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Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 7 Jul 1965

Vol. 59 No. 3

Pensions (Abatement) Bill, 1965: Report and Final Stages.

It is proposed to take amendments Nos. 1 and 2 together for the purposes of discussion.

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 8, between lines 19 and 20 to insert a new section as follows: "Section 15 of the Ministerial and Parliamentary Offices Act 1938 is hereby amended by the substitution of `three thousand pounds' for `one thousand pounds'."

I wonder should we have a separate discussion on the amendments and a separate decision? Even if the first amendment is not accepted, the second one could be accepted. They are in no way tied together. If the first amendment were not accepted and the second were, that would simply leave the status quo from that point of view and I think they should not be taken together.

Amendment No. 2 is consequential on amendment No. 1.

Surely no matter what happens to amendment No. 1, whether it is accepted or rejected, that does not prevent us from deleting from the Schedule subsections (4) and (5) of section 15?

The Senator may proceed.

The proposal in the amendment is in contrast to the Government's proposal which would remove the section altogether and enable a gratuity of half a year's salary to be paid to a retiring Attorney General in any circumstance.

The Minister present on the last occasion, the Minister for Agriculture, acting for the Minister for Finance, contended that this provision was in line with the general principle enshrined in this Bill on pension abatement. I gave my view the last day and today I intend to substantiate that view. It is shown very conclusively by the debates on the Act of 1938, in column 400 of the debates of Seanad Éireann, volume 22 of 1938. The Bill was introduced by the then Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, as a result of a Commission of Inquiry into ministerial and other salaries. The Commission reported in 1937, and its report was referred to as the Shanley Report. Amongst other things, it investigated the office of the Attorney General and in connection with this, I wish to quote from page 20 of the report, which says:

The principles which we have enunciated in regard to the remuneration of Ministers do not quite fit the case of the Attorney General. While to some extent his rank is equivalent to that of a Minister, he is a specialist who is employed so that the Government, in dealing with the legal aspects of administration, may have the benefit of his knowledge and experience. In considering his remuneration, therefore, regard must be had to the value of the services which he renders to the Government and to the inducements which should reasonably be offered to a man of high standing in the legal profession. However, it must be remembered that the salary attaching to the post is not the only material reward of the Attorney General because he may reasonably look forward to the possibility of promotion to the Bench and, if he returns to practice on completion of his period of office, the standing and prestige which he has gained as Leader of the Bar may be expected to place him eventually in a more lucrative position than was his before he became Attorney General.

We conceive that three important points fall to be determined in relation to the Attorney General, viz.: whether he should be permitted to engage in private practice, whether he should be remunerated on the basis of a fixed salary for his advisory services, with additional fees at the ordinary professional rates in respect of appearances in court on behalf of the State, and what scale of salary should be allowed to him on the assumption that his services to the State must be wholetime and must not be supplemented by professional fees. We take the view that if the Attorney General is to perform efficiently all the duties of his office, the State should have the first and only demand upon his services and that accordingly he should be regarded as employed in a full-time capacity and precluded from engaging in private practice.

That is the foundation. The Commission recommended that the Attorney General should be a full-time employee and on the same basis as a Minister. The Government refused to accept that recommendation, and in the Bill introduced in Dáil Éireann on 30th November, 1938—I quote from column 1145 of volume 73 of the Dáil Debates—Deputy MacEntee said that the Government had refused to accept the recommendation that the Attorney General be put on a level with a Minister, but after the Second Reading debate, in which pleas were made to reconsider the position, the Minister for Finance moved the amendment which we are now seeking to delete, the amendment which provided that a gratuity of a half-year's salary would be paid to a retiring Attorney General who had more than three years service, provided he was not appointed to a position of more than £1,000 a year at that period; in other words, promoted to the Bench or some senior appointment in the giving of the Government.

