I move:—
This House considers that in view of the extent to which the value of money has depreciated in recent years, old people who depend for their subsistence on old age pensions are suffering undue privation and hardship which should be remedied, and requests the Government to introduce proposals for the purpose of providing a proper standard of maintenance for old people who have retired from remunerative employment.
The motion, as will be observed, is not drawn in what might be described as scientific terms. It is drawn primarily for the purpose of securing from this House a declaration that, in view of the extent to which the value of money has depreciated in recent years, old age pensions are inadequate, and that pensioners are suffering undue privation and hardship which should be remedied. It urges the Government to provide a proper standard of maintenance for these old people who have ceased to be gainfully employed.
It may be urged that the motion should give an indication of what is aimed at in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, but, in my opinion, we are on better ground if we indicate broadly our views as to what we aim at as far as old persons are concerned, rather than to endeavour to set out in specific figures the amount of an old age pension or blind person's pension. The motion, if it is regarded as unscientific, need not cause any surprise. The whole subject has been dealt with over a long period of years, in a rather unscientific manner as far as this country is concerned.
It will not be news to some Senators —although to others it probably will be—that when the Old Age Pensions Act was promoted almost 40 years ago in the British House of Commons, the Irish Parliamentary Party of that day actually opposed its extension to Ireland and, when that proposal was defeated, the kind-hearted gentlemen who represented Ireland in the British Parliament then, proposed that the amount of the pension, as applied to Ireland, should be half the amount applying to England. Some Senators will recall that that incident subsequently became one of the rallying cries not merely of the Labour movement but of the Sinn Féin movement in focusing public attention on the attitude of the Irish representatives in the British Parliament towards the question of social legislation, so far, at any rate, as it applied to Ireland. But one begins to wonder whether the members of the Irish Parliamentary Party were very far removed in this matter from, say, the members of the Irish Government of 1946. This Government are doing precisely what the Irish Parliamentary Party proposed should be done, only they are doing it with a vengeance, and reducing the standard of pensions in Ireland, not merely to half the rate provided in Britain but, in some cases, to less than one-fourth of that rate in similar circumstances.
Before old age pensions were introduced, in 1908, the only resource available to the poor and destitute was the poor law relief. I suppose there are in this House a number of Senators who will recall the conditions under which poor law relief was provided for the poor and destitute. I have heard it said that the amount provided by boards of guardians was usually 1/6 or 2/- weekly, and that the names of the recipients were posted at the chapel gates, so that everybody would know who was getting poor law relief. Let us not be too sure that that mentality has entirely disappeared. I am afraid there is still the mentality that the poor and the "down-and-outs" are getting something to which they are not entitled, that something is being given them out of public generosity for which they ought to be eternally grateful, and that the world should know that they were, in fact, beneficiaries of our kind-hearted benevolence.
When the old age pension was first provided, in 1908, the rate was 5/- per week. It was not a very generous pension, but it was a considerable improvement on the amount provided at that time by the poor law authorities and it did bear some relationship to the cost of living. As a matter of fact, I offer the suggestion that the 5/-a week granted to the old age pensioner in 1908, when the old age pensioner was permitted to have a private income from other sources of £21 a year—8/- a week making a total income of 13/- a week—was equivalent in terms of purchasing power to £2 per week to-day. The maximum pension which a person who is practically destitute can get at this moment is 16/-a week. That is to say, if a person has a private income of more than 6/- a week, the old age pension is cut by 1/-for every 1/- that the recipient's income exceeds 6/-. In other words, we have set a target of 16/- a week and given notice to all and sundry that if you are going to be the recipient of compensation, assistance, or whatever you may like to call it, from public funds, you must not have an income of more than 16/- a week, as compared with the 13/- permitted in 1908 which, in my opinion, was then the equivalent of 40/- a week to-day.
Let me quote a few figures to emphasise this point. In the first place, there is a firm figure available for 1904. That is the year in which the British authorities prepared the figures which subsequently became the basis for the cost-of-living index figure of which we hear so much in every discussion nowadays. The figure ascertained by the British authorities as the minimum sum required to maintain a working class family in 1904 was 22/6. From that calculation they assumed that for every adult person the minimum figure would be—I am not quite sure that it is for food only—4/6. I do know that in 1908 the weekly cost of providing provisions and necessaries for an able-bodied man in a union workhouse was 3/3. The cost of providing clothing, of course in the union workhouse, was 9d., making the total cost of maintenance in a poor law institution 4/- per week. Therefore the old age pension at 5/- represented a payment 25 per cent. in excess of the cost of maintaining an old person in a poor law institution. Does our old age pension provide a figure 25 per cent. in excess of the cost of maintaining a person to-day in a poor law institution? The answer is definitely "No" as I shall show in a moment or two.
