Vol. 33 No. 21
I formally move the motion standing in my name:—
That the Defence Forces (Pensions) (Amendment) Scheme, 1947, prepared by the Minister for Defence, with the consent of the Minister for Finance, under the terms of the Defence Forces (Pensions) Act, 1932 (No. 26 of 1932), and the Defence Forces (Pensions) (Amendment) Act, 1938 (No. 33 of 1938), and laid before the House on the 23rd day of May, 1947, be confirmed.
Before dealing with the explanation of the scheme, I wish to point out that the scheme as made by me and approved by the Minister for Finance differs in two respects from the copies of the scheme circulated to Senators. In the scheme as made and approved, the figure and letter 9A appear in Article 14 (1) (b) after the figure 9, and in Article 42 (3) (b) the words "and less than 21 years" do not appear.
Again, in the White Paper which has been circulated there are two obvious misprints which Senators, no doubt, will have noticed themselves. In the paragraph dealing with Article 7, "1924" should read "1934", and in that dealing with Article 8, "1934" should read "1924".
The White Paper which has been circulated to the House gives in detail an explanation of each Article of this amending scheme to the Defence Forces Pensions Scheme, 1937, and it only remains for me to summarise briefly the main benefits provided by it.
The first amendment—that provided by Article 14 (1)—is an increase of 30 per cent. in the pensions of officers retiring on or after the 2nd September, 1946, and the only point which it is necessary to emphasise is that the 30 per cent. increase applies to every type of retirement affecting officers. In other words, it applies whether an officer retires in the normal course after 20 years' service or thereafter on reaching the age for retirement prescribed for his rank by Defence Force Regulations, or whether he has to retire compulsorily in the interests of the service or on medical grounds, or whether he retires of his own volition with the consent of the Minister after completing 12 but with less than 20 years' service.
The amendment in Article 22 (1) and (3) also provides an increase in the basic pensions for other ranks and for the first time an additional pension of 7/- a week for married soldiers discharged on or after the 2nd September, 1946.
The increase in the basic pension here is 12½ per cent. but if we take into consideration the married pension, the increase is more than 60 per cent. In this connection it is well to remember that very few soldiers will be unmarried after 21 years' service in the Army, so that it may be said that the increase of 60 per cent. will apply to practically all men. Again, in Article 22 (2) it is provided that for every year beyond 21 which a soldier will serve, he will be entitled to an extra 1/- within a maximum of 10/- a week.
The amendment also provides for an increase not only in pensions but also in gratuities for soldiers who will not have sufficient service to qualify for pensions. Instead of the old flat rate of £1 a year for every year of service, irrespective of rank, the new scheme discriminates between ranks and provides different rates within these ranks for men with service up to seven years, seven to 13 years, and 13 to less than 21 years' service. If, for instance, a private serves only seven years he will be entitled to 30/- a year. If he serves beyond seven years he will be entitled to 60/- a year, and if he serves beyond 13 and does not qualify for a pension he will receive 90/- a year for each year of service.
It may be asked what is the significance of the date—2nd September, 1946—for the increase of the pensions and gratuities to officers and soldiers. I assure the House it was in no way arbitrary but a perfectly logical proceeding. Pension is related to pay and a pension increases or decreases according as pay increases or decreases. The new rates of pay for the post-emergency Army did not become operative until the 2nd September, 1946, and, consequently, that was the logical date for the increase in pensions.
Articles 28 to 32, inclusive, and Article 40 deal exclusively with the Army nursing service. For the most part they merely redraft and amend in minor respects the provisions of the principal scheme. Under Article 40, however, there is an increase in the rates of pensions payable to the sisters of the service. Hitherto, a nurse, after 20 years' qualifying service, was entitled to one-sixtieth of her emoluments for each year of service and her emoluments included pay and allowances. The allowances, however, were fixed in a rather arbitrary fashion at £64, but in future they will be related to the actual ration, uniform and accommodation allowance payable at the date of her retirement. This would mean, roughly, that instead of the previous qualifying allowance at £64, the new figure would now be £156. Again, after 20 years' service, the retiring nurse will be entitled to one-thirtieth instead of one-sixtieth for each year of qualifying service served after 20 years.