Deputy MacEntee in introducing this amendment to the House said in column 1147:

On the Second Reading of the Bill, I pointed out that the Government had not been able to accept the recommendation of the Committee of Inquiry in so far as the recommendations related to the office of Attorney General. In the course of the Debate on the Second Reading of the Bill, the attention of the Government was drawn to the fact that the Attorney General was in rather a different position even to that of a Minister, that while it was quite true that he had not wholly severed his associations with his profession, and while he did in fact continue to practice that profession during his term of office, nevertheless the practice was limited and circumscribed to purely Government business, and that, in the proper discharge of his duty as Attorney General he, like the Ministers, had to interrupt completely his former professional connections. We have considered the position, and the Government is of opinion that there is something to be said for that point of view, and that, accordingly, if a person for any reason retires from the office of Attorney General having served three years in that position, he ought to be given an opportunity to try to make good some of the professional loss which he, undoubtedly, sustained by reason of the fact that, as I have said, he had to sever what was his purely personal and private professional connection. In pursuance of that, the Government have put down this amendment which would give to any person who has held the office of Attorney General for three years and who retires from that office and does not, in the ensuing twelve months after his retirement, receive an appointment to any wholetime office the remuneration of which exceeds £1,000 per annum and either is charged on the Central Fund or the growing produce thereof or is payable directly out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas, or is appointed on the nomination of the Government or a Minister of State to any office the remuneration of which exceeds £1,000 per annum— that, in the case of an Attorney General he does not receive an appointment of the nature specified and prescribed in this amendment, he should be given a gratuity of one-half of the salary he held on retirement from office. That, I think, is as far as the Government finds itself, in the circumstances, able to go to meet the point of view that was advocated here.

Then Deputy Dr. O'Higgins in a few sentences accepted that. He said:

I am pleased with the fact that some recognition has been given to the fact that the Attorney General, to a greater or lesser extent, has lost coniact with his business, and that, necessarily, when he goes back to ordinary life, he finds himself in the position that it takes a number of years at least before he gets back to anything like the professional position he was in before he took office as Attorney General. I accept the fact that provision is made here for that, although it is not exactly making the Attorney General equivalent to a Minister in the pensionable capacity; but it is doing something to meet the case.

When the Bill came to the Seanad, Deputy MacEntee in his Second Reading speech said, at column 400, Volume 22:

The Government is unable to accept the recommendation of the Shanley Committee to make the post of Attorney General a pensionable one, and, as I said already in the other House, they did not reach that conclusion without much hesitation. We have, however, amended the Bill as originally introduced, following the representations made in the debate on the Second Stage of the Bill, so as to make provision by way of gratuity for an Attorney General who has ceased or shall in future cease to hold office by reason of a change of Government, provided he has not less than four years' service in office. The amount of the gratuity is equal to one-half of a year's salary, and is intended to tide the ex-Attorney General over the period after the cesser of office during which he will be gradually taking up again the threads of his professional career.

I do not need to spell it out any further.

The principle is crystal-clear and the provision is simply to tie the man, who, in the words of the Shanley Report has not received the type of promotion or advancement he might regard as being due to his appotntment as Attorney General, promotion to the bench. When promotion to the bench is given at a salary which is considerably in excess of the salary of the Attorney General, at least his official salary, then there is no reason for this Minister or the Government to suggest that the man has got anything but first-class promotion or that there is any question of there being difficulties while he catches up on his professional career.

Consequently, I appeal to the Government at this time of crisis not to set the bad example of giving a golden handshake of this kind. Above all, I object very strongly to seeing this provision slipped into a Bill from which it differs radically in principle. We all accept the principle of the Pensions (Abatement) Bill. It was something which commended itself to justice and fair play because the pensions had been earned by the people concerned. There had been no deductions made from their salaries over the years but contributions were made by the State. They were in every sense the real earnings of the people concerned. There is no suggestion, whatsoever, in the quotation I have given of any ministerial approach to this that there is any analogy between that and between giving an ex-Attorney General a gratuity to enable him to pick up again the threads of his office if he comes back to a professional career.

I appeal to the Government, if they want to give a gratuity willy-nilly to the Attorney General and everybody else, then bring that into the House as a separate Bill. Let us discuss the principle behind this large gesture and let us face it as a separate issue but please do not slip it—that is the only word I can use—into this one innocuous line at the end of this Bill which merely sets out the section that is being repealed.

I had to do considerable homework before I saw the import of this. It brings home do us the vital necessity in this Chamber, and elsewhere, of scrutinising every line of legislation that comes before us and not taking anything for granted because right here we have what I might say is an abolition of legislation, this slipping of things through.