Let us inquire further as to whether or not the 5/- a week did correspond more closely to the needs of an old person than the 10/- we provide to-day. For one thing, there is evidence that the price of a pair of gent's boots in 1908 was 6/6. The nearest thing provided to-day in the shape of men's boots, although very much inferior in quality, I am informed would cost 27/6 or 30/-. The 4 lb. loaf which to-day is costing 1/- cost 5d in 1908. Potatoes then cost 5d. a stone, and milk 1d per pint. Butter was 8d. per lb and the humble herring was at the rate of three a 1d.
If we may go more intimately into this question of human needs it may be permissible to recall that the price of the "pint" was 2d. The price of an ounce of tobacco, which is now 1/3, was 2½d. in 1908. So that the price of tobacco has multiplied six times, the price of the "pint" has multiplied four times, potatoes are four or five times more expensive, bread is two and a half times and milk three and a half times dearer. I think I am safe in asserting that while there was considerable criticism of the inadequacy of the 5/- pension in 1908—and I think with some justification if we consider the old age pensioner as a social being with human rights—that 5/- went very much nearer to meeting the needs of an old person in 1908 than 10/- does to-day.
I want again to emphasise the point that the 10/- pension is not given to every person at 70 years of age. It is given subject to a means test and if, in any set of circumstances, it can be estimated by an official of the Revenue Commissioners that the old person, at 70 years of age or over, has an income exceeding 6/- a week, he cannot get 10/-. If it is estimated that he is allowed from any source an income of 1/- per day, his old age pension becomes 9/- and so on down the scale. As I have said, we allow the old age pensioner to have an income from private sources of only 6/- per week, if he is to receive the maximum pension of 10/-, whereas, under the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, he could receive the maximum pension if his other income did not exceed 8/-, although 8/- would then be the equivalent of at least 24/- a week now. We have not progressed very far in our outlook when it comes to the treatment of the destitute poor. For it must be always remembered that strictly this is a measure, where the full rate of pension is provided, applying to the destitute poor only.
An old person who receives even a modest allowance from a son or daughter, possibly from a son who has gone over to England to work in a munition factory, is immediately approached by an officer of the Government, who revalues the means of the recipient, and the pension is cut. I have a statement here from a correspondent in Courtmacsherry which will illustrate better than anything I have said what is happening. This correspondent writes:—
"Mr. X, who resides at Ramsay Hill, was in receipt of a blind pension for a number of years. Then his son joined the British Army and made him an allowance of 10/- a week. He also sent the father some small sums to provide him with additional food, pay for laundry, etc. The value of these payments was reckoned officially at 6/- a week, and the blind pension was cut off. We have done what we could to get the case reopened and the pension restored to this old man, but all our efforts have failed."
How this situation affects people who, through old age or blindness, are unable to continue providing their own income and buying with their own money the things they need, is illustrated in one short paragraph I will read from a letter sent to me by a railway worker in West Cork. He finishes up his complaint in this manner:—
"Just now the family are wondering where they will get food, never mind clothes, for the children."
This is a case of a person who is not 70 years of age but is totally blind:—
"Worst of all is the condition of the man himself. He felt some independence while he was getting the 10/- pension, but now that that is gone he feels that he is a trespasser in his own house and that every bit he eats is taken out of the children's mouths."
These are the conditions which apply in the case of people who have devoted 50 or 60 years of their lives to creating wealth for this country. When we talk about the expenditure we intend to undertake on electricity schemes, on drainage and reclamation and all the other services, let us not forget that we have the resources with which to provide this money because these old people laboured for 50 or 60 years, from dawn to dark, not merely to make a living for themselves but to create the wealth which is the source of our prosperity to-day, such as it is. This is the reward we give them. If they had served in the Army, in the British Army or the German Army or in any fighting capacity in any army in the world, even though they would have been destroying life and property, they would get at the end a pension which would at least buy for them in their old age the bare necessaries of life. But because they served in their own quiet way in tilling the fields, tending the cattle, building houses, cutting turf, slaving in mines and factories and so creating wealth for the community, during their active years, they are being dismissed with 10/- a week at most and, if they have a meagre private income of anything exceeding 6/- a week, they get less than the 10/- pension.
The history of the old age pension scheme is very interesting but it reflects no credit on any Government which we have had in the past 25 years. In 1919 the British Government, recognising the depreciation in the value of money—which is mentioned in this resolution—as it applied in that period, increased the pension from 5/-to 10/- and permitted the recipient to have in addition a sum not exceeding £26 5s. 0d. a year, so that the pensioner who in 1908 was permitted to have 13/- a week was permitted in 1919 to have 20/- a week. In other words, he could have an income of his own from the produce of his garden, from cutting turf, even from earning wages, up to 10/- a week and still get the 100 per cent pension.