We are at present reorganising the naval service and at the end of five years we hope to be able to man the vessels with officers and men who are being fully trained in the new equipment in the interval. Meanwhile, we have asked the present officers to continue in the service for a period of five years in commissioned rank and we are providing in Article 12 for a special gratuity payable to these officers at the end of that period.
The principal scheme empowers the Minister to add to an officer's actual service a number of years' (within a maximum of five) national service where the officer with 12 years' or more but less than 20 years' service is compelled to retire for any cause other than age, misconduct, inefficiency, or mental or physical incapacity. This principle is now extended in two directions by the amendment. In Articles 6 and 35, the Minister can retire officers with 20 years' service or more and add as many years (within a maximum of five) as will bring their service up to the service which they would have had on reaching the age prescribed for retirement in their ranks by Defence Force Regulations. Articles 7 and 36 likewise empower the Minister to add ten years' national service in the case of the area administrative officers of the Old Volunteer Force commissioned in December, 1933, and February, 1934.
The remainder of the scheme may be said to abolish certain restrictive conditions which the principal scheme imposed. For instance, in the case of voluntary retirement, a senior officer hitherto could not retire voluntarily unless he was commissioned before the 1st October, 1924, whereas a junior officer could do so. Articles 8 and 37 remove the restrictions, so that all officers are now on the same level.
Another restriction abolished is that appertaining to a married officer's gratuity. To qualify for it under the principal scheme, some officers were forced to retire on their death-beds and, in many cases, the form of retirement was the first intimation to them that there was no hope of recovery. The amendment in Article 10 provides that the officer or the officer's family will be entitled to the gratuity whether he dies before retirement or not.
Another restriction which is being removed is that relating to the condition that the gratuity would be payable only where an officer was in receipt of lodging, fuel and light allowance for a period of not less than two years immediately prior to his retirement. This restriction hit harshly those officers who through illness were obliged to go on half pay without allowances. Indeed, it not only deprived the sick officer of the gratuity but in the event of his death it also deprived his widow and children of their pensions. Article 19 abolishes this restriction.
Again, in the principal scheme, if an officer on retired pay receives an appointment under the central or local authority, then if the remuneration of the post equals or exceeds the amount of his Army pay prior to his retirement, his retired pay ceases; and if the new remuneration is less than his Army pay, he can only receive in retired pay the difference between his Army pay and his new remuneration. Article 15 broadens the meaning of the word pay so as to include such allowances as lodging, fuel and light and ration allowances.
The most important restriction removed by the scheme refers to what are known as ranker officers. Hitherto, if a soldier were promoted to commissioned rank, then for pension purposes as an officer he was entitled to only one-half of his service in noncommissioned rank. Many of those officers were old when they were promoted and consequently had not many years of service before becoming due for retirement. We have, for instance, a number of cases at present where such officers have retired but, on the old reckoning, they have not sufficient service to qualify for pension, with the result that they are not in receipt of any pension since they left the Army. Under Article 34 (1) of the present scheme, such officers will be entitled to reckon all their service in noncommissioned rank for the purpose of retired pay.
Finally, Articles 18, 41 and 42 broaden the basis of the pension scheme. Hitherto, if an officer died whilst serving with less than 12 years' pensionable service, his widow was entitled to a gratuity calculated at the rate of 30 days' pay for each year of service, and if a soldier similarly died without the necessary service for pension, no gratuity was payable. In 1940 we provided a gratuity in the case of a married soldier for his widow and children, but neither in the principal scheme nor in the 1940 amendment was any provision made for the payment of a gratuity to the dependents of an unmarried soldier who died in the service. All these restrictions are now abolished. If an officer dies while serving with less than five years' service, his widow or children will be entitled to a gratuity of 30 days' pay for each year of service. If an officer had less than 12 years' service, the gratuity will be payable not only to his widow or children but, in the case of a single man, to certain relatives. Similarly, any gratuity which a soldier has earned by virtue of his service will also be payable to the widow or children in the case of a married, or to certain relatives in the case of an unmarried soldier.
