Every reasonable person will agree that wage and salary earners are entitled to receive a good and proper recompense for their services. It would be a very bad thing, indeed, if the Government of any country took legislative measures to tie that recompense to what would result in a low standard of living. We would have discontented workers and, as a result, production would decline and our economy suffer.
Within the category of workers we have all sorts of people ranging from our judges to our agricultural workers. There are not so many of the former and there are many, but not enough, of the latter. All, however, are entitled to fair treatment in the matter of remuneration. I am afraid, however, they all do not get such treatment.
Whenever a worker feels he is slipping back into a position where he cannot meet his reasonable obligations because of rising costs or other circumstances, he becomes uneasy and contacts his trade union which in turn contacts the employer and, perhaps, the case eventually reaches the Labour Court where the employer explains the state of his coffers and the workers' representatives are examined to the point of exhibiting the kitchen cupboards. There is much talk of increased production if increases are to be given. There is then bargaining for increases of pence and sometimes shillings per hour or per week.
The Labour Court, however, somewhat equalises the situation between employer and employee but under the Bill we are now asked to pass, there is no indication that the members of the judiciary have been compelled, through the smallness of their stipends, to apply to their trade union to put their case before any court in order to show their difficulties in maintaining a reasonable standard of living. Yet in the Bill before us we are presenting some of these privileged workers with colossal increases in their salaries without their having to submit to the indignity of having their affairs examined in public and reported and commented on in the daily papers. What is overlooked too often is the fact that a very great number of ordinary workers will have no pensions from their work. Some may qualify for the £2 contributory OAP—but our judges will, in due course, have substantial pensions.
In regard to those to whom this Bill applies, the increases are not pence nor shillings but represent in some cases more than many of our hard working national-revenue producing citizens can hope to earn in any year of hard endeavour. There is also the fact that very generous expenses are payable to the judges.
I should like to ask the Minister, through the Chair, have these lawmen submitted to him a case which leads him to the belief that there is a definite need for the increases mentioned in the Bill before us and if so, how acute has he found the distress of their situation?
If I take the post of Chief Justice, whoever may occupy it, could the holder be living in straitened circumstances on a salary of £5,335 which he has at the moment or, indeed, could he have really been in a really precarious position if his salary had remained at what it was in 1953, namely £4,850 per year? Perhaps, this post carries an abnormal amount of responsibility but, as has already been asked, does it carry more than, or, indeed, as much responsibility as the post of An Taoiseach who, in the light of some of the salaries mentioned in the Bill, is a sweated worker and should consider joining whatever trade union would be appropriate to his exalted office?
I have heard and read statements to the effect that there is a difficulty in getting skilled law personnel to accept these posts even with the overhigh salaries and expenses, because of the fact that their earnings in the courts as barristers, counsel, et cetera, are so high that even at the enormous salary figures offered, they climb to the Bench only at a considerable loss of earnings. Is it not obvious, if this is so, that law costs are too high and should be reviewed?
I hope the Minister, when he comes to renovate our Courts of law, will give very careful attention to this aspect of the cost of the machinery of the law. It is, of course, well known that many ordinary citizens put up with grave injustices and live in hardship simply because they fear to seek justice for no other reason than that the cost of obtaining justice is too high. How true is the Chinese proverb —"He who goes to law gives away his cow for a cat."
We have also heard on occasion the spurious argument that the judiciary must be well paid in order to preserve their integrity and to remove them from the temptation of bribery or other unseemly practices. I think if this point is even considered in fixing their salaries it is an affront to the judiciary. If a man is not honest and trustworthy in himself, no salary, however high, will make him so. Most workers hold confidential information in their occupations, clerks, book-keepers, nurses, doctors, accountants, even the humblest domestic worker and I never heard any trade union put forward the case that such workers must be paid high salaries lest they divulge things learned in the course of their employment or act in a manner detrimental to the interest of their employers for monetary or other reward.
It is also said that the work of judges and their colleagues is trying and difficult and that they have to deal with the lives and liberties of persons charged with serious offences. That is true, but ordinary citizens are called upon to act in the same manner when they are summoned as jurors and are faced with the problem of making decisions which are distressing and distasteful in the extreme. Unlike those trained for the law, they have no special training to prepare them for such work—which they do without fee or reward, indeed, often at considerable loss.