There is no case to be made against the amendment and consequenetly I ask the Minister to accept it. I had hoped on this occasion, we would have had the senior Minister of the Government, the Minister for Finance, present, do speak on this amendment. Unfortunately he is not here. The principle is one that should commend itself above all to a Minister with the sense of openness which the Minister for Justice has shown do this House and which was commented on a few minutes ago. I appeal do him to accept this amendment which should be agreed to by the Government.

As I stated during the debate on the previous Stage of this Bill, I find myself very largely in agreement with Senator Quinlan on this point. I need not take up much time of the House in elaborating on the case made for this amendment but it is important that we should all understand quite clearly that there is a certain significance attached to the inclusion of a provision of this kind in the Bill before us. As Senator Quinlan has quite rightly pointed out, it is quite obvious that the Ministerial and Parliamentary Offices Act, 1938 envisaged, and had very clearly in view, very different terms of appointment applicable to the office of Attorney General from those applied to that office today. In addition to that, I want to point out that there is in fact a very radical difference in principle between the purposes and the general intent of this Bill and the provisions enshrined originally in the 1938 Act.

I do not consider there is any case whatever for this type of golden handshake, as it has been quite rightly described. It is most unfortunate that the Minister and the Government should have let it come before any House of the Oireachtas at the present time and expect us to sit here quite calmly and passive, when, at the same time, we have everybody from the Taoiseach down appealing for caution and restraint by the workers of the country and every other section who are expected do tighten their belts. They are expected to be satisfied with less than the minimum necessary to sustain a reasonable standard of living

The case made here by Senator Quinlan, I quite frankly think, is unanswerable. The Government will not only be doing justice, but will be adopting a very sensible and reasonable approach to a proper solution of this problem by following the advice tendered from this side of the House to remove this section. I do not want to say any more about it at this stage except to say I am in full agreement with Senator Quinlan in the case he has made. I urge the Minister to realise the sensible case he has made. Any reasonable Minister would listen to it. I appeal to him to take back the section and to accept the amendment.

Senator Quinlan, on the last occasion, made reference to the fact that this gratuity was to enable the Attorney General to re-establish himself in the office in which he had been engaged before he assumed the post of Attorney General. Despite the fact that he has spelled out very slowly for us today the debates which dook place on that occasion, we heard no reference in anything he spelled out to the fact that there was no question of reestablishing the Attorney General in office because, by the nature of the employment of the Attorney General, that of a barrister in prachice, there is no office to which he can re-establish himself when he has ceased to be Attorney General.

The Attorney General is a man who has reached—and I feel this is true in the case of most of the Attorneys General we have seen—the pinnacle of his profession and, by virtue of his profession, he is a man who depends exclusively on his own private associations and the private contacts be makes with his colleagues in the solicitors' profession. By devoting himself to the office of Attorney General and by accepting that post, he excludes himself—let there be no doubt about this —for the duration of his office from all his professional associations and, in doing so, he relinquishes all the contacts he established over the years, contacts which, in fact, took him some time to establish.

As I said, he is at the pinnacle of his profession. Whatever our views may be on individual cases, I feel the Government should have the benefit of the best legal advice available. The Attorney General should be highly qualified in all respects to assume that post, and I do not think we could rightly expect him, or ask him, to relinquish all the contacts he had established in the years he spent in that very slow and painful progression, and to start again without some compensation and, without doubt, some small compensation, for the loss he will incur. Senator Quinlan may reply that there is this golden handshake, and that he can expect a reward or his political efforts by, being appointed in due course to the bench. There is no guarantee whatsoever that he will be appointed in due course to the Bench.

On a point of correction, actually there is. It operates after he has been appointed, and he must be appointed within a 12-month period.

What about a change of Government? At present there is a very distinguished former Attorney General practising at the bar who did not enjoy that golden handshake. It can be said from this side of the House that that is a perfect example of a case where a man by accepting that onus and that responsibility lost, and lost substantially. It would be churlish of us to refer to a particular office when, in fact, we are trying to encourage the best type of mind and the most highly qualified person to accept the post. We should consider also and concern ourselves with the obvious case of men who relinquished much to contribute to the Government and to the legal policy of the Government.