The cost of these amendments to the scheme for the present financial year is estimated at £33,000, of which £12,063 will be non-recurring. Senators will, no doubt, have noted that practically every article of this amendment tends to broaden the basis of the pensions scheme and thus to increase the benefits payable to those whom it covers.
Listening to the Minister, I felt that he is, in one sense, to be congratulated. I have heard nearly all these points before at various times and the Minister and his predecessor have been fighting an action against the Department of Finance, I take it, nearly all the time. What he has chronicled to us is a number of partial victories over the Department of Finance, on which I suppose he is to be congratulated. The scheme is very complicated and the Minister has done something to make it clearer by his explanation. As he says, the scheme is an important improvement upon previous pension schemes for the Army. It amounts, as he told us at the very end, to a sum of £21,000 annually, apart from the special amounts incidental to this particular year, but it should be remembered that the Army is, to a great extent, the Cinderella of all the services from this point of view.
Looking at the table of pensions of officers of the highest ranks, it is quite obvious that they are not in any sense comparable with the pensions paid to the administrative grades of the Civil Service, in spite of the fact that the Civil Service precedent is sometimes quoted against officers. That, of course, is the finance method—certain things are precedents when they are against you and not precedents when they are for you—and it is to be remembered that, in spite of the fact that we have just come out of an emergency, during which officers in the highest ranks held positions of very great importance and of immense responsibility, the pensions they receive are not in any way comparable with the pensions payable to the administrative grades of the Civil Service. They are, at any rate, now better than those which used to be paid and I suppose we, and they, must be thankful for small mercies.
There is another point which strikes me in connection with this scheme. It is that there are a number of officers who are, so to speak, foundation members of the Army, who must go out under the rule with regard to age without having completed their term of 28 years to qualify for a full pension. In many cases, their pensions under this scheme will be supplemented by military service pensions, but one would think that some special arrangement might have been made for such people as those whom I might describe as foundation members of the Army. The gratuities for officers were fixed in 1938 and they have not been increased, although every other form of payment has been increased, and while a sum of £600 would have done something for an officer moving into civil life and out of an Army house in 1938, it will do very much less in 1946 or 1947. One would imagine that some increase would have been given in that amount, seeing that there has been a very substantial fall in the value of money, and that a figure which was thought adequate in 1938 would have been increased in 1947. Perhaps I am not accurate in this, but I gather from the scheme and from the Minister's speech that a single officer gets no resettlement grant at all. Is that correct?
That is correct.
That is impossible. I do not quite understand it. I can understand that one would pay extra money to a man with a wife and extra money for children, but why a man who has served his due period, who goes out and who has chosen not to marry should get nothing at all rather escapes me. I agree, being a married man with children, that it is desirable that married men should get special treatment, although I have never got any myself, but I do not understand why an unmarried officer should be regarded as a person who should get no resettlement grant, no gratuity, at all. If he is a widower, I understand he gets no gratuity either, unless he has dependent children. That is scarcely fair. It seems to me that the analogy of the Civil Service should rather be adopted—a civil servant after serving a certain number of years goes out with a pension and a year's salary. I do not know why a distinction should be made as between the married and single man in this case. I have no examples to give and I have been asked by nobody to raise the point. The point just strikes me in connection with the scheme. There are probably very few single officers.
The Minister gave a very ingenuous explanation of the date, September 2nd. He said that pension is always related to pay; the new rates came into operation on September 2nd; and therefore that was the date of the new pensions. The Minister fixed the new pay as well as the new pension, and his explanation is like that of the lady who was asked what was the meaning of "circumvent"—it is the very same as if I circumvented you. The result of this date is that certain people have been circumvented. I am not saying for a moment that the Minister is not bona fide in the matter, but what happened was—this was argued here before and I merely want to put it on record—that, after the German surrender, the emergency ended for practical purposes, so far as our Army was concerned. That is, I think, common ground. At that point, the Minister ordered commanding officers to make certain announcements to their men. I was in the most complete agreement with the Minister in that. I think he was absolutely right to indicate that the Army was going to be demobilised and that people who could get posts in civil life would be released. That was explained to officers and men by commanding officers who themselves, I think, must have been in agreement with it.