I cannot understand what unbalance has struck the Government in this matter of the payment of the judiciary where sums like £6,000 and £4,500 per year are considered necessary to maintain life with Christian dignity and are handed out to a selected favoured few, together with a bonus of accumulated arrears and an assured, generous pension on retirement, while our aged citizens are precluded from receiving anything in the way of non-contributory pensions if their incomes exceed the preposterously low figure of £104 15s. per year, which sum falls far short of the weekly sum this Bill proposes to donate in at least one case.
It is my view that we are seriously reducing the value of our judiciary by paying them salaries so much in excess of the average salaries paid in this country, not to the ordinary worker, but to highly educated, highly trained skilled persons with high academic qualifications. We are removing our higher judges from an ability to appreciate the realities of life. How can one human being appreciate the temptations and difficulties that might face a fellow human being struggling to bring up a family on a wage representing 1/- or less for each £1 paid to his judge?
The whole atmosphere of this Bill is one of building up a new aristocracy in a country where we were glad enough to be rid of such ornaments. How can there be peace in industry and to quote various Ministers and employers "restraint in seeking wage increases" when the money is handed out in such a manner to a favoured few? At this point I would like to make it clear that the policy of paying good salaries is a good one and in the case of some of the judges the demands are not unreasonable.
The courts which have to work hardest are the district courts and while the salaries of district court justices are not low when compared with those of many other essential workers I would be prepared to agree to the scale in the Bill so far as it applies to the grade of President of the district court down to the ordinary justices. In the other cases, however, I can see no justification whatever for setting up this new aristocracy. I wonder just how many of them would have reached the salary and pension standard now proposed for them by grace and favour if they had remained in business on their own account?
I cannot but remember that the Minister for Finance speaking in this House on the Central Fund Bill said at column 330, of Volume 55, of the Official Report that he had remembered the social welfare group in four out of the five Budgets he had brought in, adding—
The amounts to the Senator's mind were small each time but I think it is better to do that, to give what we can afford each time rather than wait until next year or two years' time when we might be able to give them more.
I felt sure, listening to the Minister for Finance, that he had the greatest difficulty finding the small increase for this group and when the Budget came I felt that was the reason they had to wait until August to get their few pennies. But the judges, I note, will have their big accumulations to lift retrospectively from the 1st November, 1961. Where did the Minister for Finance locate the money the Minister for Justice has now available to distribute to this non-needy section? Senator McGuire at column 182, Volume 55 of the Official Report, said:
I am all for giving a man higher wages for doing more work and giving bigger and better wages for more efficient working but, in the present state of our economy, when we are about to face competition in the open market of the EEC, our workers and many of our people generally want to work less and get more money. It really is beyond my comprehension how any sensible thinking person can justify that proposition.
Statements such as that can be read in regard to workers at a time when wages were 10/- a week and the hours were from dawn until dark, but still the economy has not collapsed and our workers are no different from those of other countries. All are striving for a better standard of living.
I am of the opinion that we should aim at reducing the work, and if possible the number, of our judges. It is well known that much of their work arises from crimes that should never happen, or at least happen much less frequently, if all workers were paid sufficient wages and had shorter hours of work to enable them to bring up their families in decent homes where, as parents, they would be able to supervise their children's work and play and have ample means to educate and guide them to appreciate the dignity and joy of a cultured, useful life.
I should also like to remind the Minister of the dangers of paying over-generous sums to a privileged section of the community when so many have so little. In this regard I can do no better than refer to the fact that our late Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, spoke of "provocative luxury which insults the sufferings of the poor." I do not know why the Minister is so anxious to pay such high increases to the judges and I would be curious to know if there have been cases of real distress among them.
Being an advocate for the payment of good wages to all workers—not just higher wages for the highest paid—I would say that this Bill reminds me of the farmer who prayed for rain and was rewarded with weeks of torrential downpour. After waiting patiently for an easing of the deluge, he at last fell on his knees and again prayed fervently in these words: "Please, Lord, do not be ridiculous." At this stage, unfortunately, very little can be done in the matter of these proposed payments but I would ask the Minister to look at the wages structure and content of our community and, more or less in the words of the farmer, say to him, with great respect: "Please, Mr. Minister, do not be ridiculous."