Senator Quinlan has resurrected in my mind the whole history of this matter. I had a lot to do with it in 1938. In 1937 we started this business of pensions for Ministers. I should like to remind the House that the practice of the Attorney General confining his services to the Government was departed from in a Coalition Government. As a matter of fact, one Attorney General actually appeared against the State while he was Attorney General. He continued an action in which he had been engaged for the Wicklow County Council, or Bray, so far as my recollection goes. He broke entirely with the precedent we thought had been established and would always be maintained.

I feel Senator Quinlan has made a very good point. The Attorney General is the leader of his profession. Undoubtedly, he loses some of his practice, and to make provision for that we gave him half his salary to enable him to get back into his stride again. If there was a vacancy for a High Court judge he got it. His position was enhanced. I think the Government would be well advised to listen to the case which has been made. I am very familiar with all this because I had a lot to do with it. We set up a Commission and there was general agreement in that Commission, but at the last moment the representative of one Party got cold feet and would not sign. It had reached the stage of being drafted when he decided that he would not sign it. However, that is ancient history. We gave the Attorney General half his salary. I think he was paid £3,000 at that time, so he got £1,500. The sum is probably bigger now because the value of money has changed cansiderably.

Senator Quinlan has made what appears to be a very strong case, but I think he has omitted certain points. In the ordinary course of events if a person occupies the position of Minister for a number of years— three, four, five or six; I forget the number—he automatically becomes entitled to a pension, not a gratuity, for the remainder of his life. The principle was enunciated on Second Reading of this Bill that such a pension should not abate, because the person took further employment, the reason being that otherwise we would lose the benefit of the experience and knowledge of various people.

Either we adopt that principle or we do not. If we adopt the principle that this pension should not abate, this means that if a person who has been an officer in the Army takes employment with a local authority as an accountant, he does not lose his Army pension. A Minister who was formerly a secretary of a county council, or who held some other position under the Government, could go back into that position and he would not lose the pension he would get as Minister. As I understand it, that is the principle of the Bill, and if we are to adopt that principle, and to support it wholeheartedly, we must adopt it for everyone. We cannot make an exclusion. During the course of the discussions on Second Reading it was stated that this pension was a form of deferred payment. A person taking up an appointment at a lower salary than he might expect in private employment or in business on his own took that employment at a lower salary because he knew he would get a pension which was a deferred payment.

I can visualise that for many persons at the Bar what they would be paid as Attorney General—I think it is something round £3,000—would be considerably less than what they could hope to earn at the Bar. The fact that they are appointed Attorney General does not necessarily mean that they will be promoted to the Bench. Perhaps the appointment to the Bench is not one to which he would be completely adaptable when he is taking on the employment as Attorney General. If we are to agree on the principle that it is a deferred payment—he does not get a pension whether he lives ten years after he retires as Attorney General or whether he laves 30 years—he gets one lump sum in place of this pension which could be described as a deferred payment. If we adopt the principle that it is a deferred payment, surely in the Attorney General's case as in the case of all other civil servants he should not be refused it.

I can visualise cases were grave hardship could come about if Senator Quinlan's amendments were adopted. I take the case of a man who is Attorney General. Let us assume that six or eight months after he retires as Attorney General, he is appointed a judge; he then dies within 12 months or two years, or, perhaps, has come to retiring age and gets another pension as a judge and has to forfeit it. If we once adopt the principle that a pension is a deferred payment, that it is something a man bears in mind when taking on the appointment in the first instance, then the gratuity in that case is a deferred payment.

While I sympathise with Professor Quinlan's wishes, nevertheless, I feel you can describe it in either of two ways. You can raise an outcry by describing the pension or gratuity as a golden handshake. We talk about compulsory Irish, the poor man's pint but if you describe it, as it should be described, as a deferred payment I think that is only right and proper.