They encouraged people to get out, and the Minister facilitated people in every way in getting out of the Army, but when these people who had initiative and who had posts to go to got out of the Army they found—officers with long service, with service since 1923, which, I think, is the date from which it starts, and men who went out under these conditions—that their pensions were lower than they would have been if they had stayed in until September, 1946. There was every reason for dating the period up to which a person would qualify for the higher pension at the date of the German surrender in May, 1945, which was the effective ending of the emergency, and which marked the date after which the Minister felt, and quite properly felt, that he could do without the services of men who had any other place to go to. I do not know whether it would cost very much to antedate the scheme from September, 1946, to May, 1945. I do not know how many people are involved, but the people involved are officers and men with long service. The Minister, I think, was bona fide in giving the direction that they should go out, but when these men acted on it, they found themselves damnified. The British White Paper, on the contrary, indicated increases of pay which would come in the future, and also indicated that pensions would be antedated from a particular date in the past, so that, if a precedent is of any use to the Minister, he has one there.
Undoubtedly, people were induced to go out, and I do not use the word in any bad sense. I do not think this was a sleight-of-hand on the part of the Minister who was acting in 1945 in accordance with what he considered to be the best interests of the individuals in the Army, and I think it was in their best interests that they should go out. It happens, however, that the scheme is brought in with a fixed date and pension, and the people who went out after giving service and giving service through every moment of the emergency, which is very important, and who in many cases were officers and men upon whom the efficiency of the Army depended, men who had ample experience and who were of the greatest possible usefulness in training the new Army and the various auxiliary forces, find that if they had stayed in they would have qualified for higher pensions.
That is not equitable. I do not think very much money would be involved—I do not know whether the Minister has made any calculation about it—in antedating the scheme, which would have the effect, at any rate, of making people who had given long service, and particularly service through the emergency, feel that they were being justly treated. I do not want to delay in any way the passage of the scheme, but I think the people who got out because they had initiative and because they had other places to go to have a genuine grievance. I do not know how many there are and I can make no guess at the number— perhaps the Minister can—nor can I make any guess at the cost; but seeing that the whole cost of improving the scheme is £21,000, the cost of taking in these people at the higher rates could hardly be very great. If the Minister had done that, he would have a very good case for getting the Department of Finance to agree and he would have removed what I think is a blot, and a very substantial blot, on the scheme as it stands.
I agree with what Senator Hayes said about this date, September 2nd, 1946. I understand there was an indication given to officers and men about the year 1945 that it would be advisable for them to retire and that in fact some of them did retire. It would seem to be a hardship on those men, if the date now is to be September 2nd, 1946. My recollection is that when passing an Army Bill here some time ago, Senator Sweetman referred to this matter and asked that the people who are going out now should not be under any disadvantage. My recollection is that the Minister said that they would not. I would like the Minister to look up the debate and possibly he may consider antedating this back to a date in 1945. There were some officers who were forced to retire and I understand that they are not in as good a position as those who were left on. There may be a reason for this or there may not but it does seem that there is hardship because of the fact that they do not come within the terms of the increased pensions.
I cannot say that I have studied this Bill very carefully although I have taken a great interest in the Army's welfare. I think that it is a great step forward in the improvement of Army conditions especially for those who have to retire. I think also that the voluntary retirement in 1945 was of great service because I am aware that great numbers of officers and men, especially those who served through the emergency, and who retired about 1945, were fortunate enough to get good employment which they might not have got if they remained on in the Army. I know that Aer Lingus both at Shannon Airport and Collinstown—I know more about Shannon Airport—were very helpful in the employment of Army men particularly those who got out about that period, those who retired voluntarily. Taking the Bill as a whole, I think it is a good one and I would like to take this opportunity of thanking Aer Lingus and congratulating them on the very good work they have done for retired Army men, officers and men. I am sure that they, too, are very grateful to Aer Lingus.
I think that the House will recognise that the Minister has taken a long step towards overcoming some of the objections which were made from time to time in regard to Army pensions. The proposals in this document are in the main more or less satisfactory so far as they go. My difficulty, however, is that the idea seems to be to perpetuate a system by which men are retained in the armed forces for a considerable period and then, in mid-life, are thrown on to the labour market suffering great disadvantages. I can appreciate what has been said in regard to the officers but their position is not quite so bad as that of the ordinary soldier. An officer who retires on pension and who has had a good Army record will fit himself into civilian employment quite readily, as has been observed in the case of many officers who have retired in recent years. They have been fitted into civilian employment very satisfactorily. But the difficulty confronting the private soldier and the non-commissioned officer is very great when he ceases his Army career.