We do not permit people now to be so lavish or so extravagant. In 1924, an Irish Government, as one of its first measures of economy, cut the pension by 1/-. In the same Budget, of course, they cut the income-tax by 1/-, so that they were cutting all round, cutting the expenditure of the rich and cutting the food which was to enter the stomachs of the poor. Nine shillings became the maximum in 1924.
We were told that that was restored later—in 1928—but it was not, in fact, restored. The maximum was raised from 9/- to 10/-, but the means test was tightened up, so that where in 1924 you would get the maximum pension with a private income not exceeding £18 5s. 0d. you could no longer, after 1928, get the maximum if your private income exceeded £15 12s. 0d. Therefore, to-day, in 1946, a person who has a private income exceeding 6/- a week from labour, from a garden, from the rent of a house or from any other source, or by way of a gift from some member of his family, can get only 9/-a week old age pension. That means that, for all practical purposes, the cut enforced in 1924 remains to this day. It is merely misleading the public to say that it was restored in 1928 to 10/-. It was restored to some where the depths of destitution were sufficiently acute, but if you had an income of 1/-a day you could get no more than 9/-a week even after the so-called restoration.
I now want to offer this further suggestion, that the 16/- maximum income which is permitted to an old age pensioner to-day has no greater buying power than 9/3 in 1928. Strictly relating the figures—and in any way you like to relate the figures—of 1928 with those of 1946, it must be accepted that the 16/- maximum which is permitted now will purchase no more for the pensioner than he would have purchased with 9/3 in 1928. In fact, therefore, the income of the old age pensioner is infinitely lower now than it was either in 1924 or 1928.
Now let us consider whether there is any standard by which we can measure in money the needs of an old person of 70 years who is no longer able to earn for himself. There are many such measuring rods but I do not know if they are satisfactory or whether they are going to help us because if I refer to them I may mislead some people and perhaps present the Minister with an opportunity of suggesting that I am making some fantastic claim on behalf of those old people which if admitted would bring the country down to the verge of poverty. I cannot resist, however, the temptation to mention one or two points in relation to standards of living which seem to indicate the insufficiency of the standard that we provide. In his book Human Needs of Labour Mr. Rowntree calculated that at December, 1937 the lowest sum on which a single woman in Britain could maintain physical efficiency was 32/10 a week. Now let us not misunderstand these figures. In the first place, they are British figures and, therefore, to provide physical efficiency here for the single woman that Mr. Rowntree had in mind would cost more in 1937 than 32/10 because our prices were substantially higher in 1937 than the British prices. Nor do I desire to overlook the fact that this figure relates to the cost of maintaining a working woman in physical efficiency. From that I conclude I think reasonably that an old person who has retired from work would not require as much income to maintain herself as a person actively working. Accordingly, I make a deduction of 20 per cent to arrive at a figure for the person of 70 years of age who is no longer engaged in physical work. That gives me a figure of 26/3. Now, it has been the experience of everybody compiling statistics, in relation to the cost-of-living figure, that those whose incomes are less than £3 a week spend approximately 60 per cent of their income on food. Taking 60 per cent of 26/3 leaves me 15/9 as the cost of food alone for an old retired person. That was in 1937. The cost of living has increased more than 70 per cent in the interval, and if you increase the 15/9 by 70 per cent. you get a total of 27/- a week. On this calculation, and making allowance for all my assumptions—whether reasonable or unreasonable I do not argue—it would require not here but in Great Britain, 27/- to provide food for an adult non-working person in the year 1946.
My assumptions may be wrong. I do not know. I am not standing emphatically on this figure. I merely quote it to show how I arrived at a conclusion that the present pension rate is totally inadequate and that we must strive to get a higher figure.
I have been looking at the cost of maintaining old people in our own institutions. It is pretty obvious that a man or a woman living in his or her own home, or in somebody else's home, cannot buy the essentials of life at a lower price than these are bought at by public institutions. The public institution buys commodities by tender and buys them in bulk quantities. It does not, like the old age pensioner, buy a pound loaf or a half pint of milk or a quarter stone of potatoes. Potatoes are bought by the ton, milk by the hundred gallons and, in the case of bread, the flour is probably bought and baked in the institution as in the case of military establishments and prisons. But, bearing all these considerations in mind, let us remember that the cost of providing food only—I ask Senators to bear this in mind—for an inmate in St. Kevin's Poor Law Institution in Dublin is 10/11 per week. That is 11d. more than we give to an old age pensioner to buy food and clothing and to pay rent. The cost of food in the Kildare County Home is 11/- per week, in the Meath County Home, 12/4, and in Westmeath County Home, 14/2. That gives some indication of the inadequacy of the provision we are making for old people. The total sum that we provide for an old person, who has spent 50 or 60 years of his life producing wealth for this country, only covers two-thirds of the cost of food alone in the case of the Westmeath County Home. If old people go into one of these institutions we must do more than feed them. We have got to clothe them, to pay people to look after them, to pay nurses and doctors and to meet the cost of heating the place, so that it is a very profitable transaction for the State to keep old age pensioners hanging on outside. For one thing, they will die quicker outside, because they will have less nutrition. Besides, it costs less than half as much to maintain them outside as in a poor law institution.