Senator Nash has just referred to descriptions such as golden handshakes. That is not the sort of remark I would expect in the Seanad in regard to the very important position of Law Officer to the Government, no matter what Government it is. That sort of cheapjack phrase is not in my view the sort of phrase that should be used in this House and certainly does not set a proper headline. What we are concerned with in this amendment is whether or not the Attorney General's office, no matter who occupies it, is to be excluded from the pension abatement provisions which we are making for all public servants and to which no objection has been taken. We are providing for our Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries and Attorneys General, in the plural, in addition to other public servants and the case sought to be made in the amendment is that we should for some reason exclude the Attorney General from these provisions. This is what the amendments amount to here. Has a case been made in that respect? In my view the answer is no. It is unfair and wrong that any particular official or officer should be excluded from any range of pensions or benefits which may be sought to be brought in. It appears to me on the face of it that the question of personality may enter into this. On the basis of clear rational thinking, is it right or proper that one particular office should be excepted from all others, particularly when that office is the important one of Attorney General where any Government must have as its Law Officer the most competent and able person who in its wisdom the Government thinks is the proper person to advise them on legal matters?

That is precisely the thinking behind the criticism made by the former Deputy Dr. O'Higgins during the Second Stage Reading of the Ministerial and Parliamentary Offices bill which came before the Dáil in 1938. In that Bill, as it was originally framed, the Government did not include the Attorney General. In my view Dr. O'Higgins properly made the point that there should be no discrimination against the Attorney General—I refer to columns 901 and 902 of the Dáil Debates of the 23rd November, 1938, and it was adopted by the Government. I quote therefrom:

I cannot see justification for discriminating between the Attorney General and any other member of the Government. In fact, we all know that he is a member of the Government, carrying, perhaps, greater responsibility than any of the others, because he is the adviser of all in a crisis, sitting as a member of the Executive Council in all but voting. In every sense of the word his task is equal to that of the others, and on leaving his plight is, at least, as bad as any of the other members of the Government. On every matter there is a certain amount of division of opinion, but I strongly urge that there should not be discrimination against one individual. A Government is a team.

In my view the question of where the Attorney General goes after he leaves his job is irrelevant. The point is that this is a deferred payment award for his job as a member of a Government team. It would be a very wrong principle for Oireachtas Éireann to establish that one member of that team should be discriminated against and, indeed, Dr. O'Higgins's remarks on that occasion were taken very fully into account by the Government and they decided to include a provision for the Attorney General under that particular Bill. I agree fully with Dr. O'Higgins's remarks on that occasion in that the Attorney General is a member of the team; indeed, he is a very important member of any Government team because——

Is he a member of the Government? I understood that he was the Government's legal adviser and not a member of the Government. That is a very important point.

The fact of the matter is that the Attorney General sits in on every Government meeting; he does not participate in voting on any Government decision but he is the person on whom the Government leans very heavily for legal advice in regard to any particular matter. He sits in as a member of the Government team; he is a party to all discussions but does not vote on any Government decision and does not participate unless asked to do so. In my view, it would be completely wrong to exclude him and I can only suggest that the reason why this particular exclusion is sought at this stage is for some personal reason or other.

If anybody thinks there is anything personal in this, I shall withdraw the amendment instantly.

I cannot see the rationality behind it. When I hear phrases like "golden handshakes" being used I think they denigrate a public office, they denigrate Parliament, in fact they denigrate everything we are seeking to establish in this country. That sort of cheapjack phrase is nothing less than denigration. I see no reason why this House should adopt this particular amendment. The matter was not even raised in the other House. The Dáil saw no good reason why the Attorney General should be excluded—no matter what Attorney General it is—from whatever provisions are brought in for gratuities or pensions. The matter has been raised here in a strange fashion. I speak not alone as a Minister but for all my colleagues in asking the House to reject these amendments as introducing an undesirable discriminatory provision against one particular officer charged with certain serious responsibilities and the onus of advising the Government over a period of years.

The position of the Attorney General is in many respects an anomalous one. It is probably inevitable that every time his position is discussed in connection with legislation difficulties will arise, and difficulties have arisen in this particular case. Before going on to deal with the matter, I think it is unfortunate that the Minister in his speech should have suggested that there is anything in the nature of private motives in regard to this, and also that he should have suggested that, just because matters are not raised in Dáil Éireann, Seanad Éireann is not free to start ab initio a discussion on the point.