I have been wondering whether it is in fact a good plan to retain men in the Army for 21 years and then have them revert to civilian employment. So far as I understand this pension scheme it seems to me that a private who retires after 21 years' service will have a pension of 15/9 a week. I am quoting now from page 15 of the Defence Forces (Pension) (Amendment) Scheme, 1947. A man who joins the Army at 19 years of age will be 40 years of age on retirement. Let us say he is a young farmer's son having no experience of industry, having no training in crafts and not equipped to take up clerical or industrial employment before joining the Army. He resumes civilian life, I am assuming, at the age of 40. The only thing he has got to live on until he finds other work is 15/9 a week. But what other work is he fit for? He may become a builder's labourer if the building industry is healthy and if there is not a great volume of unemployment, but if there are large numbers of builders' labourers on the market looking for work, men accustomed to the work of builder's labourer, the discharged or retired soldier has a poor chance of getting a job in competition with such men. It is not always recognised that the work of builder's labourer is highly skilled. It is not the work of a craftsman, but nevertheless it is highly skilled just as the work of a docker is highly skilled, as any member of this House will discover if he tries to work on the docks for seven or eight hours a day. I see, therefore, that these men leaving the services with 15/9 a week are going to be confronted with great difficulty. They are going to have to compete with men who are skilled in their own calling and, of course, the ex-soldier will not have such skill.
It is pathetic to see the number of ex-soldiers one meets nowadays, men who have given long service to the Army, men who served through the emergency, looking for jobs and finding it very hard to get them. It is true, of course, that the 15/9 will be of some assistance to them for a time, but for how long? I think the position is not one we should be contemplating without some question in our minds as to whether it is the best kind of system. I suggest to the Minister, we cannot do it now, of course, on this scheme, but we can do it later on, that the whole question of Army service should be reviewed, that is, so far as the private soldier and the non-commissioned officer are concerned. I have a feeling that it would be a better plan if men were recruited for a short-term service of, say, five years.
My suggestion is that they should be taught a trade or instructed in some calling during their period in the Army so that at the end of five years they could embark in some trade or calling with the help of the gratuity or lump sum they received on retirement. If they joined at the age of 18 or 19 years they would still be young men after doing five years' service in the Army. I think that is a better idea than the one of getting men into the Army for a long period. During that long period they become acclimatised to Army conditions and to the Army approach to civilian life, so that on retirement they find it very difficult to fit themselves into the kind of life which they knew before joining. They find that the life which they formerly knew has changed completely during the 21 years which they had spent in the Army.
I do not want to stress this too much because I realise that we are dealing with a pension scheme. It is for the House to say whether that pension scheme is to be approved or not approved. I am just entering an objection to the approach that is made in the scheme to the condition of the private soldier and the non-commissioned officer. I find that a sergeant will retire with about 21/- a week and a company quarter-master-sergeant with 22/9 a week. As a matter of fact, the highest pension set out for a sergeant-major is 29/9 or a little less than 30/- a week, which is again less than 15/- a week in terms of pre-war purchasing power. I am suggesting to the Minister that, while in this scheme he is making a great advance on what has been done heretofore both for the soldier and the officer, there is still need to review the situation so as to ensure that men will not be retained in the Army for a very long period and then thrown back on the labour market for which they have very little qualifications and with a meagre pension on which they obviously cannot exist.
I was very glad to hear Senator Duffy advocate that soldiers should get an opportunity during their period of service in the Army of learning a trade. The Senator is a trade unionist, and I hope there is implied in what he said a sort of assurance that, when they leave the Army, they will be regarded as having the right to practise their trade and that in doing so they will not be breaking any trade union rules. I was very much struck by the statement made by President Truman, reported in to-day's newspapers, in which he said that the object of keeping the Army in his country was more for the purpose of preserving the peace of the world than to win wars. That, too, is the object of our Army. Therefore, the educational aspect of Army life should be strongly stressed. I do not know much about these maters, but I welcome what Senator Duffy has said, and I hope that he will do his best to give it its full content.
