by giving us replies to questions along the following lines: What is the installed capacity in each of the Board's stations? What has been—so to speak—the greatest peak load, over the last three years say, which each of the stations had to face and what is the percentage of the potential of the station which has been absorbed at any time?
Points were made here on the Second Reading which I understand were quite accurate—that the way in which the stations have been erected for some years past has been that wherever a peat or turf burning station has been erected there has also been supplied an equivalent generating capacity by means of other fuel. In other words, we erect a station and we get 100 per cent. stand-by capacity. I do not understand how the Minister can say, or how the Chairman of the Board can assure him, that we had no reserve capacity and therefore had to build stations. I understand that the general engineering view is that the stations already erected would provide for all our needs for another decade. If that is so, I see no need to indulge in further expenditure on stations. It would appear to me that there is great loss involved if the heavy capital expenditure entailed in these stations is undertaken when only two-thirds or three-quarters of that capacity is needed in any year. The expenditure made would not be remunerated. Surely that is information that the Minister can give.
The only question that I should personally like to raise at a later stage— on the Fifth Stage—is whether it is appropriate to proceed with rural electrification to any great extent. Information has reached me that in certain parts of the West of Ireland where stations have been provided at considerable cost, the use made of electricity is that the people switch on the light provided when they are going into the nearest shop to buy bottled gas for heating and cooking. That indicates that their view is that electricity, even at the subsidised rate, is not sufficiently cheap for them. They have other means. If that is happening in many areas, it seems to me that we could just as well arrange to provide bottled gas which apparently could give a cheaper service than electricity which is heavily subsidised by urban consumers.
Next Stage this day week?
Does the Minister accept that? Could the Minister have the information in between?
The Deputy has raised a number of issues that rather astonish me since the programme for future expansion was worked out with the Board of Directors.
Has it been? I should like a precise answer on that.
If the Deputy imagines there has been any conflict in this field, there has been agreement with the E.S.B. with regard to future plans right up to 1968. There has been no conflict at all.
It was stated in this House that the Minister for Industry and Commerce years ago made the Board enter into a scheme which the Board did not agree was required.
The Deputy will be aware of the fact that the increase in consumption last year was in excess of what was anticipated.
We do not seem to be arguing on anything.
I had just asked the Minister a question and I hope to get the answer. If not, the Fifth Stage might have to be postponed.
Report Stage ordered for Wednesday, 16th November, 1960.