One of the difficulties here has been whether the position of Attorney General is analogous to that of a civil servant who leaves a post and afterwards comes back to another. On this point, we must distinguish two cases. Either the Attorney General becomes a judge or he does not. If the Attorney General does not become a judge within twelve months, this amendment leaves him in exactly the same position as anybody else who retires from a public post.

If the Attorney General does not become a judge and returns to practice or returns to any other office, provided it is not over £3,000 a year he gets his gratuity. The amendment leaves that intact. The point at issue is what should be done in the case where an Attorney General becomes a judge. What is at issue here is whether or not the Attorney General who becomes a judge, can be considered as in an analogous position to any other person who retires from the public service.

A fair case has been made and can be maintained, that an Attorney General who becomes a judge is not retiring; he is being promoted. This is a step in the career of this particular individual. It is not a step of resigning from a job in order to retire and, perhaps, coming back to some other type of work. It is, in fact, part of the weaving of this man's career. It is on this point that the Seanad should make up their minds. There is no doubt if he has to return to practice a special provision is there. If he is like any other civil servant leaving a job, or like a Minister going out of office back to private life, the amendment gives him his gratutity. The amendment is not allowing the gratuity if he goes from the office of Attorney General to that of the Bench.

It is unfortunate that this particular section was included in the Bill. It is doubly unfortunate in the fact that, since the Bill is a retrospective measure, it covers the case of somebody who has now, retired as an Attorney General. These are not matters that should be allowed to cloud the general issue in regard to the position, or what Seanad Éireann thinks should be the position, when a man leaves the job of Attorney General and goes on to the Bench. The Seanad is being asked whether this is analogous to a public servant retiring, or whether, even though technically he goes from one job to another and technically he goes from one branch of employment to another in fact this is normal promotion in the course of his career.

A good case has been made and I do not think that anything the Minister has said has rebutted the case which has been made on this ground.

I have listened carefully to what has been said and I find myself rather in the position of agreeing with the amendment that is not before us, which we would have to pass if we passed this one, but not agreeing with this particular amendment. I am surprised at the suggestion by the Minister that Senator Quinlan's amendment seeks to set up a new position. It seems to me that it is the Bill which seeks to set up a new position.

If I understand the position correctly, apart from the repeal of subsections (4) and (5) of section 15 of the Ministerial and Parliamentary Offices Act, 1938, and without that repeal which we ask for agreement for here, the situation would obtain as it was of yore. In other words the new element is not being introduced by Senator Quinlan but by the Bill and, therefore, I do not think it is quite fair to suggest that Senator Quinlan is trying to discriminate against one man or anything of that kind. What he is trying to do is have continued a practice which was regarded as just in the past.

Senator Dooge's point is that passing from Attorney General to a judgeship cannot really be regarded as retiring from one post requiring a pension and going on to something totally different. It seems to me as a layman that it is, in fact, promotion. If I understand it correctly, this amendment merely means that coupled with the following amendment the present situation will obtain except for the fact that the figure, as it were, will be raised to £3,000 instead of £1,000. I feel that £1,000, or, perhaps, £2,000 would be plenty.

I think I should say here that at present money values, most lawyers are grossly overpaid. This will be agreed to by those of us who are not lawyers. My heart does not bleed for the barrister who goes out of practice and has to live on the mere pittance he gets as Attorney General, and then we have to hand out a pension. Under the Bill before us he is now to get his pension and proceed to a more highly paid position. I would feel more at one with this amendment if it were raised, perhaps, in a time of decreasing money value from £1,000 to £2,000, but I would feel strongly in favour of the next amendment no matter what happens to this one.

Unfortunately, some of the Senators who spoke, such as Senator O'Kennedy and Senator Nash, did not seem to comprehend the situation or had not read the section. Senator O'Kennedy seems to take up the line that a man has no guarantee of promotion. This is the very point here. He gets the gratuity, the half year's salary, if he is not promoted within a year, so Senator O'Kennedy was completely wrong in his premises. Then be speaks of men who have relinquished quite a lot to serve the State. Many of them do not think of the question of gratuity. I would feel far kinder towards it if it were a question of gratuity to some retiring Ministers who had served long and nobly and I would much prefer if the question of gratuity were faced as an issue and if we had Government thinking on it and not have discrimination—that is the word which was employed—used to give it to one particular person and nobody else. That is the type of inverse discrimination that is recommended in the Bill.