The cost of maintaining a convict in Portlaoighise Convict Prison—the cost of food alone—is 11/1 per week. Portlaoighise Prison has attached to it a very substantial farm on which many of the commodities used in the prison are produced. I think that the bread for Portlaoighise Prison is provided from Mountjoy Prison. In answer to a question in the Dáil on the 26th June, the Minister for Justice said that the production of a 4lb. loaf in Mountjoy Prison is estimated as follows: Cost of flour and other materials, 8¼d.; fuel, 1d., making a total cost of 9¼d., so that when you get a pretty low figure for maintaining a convict in one of our prisons you must bear in mind that bread, for instance, which is a big item in most maintenance, costs 9¼d. in the prison as against 1/- for the old age pensioner; it is certainly not less than 1/- for the 4lb. loaf. The prisons and other institutions have, of course, farms attached to them; they rear pigs and so forth. They are thereby enabled to provide and supply food to the inmates at the cost of production.
I have been making some inquiry into what it costs us here to maintain a soldier, assuming for a moment that the old age pensioner could get a new gland and join the Army. The figures provided by the Minister for Defence show that the average weekly cost of maintaining an unmarried Class III private soldier is 50/8 a week. I am not saying now that the soldier is not very badly paid. We are not very lavish, I fear, in our treatment of soldiers or of public servants generally. I am merely contrasting one figure with the other and the net purpose of my contrast is to show that the amount we provide for the old age pensioner is totally inadequate.
Now, how are other States—big and small—providing for their old people? Is there any evidence that other countries indicate a desire to make the lot of the old person less burdensome and less unhappy? I think there is. In Britain, for instance, beginning on the 1st October, a single man or a single woman of 65 years of age will receive a pension of 26/- a week. A married couple, living together, will get 42/- a week. No doubt Britain is a very big country and no doubt we shall be told it is a very rich country. In that connection it is rather strange to note that according to the index of industrial production calculated by Colin Clarke, our output per worker is greater than it is in Britain; the output per head of the industrial population in Ireland before the war was greater than that obtaining in Britain. However, Britain is a big country with some 46,000,000 people. I am not going to draw attention to some of the expenses they have had to bear in the past and some of the costs they have had to incur. I merely mention the matter for the purpose of drawing attention to the figure now provided— may I add, by a Labour Government— for their old and destitute poor. Of course, when a Tory Government ruled Britain such as we have at present in Ireland, the same argument was advanced as has been advanced by the apologists for our Government here. They could afford it. That is what Chamberlain and Churchill said. That is what our Government here will tell us in this debate. But Governments always find money for the things which they consider are worth while.
New Zealand is not a very big country. In area it is admittedly four times the size of our State, but almost one-third of its land surface is covered with mountain ranges and two or three important centres in the country are subject to volcanic eruptions. The population, if you take the Maoris with the Europeans, is little more than half our population. The total figure is 1,600,000. For a single man aged 60 a pension is provided of 32/6 a week. A married couple gets 65/-. But there is actually something more than that, because I have been reading a pamphlet written by the Hon. Walter Nash, Finance Minister in New Zealand, who says: "In addition"— that is, referring to the £3 5s. 0d. a week for a married couple—
"such a couple could have £1 a week of their own, have up to £500 in the Post Office Savings Bank and own their own home without affecting their social security pension".
That is very substantially different from what we do here.
Apart from that, New Zealand has now introduced a universal superannuation scheme. The Hon. Walter Nash says in reference to it:—
"We are now providing by stages for universal superannuation without any means test. In 1940 everyone over 65 years of age received £10 per year".
Bear in mind, everyone over 65.
"This sum increases by £2 10s. 0d. each year and will go on increasing until all receive 32/6 a week in 1970. The amount paid in April, 1944, was £20 a year. It may be said here that the purchasing power of the £ in New Zealand is fully equal to what it would be in Great Britain."
The purchasing power of the £ in Great Britain, we know in terms of boots, shoes, herrings, not to mention strawberries, at 4/6 a lb.