Senator Hayes and Senator O'Dea have already referred to a point which I raised on the Second Reading of the Defence Forces Bill when it was before us last February. I want to repeat now what I said then. The fact is beyond question that there were many long-term soldiers whose term of recruitment expired during the emergency and who because of the emergency and of the dangers of that time, were asked to remain on in the Army, and did so. In fact they had to do so. The emergency, so far as a war-like situation is concerned, ended, and the Minister brought out a scheme of demobilisation. This fact, too, is without question, that, in pursuance of the advice and directions given by the Minister, commanding officers urged all those people in the Army who could get out to get out at once and, as soon as possible, into civilian employment. In the other House there was play made with the use of the word "force". That is not the situation. What did happen, and the Minister has evidence that it did happen, was that commanding officers urged all soldiers who could get out and into civilian employment to do so. I do not think for a moment that a commanding officer would have urged anyone to do that unless he was duly and properly authorised so to do.
Evidence has been put before the Minister that at least one commanding officer, one who has himself since retired, is prepared to give evidence on oath to that effect if there is any question of it, namely, that he was given such directions and that he carried them out. In consequence of that position, some long-term soldiers, whose term of service had expired but who were held on for the duration of the emergency, did resign. Others did not resign until after the operative date for the purpose of an increase in pension which was the 2nd September, 1946. Whether, in fact, those who remained on were in the majority or in the minority, I am not in a position to say. Neither am I in a position to say why it was that certain officers and men remained on in spite of the urge and direction given to them by their commanding officer.
I would like the Minister to assure us that he has personally investigated the reasons for this, and that he has found on such investigation that there could not have been anything that might perhaps be declared as a leakage of the fact that those who remained on after the operative date would get an increase in pension. It has been suggested in certain quarters that there was such a leakage and publication of the numbers that are involved would perhaps be the best way of setting at rest the mind of anyone who felt that.
When that situation does in fact exist, that men carried out the direction and the urge that was given to them, it seems, to put it mildly, very hard luck on those men that they should lose pension rights which they would have got if they had remained on to the bitter end. It has been suggested—I do not know what the figures disclose—that in fact the people who got out were by far the best soldiers, that in fact they were those people who were prepared to settle down and make their way in civilian life in a manner that the Minister would consider highly desirable and praiseworthy. If that is so, and I think it is so, because it was obviously those who had the initiative who would go looking for civilian jobs, it is even more certain that a hardship has been created and a hardship which could be relieved without the expenditure of any appreciable sum of money and which, if it were relieved, would do away with the feeling that I know exists in certain people's minds who were urged to resign and who did resign before September, that they were let go, but that some of their comrades were told: "You had better stay on and then you will have a chance of getting on in a better fashion." That feeling undoubtedly exists. It has been expressed to me as being a prevalent one. If it exists it seems, put mildly, a most unfortunate way in which to treat those men who stood by the nation in its hour of need.
I do not propose to enter into a discussion on the question of civil servants' pensions and Army pensions because I do not think I would be competent to do so. The only thing I would say in regard to that is that officers who receive the pensions to which the Senator referred, retire at a reasonably early age, when they can get into civil life and resettle themselves without very much difficulty. We have in present circumstances ample proof that that is actually operating. In the case of civil servants, if I am not making a mistake, they do not have to retire until they reach the age of 65 and may in certain circumstances be allowed to carry on until they are 67.
That is true.
So I do not think the comparison is one that stands very much chance of influencing me or the Government in respect to the argument that Army pensions are not reasonably fair in proportion to civil servants' pensions. I think, from that point alone, that they are.
May I say that I was not claiming that they should be the same? The Civil Service precedents are often quoted about the Army but they are not given Civil Service pensions.
I suppose that is so. They are quoted by people who quote them to suit themselves. Again, as in the Dáil, the main source of discussion on this scheme is the date, the 2nd September. All I want to say on that is that Deputies and Senators who dealt with that matter were flogging a dead carcase because I can do nothing at all about it. I can only say that as far as I am concerned there has been no plot to get rid of any soldiers before a certain date in order that they might be deprived of a few shillings. That was not in my mind and I am sure it was not in the mind of any of the Army authorities and I am perfectly certain that it was not in the mind of any of the officials of the Department of Finance.