Again, Senator Nash got the issue completely befuddled between pensions and gratuities. Surely the Government of the period of 1938 were crystal clear that this was not a pension in any sense of the word. It was simply to enable the retiring Attorney General if he did not get on to the Bench within twelve months to take up his practice again. That is a very reasonable and salutary process. All I have to add here is that the money values concerned obviously need to be modernised.

Then Senator Nash spoke about our taking something from someone that he had in his terms of appointment, but that is precisely the issue. We are not taking anything. We are seeking to preserve the status quo, the terms on which all former Attorneys General since 1938 accepted the office. Again, Senator Nash was completely wrong in that. Neither the present nor the former Attorney General when he accepted the office had any idea that they could both aspire to going on the Bench and at the same time get a golden handshake of £2,000 a year. I do nor apologise to anyone for using that term because we have to speak in the terms that people understand. They understand what a golden handshake means and it is not altogether very pleasant.

Surely £2,000 a year is wrong? On a point of order I wish to correct Senator Quinlan. If he is going to appeal to the feelings of the people, let him do so in correct terms.

On a point of order, that is not a point of order.

£2,000 a year he referred to, not a gratuity, a simple gratuity of half his salary.

Senator Quinlan.

It is worth being a member of this House to see the courage and listen to the great integrity of a person like Senator Boland, which is an example and an inspiration to us all. I hope that when we are ever found lacking in courage, we will remember Senator Boland and then speak and make a stand for what we believe. When I look back on public life, there are a couple of figures who really stand out. One is Senator Boland and the other is Senator Moylan. I I regret that such people are becoming all too rare and I hope that the future will throw up their likes. It is a real privilege to be in the same Chamber with men such as those and I congratulate the Taoiseach on the most outstanding nomination he made.

The Senator must get back to the section now.

The Minister just did not attempt to deal with the case at all. His whole case was that it is, and I quote him, "irrelevant where the Attorney General goes afterwards." The Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, when he got the Dáil to agree to this, was very specific and the words used were extremely legal and had only one interpretation. Perhaps it might be well to quote again for the Minister's benefit and see the contrast. He said "...and is intended to tide the ex-Attorney General over the period after cesser of office during which he will be gradually taking up again the threads of his professional career". That stands in sharp contrast to the Minister's approach, and also was fully and strongly endorsed by Senator Boland who said that that was their view in 1938.

Senator Boland quite rightly made the point there that it was a great pity that a departure had been made regarding the office, that the man was excluded from private practice. If the Minister wishes to place the Attorney General on the same level as Ministers, surely the first and obvious step, if he is looking for such equality, is to insist on full time service? We have it every way. We have a gratuity that was brought in on the assumption that the man concerned would really sever his connections with the legal profession, and then the situation emerges where those connections are scarcely severed at all, and now we are back to the situation in which the golden handshake is required to follow such a measure.

I would much prefer to see the Minister do something to lift the discrimination against Ministers, of which he is one, because surely they are a group in this country who are totally underpaid and frequently uncared for. It shows a great lack of moral courage on the part of the Government that they have not faced up to this issue long before now. To accuse me of discrimination against the Attorney General in looking for parity with Ministers is about the strangest joke I have heard in a long time, as if one could say that there was parity between those two positions. The Minister by his smile says that he acknowledges that fact as well as I and everybody else.

The Senator is a lip reader as well as everything else.

Again the Minister said that by using the term "golden handshake", I have denigrated the Government and public life-I leave the people to decide on that. They know what I mean by "goklen handshake" and they can decide, but I will insist on calling it a golden handshake.

Senator Dooge very rightly made the point that this was normal in the way of promotion and going to higher posts at almost double salary. Surely nobody in any walk of life feels he experiences hardship in having such discrimination exerted against his promotion upstairs, and nobody expects a handout in such circumstances.