The 2nd September was selected merely because demobilisation was practically completed then and, in an effort to secure a better recruitment for the Army, it was put forward in the hope that it would induce more people to join the Army than were joining at that particular time. Senator Sweetman has said that the commanding officers were urged to induce soldiers to leave. Commanding officers were instructed to advise every man in the Army, whether he was—as the Senator suggested—a good soldier, or a middling good soldier or a poor soldier. He was asked to induce every possible man who could find employment—that is the significant word— to retire and get into that employment. Instead of forcing men out or attempting to force men out or even inducing them to go out against their will, we made it clear that any man who wished to remain in the Army up to, I think it was the 1st October, 1946, if I do not make a mistake——
Was not it November?
Perhaps it was, but it was some date later even than the 2nd September. We gave men the right to remain in the Army if they were not in a position to secure employment or if they desired to continue in the Army and the raising of the pay—that is all it was and, automatically, a raising of the pension—was done in the hope that those good soldiers in the Army would continue in the service of the Army. If they did that, they became entitled to the extra pay and to the extra pension which followed automatically.
I was very glad to hear Senator Duffy saying what he did say. I am glad to see him taking the interest in the soldier of which he has given us an example to-day, but I would be more pleased if Senator Duffy would induce the trade unions who were refusing to give a card to ex-soldiers who are competent tradesmen, who were refusing to give them any encouragement in respect of securing employment, to change their attitude. I would feel that Senator Duffy was more genuine in his efforts on behalf of the ex-soldiers if he would do that rather than merely mention the facts that he has mentioned here.
A Chathaoirligh——
I am not going to give way until I have said my say.
In that circumstance, the Minister must be allowed to proceed.
Then, if the Chair permits, Senator Duffy can speak as much as he likes. I want to say that every possible effort has been made in the Army to give every man who joins the service a trade of some kind or another, or if we were not in a position to give him a trade, at least to make him a skilled labourer, by which I mean a man who would be competent to do that skilled type of work that must be done around building construction, the making of roads, and so forth.
Speaking as a trade unionist, one who holds a trade union card and who is in full sympathy with trade union ideals, I cannot understand how men who have given the service that these soldiers gave during the emergency can be denied the right to exercise their skill in the trade which they have adopted. I have made several appeals to the various trade bodies in regard to this and, to the credit of some them, let it be said that they agreed to accept these men and give them cards. I am not speaking in any way from which it could be suggested that I am an enemy of trade unionism—I am not —but I am speaking here now as the Minister responsible for Army direction and who has a duty to the men who gave service in the Army in the past. I am making an appeal now to the officials of trade unionism to reconsider their attitude to these men. I have come across numerous cases where men have been offered positions and employers cannot engage them because the trade union will not give them a card. That is a most unreasonable state of affairs. When Deputies and Senators stand up and speak in terms of praise in regard to the Army, I would like to see that praise put into practical effect in the manner I have mentioned.
I am glad to be able to inform Senator Mrs. Concannon that we are doing what is possible in regard to educating young men after they join the Army. We have inaugurated a scheme which will ensure that young soldiers who have reached a certain standard of education will be taken in hand and advanced to what we think is a reasonable standard for any soldier. I am satisfied that, as a result of this scheme, a very large number of young men who have not had an opportunity of reaching the standard that every young man should have in this country will, before leaving the Army, be in a position to retire and take up positions of a kind that heretofore they could not have taken up.
This scheme is a complete improvement of the recent position of the men and officers of the Army. As I said in the Dáil, whoever succeeds me can continue these improvements. This is as far as I can get at the present moment. Whoever succeeds me will not be debarred from adding or attempting to add to what I have done and he has my best wishes for his success.
On a point of personal explanation, had the Minister not lost his temper, I should have intervened for one minute to correct a mistake. I do not speak here for trade unions. I have no authority to speak for them or to them and, unlike the Minister, I do not carry a trade union card.