One of the grave objections I see against the present suggestion is the innocuous way it has been slipped into the Bill here. It is totally out of spirit and out of principle with the Bill. It has no connection whatsoever with the idea of pension abatement and it should not have been put into the Bill. It is an object lesson to the Seanad that we cannot take anything for granted. We have to scrutinise the measures as they come and satisfy ourselves that things are what they are supposed to be. In this case it was only because I happened to see a reference in the White Paper that I followed it up and found what was behind it. It is some justification of the Seanad here that we have unearthed this, and even if we do not succeed in stopping it now, because after all if the Minister decides that he is going to railroad it through, there is nothing we can do about it when heads are counted, at least we will have vindicated our right and shown that we are on the watch here, and other Ministers will think twice in future before they try to slip a fast one through here such as what is proposed in this Bill.

I have little else to say, except that at this twelfth hour, I appeal to the Minister to accept the amendment, leaving the status quo prevail, bring money values up to date, and if he wants to speak of gratuities to any retiring officer, start with Ministers first. You can give the Attorney General any equality you wish with Ministers in that but let us debate the principle in full. Let us see the full justice for it and not have simply one officer made a favourite over all the others.

I conclude by appealing to the Minister to show us that he is as big a man as Senator Boland who spoke from the back bench so that when a case is made on its merits, a case that is unanswerable, he is big enough to accept it and take it back and ask the Government to be big enough to accept it, too, because that is the spirit of Senator Boland, the spirit of the late Senator Moylan, the spirit of our President, Mr. de Valera, himself, and of the fathers of the State, Griffith, Collins and others.

Amendment put.
The Seanad divided: Tá, 20; Níl, 29.

  • Alton, Bryan G.
  • Brosnahan, Seán.
  • Carton, Victor.
  • Conlan, John F.
  • Crowley, Patrick.
  • Davidson, Mary F.
  • Dooge, James C. I.
  • Fitzgerald, Garret M. D.
  • Fitzgerald, John.
  • McAuliffe, Timothy.
  • McDonald, Charles.
  • McHugh, Vincent.
  • Malone, Patrick.
  • Mannion, John.
  • O'Reilly, Patrick (Cavan).
  • O'Sullivan, Denis J.
  • Prendergast, Micheál A.
  • Quinlan, Patrick M.
  • Rooney, Éamon.
  • Sheehy Skeffington, Owen L.

Níl

  • Brennan, John J.
  • Browne, Seán.
  • Cole, John C.
  • Connolly O'Brien, Nora.
  • Dolan, Séamus.
  • Eachthéirn, Cáit Uí.
  • Egan, Kieran P.
  • Farrell, Joseph.
  • Fitzsimons, Patrick.
  • Flanagan, Thomas P.
  • Honan, Dermot P.
  • Jessop, W. J. E.
  • Killilea Mark.
  • Lenehan, Joseph R.
  • McGlinchey, Bernard.
  • McGowan, Patrick.
  • Martin, James J.
  • Nash, John Joseph.
  • Ó Donnabháin, Seán.
  • O'Kennedy Michael.
  • Ó Maoláin, Tomás.
  • O'Reilly, Patrick (Longford).
  • Ryan, Eoin.
  • Ryan, James.
  • Ryan, Patrick W.
  • Ryan, William.
  • Sheldon, William A. W.
  • Stanford, William B.
  • Teehan, Patrick J.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Quinlan and Crowley; Níl, Senators Browne and Farrell.
Amendment declared lost.

Amendment No. 2 is not moved.

I wish to move amendment No. 2 because it is totally independent of the decision on amendment No. 1.

I have already indicated that amendment No. 2 is consequential on amendment No. 1.

I accept your ruling, Sir.

On a point of order, it seems to me legitimate to contend that the Seanad might well wish to maintain section 15 subsections (4) and (5) of the Ministerial and Parliamentary Offices Act, 1938, without changing the maximum from £1,000 to £3,000. We have decided that we do not want to change the maximum, but we might legitimately decide that we want the status quo. I respectfully submit that this amendment is entirely in order.

The Chair has already ruled that amendment No. 2 is consequential on amendment No. 1.

I accept your ruling, Sir.

Amendment No. 2 not moved.
Bill received for final consideration.
Agreed to take remaining Stage today.
Question: "That the Bill do now pass", put and agreed to.
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